I am a photographer first and a webmaster second – that is the way it is supposed to be.

Every professional photographer knows how important a good website is for getting their images out there. The flip side is that sometimes my ‘computer time’ is spent more on the web-mastery side of things than working on my images. A website should work for me, not me for it!

WordPress is an excellent foundation, and once you have found and customized the right theme for your needs, the challenge becomes the hosting provider.

As my website scales up and down my back end computing needs change. Sometimes if I want to upgrade to a more powerful instance, the hosting provider forces me to migrate my entire WordPress site with all my content, settings, customizations and databases from one instance to another. Even with specialist migration plugins like All-in-One WP Migration, some little things always break.

Many photographers with smaller websites don’t need an expensive, dedicated platform so they opt for shared hosting. My experience with shared hosting is that after the initial migration of the website, performance and site responsiveness are good. Over time though, generally after 6 to 9 months as the server loads up with other customer sites, performance figures decrease, the user experience becomes sluggish, and visitor numbers drop. So you migrate up or migrate away to another provider – it’s a cyclical process.

Looking at the Amazon AWS menu can be quite daunting if you aren’t familiar with cloud computing. Even if you are familiar, trying to figure out which option is best for your performance needs, with the most efficient administration overhead, can make your head spin!

Amazon Lightsail

To make it simpler, AWS EC2, or Elastic Compute Cloud, is Amazon’s play for cloud computing; it’s a Swiss Army knife that can do everything. The key thing is I don’t need to do everything, I want a flexible, scalable platform just to run WordPress on. Amazon Lightsail is just what I have been looking for.

As an experiment, using the 1 month free trial for the smallest Virtual Private Server (VPS), I created my Lightsail Instance. WordPress comes preinstalled, as does the migration plugin I mentioned earlier. After the migration, I accessed my site and my first thought was “wow, this is fast, my site feels much more responsive.”

This feeling is confirmed by the results from 2 separate Pingdom speed tests run a few seconds apart.

My homepage has a size of 2.8Mb and I knew performance was slow in its old home. However, I was shocked the results were this bad. 3.81s (yes seconds!) versus 616ms from Lightsail. That is a night and day difference in responsiveness!

Both the Pingdom server and my old hosting provider are on the US East Coast so latency due to geographic distance won’t make a big difference. This is purely back end server/infrastructure performance.

So, setup and migration were simple. The speed of page delivery is clearly excellent. Two very compelling reasons to keep my site running on Lightsail.

Lightsail and Instance Snapshots

This brings me onto the topic of testing, another major advantage of cloud computing. Previously, when I wanted to do some development (enhancement) to my live site, I would migrate a copy of the live site to a small virtual machine at home. Then I would do my testing and if something broke which I couldn’t fix (remember, I am a photographer, not a web guru!) I would need to migrate (again) a copy from live down to my test environment and try the test again. Not a bad solution but very 20th century (and slow) compared to what I can now achieve with Lightsail.

With AWS, I simply tell Lightsail to create a snapshot of my live virtual machine. A snapshot is exactly that, a full copy of that instance at that moment, all data, all configuration – everything. This snapshot can be used as a backup or as the base for testing using another development instance.

Creating the snapshot and loading it on a new instance with a new Public IP address took me about 15 minutes. I can then complete whatever work I need, whether it takes 1 hour or 1 week. When I am finished with the development instance, I simply delete it. My testing is now so much more efficient.

Lightsail and S3

By this point, you can tell I have got the ‘Amazon bug’, it is simple and it works. Lets see what else I can do – next Amazon S3! If you have read my Photographic Data Management article you may remember that I already use the AWS Storage Product – S3 – to backup my NAS.

To have a backup, I took another snapshot of my Lightsail instance. As you will shortly read, I am very glad I did. The first step to using S3 for my website was to create a bucket for my WordPress wp-content directory to reside.

WP Offload Media Lite

For WordPress integration with S3, the WP Offload Media Lite plugin comes highly recommended. Configuring the free plugin took a few seconds, just a matter of selecting the S3 bucket name I created earlier.

From now on, any new images I upload will be stored on S3, not on my local server storage. The problem is that my current media is still on the local server. Paying a subscription to unlock the ‘migrate existing’ feature in this plugin was a possible option. However, after a short Google search I found an alternative (free) solution with a plugin called Regenerate Thumbnails. It appears the main reason for regenerating the thumbnails is because it tricks WP Offload Media into seeing each as a new upload, and therefore storing it on S3 rather than locally.

I selected the Regenerate All option and waited for the process to complete. Checking the Media page and Envira Galleries showed about 50% of the images as having the correct S3 link, the other 50% all had broken links – not good. Proof indeed that there is ‘no such thing as a free lunch!’

For some time I have planned to update my images with higher resolution versions so I didn’t spend too much time diagnosing the problem.

Lightsail, S3 and CloudFront

Next, CloudFront as a Content Distribution Network (CDN). I am on the US East Coast, so is my AWS region. Therefore my latency to my site is very low and responsiveness is good. If a visitor is accessing that content from the US West Coast or EMEA/APAC all that data, particularly the image data, has to traverse a long distance and the site appears slow. Using a CDN means that my content is stored in all of Amazon’s CloudFront data centers, so if a visitor from Singapore is viewing my site the images aren’t being served from the US, they are delivered from the CDN location in Singapore – in other words – very quickly!

First, a domain name needs to be created within the CloudFront portal. This is normally a ‘longrandomstring.cloudfront.net’. Then I direct this domain to the S3 bucket I created earlier. Content deployment to all of Amazon’s global locations then starts automatically.

At this point, the CloudFront CDN is serving the images from the closest location to the viewer. There is one final step to complete. Google Site Search Bots don’t like the long URL string I mentioned above and it can impact the search rating of my site. The easiest solution was to create a DNS CNAME record for cdn1.exposurecompensation.co.uk. After DNS propagation I added the new CNAME record to the WP Offload Media plugin and everything was complete.

CloudFront and Hotlinking

Hotlinking can be defined as directly linking an image published on one website and making it display on another. Also, if I know the image source URL, I can copy and paste it into a browser making the image display outside of my website theme framework. Neither is good.

Embedded into CloudFront is Amazon’s WAF or Web Application Firewall. Using an Access Control Control list, I can create a policy which checks the Referrer header request and blocks hotlinking.

Without the WAF rule in place, I can for example enter https://cdn1.exposurecompensation.co.uk/image-path/image1.jpg into a browser and only the image is displayed. As you are browsing (and I hope enjoying looking at my photographs!) you are connected to https://www.exposurecompensation.co.uk. When any page displays images, it gets them from the cdn1 location, so in short, www is referring to cdn1. My WAF ACL is configured to check the Referrer header, if it doesn’t contain my https://www domain name the request to display the image is blocked.

Sometimes there are cases where I may want specific hotlinks to exist. For example, for many years I have been a member of the FredMiranda photography community. From time to time, I will post an image to a forum and do this by hotlinking. So in the WAF I can create a second rule which does exactly the same thing but with the FredMiranda referring URL allowed.

Conclusion

This was an interesting (and fun) experience, one that surprised me in terms of how simple everything was. I had no need to tweak or customize the virtual server, it just worked. Also the smallest VPS option appears to be more than adequate for my current needs. It is surprisingly fast – faster than some bigger dedicated platforms I have had from other hosting providers.

After thoroughly testing all content, forms, galleries and internal site links, I decided to make this instance my production one. I updated the DNS A record with the Public IP of the Lightsail instance. After propagation of the DNS record, the site was live!

Lastly, since environment is now Amazon centric, migrating domain ownership to Amazon’s Route 53 (their DNS product) made a lot of sense. The other benefit of doing this is that DNS updates are now almost instant.

Additional Reading

https://lightsail.aws.amazon.com/ls/docs/en/articles/migrate-your-wordpress-blog-to-amazon-lightsail

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/startups/how-to-accelerate-your-wordpress-site-with-amazon-cloudfront/

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-prevent-hotlinking-by-using-aws-waf-amazon-cloudfront-and-referer-checking/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Expiration.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/migrate-dns-domain-in-use.html

The post My WordPress Website and Amazon Lightsail appeared first on exposurecompensation.

Unless you own a yacht or are prepared to charter one, there are only two ways to get there; ferry or seaplane. To me, the choice was obvious – seaplane! Key West Seaplane Adventures provide an excellent service, and although the cost is almost double that of the ferry, there are many reasons why it is worth it.

Here is our seaplane, the magnificent DeHavilland DHC-3 Turbine Otter.

The take-off from Key West International Airport’s single runway was smooth, as was the climb out to the cruising altitude 500ft. Conditions were CAVU – Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited. On the outbound leg of the trip, I highly recommend sitting on the right side of the plane. This gives the best views, and pictures, of Key West during the climb and later of Fort Jefferson during the descent.

To get the best images during the flight, I recommend removing the lens hood and gently pressing the lens against the window; this will minimize any reflection. Set the focusing mode to continuous or servo as this will ensure you keep a good focus lock on your target. I always use continuous focus for every event unless I am doing a studio shoot. Use an aperture between f8 and f11 and adjust ISO to keep your shutter speed above 1/640s.

Around 20 minutes into the flight, the first land you will see are the Marquesas Keys.

After that, you fly over some other tiny but beautiful keys where rays, sharks, and sea turtles are easy to see from the air.

And finally, Dry Tortugas National Park and Fort Jefferson come into view. Altitude at this point is around 320ft.

The landing was smooth, and the pilot quickly reversed the seaplane onto the beach. At this point, the primary advantage of the seaplane becomes clear, the people, or rather the lack of!

When full, the plane carries 10 people including the pilot. After deplaning everyone just scatters and it feels like you are on a desert island all by yourself – amazing.

Although the Fort is the island, from the inside, it feels vast. Every side of the fort is ringed with multiple levels of cannons.

Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, a conspirator in the assassination of President Lincoln, once called the islands of Dry Tortuga: “Without exception, the most horrible place the eye of man ever set upon.” He was imprisoned there so I can understand why. It is, however a photographers paradise!

Not your regular smoothbore cannons, these have rifled barrels which spin the projectile for greater accuracy at longer distance.

Imagining a Spanish galleon sailing into firing range!

The view looking out over the remains of the jetty.

This picture is also a good example of what happens when a circular polarizing filter is used on a wide-angle 24mm lens – only half of the sky gets polarized.

With this many cannons to feed, the ammunition dumps need to be huge. Almost the same height as the outer structure.

Looking down one segment of the hexagonal fort. Each alcove on the left would have housed a cannon, fire team, and ammunition.

The outer section of the jetty, I just love the color of the water.

Just as the 9 passengers were getting back on the aircraft, the ferry pulled up at the island. Over 100 people swarmed off it, many wielding (those dreaded) selfie sticks. Definitely a great idea to take the plane and avoid the crowds.

Check out the Dry Tortugas National Park gallery where you can see larger images in the Lightbox.

The post Dry Tortugas National Park appeared first on exposurecompensation.

This is my ‘normal workflow’ when I don’t have a very short publishing deadline or an assistant tethered to my camera over WiFi.

An efficient workflow makes image selection and post-processing less time consuming, more enjoyable, and the final images are of a higher quality. These are the primary reasons why I broke my workflow down into smaller complete steps. By complete steps, I mean I will first finish all image selections, I won’t suddenly go and post-process a few images in the middle of the selection phase. When image selection is complete, I will start and finish any white balance or exposure corrections. Having this batch based approach gives me continuity and a color awareness of how the final images flow together as a set.

My 2 Primary Rules for Image Selection

1. Be Decisive

Indecisiveness slows down the workflow. It may result in your storage solution filling up with many more images than you need or want. Perhaps it might become full of ‘seconds’. Seconds can be images which weren’t good enough to make your first choice for submission to an agency or upload to your website. They could be duplicates. They can also be images that have problems which you believe one day you will go back and fix. We both know it is highly unlikely that you ever will!

2. Focus on Sharpness (pun intended!)

If the image isn’t sharp at 100% viewing – delete it. When panning at very slow shutter speeds, only part of the image, usually the part you are focussing on, will be sharp and this is normal. Yes, it is entirely possible to take a poorly focused image, resize it to web resolution and it looks fine. I don’t as I strongly believe in standards for my published work and the images I offer for sale and printing. Be proud of your high-quality photographs!

Why were you at the event? Why is that important?

It also helps to remember why you were at the event and why your images are important to your target audience. Understanding this will drive which images you select, and just as importantly which you don’t.

Generally speaking, an agency pro would want action; a racing car collision, the flash of flame from the exhaust, dynamic panning shots, the scoring player, the victory dance, etc. Images without that action ‘wow’ won’t get published. An event pro would want dignified, classic photos, for example, a horse rider showjumping artfully over an obstacle. A picture like this might be one the competitor wants to remember and use to showcase their skills. The hobbyist would be learning, developing their skills and be proud of any sharp, nicely composed, interesting images they captured.

An example of what not to publish online? The horse rider showjumping artfully over an obstacle, landing badly and headbutting the neck of the horse. Blood flowing down the riders face, and the side of the horse might make an excellent action image. In the close-knit community of equestrian event photography though, the rider most likely won’t want to remember the painful, embarrassing event, no one is likely to buy the print and it probably won’t make you any friends.

Setting up Adobe Camera RAW Properly

After your images are on the computer, the first thing you want to do is look at them in Bridge. The first thing Bridge then does is to apply a set of Camera Raw Defaults to them. This is actually the first step of Bridge helping you with automation, albeit in a rather invisible way.

Out of the box, or today out of the Creative Cloud, these are Adobe defaults. How you change these settings is based on a combination of personal preference and the basic corrections you almost always make. Remember, these are some of the adjustments that you would have manually made later in this process, so let Bridge and ACR do the work for you.

To me, the 3 most relevant tabs in ACR are Basic, Detail and Lens Corrections.

Basic represents the white balance and exposure-related controls. From experience I know that generally my Nikon D3x and D810 images can benefit from a very slight exposure increase, this is where I configure it. I also add positive values to Contrast, Blacks, and Vibrance. I always leave White Balance set to ‘As Shot’ as to me there is no reason ever to change it.

With the Basic tab, it is important not to get carried away. I recommend thinking of ACR as your helper adjustments, they pave the way for more effective changes later in Photoshop, they don’t replace Photoshop.

Detail primarily controls the amount of pre-sharpening applied to the RAW file. Proper image sharpening should always be done with a combination of pre and output sharpening.

Lens Corrections simply removes Chromatic Aberration and applies a lens specific profile for the correction of distortion and vignetting.

My ACR Defaults are my foundation adjustments as they get applied to all of the images I take. Yes, there are always some exception shoots which require a different set of foundation parameters, but ACR makes these changes very simple too.

Using your own set of ACR defaults turns the first use of automation into a much more useful one. Plus, these minor but commonly made adjustments will enable you to make a better and quicker assessment of images during the selection phase.

Image Selection

In Adobe Bridge, Labels menu, I will assign a color to each of the images. Green – good, makes the final selection. Yellow – might need it. Red – delete. If I am working with HDR, then I label these as Blue and group each set of images within a stack.

This is where a tablet comes in very handy. My Wacom tablet has 2 quadrants of buttons, top left, and top right. I have configured the top left buttons with the appropriate keyboard shortcuts for the above labels, or colors.

As I am browsing the images, I tap the button for the color I want, this marks the image and then shows me the next one. If a closer inspection of the image is required (and it usually is), then within the preview pane in Bridge, I can click anywhere in the image, and the loupe is displayed so I can see a small portion of an image at 100% view. For a really detailed inspection, I will open the image in ACR, and then I can zoom to 100% and scroll around to check the finer details.

The first pass through this process is what I call ‘my first cull’ and is quick and decisive. Above I wrote that Yellow is ‘I might need it’. At this point in the process, it is more like an ‘ok, interesting; a better shot might come along, will decide later’ classification!

The objective now is to get to a final set of images for editing, the green ones. Using the Bridge filter panel, I will view only the ones marked green and yellow. This final image selection is often a little more time-consuming and involves spending more time in ACR viewing the images at 100% to ensure the best images are selected and kept.

Once my final selection is complete, I will view only the red images and delete them. Then using Bridge, Tools, Batch Rename, perform the rename to my standard. This is based on an abbreviated event title_date taken_sequence number. For example, D1GB_061017_001.nef.

Final Image Preparation in Bridge

Good, I now have a final set of RAW images from the event! The last adjustment steps in Bridge (ACR) are white balance and temperature corrections, then any final exposure changes.

If the same values need to be applied to multiple images, there is an easy way to do this. Simply make the adjustments to one image, highlight the others that require the same correction, right-click, select Develop Settings and Previous Conversion. Voilà!

The final step in Bridge is to prepare the green images for further editing in Photoshop. This involves doing a batch conversion of the images from RAW to TIFF. Following my complete task methodology, the images have to be converted to something. As Photoshop Layers are an integral part of my workflow, the choice is only TIFF or PSD. Why TIFF? Habit, I guess! Many versions of Photoshop ago, I had corrupted file problems with PSDs so using TIFF just stuck.

Using the filter panel, highlight green and select all. Then in Tools, Photoshop, select Image Processor. The picture shows the simple conversions options I typically use. Click Run to start. Photoshop will then convert all the RAWs to TIFFs based on the ACR settings for each individual image. This is usually a good time to relax and enjoy a coffee!

I will not cover the use of Photoshop Actions in this conversion process now, although the capabilities are many and very powerful once mastered.

Image selection is now complete!

The third article will show how I take that final set of images through Photoshop quickly and efficiently, leveraging the power of Actions wherever possible.

I hope you found this article useful and if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. Please send me a message via the contact me page.

The post Post-Processing Workflow – Image Selection appeared first on exposurecompensation.

Let’s Get Started

No matter how perfect the light was at the time the shutter button was pressed, how correctly the camera was configured or how well the shot was composed in the viewfinder, all images benefit from some kind of enhancement during post-processing.

My events often end with thousands of images which need reviewing and processing. It is therefore critical to have a workflow that not only maximizes the quality of the finished product but one that is also efficient and uses automation as much as possible. When I am managing multiple projects in parallel, time is important. It is even more so when client timelines or publication deadlines are the priority.

A powerful computer and clever graphics software are essential pieces of the puzzle. These can, however, become relatively unimportant if you have a time intensive, inefficient workflow.

Funny Story – My Learning Experience

Writing this article reminded me of a funny story from 2006. It was my first time out covering a premiership rugby match – I was excited! The final whistle blew, and I shot a few quick bursts of the winning team celebrate. Then I grabbed my heavy gear and ran down the tunnel to the media room.

With a fistful of memory cards, I waited a few minutes for my laptop to wake up, when it did, the image copy progress bar crawled slowly across the screen. Moments later, the laptop connected to WiFi and Norton Internet Security instantly stated that an update was required. “No, not now, go away!” I screamed silently at the screen. In the pandemonium, I must have hit the enter key and the laptop restarted. By the time I had finished everything, I had missed the deadline for the national press. Despite getting an image on the front page of local news, it was an essential lesson for me.

The moral of the story is this. The computer and software I started my first match with weren’t bad, they just weren’t suitable for the kind of environment I was operating in. I promised myself this would never become an issue again. The very next day I bought a new Mac Book Pro, and my journey with Apple and Adobe began.

Post-Processing and Workflow Related Tools

As you may know by now, I am an Apple guy, and for over 10 years Adobe Photoshop has been at the heart of my workflow. While most plugins come and go, I have been using the Nik Collection suite of tools for almost as long as I have been using Photoshop. I was delighted to recently read that DxO bought the product from Google and will start developing the suite again.

Now I will briefly touch on some topics that directly relate to the workflow itself or the quality of the output.

• The monitor. Deciding on the right one is more important than choosing the most suitable computer or graphics software, or even the comfortable armchair you are sitting in as you read this. First, you look at it constantly (the monitor, not the chair!) so you don’t want it giving you eye-fatigue. Second, you want accurate color reproduction. I use an NEC Spectraview PA242W and highly recommend it on both counts. As far as office chairs go, I love my HÅG Capisco!
• Monitor calibration is critical. If you are manipulating the color or white balance in your images, how do you know you are doing so accurately? A device like the X-Rite i1Display Pro creates a unique profile for your monitor with your graphics card in the lighting you typically work. The calibration is done off of known color values and is a surefire way to modify color with confidence.
• Graphics tablets like the Wacom Intuos Pro series are really helpful. During my image selection and review phase, I use the tablet for labeling, swiping, opening images, etc., it saves a lot of time. Also, when doing detailed editing (spot healing brush, clone tool, etc.) I find the stylus to be much more precise than a mouse or trackpad.

In late 2017, I returned home from 9 days in the Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks with 4,000 images. This total number of images waiting for your attention might overwhelm you. You may even consider it all to be a huge chore. Believe me, even with my workflow, it still took considerable time, but the experience was an enjoyable one.

In this series of articles, I will explain what works for me and why.

The second article will illustrate how, using Adobe Bridge, I review and classify the images. How I get to a final selection from an event and how I use Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) to perform the first stage of image manipulation.

The third article will show how I take that final set of images through Photoshop quickly and efficiently.

I hope you found this article useful and if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. Please send me a message via the contact me page.

The post Post-Processing Workflow – Introduction appeared first on exposurecompensation.

This article is not intended to be a full review of each of the 3 elements of data management, but rather to show how easily the 3 components can work together when the right individual solutions have been identified for your needs.

Since my primary workstation is an [8/12/18 – now dead] aging 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 (still waiting for Apple to announce the new model in 2018) I just cannot afford to rely upon internal drives where my data cannot be quickly accessed in the event of a computer failure. Secondly, the process of managing data across multiple matching pairs of external drives has become too cumbersome, and the data isn’t exactly what I call accessible when I am in the field.

Galloping to the rescue is Network Attached Storage (NAS), but as you will read, it’s only part of the picture.

Storage.

After lengthy research, enter the QNAP TS-653A NAS and the first question, why QNAP? The choice ultimately came down to Synology versus QNAP. I did briefly look at Drobo, but stories of proprietary file systems and expensive data recoveries turned me off. The QNAP won due to the slightly better price point and better hardware specification for my needs.

Image courtesy of QNAP

The 6 in the TS-653A is the number of hard drive bays that can be configured into RAID to maximize the availability of my data. At this point, it is critical to mention that data availability is just that, it’s availableness. Any measure of availableness is not a backup, a backup is something else, somewhere else. Availableness can be defined as the ability to survive 1 or more failures and still be available.

The QNAP was very easy to set up. I merely installed 5 Western Digital RED 6 TB drives, started up the unit and configured RAID 10 with a hot spare.

The result, 10.62 TB of data availableness.

RAID 10 Array

Is my storage and availability problem solved now? Almost, but not quite!

Enter another QNAP, this time a (2 bay) TS-253A unit with a single 8 TB WD RED drive – located securely off-site. The 2 QNAP units synchronize in real time over the Internet via an encrypted tunnel. Why? Because in the unfortunate event of a house fire, burglary or hurricane, etc. my data is still available and relatively close.

Warning, techie bit! I wrote, I installed the drives and configured RAID 10, in reality, I did do some testing beforehand. RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a storage virtualization technology which combines multiple disks into one or more partitions to achieve better performance, resiliency (the ability of the partition/s (my data) to survive a drive failure) or both, based on the balancing act of prioritizing the features most important to you.

With a 6 bay NAS and 5 drives, I had 2 options, RAID 6 (with all 5 drives) or RAID 10 using 4 drives plus 1 as a hot spare. Storage space with 6 was higher, 17 TB versus 11 TB with RAID 10. The write speed of RAID 6 was 50% slower than RAID 10 and read was 25% slower. The RAID 6 array rebuild time (what happens after a drive fails) was significantly longer, in my case over 24 hours.

RAID 6 is technically more survivable if you only have a single NAS, and only then if you can accept the slower write performance. Given that all of my data resides on the NAS, read/write performance is essential to me, so RAID 10 is what I decided to use. In my opinion, the 2nd NAS in real time synchronization mode provides the additional resiliency I lost by choosing 10 over 6, as well as giving me the added benefit of off-site security.

If I need more than 11 TB in storage, I can just buy another 6 TB drive, configure it and the current hot spare into the array for 18 TB in total. Or I could buy another pair of 6 TB drives, still get 18 TB and keep a cold spare.

Backup.

There are so many cloud-based backup solutions that it is impossible to list them all; however, a solution exists close to home – Amazon. Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 to be precise. S3 is Amazon’s enterprise-class cloud storage solution.

As an Amazon Prime member, I have free access to the AWS Free Tier, and this comes with a 5GB storage limit, more than enough storage to do some serious testing.

QNAP offers 2 native apps to use S3 for backup, Hybrid Backup Sync, and S3 Plus. Choosing S3 Plus was easy as Hybrid Backup Sync was still in beta at the time. Configuration was straightforward and the backup happened seamlessly. Over a 1 week period, I regularly changed the contents of the local backup folder and S3 Plus/AWS never faltered. The restoration process was also very intuitive.

S3 Plus Screen

S3 offers 3 storage classes, Standard, Standard_IA (Infrequent Access) and Glacier, each with a different data retrieval and pricing structure. My data is backed up first to the Standard class. The object lifecycle policy I created within S3 will move my data automatically to the Standard_IA class if it hasn’t changed within 30 days. Cost is the primary reason for the change of storage class after 30 days. Standard_IA is half the price of Standard per GB, per month. Plus, my data is easy to get back in case I need either a full or partial restoration. Glacier is something I don’t currently use as this is a deep freeze back up and the data isn’t accessible in real time.

The first backup of 650 GB took 74 hours to complete and incremental backups occur automatically each night. The first monthly bill was a very reasonable $7.77. Only having my image folders plus a handful of other data directories backing up to S3 is the best backup security to cost ratio.

Access.

Now that I have a proper storage and backup solution, what is the best way to use it?

The speed of accessing my data is very important. This is why my Mac Pro is connected to the NAS by Gigabit Ethernet cable. This gives a read/write speed of 109 MB/s or 872 Mbps which is right at the maximum theoretical throughput of Gigabit Ethernet – which is another way of saying, very good and very fast.

Mac to NAS Speed Test

Another techie interlude. My NAS is actually connected to my home network with 4 x 1 Gbps interfaces in a single LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) channel. No, this doesn’t give a single device 4 Gbps of bandwidth to my NAS! It does allow up to 4 devices to each access the NAS at maximum single Gigabit Ethernet speeds, 872 Mbps. My Mac is synchronizing data to my NAS over 1 interface. The NAS is syncing to the secondary unit over a 2nd interface. I can then go and stream an HD movie from my NAS using Apple TV on the 3rd interface. All this can occur at the same time without any degradation of performance.

A network is fast, but using SSDs in the computer is faster still. 2 SSDs in RAID 0 (striping) allows the highest read/write speeds that the computer can achieve. In my case 500 MB/s or 4000 Mbps. For this reason, all new project images are editing directly on my local Mac SSDs.

There are NAS units which can directly attach to the Mac via USB 3 or Thunderbolt. As I don’t need all of my data to be available at such high speeds, the significant increase in cost was not justifiable. Gigabit Ethernet speed is fast enough for me.

By now you might be thinking aha, Mac / Time Machine / Hourly Backup! In 1 hour, you can make many images changes. That is a lot of work to lose – got you!

A wonderful application called GoodSync solves that problem. Under local Documents, I have a folder called Working Images (a folder which Time Machine ignores) with further folders underneath. GoodSync is configured to perform a constant, real-time synchronization to a folder on the NAS. GoodSync is exceptionally fast.

NAS is like having your own Private Cloud, securely accessible from anywhere in the world with a data connection.

Photographic Data Management – Conclusion – 3 Cowboys defeated!

Upon finishing an event or trip with hundreds, more often thousands, of images, the summary process is as follows:

1. Copy images to Mac
2. Real-time sync from Mac to NAS. NAS to NAS replication
3. NAS to Amazon S3 for backup

As soon as the images hit the Mac, the sync to the NAS begins automatically. Every time GoodSync detects a new or changed file, it syncs it. NAS to NAS replication is constant. At the same time, Adobe Bridge begins generating all of the image preview thumbnails so I can start editing immediately. All of the data synchronizations happen transparently in the background.

This is the storage, backup and access solution working in harmony for me, not me for it.

I hope you found this article useful and if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. Please send me a message via the contact me page.

The post Photographic Data Management Nightmare appeared first on exposurecompensation.

This is their story.

Watching the bald eagle grow from a tiny, grey fluffy chick into a flying adult has been an amazing experience, and I feel very privileged to have watched it. Visiting the nest each week, I have also learned so much about the characters of each eagle.

I decided on the article title; Bald Eagle Family and Me, an alternative could have been ‘The Central Florida Squirrel Massacre!’ due to the number of squirrels the parents caught and then dismembered. Consider yourselves warned. 🙂

The tree is 77 yards from my regular shooting position, and the nest is 66 feet up in the tree.

16 December 2017

Nest building is now complete. The female is on the left, the male on the right. How to tell them apart? The female is larger than the male, the tip of her beak curves slightly inwards, the male’s does not.

31 December 2017

The female returning to the nest – probably because I arrived and set up a big super telephoto lens on a tripod pointed in their direction.

The female bald eagle is definitely on an egg and staring at me constantly!

 7 January 2018

Rare to get a shot of both the adult eagles so close together – female on the right, male on the left. Remember what I wrote about the tip of her beak curving slightly inward?

11 January 2018

It had rained all night and the conditions this morning weren’t ideal for photography, but after I had got my tripod set up, the first thing I saw was the tiny head of a bald eagle chick staring right back at me! Amazing! I am guessing about 1 week old.

As I was moving to higher ground, the male arrived with a squirrel in his talons. Talk about repositioning at the wrong moment, but this is the nature of wildlife photography! There will be many more opportunities for this type of shot as the chick will have a voracious appetite until it fledges and eventually leaves the nest.

15 January 2018

Mother and chick were very active this afternoon, the chick ripping small pieces of meat from the carcass in the nest. Even though it has been 4 days since the last visit, the chick seems bigger, the feathers have a much deeper grey color and the tiny beak looks more defined. Perfect light and blue sky today. Can’t help but smile seeing the mother and chick so close together!

Better out of the nest than in!

24 January 2018

First wing flap. Usually, I wouldn’t post this as the bald eagle chick is facing away from the camera. It was just so beautiful to see; I have to share! What a change in only 9 days!

27 January 2018

The light conditions were very changeable today with the sun popping in and out of the clouds. The eaglet was crying for food, and the mother eagle was obviously out hunting. Just as she did return with a fish in her talons, light levels crashed – typical! Great to see her feeding her chick.

3 February 2018

They say light and patience are a photographer’s best friends. I don’t know who they are but they are right! This afternoon the light, or lack of it, was my enemy. Still, in the interests of documentation, this is my only keeper. All of the fish and tree rats (squirrels) that the parents catch are obviously going to good use as the eaglet is growing rapidly and looks very healthy.

5 February 2018

After days of poor light, finally, blue skies and sunshine!

I can fly!! Truly fantastic to watch. After today I also think that the chick is female as I can see the beginnings of an inward beak curve.

6 February 2018

Today the male was out hunting and soon returned with what I can only guess was a large part of some large animal’s intestine. The female immediately jumped on it, fed a few small chunks to the chick and then proceeded to wolf the whole thing down herself!

The only problem was a small section of the intestine looped itself over her lower beak, and she just couldn’t swallow it. I really thought I was watching a bald eagle choke to death. She tried to bring part of it up, the eaglet then grabbed the other end and it was a tug-of-war. After flying to a nearby branch and rubbing the side of her beak against the branch, she managed to get it down.

It was a challenge to maintain proper long lens technique when laughing so much!

11 February 2018

The male bringing in a tasty squirrel for breakfast, quite a large one by the look of it.

14 February 2018

No longer a chick, this is a young eagle now. Complete with the imperious look that all adult bald eagles have.

24 February 2018

Lots of wing flapping today and I am positive at one point the eaglet was airborne for a moment! The downdraft from the wings lifted all kinds of feathers, fluff and other light detritus up from the bottom of the nest!

Finally an opportunity to get a burst of shots of the male eagle bringing in another freshly caught squirrel in his talons.

1 March 2018

Photographing the juvenile eagle this afternoon made me hungry! The father had caught a duck, stopped along the way to eat half of it, then returned to the nest. The eaglet went berzerk, ripping off large pieces of the succulent red meat and then getting them stuck on its beak. She even ripped off a flipper, with sinew and bone still attached, tried to swallow it and didn’t understand why it wouldn’t go down. The father had to intervene, gently pull the flipper out of its beak, reorient it in his beak and feed it back at the correct angle.

4 March 2018

The juvenile was up and about by the time I arrived. At first, it started tidying up the nest before doing to practice takeoffs and then hovers.

Father then arrived with a fresh squirrel. I love the look of hunger and delight on the infant.

The juvenile quickly consumed the head (I guess it was the tastiest part!) then picked up the headless carcass and carried it to the other side of the nest for later. She is strong now.

7 March 2018

Mother arrives with a mid-morning snack, a freshly caught fish which was eaten quickly.

As the eagle gets bigger, so does the errr – you know what.

Then (somewhat lighter) some more flying practice using her legs to jump and then furious wing beating.

10 March 2018

Usually, small animals are delivered from the left side of the nest, but today, that was where the juvenile was sleeping. The father had to approach and land at an unusual angle carrying (you guessed it) another squirrel.

They then both grabbed the squirrel and started tearing at the meat.

See the squirrel paw hanging out of the juvenile’s beak.

Ever wondered what happened to the tails of the squirrels? To be honest, neither had I. Now we all know the answer!

12 March 2018

Now starts the difficult time, the time when the youngster could fly away and leave the nest at any time. That realization makes me happy and sad at the same time. Walking down to the nest today I saw nothing; neither parent was in the tree – although that has become quite common over the past few weeks as squirrel supplies in the neighborhood must be at an all-time low! There was no telltale dark shape in the nest either, but after setting up my tripod and about 30 minutes of waiting, a wing was briefly visible over the edge of the nest. What a relief!

Soon after, the father arrived and perched high up in the tree. He began calling, and suddenly the youngster was standing up in the nest and wing beating hard. It was very windy today, and I could sense the nervousness in the young eagle. She did her best and managed to get about 6 inches above the nest but then sank back down, her talons once again on terra firma. She promptly lay down in the nest and fell asleep – I guess learning to fly is tiring!

14 March 2018

Today the young eagle was completely down in the nest with only her head barely visible as she scanned the sky. She stayed motionless like that for over 45 minutes and then I heard a distant call from one of the parents. In an instant, the juvenile was standing up in the nest crying loudly.

Milliseconds later the mother arrived at maximum speed with a possum in her talons! It all happened so fast I was barely able to swing the lens to keep up with her as she flared her feathers for what looked like a very heavy landing. I am so glad I was using the Nikon D3x body today, no way would the D810 have focussed that fast!

This is one of my favorite images so far. Both the mother and youngster together in the same frame, a new kind of rodent for dinner, the spread wings of both eagles and catchlights in their eyes.

Next, the mother did something I have not seen before. The chick was going crazy trying to get at the carcass, and she merely covered the juvenile’s head with her tail feathers, and that seemed to soothe her as she consumed a few bites of the possum.

16 March 2018

Today was the first time I have seen the eaglet out of the nest, although no actual flying. She appeared nervous the more she inched her way up the branch.

As I was packing up to leave, mother arrived with a very small squirrel. The eaglet immediately jumped on it but then seemed unsure of what to do next. I then realized something. Usually, food is delivered ‘open’, that is partially eaten by the adult, or ‘closed’ in which case the delivering adult helps the youngster ‘open’ it and then leaves her to it. Today, the mother simply dropped off the squirrel and then flew to a nearby branch and watched. The juvenile looked at her mother for many minutes as if asking for help. Perhaps instinct kicked in, but soon she ‘opened’ the squirrel and began eating.

A scratch or perhaps a cheeky wave to the camera!

Some issues with balance the higher she got.

17 March 2018

From a photographic perspective, it was a quiet Saturday. In a way, this was just as well because the light was very harsh. It is obvious that the eaglet was undergoing some intensive final training. Shortly after I arrived, the male flew to an outer branch, and the eaglet crab walked out onto the middle of the limb. The female then blocked the return route to the nest, and it was clear they wanted the juvenile out. Perhaps pushing her to fly or more likely getting her used to perching on a narrow branch. The family stayed like this for hours.

18 March 2018

The young bald eagle seemed a little more confident today. Instead of wing beating in panic when there was a strong gust of wind, she leaned forward, ducked down a bit and spread her wings. Her strong, sharp talons held her in place on the branch, but it almost looked like she was enjoying the sensations of aerodynamic lift!

I think her maiden flight will be any day now.

20 March 2018

It rained all of yesterday so it was impossible to visit the nest. This morning, despite a grey sky, I had to make a quick trip to see if the young eagle was still there. She was, although looking rather bedraggled after a wet night and a tornado watch all morning.

21 March 2018

While clear skies have returned, I don’t think very windy conditions are ideal for the first flight. The wind didn’t stop the eaglet from venturing high up into the tree. Lovely feather display, almost like all air brakes and ground spoilers deployed.

25 March 2018

Since the 21st of March, I have visited the nest at least once per day, waiting for this event – the maiden flight!

This morning I heard the eaglet crying loudly for food, but neither parent was around. Later she flapped her way up to one of the highest branches and after a short moment of hesitation took flight. She flew confidently, circling and climbing on the thermals. After about 5 minutes she returned to the nest in a shallow angle dive, landed neatly and promptly fell asleep.

Today also starts the clock on the unknown countdown to when she flies away for good, not something I am looking forward to. Still, I am smiling as there was always a chance I would have missed the opportunity to see her fly like this. The circles she flew in the sky were directly above me, in nearly all of the images it feels like she is looking right down at me. Spectacular and so special!

All these pictures were taken handheld at 700mm, f8, and c. 1/2000s.

28 March 2018

Since I first saw the young eagle fly, she seems to be doing a lot of it as most days the nest and tree are empty when I arrive. This afternoon the mother and daughter were in the nest, I waited for over 2 hours, but apart from a bit of sunbathing and wing flapping, nothing happened.

1 April 2018

I have not seen an eagle for 3 days, but despite this morning being very misty, I walked to the nest anyway. Leaving my camera gear at home, I took only my binoculars. The young eagle was just about visible through the heavy mist, perched high up in a pine tree.

I shall end this wonderful story now as both parents have left and the eaglet is hardly in the area anymore. It has been a fantastic adventure requiring lots of patience, but I have enjoyed it immensely.

Such an amazing transformation in 74 days.

I hope you enjoyed the story.

The end.

See the gallery to view the images in a Lightbox slideshow.

The post Bald Eagle Family and Me appeared first on exposurecompensation.

At any time of the year, these 2 parks are a photographers paradise – beautiful steaming pools, geysers, mountains, lakes, water reflections and wildlife everywhere.

The unexpected late September snow storms in Yellowstone caught everyone by surprise. The first tire tracks in the snow each dark, freezing morning we made by my rental Subaru AWD. For many hours it truly felt like I had the entire park to myself, quite a surreal experience. Quite a fun one too; Subaru, traction control off, snow tires, and not a traffic cop or park ranger in sight. I was told later that overtaking a snow plow (while it was plowing!) was rather frowned upon by local law enforcement!

It is difficult for me to chose a favorite image from the trip. If I had to choose, I mean really had to choose, I think the shots of the Grand Prismatic Spring would be my favorites. Why? For a start, it is jaw-droppingly beautiful! Despite it being one of the most famous and photographed places in the USA, it is the snow-color-steam combination that I love so much. Also, not many people are lucky (or perhaps brave) enough to see the spring in those conditions. Searching Google Images for ‘Grand Prismatic Spring Snow’ yields only a few results. In my opinion, the snow just adds so much more depth to the pictures.

Someone recently asked the question of what gear did I take with me. Nikon D810 and D3x bodies. 24-70/2.8 and 70-200/2.8 zooms and a 300/2.8 prime. For the landscape shots, the 24-70mm was my most used lens. I used the 300/2.8 VR (with the 1.4x TC) for the majority of the wildlife shots. In retrospect, I should have brought my 500mm for that little bit of extra reach. The decision to pack heavy and take my big Gitzo 5560SGT tripod and Manfrotto 405 geared head was a good one. A circular polarizer is invaluable to getting the best out of reflections.

Now I just need to plan my next trip, this time in Spring!

Gallery

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