PhotoNetCast Podcast Episode #10 - It’s all about Books

Know of other Photography books that are worthy of recommendation? Feel free to share. I’m always looking for great photography books.

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Not too far off in the distance from Mesa Market is Factory Butte and a wide stretch of desert wilderness. This area is filled with amazing formations created over tens if not hundreds of thousands of years and a unique ecosystem filled with a variety of plants and animals that have evolved to survive the harsh arid climate. This beautiful yet arid land has been under pressure from off-road enthusiasts who use the sandy flats and high banking ancient buttes & dunes as 4×4 fodder.

Photographed: Factory Butte in the distance with 4×4 tracks marring the landscape in the foreground

Randy has been involved in trying to work with local and state government agencies in addition to environmental groups to help preserve this unique ecosystem from destruction by recreational motorists. As with most environmental battles the ongoing battle to preserve this land has been fought for sometime and is often reminiscent of a “David and Goliath” type battle. Randy who is on the front lines due to the location of his home and business has stepped up to face the odds and fight for what he feels is right. After you talk with him about the subject you can’t help but feel charged to make a difference. It is that facet of Randy’s personality that is most infectious.

Randy personifies the difference an individual can make, but it takes a lot more than an individual willing to publicly stand up for what he believes is right. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is an organization that works with Randy and other like minded individuals to fight for the preservation of wild lands and endangered plant & animal species in Utah. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) website is a critical resource for those interested in helping preserve this and other wilderness areas in Southern Utah.

Off-Road Vehicles - Searching for Balance and Quiet in Utah’s Wilderness

With very recent news of the Bureau of Land Management proposing 2 million acres of land including the Factory Butte area to be opened for oil exploration and off-roading it is critical for those who value our environment to step up and help individuals like Randy Ramsley and organizations like SUWA.

BLM proposes 2 million acres for oil exploration, off-roading - Salt Lake Tribute

While enjoying a cinnamon roll at Mesa Market, one of Randy’s signature pastries, I was pointed to his copy of Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation. This book details photographically the impact of motorized recreational vehicles not just on the Coyote Buttes area, but other fragile desert and mountain environments. If there is any doubt to the lasting impact these vehicles and activities have on the environment this book clearly put them to rest. As if it wasn’t enough to discuss this book with Randy and Guy Tal, who introduced me to Randy, by the time I got home I had a book review of Thrillcraft by Roger Kaye in my mailbox via the June Wilderness Watch newsletter.  This was hardly coincidence. Those that are fighting for the protection of this area are working hard to raise awareness to this issue. Given all their sacrifice and effort it raises the questions, “What can you do to help?”

If you can’t join Randy in his local fight then consider taking action via the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) Action Center. To find out about issues impacting wilderness in your area consider joining and supporting Wilderness Watch or Earth Justice. It goes with out saying if you’re passing through the Capitol Reef National Park area via Highway 24 stop by Mesa Market to support Randy Ramsley

Additional write-ups to check out:

Factory Butte and Off-Road Vehicles
An interview with Randy Ramsley - by Guy Tal

Technorati Tags: Randy Ramsley, SUWA, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Caineville, Utah, environment, BLM, conservation, Caineville, Utah

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Those that were with me when I took this panoramic thought I was a little nuts. I’m finding that is a more common reaction than not when out in the field. For better or worse I can’t stop myself from pursuing ultra-high resolution photographs of the locations I travel to.

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The Wave - Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness

More Wave Photos… and The Wave photo gallery

Technorati Tags: landscape, photography, panoramic, photo, The Wave, Arizona, Utah, Paria Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness, photography, podcast

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In a ruling Wednesday, the federal appeals court in Washington said that just because a software programmer gave his work away did not mean it could not be protected.

The decision legitimizes the use of commercial contracts for the distribution of computer software and digital artistic works for the public good. The court ruling also bolsters the open-source movement by easing the concerns of large organizations about relying on free software from hobbyists and hackers who have freely contributed time and energy without pay.
- New York Times

Photosynth the next development - Finding Paths through the World’s Photos
This demonstration is eye opening and a good look into the window of development applying realworld application to this technology. If you missed what Photosynth is there was another demo previously mentioned in my post Photosynth the future of socially networked images or something bigger?. For those who want to cut to the chase here is the video link: Photosynth demo by Blaise Aguera y Arcas at TED

Amazing Womens Fencing Photos from the Boston Globe
Amazing Women’s Fencing photos from an amazing week at the Olympics. It’s a shame this sport among many others aren’t getting coverage on TV.

Faces of Beijing photo essay by photographer Kris Krug
I was made aware of the Faces of Beijing photo essay of by Kris on Twitter and was very much taken by the unique perspective of the people, city and atmosphere. Very much worthy of checking out.

PHOTO PROJECT: The $50 Film Camera - Epic Edits
Brian Auer is running a photo project titled The $50 Film Camera. The project is sponsored with prizes to be given out. If you’re an old film shooter looking to brush the dust off your old camera or a new photographer looking for a reason to experiment this is the project for you.

Making a Photo Flipbook
A fun alternative to showing photographs or at least a series of photographs. How to make Handmade Flipbooks via The Curious

Photographers I Like a series at Marvin’s World
The first in this series highlights fellow PhotoNetCast‘er Martin Gommel
Photographers I like - Part 1

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Word is that the San Francisco City Board of Supervisors will be taking up the topic to address public concern. This is starting to get greater visibility in local news. I was interviewed Thursday by KRON News on the matter and tried to share a balanced concern for public health & safety while keeping an eye toward a modern wildlife conservation effort.

More Urban and San Francisco Coyote Photos & Articles

If you’re a pet owner like myself be sure to keep your pets supervised and on leash in addition keep an eye out for Coyotes at dusk and in the evening. Also if you’re driving be careful at this time as well. Coyotes are swift creatures but not swift enough to dodge a fast moving vehicle. That being said I do hope that local officials and the California Department of Fish and Game think out of the box in how to manage the situation. Predators can’t continuously be eradicated while their prey explode in population in urban areas. With a little luck and proactive management San Francisco can avoid a panic about Coyotes.

Technorati Tags: Coyote, San Francisco, News, Presidio, California Department of Fish and Game,   Canis latrans, wildlife, photography, stock photo

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Technorati Tags: wildlife, video, TED, crow, Joshua Klein

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While I was busy snapping away Guy snuck in a photo of me in action (see below).

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Photograph courtesy of Guy Tal

For more about Guy Tal listen to EXIF and Beyond: An Interview with Guy Tal

Technorati Tags: Utah, Panoramic, photography, landscape, sunrise

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4 Ways to Boost Lightroom 2 Performance

1. Drive Space

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Have as much free space as possible on your start-up hard drive. If you don’t know how much free space you have check the Volume Browser.

Tip - The Volume Browser - Matt Kloskowski at Adobe Photoshop Killer Lightroom Tips

Although dated information and not Lightroom 2 specifi the core message is a good one…
Quickly clear space by deleting PSD files that you accumulate over time. Granted you’ll want to back them up first.  Friday Tip - PSDs and Drive Space - via Matt K. again at APKLT.

2. Catalog Optimization

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Utilize the Catalog Optimization feature (after backing up your catalog) and adjust the Preview Cache to the appropriate resolution. If you don’t need Metadata suggestions deactivate it to help boost performance.
Note: Changing the preview size will not impact existing images in Lightroom. To apply these changes to existing preview images use Library -> Previews -> Discard 1:1 Previews menu item. This can take a while so it might be best to conduct this overnight depending on the size of your catalog. Also note that such optimization steps need to be applied to each individual catalog you may have.

Lightroom Tip#17: Speeding Up LR 2.0 Catalogs - Outdoor Images Fine Art

3. Camera Raw Cache

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Every time you open an image in Camera Raw the full resolution of the image must be loaded into Camera Raw…as you can imagine, this can be pretty processor intensive…the Camera Raw cache will cache recently opened images to make re-opening them faster. There’s a preference limit to determine the size and the cache will remain constant in size by flushing out older cache files when newer images are loaded into Camera Raw.

In the Camera Raw preferences, you can choose how large a cache to allow, where it is stored and you can purge the cache from there. If you have a large amount of free disk space on your drive, I would actually suggest increasing the cache for improved performance. If space is tight (like on a laptop) you can reduce the cache preference.

I would not be inclined to flush the cache if you have a lot of drive space…in fact I would suggest increasing the cache amount–if performance is important to you…

- Jeff Schewe via Luminous Landscape Forum

4. Viewing in Develop mode vs Library Grid mode

For example, on one of my catalogs, I only ever look in Grid mode if I’m in the Library module, or I’m switching to Develop module (which reads the full res file anyway), so on that catalog I have the smallest lowest quality previews - I don’t need anything bigger.

On another catalog, I often view the images in Loupe mode on a 23″ high res screen, so those I have set to a large preview and a medium quality.

When you say you’re having to wait 10 seconds for a preview to show up, I’m guessing you’re in Develop module? The thing you need to understand about that is that it first shows the preview file, then does a quick read of the raw file, frees up the sliders, and then finishes reading the raw file properly. Your preview setting will only affect the very first view you see, and after that it’s down to disc read speed, whereas in Library module you are viewing the previews you’ve already created. Best thing you can do in Library module is to render previews before you start looking at the files, either in the Import dialog or by selecting all and using Library menu > Previews > Render Standard Previews.

- Victoria Bampton - Lightroomforums.net

2 Quick Productivity Tips:

1. Use Shortcuts

Use Keyboard Shortcuts Mac Version (PDF) and Windows version (PDF) via “The Lightroom Queen” Victoria Bampton

2. Regularly Back Up Your Catalog(s)

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Lightroom > Catalog Settings > General - Back Up Catalog

Once a copy has been made be sure to back it up to reliable media whether a second drive to keep off-site or to a DVD. Nothing can impact productivity more than losing your catalog.

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Known Incompatibility Issues:

Nvidia 9600GT sluggishness with 3D Settings

3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings > Multi-display/mixed GPU Acceleration

By default it should be multiple display performance mode. Change this to a single display performance mode.

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Lightroom 2, performance, tips, optimization

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Wall Arch Sunrise, Arches National Park

Wall Arch Collapses - U.S. National Park Service

Technorati Tags: Wall Arch, Arches National Park, landscape, photography, photo, stock photo, sunrise

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The much-awaited Adobe Lightroom 2.0 was released July 29th after a brief 4 month Beta period. With out hesitation, for reasons I’ll explain later, I upgraded my copy of Lightroom to version 2 the day it was announced. Now that I’ve had a chance to use the application in real world conditions for the past week I wanted to share my impressions of it.

Since Lightroom went into its initial Beta I’ve been sold on the concept of non-destructive editing of my RAW files. Lightroom 1.0 for all intents and purposes was a great first step combining a state of the art RAW converter, basic digital asset management technology and thanks to Phil Clevenger a revolutionary user interface. Additional functionality to ease printing and web gallery output rounded out the application. Streamlined to help photographers more quickly manage large and small quantities of photography alike Lightroom’s release still seemed to confuse some diehard Photoshop users. What about localized edits and masks? For that Lightroom 1.0 users would still need to rely on Photoshop, initiating the editing of a file in Lightroom and working on a copy in Photoshop. All in all a great first step but far from reaching it’s full potential.

Enter Lightroom 2.0, building on the applications core functionality non-destructive photo editing has been taken to the next level. In version 2 the strengths of each core function has been enhanced. The new features that are making the biggest impact in my day-to-day use of the program include:

Smart Collections

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This feature single-handedly was the biggest reason behind my upgrade. When I learned this feature was in Lightroom 2 Beta I knew I would upgrade to version 2 immediately. The manual collections with in the first version of Lightroom were helpful, but severely limiting. More times than I can count I’ve needed to generate collections based on specific keywords (location, subject, etc.), date or rating. The ability to dynamically pull together collections of images across multiple photo sets is incredibly helpful and a huge time saver. This is especially true when looking to create a new collection or build out existing collections as new photos are added to an image library.

Local Adjustments
Lightroom 1.x was all about global adjustments such as color correction, curve adjustments, vignetting, etc. Lightroom 2 now has the ability to apply local adjustments through the following editing tools: Crop Overlay tool, Spot Removal brush, Red Eye Correction tool, Graduated Filter mask, and Adjustment Brushes mask. The Crop Overlay tool provides a quick means of cropping and even leveling ones photo. The Spot Removal brush has been enhanced to clone or heal with a user defined opacity. The Red Eye Correction tool now provides a drag and correct feature to customize the shape of the correction area. The Graduated Filter mask enables gradient-based masks to adjust exposure, brightness, etc. (more on this below). Finally the Adjustment Brush mask enables you through a brush tool to adjust exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness, color and even skin softness.

Knowing Adobe I can see the types of Local Adjustment tools expanding in the future and/or having the existing tools refined further. For images that require minor edits or tweaks these editing tools give photographers a greater degree of flexibility and saves time in cutting out the need to use Photoshop for relatively basic types of edits. I wasn’t missing localized edits too badly in the first version of Lightroom, but now that I have them at my fingertips I don’t know how I lived with out them.

Graduated Filter Masks

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This local adjustment tool is worthy of noting individually due to the broad impact it likely will have on my work and the work of others. Managing scenes with a dynamic range beyond the capabilities of a cameras film or sensor has troubled photographers for decades. These days people are increasingly using HDR to deal with this or are double-processing RAW files. For those like myself that prefer pre-processing techniques Graduated Neutral Density Filters have been the solution.

The Graduated Filter masks provide a means to handle an image in a similar fashion to both double-processing and the use of Graduated Neutral Density filters. A Graduated Filter mask(s) can be applied adjusting exposure and/or brightness. Rather than processing the same RAW file twice to double-process or use a Graduated Neutral Density filter when taking a photo one can simply apply the appropriate mask to balance the exposure. It should be noted these masks aren’t just limited to exposure and brightness adjustments. Graduated filter masks can also be applied for contrast, saturation, clarity, and sharpness adjustments.

Does this function equate to the death knell of Graduated Neutral Density filters? I would argue no. Being able to manage light before it reaches ones film or sensor will never go out of style. Certainly use of the Graduated Filter mask can only help, but for my line of work it’s not a replacement. Over time perhaps my tune will change. In the meantime I look forward to experimenting with this adjustment tool to find its limits and sweet spot of use.

Centralized UI for Editing Tools
From a User Interface (UI) perspective the already streamlined Lightroom interface has been improved. When in the “Develop” module of the application, editing tools used for local adjustments are now tightly centralized in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Having the Crop Overlay tool, Spot Removal brush, Red Eye Correction tool, Graduated Filter mask, and Adjustment Brushes mask in one consistent location is a real time saver particularly if using a large monitor or dual screens.

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Volume Management

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Lightroom 2 now has a more intuitive means of visually displaying photo directories on their respective hard drives and the status of the drive to let you know if the files can be accessed. Seemingly simple in concept this was lacking in the first version of the application and was a pet peeve of mine. In the original version of Lightroom it was a common occurrence to navigate through your library find a photo set, load the set to view image previews, click on an image and then be told the image was off-line. For those with photos stored across multiple drives the inclusion of this feature now makes it easier to identify where content resides and whether or not the drive is connected or turned on saving you time and frustration.

CS3 Integration

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Expanding on the “Edit in Adobe Photoshop” feature it is now possible in Lightroom 2 to select photographs and “Open as Smart Object in Photoshop”, “Merge to Panorama in Photoshop”, “Merge to HDR in Photoshop” or “Open as Layers in Photoshop”. Clearly the big take away from these added functions are Adobe’s willingness to streamline more complex image creation. I don’t expect Lightroom to pick up built-in HDR or Panoramic functionality, but the fact it is now easier and faster to utilize this functionality in Photoshop is worthy of praise.

Multiple Display Support
The majority of photographers dream of having a computer setup utilizing multiple monitors. For those lucky enough to have a multiple monitor configuration on their workstation or laptop this feature will make you very happy. In this version of Lightroom Adobe took multiple monitor support one step further by providing 4 multiple display functions to assist in image sorting, ranking and comparison. The multiple display functions include Grid, Loupe, Compare and Survey.

These display options should sound familiar as they’re the same display options available in the default single monitor mode. The loupe view for the second monitor does include 3 viewing mode options: Normal, Live and Locked. The Normal mode displays the same image on both monitors with the option to set a different zoom ratio. This is helpful when evaluating subtle edits. The Live mode turns the second monitor into one large loupe displaying the portion of the image your cursor is over in the scaled original on the main monitor. The Locked mode displays a fixed size preview of an image on the second monitor. Changing the image requires the use of keyboard commands “alt/option and Enter”.

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Enhanced Sharpness Tool

The ability to make localized adjustments for sharpness is another time saving function, but what really makes this function note worthy is the ability to utilize Auto Masks. After specifying your brush size, edge softness and flow rate you can activate the “Auto Mask” option. When active brush strokes are confined to areas of similar color. This works particularly well when keeping sharpness adjustments to specific objects with in your image. As with other localized adjustments a circular point will mark the spot of the completed adjustment. Mousing over the circular point will activate a highlight of the effected area.

Other Features of Note

• 64-bit processing support - For those with the latest Mac OS and Windows systems Lightroom will take advantage of their advanced memory handling capabilities.
• Print Packages - Quickly choose and customize print package layouts to conserve paper and ink.
• Output Sharpening - Select from sharpening presets for different types of print and web output.
• Enhanced Batch Processing - In addition to naming and organizing photos on import from your CF cards it is now possible to apply preset adjustments.
• Camera Profiles - Lightroom 2 (and Camera RAW 4.5) now support alternate camera profiles that can be loaded and referenced in the Camera Calibration panel. Profiles that match camera manufacturer color appearances such as Canon’s Picture Styles (Standard, Landscape, Neutral, Portrait and Faithful) could be applied via this feature.

Concluding Thoughts
The Adobe Lightroom team has been exceptionally busy the past several months and they’ve done an exceptional job in hearing their users via the Beta program. Lightroom 2 has been one of the best upgrades I’ve invested in over the past year or two. As Lightroom improves so too does my end product and overall productivity. As a photographer striving to make the most of his limited time Lightroom has proven to be an essential asset.

Adobe Lightroom Features and Shortcuts - Lightroom Journal

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Lightroom 2, Lightroom, software, review

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