Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

The timing of this GPS Receiver from Canon is perfect in my opinion. You might remember that when Lightroom 4 came out, when talking about the Maps module, I said that this was one of the things that I’d been waiting for, to finally get me geoencoding my images. I’d dabbled with creating tracklogs with my iPhone, but didn’t like how much battery it sucked up, at least with my old phone without multitasking. I’d also toyed with the idea of buying a dedicated unit, but I didn’t like the idea of adding an extra step to my workflow, using separate pieces of software to tag the images etc.

You probably already know that I’m just not one  for adding extraneous processes that I don’t believe to be fully necessary, and geoencoding unfortunately fell into that category, until the Maps module was added to Lightroom 4 that is. With the Maps module, it became easy, and almost acceptable, to the point that I started to drag images to the map to geoencode them with the GPS coordinates of that location. I know where most places I visit are on a map, but for places I might not find, if I took a few moments to shoot an iPhone photo which are automatically geoencoded, I could use those images as a reference, so I finally started to get excited about Geotagging my images.

Canon GP-E2 on 5D Mark III

Then though, just as that functionality was added to Lightroom 4, Canon announced the GP-E2 GPS Receiver, which although not the first Receiver from Canon, seemed to fit with my idea of how easy this should all be. I could just slide it into the flash hot-shoe on my camera, and it would tag all images I shot. As we’ll see later, there are still reasons to open an application that Canon provide for certain things, but basically, once I have my images tagged in camera, they just appear on the Map in Lightroom. This is the simplicity I was waiting for, so I ordered a GP-E2.

Initial Impression

The first thing that struck me when I took the GP-E2 out of the box is its size. I’ve seen how small the Nikon GPS receivers are, and was expecting something similar in size, probably around a third the actual size of the Canon Receiver. The big difference with the Canon GPS Receiver though, is that it is totally self-contained, with its own AA battery, and you don’t need a cable to connect to the camera, unless you want to use a flash or something else in the hot-shoe that would require you to keep the GP-E2 off the camera.

The benefit of having the Receiver sitting right on top of the camera though, is that it will not only tag images with the GPS coordinates, it also knows which direction the camera is pointing, and embeds that information into the images as well. This information is only viewable with the Canon Map Utility that comes with the GP-E2 though, and isn’t yet available in Lightroom. Looking at the GPS data in the EXIF information in Lightroom, I don’t even see this direction information, so I’m not sure if this will magically appear in Lightroom later, if Adobe build this support into a later version, which I am seriously hoping they will do.

GPS Lock-on Speed and Accuracy

When you first turn the unit on, it can take a good minute to 90 seconds to get a GPS signal. I have noticed faster, but the majority of the time I’m finding that it takes well over a minute.

In the screen grab of the Canon Map Utility showing the first day I used the GP-E2, literally minutes after I bought it, you can see that for a while after I turned the unit on, it tagged my images as being on the other side of the Shinjuku station, in a totally different area to where I was. I drew some rough notes on the screen grab, and you can see how far out the first shots were. Note though, that the GPS unit was still not even showing that it had a signal, so I thought it was actually quite good that it tagged the images at all. (Click the image to view larger.)

Canon Map Utility - First Day

The rest of the shots on this first screen grab also shows a little bit of drift from where I was actually shooting, and I think this is because I was among the tall buildings of Shinjuku, which were probably getting in the way to a degree, and once you’re in a less built up area, accuracy increases, as we’ll see in a moment.

I had another day out with the Receiver last week, and this time, there were no tall buildings, although it was a park with lots of tall trees in some areas. You can see on this next map that in some areas the GP-E2 went a bit crazy. The spots where it looks like a kid has scribbled on the map with a red pen, are areas where I’d stopped to takes some photos under some tall trees and a thick canopy of leaves. The areas where the lines are less frantic, are the less wooded areas.

Map Utility with Track Logs

This next screen grab shows the Canon Map Utility with the images selected, so that you can see the camera direction information. Unfortunately, I can’t see a way to show both the image information and the tracklog in Map Utility, although that might be a pretty busy screen to look at even if I could. If you compare the last screen grab with this one though, you can see that most of the places where there is a concentration of photos being shot, there is a red scribble on the track. The one exception is the area close to the bottom about a third of the way into the map from the right, which is actually where we had lunch, so there are no coinciding photos shown.

Map Utility with Photos

As a test, during this visit to a local park last week, in addition to the Canon GP-E2, I used MotionX-GPS on my iPhone 4 to record a second track log for comparison. The iPhone 4 is supposedly not as accurate as the iPhone 4S but it still does a reasonable job, and this is really just to give you a point of reference.

You can see from the following screen grab of Google Earth with both track logs loaded, that the iPhone, which is the yellow line, doesn’t wander anywhere near as much as the GP-E2, which is represented by the blue line here. Some times though the iPhone over simplified things, though I believe Motion X was logging at 10 second intervals, the same as I’ve set up my GP-E2.

Google Earth with iPhone 4 and GP-E2 Tracklogs

So, on the accuracy, I’d say the GP-E2 does pretty well when it has a good view of the sky, and wanders a little when there are buildings or trees around to block or hinder the signal. For me, this level of accuracy is plenty, but you’ll need to make your own mind up based on these results for your own use. Of course, you can also tweak how the GP-E2 behaves, or creates the track log, and a more experienced Geotagger, would probably get better results with it than I currently am.

.log Files

Something else you might want to note is that the GP-E2 Receiver writes its track log files in what seem to be a proprietary format, which can’t be imported directly into Google Earth, or Lightroom 4. To get the track log into Google Earth you have to open the .log file in Canon’s Map Utility and export it as a .kmz file for Google Earth.

If you open the file, it’s just a text file, and I read somewhere that you can delete the first line and use it as another format, but that to me is even more trouble than exporting from Map Utility, so I haven’t really followed up on that.

As usual, I try to keep my workflow as simple as possible, using the least possible tools and steps to get to where I want to be. At the moment, with the exception of when I want to see camera direction, as long as I have the GP-E2 attached to the camera, I’m done. The images just appear on the Maps in Lightroom.

Syncing with Multiple Cameras

I will still have to use Canon’s Map Utility when shooting with more than one camera, to enable me to tag images that I shot without the GP-E2 attached. They won’t have direction information, but to their credit, Canon made it pretty easy to tag other images from the track log, with just a few mouse clicks, which I guess I’ll be able to live with, unless I spring for a second unit, which I don’t see me doing right now.

To sync multiple cameras though,  you make sure you have imported the track log into Map Utility, by plugging in the GPS Receiver with a USB cable, and that is then copied to your local hard drive automatically. Then you select the images that you want to tag and hit a button to Automatically Add Location Information, and Map Utility adds the location from the log file based on the time the images were shot. This of course relies on you having both of your camera clocks set to the same time.

[UPDATE: Although I'd tried Jeffrey Freidl's amazing Geoencoding plugin for Lightroom to tag files using coordinates in the GP-E2 tracklog, it currently isn't working. Jeffrey has since gotten in touch though, and believes it should work, so he's looking for a solution.  I'll update you if anything comes of this.]

Supported Cameras

As there is a setting to allow you to set  the time on the camera from the satellites it locks in on, you know the camera with the GPS is going to be accurate, but so far, the only cameras that actually support this unit are the 5D Mark III and the 1D X, which isn’t on the streets yet, as on May 14, 2012. The 7D is also supported, but only when connected to the camera with one of the two supplied USB cables. Also, the 7D does not support the camera direction feature. It’s purely for geotagging or creating a track log.

Compass Information on Electronic Level

One thing I thought was very cool, is that you can see the direction that the camera is pointing on the back LCD, when you have the Electronic Level turned on. This means I’ll be able to use software like VelaClock or The Photographer’s Ephemeris to get the azimuth at which the sun or moon will rise or fall, and point the camera there ready, while I wait. Of course, I can use a compass, and there’s one in my phone too, but I still have to line my camera up with that. Now I can see it right there on the camera, removing some of the guess work.

GPS Signal Confirmation

There are a number of ways to see whether or not the unit has a GPS signal. The easiest is that when the unit has a signal the right of the two red lights on top of the GP-E2 turns on and stays for a second or so, then goes off for 3 or 6 seconds, before flashing again. If the unit doesn’t have a signal, it flashes three times in quick succession, then waits another 3 or 6 seconds before flashing rapidly again, until it gets a signal. The difference between a three or six second interval between flashes is apparently some kind of power saving, but I wasn’t able to find out when or why that kicks in. Mine’s been flashing at 6 second intervals pretty much since I got it, despite me putting a nice high powered Lithium battery in it.

Also to confirm that you have a GPS signal, when you half press the shutter button with the GP-E2 attached to camera, you get a GPS indicator on the top LCD panel or on the back LCD in LiveView, which turns on solid when there’s a signal, or flashes rapidly when there’s no signal.

The battery level indicator is similar, in that it flashes once for a second every 3 or 6 seconds when everything is OK, but it blinks rapidly for three times when the battery is starting to run low, then, it goes out when the battery is dead, not surprisingly.

Using GP-E2 Off Camera

The unit comes with two covers. One is a tight cover to protect the unit when in use off camera. It has a window on the side to open the USB port so that you can plug it into the camera while for example attached to your belt, using the built in belt loop, or you can just attach it to your belt and literally use the unit just as a GPS Receiver, then geoencode images from any Canon DSLR later. There’s also a second window of course, to give you access to the switch to turn the unit on, and to enable you to see the battery and GPS signal indicators.

Canon GPS Receiver GP-E2 in Case with Pouch

Note too that the power switch has two settings. ON only geotags your images, and doesn’t create a track log. Turn the switch another notch though, to LOG, and you’ll get your images tagged, and there’ll be a track log file saved to the device.

The second is a protective pouch to put the GP-E2 in while carrying it around. Because the first case is quite tight and takes a bit of putting on and taking off, and you have to take it off before you can attach the unit to the camera. I’ve been just using the pouch so far, as I’m generally using the unit attached to my camera. They both have their uses though, and I’m glad there is the pouch, as that suits my current workflow.

Slight Nit-Picks

Slightly disappointing was that there was no battery included. I had taken my camera with me when I went to pick up the GP-E2 as I planned to start using and testing it straight away, but I had to buy a battery before I could use it. If I’d known it wasn’t included, I’d have taken a charged Eneloop battery instead.

Also, there is no USB cable included to plug the unit into a computer, only a long and a short cable to plug the unit into the camera. Three cables might be a bit much, but in that case, I would like to have seen an adaptor from mini-B to a Type A USB connector so that I could plug the device straight into my computer to transfer the track logs.

Conclusion

Overall though, I’m very pleased with the GP-E2 GPS Receiver, and can finally now get into geoencoding my images. It’s accurate enough for my needs, though I’m not sure how it will fair when hard-core Geotaggers get their hands on it. I’m really pleased that I’m now able to tag my own images though, without having to jump through hoops, however easy those hoops might have been to jump through.

The next step of course, is to build this into the cameras. I know that there are already some compact digital cameras out there with amazing GPS units built right into them. I had a great conversation with Chris Miller on Google Plus about this, but it’s Chris’ theory, and I’m sure he’s right, that the manufacturers are concerned about battery life, buy just having the GPS build right into the camera.

They are probably also worried about people turning them on by mistake, then posting images online with directions to their homes embedded etc. which would not always be a good thing of course. I think it will be here soon though, and all the manufacturers have to do is make sure that they turn off GPS by default, and then flash a message up when the user turns it on, warning about battery life.

It’s also quite easy to Remove Location Info when exporting images from Lightroom and other workflow tools too, so hopefully it’s only a matter of time before we see this. Of course, that means my nice new little GP-E2 will then be obsolete, but I could handle that too, for the ease of having this all just build in and working.

Announcing Pixels 2 Pigment!

OK, so I hope that was of some use – let’s move on to that important announcement that I mentioned in the introduction. Because of a bit of a reshuffle in my schedule for August, September and October this year, I’ve decided to try and plan a series of weekend workshops in Japan, the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. These are basically building on both my Color Managed Digital Workflow seminars and the success of my Craft & Vision ebook, Making the Print.

I’ve been blown away by people’s reaction to Making the Print, and many have asked if I can do a face to face workshop, to build on some of the techniques discussed, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The two day workshop seminar is called Pixels 2 Pigment, and I’ve put together a new Web site to gauge interest as I plan this.

Without overcomplicating things, we’ll work through an entire digital photography workflow, starting from capture right through to printing. We’ll be calibrating every step, from capture to output, and including practical exercises and demonstrations, to give you the tools to streamline your own workflow and get you making professional quality prints every time, without tearing your hair out in the process.

For details and currently tentative dates, see my www.pixels2pigment.com web site, and more importantly, if you think you’ll attend one of these seminars, sign up for the newsletter using the form on the page. This will give me an idea of how big, or small, a venue we need, and also help me to work with sponsors on the possibility of them helping with some of the overheads, to reduce the cost to you.

My current plans have us starting in Tokyo and maybe also Okinawa, as I’ve already had a request to run this workshop there, and then move on to California, then up to Vancouver, across to Toronto, then down to New York, before flying across the Pond to do a weekend in London, all currently scheduled for the five weekends in September. Then, if there is enough interest, I’m hoping to go to Australia and do Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in October.

In addition to the weekend seminars, I’ll also be arranging some short excursions on some of the days in between, depending on what’s available nearby, but the most important thing right now is for you to let me know that you are interested. There’s no obligation at this point, but please only fill out the form at www.pixels2pigment.com if you are seriously considering joining me for what I think will be an incredibly useful and fun weekend.

Show Notes

The Pixels to Pigment Web site: http://www.pixels2pigment.com/

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Here’re some links to some of Andrew’s self-published ebooks.

Andrew S. Gibson

Andrew also told me after the interview, about a great article on the Lens Optimization feature in DPP, that I thought I’d also share here.

You can catch up with Andrew in the following places.

Web: http://www.andrewsgibson.com/blog/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewsgibson

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AndrewSGibson

500px: http://500px.com/andrewsgibson

Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/112821156866464968100/posts

And here are some of Andrews photographs.

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

by Andrew S. Gibson

Show Notes

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

If you do want to get involved but not sure what to do, all details of how to upload your images, the rules of engagement and an explanation of the voting process are posted in the Assignment Forum at martinbaileyphotography.com. Also note that even if you don’t see this Assignment related episode at the end of the month, or start of the new assignment month, I do also announce the theme in the Assignment Forum at the end each month, so you can always look there if you are heading out shooting and wonder what the theme is.

So, let’s jump right in and take a look at the incredible winning images for the Food Assignment, and in fifth place, is Morton Goldberg with More Cookie Than Monster, and here’s Morton’s back-story.

More Cookie Than Monster © Morton Goldberg

March was a busy month and when the 31st came, I had not even made a start on the month’s assignment. If I was going to participate, I would have to do something simple — there was too little time remaining to do anything elaborate. That certainly meant that I wasn’t going to do any fancy food preparation of my own. I decided that baked goods were my best bet. There are bakeries in my area that produce luscious looking treats.

I visited the bakery in a local Whole Foods Market. It was near enough to Easter that they had a selection of pastries shaped as bunnies and baby chicks, but I was attracted to a tray of puff pastries decorated to look like muppet monster heads. I thought them amusing without being too kitschy.

I bought two. I was afraid, although each was carefully packaged in its own little box, there might be damage on the way home. Puffs are very delicate. I was right to be worried. Despite my trying to be careful, only one made it home in good enough condition to be photographed.

I used my trusty tabletop Lowel EGO light set-up to light the puff. This consists of two 16-inch square daylight fluorescent softboxes. This is an excellent kit for food photography. Actually, I think it was designed by Lowel with food photography in mind as its main application.

A confession: despite what my caption says, the subject is not really a cream puff, but a custard puff. I didn’t know that when I wrote the caption. I only found out later when I ate the puff.

I’m very pleased to have placed fifth with my rather hastily produced photo. My compliments to all those who placed above me for their excellent work. Also, I thank Martin for providing this assignment and for keeping them going. I know, Martin, you have heard this many many times, but it still bears repeating.

Well, thank you for participating, and especially this month Morton, as your photograph brings a broad smile to my face every time I look at it. You may not have made this yourself, but it’s a great find, and you lit it very well indeed. I think the light brown background matches the subject very well too, and even the fact that your little monsters right eye has been pushed half way out of its socket, adds an additional touch of humor to the subject. I really do like this one, congratulations on placing Morton.

Next up, in fourth place is Greg Anderson, with A Fancy Feast, and here’s Greg’s back-story.

A Fancy Feast © Greg Anderson

First off, a big thank you to everyone who thought that my photo was good enough to vote for. I’m surprised that my first entry made it into the top 5!

I had been planning to pick a “theme of the month” contest to try and keep myself shooting, and since Martin’s podcast is one of my favorites, this seemed to be the natural place. By the time the holidays calmed down and I re-combobulated myself, it was March, and theme was food. Oh no! I barely have any culinary skills to make food, much less an eye to photograph it. But after a bit of thinking, I decided that since there was no stipulation that it had to be people food, I would try a different take on the topic.

Originally I thought I might have a scene with some cat food in the front (like it turned out) but have the feline face be visible, perhaps with some lip smacking going on, or some other appropriately catlike facial expression. But I quickly scratched that, knowing that it would be hard enough getting one of my cats to sit in the right place, never mind getting one of them to take posing directions. So I decided that a backlit, silhouetted cat with more direct lighting emphasis on the food was the way to go.

Setup was pretty basic: I put one gridded speedlite above the food, and one bare flash behind the cat’s seat on the floor, pointed at the blue background. It turned out to be easier than I thought to get a cat to sit by the small table I had set up, and about as easy as I thought to get said cat to sit in about the right pose. What I hadn’t counted on was tails: After my first round of shots, I found that over half of them had the backlight flash obscured partly by a swishing cat tail, since the flash was positioned right where the cat’s tail hung over the seat.

Disappointed with the results, I let it sit for a week or two. Even though I put the food away, I found that I almost always had cat sitting or sleeping on the seat, and they always had an expectant look on their face when I came into the room. The liberal use of cat treats during the previous session had made an impression, I guess!

When I finally came back to it, I had decided to add the glass of milk to the scene because having just the bowl of food and the cat in the scene wasn’t creating the right balance. Also, my backlight problems had been solved by the addition of another grid that I received from my wife for my birthday during the two weeks of downtime. Now I could position the background flash further to the side, and shape the light more.

I of course had a willing subject, and in return for three for four cat treats I managed to get the image that I entered in about 5 minutes of shooting. Post production in Aperture involved a slight amount of burning to some of the topmost pieces of cat food, as they were a bit too hot compared to the rest of the food. I also brushed in some desaturation on the milk to make it look more white, as opposed to the yellowish-white that milk tends to come out as in pictures.

Thanks go to Goomba, the cat in the picture, and Martin for everything that he does for the community. And again, thanks to everyone who voted for my picture. And of course, congratulations to Colin Michaelis for taking first place!

Well, you’re very welcome Greg, and thank you for participating, and for the great back-story. I think the key to your success with this image is that you allowed yourself enough time to revisit the assignment after a few weeks, and there’s a lesson to be learned for all of us here. Some months, it just isn’t possible to start shooting early enough, and having the pressure to come up with something on the last day, as Morton did, will certainly help sometimes, but here, I think the fine tuning of the lighting, and thinking of adding the glass of milk really made this shot. Without the milk, the feeling of the cat sitting down to a gourmet dinner would have been lost. Also, thanks for the tip on desaturating the milk a little. I’m sure that’s something we can all put to use too. Congratulations on placing, and I’m looking forward to your future shots as well.

Moving on to third place, and we have Elise Ange’s back-story for “S” is for Strawberry.

"S" is for Strawberry © Elise Ange

Congratulations to Colin for the win and to all who placed! Thanks to everyone who voted for mine.
I had decided that what I chose as subject matter for “Food” would not be cooked. Strawberries were featured in the weekly shopping circular and they looked mouth-watering. I arrived when the store opened for the biggest selection. I spent a lot of time looking through the strawberry packages to find ones which were all red.

The setup was not easy and I tried different glass containers, some with dry fruit, some with the fruit in water. I had a difficult time with the lighting. The first batch of strawberries did not yield any photos worthy of submission. Fortunately the next week, strawberries were still plentiful in the store and I bought a second batch.

I had done a bit of reading about food photography and decided to try natural lighting. I found a fancy bowl that I had received as a gift a long time ago and never used. However, I found that the natural lighting coming in the window still needed to be supplemented because it was stronger on one side of the subject than the other. I did some minor adjustments in Photoshop and cropped the image a bit. Martin’s themes present a challenge to me each month, but I learn something worthwhile with each of them.

What a beautiful way to have captured these strawberries Elise. Here simplicity is key, and the bright red strawberries against the white, and transparent bowl work very well, especially with that beautiful soft lighting.

I’m really pleased that the assignment helps you to continue to learn, as it does for all of us I think. Again, going the extra mile, and getting up early for the first batch, then going back to the store for a second batch of strawberries really contributes to the quality of your work, I’m sure. Congratulations on placing Elise, and thanks for continuing to get involved.

Next up, in second place is Graham Aylard with “Stawberry”, and here’s Graham’s back-story.

Strawberry © Graham Aylard

Thank-you for your votes and placing my image second. Here is the back story of the image ‘Strawberry’

Back in January I wanted to take my photography to a new direction. Studio photography. Inspired by one of the modern greats – Rankin. Although he operates with much more expensive equipment, staff and costly resources, personality of his subjects always shines through – a key element to his style of photography.  I wanted to capture personality of people too. I’ve been doing landscape photography for some time, studios was something that I haven’t really done before. It was time to plunge into the deep end and tackle studios.

I booked Lux studio near my home town in Maidstone for my first lighting lesson. Few weeks later, I booked model Kate for my first ever shoot.  I opted for a professional model instead of friends or family as I knew a model would be comfortable in front of the camera. Plus I wouldn’t have to worry too much on directing the model.  It went very well, capturing with some lovely fashion images. I learnt so much about lighting and portraiture that I wanted to give it another go.  Roll on a month later – I’d booked another session at Lux and hired semi-pro model Kandice.

With the theme of food, I knew that a single item of food being eaten by Kandice would work well. I asked Kandice to pose using a cherry as the food prop. However it turns out that Kandice likes cherries as she kept on eating them after I took only a few shots each time.  I also wanted to try a strawberry, so when Kandice finished off all the cherries, I got the strawberries out.  I tried head on shots at first but I wasn’t happy with the results. The side on pose with the model holding the strawberry slightly away from the lips seemed to work better for me. It also prevented Kandice eating all the strawberries!

Lighting in the studio was provided by four Bowens units, two Bowens 250 pointing at the white vinyl backdrop insuring a pure white background, and two slightly more powerful Bowens 500R for the key and fill lighting. Both of these fitted with a soft boxes. Captured on my new Nikon D7000

Post processing was done using Lightroom 3. During my efforts to process the studio shoot my iMac slowly died. Re-installing the OS didn’t help. But a torx screwdriver – size 8, Sat Nav windscreen holder and a new hard drive proved to be the answer. I had to pull the screen off and replace the hard drive which is located right behind the LCD screen. Pulling the screen off an iMac is certainly not for the faint hearted. Reinstalled the OS and Lightroom and all is well. Thankfully I have a reasonable backup workflow so I lost none of my images.

Back with a working computer I took the image and tilted it about 40 degrees for a more pleasing composition. I softened the models skin using the selective brush tool and sharpened the lips, increased the contrast, brightness and vibrance. Using the selective brush tool again, I removed the colour in the skin leaving the strawberry and lips in colour.

I was pleased with the result and I am chuffed to bits for the votes – thank you.  But my biggest critique is my partner, and she liked it too. So much so that my partner wants it framed and displayed in the kitchen of our new home when we move in together soon.

Other images of Kandice, including the colour version, the cherry images and my first studio shoot can be found on my website, http://www.grahamaylard.com.

I would like to add a thank-you to Martin for putting these assignments together. It has really made me think about my photography in ways I thought was not possible. And for the fact that each image is at first, anonymous which means we are all voting on the merit of the image and not the photographer or even the kit used.  That’s really important to me, no matter how many votes I get! Thank you to MBP members for all the votes and thanks to Kandice, who posed for the image and ate all my cherries! I would also like to add a big thanks to my family for all their support, I would be taking a lot less photos if it wasn’t for the encouragement from my partner Sue.

And lastly congrats to Colin, for the winning image. A worthy winner.

Thanks for yet another great back-story Graham, and you are very welcome for the assignments. Again, I’m really pleased that they help. You are certainly doing well with your studio work. This image is simply beautiful. I checked out the color version on your Web site, as well as some of your other work. I really like what you are doing, in all of your chosen genres. Great stuff!

I find it interesting that both you and Elise ended up with vivid red strawberries and mainly white for the rest of your images. This really works well, simplifying the image overall, yet accentuating the reds. Very nicely done indeed. Congratulations on second place.

And in first place, as many have already mentioned, is Colin Michaelis, with A Splash of Color, and here’s Colin’s back-story.

A Splash of Color © Colin Michaelis

Wow! What an honour it is to place alongside this great group of submissions for the “Food” assignment. Such creativity was shown by everyone. It is amazing the different perspectives we all bring to a topic.

When I saw the assignment for March was “Food”, my first reactions were – what on earth could I possibly do that will be worthwhile, and this is not something I know how to do. My next thought, however, was that this is exactly the reason why I have challenged myself to participate in the MBP assignment – so that I will tackle things that are not part of my normal routine, broaden my horizons and learn from the creative ideas of the other participants.

After a day or two of pondering the assignment, I decided on a concept. We have all seen pictures of food (often berries or fruit) splashing into water and so it is a little bit of a cliché image. However, I have the view that if I have never done it, then it is not a cliché for me yet. So I did some research into how other people had done similar assignments and made an investment in a $13 fish tank.

Setup involved placing the aquarium, about 2/3 full, in front of a black poster board. My two SB-28 strobes (covered in clear plastic to keep them dry) were on stands, one angled down into the tank from above and the other from the front through the glass at a 45 degree angle. The flashes were set to 1/32 power, and this was how I planned to freeze the action. I placed my camera, a Nikon D90, with my 50mm f/1.8 lens on my tripod facing straight on to the tank.

With the three peppers balanced on a plate about 12” above the water, I dropped them and pressed the shutter release cable with my other hand a split second later. From the first try, my timing was pretty good, but I found the first 3-4 shots all had a bit of reflection in the front glass. I removed the front speedlight, which solved the reflected light problem, but I was not getting quite enough light. I did not want to increase my flash power so I mounted the second strobe like the first but from the other side of the tank. This got me the look I wanted. It probably took about another ½ dozen tries to get the timing just right.

I found that two essential pieces of equipment were a squeegee and paper towels. After each attempt, it was essential to wipe the tank dry with the squeegee and then completely remove any remaining water spots with the paper towels. Even after doing this I needed to touch up a couple of water marks with the healing tool in Lightroom 4 and dodge a couple of places where there was a little reflection on the glass. I boosted the vibrance a little, although the colour of the peppers was already pretty good.

I had a lot of fun planning this assignment and I had a blast actually making the photograph. To get the results I did exceeded my own expectations and it is very encouraging to me to that I was able to learn something new. And as a bonus, I managed to keep camera and strobes dry, so they will still be working for next month’s assignment. 

Martin, I thoroughly enjoy your podcasts which I listen to regularly. I learn a lot from them. And now that I am participating in the monthly assignment (this is my second entry) I am forcing myself to learn through making photographs that expand my comfort zone. So thank you Martin for providing this great forum.

You’re very welcome Colin, and thanks to you too for getting involved, and for yet another excellent back-story, and what an brilliant tutorial on how to shoot this kind of image! Your investigation beforehand, and the a little trial and error with the positioning of the lights really paid off. You totally nailed this, creating a professional looking image, and capturing the freshness and appeal of the food too. Very well done indeed, and congratulations on a well earned first place.

I’d like to quickly thank all five winners again for taking the time to write out your back-stories to share with us all. I often fail to mention this, but it adds so much to the assignment, and is key to enabling me to bring this episode to the community each month, really building on the experience that many of us put so much into. Thanks also to everyone that got involved in the assignment. Whether you placed or not, I’m sure you all learned something by getting involved and giving this a try.

The theme for April was “Interesting Plainness” and the voting system will be turned on tomorrow, on May 1st, so if you are listening to this soon after release, do drop by the www.mbpgalleries.com Web site and cast your vote for your top five images before May 7, 2012.

The May assignment, using a suggestion from Morton Goldberg, is “Side Light”. This gives you a lot of scope to work with various types of subject matter, so let’s have some fun during May, and see what we can come up with.

Flattr & Paypal Donations

Before we finish today, I’d like to mention that I’ve recently placed Flattr buttons on the blog and Podcast pages, to make it easier for people to help with the upkeep of the Podcast. I don’t mention this very often, probably only two or three times in almost seven years of creating this Podcast, but it does take considerable time each week to keep this up, not to mention the cost of the servers etc.

I get a lot back from this community of course, and that’s one reason why I don’t push this, but people have recently been asking more and more how they can help, so I thought it might be worth mentioning again. Note that in addition to Flattr, the new microdonations service that I think is going to become almost a standard way to pay content creators very soon, I have left the Paypal donation buttons in place, on the right side of each page, so if you want to show your appreciation, a donation using either Flattr or Paypal would be very much appreciated.

I’ve also placed Google +1 buttons on most pages around our Web site too, so you can also help by clicking these +1 buttons to let Google know that what I do here is appreciated, or maybe you could write a review for the Podcast in the  iTunes Store. Anything that you can do is very much appreciated.

Show Notes

Assignment Forum: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=24

Assignment Scores: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/scores2012_1.php

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen and there are other formats at the bottom of the post:

Today, I’m going to show you some of my favorite pics from the day, and talk a little about how valuable I found the experience of actually doing a photo-walk. This was just my first, but it certainly won’t be my last.

We were scheduled to start at 1pm at the main gate to the Shinjuku Gyoen park, but this is a very popular spot for Cherry Blossom viewing parties or Hanami, so when I arrived, about 15 minutes early, there was already a queue of over a thousand people or so at the gate. It turns out that there was a line of security guards checking people’s bags for alcoholic beverages, as they aren’t allowed in the park. This is kind of weird as most Hanami parties include getting totally bladdered under the cherry blossom trees, but I guess they’ve probably had problems in the past and now clamped down on this in the park.

Friendly Faceoff

It took us to around 2pm to actually gather, and I met Mark for the first time, as well as Takahiro, who’s work I really like, which was nice. I also was able to meet a number of other people that I’ve so far only known from Google Plus, such as Yuga Kurita, who’s actually a carbon-based, bipedal life form descended from a cat, and very nice person too. I also met Masanobu Tanzawa, Andrew Holian and Jason Thompson, who I’d met online, and Eric Seaholm, who we’ll see later. There were lots of other great people that joined, but it would take too long to mention them all here, so let’s move on for now.

The group quickly split up, and people went their own way around the park. I spent most of my time with Jason Thompson and Eric Seaholm, and we bumped into other members of the group as we walked and photographed. Although we were in Cherry Blossom season, I didn’t go to the park expecting to be able to photograph the cherry blossom as a main subject.

As we can see in this first photo (above) shot almost at the end of the day as the park was closing, the trees were beautiful, but because of the crowds I’d decided from the start to see what I could capture with regards to how the people were enjoying the cherry blossom. This was one of my favorite shots, as we have this western guy having a good chat with a punk looking girl with red and pink hair. I opened the aperture open wide to f/2.8 for a shallow depth-of-field, but you can also still see some women to the right that look as though they’re laughing at the fashion of the younger girl here. I also like how this photo gives you a sense of just how crowded the park gets at this time of year. Usually there’s enough space for kids to play with footballs and run around having fun, but not during Hanami time.

Someone Else's Group Photo!

Also at the end of the day, as people were getting ready to leave, this group of young men gathered for a group photo, being taken from my right, but I couldn’t resist snapping my own version as well. Even though this was a photo-walk, I still used my Black Rapid Double Strap so that I was nicely balanced, to avoid getting tired by being pulled to one side or forwards, with a single camera on a strap. The last shot was from my 70-200 f/2.8 lens, that I had on one side, and I was able to quickly switch between that and my 50mm f/1.2 lens on the other side, which is what I shot this with. Again, I shot this wide open, at f/1.2 this time, to send the background out of focus. Of course, with that shallow a depth-of-field, the people at the back of the group were also going out of focus, but I like the overall look. I’d need to stop down more for a group photo if I was the official photographer of course.

Although I’d been photographing for a couple of hours at this point, and the company had been great too, I must admit, I started to really have fun from around this time, and as we walked out from the Gyoen Park and across town. The route we took to begin with was not new to me, but as a group, I found myself in the kind of mode that I get in during the workshops and photography tours that I hold, and this is one of the things that I wanted to reflect on a little.

As in this shot (below), I’ve walked past this little alley many times, and I think I’d even photographed it once in the past too, but with the heightened senses I had through being on the walk, and possibly a sense of rivalry, that I had to try and get as many reasonable shots from the day as possible, I found myself raising my camera more than I usually would, had I been say just in town doing a bit of shopping.

Sakura Decoration

Of course, the fact that they had the cherry blossom decorating the alley made it totally different on this day, and I may well have shot it anyway, but there’s no doubt that I was being pushed on by the fact that I was part of a photography group.

Feeding on Each Others’ Creativity

As I say, we get this on my workshops and tours too. The group feed from each other in a creative sense. Either through showing each other what you just shot on the back of the camera, or just from trying to outdo the next guy, but there’s an electric air of creativity that I certainly felt with this group.

Cosmetics Clown

Maybe for me it’s also partly down to my new found appreciation for street photography that has lay dormant for most of the time that I’ve spent in Tokyo, and currently starting to grab my attention more and more, as I mentioned last week.

Either way though, I enjoyed it, and felt that I was looking for photos in the city, as much as I do in the places of natural beauty that I spend so much time in outside of the city throughout the year.

I’ve found that recently I’ve been keeping my camera over my shoulder when walking in the city too, rather than carrying it in a bag, so that I can reach for it and shoot more quickly if something catches my eye, like this guy standing on a box outside a drug store, touting a sale that they were having on cosmetics.

It’s not as though this is the first time I carried my camera over my shoulder in the city, but again, felt more willing to raise the camera at anything that I found interesting, whereas I might not have in the past, if I was just out on a shopping trip.

As we walked, I noticed Eric Seaholm doing his thing, with his cool little four thirds camera, and couldn’t resist snapping this shot too. I had actually just raised my camera when Eric lowered his, but he kindly raised it again for this photo (below).

Eric Seaholm

The shot was OK in color, but having chatted with Eric for most of the evening following this, I found this guy to be an artist to his core, expressing himself in many different disciplines, including movie making, so although I rarely mix and match my post processing styles, this one just cried out for a bit of Film Noir look in Silver Efex Pro 2.

Just down from where I photographed Eric, my usual route through the city would have kept me at street level, and around the front of the Cocoon Building that I have photographed many times in the past. But on this day, Takahiro Yamamoto led us up some stairs to a pedestrian overpass that I’d never used before. This in turn led us around the back of the Cocoon building, so my creative juices got another squeeze as we made our way through the city.

Funky Photowalk

As I often do for cityscapes, I reached for my 14mm f/2.8 lens, and lined this shot (above) up with the walkway above street level along the bottom edge of the frame. It’s difficult to see in the Web version, but there are actually two young ladies from our group walking along the walkway in the bottom center of the frame, and I composed this so that the top of the Cocoon Building, that is home to some of Tokyo’s top art and fashion colleges, isn’t clipped at the top either. From this perspective, the ball to the side of the Cocoon takes center stage of course, but I like this structure too, so it’s a welcome addition.

A little further down, I had a clear shot upwards of the Cocoon Building with three other high-rises looking up at a slightly dramatic sky, helped a little with Silver Efex Pro. These sharp angles on the Cocoon are something that are new to me, and again, that’s thanks to the photo-walk and Takahiro bringing me around a side of the building that I’d never experienced or even thought to seek out.

The Cocoon Building

And again, just a few more feet further on, we descended a spiral staircase at the base of the Cocoon Building, that just begged for a 14mm perspective. Luckily, the sound of my camera shutter for a couple of previous frames alerted the guy to the left of my presence, and he looked up, making this shot in my opinion (below).

Spiral Staircase

A little further through town, we reached the Metropolitan Government Building, and they open one of their higher floors to visitors, with an excellent view out across the city. We got up their just after sun set, and there was still a bit of color in the sky, which some of the group capitalized on, but I wasn’t particularly taken by it, especially as the sun set occurs on the side of the building where there aren’t many tall buildings.

I found a spot with a view of the Docomo Tower, and as night fell, I recalled that the 5D Mark III now has multiple exposure functionality, so I had a play with that. Here you can see that I shot the first of two frames with the lens way out of focus, and the second frame focussed on the Docomo Tower and other buildings. Using the Average Exposure Control to merge the two shots, this gives you little balls of light spread throughout the city, which I thought was quite effective.

Bubbly Shinjuku

I also shot the second Government Building from the other side of the observation lounge, using the same technique (below) and though this was quite a cool look too. Of course, this is one of those looks that you could soon get tired of, but I reckon it works for these few shots, and I’ll probably shoot more as the opportunities arise. Of course, you could do this in Photoshop too with Blend Modes, but it’s much more fun to do it in camera.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building No.2

By the time I’d just about finished shooting this, my friend Ade came over and told me that everyone was heading down, so with the promise of beer, I quickly followed him to the queue for the elevator.

Before we headed a few more kilometers across town though, we spent a few minutes outside the building, and the group got some great shots here too. Actually, you can search for and see lots of shots from the group from this day on Google Plus by searching for #Sakuraphotowalk or #Sakuraphotowalk2012 .

Many people that shot this included the group in their photos, which looked great, but I waited until there were just two left, and shot this (below), just before rushing after them to the pub.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

Again, shot with my 14mm f/2.8 lens, and I made use of the in-camera level on the 5D Mark III for this. You can see from the line across the bottom of the photo that it’s very slightly off, but it’s close enough for me, and probably user error rather than the camera.

The rest of the evening was spent at the Hub Pub at Opera City. It was great just chatting photography with lots of like minded people, and I ended up reaching for the camera a number of times through the evening too. This is one of my favorites from the Hub, of Jason Arney looking at his phone, with the light illuminating his face.

Phone Light

Seven pints of Guinness later, and I was on the last train home, happy and content with the day.

As I said, this was my first photo-walk, not because I’ve been avoiding them, but because they just don’t happen very much here, and I haven’t had enough experience with street photography to call my own walks together, so it just hasn’t come together.

I really did enjoy myself though, and this, and the following week’s visit to the Tsukiji Fish Market have lit a new flame in me, that won’t take over my nature work, or my portraiture work for that matter, but I’ll hopefully be able to keep the flame burning enough for this kind of photography to augment my enjoyment of my photographic life.

As I said earlier, I felt very much like I did when I am on my workshops and tours, where being around like minded people helps you to feed off of each others’ creativity. The difference here of course being that this kind of photo walk is generally free, or even if you join a professional with a workshop element, they’re usually not very expensive at all, but they can help you grow as a photographer, so if you get a chance to join something similar in your area, jump at the chance. Like me, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Show Notes

Google Plus Sakura Photo Walk Search: https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23sakuraphotowalk

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen and there are other formats at the bottom of the post:

Over the last twelve years since I moved to Tokyo, I’ve certainly not made the most of the fact that I live in one of the largest cities in the world with regards to my photography. I’m not much of a street photographer, largely because I rarely like my resulting images, but also because I have simply prioritized my time to concentrate on my nature and wildlife work. I have though for a long time wanted to visit the Tsukiji Fish Market, so when I was in a Google Plus Hangout with Scott Jarvie who was set to come to Tokyo for a few days last week, I decided to go and check it out with Jarvie, and see what we could make of it.

I ended up with 26  photos that I really quite like, and have posted an album on Google+ if you want to check that out. I’ve selected 12 images from that set to quickly walk you through today though, but I did want to give you a heads-up about an important aspect that we missed because I didn’t know how early we needed to get there.

The Auction – 4am Registration!

On the Tsukiji Fish Market Web site, it says that they start registration for two groups of sixty people to enter and watch the Tuna Auction from 5:25 to 5:50 for the first group, then from 5:50 to 6:15 for the second group. The earliest train I could get wouldn’t have gotten me to the market until around 6:30am, and as Jarvie’s first train wouldn’t get him there until around 5:25, so I drove and parked in a nearby car park, and took a steady walk over to the office by around 5:10, thinking I’d get two spaces for me and Jarvie, and wait for him to arrive. You can imagine how shocked I was to find that by 5:10am, all 120 visitors spaces were already taken.

I asked why they’d all gone in less than 10 minutes, and was told that people start arriving at around 4am to secure their slot. I heard the same thing a number of times through the morning, that people generally arrive and register from 4am, so if you want to visit, and actually watch the auction, you’d better get up especially early, not that getting there by 5:10am is exactly what I’d call a lie-in mind.

Market Out of Bounds Until 9am

Hard Nut

Another thing to note is that the Market is pretty much out of bounds until 9am once the auction is finished, so although you can go a little early, and get some shots from afar, if you don’t intend to get there by 4am to get into the auctions, you might as well take your time. As you can see in this image, there are security guards that will ask you to leave the market if you walk in their before 9am.

Jarvie and I snuck around the car park, shooting images like this one from the outskirts, and I do like the results, so I don’t want to play this down too much, but for the most part, we were killing time, and once we were allowed in to the market from 9am, the pace of shooting changed, and the resulting images where very different as well.

Stay Aware!

Driver

Another thing to note is that there are electric carts buzzing around the market all the time, usually in convoy, and not really abiding by any rules as far as road markings go. I heard these things bump together a few times, and they are heavy and hard, and would really hurt if you got clipped or even full on bumped into by one, so stay aware.

In fact, you should just always keep in mind that this is a working market, not a theme park or a tourist attraction. Be respectful at all times that you are a visitor and you are being allowed to be there out of kindness, not duty. A few years ago the market was taken totally out of bounds to visitors due to a lack of respect for simple rules and common sense, and it would be a shame if that were to happen again, so don’t touch anything, keep a relatively low profile, and generally just play nicely.

So, as we weren’t able to enter the auctions, where they lay out hundreds of Tuna fish to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, we had a walk around the Sushi shops in the nearby vicinity to the Market, and they in themselves provide some good photo opportunities. Here (below) we can see one of the lines of sushi shops that we walked around. There were a few shops that had a long queue of non-Japanese visitors outside, and I’m guessing that’s because they offered great sushi at very cheap prices. Jarvie and I decided though to go into Sushi Ichiba, the small establishment that you can see on the left of this shot.

Sushi Galore

It wasn’t exactly cheap, with what we selected being around ¥2,800, which is around US$34 but we didn’t have to queue up for an hour, and boy was it good.

Sushi Shokunin

Here’s another shot from behind one of these little restaurants, of a young Sushi Shokunin, cutting up the Tuna, removing the bits that wouldn’t be used, ready to be more thinly sliced and placed on top of the rice to make Sushi.

Cutting the Maguro

This day to me was very much about textures, with lots of old buildings and fittings like the shelves in this shot, so I decided to process most of the batch in Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4. I’ve processed them to the point where they are just starting to look a little like HDR images, but as a complete set, a body of work, I quite like the feel of these.

Quick Japanese Lesson

Note that for just about everyone of these shots, I asked for permission to photograph the subjects. In Japanese, may I take your photograph is “Shashin totte mo ii desu ka?”. If you are going to head into the market, or photograph people anywhere in Japan for that matter, keep hold of this, and listen a few times, repeating after me. 写真撮ってもいいですか？

Then, when you’ve finished, hopefully without taking too long and even if you do, make sure you don’t outstay your welcome, thank the person who’s photo you took with “arigatou gozaimasu” or “arigatou gozaimashita”, which both mean “thank you”, with the latter being past tense, which is sometimes preferred, especially if you were with the subject for a while. There are different ways to say these phrases, but as someone that’s lived here in Japan for 21 years now, you can trust me that this is about the best way to say these simple and yet practical phrases, in everyday use.

Back into the Market

By the time we’d eaten and loitered outside the entrance to the market for a while longer, it was finally 9am, so we headed inside to photograph the people that work here. I’d asked the gentleman on the right in this photo if it was OK to photograph them as they used a variety of what I’d prefer to call swords rather than knives, to cut up a tuna.

Big Knife!

As we waited for them to get started, a group of foreigners started to gather, and without any one of them asking if it was OK, they all just silently snapped away for the entire time. Some of the security guards actually tell you to ask permission before taking photos, but still, I found it sad that some people just shot away without any real concern for the feelings of the subjects. I understand that I’m lucky to already know the language, but when possible, it would be best to at least make an effort to ask permission, even if it’s just pointing at your camera and asking the pretty much universal “OK?”.

Tsukiji Fishmonger

At this point, the guy in this photo came back to his stall, on the opposite side from the stall where they were cutting up the tuna, and had some fun in Japanese, talking about the large group of foreigners that had taken over the front of his work space.

After a minute or so, I decided to politely make him aware that not all of the foreigners he was talking about didn’t understand what he was saying. I turned and apologized for getting in the way, in Japanese of course. This of course was met with laughter from him and a few others on his stall, and a slight amount of embarrassment.

I continued to have a very nice long conversation with this guy, who as you might guess, despite the tough appearance, seemed to have a heart of gold. Part of our conversation was actually about how many people that work in fishing ports or related industries can be quite tough looking and rough, but inside, they are warm and generous people. I also learned that he was a baseball coach for a school baseball team, and we talked about how emotional it can be to watch the high-school baseball tournament at Koshien Stadium, that’s just finished here in Japan. We laughed a lot, and then one of the others on his stall came back with a few pieces of tuna on a plastic tray, and proceeded to open a packet of soy source over it, for me to try.

Sashimi Celebration

Jarvie Eats Tuna Sashimi

The raw tuna, or sashimi, was absolutely beautiful, and of course, I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t let them know that Jarvie was with me, so that he could try it too. This offering of food like this is quite typical of the Japanese once you’ve made a connection as we had, and I was really pleased to have been taken in by them as they did. Jarvie just mentioned on Google +, as I was preparing for this Podcast, that it made a big difference with my understanding Japanese, and helped us to get some photos that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, and I totally agree. Being able to speak the language makes such a difference at times like this. If you ever want a personal guide in Japan by the way, I’m not cheap, but I’d be glad to quote a price if I’m available during your visit, so drop me a line if you seriously want to hook up for something like this.

Tuna Freezer

We continued to walk around the market, and was amazed by just how large the place is. Even for someone like me that hasn’t particularly enjoyed this kind of photography so far, there’s just a wealth of opportunities for great images, such as this guy looking for a piece of tuna in his freezer full of the stuff.

By the way, I shot my images mostly with the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, my 50mm f/1.4, and my 14mm f/2.8 lens. I also used the 24-70mm f/2.8 a little as well, but these last three shots were all made with the 14mm, which is behind that slightly funky perspective.

Tsukiji Fish Market

The light in the market can be amazing too, with reflections in the wet cobblestone floor, and in this last shot (below) you can see that we’d found a spot where the light was pouring in through a glass skylight.

Tsukiji Skylight #1

I found the light, the people and the place to be quite magical, and will certainly be going back again soon, probably by 4am next time, so that I can get into the tuna auctions and see what I can make of that too. I’m actually quite happy to have found at least a bit of a voice in street photography here. I have of course been shooting and posting some street photography for years, but always found Japan frustrating because of the peace signs and cute poses when you try to photograph anyone. On this trip though, there was none of that, and this, along with some of the shots from a recent photowalk that I did too, might just start to turn it around for me with regards to this relatively unexplored, on my part of course, photographic genre.

Tsukiji is Moving to Toyosu

One last thing that I wanted to touch on before we finish is that the Tsukiji Fish Market is moving from it’s current location to a place called Toyosu, about 10 minutes down the road. The actual date is not set yet, but it’s expected to be within the next two to three years. I’ll try to remember to come back and update this post, but do note that if you are listening to this podcast or reading my blog post in or after 2014, the market might have moved, so do check beforehand.

I’ll also put a link to the official Web site in the show notes, and try to update that too, at least on the blog, if it changes in the future. Remember that you can get to the blog posts to check images to accompany the audio at mbp.ac/331, where 331 is the episode number. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the photos from this day on Google+, and I’ll probably drop them on Flickr as well as my own gallery too, whichever suits you, and do let me know what you think.

Show Notes

Tsukiji Fish Market Web site: http://www.shijou.metro.tokyo.jp/english/market/tsukiji.html

My Tsukiji photos on Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/photos/102227359845636175866/albums/5731832324940681889

Music from Music Alley: http://www.musicalley.com/

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

My old portfolio, a black clamshell box in a leather case, was starting to look very dated, and didn’t really portray the image that I want to show potential clients, so I decided to splash out on the case that I’d originally considered some six years or so ago. Today I’m going to discuss my process for selecting my portfolio images, the format, and also take a look at my new case, which I’m really pleased with.

I actually originally tackled part of this subject back in September 2006, when I released Podcast episode 55. I walked you through my process for creating a portfolio at the time, but the tools have changed, so today I wanted to talk a little about how I edited my selection down in Lightroom. If you don’t use Lightroom, you can certainly do similar things in Aperture, Bridge or even Finder or Explorer on Windows, but we’ll concentrate on Lightroom and you’ll need to rethink this yourself for your own system if you use another tool for your photo management.

Decide Format & Orientation

As you start to consider your portfolio, it helps to make a decision on your format before selecting your images. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you from creating multiple portfolios in multiple formats, but if you try to work on too many possible formats at once, you run the risk of weakening them all, or worse, not actually completing any of them. I suggest you set your sights on one main presentation format, and aim to take that to completion, but work in a way that will enable you to easily rework your collections for other formats, or easily extend or create new collections without having to start from scratch each time.

Pina Zangaro Camden Portfolio Case

We’ll talk a little about other formats later, but for my main portfolio, I decided to go with a loose leaf portfolio, that would allow me to easily change the contents and order of the portfolio. The case I bought also has room for some sixty or so prints if I need to, which means I could for example carry two or three large collections of images if I need to. Note that I wouldn’t suggest walking into a clients office with 60 images in a single portfolio. That’s too many. You want to be working with 20 to 30 images or an even tighter edit when you know exactly what the client wants.

Another decision that it helps to make before you start to edit down your image selection is the orientation of your portfolio and whether you will print all of your images with the paper in that orientation. For example, if you print with the pages in landscape orientation, you might want to try to select landscape oriented images over portrait when possible. And for the portrait aspect images you leave in, you need to decide whether you will print them with the page also in portrait mode, or print them smaller with the page still positioned horizontally, to save you or your clients from having to turn the page for portrait images.

Of course, if you know that your potential clients prefer portrait aspect, which is common with some kinds of magazine, you may decide to print in portrait orientation, and even print your landscapes narrower in this orientation, although there is of course the option of printing double page in the magazine. There are lots of possibilities to consider, but whichever you decide, it’s good to make this decision before you start your selection, and give yourself maximum flexibility in your portfolio as you start to print.

One other thing to note is that when I find something in the field that can be shot in both orientations, I usually do. This allows me to select a portrait or landscape orientation of essentially the same subject based on these factors.

Also keep in mind that if your final output is going to be a printed book, although you may still be able to decide to go with landscape or portrait orientations, you won’t realistically be able to flip the book around to change orientation. You’ll need to create a book that most matches your clients requirements and your images, and go with that. The good thing with books though is that it’s easier to include two portrait images facing each other on an open book, and if necessary, spread landscape work across both pages, although in this case you do have to be mindful of what you’d lose in the dead area in the binding of the book pages.

Once you have decided on your format though, be it loose leaf or book, portrait or landscape, we can move on to start our selection process.

The Selection Process

As a standard process, I’m a big believer in keeping tabs on my best work as I shoot, and I actually make a copy of these best images to make selections like this easier. I do all of my rating leaving the stars on my original RAW files, so that I can easily go back to my original folders and sort by the star rating, and see exactly which images rose above the rest and made it to my Best Images collection. I also leave 2 stars against everything that I thought was good, but didn’t make the final cut, so that I can easily go back and look for something similar later if necessary.

Once I’ve completed my selection process, I create a copy of the best images in a different location, and archive the originals. The result is that I continuously build on a collection of my best work, so I don’t have to trawl through over 130,000 and growing original files when I start a project like this. If you don’t already do this, it’s a good idea to start. It makes things much easier.

There are currently some 3,000 images in my Best Images folder, although the selection is ready for a bit of a pruning session. I live with my images all the time though, looking through my library often, and I always have a bunch of stronger favorites in mind. The first thing I did when I decided to put this recent portfolio together was decide on my main theme, which was going to be Japanese Winter Wildlife and Landscape, one of my stronger genres. I also decided to select and print a few of my other season images, so I went through my 3,000 best shots, and started to select my favorite Japan nature and wildlife images.

I find the easiest way to make your selections in Lightroom is to create a Collection in the Library module called Best Shots or something like that, right click it and select “Set as Target Collection”. Once you’ve done this, you can just go through your images and hit the B key on your keyboard to add it to the collection, and hitting B again will remove it. If you don’t already have that batch of your best work, like my 3,000 shots, then you’ll need to go to your archives, and add everything you are confident showing people and that represent your best work.

Be Very Selective

Even at this point though, be very selective. Your portfolio is only as good as the worst image it contains. If you are undecided between on or two images of a similar subject, at this point it’s still OK to put them into your collection, but the next phase of the process has to be another run through your images to whittle that selection down to as few strong images as possible. If you are doing this for the first time, I suggest you do include both portrait and landscape oriented images, even of the same subject if you have them, as that will give you more flexibility in producing a portfolio in various formats later.

My first pass through my best shots with my Japanese nature theme in mind resulted in 79 images in my initial selection. (Click images to view larger.)

Japan Nature and Wildlife Best 79

Once you have your selection of best shots, it’s time to really narrow this down to only the images that you intend to include in your portfolio. By all means, make a copy of your collection at this point, and that will be your intermediate base for creating larger or more varied portfolios, but we still want to move on now and whittle this down to a much tighter edit for your printed portfolio.

Let’s continue the selection process though, now really bearing orientation in mind if you have to. I decided for my loose leaf portfolio I was going to print full page, regardless of the orientation, so that people would be able to see my images as large and detailed as possible, although when I had the option, I selected landscape over portrait orientation to avoid making the client turn the pages, as much as possible at least.

Next I reduced my selection to just Winter Nature and Wildlife shots, and I still had 55 shots in my collection. My goal was to keep the main part of the portfolio, without any other backup images, to no more than 30, it was time to start getting really ruthless. I still had to kill off almost half of my selection.

It was at this point, that I enlisted the help of my wife, as I feel it’s important to get impartial feedback from a trusted third party. My wife can certainly be ruthless, and although I don’t agree with her on every single choice, in general, she’s really good at helping me to weed out the images that the selection can live without.

After a nasty afternoon deciding which of my images had to go for the sake of the greater good, I was finally down to 32 images, and decided to sleep on the selection. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the process, and remember that each of these images is selected from what I believe is my best work. They’re like my children. In fact, Zack Arias did a post last year about his portfolio creation process, and in that post he mentions that one of his friends said ”It’s like lining up your children and deciding which ones you’re going to shoot” and someone else rephrased it to “…deciding which ones you love more”. I can totally relate to both of these sentiments. It’s hard, but you have to reduce your numbers to something reasonable.

After walking away from my selection for the night, the next day I was able to reduce my selection by two more, to my initial goal of thirty, and as I continued to work on the printing, I actually removed two more, taking the portfolio down to 28 Japan Winter Wildlife & Landscape images. For a large printed portfolio this feels like a good number to me.

Lose the Emotion!

Something to note here is that one of the images that I killed last was one from this year’s Hokkaido Workshop. I’ve mentioned a number of times in previous Podcasts that I like to sleep on my images for at least three days, and usually more than a week if possible, before making my final selections to post to the Web or otherwise show people. Well, this emotional attachment that we have with our images continues to wear off as the memory of the experience and hard work that we went through fades.

The last image that I removed is a nice image, and it will continue to live on in my Best Shots folder for years to come, I’m sure, but it was probably only in my final selection because of the emotion of the experience and any viewer of an image in a portfolio doesn’t have that. They only see the image in front of them, and if you have to spend time explaining why it’s “good”, then it probably isn’t. At least not good enough to be in your best of the best portfolio.

Japan Winter Wildlife & Landscape 28

So here’s my final 28 images for this initial Japan Winter Wildlife & Landscape portfolio. It looks a bit bleak compared to my very colorful Nature of Japan selection, but this is to show a Landscape centric client, so I’ve tailored it for their use, and this is an important point, and one of the reasons that I went for a lose leaf portfolio as opposed to a printed book at this point.

Specific but Flexible

In addition to the above 28 images, I have printed 10 of my images from other seasons from around Japan, and 5 images from last year’s Antarctica expedition. These are to have ready if the conversation moves on from the Winter work, and as I mentioned earlier, having a lose portfolio allows me to print various images and mix and match what I include for any given meeting, depending on client needs. In the coming weeks I intend to do more printing to create a full Nature of Japan portfolio, so that I’m ready to take that out at the drop of a hat too.

Note too that I can also reorder this set depending on what I think is important to any given client. One rule of thumb that I touched on back in my 2006 Podcast episode is that you do want to lead and finish with your best two images of your set. Of course, you have worked hard to get this selection down to what you consider your very best work, but even within that, there are going to be varying degrees of greatness, so select the best two and put them at either end of the set.

Note that in Lightroom if you drag and drop an image into a different location in your list of images, it will automatically switch your sort style to User Order, so you can easily use Lightroom to decide on the order in which you’ll present your images. This is also useful if you are going to print your book, as you can use Lightroom to work on the order without printing your images out if that works better for you. When I first started keeping a printed portfolio, I used to print out the images on plain paper, and lay them out on the floor, which works, and is great for collaborative editing, but at the moment, I prefer doing this in Lightroom initially, then physically reordering the prints, and making any adjustments necessary after that.

The Printing Process

So, as I set about the task of actually printing my portfolio images, I used a few techniques that made the process easier, which I wanted to pass on here. Firstly, before I printed any of my images, I used the new Soft Proofing feature in Lightroom 4 to check and adjust all of my images. I touched on this in my Lightroom 4 Beta video in episode 319, so I won’t go into detail today, but being able to move through all of these images, checking how they’ll look when printed, and making any necessary adjustments right there in Lightroom made the whole process much quicker. I soft-proofed all 28 images in less than an hour, including adjustments, whereas it would have taken me probably a day to do this in Photoshop. This new feature in Lightroom 4 is incredibly useful.

Lightroom 4 Soft Proofing

As you soft-proof in Lightroom, if you make any adjustments to the image specifically for print, Lightroom will create a virtual copy of the image, appending the printing profile name to the copy, so that you can identify it correctly later.

To make the printing process smoother and easier to track, once I’d finished soft-proofing, I selected all of the soft proof virtual copies, and the images that had not required any soft-proofing, and created a second Collection called “For Print”, and told Lightroom to include the images that I had selected.

Then, when I started to print each image, I selected to only show images without a color label in the Attribute toolbar in Lightroom, and as each print was completed, I hit the number 6 key on my keyboard, to add a red label to the image I’d printed. This not only made the image disappear from the list, so that my current view of the collection only contained images that still needed to be printed, but it also gave me an indicator later on that the image had already been printed, should I select the image or soft proof copy in the future for another variation on my portfolio. I use number six for red, as in stop, to make me stop and think before printing, but you can of course use any color, or even star ratings or the flags, whatever works for you.

Pina Zangaro Camden Portfolio Case

Let’s just take a quick look at my new Pina Zangaro Camden Portfolio case before we move on too. As you can see, I had the case Laser Etched with my company logo and a part of a landscape scene across the bottom of the case.

Laser Etched Pina Zangaro Camden Portfolio Case

To create the artwork, I used Photoshop to roughly cut out part of one of my winter landscape shots, and then posterized it to make the details almost totally black, and then I opened the image in Adobe Illustrator and created an outline from my image, which is what you have to submit for etching. I then just placed my logo at what I thought was an esthetically pleasing position on the case, and sent it in for the Etching to be done.

MBP Portfolio Case with Leading Photo

As I said earlier, I’ve been hankering after one of these Camden cases for around six year or so, and so I was really excited to be finally placing an order. I went for the 11×17″ case, which is probably named that way because you can put 11×17″ portfolio books inside, but my plan was to place my prints directly inside the case, which has internal dimensions just over 13×19″ so it’s perfect of course for 13×19″ prints too as you can see here (click image to view larger).

The case in incredibly well made, and I’m very happy with it. It was certainly worth the wait, and I’m pleased that I personalized the case with some artwork and our logo.

You can check out the pricing over at www.pinazangaro.com but just to let you know that this particular size and case without the laser etching costs $220, and if you add the laser etching allowing five days for the work, they cost $292, plus shipping. I wasn’t in a hurry so five days was fine for me, but if you are in a hurry there’s a one day laser etching option too, for $364, plus shipping. These certainly aren’t the cheapest portfolio cases around, but the impression that this will give my future clients, could well be priceless.

What’s Next?

There are times when a client just wants you to send them a physical book of your work, so my next job is to decide whether I’m going to send off to Blurb to create an actual book of this current portfolio, or create a book matching my new Camden Portfolio Case, with something like the Pina Zangaro Machina Presentation Book. I must admit this is what I’m leaning towards, as it will allow me to add printed pages either in polypropylene sleeves, or with adhesive hinge strips, and I can add business card or DVD pockets to make the presentation totally self contained.

As interest in my work here in Japan increases, having these various ways to approach potential clients and present or have them view my work in a way that works best for each situation is going to be very useful.

Digital Presentation

We shouldn’t close either without noting that I do also usually take either my iPad or MacBook Pro when I’m meeting clients, so that I can quickly show them other work that I have, should the need arise. I make sure that I have a number of collections loaded on my iPad for impromptu presentation, but I actually have all 3,000 of those best shots loaded too, and I know roughly where each image is if I need to show something relatively obscur from my library.

If I’m using my MacBook Pro, I just fire up Lightroom and I can show them collections right there, but the great thing about the iPad is that you can give your clients a more tactile experience and let them control the experience by just passing them the iPad.

I have been using a few portfolio applications on the iPad, namely Foliobook, and I recently also picked up Xtrafolio as well to compare the two. Both work great, although I haven’t yet reset these up fully since upgrading to the new iPad, but I’ll be revisiting these applications soon. I will probably do a Podcast episode on them both once I’ve taken Xtrafolio through it’s paces, and seen which of the two I personally start to sway towards.

Oh, and on resolution, I know that there are lots of schools of thought on how to resize for the iPad, but honestly, I just export full sized JPEGs to a folder on my hard drive, and I just sync that to the iPad. I let Apple deal with the resizing and it works great. You can zoom right in on the details when necessary, and the images look stunning, so I’m a happy camper.

Tear-Sheets

To round off the discussion on the portfolio, I should also note that I will often also take a number of relavent tear-sheets of previous uses of my work, to show the potential customer not only how my work is being used, but this is a good chance to show that you are actively working with other clients, which obviously becomes a more powerful tool as you get more big names in your previous client list.

I also keep a digitized version of these tear-sheets on my iPad and iPhone, as you never know when this stuff might come up in conversation. All of my images and collections are on my phone too of course, which is always with me, and the Retina display actually makes this a viable method of showing images to someone that you meet unexpectedly.

Conclusion

I don’t think there’s any one way to present your work, though I do suggest that you make your image selection process robust enough that you can easily go back and pick out some relevant images to cater for various client’s needs. I was recently asked to go and meet a few people at Canon, with very short notice, but because I already have my best shots identified, I was able to quickly create a collection of some 40 images on my MacBook Pro to show them, and they sat through all of them, commenting on each, which was great.

If you do have clients that deal with printed images, I do suggest that you try to create at least one printed portfolio, and although I know money doesn’t grow on trees, don’t scrimp too much on your presentation either. Whatever type of portfolio you choose, makes sure it’s as classy as you and your images, and you’ll get the right message across to your potential, and hopefully future clients.

Show Notes

Pina Zangaro Camden Portfolio Case:
http://www.pinazangaro.com/products/23/Camden-Portfolio-Cases–.html

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

If you do want to get involved but not sure what to do, all details of how to upload your images, the rules of engagement and an explanation of the voting process are all posted in the Assignment Forum at martinbaileyphotography.com. Also note that even if you don’t see this Assignment related episode at the end of the month, or start of the new assignment month, I do also announce the theme in the Assignment Forum at the end each month, so you can always look there if you are heading out shooting and wonder what the theme is.

So, let’s jump right in and take a look at the incredible winning images for the Intimate Landscape theme, starting with Bill Johnson’s wonderful image, Hidden, and here’s Bill’s back-story.

Wow! There are many fine photographers in the Martin Bailey community, so I am deeply honored to place in the intimate landscapes competition for the month of February. This is my first time to place. Thanks to everyone who voted for this photo!

Hidden © Bill Johnson

My photograph entitled “Hidden” was made at Seven Falls in North Central Alabama, USA. Even in the States, Alabama is often overlooked when it comes to a place of natural beauty. I have read that Alabama has more than 1700 waterfalls. Most of these would be small by any standard. These falls mostly occur as the Appalachian Plateau ends and the many streams and rivers drop into the piedmont area.

I was on a trip from the Gulf Coast where I live to Nashville, TN, and looked to see if there was a waterfall close to the Interstate highway. I found gps coordinates for Seven Falls in rural Morgan County, Alabama, not more than seven miles from the interstate. It was high in the hills and by the time I arrived at the creek there were nothing but dirt roads. There had been about three days of steady rain and it was still cloudy the day I arrived. The winter weather has been unusually warm in the southern US, and even in early February some of the trees were beginning to leaf out. The hike to the falls was easy, and the hike down into the canyon was easily accomplished. It was a beautiful area with a mature mixed hardwood forest.

Because my wife was with me I knew I wouldn’t have a great deal of time to make a photograph. Frankly, I was amazed at the beauty of the falls. Even though the falls is easily accessible if you know where it is, I found very few photographs or comments about it online. For this shot I put my tripod on a boulder so the upper cascade of the falls is easily seen. It was cloudy but I still used a variable neutral density filter set as dark as possible. The Tokina 11-16 was set at f19 for maximum depth of field with sharpness, and 16mm allowed a wide angle in this relatively intimate space. These settings provided an 8 second exposure in the middle of the day which provides the silky moving water of the falls.

Composition is important to me. For me, this photograph moves from the bottom right tree through the monolithic granite boulder at the base of the falls and back to the upper right with the movement of the water. While I am pleased with the overall presentation, the greens, especially those of the moss, popped just a bit brighter on the upload than they were meant to be (I’m not sure why that happens). While this brilliant green mossy covering is everywhere and really adds visually to the appeal, imagine a shade or two darker. The reds in the canyon wall and all the other colors in the scene appear as my eye saw it. It is a stunningly beautiful place. One other note about this falls–the water goes underground at this pool. I didn’t try to find its reappearance but it was at least as far as the eye could see.

I end with a special thanks to Martin. I’ve been listening to your podcast since about #100, and have learned a great deal from your photographic journey. More than anything, you’ve been an inspiration. I wish you continued success and good health.

Thanks so much for that message at the end there Bill, and thanks so much too for getting involved in the Assignment, with such a beautiful image too. You probably already know that I’m partial to a good waterfall shot too, and this is certainly one of them. What an amazing back-story too! It’s intriguing that the water goes underground right from this pool.

I love the colors as you say, with those bright greens and beautiful reds. Great use of the Vari-ND for the long exposure, and I like the composition too. For me, my eye is led  into the shot with the smaller rock in the left third, up into the falls with the aid of the large rock in the middle, and then up the tree, where I start to explore the red rock face to the left, then over to the right side, and back up into the image with the leading lines of the two trees on the right. It’s always a good thing when your compositional elements lead the eye back into the shot to continue exploring. Well done Bill, and congratulations on fifth place.

In fourth place we have Colin Michaelis, with Individually Sculptured, and here’s Colin’s back-story.

Thanks to those who voted for my picture, “Individually Sculptured”. I am delighted and honored to join the other placed entries. Congratulations to all of you and particularly to Seearbudd for the winning entry.

This is my first entry to the MBP Assignment. I decided recently that I needed the challenge of working on an assignment as I had fallen into the rut of taking mostly the same images – broad landscapes and birds. The first time out, the assignment achieved my goal, and got me looking at the world differently. The idea of an intimate landscape did not often cross my mind before, now I think it will be a regular element of my photography.

Individually Sculptured © Colin Michaelis

I went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens, which are magnificent year-round. The Japanaese garden, Sansho-En, at the Gardens, is on three islands. I was viewing the garden this time, less as a grand landscape (which it really is), but focusing more on its component parts like a bright yellow willow tree, the rocks in the lake, or rounded stones on the shore. This change in focus was caused directly by this month’s assignment. So instead of putting on a wider angle lens, I actually put on my Bigma (Sigma 50-500mm) that I normally use for bird photography.

One of the elements that really caught my eye, like never before, was the sculptured or styled trees – mostly pines – at the Garden. This one (I think a Scots Pine) had a striking profile and with the ice of the frozen lake as a wonderful backdrop, really stood out as a feature on its own. My composition choice was to limit the frame to one tree and then limit it even more to just part of the tree and include a lot of the stark frozen lake, partly getting the environmental context – that wintry feel, but also providing a great contrast to the rich hues of the branches and the needles. That contrast, I felt, really made the tree pop and draw the eye to the intricate carefully pruned branches. The picture was taken with my Nikon D90 with the Sigma 50-500mm at 240mm focal length for this shot.

Special thanks to Martin for his helpful blogs and podcasts. I particularly appreciated this assignment forcing me to look at landscapes entirely differently this month. I look forward to the next assignment challenging me to think differently and step even more out of my comfort zone.

I’m so pleased that this assignment got you thinking in a different way Colin, and possibly even changed how you’ll approach your photography from now on. That’s exactly what I hope from these assignments, and I hope that those who haven’t yet really gotten involved are listening!

What a beautiful subject you found too! Unmistakably Japanese, and the frozen lake really does help to make the tree pop, almost like a traditional Japanese painting. At first I thought it was a flowing river in the background, and you’d used a long exposure like Bill to make the water smooth and silky, so it was fun to hear that it is actually ice.

I also like the way you chose to crop off the tree mid-way, and give us only a hint of it’s oriental, mistic form. Very well done Colin, and thank you for getting involved, and for the kind words. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your work in the assignments.

And in third place is Elise Ange, with The Color of WInter, and here’s Elise’s back-story.

Congratulations to Seearbudd and to the others who placed. There were so many great interpretation of the theme this month. Even though this was a very difficult one for this time of year, I learned a lot about this type of photography and found myself wishing for those cloudy days with the better lighting conditions. But the brown colors of winter made for many lackluster photos and nothing to submit for the theme. It was only one morning after one of the few light snows during the month that the opportunity presented itself in the woods next door.

The Color of WInter © Elise Ange

Without the snow, this scene would have not have come together. It delicately defined the horizontal branches among the strong vertical trunks. After I had downloaded the shot, I was pleasantly surprised with the variety of browns and bark textures in the trees. This was only minimally processed and slightly cropped where the right-most tree trunk showed a small empty space. I found this theme very intriguing and will probably do more of it with the better colors of Spring. Thanks to Morton for his suggestion and to all of those who voted for “The Color of Winter”.

I totally agree that the snow made this shot Elise, it’s beautiful with the white adding so much contrast and outlining the trees and finer branches. I see what you mean about the various textures in the bark on the tree trunks too. It’s fun just looking at each trunk in turn, and appreciating the detail and pattern created on the surface of each. Excellent work as usual Elise, and congratulations on third place.

And in second place is Wythe Whiting with Untitled and here’s Whythe’s back-story.

What a great assignment and a strong showing of submissions. I’m really tickled to have placed in this month challenge. My backstory is pretty short. I went out to a small creek to see what kinda water falls it had. As it turned out, this was not the kinda place where you could set up and get a nice shot of big falls. So instead, I decided I’d try to move in closer to try and get some more abstract shots of rocks and water.

Untitled © Wythe Whiting

I found this nice rock with water sheeting off of it. I had an 8 stop and 3 stop nd filter on to slow the exposure to 10 seconds. I later learned that a 5 sec exposure gave exactly the same look to the water given how fast it was moving, so maybe a bit of over kill on the filters. I used a 25 mm lens and so the camera is only about a foot or two away from the “falls”. The black and white conversion was done with silver efex.

I really enjoyed this assignment and will be thinking of intimacy with my landscapes a lot more now. Thanks to all who voted for me.

Again, it’s great to hear that this assignment has you thinking more of intimate landscapes Wythe. I believe that many landscape shots can be improved a lot by getting in much closer, and examining the details, rather than automatically reaching for the wide angle. There are of course places for the sweeping vista, but close is often much more compelling in my opinion.

And once again, another great water fall shot. I love the tight composition, and the feel of the running water in contrast with the textured black rocks. A very nice black and white conversion here too. You gotta love Silver Efex Pro. Congratulations on a very well earned second place Whythe!

And in first place is Thomas Seear-Budd with In Search of Intimacy, and here’s Thomas’ back-story.

Firstly I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for my image. This is the first time I have entered one of these assignments and I am really suprised that I won. There are so many talented people who entered some truly amazing work in this assignment. Also I just want to say a big thanks for Martin for making this sort of interaction among photographers possible. You have formed a great environment full of education and learning.

The back story of my image is a similar to that which was posted with the photo. I went down to this site about four times before I got what I was after.

In Search of Intimacy © Thomas Seear-Budd

Whenever I go down to the South Coast (Wellington, New Zealand) to take photos, I usually spend about 2-3 hours sitting among the rocks, shooting and thinking. I have been down several times and while I’m there I always have at least one moment where I think about my Mum. Earlier this week I was taking photos down there, only this time I began to think more deeply. I began to think about my memories of Mum and the times we had together.

To fill you in, when I was 10 she died of cancer. She had suffered for eight long years, while caring for two small children and a loving husband. As I was only 10 when she died, my memories of her are not crystal clear. What I found interesting as I dived deeper into my thoughts was that these memories were mostly visual. I don’t remember sounds or smells as much as pure visual experiences.

For example, I remember the experience of going bike riding along the coast here with Mum. I don’t remember specific rides but I remember the feeling and sights. As I sat on these rocks I began to respect this place for how significant it is in my life and its importance to my mother. Due to its impact and meaning to Mum, this coast has more significance to me now than my nearby family home.

I remember her going off for walks down at the coast and she constantly wrote about it in her daily notes. At the time I never thought anything of this. But here I am ten years later, sitting on these rocks beginning to wonder why she came here and what she did. Or more importantly what she thought about. I think she came here to escape, to think by herself. To cry, yell, jump and run. I think she used it as an opportunity to think about my brother and I, as well as to worry and pray for my father.

I think she also contemplated about what we would become and reflected on her life and illness. I think this last point is very important because my Dad has told me that they rarely talked about the illness. He said that mum was in denial. She wanted to focus on her family and on the moments she had. This environment served as her escape and she formed an intimate bond with it. In doing so, this place has become a catalyst for my memories of her.

Over the past decade this landscape has enabled me to search for a more intimate relationship with my mother who I never fully got to know. To me, this image speaks of this on-going search for my mother. This may be a never-ending journey but one thing is certain, a greater level of intimacy will grow.

Thanks again everyone, I am honoured to be selected this month. I have only been seriously photographing for about 4 months, so this result is really satisfying.

Wow! Holy crap Thomas! If I hadn’t had a chance to think about what I would say right now, I’d be speechless, on so many levels. Your story about your mother and this place in heart-wrenching, and yet incredibly tender. I feel so sorry for you and your family, and all that you went through, and for your mother who lost the fight with that awful desease that takes so many.

Also, it sounds like you are only twenty years old, and having only been photographing for 4 months, and coming up with this! I cannot wait to see how you develop as a photographer, and really hope that you’ll hang around to share your progress with us.

You followed your post with the shooting information, that you used a sigma 10-20mm f3.5 lens, at f11 for 50 seconds, and that you wanted to use one point perspective to compose this image to draw the viewer into the frame to add to the idea of searching.

You accomplished your goal in the image, with the beautiful composition, dark corners and the water leading down through the rocks. Then the flowing sky from the long exposure brings us back up through the photo to come back down and start exploring again. It’s a masterpiece and classic image, after just four months of shooting. I’m sure you’re very proud of your work, and I’m sure that your mother would have been too. Well done Thomas.

Thanks once again to everyone that got involved in the February assignment. Whether you placed or not, I’m sure you all learned a little something from getting involved and giving this a try.

The theme for March was “Food” and the voting system has been turned on a few days ago, so if you are listening to this soon after release, do drop by the www.mbpgalleries.com Web site and cast your vote for your top five images before April 7, 2012.

The April assignment, using a suggestion from our friend Landon Michaelson, is Interesting Plainness. This is very open to interpretation, so let’s have some fun during April, and see what we can come up with.

End Notes:

You might recall that I made a deal with Aurora Expeditions to join a number of their amazing photography adventures from June to December this year. Unfortunately, so far we’ve only had a few people sign up for the Photography Option, and without people signing up for this, I won’t be on board. Because I need to plan other activities for the time that I’m not working with Aurora, we’ve decided to draw a line in the snow with regards to booking for some of the earlier expeditions.

Details of the tours are on my workshops and tour site www.mbpworkshops.com, but the deadlines we’re drawing right now are for the Russian Far East expeditions KUR04 and KAM05 from the end of June and into July, which will close with regards to the photography option on April 16, and the Jewels of the Arctic, Greenland expeditions GRN20 and GRN21 in August will close on April 30.

If you are thinking of joining any of these expeditions, but haven’t yet booked, do get your ducks in a line and get in touch with Aurora Expeditions, and don’t forget to use my Booking Form from my workshops web site, and ensure that you sign up for the Photography Option too. We’ll be in some amazing locations, having the time of our lives, so I hope you can join us.

Tokyo Photowalk with Mark Esguerra

Also, I’m planning to take part in Mark Esguerra’s photo walk, starting outside the main gate at Shinjuku Gyoen at 1PM on Saturday April 7, which is this coming weekend. If you live in or around Tokyo or are visiting for the cherry blossom, it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to the details on Google+ => https://plus.google.com/u/0/100377493270775536948/posts/J8muk7Rbddu

Show Notes

Assignment Forum: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=24

Assignment Scores: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/scores2012_1.php

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

I went to the Shinjuku Gyoen Park, where I knew the Kanzakura, a type of early flowering cherry blossom, were in bloom, and this always attracts some birds which would be a good test of the new Auto-Focus, as well as high ISO capabilities, as it wasn’t a particularly bright day. I’d been hoping for White Eyes, but when I got there I found a flock of Brown-eared Bulbuls at the main Kanzakura tree, so I set in to see how the 5D Mark III handled.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III

I posted the first couple of shots that we’ll look at today on my blog last week, so you may have already seen them, but lets take a look at these first, so show you how sharp the sensor is, and at high ISO’s too. Ensure that you have your browser window nice and wide, and click on the the images to view them at the full size that I posted them in, to really see the full detail.

First, here’s one of my favorite shots from the day, of the Bulbul just taking off, with a couple of blossom petals falling. This is straight out of the camera, shot handheld with a 300mm F2.8 lens and the 1.4X Extender III fitted, and using ISO 400 for 1/1000 of a second at f/5.6. Note too that this was the second of the only two shots that I was able to get as I saw the bird start to spread its wings. Had it not been for the faster frame rate of six frames per second, I’d have missed this shot.

Shot with the new Canon EOS 5D Mark III - There's about a 3% crop on the top and right side of this, for artistic reasons, but that's all I've done to this image.

Here though, is a 100% crop (if viewed with the browser window wide enough) showing just the birds head and some of the blossom. You can see that the focus is spot on, right over the head, beak and extending down to the eyes, which is exactly what I wanted. And the sharpness is amazing. Of course, that was always a given but it’s nice to see such great image quality.

Browned-Eared Bulbul Takes Flight 100% Crop

Just to be sure you know what I mean by straight out of camera here, for these first few images I had downloaded the Release Candidate of Adobe Camera RAW 6.7 which has support for the 5D Mark III and 1D X already. So basically these photos do have the default settings for the latest Adobe Camera RAW applied, but I have not applied any noise reduction at all. Also note that I cropped the full version of this image by about 3% along the top and right side, to clean up the right edge a bit, but that’s all I did.

5D Mark III Support in Lightroom

I did try to use Digital Photo Professional and ImageBrowser EX, that come with the camera, but that just confirmed my belief that Canon should stick to making great cameras. After confirming that Adobe’s Bridge and Photoshop combination is only slightly less painful, I found that if I convert my RAW files to DNG using the ACR 6.7 DNG Converter (also still Release Candidate as of March 27, 2012) I can then import and edit my images in Lightroom 4, which was such a relief.

Camera Controlled Exposure

Anyway, let’s get back to my first day’s photos. Although you probably know I shoot pretty much exclusively in Manual exposure mode, I was moving from shooting the birds on the outside of the tree, to going under the tree and shooting up at the birds, and there was much less light under the tree than on the top. This did of course mean that I had more backlight when under the tree, but I found it easier to deal with that with Exposure Compensation than a Manual Exposure adjustment. I know this is very different to my shooting techniques so far, but I was also trying to get a feel for the new brain in this camera, and it worked out pretty well.

For the last shot, I’d already started to try Aperture Priority, but I found myself constantly checking to ensure that I was getting a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the birds motion. Although I like a bit of wing movement in my bird shots, these Bulbuls move so fast that to keep their heads sharp too I needed to keep my shutter speed at 1/1000 of a second. Because of that though, I decided to also try Shutter Priority, setting the shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second, but I also took another leap of faith at this point, which was Auto ISO.

Although some of my recent cameras have had Auto ISO, I’ve didn’t feel comfortable using it because I otherwise shot in Manual, and allowing the camera to make decisions about the exposure would have taken control out of my hands. Now though, using Aperture and Shutter Priority, I figured I might as well take another leap of faith, and give the camera maximum flexibility in exposure, beyond changing the aperture or shutter speed, so I flicked the camera into Auto ISO mode too.

This resulted in the next image being shot at ISO 2000 with a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second at f/4.5, and I have to tell you, I was very impressed. Although I couldn’t reproduce the high grain on my 1Ds Mark III in my tests over the last few days, at least from my experience in the field, this images seems about as clean as ISO 400 on my 1Ds Mark III, and probably comparable to ISO 640-ish, on my old 5D Mark II.

Brown-eared Bulbul at ISO 2000

And here’s a 100% crop of the bird’s face. You can see that I nailed the focus on the bird’s eye again, and that was hand-held, at 420mm, with an aperture of f/4.5, so incredibly shallow depth of field.

Brown-eared Bulbul at ISO 2000 - 100% Crop

I used a mix of AI Servo and One Shot auto-focus, but because I was shooting under a tree with lots of branches everywhere, it was mostly One Shot on this day, but I’ve got to tell you, I really believe that the new auto-focus system on the 5D is worth the cost of the upgrade all by itself. Almost all of the 500+ frames I shot of these birds on my first day were tack sharp, right where I wanted the focus to be. The hit ratio over the 5D Mark II is greatly improved, and it’s even better so far compared to the 1D Mark IV, which was a huge improvement over previous cameras at the time too.

Before we move on though, just to reiterate, this image (above) was shot at ISO 2000, and just look how clean it is.

How High Can You Go?

So, over the last few days, I’ve been testing the 5D Mark III in my studio, to see just how high you can safely go with the ISO before you have to start to worry about the grain. I’ll show you some example photos right after this, but to cut to the chase, I’m thinking that I can use as high as ISO 12800 without thinking about the noise at all. ISO 1600 is the new ISO 400, and ISO 6400 is the new ISO 800, of course this depends on what camera you’ve been shooting with so far, but this is how I’ve mentally remapped the new ISO to Image Quality.

With the 5D Mark II and 1D Mark IV, in low light, I would go down to ISO 1600 without worrying too much, although I’d go further if necessary. My mental limit though was 1600, but now with the 5D Mark III that point where you think for a moment, will probably be when I go past ISO 12800. When I really need to push it, I’ll still go to 25600, which is where Canon set the defaults for this camera, and depending on how I intend to use the image, I’d even 51200 if necessary.

Expanded ISO

If you want to, you can set the camera to allow you to select two Expanded ISOs, H1 and H2, which are equivalent to ISOs 51200 and 102400. I think the point that Canon set the defaults is spot on, because the image degrades quite a lot at these ISOs, but still, if you are really in need of an extra stop, H1, ISO 51200 is just about usable, especially if you are shooting for the Web or printing relatively small.  ISO 102400 is probably to be avoided, but again, if a UFO lands on your lawn, and they don’t light everything up for you, then use it, and try to clean the image up later in Lightroom.

ISO Examples

OK, so let’s take a look at some photos shot through the entire ISO range. First, here are twelve shots in one stop increments from ISO 50 to ISO 102400. These have been reduced to a height of 853px for the Web, but this shows that for Web use, you can really tell no difference in the quality of the image until you reach into the Expanded ISO Range, with the two images at 51200 and 102400 at the end. Click on the first thumbnail to view the image larger, and then click the right of the image or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move through the images.

ISO 50	ISO 100	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 800	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 6400	ISO 12800
ISO 25600	ISO 51200	ISO 102400

Pretty impressive huh!? Let’s take a look a 100% crop from the above images to see how the grain really looks.

ISO 50 - 100%	ISO 100 - 100%	ISO 200 - 100%
ISO 400 - 100%	ISO 800 - 100%	ISO 1600 - 100%
ISO 3200 - 100%	ISO 6400 - 100%	ISO 12800 - 100%
ISO 25600 - 100%	ISO 51200 - 100%	ISO 102400 - 100%

Following on from the Web sized images, these do show more grain than you might have hoped in the higher ISOs, but realistically, I still think this is pretty impressive, especially when you consider just high these ISOs are. I think you’ll agree that 12800 is almost a no-brainer, with 25600 still really quite usable and even 51200 still in the running at a push.

More on Auto ISO

So, as I said, although I know people have been using this for a while, I believe this now makes Auto ISO something that I myself will be using more moving forward, so I just wanted to note a few things with regards to the Auto ISO settings.

You might be wondering how the camera makes a decision to increase the ISO over reducing shutter speed, but you’ll be pleased to know that this is quite intelligent, and you have some control over the decision too. Firstly, you’re able to set the minimum shutter speed that you’ll go to before the camera starts to crank the ISO.

If you are in Manual mode, where you set the aperture and shutter speed, Auto ISO will adjust itself to put exposure at where the camera thinks it should be with the exposure compensation caret at zero. In Aperture Priority, or Shutter Priority, you can use Exposure Compensation as well, to increase or decrease the Exposure.

If you’ve set the Minimum Shutter Speed to Auto, the camera cleverly uses the focal length of the lens fitted, including zoom lenses, as the minimum shutter speed. This is of course automating use of the popular rule of thumb regarding shutter speeds, which makes this really quite a useful setting. For example when I have my 50mm lens fitted, shooting in low light, the camera will drop down to 1/50 and sometimes 1/40 of a second, and increase the ISO rather than going slower, until I hit the maximum ISO that I specified in the Auto ISO Range. Once I hit the maximum ISO, the shutter speed will start to drop below 1/40 of a second, as a last resort. When I use my 70-200mm lens though, the automatic minimum shutter speed increases to match the focal length I am shooting at.

If you select something other than Auto for your Minimum Shutter Speed, the camera will start to crank the ISO higher when you reach that shutter speed, but again once the ISO reaches the maximum set in the Auto ISO Range, it will start to increase the shutter past the minimum you selected. In Manual mode using Auto ISO means that you do of course lose control of the exposure, but if maintaining an absolute slowest shutter speed is more important than under-exposing your images, then it’s still useful. You can set both your Shutter Speed and Aperture, and have the Auto ISO expose you’re shots to what the camera thinks is the correct exposure, but then if it gets too dark, you’ll just get dark shots, rather than slower shutter speeds.

5D Mark III - Top View

Gapless Microlenses and Larger Pixels

Although we gained a slight resolution boost, jumping from 21 megapixels to 22 megapixels, apparently now there are now no gaps between the microlenses that sit above the photodiodes, and larger 6.25 µm (micrometer) pixels which in turn means improved signal to noise ratio, higher dynamic range, and of course this is partly what’s behind the incredible new ISO capabilities. Basically the camera is gathering almost every bit of light that hits the sensor, which along with the new DIGIC 5+ image processor has resulted in better image quality in every way. I haven’t had time to search around to see if anyone else is talking about this, but I generally find the quality of the images coming out of this camera to be richer, deeper and simply more pleasing to look at.

Greatly Improved Auto-Focus System

I mentioned briefly earlier that the new Autofocus is deftly accurate, but let’s take a little bit more in-depth look at what’s changed.

One of the only things that I was unhappy with on the 5D Mark II was the autofocus system. My other cameras are a 1Ds Mark III and a 1D Mark IV, both with 45 point AF, and especially the 1D Mark IV, had much better AI Servo for tracking moving subjects like birds in flight. Spoilt by that somewhat, I was always disappointed by the 5D Mark II’s ability to track birds in flight, and didn’t like having to select just one of eight other AF points when I moved away from the center point, but that’s changed.

Although I haven’t shot birds in flight yet, from my tests on my first day, it’s easy to see that the new 61 Point AF system is worlds ahead of the 5D Mark II and even the 1D Mark IV with regards to accuracy. It just nailed the focus so much more often than I’ve seen until now. I always felt that AI Servo wasn’t as accurate as One Shot for focusing on even a stationary bird, but having used AI Servo for the relatively fast moving Bulbuls in the tree last week, I found it to be as accurate at nailing sharp focus than One Shot focussing.

Also, low light focusing seems greatly improved. I haven’t had an opportunity yet to do any tests in the field, but just focusing in my studio towards the end of the day, in light that would require around a two second shutter speed at ISO 100, both AI Servo and One Shot seem to be focusing very well. It’s snappy and accurate.

5D Mark III - Autofocus Menu

You can see (above) that Canon were serious about the Autofocus on this camera, because they gave autofocus a whole menu to itself.

Selecting AI Servo AF Characteristics

The AF Menu starts off with six presets or Cases for various types of subject, with varying Tracking Sensitivity, Acceleration and Deceleration tracking and AF point Auto Switching sensitivity.

All of the modes are based on a sport, and may not immediately seem to apply to what you are shooting, but I’m sure as we use the system it will become easy to know which to use for any given situation. I imagine for example that when shooting the Eagles in Hokkaido, that switch direction and speed very erratically, Case 5 for figure skaters might work well, or even Case 6 for rhythm gymnasts. For birds in flight without so much erratic movement, might be better with Case 4 though, for soccer and motor sports. I’m sure someone’s already posted this stuff on the Web as well, but I haven’t checked. Either way, I’ll be doing some trial and error tests myself to get a feel for each mode. All of these Case presets are customizable by the way, so you aren’t restricted to what Canon has provided us.

Also, in the other AF Menu screens, you can fine tune things like how much priority the camera should give to obtaining accurate focus before you are able to release the shutter for the first frame, and you can set a different priority for the second frame onwards in continuous shooting.

Basically this means that you can say to the camera, I’m not really worried about accurate focus for the first frame, just let me start shooting, but the after that slow down the frame rate if necessary to obtain a better focus. Or conversely you could say don’t let me start shooting until you have focus, but then shoot away regardless from the second frame onwards. These are three value sliders though, so the reality is you’d probably choose somewhere in between and try to get the best of both worlds, as you test to see what works best for you.

By the way, I set mine to prioritize focus for the first frame, and then equal priority from the second frame onwards. I’ll let you know how I get on with this later, especially if I start to make changes.

AF Area Selection Modes

There are six  AF Area Selection Modes, including Single-point Spot AF for pinpoint focusing. This is was I used the most for the Bulbul shots last week, so that I could focus on the birds eyes even through small gaps in the cherry blossom petals.

Single-Point AF is also just one AF point, but it doesn’t have the dot in the middle of the square that represents the Spot AF in the last option I mentioned. AF Point Expansion enables the four AF point above, below and left and right of the selected AF point to also become active. You can also expand this selection to include all eight AF points surrounding the selected point.

Zone AF is where a block of focus points are selected, and can be moved around nine zones using all of the 61 AF points, and finally, there’s 61-point Automatic Selection AF mode, where you leave selection of the AF point entirely up to the system.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III AF Area Selection Modes

Orientation Linked AF Mode and Point Selection

Another nice touch, and something that I’ve had on my 1 Series bodies for a while, is Orientation Linked AF Points. You can now select an Auto-focus mode and manually selected  AF points for each orientation, so if you have one mode and AF Point selected with the camera in Landscape mode, then switch to Portrait mode, and select another AF Point or AF area selection mode, it will remember the difference, and toggle between the two sets of settings as you change the camera’s orientation.

No Auto-Focus at F8

Unfortunately, even with such a vastly improved autofocus system, and despite the fact that it’s been ported almost exactly as is from the 1D X, the 5D Mark III will not allow auto-focus at f8, which means you can’t use a 2X Extender on the f4 super-telephoto lenses, or any combination of lens and extender that takes your lenses widest aperture to f8.

This was always possible in previous 1 Series bodies, but even the 1D X might not have this when it finally hits the streets, which has the birding community up in arms. I’ve heard that this is because the physical sensors in the 1D X and 5D Mark III system are only rated down to f5.6, so there may be a physical restriction. People tape up the connectors on the back of the lenses though, and also use teleconverters that don’t relay the aperture information to the camera to overcome this, and it seems to work on most occasions.

I’ve also heard that Canon are talking about making a firmware change to allow you to turn on f8 auto-focus on the 1D X, albeit a little slower than f5.6 auto-focus, and if they do that, it would be nice to see this change made for the 5D Mark III too. As it is right now, I’ve confirmed that my 600mm f4 lens doesn’t have autofocus with the 2X Extender fitted.

63 Zone iFCL Metering

Before we move on from the Autofocus system, I wanted to briefly mention that the 5D Mark III also incorporates dual layer 63 zone iFCL or intelligent Focus Color Luminance metering. Basically the system takes color and luminosity readings from around the selected focus points to increase metering accuracy.

Ergonomics, Buttons and Dials

A lot has been redesigned in the 5D Mark III and one thing that the people at Canon said they put a lot of time and effort into was the sound of the shutter mechanism. I wasn’t surprised to hear that, because I’d heard the shutter during the launch event, and found it very pleasing. Let me shoot a few frames here, and show you what I mean (listen to the audio).

Also, there’s a Silent mode, that slows down the frame rate, but does make the shutter mechanism really quiet, if you find yourself in a situation where that’s important. Here’s how it sounds… (Again, listen to the audio, it’s at about 31 mins.) Both of these were recorded with the camera about 15cm from the mic, so you can tell that the Silent mode is much quieter.

Both sound great, but I really like the standard shutter sound myself. I think it’s the best sounding shutter mechanism of any Canon camera so far. Great work here.

The camera itself actually now feels much better to handle. It was never a bad camera line, but the grip now feels more substantial, and the addition of the M-Fn, Multifunction button aids operation greatly. In fact, there’s a new Custom Controls menu that we see in this image, from which you can customize many of the buttons on the camera.

For example as you can see in this image (below) I have set my camera so that the new electronic level is displayed in the view finder when I press the M-Fn button, located just above and to the left of the Shutter button. This is also where you can remove auto-focus from the shutter button, so now my shutter button only meters, and then of course releases the shutter. To focus I press the AF-ON button on the back of the camera.

5D Mark III - Custom Controls Menu

There is also a Live View and Movie START/STOP button to the right of the viewfinder, which will be easier to use when shooting movies, but I haven’t yet had a chance to shoot any video. Other new buttons include a Quick Control button just above the Quick Control Dial, for easy access to the camera controls on the LCD. The Quick Control Dial is also now touch sensitive when shooting movies, so that you don’t hear the clicking sound of the dial if you change settings while you’re recording.

I found myself instinctively using the new RATE button to give stars to a few of the better images from my shoot last week, and although I didn’t check this myself, I believe these star ratings are universal, and available in Lightroom and Bridge etc.

There is also a new Multifunction Lock switch which can be programmed to lock the Quick Control Dial, the Multi-Controller and the Main Dial individually, or none at all, which will be useful if you sometimes catch these dials while shooting.

Mode Dial Lock Release

I’m also pleased to see that there’s now a button in the center of the Mode Dial, so that you can’t accidentally switch between shooting modes, such as Aperture Priority and Manual etc. With my old 5D Mark II, especially when using the Black Rapid straps, the camera would rub against my leg and change the dial quite often, which used to drive me crazy.

Zooming Blues

One change that I’m having a really hard time getting use to is that Canon decided to take the preview image magnification away from the buttons on the top right on the back of the body. Pretty much every time I go to look at an image I’ve shot, I hit the AF Point Selection button to zoom in, and nothing happens. There’s now a dedicated button in the middle of the five buttons that run along the left side of the back. It was really easy to just hit that AF-Point Selection button before, and it’s become muscle memory for most people I’m sure, so it would have been nice to have left that alone.

Note that you can, and I did change the custom controls so that the Set Button in the middle of the Quick Control Dial displays the image preview and zooms in as well. You can also set a custom function to zoom to a predetermined magnification, or remember the amount of magnification last used, which is also nice.

View Finder Improvements

We now also have almost 100% field of view in the viewfinder, which is great, and really helps to keep the edges of the frame clean when shooting with the viewfinder. The new Intelligent Viewfinder with Superimposed LCD also allows for lots of information to be displayed right there in the Viewfinder. I really like for example how the focus points and grid illuminate in low light, or just show up as a black squares and grid when it’s light enough to see them. Also the viewfinder flashes red when you achieve focus too when it’s dark, so there’s no ambiguity.

What you see in the Viewfinder is fully customizable too. You can turn the grid on or off, and how the Focus points are displayed is fully customizable as well. I can’t imagine anyone not being able to find a way that really suits there shooting style, including just turning it all off if necessary, and it’s all customizable really quickly, so you can change it for any particular type of shooting too.

Multiple Exposure Example (Click for Larger View)

Multiple Exposure

One other feature that I was looking forward to is Multiple Exposure. I used to have this on my old Canon SLR film camera, and Nikon users have had this for a while, but now we have it on the 5D Mark III and the 1D X will have Multiple Exposure too, and I had a lot of fun playing with it over the last few days.

This shot is a two frame multiple exposure. For the first frame, I went to f2.8 and focussed on the Calla Lily, to send the background elements out of focus. Then for the second shot, I stopped down to f11, to bring the background into focus, and I used the Dark (comparative) control mode, which basically gives preference to darker tones over lighter ones. All the modes are useful, and you can create a nice painterly feel quite easily with a bit of experimentation.

I really was like a kid in a candy store playing with this feature over the last few days, but I soon learned that it’s very easy to overdo it. For example, you can shoot your first image totally out of focus, then overlay one that’s nice and sharp, and at first, it looks quite nice, but the more you look at the resulting images, they just look like badly done HDR images, so care is needed here.

Also, you can of course do shots of moving subjects, shooting more than two frames, up to nine I believe, and have them appear at multiple points in the frame, which is fun. The cool thing about this too is that unlike with the old film cameras, you actually get an overlay on your LCD and can line up your shots with what you will overlay them on, so it’s quite easy to get good results too. The most time consuming part was getting use to the different modes, like Additive, Average, Bright and Dark, but the creative options are huge with this, and like I say, it’s a lot of fun.

HDR Mode

I guess I should have spent more time testing the HDR mode, but at the moment I just don’t do that much HDR, and so it fell by the wayside as I tried to find out as much as I could about the 5D Mark III over the past four days as I prepared for this review. I did do a few handheld shots with the natural mode selected, and they looked incredibly good. As I try this in the field I’ll report back with my findings, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of others covering this in their reviews soon anyway.

5D Mark III - Rear View

Accessories

Need That Battery Grip!

Apart from not getting used to the repositioned Zoom button yet, the only other thing that I have found awkward, especially while shooting the birds on my first day with the camera, is the lack of vertical shooting controls. Of course, these will come with the Battery Grip BG-E11 that is scheduled for release towards the end of April. I didn’t think I’d miss that grip so much, but I’m really looking forward to that release.

GPS Receiver GP-E2

With Lightroom 4 now having GPS support, I’m also looking forward to the new GPS Receiver, GP-E2 that fits into the flash shoe, and will work with the 1D X when I get that too, which saves me having to buy a dedicated GPS unit for the 1D X. These units record the direction that the camera is pointing when you take a photo as well, which will be useful.

Conclusion

Well, following that review, it’s probably a foregone conclusion, but I have to finish by saying that I give the Canon EOS 5D Mark III a huge thumbs up. You might think that I want to give this camera a good review because I just spent $3,500 on it, but really, I’d tell you if I didn’t like it, and honestly, it has far exceeded my expectations. I was really looking forward to the new Autofocus and ISO capabilities, and the Multiple Exposure. I have 10 frames per second on my 1D Mark IV, but it’s still nice to be able to shoot higher resolution images six frames per second too. It’s not lightening fast, but it was enough to get some tricky action shots with the Bulbuls, and I’m looking forward to really giving the AI Servo focusing a run for its money too.

I know there’s been a lot of fuss about the raised prices for the 5D Mark III, but I tell, from what I’ve seen, there’s easily that amount of R&D gone into this camera, and I don’t regret paying the extra and picking up my copy of this great new edition to the Canon line up. The new ISO capabilities and Autofocus open up doors to us in the Canon camp, and as I say, the images seem to have a depth and richness that I was not expecting, and I’m looking forward to hearing what others think about this. I hope it’s not just me, coming from my infatuation with my new baby.

Podcast End Notes

Aurora Expeditions

Before we finish, firstly, I’d like to mention that I’ve hooked up with Aurora Expeditions putting me on these eight voyages as resident photographer. We’ll be visiting Antarctica and South Georgia, the European Arctic, including Spitsbergen, Iceland and Greenland, and the Russian Coast including Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya.

Information on these amazing photography adventures is on my mbpworkshops.com Web site, with links to full details of each voyage on Aurora Expeditions Web site. Do check that out if you are interested in joining me on one of these amazing photography adventures.

Partnered with Stitcher Smart Radio

Also, we’ve recently joined forces with Stitcher Smart Radio, to enable you to listen to the Martin Bailey Photography Podcast using Stitcher on your iPhone, Android Phone and Kindle Fire, as well as in GM and Ford cars that support Stitcher Radio. I’ve put a graphic tile in the sidebar on the blog and Podcasts page, if you need the app, but if you already use Stitcher, just search for Martin Bailey Photography and you’ll be hooked up in seconds.

Show Notes

Adobe Camera RAW 6.7 (currently Release Candidate, not final release): http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cameraraw6-7/

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

NOTE: I released a full review of the 5D Mark III a few days after this post. See here.

I’ll follow up in the next few days, with more photos and some first impressions, but one thing I will say right now is that the new auto-focus system is worth the cost of the upgrade all by itself. Almost all of the 500+ frames I shot of these birds today, granted, mostly using One Shot, were tack sharp, right where I wanted it to be. Far less hit and miss than its predecessor, the Mark II.

For now, here is my best shot from today. Maximize your browser (larger than 1280px at least) and click on the images to view them larger than below. The second image is a 100% crop if viewed with the browser wide enough.

Shot with the new Canon EOS 5D Mark III - There's about a 3% crop on the top and right side of this, for artistic reasons, but that's all I've done to this image.

Browned-Eared Bulbul Takes Flight 100% Crop

By the way, these were shot with a 300mm F2.8 lens with the 1.4X Extender III fitted.

The above two images were shot at ISO 400, 1/1000 at f/5.6. The next image was shot at ISO 2000, 1/1000 at f/4.5 and it’s as clean as ISO 400 on my 1Ds Mark III, and probably comparable to ISO 640-ish, on my old 5D Mark II.

Brown-eared Bulbul at ISO 2000

And again, here’s a 100% crop of the birds face.

Brown-eared Bulbul at ISO 2000 - 100% Crop

I’ll update this post soon or add a link to a new post with more information very soon…

See Ya!

 NOTE: I released a full review of the 5D Mark III a few days after this post. See here.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

In previous years, I’ve gone through a blow by blow account of our entire trip, usually requiring a three or four episode series of Podcasts to get through it, but the content of our trip this year was pretty much exactly the same as 2011, so we’ll keep it relatively short this year, concluding a two part series today with another 12 images of the 60 that I whittled my selection down to. If you want to hear more detail on the locations we visited, do go back and listen to episodes 279, 281 and 282 from 2011 as well.

We pick up the trail on day six, with this photo of two Whooper Swans flying into the distance over the the Kussharo Lake. I have a number of images in the set with the swans flying towards me, but this is one of my favorite flight shots, with the swans flying away, probably leaving for the day to where they’ll spend the night.

Good Night

The swans in this shot almost mirror each others wing position and the relatively shallow depth of field raises them or separates them from the background really well, especially when viewed large. I’ve started to post images at 1280 pixels wide, and if you open your browser window up as wide as it will go and click on the images you’ll be able to see a reasonable amount of detail.

The following morning, we got up for another dawn shoot, and made our way to the Bihoro Pass and climbed a short way up the snow covered mountain to a view point above the Kussharo Lake. We were welcomed by a beautiful new moon above the lake, so I shot this at 95mm with my 70-200mm lens, at 06:05. I love the colors in the sky as the sun nears the horizon on a clear day at this location.

New Moon

The temperature on this morning was -17°C in the town at which we’d stopped a few hundred meters lower than this, so the temperature on the mountain was probably around -20°C, but there was a significant wind chill this morning, so it actually felt colder than a calm -26°C at the river when we got the beautiful mist and frosty trees that we looked at last week. Don’t let that put you off though, if you are thinking of joining us at some point. The cold is harsh, but with good planning and the proper gear, we always make it through OK, with some good stories to tell afterwards. As Sir Rannulph Fiennes said…

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.”

Later that day, a bit of luck and fast reflexes resulted in one of my favorite shots from the trip. I was laying down in the snow again, trying to get another low perspective shot of a swan spreading its wings, when a tiny dusky thrush appeared on the stones at the edge of the water. I had a second to zoom a little and recompose the shot, and hit the back focus button to focus on the thrush, just as he poised to take off. I fired off two frames, one with him poising, and this is the second, as he took off.

Fleeting Visit

Again, there’s a swan in the mist to the left which I really like, and although the little thrush was too fast even for the 500th of a second shutter speed that would have been perfect for a swan flapping, the resulting image is enough to make me happy. On occasions like this, I’m happy to call the movement blur artistic.

The following morning, we headed out early again for a sunrise at Mashuu Lake. This year the Mashuu Lake was totally frozen, with wonderful patterns in the ice, and in the drifted snow that had settled on the ice. I shot this wide with my 16-35mm lens at 16mm, and pointed my camera upwards to what at the time looked like a relatively uneventful sky, but I trusted in Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2 to bring out some beautiful detail in the wispy cloud cover, and also accentuate the difference in brightness in the sky from where the sun was on the horizon on the right side, compared to the still relatively dark left side of the frame.

Mashuu Lake at Dawn

The last shot was from the view point next to the car park, but just a little further along from there, I found a beautiful silver birch tree, which I included in this shot.

Birch Tree & Mashuu Lake

This is a slight change to my usual style, but the patterns of the tree against the lake appealed to me, so I lined it up with the tiny island in the middle of the lake between the two thickest branches on the tree, and stopped down to F22. If that makes you cringe because of the softness caused by diffraction, don’t worry. The new 70-200mm F2.8 L lens suffers very little from diffraction, besides this was the only way I could get the background details almost totally sharp at this focal length and focusing distance. This might be another reason to upgrade to this version two lens if you like to shoot with very deep depth-of-field, although I personally only do this very occasionally.

After breakfast, on the way out of town, to travel to Rausu, the fishing town where we’d photograph the Sea Eagles, we made a stop at Iouzan, which translates as Sulphur Mountain, when I got this whacky shot.

Apocalyptic

We shot here last year too, but this year it was clear, but cold, so the steam was insane. As I composed and shot a few frames, the sun almost broke through the steam, creating a much more contrasty and detailed shot than I’d seen to that point. I was shooting in manual mode though, as I usually do, but this was one of those times that it cost me the shot, and rather than adjusting to the new exposure, I went to Aperture Priority and knowing that the top of the screen would have the sun poking through, I added 2/3 of a stop of exposure compensation, to stop the bottom of the shot from going too dark.

The sun didn’t break through the steam again for a while, and I’d set this photo stop to just thirty minutes, as we needed to make some ground to Rausu, and I didn’t expect much of a shot here. It was more of a sight seeing stop. I was running out of time quickly, but I stood at the same spot waiting for the sun to break through again and it did, with about two minutes to spare, so I was able to get a few frames that I like. The result is that I blew out a little bit of the upper steam area, but it was enough to bring back all the detail in Lightroom, and then I ran it through Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4, to enhance the detail in the steam and the foreground rocks, for this resulting image.

The next photo is from the following morning at Rausu. The sea ice had been right in to the harbor for the previous three days, but on the day we went out, we had to travel quite a way out to get to the ice. This is how it works. The ice is there for a couple of months, but a strong wind in the wrong direction can totally clear the passage between the Shiretoko Peninsula and the Kunashiri Island overnight, so there is always a bit of risk at this location, so I was pleased that we were still able to get out to enough ice for the eagle to feed.

Surveillance

As we got to this spot, there was already around a hundred of these magnificent Steller’s Sea Eagles just sitting on the ice, but as the sun rose, and we started shooting, other eagles flew out to join the group. Again, this is one of those parts of the trip where standing space is scarse, so I always put the group first, and shoot from the back through any gaps that I can find, and I was pleased to have captured this eagle flying straight towards us, through a gap between some people at the front of the boat. This is probably my favorite Steller’s Sea Eagle shot from the trip.

I have a few others that I’ve uploaded, and a load of great shots from the second day that we went out too, but many were repeats of shots that I already have, or they were very similar, so I kept my Steller’s shots to a minimum.

After the second day shooting the eagles, we went out to the end of the Notsuke Peninsula, a tiny slither of land that juts out into the ocean at the base of the Shiretoko Peninsula, and had some fun shooting the large chunks of sea ice that had been stranded on the beach. The waves wash the dark colored sand up onto the ice and it gets mixed into the snow to give the ice a wonderful texture, that I enjoy shooting, as we can see in this shot.

Icy Waves

This year, as last year, we spent a night at a location not far from where we shot this, on the mainland looking out towards the Notsuke Peninsula, in the hope of seeing a mishaped sun, as it rises over the frozen sea and peninsula, but this didn’t happen again this year. It’s a very slim chance, so I’ve decided to extend the time we spend with the eagles to three days next year, and cut out the middle day.

On the second to last day, we drive around to the Utoro side of the Shiretoko Peninsula, and spend some time stopping at scenic spots as we drive along the base of the peninsula in the Shiretoko National Park. In this next shot, I tried a technique that I’d seen Tony Sweet do in the past, and have always wanted to try.

Abstract Birch

Basically you set your camera to a relatively slow shutter speed, here I used 1/10 of a second, and release the shutter as you pan downwards, causing this wonderful abstract pattern. In this shot, I panned slowly enough for you to still be able to see the dark patches in the trunks of the birch trees.

In this next image, I went to portrait mode, and was panning slight faster, which almost totally removes the pattern on the tree trunks, but gives a beautiful ethereal, almost ghostly feel to the resulting images.

Abstract Birch

Once we got around to the other side of the peninsula, we shot the beautiful Oshin Koshin falls, but again, I’ve shot them so often that I didn’t include any shots in my final selection. Then, we headed up into the Shiretoko National Park for a walk through the woods and out to the Furepe Falls. I bring the group in here in search of Ezo Deer, but it’s also a wonderful place to get some stark landscape shots. Here we see one of the group members bearing the elements in the park, as snow is blown up from the ground by the bitter high winds.

Fighting the Elements

As long as you have the right clothing, and frame of mind, this is not anywhere near as tough to bear as it looks. I always come away from this trip feeling excited and happy to have fought the elements, and won.

Here’s one last shot to finish with, from the same location. I love winter trees, as you may have noticed, and I spent a little time at this spot waiting for the wind to whip up a nice background behind the tree, giving me a little more separation between the tree and the background, as we see here.

Winter Winds

This is actually two trees, with a small white tree that was just to the right of the main tree here, but I took a few steps further along to align the second tree behind the first, essentially joining them together, so that I didn’t have to clone out the second tree later. I’m far more likely to clone something out these days than I used to be, but I still don’t like doing so if I can help it, plus I don’t like spending any more time in Photoshop than I absolutely have to, so this is the sort of thing that I do to reduce that necessity.

Shortly after this, we went back to the bus, and started to head over the the Memanbetsu airport to make our way back to Tokyo to finish the tour. As usual though, I passed my digital recorder around the bus, to get a message from the less shy members of the group. Let’s take a listen to that now.

<<INSERT RECORDING>>

That was a lot of fun, as usual.

So, next year’s tour details are now available at www.mbpworkshops.com, and as I mentioned last week, in 2013 we are doing two tours. On the first tour, I’ve invited co-host with Chris Marquardt, and Chris will be providing some of the workshop elements in German, but I’ll be there, and will be providing my usual English guidance and instruction as well, and of course Chris’ English is probably better than mine, so English speakers will get as much from the tour, and it’s a great chance if you are a fan of Chris’ to spend some quality time with both of us. This first tour will be from January 28 to February 8, 2013.

The second tour will be from February 18 through March 1, 2013, and as I eluded to last week, I’m incredibly excited to tell you that we will have a very special guest with us on the second tour as well. David duChemin, an amazing photographer and best selling author of Within the Frame, Vision Mongers and Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images, as well as author of a slew of eBooks from Craft & Vision, which is David’s company. This is an excellent chance to shoot along-side David in some amazing locations, and I’m sure we’ll hear some interesting stories during some of our workshop and critique sessions as well.

Whether you join Chris and I, or David and I next year, we’re going to have an amazing time. If you are interested in joining us, do take a look at the www.mbpworkshops.com Web site, but hurry, as places are filling very quickly.

Thanks very much for listening today. Remember that you can find me on Google+ and Twitter etc. All links are on the top page at martinbaileyphotography.com, so do drop by and take a look. I’ll be back next week, with another episode, but in the meantime, you take care, and have a great week, whatever you’re doing. Bye bye.

Show Notes

Future MBP Photo Adventure details: http://www.mbpworkshops.com/

Subscribe to Tour Information Newsletters: http://blog.martinbaileyphotography.com/newsletter/

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

In previous years, I’ve gone through a blow by blow account of our entire trip, usually requiring a three or four episode series of Podcasts to get through it, but the content of our trip this year was pretty much exactly the same as 2011, so I’m going to make this a two part series, and we’re going to concentrate on just 12 of my images each week, and just touch on the location details as necessary. If you want to here more detail about the locations, do go back and listen to episodes 279, 281 and 282 from 2011 as well.

Before we jump in and start looking at the photos, here are a few statistics about my editing process. This photography adventure has us shooting wildlife or landscapes from dawn ’til dusk some days, and shooting for at least 5 hours a day, even on the short days, so we come back with a lot of photographs. I shot just over 7,000 images and I’ve been to these locations more times than I can remember. I don’t shoot any where near as much as some of the participants for who are on their first visit.

I won’t go into detail on the actual rating system that I use, as I’ve covered this in other episodes, but basically, I go through my images in Lightroom, and give 4 stars to anything that’s good enough to publish and hit the X key to reject anything that was either technically faulted, as in blurred, or not exposed how I’d intended it to be, and I also delete perfectly good images, if I was shooting in burst mode and ended up with many images of the same subject. With wildlife, as a bird is flapping its wings for example, you often use burst mode more than for other more controlled subject types, simply because you’re trying to capture the best or most pleasing wing position. The same goes with the Snow Monkeys for example, as they have incredibly expressive faces, and you want to be able to capture a few variations and pick the best later. So, by the time I’d finished deleting images on my first kull, I was down to 4,500 images and 417 that had 4 stars against them.

The 417 images that I’d initially chose were selected as much as possible down to just a few of each subject. For example, I might have 10 frames of a certain subject doing a certain activity, like Snow Monkeys in a huddle, but from that, I’ll only select the stronger compositions, and images that I also don’t have in my library from previous years. There’s not much point in reposting something almost identical to my previous work. Of course, if you are shooting with a higher resolution camera, there is merit in replacing images from previous trips, but I was back there with the same cameras that I’ve been shooting these locations with for the last three years or so, so that isn’t going to be the case.

Then, I spent the next week after getting back from the tour, going through my selection numerous times, weeding out the lesser images, until by March 4, I was down to 120 images. This was still way too many to show people though, so I continued to work through my images each day until I reached a tight edit of 60 images on March 9. This can be an agonizing process, and I kicked out a whole bunch of images that I really liked, but that just didn’t add anything to my image library, and I want to show the minimum number of images possible, so as to keep my audience engaged. Even sixty would be too many images for a portfolio of course, but that’s not what I’m creating here.

Anyway, once I had my 60 finalists, I uploaded them to my gallery, and to Flickr, and a smaller selection was added to Google+, so some of you will have already seen these, but let’s jump in and start to look at a very tight edit of my final selection. First, let’s look at a couple of Snow Monkey shots, the first of which is this huddle of five monkeys.

Five Monkeys

Here there was a group including the alpha male, three of the wives probably from his harem, and a youngster. They were huddled in this way on top of a box, which is one of the reasons why I cropped in tightly like this for this image, to exclude the box, and this is kind of an important lesson here. Some people will choose to include the box and that’s fine, but I usually try to exclude that sort of thing. But even if that had not been the case, you often find that a tight crop can enhance an image anyway, so it’s always worth bearing in mind.

I also chose to photograph the monkeys at this time because they were all looking this way, with the one on the left almost looking directly at the camera. These Japanese Macaques have such expressive almost human eyes, that really pull you into an image. I think the eyes add so much to this image, that I included it in my set, despite the large dark patch above the monkey’s heads. I would have much preferred it if I could have gotten a white background all across the top, but it wasn’t possible from any angle, unless I’d grown by a foot or so.

I found another huddle though, again on top of a wooden box, but this one did have a white background, so I really like this next shot too, especially as the two monkeys in the middle were huddling around a baby, who’s face we can just see poking out from between them. This again adds so much to an image in my opinion.

Five Monkeys

Note that I lightened the baby’s face by about half a stop of exposure in Lightroom, by brushing it on with the Local Adjustments tool. This just helps to bring out the face a little more, as it was quite dark there, in between the two adults. By the way, the main lenses I use at the Snow Monkeys are my 24-70 and 70-200mm lenses. You are very close to the monkeys. So close in fact that you have to be careful not to touch them when shooting by the pool, and these two shots were made at 200mm and 165mm respectively.

I only posted one monkey shot where they were actually in the water in the hot spring bath at this location, mainly because space is limited down by the pool, and I didn’t spend much time down there, preferring to allow as many of my group to go down there as possible. I’ve posted lots of these kind of photos from previous years, so the few that I did get, weren’t really going to add anything to my image library.

Japanese Serow

Most years while we’re at the Snow Monkeys location, we see a Japanese Serow, which is a type of antelope, high on the valley side, and I’ve photographed him many times, but until this year, I have never gotten any photographs that I really liked, because the background has been too messy, or his pose was just not very interesting. This year though, I was happy to get three shots that I really do like of the Japanese Serow, and this is the one with the best background, and the pose isn’t bad either.

These are curious looking animals, with their ten centimeter or so horns, that you can actually see better in the other two shots, but can just make out in this shot too. Their thick set and coat make them look quite bulky, which they need to be to get through these harsh winters, but they’re still quite a nice animal to shoot. This by the way was shot with my 300mm F2.8 lens, with the 1.4X Extender fitted.

After the first three days with the Snow Monkeys, we flew up to Hokkaido, and for the first few days, we were shooting most of the day at the Akan International Crane Center, but again, since I’ve shot there so many times already, I have to get something that beats my previous year’s images to make it worth showing, and one that I was happy with was not of the cranes, but the White-Tailed Eagles that come in at 2PM to steal the fish that are thrown out for the cranes. I got two frames of a pair of eagles either fighting, or courting, it’s sometimes hard to tell, and this is the second of the two images. I posted the first in my gallery too, showing the eagle flipped over and the other zooming in on him, and this second frame shows them just after they’ve past each other.

Near Miss

I shot this one with my 5D Mark II and the 300mm F2.8 lens with the 1.4X Extender fitted again, but as these guys were quite a way off, I’ve had to crop this one a little more than I usually like to, but I’ve still got enough resolution to do a 13×19″ print, which is about as much as I can stand to crop, but I had no control over how far away the eagles would be when they did this of course, so I have to live with it.

In this next shot, a single White-Tailed Eagle came much closer, and although I have lots of shots of these beautiful birds in flight, I chose to keep this one in because I really like the wing shape here.

White-Tailed Eagle

This is also one of the only locations where I often find myself including a bright blue sky in my shots. I’m not partial to blue skies, but this place usually gives me some nice eagle and crane shots where I think the sky really adds to the images. This was shot with the 300mm without the extender, but on the 1D Mark IV and was only cropped very slightly this time.

If you’ve been following this Podcast for a while, you’ll probably remember my Distant Dance photo from February 2008, which was the first time I took a workshop group to Hokkaido, and we visited the Otowa Bridge, in the hope of it being cold enough, and the air still enough, for there to be frost on the trees, and mist over the river. Well, on that first visit, it happened, and was magical, but although we’ve had year’s when it was still quite pretty out there, it didn’t happen again quite the same for the following three years.

I’ve been praying for frost and mist before each trip ever since, and I think my prayers were answered a little too much, at least for the first few hours at the bridge this year. As the sun rose, and convection kicked it, the temperature dropped from -21°C to -26°C, and there was no wind at all, but with temperatures this low, although the trees were beautiful, there was actually too much mist to be able to see the cranes in the river.

In this shot, you can see just how beautiful the scene was, and luckily there were three swans in the foreground to add interest, but you’d never know looking at this shot that there were around 200 majestic red-crowned cranes sleeping in the river, shrouded by the mist.

Dawn on the River

This is a stitched panorama, shot at 300mm on the 1Ds Mark III, so a relatively wide shot. Of course, I really like this shot too. It’s a beautiful scene unto itself, and if you look really closely, you can actually see some of the cranes in the left side of the image in the mist. Note by the way, if you expand your browser window as wide as possible and click on the images, you can view them at 1280 pixels wide, which will hopefully enable you to appreciate the detail more.

Here’s another photo of the swans from the last image, but this time shot at 600mm, so that you can see more detail in the trees to the right of the scene, and the layers formed by that beautiful mist. I know that it’s difficult to make out three swans here, but basically it’s two swans with their heads under their wings sleeping, with one in the middle with his head up.

Misty Awakening

It’s important to note here too that I was shooting in manual mode, with the meter showing the image over-exposed by around two stops. If I left it to my camera, with the current metering system, it would have been rendered much darker, and no where near as beautiful and delicate as this. This may well change with the RGB aware metering in the 5D Mark III and 1D X that will be with us shortly, but for now, this is a big issue to keep in mind in these locations.

There was a couple of hours after sunrise where the mist was simply too thick to see the cranes in the distance, and also with it being so cold, the cranes took their time livening up and moving around. That was a bit of a blessing in disguise, as it would have been totally frustrating if we could hear the cranes honking and dancing but not be able to see them. Fortunately though, the mist did start to clear at around 8:15, and we were able to get some very atmospheric shots, like this one, where you can perhaps make out two cranes honking in the middle of the frame, with a flock of pintail ducks flying over their heads.

Song For The Pintails

This again is a stitch, to extend the image over to the right a little. I made a note to continue to shoot multiple images across the scene once I’d shot something that I thought might work, and I was pleased that I did. I ended up with some very wide panoramas, that I’m looking forward to printing, but for the Web let’s look at one more that’s wide, but not the widest.

Short Flight (Panorama)

Here I noticed a crane taking a short flight from one part of the river to another, and grabbed a couple of frames, then again, ran across the scene for a few more frames, to enable me to make a panorama. I actually posted just the single image with the crane in flight as well as this panorama, to give me more printing options, but I prefer these wide versions, especially with large prints in mind.

After an amazing few hours at the Otowa Bridge, which incidentally translates to “The Sound of Wings Bridge”, we went for breakfast, then back to the Crane Center. Here’s one of the images that I got of the cranes that I simply could not throw out. The orthodox photographer in me wanted to throw this out, because there was too little space left on the left side of the frame.

See Ya!

Basically this was one of those shots where I’d noticed the crane flying over-head, but by the time I’d rased my camera and focussed, the bird was too far past, and I didn’t have time to reframe. For some reason though, maybe the artist in me, as opposed to the technician, I really like this. As much as I tried, I just couldn’t throw it out.

The following morning, we went back to the bridge, but it wasn’t cold enough to get any frost on the trees, so we decided not to shoot there, and as we got ready to go back to the bus, my friend, photographer Jeremy Woodhouse, who we met most days in Nagano and Hokkaido, told me about two apple trees nearby that I didn’t know about. He actually drove around there to show us where they were, so rather than going home empty handed this morning, we spend 20 minutes photographing these lovely trees on the snow covered hills.

Apple Trees

I’ve learned lots of little added bonus spots over the years, from friends like Jeremy, and Japanese photographer Yoshiaki Kobayashi, and as the tour leader it’s great to have a few options like this, so I’m very grateful to these guys for sharing as they do. Of course, I share my own information with others just as much, so that we all end up with better tours each year, and in turn, happier customers.

On the third day in Hokkaido, six days, or half way into the tour, we moved over to the Kussharo Lake, where we photograph the Whooper Swans that spend the winter in the little pools warmed by hot springs that flow into the lake, and prevent it from totally freezing over. Here is the last image for today, which I shot laying down in the snow, with my angle finder on my camera, so that I could look down into the finder, rather than straining my neck trying to look into the finder on the back of the camera.

Swan Lake

I had the camera rested on my hand, which was resting in the snow, and framed up the scene, waiting for a swan to spread its wings like this. On the first day with the swans, it was bitterly cold, so I didn’t want to lay in the snow for long, so I was pleased when after about 20 minutes this swan did as I wanted. There was also another swan positioned perfectly in the mist to the left, which adds to the overall atmosphere of the shot, so I’m very pleased with this one.

That’s it for this week, and we’ll pick up the trail later on in this same day, with more swans shots from the Kussharo Lake in episode 327 next week.

Note that I’m about to release details of two Snow Monkey and Hokkaido Photo Adventures in 2013. The first will be with Chris Marquardt, so we’ll be providing some of the workshop elements in German, although I’ll also be there, so even if you don’t speak German, Chris and I will be helping the group in English too. This first tour will be from January 28 to February 8, 2013.

The second tour is going to be from February 18 through March 1, 2013, and you can see details of both tours on my www.mbpworkshops.com site. If you’d like to receive notice as soon as the details are released, you can also sign up for my Tour Newsletters (at mbp.ac/news, and I’ll put a link to those in the shownotes).

Note too that although I can’t say who it is this week, if you are catching up on this Podcast more than a few days after this episode is released on March 13, 2012, you’ll see that we will have a very special guest with us on the second too. I’ll be able to mention who that is next week too, but I have to tell you that I’m really excited about this, and I think you will be too.

One last bit of housekeeping before we finish, and that is that I was interviewed recently by my friend Ibarionex Perello, of The Candid Frame podcast. I’ve secretly wanted to be on that Podcast for many years, and it turns out that Ibarionex hadn’t asked because he thought he’d interviewed me a long while ago. When we were chatting last year and the subject came up, I reminded Ibarionex that I hadn’t been on his show, so he kindly changed that. If you don’t already subscribe to The Candid Frame, please do. It’s one of the few other Photography related Podcasts that I listen to regularly, and I know you’ll enjoy it. I’ll put a link to my interview in the show notes, or you can find it by going over to thecandidframe.com

Thanks very much for listening today. Remember that you can find me on Google+ and Twitter etc. All links are on the top page at martinbaileyphotography.com, so do drop by and take a look. I’ll be back next week, with another episode, but in the meantime, you take care, and have a great week, whatever you’re doing. Bye bye.

Show Notes

Future MBP Photo Adventure details: http://www.mbpworkshops.com/

Subscribe to Tour Information Newsletters: http://blog.martinbaileyphotography.com/newsletter/

The Candid Frame Interview with Martin: http://thecandidframe.blogspot.com/2012/03/candid-frame-132-martin-bailey.html

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Now, I haven’t had a chance to play with this new system yet, but my friend Syl Arena has, and he kindly agreed to come onto this week’s episode to tell us all about it!

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

In this episode we touch on…

• System Components
• Sync Speeds
• Individual Control of Flashes in Groups
• LED Color / Color Coding
• Channel Scanner
• Compatibility with older Canon Speedlites
• Using the system work with Profoto/Other Studio Lights
• Is this system a game changer?
• What does Syl think of the 5D Mark III?

As this was an ad-lib chat between Syl and I, there is no transcript this week, but Syl has put together a great First Impressions blog post and video to take you through these new products and why they’re important, so do check these out too, AFTER you’ve listened to this Podcast.

I can’t wait to get my hands on this new Speedlite gear, but now, let’s make do with a few photos from Syl’s blog.

© Syl Arena - ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter

© Syl Arena - 580EX and 600EX-RT Back Panels

Here are some of Canon’s press release photos of the new gear.

Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT

Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT Back Panel

Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT

Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT Back Panel

Show Notes

Syl’s First Impressions Blog Post: http://pixsylated.com/blog/canon-600ex-rt-first-impressions/

Syl’s Video: http://pixsylated.com/blog/video-canon-600ex-rt-speedlite-st-e3-transmitter/

Syl on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/syl_arena

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Despite the relatively difficult theme, we had a great turnout for the Frozen Motion assignment, with almost double the entries of the previous months! Thanks to all of you that stepped up to the plate for this one and uploaded your images, and please do continue to try and get involved if you don’t already.

If you do want to get involved but not sure what to do, all details of how to upload your images, the rules of engagement and an explanation of the voting process are all posted in the Assignment Forum at martinbaileyphotography.com. Note that even if you don’t see this update episode come out at the end of the month, or start of the new assignment month, I do also announce the theme  in the Assignment Forum at the end each month, so you can always look there if you are heading out shooting and wonder what the theme is.

So, let’s jump in and take a look at the winning images, starting with Satoshi in fifth place with “Happy Hour”.

© Andrew Satoshi Aylett - Happy Hour

Hello everyone, and thanks to all who voted for my photo. As this is my first entry, it feels like first time luck to be selected amongst such talented photographers in this community.

Before knowing the assignment theme for the month, I’ve been coincidently taking some action photos of my dog at the local park which I was quite happy with some of the results. But I remembered in the previous podcast when Martin mentioned, monthly assignment are not for digging back through your old photos, its about getting out there and shooting with a purpose and it’s a great way to improve on your skills.

Although I had taken some shots during January, I decided to take on the advice and re-shoot for this assignment. This also gave me the opportunity to plan this shoot and after three days returning back to the same spot, I finally nailed one of my dog jumping in the air.

As my dog wanders down the hill, the only way that I can get him to sprint back up where he makes the final jump is to get his attention and run the opposite direction. He really loves to play chases.

Firstly, I needed to pre set the camera in aperture priority mode to f5.6, iso 640 to achieve shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second. I’ve also under exposed by -0.3 from exposure compensation to make sure I get all the highlight details in the photograph. It was late afternoon and the sun was quite low, giving nice side light across the park.

As my dog makes his way towards the top of the hill I then quickly focus on the area where I think he is going to make the jump and lock the focus and exposure by pressing down on the af-l button on my Nikon D3. I’ve also set my camera to continuous shooting mode and made sure that I started firing before he reached the top.

Finally, I hope for the best that just one photo is in focus at the right moment.

Andrew Satoshi Aylett

Well, first of all, thanks for getting involved Satoshi, and thanks for the great back-story! I really like your shot, and your subject, Charlie, is a beautiful looking dog. You must be very proud of him. It’s good that you were able to think of all the variables for your shooting situation ahead of time, such as ensuring that you had a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the motion, and pre-focussing as you did, are perfect to execute shots like this, so well done on that, and congratulations on placing!

Next, in fourth place is Marcus Perkins with “Breaking the Slidesical”, and here’s Marcus’ back-story…

© Marcus Perkins - Breaking the Slidesical

Firstly many thanks for the votes and congrats to the other placed entries. It was a great theme and there were lots of great photos. This year I made the resolution to enter the MBP monthly assignments to get me taking pictures. Something that I had been neglecting last year.

I had the idea of breaking the block of ice when I first saw the assignment title. I liked the idea of using the ice as a lightbox for a slide and set about testing the freezing process. The first attempts were ok although with the slide buried deep in the ice, the picture itself wasn’t clear because of frosting. Finally with the month slipping away I managed to get the slide to stay on the surface of the water as it froze in a plastic tub.

I set up my studio with a black card background and white card base to reflect the light.
I wanted to use Nikons Auto FP mode for this to maximise the shutter speed. I used two SB800s, one placed behind the block of ice and one front and camera left.

The settings were 1/8000sec F8 – foreground flash 1/1 power – background flash 1/8 power. I knew this would be a one shot effort and couldn’t use high speed continuous due to the flash recycling. I braced myself with the lump hammer, a wireless remote and hoped for the best…..

© Marcus Perkins - Aftermath

It was close to what I wanted and I was very happy not to have caught the hammer in mid air! I had another couple of swings just for the hell of it and then it was time to tidy up and apologise for the noise.

© Marcus Perkins - Aftermath

Post processing was limited to a crop, white balance and the usual sharpening etc. Many Thanks again.

Thanks you Marcus! You made a great shot, and a great back-story to follow up with. I’m impressed with your vision here, as well as the execution of the shot. I’m sure this is one of those times where I would have missed the timing slightly and ended up having to clear up and refreeze everything etc. Congratulations on a great shot and for placing in the assignment.

In third place is Jack Andrys with “Look”, and here’s Jack’s back-story…

Let me start of with a big thank you to all who voted for my image, I am honoured to have placed amongst such great competition. Whilst it is rewarding to have placed, I found that just the act of participating was a great deal of fun in itself. Thank you to Martin and anyone who helps in the background on the assignments.

As to my photo, it was early in January and my daughter was visiting from Australia so I had many opportunities whilst showing her around San Francisco to photograph our site seeing. It was the afternoon when we decided with the rest of the family to take a boat tour around the bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was cold and as you can tell a windy trip so in the main we stayed inside, but ventured out on deck to take some shots as we neared the bridge.

The sun was low on the horizon and with the light fading surrounded by a deck full of people I was forced to shoot close at 24mm with my daughter at the minimum focus distance on the 24-70mm. I set myself a minimum shutter speed range of 1/60 to 1/80 and tried to stop down to as high an f stop as possible which ended up being f9. I ended up taking about 25 shots all whilst the boat went under the Golden Gate Bridge, and after I imported them into Lightroom 4 Beta I fell in love with this image.

© Jack Andrys - Look

Whilst there were plenty of shots with my daughter looking less wind swept and more posed, it was this shot which captured the moment when she lost interest in everything else but the bridge. I think she even forgot that I was taking photos at this point in time.

When I processed and cropped the shot and looked at the way her hair was pointing at the bridge frozen yet still in motion I immediately remembered the January assignment. It was great to place on my first ever assignment entry. Thanks again to all and well done to Mr “Jello” Tanaka for his winning entry.

Thanks very much for getting involved Jack, and for yet another great back-story! You captured a beautiful image of your daughter in a wonderful moment, looking up at one of the most iconic structures in the world. The look is great, but for me, what makes this is the clouds, flowing in almost the opposite direction, complementing your daughter’s hair as they criss-cross. Congratulations on the excellent shot and for placing Jack!

In 2nd place is Elise Ange with “Flight of the Husky”, and here’s Elise’s back-story.

Congratulations to Forrest for the win and to all who placed! Thank you for all of your votes.

It was almost the end of the month and I hadn’t been very successful in getting anything to submit. There were so many great entries that I needed to have something different than what was already posted. I decided on some sort of flight. I have several interesting kites but it is too cold in the middle of winter for flying them. The next best thing was planes. The small commercial airport I visited did not allow photography without written permission. The next two small local airports had no activity when I drove by them. But the third one was busy enough with take-offs and landings.

© Elise Ange - Flight of the Husky

It is located in a state park next to a beautiful lake surrounded by many trees. The setting was ideal and the temperature not too chilly for the couple of hours I was there. The take-offs were into the sun so I concentrated on the landings coming in over the lake. The Husky A1-A is bright yellow with black trim and produced the most contrasty photos. The conversion to black and white with Silver Efex Pro made an even more dramatic image.

Great shot Elise, and a very nice black and white conversion as usual. I really like that you can see the pilot’s face as they guide the small plane in to land. I see from the EXIF data on your image that you had cranked up the ISO to 900 with an aperture of f4.5 to give you a nice fast shutter speed of 1/1250 of a second, which helped to freeze the motion, in line with the assignment theme, which is great. Congratulations on placing and on a great photo Elise!

Finally, in first place is Forrest Tanaka with “Attraction”, and as you’ll hear Forrest has a great back-story behind this image.

Hey everyone, thanks for all the votes! It’s a nice way to come back to Martin’s assignments after a long break. This is the backstory for the shot, “Attraction.”

I had tried a similar shot for an assignment a couple years ago or so, and it completely failed. It involved tilted tables, and moving and stopping glasses of wine, and all I ended up doing was making a big mess and some lousy photos. The idea stayed in the back of my mind, and a recent trip to the grocery store where my daughter was looking over pudding flavors next to the Jello (US brand generic; it’s “jelly” in other countries) packs finally made the connection click. Then the Frozen Motion assignment came up, and I knew I had to enter.

I bought some long-setting raspberry Jello and some raspberry juice for the poured “wine” (I’d photographed real red wine before, and it looks as opaque and black as coffee). I poured the Jello into a couple of wine glasses propped at an angle on styrofoam protectors from a laptop box. Then I set up a frame I’d made that lets me hold a translucent white 1m-square sheet of acrylic I use for some product shots, and a remote strobe on the floor below pointing straight up. I shot it with a 70-200 lens at 100mm with just this one strobe.

On the first attempt, I forgot to set multi-shot mode on my camera, so I only ended up with a wine bottle and no wine. The second, I missed the wine glass completely and made a mess. This was the third.

© Forrest Tanaka - Attraction

If you want to see how I took the shot, I redid the shot the next day on camera and posted it on YouTube.

What an brilliant shot Forrest, and a very imaginative way to achieve these excellent results! When I first saw the image I was running through the possibilities, like those you mentioned, as in tilting the table and quickly pushing the left glass in to cause the fluid to move up like that, but I figured that both would be too messy or difficult, and then I’d figured that it must be Jello when I saw your post on Google+ about this, with your video.

Thanks once again to everyone that got involved in the January assignment too. Whether you placed or not, I’m sure you all learned a little something from getting involved and giving this a try.

The theme for the February assignment was “Intimate Landscape” and we will turn on the voting system for that in the next couple of days, so do drop by the www.mbpgalleries.com Web site and cast your vote for your top five images before March 7, 2012.

The March assignment, taking Forrest’s lead, is “Food”. Let’s try to capture something delicious and tantalizing, which will probably require a bit of imagination and experimentation, but should be a lot of fun.

You will be able upload your images until the end of March, anywhere in the world, regardless of your time-zone, so don’t forget to post your images.

Show Notes

Assignment Forum: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=24

Assignment Scores: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/scores2012_1.php

Music from Music Alley: http://www.musicalley.com/

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Here are Landon’s photos that we talk about this week.

Old Work © Landon Michaelson

Field Storage © Landon Michaelson

Mammatus Indigestus - Bowels of the storm © Landon Michaelson

Want Out © Landon Michaelson

Mantis Religiosa © Landon Michaelson

River Rocks © Landon Michaelson

Both Hands Full @copy; Landon Michaelson

Lucky Strike 13 © Landon Michaelson

Saturated Dance © Landon Michaelson

Show Notes

Landon’s Web site: http://bksecret.com

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery

Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Here’s Landon doing this thing in the field.

Field Storage © Landon Michaelson

Next week, we’ll also talk about the following photos. Don’t miss it!

Old Work © Landon Michaelson

Mammatus Indigestus - Bowels of the storm © Landon Michaelson

Want Out © Landon Michaelson

Mantis Religiosa © Landon Michaelson

River Rocks © Landon Michaelson

Both Hands Full © Landon Michaelson

Lucky Strike 13 © Landon Michaelson

Saturated Dance © Landon Michaelson

Show Notes

Landon’s Web site: http://bksecret.com

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Listen right here with the player at the top of this post, or…

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Three Flavors of FoCal

Before we get started, you’ll want to note that FoCal currently comes in three flavors, Standard, Plus and Pro. Standard gives you Target Setup help and Semi-Automatic Calibration. Plus gives you Fully Automatic Calibration with one button press. Pro gives you Analysis information, Reporting, Target Optimization and extra tests in addition of course to Target Setup and Fully Automatic Calibration. I had a chance to use FoCal Pro, which is what we’ll look at today, but you can see what you get in the other packages here too.

No Delivery Necessary

The great thing about FoCal is that you don’t have to wait for delivery. You print the targets yourself, and detailed instructions are included in your download, so it’s quick and self contained. You do currently need to wait for up to a day for your initial license to be sent to you, but hopefully there’ll be a totally automated licensing system in place at some point.

Camera Support

Right now, FoCal version 1.1.0.40 supports the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 7D and 50D, and the 1Ds Mark III is supported although the Semi Automatic mode is not available for the 1Ds III, and Mirror Lockup isn’t used during the tests on the 1Ds III either. The 1D Mark IV and III are set to be added soon, and support for a range of Nikon cameras is planned for early March, though this could obviously change.

Other Future Features

Other features that I’m told are on the roadmap are AF Low Light Performance checks. This not only allows you to check the test environment, but will also give you an idea of your lowest exposures at which you can expect good autofocus in the field. Also, a test to find the sharpest apertures of your lenses is coming, and this is very powerful. Imagine being able to just press a few buttons and find your optimal aperture for all your lenses!

Also, Shutter Vibration tests are coming, and this will basically find which shutter speeds are most affected by shutter vibration. I know for example that around 1/50 of the second is really bad for vibration with my 600mm f4 lens, but I’ve not really looked into this for other lenses. Again, being able to work through your lenses finding these details, probably in one fell swoop, is huge in my opinion.

Mac Version on the Way Too

Although there’s nothing particularly difficult about FoCal, you’ll benefit from reading the documentation before you start to actually use the product. As of February 2012, FoCal comes with two  PDF documents, which are the product manual and a FoCal Testing Guide. Do take the time to read the Testing Guide, as this helps you to fully understand the product and the process, though I am going to walk you through much of this today as well.

Printing Your Targets

Medium Target

Large and Small Target

The advice is to print these targets on heavyweight matte paper with an inkjet printer. The use of heavyweight paper is for strength in the targets, so if you don’t mind printing new targets as yours become tattered then normal A4 paper will work apparently. Matte paper is used to reduce reflection.

The targets are designed to be printed at 300dpi, so to control the size, ensure that no scaling is carried out. I had to trim a bit of white space from around the edges of the files and then just select to print the image centered on the page with no scaling when printing from Photoshop. This ensures that the file is printed at its native resolution.

Software Setup

For the FoCal software to work, for Canon cameras at least for now, you also need to ensure that you have the Canon’s EOS Utility application that comes with your camera installed. Once you have EOS Utility on your system, just run the FoCal software installer, which is very straightforward and needs no explanation here.

When you start the FoCal software the first time, when the Camera Selector window is displayed, click on the License button and install the license that you’ll have received by mail when you buy the product.

Searching for Cameras

This is also the screen that you’ll see once a license is installed, but no cameras are connected. After you connect your camera to your computer with a USB cable, it will appear in the list for you to select. Under the Setting menu in the main dialog, you can turn on a checkbox to automatically select the camera if only one camera is detected. I turned this on as I doubt I’ll ever have multiple cameras connected at once for this kind of testing.

Camera Selector

Target Setup / Distance

Tape or use Bluetack or something to attach your test targets to a wall, at the same height as your camera, also ensuring that you can get the right distance from the target to your camera. You can perform the test at any distance, and if you often use your lens at Minimum Focus Distance, you might want to calibrate at that distance, as the results can vary, but the FoCal documentation quotes the Canon advice of calibrating at 50x the focal length of the lens.

This means if you are calibrating a 50mm lens, the distance should be 2,500mm, which is of course 2.5m or 8ft. It doesn’t really matter to the test how far away you set your camera, but this will be the distance at which the microadjustment is the most accurate, so keep this in mind as you run your tests.

The same goes for zoom lenses. You can calibrate at any focal length that the lens can be set at, but this will mean that the lens’ focus will be most accurate at that focal length and may run off slightly as you move away from that focal length. So, if you want the best performance across all focal lengths, then you might want to set say a 24-70mm to around 50mm, in the middle of it’s range. Alternatively, if you pretty much always shoot at 70mm, you could choose to calibrate and microadjust at 70mm.

The FoCal documentation also suggests calibrating at both extremes of the lens, finding the microadjustment values, say +4 for 24mm and +7 for 70mm, and making your decision based on these values. For example you could set at either of these values for best focusing at either extreme, or choose microadjustment of +5 or +6 to get a happy medium.

Although this seems a little bit haphazard, the new 1D X is actually going to have the ability to a microadjustment value for either end of the focal length range to remove the guesswork, so Canon fully understands that there is something missing from the microadjustment on cameras to date.

FoCal states the general advice of calibrating at the telephoto end of a zoom lens, 70mm in the case of a 24-70mm lens, as the depth of field is shallower at 70mm, allowing for more accurate microadjustment values.

Camera Setup

Once you have your targets attached to a wall and your camera distance sorted, you’ll want to setup your camera for the tests. For the tests to work, you need to ensure your camera is in Av mode, with the AF set to ONE SHOT and select only the center focus point, not automatic selection. Also turn off image stabilization if you are testing an IS lens.

Your test environment also needs to be bright enough to get at least a 1/4 of a second exposure at f2.8, ISO 100, although brighter will help to get more reliable results. 1/125 of a second at f2.8, ISO 100 is recommended.

Fire up FoCal

Connect your camera to your computer with the USB cable that came with the camera, and fire up the FoCal software. Assuming this isn’t the first time you start FoCal, and you already have a licensed camera connected, you’ll either see the Camera Selector screen, or you’ll see the following screen if you have set FoCal to automatically select the camera when only once camera is selected. The details of your camera and lens, as well as any Microadjustment you might already have set for the lens attached will be displayed.

FoCal Main Screen

To get your camera aligned with the Target, click Show Tools and then Target Setup, and your camera will go into LiveView and show you your target on the wall. At this point, even on a sunny afternoon, with my normal room lights turned on, the image on the screen was very dark.

Target Setup Help

Even after getting a standard light from another room, there didn’t seem to be enough light, but the software was able to guide me to the point that it was happy to start the tests.

Target Setup Complete

The on-screen alignment help is very cool. It not only tells you when you need to move your camer up, down, right or left, but it detects too much rotation or if you are looking at the target from too much of an angle from the sides, or above or below the target. Once you have everything lined up correctly, you’ll see a check mark on the screen, showing you that you’re good to proceed with the tests.

I found though that if you measure the distance from the floor to the center of your lens, and make sure the target is attached to the wall with the round circle in the middle at the same height, then just judging by eye if the camera was square on, then looking through the finder and putting the center focus point over the circle, the test passed first time. Also, as the test is also run when you start the Fully Automatic Microfocus Adjustment Test, and won’t proceed if there are problems, this is probably the quickest workflow.

You also get a distance readout, so you can see how far away from the target your camera is. In the above screenshots I was 2.2m away, but changed this to the recommended 2.5m for the test with my 50mm lens.

Once you have your camera lined up, just hit the Fully Automated AF Microadjust button on the main screen, and the Test screen is displayed, and you just hit the Start button to kick off the test. The test takes a minute or so, and your camera will make a number of exposures.

Once the test is finished you’ll see a specific amount to adjust the lens by, which in the case of my 50mm f1.2L lens was +7. This is not surprising as I actually had Canon set this lens to front-focus slightly, as I found that there were discrepancies between the center focus point and the peripheral points, and we were trying to reach a happy medium. This setting might negate some of that of course, but that’s not what we’re here to look at today.

Test Finished

At this point, you are actually able to set the amount of microadjustment in the camera right there, and you’re done.

If you hit the Analysis button on this screen, you can see the various microadjustment settings mapped out on a graph and check how blurred or sharp the image became between each setting by clicking on the nodes, which is really useful. (Click the image to view details)

Analysis Screen

I went on to test my 70-200mm f2.8 L II lens, and found that at both 70mm and 200mm, there was no microadjustment necessary, which didn’t really surprise me, as I’ve never had any problems with this lens at all. Note that I did perform this test at 2.5 meters though, which is a bit close per the recommended calibration distance, but I often use this lens quite close too, so I left it as it was.

70-200mm Spot on!

I then calibrated my 24-70mm f2.8 L lens and found that although no microadjustment was necessary at 24mm at 1.25m, at around 3m I required +4 adjustment at 70mm. Based on this, I tested the lens at 50mm at around 2.5m and found that no microadjustment was needed at this focal length and distance either. I then ran the test again at 3 meters at 50mm, and found that once again, +4 adjustment was necessary. I started to wonder now whether the problem was in the focussing distance, or the focal length? So I did the test again at 24mm from 3m, and found that the lens needed a -2 adjustment at this distance.

Semi-Automatic Microadjustment

I hadn’t really understood the Semi-Automatic AFMA Test to this point, but then found the value in this feature once I had a lens that had somewhat sporadic focus adjustment measurements. The manual has a good explanation of how to use this module, which you’ll need to read, especially if you opt for the Standard version of FoCal, in which this is your main workflow.

Semi-Automatic AFMA Test

For me though, I found it useful to be able to run the test while switching through a few different focal lengths and settings to see where the happy medium lays. Once you have a lens that requires a difference microadjustment amount for various focal lengths and focusing distances, you really just have to find the best value as a compromise between the various possibilities, which this tool enables you to do by playing with the possibilities, then applying various adjustments and refocusing using the onscreen buttons, and see how the sharpness improves each time.

The higher the line on the graph by the way, the sharper the image. The graph here is a bit all over the place, because it shows three different focal lengths. I’m not sure if this is how it should be used, but it helped me to lock in on +2 as my final microadjustment.

Check Your Settings!

After I’d finished running my tests on these three lenses, closed the application and unplugged my camera, I noticed that my camera’s file format was left at Large Fine JPEG, and the meter mode was set to Spot Metering. I found in the manual that the software does try to return camera settings to their original values, but this didn’t happen with me, probably caused by the camera going to sleep while I was making notes and the software lost its connection with the camera. Either that, or because I changed lenses with the camera connected and software open, which I also read can cause problems.

Anyway, regardless of why this happens, you’ll want to check these when you’re finished, to avoid shooting JPEG afterwards, or ending up in the wrong metering mode etc. I spoke with the FoCal people about this, and have been told that this should get more robust in future versions. They’re a great team and really listen their customers.

Conclusion

In general, I found FoCal to be very easy to use. It takes a bit of time to get up to speed on how to use it, reading through the documentation, but none of it is difficult to grasp. Now that I’ve calibrated three of my main workhorse lenses, I’m going to set aside another couple of hours to calibrate my other lenses, and then run through them all again with my two other bodies. Based on these initial tests, I’d say it will probably take me about two hours or so, as I have a lot of lenses, and three bodies, but it will be worth it.

Note that although I received a copy of FoCal for these tests, I have not received any financial or material compensation from Reikan Technology in connection with this review. As is always the case with my reviews, these are my own honest opinions, based on a spending some time using and testing the product.

Discount for MBP Visitors!

Just for MBP visitors and Podcast listeners, Reikan Technology have provided a very healthy time limited discount when you buy your copy of FoCal. FoCal Standard is only £19.95 anyway, so that’s not included, but you can get FoCal Plus, which is usually £39.95 for just £25, and FoCal Pro, which is usually £69.95 for just £45, which is more than a 35% discount of both products.

This discount will be available until March 31st 2012, but only if you buy from a special page setup specifically for MBP listeners. Head over to http://www.fo-cal.co.uk/mbp45 before March 31st, to pick up your discounted copy of FoCal. If you are catching up after March 31st, 2012, but are interested in buying FoCal, still check this page, as I’m told there’ll be some sort of discount for you, even though it won’t be quite as hefty a saving as the initial offering.

Note too that even if your camera is not yet supported you can either buy the software now at the discounted price, and wait for the free update when the additional Canon and a range of Nikon cameras are added, but also, do check back through February and March, as there are some changes coming very soon, probably before this initial discount expires.

Housekeeping

Andrew S. Gibson, one of my fellow Craft & Vision authors, just released an interview with me on his blog if you are interested. Andrew asked some great questions, and we touch on how I prepared to leave my old job, to pursue my passion in full time photography. You can take a read here: http://www.andrewsgibson.com/blog/2012/02/making-the-print-an-interview-with-photographer-author-martin-bailey/

Show Notes

FoCal MBP Discount: http://www.fo-cal.co.uk/mbp45

FoCal Web site: http://www.reikan.co.uk/focal/

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

If you do want to get involved but not sure what to do, all details of how to upload your images, and the rules of engagement are posted in the Assignment Forum at martinbaileyphotography.com. Note that even if you don’t see this update episode come out at the end of the month, or start of the new assignment month, I do also announce the theme  in the Assignment Forum at the end each month, so you can always look there if you are heading out shooting and wonder what the theme is.

So, let’s jump right in and take a look at the five images that got the most votes from the MBP Community for the Organic assignment. In fifth place is Morton Goldberg, with “Not a Pumpkin“, and here’s Morton’s back-story…

Not a Pumpkin © Morton Goldberg

My idea for this assignment was simple: use the same lighting setup and depth-of-field stacking technique as I used in last month’s assignment to photograph a fruit or vegetable. I thought the visual contrast between the two subjects photographed with the same lighting and perspective would be interesting. There was a risk with this idea: it assumed the viewer would make the connection with my Machinery assignment entry, at least subconsciously,

I first looked in my fridge, but wasn’t inspired by what I found there. A trip to a produce market presented me with a wealth of colorful subjects despite it being December. Although tempted by a variety of exotic squashes, I decided to focus on bell peppers (pun intended). They were available in green, red, yellow, and orange. I was much taken with a little orange one which looked to be a miniature pumpkin.

Beside being intriguingly photogenic, the orange bell pepper appealed to me because I had never tasted one and because it was very much the same size as my last month’s machinery subject. This sameness in size meant, when photographed with the same studio setup (including the same camera to subject distance), I would get precisely the same lighting and perspective, which is what I very much wanted.

The only difference in photo technique between my Machinery assignment entry and this image was that I used a five-frame DOF stack for the bell pepper rather than an eleven-frame one. Post processing was exactly the same.

After serving as a photographic subject the pepper contributed to a fine salad. It was very tasty.

Well done on fifth place Morton! I like the shot, and the obvious link between your two shots. The appealing thing about your subject to me, and why I think it was successful in the assignment, is the fact that the bell pepper seems to be a tad past its best. The wrinkles in the skin and the slightly wizened stalk emphasize the feeling of this being a living “organic” object. I’m pleased that this little guy made a nice salad too. Congratulations Morton.

In fourth place, we have Landon Michaelson, with “Bio“, and here’s Landon’s back-story…

That was a great assignment. Really got me thinking. Congrats to all the great entries, ideas and [thanks for] the resulting votes. Now on to the back story for “Bio”.

My first idea was to get out a bag of compost. The great soil that comes out of the process of composting organic waste. Then I recalled I had part of some vertebrae I found washed up on an ocean beach years ago. They have been sitting above my workshop bench on a shelf beside the radial arm saw for a long time. It still has beach sand on it within the crevices. I figured bones are foundational and so different than machines made by humans.

So I started with the idea of shooting down the inside of the vertebrae where the spinal column would be. Thought of what camera might get me the right angle of view. That turned out to be an iPhone and I took some test shots. The next idea was to run some fiber optic cable through it to simulate nerve impulses and some dramatic lighting. But that idea got put on the back burner as the month progressed.

Ultimately I wound up taking some time on the last day of the year to try shooting the object with a “big boy camera” by mounting my 105 VR macro lens on my D700 and having a go at framing the subject various ways looking for a compelling angle.

Bio BTS © Landon Michaelson

Photo number one (above) shows how I grabbed some hunks of white foam core, setup an Alien Bee B800 on a boom arm light stand, mounted a 47-inch octabox to the bee and set it with the face of the octabox vertical with the edge of it touching the floor. Placed a couple of hunks of white foam core on the floor ramped up and resting on the front of the couch. I used various bounce sources on the opposite side of the bones and wound up with a small circular collapsible 5-in-1 reflector using the silver side. It gave the right look to my eye. I triggered the strobe with Pocket Wizard Plus II units. I thought the large diffused light source and the texture of the object combined with some processing would provide a compelling image in the final outcome.

Then after taking a number of shots at various angles I dropped them into Lightroom to have a look.

Bio Attempts © Landon Michaelson

Photo number two (above) shows a couple of the other angles I had tried. I tried some processing ideas as well. Some black and white and some toned to look like bone color. It did not take me long to find that a closeup instead of the whole object was more compelling subject matter and pure black and white was my processing choice. I tried a tight crop in Lightroom with what I had shot and that is when I noticed the sand texture showed up much better as well as the small barnacles on the bone surface in many places. So I went back out into the living room and concentrated on framing in some full frame closeups of what I thought was an interesting section to photograph.

Bio © Landon Michaelson

Camera settings were f/20 for depth, 1/250 to nuke any ambient light at ISO200.

I then selected one file that stood out as the best. Some base processing in Lightroom followed by passing it through Silver Efex Pro 2 provided me with a photo that met my goals. With a few minutes left before midnight I uploaded the image to the assignment gallery. It was a good sendoff to finalize 2011.

Well, thanks for the thorough back-story with a great behind the scenes photos too Landon! It was a great idea of course, and I can totally relate to how you noticed the tiny barnacles when viewing the image zoomed in on screen. A lot of time when I’m shooting things up close like this, it’s how it looks on screen that drives me back to the subject with a new idea or two.

I agree that your winning image was probably best for the Organic assignment, but I also really like the other examples that you posted too. Masterful use of your gear and subject matter, as usual. Congratulations on fourth place Landon!

And in joint second place is Melanie Lebel-Potter, with “Promise of Spring to come“, and here is Melanie’s back-story…

A bit of boredom on a rainy day between Christmas and New Year. That’s what’s behind my picture.

I have been thinking for a while about this assignment and was planning to take a picture of some of my Christmas baking (either finished or un-finished items). I have got few nice shots but nothing that felt organic enough. Christmas came and went and no organic-looking picture…

December 29 was our last day up north before coming back home to the London area. Our plans for a nice country walk got thwarted by horrendous weather so I resorted to take pictures of my mother in law’s hyacinths instead. I noticed a few pots of them around the house at different stages of growth and thought they would make a lovely photographic study.

Promise of Spring to come © Melanie Lebel-Potter

The pots were placed on a coffee table near a large window in the living room. I used my deflector (black “reflector”) as a background and kept moving it up and down during the exposure so we couldn’t see the wrinkles on it. (It worked better than placing it further away, which could not be done easily anyway.) The camera was on a tripod and a cable release helped a lot!

It is only when explaining to my mother in law what I liked about this particular bulb (“It is both elegant and earthy. No, earthy is not the right word… what would it be?.… elegant and… organic. Yes, organic is the word … Oh, Wait!…”) that I realised that I had my shot.

I almost forgot to upload the picture and did it in the middle of a New Year Eve’s party….   I am not only amazed that I have placed for the assignment (co-second with my favourite picture!  ) but also that I entered the picture correctly in the first place… 

You did great Melanie, on the upload and the photo! The fact that it’s obviously a shoot of new growth coming out of the bulb was a great idea, but I think the soil that it left around the base adds a lot to the organic feel. You chose an interesting way to remove the creases in the background too. With it being totally dark and black, you might have gotten away without doing this, but it’s certainly an ingenious way of dealing with creases when using a relatively long shutter speed. It looks like the EXIF data was removed so I can’t see exactly how long the exposure was, but I imagine is was probably over half a second or so to make that possible. Congratulations on joint second Melanie, and thanks for the kind words about my image, which shared second place with yours. Here’s my back-story…

There actually wasn’t really a lot to my shot, “Bunashimeji“. The lighting here was just the ceiling light in my studio, which is two circular florescent tubes with a white dome shaped shade. I placed the mushrooms as far away from the light as possible to get a good angled shadow, and I taped a bit of black velvet to the wall behind them to stop light from bouncing back and filling in the slight shadows. The white balance was adjusted slightly, and I ran it through Color Efex Pro 4 to give the detail/texture a subtle boost.

Bunashimeji © Martin Bailey

I took the most time looking for the best composition to give the mushrooms a bit of character, and eventually I only shot about five frames with a few different apertures for shallower depth of fields. When shooting macro though, even f8 gives a relatively shallow depth of field, and this was the one that I liked best, as it gave us nice amount of texture and detail in the spots on top of the mushrooms, which are called bunashimeji in Japanese.

And finally, in first place is Aviv with “The Organic Market“, and here’s Aviv’s back-story…

WOW – Thanks so much to all who voted.

I have been a huge fan of the MBP Podcast pretty much since picking up photography some year and a half ago. Watching the monthly assignments I was constantly blown away not only by the wonderful images but also by the commitment and effort put into the creation process. Being placed among the winners in my first submitted assignment is extremely humbling, and I will only take that as a sign that I should commit more to the future assignments and to the MBP community.

Since I am not much of a studio photographer and do most of my work in the street. I took the topic of “Organic” as an inspiration to where I want to shoot and what ambiance I’d like in the image. I love farmers’ markets and since I recently became more oriented towards organic growth, I thought the newly established Organic Market in the old Tel-Aviv port would be a perfect location.

The Organic Market © Aviv

It was a great morning for photography and the market offered many subjects to photograph. After covering the little booths, the merchants and the produce I searched for a view that shows the entire market atmosphere. I have to give credit here to a fellow photographer who joined me that morning on a last minute decision and she spotted this restaurant overlooking the roofed market. We set ourselves and our tripods there and the combination of the limited light and the desire to capture motion, lent itself nicely to slow-exposure. I put on the darkest ND filter I had to not over-expose the lit areas while shooting slow enough to get the moving crowd.

I experimented with various compositions and exposures to show people standing still at a booth while others are rushing through the market. I liked how the vendors were constantly buzzing to serve customers and it was nice to capture the baby stroller in there as well; all surrounding the beautiful Organic vegetables in their lively colors.

Thanks again and congratulations to the other winners and to all who submitted really stunning work. Wishing everyone the best for the New Year, and especially to Martin – may 2012 be less dramatic for you than 2011!

Thanks for the well wishes Aviv, and for the great back-story! It sounds like you also put a lot of effort into your shot for December, and it really paid off. The view from above really makes this, and the movement you captured in the customers and market stall owners really enhances the image and does somehow give it a more organic feel.

The bright colors and giving us a title to recognize this as an Organic produce market probably clenched it for you. Great stuff! Thanks for getting involved, and congratulations on making such a splash in your first month!

Thanks to all the winners, and to everyone that got involved with this assignment. As of the time of recording we already had more images uploaded to the January 2012 assignment album than the Dec album finished with, so it looks like more of you have made an effort in January too, which is again very nice to see. Remember the deal I made with you last month, that if we can reach 100 entrants to the monthly assignments during the first half of 2012, I promise to spend the time to approach potential sponsors and line up some prizes for the second six months of this year.

The theme for the January assignment was “Frozen Motion” and we will turn on the voting system for that in the next couple of days, so do drop by the www.mbpgalleries.com Web site and cast your vote for your top five images before February 7, 2012.

The February assignment is “Intimate Landscape”. This idea was originally from Morton Goldberg with actual theme name tweaks for us by Nancy Lehrer. The idea is that you would single out just a tiny part of the landscape but still depict a somewhat grand scene. I for example tend to shoot lanscapes with long lenses, as long as 600mm in fact, to just single out a small area, and I find this approach quite effective. A landscape doesn’t necessary have to be a wide angle or even standard focal length shot. In fact, I think that many landscape shots would benefit from being shot much closer, so let’s give this a try. Thanks for the idea Morton and for your help with the wording Nancy!

You will be able upload your images until the end of February, anywhere in the world, regardless of your time-zone, so don’t forget to post your images.

Show Notes

Assignment Forum: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=24

Assignment Scores: http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/scores2011_1.php

Music from Music Alley: http://www.musicalley.com/

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.

If you want to download Lightroom 4 Beta yourself, you can grab that here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

And here’s a link to Jeffrey Friedl’s “GPS-Support” Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom too:

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/gps

Here’s the video. Don’t forget to hit the full-screen button in the video window, or click on the Vimeo link and go full-screen from there.

Note that there is an iPod/iPhone version of this video in iTunes, but when watching on a computer, the video above is better.

Making the Print: Printing Techniques for the Digital Photographer

The second eBook in C&V’s Masterclass series and my new book is the perfect primer regarding all things related to fine-art printing. No stone is left unturned as I explain everything you need to know about making beautiful, frustration-free prints.

In Part One of the book, I walk you through what it takes to get started, from buying a printer, selecting papers, and printing with profiles to take control of your printing, and we also look at printing with artistic borders.

In Part Two of the book, we Step it Up! and delve into Color Management, and you’ll be calibrating your display and printer (but only if you want to). I take you through some Fine Art Paper options, large format printers, and even take you step by step through creating a canvas gallery wrap and printing for exhibition.

If you have ever felt frustrated by your printing in the past, or you get good results, but not great, a read through my new 65 wide-page book, Making The Print, will get you printing photographs to be proud of in no time, without pulling your hair out.

Do check out the other offerings from Craft & Vision too while you’re there. I own most of these books, and have thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. This is what makes me even prouder than ever to now be a part of the Craft & Vision team of authors.

Special Offers on Making The Print and other C&V PDFs

For the next five days only, use the promotional code PRINT4 when you checkout to buy the PDF version of Making the Print for only $4 OR use the code PRINT20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST January 21, 2012.

I do hope you enjoy Making The Print!

- Martin Bailey

Oh, and don’t just take my word for it, check out these reviews…

By Andrew S. Gibson: http://www.andrewsgibson.com/blog/2012/01/making-the-print-an-ebook-by-martin-bailey/

By Sean McCormack: http://randompanderings.com/?p=1305

By Darryl Bueckert: http://dbueckertphoto.com/ebook-review-making-the-print/

By David duChemin: http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/2012/01/new-ebook-making-the-print-a-masterclass/

By Izabela Korwel: http://www.korwelphotography.com/2012/01/17/tuesday-read-making-the-print-by-martin-bailey/

By Paul Bousquet: http://paulbousquet.tumblr.com/post/16002819349/print

By Aaron Hockley: http://aaronhockley.com/making-the-print-martin-bailey-craft-vision-photography-ebook/

By Jose Antunes: http://www.pixiq.com/article/make-the-print-frame-it-and-expose-it

By Stan Olszewski: http://blog.soskiphoto.com/2012/01/book-review-making-print-by-martin.html

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

The Selection Process

To start, let’s go over my selection process, and recap on a few workflow details. If you recall from my Lightroom Digital Workflow Podcasts, when I finish a shoot, I initially work through all of my images in a Year > Month > Day folder structure, in what I call my Photo Originals folder. I star rate to bring the best images from the shoot to the top, usually using 4 stars at the point, then once I have been through all the images, I show only the four stars to get rid of anything that wasn’t selected in the first run, then single out batches of images of similar subjects, and try to narrow the selection down to just one or two of each, by giving them five stars, and at the same time, I demote anything that doesn’t make the cut to 2 stars, my “once great” rating. I also hit the X key to mark anything that is technically flawed and now even anything that is just a duplicate or insurance shot of the same thing.

As my five stars float to the top, I start to look at the entire selection, to see if anything stands out as not really fitting, and continue to try to get to as few images as possible, hitting the number two key every so often to demote images out of the selection. By now if there’s something that needs to be done like working on the images in Silver Efex Pro 2 or Color Efex Pro 4, I’ll do that and leave a copy in my originals folder. The resulting TIFF or PSD file becomes the five star, and the orginal RAW file becomes a 3 star. That’s just my way of keeping the originals with the final processed version that I’ll take and put onto my Stock site or my gallery. If I don’t need to edit the image at a pixel level, the original RAW file is what I use. I only create a copy when necessary.

I then add titles and keywords, and change the filter in Lightroom to display 3 stars or above, to reshow my original RAW files as well as the modified files, select them all, and select an Export Preset that sends my selected images to my @Finals folder for that particular year. This does mean that I end up with a copy of the RAW or any PSDs etc. in both my originals and my @Finals directly, but I like that redundancy. Of course, I also make other backups locally and in the cloud, but we won’t go into that today. I generally end up with 300 to 500 @Finals each year, and last year I finished up at 491.

So, I then created a 2011 Top Tens Collection in Lightroom, and made that the Target Collection, so that when I hit the B key, the images is added to that selection. I then selected my @Finals > 2011 folder and started to go through my year of images. As you work through the year doing your photography, you start to create a mental list of images that really stand out, so my first pass was just a case of hitting the B key as I saw these images, but once done, I had 48 images in my list, roughly 10% of the year’s best shots.

I now selected my new 2011 Top Tens Collection, and went through again, thinking to myself, “if it was a toss-up between this and another favorite, which would I chose?” and that usually makes it easier to hit the B key again, and trim down the selection. After doing this a few more times, I got my list of candidates down to this 28 images (click on the image to view larger).

My Initial Selection Drilled Down to 28 Images

From this point on, you have to start to get pretty ruthless to drill down to just ten images from a year. I cut my driftwood camel, horse, cow shot because although I really like it, it was a man-made object, and I was still trying at least to reduce this selection down to my nature and wildlife work. Similarly, I removed the following boats in the Souya Harbor shot, though I couldn’t bring myself to remove the shot of the wrecked minesweeper that we came across on New Island in the Falkland Islands on our way back from Antarctica.

As we can see in the following screenshot of my now 15 selects, at this point, I also still had one shot of the Cocoon Tower in Shinjuku from the Gyoen Park, that I really love as a photograph. To the right of that I also still had a shot of a Airship flying over the main street in Ginza, in the center of Tokyo. I begrudgingly hit the B key to remove these two shots, and was down to thirteen, though two of these were now slotted to get an honorable mention, so I was aiming for twelve, just one more to go.

Drilled Down to 15 - Getting Very Tough to Remove Shots!

Continuing to weed out the weakest, the last shot I decided to remove was my “Get the Flock Outta Here” shot from just a few weeks ago, when I’d traveled over to Kotokunuma, a pond where a large group of Whooper Swans winter, and I captured a number of swans in a bit of a ruckus, which I really like too. I removed this because it’s a very busy shot, with water flying everywhere, and maybe more an action shot than anything, but it was a very tough decision.

Get the Flock Outta Here!

I was now down to twelve shots, but two of these alone were not in my top images. Before we move on to the Top Ten, I wanted to talk about a new pattern that I’ve noticed in my work, or at least my way of thinking about my work in 2011.

New Pattern – Synergetic Image Sets

A number of times throughout the year I found myself treating multiple shots as a group of images, where the synergy between two or more photographs raises the group of images above the sum of the individual shots alone. I’ve started to see more beauty in these small sets of images, such as the two iceberg shots from Antarctica that I made into gallery wraps to hang on my studio wall.

Two Iceberg Gallery Wraps

In this case, the top image did make my top ten, but the bottom image did not, but as a pair, or set of images, I find this to be much more than just two images. It works really well, and I enjoy having them both of my wall.

An even more powerful example in my opinion is the two photographs of Whooper Swans in flight that are left in my Collection of Top Ten images, pushing the count to twelve. These really do stick in my mind as two images that I love to look at together. Neither of these images individually would make the cut, as a set, they blow my socks off. The pale background with the white birds appeals to me a lot, and I did select both of these images for upload to my gallery after my first visit to Hokkaido in 2011, from the end of January to the start of February, before I went back with my workshop group in mid-February.

New Pattern – The Appeal as a Print

As you all know, I’m an avid printer, and I’ve found myself more and more being attracted to these sets, not so much as a Web offering, but as a printed set. The subtle shades of grey and pale blue with the white of the swans in these images make an absolutely beautiful set of prints. In this case, I don’t necessarily think that either image alone would look that great as a solo print, but two prints together, slightly off set on the wall looks incredible, and I’m finding myself drawn towards looking at and selecting images and these sets of images based on their appeal as a printed set.

Four Whooper Swans in Flight

Four Whooper Swans in Flight #2

This can also be said of the single print to a degree of course. Some images sing as a print, when they might not be appreciated as much on screen, especially at the size that we share images online in. I’ve had this appreciation for a long time though, and so today really just wanted to talk about my new appreciation for a set of images, and the printed set, in addition to individual prints.

Top Ten

OK, so having covered my selection process, and my growing love of the photograph set, let’s take a look at my top ten images of 2011. This first image happens to have been the first chronologically as well, though I have ordered this list in my favorite order, and we’ll count down from ten to number one.

#10 – Given in to the Elements

Given in to the Elements

This first shot, “Given in to the Elements”, was shot on January 29, during a solo trip to Hokkaido when I pretty much circumnavigated the island. I don’t think I talked about this trip in a Podcast, but basically I traveled by Ferry, which takes about 20 hours, up to the port of Tomokomai, and then drove across to near Sapporo in the south-west corner of Hokkaido, and the drove up the west coast over a couple of days, across the very top, down the east coast, and then over to the where we photograph the Red-Crowned Cranes in my Hokkaido tour that we’ll be starting this year in just a month now.

I noticed this derelict house with the collapsed roof from the weight of the snow as I drove along, just after stopping for another few shots just a mile or so back. There’d been a heavy snow over night, so the white pristine snow coupled with the still heavy sky made for what I consider to be quite a nice image. I worked the scene for some time, with some shots with the house framed more tightly, but this one remained a favorite because we still see that heavy sky. I purposefully framed the shot almost half and half for balance, and love looking at the detail in this shot in a print. This really stands out to me as one of my favorite shots of 2011.

#9 – Shower Me!

At the other extent of the timeline, the next shot is the most recent, shot on December 28. I’d driven over to the Kotokunuma Pond in the Ibaraki Prefecture, as I do as most year’s draw to an end, and spent a couple of days photographing the Whooper Swans that winter there.

This year was especially poignant as I learned that the quake of March 11 had cracked the embankment of this pond, and most of the water had ran off in March, leaving not much more than a puddle. The Swans that had probably intended to stay for a few more days or weeks left, flying back to Siberia for the summer and there was concern that this experience might have caused them to find somewhere else to winter this year, but the crack was fixed around October time, and the water levels are slowly rising, though still about 1.5 meters or five feet lower than usual.

Shower Me!

As you can see in this image though, as they splash around, the water is still quite muddy, but the swans did come back. I counted 75 on my second day there. This shot is very dynamic, and although this was a show of superiority from the swan to the right, it almost makes me feel as though they’re frolicking, and the guy at the back is enjoying his shower in the relative warmth as the ice that was on the pond just a few hours earlier thawed away.

#8 – Swans’ Attension

Number eight is a simple shot from Hokkaido on February 18, and you may recall the story of this shot from my Hokkaido Tour update episodes. We’d just been photographing a tree just down from the beach, where the hot springs that flow into the Kussharo Lake keep the sand warm and the water from freezing just enough for some of the swans that fly down from Siberia for the winter to make this their home until Spring.

Swans' Attention

I saw these swans all looking in the same direction, off to camera left, and grabbed a shot. My friend Graham Morgan asked what I was photographing, and I got one of those affectionate expletives that Graham does so well as he saw the image on my LCD, and looked up to see that the scene was gone.

I like this shot for its simplicity, another trend that I’m finding in my work. The swans are just close enough that the snow storm doesn’t remove much of their clarity, but the rest of the image up to the copse in the distance is gradually hidden by the snow fall.

#7 – QI #2

On our third day in Hokkaido, it was snowing heavily after breakfast back at the hotel, and although we were scheduled to go over to the Kussharo Lake where a couple of hours later I’d shoot the last image that we looked at, I made the call to first go back to the Akan Crane Center, because we hadn’t had any decent snow there over the first few days, and I was unhappy that the group hadn’t been able to get any shots with a beautiful white background.

QI #2

As if it had been prearranged, shortly after we got there and the group had all set up their tripods and long lenses, there was about thirty minutes or so of frenzied mating dances where pairs or birds like this did their Kyuuai dance in the heavy snow that pretty much blotted out the dark top half of the frame that had been getting in the way on previous days, and now with the fresh snow cleaning up the field that had become somewhat soiled, the scene was set for us all to get some shots of a lifetime. This is my favorite from this thirty minutes or so.

#6 – Wrecked Minesweeper

On our way back from Antarctica, we traveled around a few of the Falkland Islands, and this Wrecked Minesweeper had been run up onto the beach at New Island.

Wrecked Minesweeper

We’d seen the ship when we first arrived, but I wasn’t overly thrilled with the scene as the tide was much further in, and it wasn’t obvious that the ship had been run aground. After spending a magical few hours photographic albatross on the other side of the island though, I set up for a few long exposures of this ship with the tide now further out, as we waited for some others in the group to get back.

You might recall that I did a color version of this shot in my Color Efex Pro 4 video, which I also like a lot, but again, the simplicity of this shot wins me over for my top ten.

#5 - Gentoo Point – Antarctica

When I first got back from Antarctica, I’d have said that this shot, from Gentoo Point, was going to be my favorite for the year. I still love it a lot, and have a print of this at 24×36″ on my studio wall, but it kind of got pipped at the post by the next four images in the larger scale of things throughout the year. Part of it is most certainly a heightened appreciation for the simpler image, but this shot is still in my mind a kind of classic scene, even though I say it myself.

Gentoo Point - Antarctica

This too is a long exposure at just under two minutes, which gave the sea a cotton candy feel to it in the bottom right side, but also made the clouds flow a little, which coupled with the magic of Silver Efex Pro 2, created a beautiful dramatic sky. The distant peaks add to the drama and then the seven penguins that had stayed almost perfectly still for two minutes top this off, especially in a large print.

#4 – Deception Island Iceberg

As we sailed home, past Deception Island, this beautiful blue iceberg caught my eye, and with the help of a bit of Lightroom processing then later some Color Efex Pro, I was able to really bring out the heavy sky and blue of the ice to surprisingly to me, bring this shot ahead of the Gentoo Point shot in my ranking for the year.

Deception Island Iceberg

This is one of the pair that we looked at earlier, that I do believe stands well on its own too. Note that this wide 2:1 ratio is something else that I’ve found myself doing quit a lot this year too. The gallery wraps that I have on my wall here are 13×26 inches, and another size of these that I’d like to do is 20×40. That would be impressive, if I had the room left on my wall.

#3 – Reverence

Shot number three is from February 13, on the Snow Monkey leg of my Winter Wildlife Wonderland Tour. I’m still enjoying this shot so much, despite the fact that the young monkey’s face is very slightly out of the depth of field.

Reverence

This was a bit of a grab shot as I saw the youngster watching adult snow monkey shaking the snow of his mane, and I didn’t quite get it lined up squarely enough to get both of their faces sharp. Still, the expression on the youngsters face was enough for me to not only keep this in my selection, but to secure their place in my top ten for the year.

#2 – Journey Begins

Number two was a bit of a surprise, almost like a present. On the fifth of May my wife and I went for a walk in the Shinjuku Gyoen park here in Tokyo, and we’d been trying for a while to time it so that I could capture a macro photo of the seeds of a dandelion puff-ball as my wife blew them away. The timing of this was incredibly difficult, and she was starting to get frustrated, and this was one of the last shot that we made.

Journey Begins

When we got home, I went through the images, and in the original color version, I wasn’t really taken with this shot at all, so left the images in my library as they were too good to throw out, but not good enough to process.

Journey Begins (original)

Then, towards the end of August, as I recuperated from my surgery in June, to remove that pesky brain tumor, I went back through my library and these images jumped out at me. I figured that if the color version wasn’t working, it was at least worth trying a black and white version, so I threw this into Silver Efex Pro 2 and immediate fell in love with what I saw.

A little bit of selective darkening on the right side and the bottom below the seeds as they fly away, and a color filter to darken the background even more really brought this shot out for me, and this is one of those that made the hair on the back of my head stand up when I held a print of it.

#1 – Tanchou Study #7

Tanchou Study #7

At the end of my first trip to Hokkaido, after circumnavigating the island doing landscape work, I hooked up with a friend and went to the Akan Crane Center for a few more days before sailing home again on the ferry.

During those few days, I made a number of close-up crane shots that I call my Tanchou Studies. Tanchou is just the Japanese word for the Red-Crowned Cranes. I’ve been making these studies each year when I go, and always like the results, despite them starting out as a way of killing time while we wait for the birds to dance or fly in or out of the field at the center.

This particular shot though became an instant favorite of this year’s series of studies, and has pretty much stayed at the top of my list for favorite shots of this year, and may even be my favorite shot of my own, of all time. I just love it.

Again, the simplicity is appealing, to me and the fact that the white along the left side of the bird as we look at the photo is darker than the background, but then the right side, being hit by the light from a slightly overcast sky, is just a bit brighter than the background, giving us just enough separation to make us think.

The angle of the head and the eye, even though it doesn’t have much of a catch-light, has reflected just enough of the white of the snow to separate it from the black of the feather on the crane’s face. To top it off for me, the crane has that beautiful splash of red on its crown, giving us a nice color contrast. This to me really portrays this beautiful bird at it’s best, despite it not being a dancing shot like the one we looked at earlier.

2012

So, there you have it. That’s my Top Ten shots from 2011, a year that came with its fair share of challenges too. As I mentioned earlier, and as many of you already know, in June we found that I had a sizable brain tumor, and by the time we found it, I’d started to have funny turns and then as we started to work on some plans for the surgery, it caused a kind of a mild stroke that caused a change of plans, and semi-emergency surgery.

Of course, the fact that I’m still here, now working again and Podcasting each week, shows that not only was the surgery successful, but I’ve recovered well, thanks to the amazing staff at the Jikei University Hospital in Shimbashi, Tokyo.

You might also recall that although most of the tumor over my pituitary gland was removed, the surgeons decided that it was too dangerous to also remove the cyst that was the size of a golf ball in the right side of my brain, knowing that they had a good chance of shrinking that down with medication later. Despite the fact that I had an allergic reaction to the planned medication that almost killed me from liver failure a week later, I started on some new medication that would hopefully shrink the cyst a month after the surgery.

An MRI scan after two months of taking the medication, and three months after the surgery, showed that the cyst had shrunk to around 1/10th of it’s original size. Then, last weekend, I went back for another MRI, almost six months after starting on the new medication, and as the neurosurgeon, Dr. Joki, flicked through the MRI images with the wheel of his mouse, he had to do a double take. He went right past the only two images that showed anything at all. He was jumping up and down with delight as he exclaimed “We’ve won!”.

He sat down again and we shook hands, with our other hands cupped around the back of each others, and he smiled a broad smile as I fought back the tears and we looked back at the screen to see a tiny slither of soft tissue that is what’s left of the cyst. I tiny bit of membrane. That’s all there is now. The MRI also shows a bit of space above the slither of membrane, which means that it is no longer putting any pressure at all on my brain.

My wife was with me, and the three of us couldn’t believe our eyes really. Dr. Joki had thought it would take much longer to get rid of the cyst, and he’d beaten himself up about having to leave it in, in the first place. He told us though that I’d lost a lot of blood, and every time they went after the cyst, I bled so much that I any more would have meant a blood transfusion. Also, he feared that had they gone after it, they would have damaged my optic nerve, or something else, maybe causing paralysis, and he knew that I’d just given in my day job and started out as a full time professional photographer, and thought that a photographer without his eyesight might as well be dead, so he decided to stop there, again, knowing that they could probably shrink the cyst with medication.

It was touch and go for a while, with the allergic reaction and everything, but his decision turned out to be perfect. I’m so grateful to not only have come out of this alive, but to have no side affects that we are yet aware of at least. I’m grateful to Dr. Joki, the neurosurgeon, for his skills as a surgeon but also for having the wherewithal to stop when he did. I’m also grateful to Doctors Matsuwaki and Mori on the ENT department  for their part, making it possible to do the operation through my nose, and then taking care of me afterwards. I’ve been washing the back of my nose out with salt water every morning and night for the last six months, but that also stopped last week, as things are now cleared up enough for that to no longer be necessary.

Of course, there’s a whole plethora of other people that cared for me in the hospital during that time, and none of it would have been possible without the entire infrastructure, but I’m just so grateful for the way things went.

As we welcome in 2012, a number of friends online said that they bet I was happy to see the back of 2011, but that really isn’t the case. For sure, I was unlucky to get the tumor in the first place, but I was so lucky to have been here in Tokyo at this point in time, and to have been almost miraculously channeled through to these amazing doctors from the first few hospitals that I visited. It’s almost a miracle that I came out of 2011 at all, but I truly feel that I’ve come out of it stronger than ever, so to me, 2011 was not a bad year. I’m still able to do what I love, and love what I do.

I wanted to also once again thank my brother Sean and his wife Zena for coming over to support us, and of course my wife Yoshiko, for their support during that traumatic time. Finally I once again want to thank each and every one of you for your friendship and support, and thank you for sticking around. That was my 2011, and here’s to what I think will be an amazing 2012, and beyond.

Show Notes

Music by UniqueTracks

Audio

Use this audio player if you’d prefer to listen:

Subscribe in iTunes for Enhanced Podcasts delivered automatically to your computer.

Download this Podcast in MP3 format (Audio Only).

Download this Podcast in Enhanced Podcast M4A format. This requires Apple iTunes or Quicktime to view/listen.

Gallery
Click a thumbnail to view the images from this post with limited shooting info. Once the image has opened, you can navigate back and forth by clicking the image.