A change is as good as a holiday

I seem to be starting a trend on this blog about blogging more about software and computing than about photography, but it is all related in the long run. A while back now I blogged about going back to linux as a platform for my photography work and I was highly impressed with how far things had come since I previously ventured in that direction. After a few months, I had a workflow that I was proud of and that worked incredibly well for me. This was all pretty much built around using Bibble Pro 5. I was happy with Bibble as it was fairly quick and reminded me of using Lightroom from when I had been using Windows and OS X.

Just over two weeks ago however I changed platform again and thanks to my very loving better half, am now typing on a brand new 13″ Macbook Pro. Sure, some people will tell me that the 15″ would have been a better move for the larger and slightly higher res screen but doing any form of graphic work on a smaller 1280 x 800 screen is no problem for me (I had a 14″ Acer Aspire for about a year). This thing is plenty quick for what I need to do as well.

The change presented me with a choice that I hadn’t really given much thought to in the past. With Lightroom 3 being released recently and Aperture 3 hitting stores earlier this year, I had a choice of two incredibly powerful library management and editing tools. Lightroom would have been a been a fairly safe choice given how long I had been using it and that I still have a workflow engrained in my mind, but I decided to give the free 30 day trial of Aperture 3 a go as well.

From my limited play with Aperture, I must say that I am loving it. It’s catalog management appeals to me more than that of Lightroom (this is subjective I know, but I always liked how iPhoto handled its library) and I find myself being better organised with keywords and other metadata now as well, thanks to the workflow I am developing with the program. The colour tags that you can rename definitely mean the end of picking tags in Lightroom for certain things and trying to remember what each one was supposed to represent. It is a small thing, but something that helps in the early days of sorting out your workflow.

Editing photos was where I was where I really expected the competition to heat up. Both programs are loaded with enough editing tools to keep Photoshop sitting on the sidelines watching on for the most part and both do pretty much the same job, so not really much to talk about here. One thing that is worth mentioning though is the presets. Both applications make use of them for quick access to different types of edits but in my opinion, Lightroom has the edge. I always relied pretty heavily on the (free) presets in Lightroom that I had been collecting over the years (mostly from Lightroomkillertips.com) but moving to Aperture, well… there just aren’t that many out there. Sure, there are enough sites with the odd preset collection for sale, but they are of pretty questionable quality more often than not. I have managed to find a few free ones so far which seem to be ok, but there definitely isn’t anywhere near the same quantity (or quality). The plan at this stage is to do my part and start making my own to share.

Now, one of my favourite features so far with Aperture is the way it handles it’s full screen mode. This is what makes doing any organising or editing on the 13″  very manageable. Just hit F and all the toolbars, dock, window trim and the finder bar disappear leaving you just with your photos floating above a black background. All your editing features are just a shortcut away at any time and the windows they open in can be moved about if they get in the way. I liked the full screen mode in Lightroom, but this is just so much more (by showing so much less).

I still have 14 days to go with my Aperture 3 trial, but so far I would say that I will be handing over the $250 for a full licence so I can continue using it. I haven’t touched on a lot of what Aperture 3 can do, but I will be doing a review of sorts if I do end up going with it in the long run.

Home From The High Seas

A while between updates, but I have been off for the last week on yet another cruise. This time on the Pacific Dawn again for a week up to North Queensland and back to Brisbane via Willis Island. Not been home all that long and haven’t been through all my photos, but here is a quick one from heading ashore at the Whitsundays. Was a great week and there shall be more updates soon!

May the 4th be with you

If you haven’t heard yet, today is International Star Wars Day. Why is this all of a sudden relevant? Well, if you follow my flickr then you will have noticed that I am digging into yet another 365 days of photos thing, but this time it is based around Star Wars or to be more specific, Stormtrooper action figures. So given the day that it is, here is a quick update with some of my picks so far. Oh and don’t forget to check out the whole set as well!

Adobe, you impress us yet again with content aware fill

I am sure by now that everyone has seen the videos from Adobe showing off the impressive little tool that is going to be packaged with Photoshop CS5 known as content aware fill. If you haven’t seen the video of the guys from Adobe virtually picking up trash and doing a spot of tree lopping then go and take a peek here. Sure, its pretty nifty and will probably get used way too much by people using it just because “it is pretty damn cool”. But now we see another video with some more down to earth, real world applications for it.

Linux and Photography – Round Two

Some may remember that a fair while back now, I blogged about using Linux (Ubuntu Studio 8.04 to be exact) for photographic purposes. I came to the conclusion that whilst it was completely possible, life was just easier if you were running a Windows or OS X install and using either Lightroom or Aperture. Since then however, I got rid of the Ubuntu Studio install and just ran a regular flavour of Ubuntu and what I found was that it became even more useful for the odd bits of photography work I had to do each day and as a day to day operating system.

Jump forward a year and a bit and I know sit here with a semi fresh installation of Ubuntu 9.10 (64bit) in front of me and I am astounded at how quickly things have progressed. The experience is just so much more polished and it feels like such a solid OS to work with. There are some negatives however, such as the music library management program I had been using, Songbird, ditching its iPod support, but that is for another time. So without any further ado, lets jump into how I handle my workflow from start to finish.

First off, we have a nice and clean desktop to work from. You may be different, but I absolutely hate clutter in the back ground. Whether it is a gazillion shortcuts, mounted devices or a busy wallpaper, I just cannot stand it.

Now, so you have come home from a busy day covering a protest or trekking up and and down mountains in search of that “perfect” landscape, you have your images on your card and you want them downloaded onto your PC. My recommendation would be a nice little app called Rapid Photo Downloader, which does exactly as the name suggests, it downloads your photos off your memory cards nice and quick and has management for folder structure and file management among other things. It isn’t a catalog manager but for those who are used to using Explorer, Finder or Nautilus to manage your collection of images, it isn’t a bad starting point.

Next up is getting around to the actual processing of the images. At the moment, I am using a trial of Bibble 5 and I am amazed at how much it has improved since Bibble 4. There are a few areas of the program that by far outshine parts of Lightroom, like incorporated Noise Ninja, the ability to create edit layers and some of the presets as well. It mightn’t be as polished as Lightroom is or as quick sometimes, but it really is a powerful image editing program. There are some basic catalog features in there and the interface is straight forward and rather easy to get used to as you use it. Of course, one large downside is the price, Bibble 5 is currently selling for USD$199.95, a bit of a sting if you are more than used to the free nature of most of the Linux world. If you decide it is worth it though, you get an incredibly powerful and versatile piece of software for your money. If you don’t want to fork out this kind of cash, then there are other options out there such as Raw Therapy (which I spoke about in my last article) and RawStudio which can be had for the grand total of nothing.

Once you have finished editing your photos, you will most likely want to share them with the world. In my case, that meant finding an application to upload batches of photos to Flickr with as little trouble as possible. I also wanted something where I could specify a particular set for the images to be placed in as well as tags and resize options if I needed to resize something quickly without opening the Gimp or Bibble. After a quick search of the internet, I decided to give kflickr a go as it looked like it was the best match for my needs. It is incredibly simple to use and nice and quick. Haven’t had an issue with it yet (touch wood).

I decided to not include any mention of the Gimp as it really hasn’t changed all that much since I last spoke of it and also, I never really use it. Same for another great program, Inkscape, it is incredibly feature rich and a great free alternative to Indesign, but I just have not had a chance to use it lately and give an accurate opinion on it. If you like to do some video editing on the side, then there are options there as well such asPiTiVi which seems to be a well polished, feature rich video editor/movie maker (don’t ask me any more about it, I only have it installed and haven’t used it yet).

So there we have it, a quick run down of what is available to a budding photographer who doesn’t want to rely on either Microsoft or Apple for their computing needs. Using an OS such as Ubuntu also means that you can save a fair bit of cash when building a system to use for your editing needs, which leaves more money in the bank for cameras, lenses and other accessories 😉

Let me take you on a holiday

Instead of writing the usual BS about not posting in forever and a day, I will instead skip to some content. Firstly though, my camera did decide to stop working on me one day and I was incredibly slack getting it repaired. At the moment it is sitting at the Canon offices at Cannon Hill (fitting location no?) waiting for me to pick it up which will be in a weeks time.

Now! It is indeed yet another cruise but this one was a big one. Big in the event, not big in length of the holiday terms… This one was another two night cruise from Sydney to Brisbane on the Pacific Dawn for Oz Cruise Club’s Christmas Party. It’s a bit of an extreme thing to do for a Christmas Party but there isn’t really anything else you can do for a club based around cruising right? Anyway, on with the photos.

There was of course, a rather large ship…

Great views and great places to view them from…

A bit of partying…

And as always, some great food…

Not a lot has happened since then photographic wise other than a recent development in that I will be looking to branch into some slightly less amateurish work and setting up an identity for myself that isn’t just a personal thing. Keep a lookout soon for Red Ribbon Studios. I will of course keep updating this site as often as I can with more general posts, but as I attempt to get into the paid field, there will be more posted on a dedicated site.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Remember a post I made a while ago about my sources of inspiration? Well not long after I wrote that, I was introduced to the flickr of Lakshal Perera (Lucky for short) and in particular, his 52 weeks projects self portraits. Every time I saw one of them, I just wanted to drop whatever I was doing, grab the camera and start shooting again. For some reason, I never actually added him as a contact (or I thought I had), so today I finally got around to doing it. Turns out he recently moved up to Bris-vegas and has started taking on a 365 days project as well, but with a bit of a twist. Wish I had his will power for sticking with photography projects, into his second 52 weeks project and doing a 365 one at the same time. I couldn’t even keep up with just one of them at a time…

Lucky also has a blog as well as his flickr and it is definitely worth checking out. So what are you waiting for? Go have a look-see 😉

The Wait Is Over

Ok, forgive me for being a little slow on this one, but I don’t normally make posts about these sorts of things (probably going to change from now on though). Anyone who has been remotely (excuse the pun) into the strobist movement over the last few years will no undoubtedly be aware of the long saga involving the release of the RadioPopper Jr’s. Well, after a ridiculously long wait and a redesign, they are finally here and now known as the RadioPopper JrX.

Of course Dave Hobby, being the in the know guy that he is, got his hands on them over the weekend and has been kind enough to put them through their paces for the rest of us. Clicky here if you wish.

Now I have a slight dilemma, do I try and get my hands on a set of these or just pick up someone’s second hand Alien Bee Cybersyncs as people start offloading current set ups for them? Could just say stuff it and find some Pocket Wizards though…

You Gotta Love This City

The Whitlams sure got it right with their 1999 song “You gotta love this city” of the Love This City album. Sure, they were singing about Sydney and not Brisbane, but the song still applies. In the recent months I had been mulling over the possibility of packing up and moving south to Sydney or Melbourne because I was bored of Brisbane and desperate for a change but in the last week or so and after spending some time in the city, I don’t want to leave. Sure, it isn’t as big as the other two but I see that as a good thing. There is just this sleepy city charm about the place. Also like that it doesn’t take upwards of an hour to walk from one end of the CBD to the other…

Anyway, I made a last minute decision this afternoon to jump in the car and head for Wilson’s Lookout (see the blue marker on this map), a place visited frequently by my local snapping colleagues but never ventured to by myself. Well, this place was the last nail in the coffin for the idea of moving southward. Would have to be my new favourite place in the city and as the sun slowly sets behind the buildings and the lights start to flicker on, it is probably one of the most beautiful in town as well.

Losing It

It’s official. I am in a photographic funk and have been for quite some time now. Getting out of it is proving to be ridiculously difficult and is frustrating me beyond belief. The other day, I ventured into the city with the sole intention of taking photos. Of course, I lugged my gear around for a good 6 hours and took nothing. Nothing at all! The camera didn’t even leave my bag once.

I really am starting to think that the 40D is to blame. Now I know we aren’t supposed to blame our equipment but I was just much more pleased with my photos when I was shooting with the 20D. Everything about the images just seemed to pop more and I rarely ended up in situations like this. Looking at my normal sources of inspiration is proving to be not so useful as well which is a tad annoying… I am however going on a little shoot next weekend with an old friend from school, Hayleigh (blog, Flickr) so hopefully I will be able to take at least a couple of photos then haha. Actually, it has been a while since I have just wandered around town with some company and my camera, so maybe that is why I have started to lose interest.

In other news, I am now the official photographer for Oz Cruise Club, a site which I have been involved with for a fair while now. So I have an excuse every now and then to take photos at least ;). With the second and third official club group cruises organised and with me booked on them, I will be able to shoot a bit more than I am now. I will also be going along to land based events in Brisbane and also Newcastle and Sydney when I am able to organise flights and accommodation. We had a quick breakfast/lunch meet and greet last Wednesday which was great fun. Took my first large group photo with the strobes as well and well, I still have a lot to learn about lighting. Happy with the results none the less though.

And of course there was a ship involved as well (same one I went on back in February)