SoFoBoMo 2010: the editing process

Manila, June 2010
One of the SoFoBoMo 2010 rejects

As a progress report, I thought it might be useful to some to go through the edit ting process I've been using. I don't do bulk edits in this way very often and so SoFoBoMo is also an opportunity for me to hone my skills in that area, too. here is the step-by-step:

1. Having imported all the photos and catalogued as normal (I had 527 frames taken), I make first cut selections. I'm using Lightroom exclusively for processing and editing as it's a quick and easy one stop shop for the whole workflow. First cut is a fast process - anything that seems like it fits the theme and appears properly composed, exposed and in focus. 226 picked, took about 15 minutes.
2. Work on the first few to develop the visual look, exposure, toning, contrast etc. That takes a few minutes per photo, maybe I spent an hour sorting that out. The key parts of the development got turned into Lightroom presets, especially the toning, which speeds up the rest of the work.
3. Work through the first-cut to pick the ones to edit. Again, pretty fast and I develop a lot, rather than waste time mulling over selection. With the presets developed I spend only a couple of minutes on most photos. A few have local adjustments which take a bit longer but I doubt I spent more than 10 minutes on any one frame. As this is about a fast turn-around, I want good not perfect works of art. And consistency is more important to me than a few individual highlights. 102 edited.
4. I developed a Smart Collection to gather up the edits as they were completed, I'll use the collection for the final sorting and selection. I'm not into the book layout proper yet but I have a few distinct page forms in mind: double-truck, full bleed, single page, multiple per page. The 102 will get ratings based on likely page type and sorted into order of pages in the collection. I may or may not use them all.
5. From there, It'll be new export presets to turn the edits into the final images for the book. Part of that preset will be automated numbering and filing so they're all in order in a separate folder on my computer. Having them sorted that way speeds up entry into the book layout.

Even though I've been working on editing all week, I've actually spent very little time each day. 100 at, say, three minutes each is only 5 hours of work to get to the final cut plus the original hour to get the visual look right, meaning about an hour a night this week.

An interesting challenge

Floating leaves 2, Manila, February 2010

After my initial efforts picturing the floating leaves in digital, I reckoned it would make an interesting subject for a short series using the large format camera with the goal of producing some nice prints for the wall. And so, at he weekend, I decided to start on that effort, while the idea was fresh.

turns out it's quite a challenge for a few reasons. For a start, I've not done any close up work like this with the LF camera. there is the difficulty of working with the camera pointed at the ground, mounted low. Not too easy. Especially when it's suspended out over the water.

I also didn't realise how much the leaves move in the wind. In the course of the 45 minutes or so of fiddling around, they did 2 complete laps of the pool. With the narrow field of view I'm working with they traverse the ground glass in about 5 seconds. This will be a challenge of weather and shutter speed, too.

Needless to say, I didn't get a single exposure in. Instead i decided to bring it indoors and spend some time in the evening practising the set-up required. Below is a shot of part of my experimenting.

Staring at the floor, Manila, February 2010

With a 210mm lens mounted and working at about 2-3 feet above ground I'm getting out close to full bellows extension, hence the front standard hinged forward.

Another thing I've learnt from the digital trials is the difficulty of the white balance for these shots. It looks like I might have to get a grey card to help.

Fortunately there is no time limit on this - I can shoot almost any day while I'm living here, so plenty of opportunity to try things out. And I won't be exposing a single sheet of film until I'm happy I've got the technique sorted.

Yet another new blog

Some time ago, Paul Butzi (who seems to do a lot of my creative thinking) postulated some ideas for photographic projects. One he suggested was a long-term collection of photos: one from every month for ten years. And that got me thinking - I had a move up-coming at the time (now completed) which would form an ideal start point for collecting photos of the places I live. Over ten years I'd expect to live in 3 or 4 different locations, forming some nice sections to a developing project as my life and surrounds develop.

And so I've started such a project: Impressions of Place. I'm putting it to its own blog because then I can write about my impressions as I gather together photographs. That keeps this blog to be more directly about photography and the new project as its own entity. Along the way I'll also post my usual eclectic mix on my photo of the day, and I might well collect impressions from places I travel to in the meantime: vacations and the like - to see how those impressions compare and contrast with those of my home location. I also want to see if my impressions and photography have influences on one another.

The way I'll write it will probably be 3 or 4 posts a month, together with a number of photographs. At some point I'll need to choose the photo of the month for each month. That will be a special post at the end of each month. I've already put together the first few posts.

Unfamiliarity

Manila, December 2009 (as it came out of the camera)

Use a camera for any length of time, take a bunch of pictures and you get to feeling you know how it works. Conventional wisdom in the photography game. But I also realised that one needs to be familiar with the equipment in a range of situations, too.

Last week our department at work had a social, so I was snapping a bunch of pictures at the restaurant with my LX3. I've taken loads of photos with it, am comfortable with it in a range of situations. Except this was new for me. Normally I'd have a rangefinder and fast film in this sort of environment.

Getting home, I found most of my shots were rubbish, grossly under-exposed for the most part. Something I hadn't realised was that the LX3 metering is strongly protective of highlights in its matrix mode, much more so that my Canon SLRs. And so, with a mixture of bright back-lighting and darkened table lighting, I got a lot of shadows (like the one at the top of the post). No flash - I don't do that. And after a few drinks and with the general aim to be quick, I wasn't chimping and playing around with settings.

At least I've learnt for the next time, I suppose.

Learning cycles

Manila, November 2009

Two related trains of though in one post: a blogger BOGOF.

Like many amateur photographers, digital saw my skills improve dramatically. The short review cycle & low cost per exposure made it easier to experiment and review the results. Although I now have my kit mastered, and all the technical stuff down, digitial was handy to learn by playing with exposure & focus modes & all the extra bits beyond DoF. Having a screen to chimp away kept that cycle really short. Without the short feedback, the learning would be slower: for one, I'd also have to remember all the things I was doing at the time.
Having the sort of brain that likes to experiment and analyse these things also helped.

But I've really got past that. Now on a typical afternoon walk I'll take less exposures and return with more I like and develop. Hit rate has gone way up because I have the equipment nailed.

And that leads to the second train of though. Like Paul Butzi, I like to use the short feedback loop of digital to get to grips with what I've just been doing. Helps me learn about my photography and what it means. I could go out one day, try a bunch of things and use that learning the very next day. For times when I'm shooting consecutive days, that's really handy.

But there is also more to it than that. I find that keeping close to the taking of the picture helps with linking the results with the intention. What did I see, feel & understand by it? Which images reflect that state I was in? Waiting a month will have that lost, and I'd just be back to taking nice shots of stuff. I'm not an "Art is Verb" kind of guy like Paul but I find the means to the end is important in defining that end point. Understanding how I'm getting there helps me understand where I am, and can, go.

Sometimes I do go back to images after some time, or develop ones I previously overlooked. But those new images are different things than the ones of the time. And for the photographs I am taking at the moment, the understanding I get in the "right now" is important to me.

The rational photographer

It's been something I've been thinking about for a while: my mental process when working, specifically for photography. My thinking has been prompted by several blogs I've read describing a sort of unconscious or emotional approach to the whole business. This post has finally happened thanks to Paul Butzi (again).

My thinking is far too rational to get lost in some unconscious "flow". Almost every shot, every experiment I try is logically thought out. Often this works just at the edge of conscious thought and can be hard to verbalise or explain but it is there.

Over the years I've often had cause to think on how I think. People often comment that I don't think like others, in that my mental processes seem to work differently than most. Not better, just different. I also think fast, churning lots of options in a short space of time. My brain is constantly evaluating the world around me, considering evidence, thinking of the options and possibilities. Good attributes for a scientific worker, not typical of the artistically inclined.

And so it seems to be with photography. I carefully evaluate everything, considering what I see, how I see it, how I want to represent it. It's a background mental process that seems to be constantly working. On the outside, it may be hard to tell - when it's going well the whole thing can take the blink of an eye. If you saw me plonk down my tripod and crank out the shots, at times it might seem unconsidered. And just because it takes you some time to work through a process doesn't mean it takes me the same amount of time.

Why do I not think this is some sort of instinctive approach? Because this thinking and outcome works just the way it does, for me, in scientific or mathematical work. Often I can "see" the answer but can then consciously step through the logic to get there. It is similar with my photography. See, analyse, devise, execute, test the variables. I don't always get it right and I then actively learn from the mistakes: make improvements, get new ideas, discover new things by accident. As my English teacher once said of me: efficiently analytical but lacking in empathy. It's the way I am so I work with what I've got.

This may be hard to understand: it's certainly tricky to describe. For the emotional crowd it is likely hard to relate to, just as I find the more emotional approach very hard to relate to my own experience. There was a point in time when I tried to explain others' process in terms of my own experience but I realised that was specious. That just becomes denial through ignorance. So I try hard to understand my own thinking and how others think and work. What I learn from other photographers seems to help with my understanding of others in general.

Media are multi

Another interesting rumination from Paul Butzi. Leads me to think - paper media and electronic media are currently poles apart, maybe at odds with one another. But yet we want convergence, or at least translation: the ability to put together electronic files easily put to paper, or paper files readily turned into 1s and 0s.

The problem seems that those writing the standards are thinking in small boxes. Most mark-up is designed for online text, images are an after-thought. Printable structure is a whole other business. Yes, I realise there are fundamental differences in paper and screen display but there can be simple way to translate between the two even to the point of double-structureed files.

Much as I enjoy learning new stuff, I'm getting fed up of having to become an expert in various technologies just to get stuff done. it's one fo those things where the answer seems tangibly close yet just out of reach. For sure technology is moving on apace but I'm never satisfied when the answer seems tantilisingly close.

SoFoBoMo 09: my books, wrap-up

End of the beach, Mundesley, Norfolk, June 2009

I've got there, it's over. Here's a summary of what I did, why I did it and what I learnt along the way (with all the self-promoting links, natch).

Part 1: On England's Pleasant Pastures Seen

Norfolk, May 2009

The first two books have titles inspired by Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient times" (better known as the hymn Jerusalem), which is evocative of all that is English. This one covers the rural county of Norfolk.

It was designed from the outset as a print book (available from Blurb with a free print offer!) with the unusual aspect of a bottom-edge binding. This is a layout I've been meaning to try for a while. The online pdf version attempts to recreate some of the experience of that format.

All of the photos wee taken using a rangefinder (Zeiss Ikon) on colour negative film (quelle horreur).

Part 2: Upon England's Mountains Green

Blencathra, Cumbria, may 2009

Following on from the rural landscape of Norfolk, this is about the hills of Cumbria. From the outset it was designed as an online book but in a format that could readily be converted to print. I was experimenting with mixing colour and black and white, multi-image pages, background colour and captioning. Variable quality of images but turned out rather better than I had imagined.

All the colour work was with a Panasonic LX3 camera, all the black and white with a 4x5" field camera on Ilford FP4+ roll film.

Part 3: Under English Skies

Swaledale, June 2009

A purely online effort, using images from a photography workshop in Swaledale, Yorkshire. Title comes from my observation that England seems to have very particular skies, which suits the very particular landscape photographed. Some pretty good photos. Book was designed from the outset as a purely online book, taking advantage of variable page sizes etc afforded by a purely electronic format.
However, I think I'll extend this idea into a longer series of my best landscape work from the UK and turn it into a printed version.

Part 4: Seafront

Fishing on the beach, Mundesley, Norfolk, June 2009

Another effort from Norfolk, this time based around the seafront of the village of Mundesley. Again designed as an online "book" but in a very different format, further exploring the unique capabilities offered by electronic presentation. Of course, it could be printed (large) but that isn't really the point.

Both books 3 & 4 were shot entirely with my Canon 40D.

There we have it - four very different books, four different cameras, two different types of film.

Why so much? Partly my travel schedule - 5 trips during the SoFoBoMo period (not all planned at the start) meant I couldn't really focus on a single topic. So I used that to my advantage to explore different ways of doing books and shooting projects.

I've learnt a few things:
Electronic presentation of photo work has its own characteristics. It is possible to produce entirely satisfying work solely for that medium, if one is prepared to think in a different manner to traditional print layout.
Editing is a tricky business - choosing work that fits together is not the same as picking a bunch of good photographs. For this effort I went for first impressions, quick selections, cutting down the time I applied as exploring the form of presentation was more important than content.
Practice with book layout and workflows for preparing images helps. Editing aside, I can easily assemble a book in an evening (3-4h). Good preparation helps: having text written, images processed (but not sized) and a clear idea of layout & storyline are requirements to do things that quickly.
Putting together presentable work takes less effort than one might imagine. While I'm not claiming any of these as works of Fine Art, they're reasonably good and didn't take a huge amount of effort, shoehorned as that was around a busy work & travel schedule.
Shooting with film is not a good idea for large volume or time-pressured work. The camera time is about the same, and I produce less frames but the processing time is high: develop, scan, dust spot, apply corrections, dust spot, prepare for print, dust spot... I do not intend to use film for SoFoBoMo 2010.

Overall it's been fun, it's got me out when I might otherwise have stayed indoors and it's taught me a lot (again) about my photography. It pushed my meagre time-management skills (although I work well to deadlines). I continue to develop the running themes in my work and see some large chunks coming together. And it was fun.

I've now downloaded around 50 of the other books and I'll be posting some comments on them in due course.

Water on Processes

Water like scales, Swaledale, June 2009

A couple of new posts on my project blog Processes of Nature following from my recent trip to Swaledale. This sort of style focussing on water could even become an entire series of its own.

One thing of note with the image "Dark Water" was the difficulty I had printing it. You really get to see the limitations of screen to print matching with a dark subject like this. It took some significant extra adjustment to get a print to match what you see on the screen - I was looking for that dark, almost glass-like appearance but with a clear discernment of the colours. Not easy but I think worth the effort.

More coming over there tomorrow and over the next few days. Plenty of new images from the past couple of months.

Challenging processing

Swaledale morning, June 2009

I'm cracking through part 3 of my SoFoBoMo efforts, facing a processing challenge I've not done for a while. The final collection will be from my Swaledale pictures, which contain quite a lot of landscapes shot in mixed lighting. The challenge here is producing a colour balance that provides a natural look across the entire frame. Single white balance changes don't cut it.

Most of my processing these days is done in Lightroom but doing areal colour changes like this is quite slow and hard to control. This is where I turn back to Lightzone, which for a long time was my main processing platform but no longer. Returning for an extended spell a relive all its annoying foibles which make other programs more attractive. In this situation, however, Lightzone has a powerfully useful feature: selective white balance control. Sure, there are other ways to control local colour balance but I find the parameters of a standard white balance tool (colour temp & hue) to be intuitively photographic.

An aside: I note Bibble5 is out on pre-release. The publicity material suggest it might be a contender for my ideal hybrid between Lightroom and Lightzone. I'll certainly be trialling the full version when it comes out.

Judging ones own work

Run-off pool, Cumbria, May 2009
This one is an also-ran

Going through the process of selection of photos for my SoFoBoMo books and the evaluation sessions on the recent workshop has got me thinking about how I judge my own work. There are many ways one could do this, I suppose but here is my approach.

I generally think about my work in four tiers: the print work, the good, the almost and the rejects. Print work is what I consider to be my very best (at the time) and gets printed for display. A few make it onto the walls. The good are generally acceptable, OK for a book but missing something. The other tiers fall away from there. Of course my cut-off level for each tier changes over time. There is stuff from a couple of years ago that was print material then and would only get into the almost pile now.

But what is good? For me it is all about matching output with intent - that includes subject, the technical stuff like lighting and composition and most importantly reaction to the work. Garnering others reaction can be tricky. And I'm not always necessarily looking for high praise. Mixed reaction, positive and negative, is sometimes part of it.

Which then comes down to the material I've been choosing for SoFoBoMo. The first book has been pretty good, I feel, in terms of picture selection. Only a couple from the almost pile. The next one will have far more compromises. I am using SoFoBoMo much more about the process of book design than the actual images. The dilemma I face there is that I will also be using some of my very best recent work. And if I have a series that has some print material, do I devalue those by putting them in a book, or does it improve the book?

Live View: the great focusing aid

Bug on flower, Swaledale, June 2009
I've yet to identify the species

When I started photographing last week, I realised it was the first time I'd used the 40D on a tripod. that gave me the opportunity to use Live View for the first time. It's one of those features I'd rather dismissed and ended up using it almost constantly. Here's why:

At normal view, Live View is fairly mundane - just a full-screen view of the subject rather like using a digicam. However, for critical composition that is useful as it is 100% view, compared to the 95% view finder. Suddenly I don't have extraneous objects in the corners.

The most useful feature is the zoom for focus. Suddenly focus is even more precise. Better than using the view finder or auto focus. Used on a tripod with manual focus, I'm getting far more detail out of the sensor than ever before. When I'm working this way, I've found it best for me to use live view to focus, then a remote release with mirror lock-up for the exposure. Live View does have a histogram function (which takes several settings to activate) but I'm not convinced it is as accurate as my tuned settings for review. More testing required for that.

Crop from the centre of the frame. Final output sharpening not applied.
I couldn't get focus this accurate any other way.

As Paul Butzi has said, it's rather like using a large format camera. I just miss the movements (not having tilt-shift lenses).

There is one drawback, battery life reduces significantly. With normal hand-held use, I get about 950 shots to a full charge, with Live View that drops to around 150. Suddenly I need a couple of batteries per day. As a result I'm getting more selective about using Live View - check composition, check focus and then turn off.

Scribus output, pdf and jpeg

This is aimed squarely at the SoFoBoMo crowd but should be useful for others putting together pdf books for the web. I know several will be using Scribus as their layout software.

I'm using Scribus as my layout software, as I have done in the past. Normally when I'm playing around with layouts, I export a partial book to pdf to see how it stacks up. Last night I made a minor error in the options I chose and felt it worth pointing it out.

There is an important option in the pdf output dialog (below) where the type of image embedded can be selected. I accidentally chose "Automatic". Running a layout with just 10 images in it gave me a 7MB pdf file, even using the "medium" compression setting. I then re-ran the export but with jpeg selected, suddenly the same material was only 1MB. An issue to note. I don't know what image format Scribus chose under "Automatic" but it clearly wasn't as compact as jpeg. Visually there was nothing different in the output.

Scribus pdf generation: several options for images - chose JPEG

It might be that other pdf generating software has similar options around the format for image embedding, I don't know as I don't have access to other options. If anyone else knows of similar options in other software, post a comment.

The dangerous lure of film

As regulars may have noticed, I shoot quite a bit of film - mainly black and white but also some colour (with a rangefinder - oh, the horror!). It seems like such an attractive option for shooting. I like using the Zeiss Ikon and it is also quite small - I can easily drop the full kit and a few rolls of film in my carry-on bag when going away for a few days. Lack of feedback limits the number of shots I take and can have me covering quite a lot of subjects. The attraction here is the simplicity at the picture taking end of the process. Or large format, movements & the attraction of large prints with fine detail. Much cheaper than the digital equivalent (I don't expose enough film this way to make any digital replacement viable, not even a full-frame 35mm DSLR).

Then there is the processing. I keep forgetting what a horrid job that is. Endless cleaning & scanning, then a pile of cropping, rotating, dust spotting (one day, in the far off distance, I'll actually get a clean scan). The whole post-process is even more stultifyingly boring than with digital and time consuming, even with a fair degree of automation. At least there are less images.

The hours I'm currently spending on film process are making me tired, not helped by the dull work I'm having to crank out during the day at present.

A photographer's practical guide to jpeg

Stemming from the question on the last post about sizes of pdf books, I thought it was worth writing about JPEG images: sizes, resolutions, compression etc. This is based on a little technical reading and a lot of practical experimentation. Technically, I may be a little off in some areas but this will be good enough for the masses.

The aim of a JPEG image is to preserve as much detail as possible while compressing the file size as much as possible. By setting the quality/compression (these 2 are the reverse of one another - high compression gives low quality) value you are determining the trade-off between quality and file size. However,there is a general misconception as to how this works.

For highly detailed images (think lots of tree branches and small leaves) there is automatically less compression as the JPEG tries to keep the detail. If your image is highly detailed then you can actually use lower quality setting and still get an excellent image. In the other direction, large expanses of nothing compress very well. If you shoot a picture of a white wall even the highest quality setting will give a small file. JPEG is clever like that. The tricky stuff comes when there is a mixture of detail and even tones (e.g. trees against a blue sky). The even part compresses well, the detail is kept in the main but at the edges JPEG gets confused, throwing up those nasty artefacts. This is where judicious use of the quality level is needed. I'll come onto advice on values later.

The next part is the resolution or pixel size of an image. If you are printing, you'll want high quality files with lots of pixels. Typically 240-300ppi for the given print size. That means the total pixel size will be the paper size multiplied by 240 or 300 (e.g. if I print a 10"x8" at 300ppi, that'll be 3000x2400 pixels). Nice and easy.
The tricky part is on-screen display. To display on the majority of monitors, you only need an image about 1000pixels wide or 600 pixels tall. Maybe a bit more to cover larger displays. If your software works as a size & resolution then the size multiplied by resolution shouldn't be more than about 1000x600pixels (e.g. if I have a 10"x8" page for on-screen display, I need a resolution of only 100ppi to give 1000x800pixels). This is important for pdf generation, as pdf is designed to work in physical size and resolution. To cover most monitors today, you don't need more than 100ppi resolution (nor page size more than about 12"x8").

So what about recommendations for compression values? JPEG generation generally has one of three ways of setting quality: a high/medium/low scale; a JPEG compression factor (typically a number up to 100) or another numerical scle of some sort (e.g. Photoshop's 1-12).

For printing, go high. Photoshop 9 or 10 (11 and 12 really are pointless and don't practically give better results), JPEG factor 90 or 95. NOTE: JPEG compression factors are NOT percentages. the maximum value (from the JPEG standard) is 95 - any scale that goes to 100 is distracting you.

For on-screen display, you only need a medium level. Photoshop 7 or 8 (sometimes lower but go careful); JPEG factor 70-75. This will yield a files size about half that of the higher qualities and still give excellent on-screen display. Use the lower values unless there is a big mix of detail and even tones.

A final note on setting resolution versus compression, especially in pdf generation. The biggest win in file size (small being good) is a lower resolution. 300ppi has 9 times the pixels of 100ppi. To get that kind of compression with quality you need to go down to about 20-25 quality factor, which is barely recognisable. You could probably go down to 90ppi and give good display quality even on large monitors (a factor 11 smaller than 300ppi).

As for pdf books for the web (aimed squarely at the SoFoBoMo crowd) - aim for file size that gives around 50-60kB per page or 100-150kB per image overall (non-image pages generally take very little space in pdf). If you've gt 40 images in 55 pages (typical SoFoBoMo fare), that's 2.7-5.8MB total filesize.

SoFoBoMo: don't sweat it

I note with interest a theme or two running through the collective blogging of the SoFoBoMoers. (Whether it's one or two themes is rather moot.) Funnily enough, this repeats some of the problems encountered last year, too.

There is the searching for a theme and the agonising over whether the pictures will be good enough. Don't sweat it, say.

First bit of advice from me (may be a little late now but I'm sure I mentioned this in the past) - keep a handy note of photo theme ideas as you go. Since last year's effort, I've kept a list of ideas in a little black book. As I think of possible photo projects, I write them down - no analysis, just ideas. Some may eventually dry up to nothing but I've collected enough ideas to have at least a couple of fliers for this year. Some ideas lead to others and so on. Get a book & pencil small enough that you'll carry it everywhere.

Second thing, and this should be immediately useful, is that the idea is to produce 35 pictures. Not "35 images that will be candidates for my MOMA retrospective." They don't have to be perfect. they don't even have to be good. For once, lower your bar and accept imperfection. You'll be so much happier with a complete effort, than a half-done bunch of perfect images. The book, complete, is the goal.

Remember: Solo Photo Book Month - 1 person, 35 pictures, 1 book, 31 days.

Lightroom: nearly but not quite

Regular readers will probably be aware that I've been a long-term Lightzone user but recently have been writing about Lightroom.

Lightroom has almost completely taken over my photo-editing and management duties. It has many features to commend it - simple to use, pretty quick for most tasks, great organising features and solid printing system. However, it is just a few notches short of being quite all there.

First, as Kjell has noticed, are the problems with local adjustments. I'm sure that'll get fixed in time. Most of the time I only want small amounts of local adjustment for which it's great.
Next, and a big one for me, is the handling of sharpening. I use high radius, low amount (hiraloam) sharpening on a lot (if not, most) of my work for local contrast enhancement. I find Lightroom is not so good for that - clarity is a bit heavy-handed and I can't fine tune its effect. And I'm not enamoured of the sharpening tool in the details section. Again, not the control I'm used to with USM (or PWP's excellent advanced sharpen). This is particularly bad for scans (which usually take much more aggressive sharpening). I'm finding I have to take most images elsewhere for sharpening adjustments.
I'd also like to have support for advanced plug-in in the way Photoshop does. I've tweaked my workflow to deal with this but it does mean some back-and-forth.

I could add a list of other things I'd like to see, but then it would move Lightroom away from the things that make it good.

So what about Lightzone? Well, I do still use it but for limited applications. It is still has the best shadow recovery tools anywhere. The ability to do selective white balance is invaluable as is the ability to white balance processed files. I still it has the best masking system around especially after I discovered the clunk that is Lightroom masking. And Lightzone is still my favourite black and white converter: selective masking by area, colour, tone means I can apply multiple filter effects in lots of subtle ways. There are a couple of B&W things I do that I can't do any other place.
But Lightzone is quite rough around the edges: generally slow, memory inefficient and a host of other niggles. Development doesn't seem to be going anywhere and they are lagging behind the competition.

I think my perfect editing tool would have the layering and tools of Lightzone, integrated into the Lightroom workflow. Now that would be a powerful product. No, I don't think using Lightzone as an external editor from Lightroom fixes that. It would be nice to have a develop panel in Lightroom for Lightzone, running it as an engine underneath, controlled from the same xml file format that Lightroom uses. That would get me to the core differentiator in Lightzone (the adjustments engine) without having to suffer the niggles.

SoFoBoMo takes over

If you've not already, go read Paul Butzi's latest post - hilarious.

It seems to be that time of the process when people are turning to thoughts of their projects, matching travel plans etc. No such difficulties for me! I currently have 4 solid project ideas (i.e. projects that I know can be completed in the fuzzy months) plus at least one other possible. At this rate, I can see a SoFoBoMo challenge for myself in a couple of years being to produce a book a week for each of the eight weeks.

I'm also hoping to put out a book of some of my Tanzania photos in a couple of weeks. This one I also intend to format differently to challenge some accepted notions of photobook design and test some ideas I have (more of which in a later post). That's part of my preparations for SoFoBoMo. I'm really going to spend some effort challenging myself on the book design aspects this year.

A collection of techniques

Wimpy Restaurant, Tanzania, January 2009
Shot from a moving vehicle at about 50mph; (as I recall) f/8, 1/500s

I seem to collect photographic techniques like Lego bricks. Having a wide range of interests, I'm developing a wide range of means to capture those things as pictures.

One of the recent methods that I am honing is what I call the "Drive-by technique". Nothing fancy, really, just shooting from a moving vehicle. It's a great way to capture street life, and is something I did quite a lot of in India last year and Tanzania recently. Equipment plays a part. The rangefinder, and probably also film, helps a lot. Zone focus, wide angle, smallish aperture, fast shutter. Look ahead, see something interesting coming, snap as it passes. Not a very high hit rate, but the good stuff is pretty good. And sometimes I react to one subject but something unexpected happens.

Heart balloons, London, March 2009
Originally it was the balloons that attracted me but that's not what the final shot is all about.

Working in this way is helping me out and about on the streets. I react more quickly to situations and take less time to get the shot. Wildlife photography, especially long lenses, helps with holding a camera steady, meaning I can shoot more successfully at lower shutter speeds. Watch wildlife helps me anticipate events. All these methods can help even when in slow mode in the landscape on a tripod - less faffing and an ability to react to changing conditions. The slower methods give me time to get more fully acquainted with camera operation, metering, composition methods etc.

It's why I use the Lego analogy. A series of techniques can then be plugged together in any given situation as suits the equipment in hand (and instinctively having the right one there) and environment. As time goes on it is more and more about the picture, I think a lot less about how to get it.

Having trouble with the language

Posting has been a little thin as I'm on the road again with dodgy internet (thank goodness for complementary internet in the big city).


I've been contemplating the idea of self-analysis in photography. Looking at others work, I can readily analyse what I like/dislike, what makes good images work for me - I can articulate my relationship with someone else's images.

For my own work it is entirely different. My reaction is much more instinctive. I like it or I don't. I feel it's good or not. But I have trouble articulating it. Once another person does that for me, however, I can come to understand my own reaction through the eyes of someone else.

Strange stuff.