Discontinued!

This blog is discontinued. I installed the WordPress software at emagix.nl and new posts will be added there.

Adobe announces Creative Suite 5

On Monday 12 April Adobe will launch their Creative Suite 5. Visit the launch page at adobe.com to register. I’m particularly interested in the new Photoshop CS5 features…

Panasonic micro fourthirds GF1 successor?

Since a couple of weeks micro fourthirds camera forums on the net are mentioning a new Panasonic patent which displays a Panasonic GF1-like camera with a built-in EVF. Such a camera, expectedly named GF2, would be the dream successor of the already very desirable GF1. Estimates are that the GF2 might be officially announced by Panasonic in September 2010. But it’s rumors only, nothing official.

Quantum Dots

Interesting link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8580372.stm. According to dpreview.com “technology developer InVisage Technologies has announced sensors it says can offer four times better performance than conventional CCD and CMOS sensors”, which sounds promising for future image capturing devices.

Include WordPress as a feed into my own site?

I wish I knew how I could include my WordPress blog into my own website!

Braindump

It has been a while since I posted something new. Over a month or so? In the meantime I did only one more shoot for SG and I edited and ordered a series of photos for a giant kitchen wall project. Every now and then I edit some US pics (at the current pace the book will take decades to complete). Oh, my camera has some competition as well. I ordered Cakewalk Sonar so I can bring back my music composing/recording/editing passion back to life. If  time were not such an issue!

New Suicide Girls shoot

A new Suicide Girls shoot is in the making. No details I can share with you yet, but it all works out fine, I’ll be shooting this model before the end of the month! She’s really cute and I’m looking forward to working with her.

Henrike set online

I just uploaded the pics from my shoot with Henrike to PBase. They are marginally edited, mostly because the light and colors were nearly perfect, both outside and inside. Again, the low light capabilities of the D700 helped a lot (I did bring a tripod but I love working with the camera hand-held).

Henrike

Blog background

I created a new image to use as a background on community sites, blogs, twitter and other purposes. It’s made up of 64 images from my photo archives, including most of the models I’ve worked with in recent years and my favorite travel destinations. I’ve a black and white version too, but I like the colorful one for the time being.

Editing: obtaining the same result twice?

Do you recognize this: you start working on an unedited RAW image from your camera and try to tweak it in Photoshop as good as you can. When you are really satisfied, you save the image and start all over again. Then compare your results, are they identical? In my case they rarely are. Nearly always, I can clearly see differences in contrast, tone, saturation and so on. While in both cases I tried to get the best possible image. I wonder why this is. Am I satisfied too easily? Should I follow a strict editing method (white balance first, then levels, then color etcetera). Or does my mood change while I’m editing? So quickly?

Here’s a couple of things I’ve been considering:

• Do everything to make your RAW image as good as possible. You can tweak a lot in your RAW converter, but try to capture your image as you want to have it.
• Batch process RAW images. Don’t adjust settings for each individual image if you want to obtain a consistent series of photos. Same color temperature, same contrast, same curves (assumed all photos were made under identical conditions, such as in a studio setting)
• If you’re working on multiple images, keep a reference photo open in Photoshop so you can compare (intermediate) results with the reference photo. This really helps to obtain consistency throughout a series of photos
• Check your light conditions: are you working in natural light? Your environment impacts the way you perceive colors. If you work at night like me a lot, have a look at your photos the next day at daylight. Do you still like what you did? Or, while you’re working, take a short break, read something, watch some video and take a fresh look. Do you still like the picture like you did before?
• Work on a neutral background. Don’t let you windows/Mac color schema distract you. Choose a theme with neutral grays of maximize your photoshop window to get rid of unnecassary window borders

Maybe I’ll come up with some more. But this is a couple of things I try to obtain consistent high image quality.

Photo frames

Today I received the Halbe photo frames that I ordered earlier this week from monochrom.com, my favorite German internet store for photography presentation supplies. I tried some IKEA frames for a small photo project in my kitchen but these frames suck in every possible way. The Halbe frames instead are extremely well-made, easy to handle and come with the nearly reflection-free Mirogard glass. Recommended!

Wordle

(It took me about 30 minutes to figure out that WordPress capitalizes the P in wordpress if it’s included in a link, so the wordle link would not work. Thank you WordPress!)

Uploading pictures from phone

I’m trying to figure out how to upload pictures directly from my phone to WordPress. Or to Flickr. I managed to publish some to blogger.com, using a sort of built-in function of the phone, but I prefer not to have 8 different blog sites for different purposes. My life is complex enough already, thank you!

Sick

Due to the flu I had to cancel both shoots this weekend. I hope I can re-plan on a short term basis (for now I can only think of sleeping and take a good rest). So for those who came to see the first results: be patient!

Upcoming shoots

I’ve scheduled two shoots for the upcoming weekend. Saturday I’m doing a shoot with a SG model for a new set and on Sunday I’m seeing a old friend for a full day of shooting. I’m thinking of creating a new book out of the results of one day so I need about 100 shots which are good enough and don’t look all the same (more or less).

My book has arrived

The Norway photo book that I ordered from blurb.com was in my mail this Saturday, a couple of weeks sooner than I expected actually. It looks good and I’m quite happy with the picture quality. The colors are a bit less saturated than on my screen but I may start using to apply the color profiles that Blurb provides in their B3 program. to avoid any differences in the future.

My new book: “Norway – a picture diary”

Last week I published my first book on Blurb.com, titled “Norway – a picture diary”. The book contains over 80 pictures on 25x20cm format, printed on premium paper. All photos were made during my roundtrip through Norway in the Summer of 2008.

Destinations covered include Oslo, Hamar, Jotunheimen, Jostedalsbreen, Lom, Bergen and Trollstigen.

Click here to order.