Photo Editing, Tutorials, Photography News, and More
This blog covers a range of topics from Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, iPhone Photography, and more. If you want to see more of my actual photography work, visit my Portfolio and Photo Journal blog.
The Fleeting Beauty of the Cherry Blossom
I look forward to the sight every year. It's a fleeting moment, but worth the wait. The pink and white beauty of the cherry blossoms that burst forth every year, announcing spring to the world is one of my favourite sights. When the cherry blossoms bloom, the bleak months of winter are finally at an end, and this year more than ever, I've been eagerly anticipating the blooming of the cherry blossoms.
Mirrorless Cameras are Like iPads
There are a lot of heated discussions in the the photography community when it comes to mirrorless cameras. For some, it's an "either or" situation. You are either a mirrorless shooter or your not. I began to think that the situation with mirrorless is very like the iPad (and tablets in general) market. Some people see iPads as the future of computing. I'm reminded of the comments the late Steve Jobs's made about the iPad and computing market after the iPad first launched. He made the analogy of iPads being like cars and computers being like trucks. While many people only need a car, he pointed out, there will always be people who need trucks. For me personally, this sums up how I feel about the camera market. Mirrorless cameras are kind of like cars in this analogy, or like iPads.
The Current State of Photo Workflow Applications
When Apple first released Aperture it was something of a revolution. It was the first application to be released which combined an asset management solution with raw processing software. It may be hard to imagine now but up till this point, the tasks of managing your images was separate form the process of developing raw files. While some people still work the old fashioned way, Aperture forever changed the way many photographers approach their workflow.
A Fun Week (Not)
I want to apologise for the lack of updates this week. I've not had a very fun week. What started out as someone coughing on me in a line at the bank, turned into a cold, which I then thought was becoming the flu, ended up as a bad chest infection that had me taken to hospital by ambulance the other night with a fever and a ridiculously high heart rate. Special thanks to my Apple watch for the heads up on that one.
Fun With Monitor Calibration
I've been using a defunct Pantone Huey Pro to calibrate my display, for pretty much as long as I can remember. While the device hasn't been officially supported for a while, it had continued to function until recently. Since El Capitan came out, the software hasn't been working properly, and my display has been slowly drifting. On top of that, somewhere along the way, the gamma got screwed up, which I didn't realise. So the upshot of this is that my screen was too bright, and so I was outputting my images too dark.
Sony, Customer Service and Professionalism
Late last week there was something of a blog storm over a video photographer Matt Granger posted about his experiences with Sony’s customer service. If you haven’t seen it already check it out. Basically he had a terrible time getting customer service for his professional Sony cameras. After he posted the video, many of those in the photographic community who also use Sony products chimed in with their own similar stories of Sony’s poor customer service. While I haven’t had to deal with Sony’s customer service here on for any of their Photography products, I too have heard the stories, and have had to deal with the company for other issues.
The Advantage of Having Photography Side Projects
I recently read an interesting post on Medium about the advantages of side projects. In the case of the article I read, it was talking about web development, but it occurred to me that the same thing can be true of photography. Depending on your business model, a side project could actually be quite beneficial to you.
5 Features for Photographer's I'd love to see in iOS 10
I recently wrote a post about some features that I'd love to see in an upcoming version of Apple's Photos for the Mac. I also have some ideas on photographer friendly features that I'd like to see on iOS at some point. Some of these I've wanted for a while and written about before, so I'm not so optimistic, but these are features I'd really like to see in iOS at some point. I've tried to keep these ideas to things that would be reasonable to implement, or in-keeping with what one could expect at the operating system level.
A Little Rant about Photoshop
I normally try to keep the topics on this blog as positive as possible. I try not to court controversy by objecting to anything too strongly, but there’s something that’s been bothering me for a little while now, and it’s Photoshop. With the most recent update, Adobe made some significant changes to the Photoshop interface, and in my opinion, they’re not very nice.
Kodak brings Super 8 Back from the (Almost) Dead
While Nikon may have had the big photographic announcements at CES this year, in my opinion, the more exciting news came from Kodak. Yes, Kodak, remember them? Kodak announced that they’re creating a new super 8 film camera. The new camera and service will blend digital and film technologies, and seeks to capitalise on the analogue resurgence. As someone’s who’s shot Super 8 in the past, I for one am very excited about this.
All the fun of a hard drive failing
I knew something wasn't right. My computer, a 2012 Mac Pro, had suddenly decided to go slow. Not just slow, but slow in a very specific way. It was like it was stopping to think every few seconds. It was something that was eerily familiar. I'd seen this before, and I hoped the cause wasn't the same, but I knew in my heart what was happening. My hard drive was failing. Worse, it was my system drive.
Looking Back at the Year, and Looking Forward to 2016
This past year has been kind of a weird one for me. I achieved a lot of what I had planned for this site, and for my photography career, but I also had some setbacks, both personally and work wise. In this post I'll take a look back at 2015, and talk about some plans and goals for the year ahead.
The Death of Holga and the Resurgence of Film
I read some sad, but not entirely surprising news during the week. It seems that the company that makes Holga cameras is shutting down. I’m not hugely surprised by this. The Holga craze of a few years ago was pretty much killed by Instagram and the iPhone. I only noticed recently how many of the places that used to sell Holga cameras had stopped selling them (in lieu of Fuji Instax cameras).
Paris
I’ve been going back and forward about whether or not to write this post. I wanted to say something about the recent horrific events in Paris and yet, I didn’t want it to feel like I was making it about me. But, as Stephen Colbert pointed out on the Late Show, it’s ok to try and find a connection with the city, to show solidarity in whatever form you can. So this is my tribute to Paris. It is what it it. It’s only tenuously about photography, but it’s a subject that I hold dear, as it’s a city I hold dear.
A Thank You, An Apology, and An Update
I’m totally blown away by the response to my X-Trans lightroom guide that I published earlier in the week. the response has been amazing, and some of you have sent some lovely kind words of support. It’s the highest volume of traffic my store has seen and it’s been hard just to keep up. So, a sincere thank you to everyone. I really am blown away by the response.