PixelatedImage Blog

In 1984 Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita changed cinematic history with the greatest movie of all time. If you do not think The Karate Kid is brilliant cinema, we cannot be friends. Who could not love the simple philosophy espoused in the line on the poster: He taught him the secret to Karate lies in the mind and the heart. Not in the hands. I feel a tear coming on even as I write this.

Of all the memorable bits in the movie - I have a point that I’m building to so sit tight - is when Miyage-san begins teaching Daniel, not Karate but home renovations and car-washing with zen-like admonitions to “Paint-up, paint-down. Wax-on, wax-off.” I loved that. I immediately subscribed to Better Homes and Gardens in hopes that I too could learn Karate. It didn’t work.

Back to the point. I learned three things from The Karate Kid, two of which are immediately applicable to the photographic journey.

1. The Crane is a formidable Karate technique if you don’t see it coming. But it’s hard to do with camera in hand and has no immediate photographic application.

2. When you learn the fundamentals so well that they become instinctive, you will never have to think about them and technique itself steps out of the way when you are (a) being bullied by a guy with a mullet or (b) expressing your vision with your camera. I’ll come back to this.

3. The secret to Photography, like Karate, lies more in the mind and the heart than in the tools of our craft. It is primarily an art of expression and everything is derivative of your vision - for which you must have a mind and heart. Time spent exploring the things about which you are passionate is time spent working on your craft, whether you have a camera in hand or not.

Back to #2, the fundamentals. The photographic journey is not one taken in one step or in one day. The camera is deceptively simple and while you can certainly - to extend the Karate metaphor - start flailing and kicking immediately, it will no more make you a black belt than picking up a camera and pointing it helter skelter makes you a photographer.

There is great value in a wax-on, wax-off type of repetitive exercise. Moving your fingers over your camera and lens so often that you know each button by touch gives puts you in a place where you can think, not about the technology, but about the scene in front of you. The same is true of composition - the more familiar you are with a repertoire of compositional possibilities, the sooner you have a starting point with less wasted time and effort. This is a journey that took me nearly twenty years. And it was only then that I finally had a vision I felt passionately enough about that I would pursue this as a career.

Whether your journey ever takes you to a place of vocation, take some comfort in knowing that every frame you shoot - even the junk - takes you closer to getting the geek stuff out of the way and allowing the artist to do his thing without distraction.

If you want to speed up the process, then thank Mr Miyage for the hint, pick up your camera and work it. Blind-fold yourself and identify each button by touch. Can you change ISO or your focus point without looking, without thinking? Can you adjust your EV compensation with little more than a glance? The more unconsciously you can wield your tools, the more you can spend your time looking, reacting, and creating.

“If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an “artless art” growing out of the unconscious”
- Daisetz Susuki, quoted in Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye

It’s just past noon on Monday and I’m only now getting to posting something. We had guests this weekend and I’m only now recovering. I usually put in more work over the weekends, just didn’t get to it this weekend so it all got bumped.

Ok, lame apologies aside, here’s something I discovered this morning while trying to organize some new projects. It’ll appeal to you if you’re visually oriented and kind of anal-retentive about being organized. Another apology: this is Mac OS-X only. I’m on Leopard but assuming it works on Tiger too. Could be wrong. For those that are left out - sorry. (Update - I’m told this is OSX Leopard only)

I like my desktop and folders to look good. I also like them to be easily identified and since I am a visual person I’ve taken to making custom icons for important files. But this morning I just wanted a down and dirty icon for a new project folder. Here’s what I did:

1. Make an image and make it square.

2. Save it in Photoshop as a JPEG.

3. Find that JPG in the finder, click it and hit CMD+i - this will bring up an info pallette with a little thumbnail at the top. Click that and hit cmd+c (Update - Follow the instructions, and the REVERSE of the image below. I mixed it up. Sorry.)

4. Find the folder for which you want this ad hoc icon, click it, hit cmd+i, find the little thumbnail as you did in step 3, click it and hit cmd+v

5. That should paste a new icon. If you used a square you won’t have transparency issues. Now just delete the jpg image and you’re done.

1. If you haven’t backed-up your data in the last couple days, now is the time to do it. Go now, the class can wait.

2. Floundering for ideas to create a streamlined back-up strategy? Check out Scott Kelby’s strategy here - it’s nearly identical to my own. I’ve been meaning to write an update on how I backup my stuff, but Kelby’s post this morning is so close to the one I’d have written, I’m just going to point you there.

I got my DROBO last week and have yet to fill it with drives, so for now I use a 1TB LaCie for the redundant archives, another for offsite backup at a friend’s studio, and I use Hyperdrives instead of the Epson P5000 (Here’s a solid review of the Hyperdrive from Luminous Landscape.) I haven’t used Apple’s Time Capsule either, and instead just use a LaCie drive and SuperDuper to create a bootable copy every two days.

However you do it, do it simply, do it redundantly, do it often, do it now.

When I first started blogging I did a Home Office Smackdown and readers sent in pics of their home offices. Very complicated. A friend, Jordan Nielsen, posted something similar this morning and in a moment of boredom I decided to play along and will link this to his comments. I invite you to link yours in mine. Why? Why not? (Click the pic to embiggen it.)

On a side note - anyone out there ever have Photoshop’s Photomerge go through its paces with a small handful of jpgs only to simply end up with nothing at all, as if you’d never started the process? Very strange - for the life of me I can’t get it to work. Gurus feel free to chime in. But only once you’ve shot your office/studio/workspace and linked it in the comments.

Scott Kelby has finally come to his senses and abandoned his No Blog Wednesday policy in favour of Guest Blog Wednesdays. It’s clear the man needs a break, but why make us suffer, right? (Totally kidding, Scott!) - Head over to Photoshop Insider for the first guest post by Vincent Versace. If  you’ve been enjoying my recent rants on the geek:artist ratio and the HOW vs. WHY stuff, you’re going to love what Versace has to say about being taken by your photographs.

Brave enough to stare the future of digital imaging in the eye and not flinch? Head over to Red.com and look at the Red Cameras - the 5K Epic, the 4K Red One, the 3K Scarlet. Very cool.

It looks like we’ve now filled what we thought was our last space for the Lumen Dei Photographic Workshop and Tour in Kashmir this September, but we’ve been talking and if we hear from you in the next week we can make room for one more - it’s just how the logistics are working out. So - if you’re kicking yourself for not applying, these are literally the final hours. But this is REALLY the last spot, no more joking around.

While we’re talking about travel photography, the website for the Travel Photographer of The Year 2008 competition is now open. As always, the prizes are sweet, and you need to do your due diligence about the rules. If nothing else, look through the galleries of winners from years past - some inspiring stuff in there.

And some reminders:

Have you checked and/or updated the firmware for your camera recently? I just upgraded my 5D bodies today after ignoring it for too long. For some reason it scares the heck outta me.

Have you done your data backups today? This week? If your primary harddrives died right now, how catastrophic would it be? Does the whole thing keep you up at night or make you break into a cold sweat? Consider DROBO.

Calibrate your monitor. It’s even less fun than flossing, but your images will look better.

This is likely not the first time you’ve heard about Mpix.com but I need to add my voice to the chorus praising their service and quality.

While I was down at NAPP HQ last month, Scott Kelby was showing me some of the prints he’d had done by Mpix on the Kodak Metallic paper and folks, I was blown away.

One of the things I want most in many of my images is a feeling of luminescence and this paper, combined with the right image and processing, does that. Will it work for all images, no, but then no paper ever really has. Some images work best in matte, some in high gloss. Mpix offers printing on traditional Kodak Professional Portra Endura papers, Kodak Professional Endura Metallic, and Ilford Professional Black and White papers, as well as canvas.

I placed my order late on May 12 and received it today on May 18 - a Sunday. Bear in mind, I live in Canada and I’ve been told US orders arrive much faster. My prints - large 16×24 metallics mounted on double-weight matboard - arrived perfectly packaged and in perfect condition.

As to the quality - it’s gorgeous. I can’t stop staring at these. My photographs have never looked so luminous and perfect. No colour shifts, no plugged-up midtones, no weirdness of any kind. Just big, gorgeous, prints. For the price and the ease, and the fact that Mpix goes to 20×30 starting at $32.00, my Epson R2400 may start seeing even less action than it ever has.

I’ve been putting this experiment off for a while because frankly I just didn’t want to be disappointed. Nothing could be further from it. AND as a bonus - Mpix is running a promotion - join NAPP before June 30, and pay $89 instead of $99. And they’re tossing in a Dave Cross DVD for free. There’s nothing in it for current NAPP members, which kind of rubs me the wrong way (Scott, you’re on this one, right?) but if it gets a few more of you hold-outs into the fold, then more’s the merrier. Click here for the details on the NAPP thing.

Check out the Mpix website to see the whole range of products and pricing.

Stop reading this blog right now (ok, not RIGHT now, finish the post, then stop) and go do two things:

1. Calibrate your display.
2. Backup your drives.

OK, you done? You can come back now.

I have a friend who is just on the cusp of making the switch to digital. She’s an accomplished film shooter and feels it’s time to make "The Switch". So she’s easing in and got a leased Nikon and is having some frustrations (not with the Nikon specifically, but with the switch in general). So this one is for her and for those of you who might be going through the same thing. Here’s a really brief, and incomplete list of advicey kinds of bits that came to mind as I was packing for my LUMEN DEI trip this morning.

1. Digital is not just like film only different. When you swtich to digital you aren’t just switching one type of film stock for another, you’re switching paradigms, gear, workflow, business models, and billing practices. You’ll shoot differently, expose differently, and if you never did any of your own darkroom or lab work, that’s gonna change now too. Sometimes learning new things is so difficult because we fail to let go of our old paradigms - digital is a whole new world, so let go of everything you thought you knew and go in with eyes open and be prepared for a learning curve. Don’t panic, it’s all going to be ok.

2. The learning curve is inevitable, but you can make it easier on yourself and I’d recommend three books by my colleague Scott Kelby. Scott says he’s a fan of mine but as I’m a fan of his it’s more like a mutual admiration society, but it’s kind of exclusive so don’t go asking for membership or pool passes. Here’s my recommendation - go to scottkelbybooks.com and order these three books:

1. The Digital Photography Book, Scott Kelby
2. The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers, Scott Kelby
3. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers, Scott Kelby

I know there are alot of books out there on these three subjects, but while Kelby is an excellent photographer and knows his stuff inside and out, it’s his ability to write and educate clearly, simply, and without condescension that sets him apart. That and an uncanny ability to presage the questions I have and answer them in the next paragraph. It’s pretty creepy, actually.

3. Now make sure you have Photoshop CS2 or CS3 now that it’s out, and Lightroom. Lightroom is so far beyond what I began with and starting out with it is, in my mind, totally crucial. I can’t speak highly enough of the program. Sit down and work through Scott’s three books - you’ll find the whole thing becomes much less intimidating with Scott teaching you. Trust me on this one.

4. If you’re heavily invested in optics from Nikon or another line you might want to stick with that brand when buying a digital camera, but my recommendation otherwise is Canon. The full-frame sensors are truly the holy grail, in my mind, of digital shooting. And only Canon gives you them. The 5D is an incredible camera. Some have asked me about the 1 series and while I’ll admit they’re amazing, my recommendation is to buy the 5D and spend the difference on an L series lens or two.(Unless you’re heading to Bhagdad and need the bomb-proofing and weather/dust seals) The bodies will all one day be obsolete but the lenses will last much, much longer. And they’ll have a visible effect on your work. I’m not bashing Nikon - the fact is both Nikon and Canon make a couple excellent cameras and a couple that are more like cheap toys for weekend warriors. I prefer Canon.

5. Go out and shoot, have fun, play with your camera. Shoot thousands of frames and delete them if you don’t like them. Learn to read your histogram, learn your white balance, shoot in RAW.

6. Don’t hesitate to ask questions or look for help. If you’re in Vancouver I’m available for coaching and I’m not as expensive as you think. Seriously.

I really believe that digital imaging is a gigantic step forward in the technology needed to take your vision and put it within the frame - the rewards, for me and countless others, are simply so much greater shooting in digital. But the transition can be intimidating. I hope some of this has helped. As always, questions are welcome. And if I don’t know the answer, I’m pretty sure it’s in something Kelby has already written.

Chapter Two is a long one. It covers the Library Module and as such there is a tonne of information to cover. Even for someone who thought he really "got" Lightroom already I learned alot.

Here’s a tip - read the whole thing carefully, with Lightroom open in front of you. There are alot of little details hidden in the paragraphs. One thing I think this book could benefit from - and this is not a criticism, it’s an observation about the risk of having too much good content - is some kind of icon system that visually says "here’s a keyboard shortcut" or "here’s a power-user tip". There’s so much good stuff in here it is easy to miss and could also be hard to find again in a pinch - so I read with a marker and makes stars and notes in the top of the right-hand page.

Ok, so here’s what gets covered:

Interface keyboard shortcuts - which have already made things a little more fluid for me.

Using Grid, Loupe, Survey, and Compare views

Sorting photos - something of a beginning-to-end sorting workflow. Not the way I do it, but at least as good. Kelby spends alot of time on flagging and rating and it gives you a solid idea of how beneficial a workflow that’s been thought out from beginning to end can be.

Collections and Sub-collections - Which I confess I under-use. But I’m in the process of figuring out my own flow, so at some point I will replace my previous system and use these - way easier. But the problem with moving to a new system is that you’ve got so much stuff still leaning on the old system and moving those old files is no fun at all. Soon. Veerrry soon.

Keywords, Stamping, Metadata, Stacking (and some great stacking shortcuts - for example CMD+G will stack selected photos without clicking through the menues. Want to expand a stack quickly? Click the stack and hit S - blammo!) The metadata section is worth camping out in for a while - very helpful.

Identity plate stuff

Folder stuff - which is really key to understanding how Lightroom sees your images and how you can use lightroom to move things around and be organized.

Working with Multiple libraries (Matt Brandon, see pages 104-109)

Sorry I’m not doing much more than a summary, but the reality is that there’s so much good stuff in here you just need to get the book. Beside Scott Kelby numbers himself as one of my fans and I could never betray that trust and copy his content here. BUT let me say this - there is a tonne of info here and having spent a couple hours working through it I am more comfortable with Lightroom and it’s capabilities. As always, Kelby makes the learning easy. A couple format changes would help break down the content into more bite-sized pieces.

I can’t recommend using this book as the foundation of your thinking as you create a cohesive workflow that you consistently use - the more consistent your flow is the faster you’ll work, the more sure you’ll be of your data, and the more able you will be to find images when you’re looking - not to mention protecting them with the right metadata. If you do it all as part of the flow it becomes second nature - and Lightroom allows you to do so much almost automatically that there is no excuse for not embedding metadata and assigning keywords.

Adobe has just announced the full release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It’s hitting the market at $199USD and ships on February 19. More details here on the Lightroom product site and here on the Rob Galbraith site.

In brief, it’ll ship February 19 and the intro price is $199USD, which will go up to $299 after April 30th.The current beta will expire on February 28.

I am very excited about this, can you tell?! Be sure to read the announcement and details on Rob Galbraith’s site.

The wait is over….but why am I so excited about Lightroom? In short, Lightroom provides a place to import, process, sort, and output my images, completely in harmony with Photoshop. Less of my work now happens in Photoshop and the workflow in general has been streamlined. Apple’s Aperture has been out longer and while i concede Aperture has some cool features that Lightroom doesn’t, Lightroom benefits from an extensive beta program that included thousands of professional and advanced amateurs. For me and my style of working this changes everything.

Also check out the NAPP Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Learning Center (the NAPPAPLLC?) HERE - excellent content as always from Scott Kelby and the NAPP gang.