I’ve just finished my portfolio site overhaul at laroquephoto.com. All done in WordPress 3.0 using a child theme based on Graph Paper Press’s Modfolio.

I was admittedly inspired by NY photographer TONE. He shoots pretty cool stuff and I loved the stripped down one column look of his site – also based on a GPP theme. I’m using Fancybox to display the built-in WP galleries and QTranslate (just updated for 3.0) to allow both french and english versions of the posts, even though most of them are pretty thin on words…

I’ve also designed a new watermark signature (which started appearing in the last posts). I’m playing around with the brand image, trying to differentiate between my more mainstream portrait studio work and everything else. It’s hard to find the line though…

But I’m happy with it overall. At the very least I’m rid of Flash  - and all SEO’d out… ;-)

]]> http://diode.tv/blog/2010/07/13/ze-overhaul/feed/ 0 http://diode.tv/blog/2010/06/01/a-jump-to-big-lights/ http://diode.tv/blog/2010/06/01/a-jump-to-big-lights/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:38:53 +0000 Patrick http://diode.tv/blog/?p=929 I’m a Nikon guy and I love speedlights. I love CLS and the built-in freedom we get as Nikon shooters to basically build an entirely wireless studio at no added cost. But sometimes you just need more power. Heck, even David Hobby agrees with that ;-)

With a shoot coming up involving largish group shots and mounting insecurity regarding my flash vs ISO vs aperture capabilities, I decided it was time to start looking at some sort of big light kit. Amazing what fear can do to a wallet isn’t it?

Actually, I wasn’t thinking “kit” at first. Just  a monobloc to add to my current setup when more kick was needed. But as I’m sure a lot of you know, when you start going down that gadget road…

The fact is I’d been playing with this idea for the past year, reading about the subject on various blogs, following photographers I admire  - like Zack Arias and John Keatley – and the way they work with strobes. Upon my return from the road trip, I finally jumped in.

don’t fight the system

There are a lot of options out there but it soon becomes very clear that buying big lights is buying into a system. Yes, there are universal third-party accessories. But most companies offer complete lines of modifiers that just fit better and are made to work in tandem with the particularities of their lights. So it’s important to think about long-term use and versatility. If you’re interested in the subject I strongly recommend reading the Strobist’s in-depth look. It’s an amazing read that helped a lot in making my final decision.

I’m a big kid now

Light is light, but not all light is created equal. I’d been very interested in Alien Bees, mostly because of their pretty impressive price/performance ratios. They’re just incredibly affordable for what they do. Paul Bluff is very aggressive  - in a good way – and offers an innovative range of accessories at equally low prices. But a couple of things made me hesitate:

• Build quality: they’re apparently not the sturdiest units out there.
• Light consistency and refresh rate: most reports tend to be a little down on those points.
• No canadian distributor: they do offer shipping and service in Canada, but it’s not like you can go to your local pro photo store for support.

Mind you, some of those points might be completely off. But since I didn’t have the luxury of testing them out, I had to look elsewhere. So what were the options? For me, it came down to Elinchrom or Profoto. I based my decision on quality of light, longevity and ecosystem. Profoto was out of my price range. Period. But lo and behold: Vistek were having a sale on Elinchrom gear. Talk about timing!

So I’m now the proud owner of the BX500Ri To-Go kit and so far, I’m loving it. The kit comes with two Portalite softboxes (which are ok, not tremendous), two 500ws BXRi heads with built-in Skyport (radio receiver) and an El-Skyport transmitter allowing remote control of up to four groups of strobes from the camera. I added two 21cm reflectors with 20° and 30° grids and a light stand (I needed one). Came up to around $1700 canadian.

Biggest difference with the speedlights? Power baby. I can shoot at F18 ISO200 without batting an eyelash. And the light is beautiful.

shot with a 30º grid, 1/250 F22 ISO200

No more speedlights?

Not a chance. Each has its place. For portability nothing beats speedlights, and the fact remains that an SB900 packs a lot of punch it such a small package. With big lights you also lose TTL (natively at least) and FP Sync which means you’re down to 200-250 sync speed.

One huge caveat on this last point: don’t get fooled by Elinchrom’s claims of synced 1/1000s shutter speed. If there’s one disappointment with this kit this is it –  it doesn’t work. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the new ELS-Skyport SPEED transmitter either since the manual for the El-Skyport lists that speed as well. I called Vistek about this issue, googled left and right and so far I’ve got nothing. What I do know is that as soon as I hit 320 I get the curtain call – nice and dark at the bottom of the frame. Great for a mock-up density gradient. Not so great for cutting down ambient outside. I’ll let you know if I hear anything on this issue. One other thing: in my tests the flash speed doesn’t make up for FP sync when it comes to freezing motion. At least not at the powers I’m using in the studio.

Another place where speedlights will still be indispensable is for wide apertures. These 500ws lights are way too powerful to use 1.8 or 2.8 apertures, even stopped all the way down with my D300 at ISO100 equivalent. I’m keeping an SB900 in a softbox for that.

mixing and matching

What about mixing all these together? A few options available:

1. Use Skyport to trigger Strobes and SU4 on the speedlights.
2. Use CLS to trigger speedlights and optical for strobes.
3. Go all manual and optical.

I’ll be using options 1 or 2 depending on the situation. Option 1 is straightforward: just switch the BXRis optical button on and shoot. Everything syncs. Option 2 is a bit trickier and I’m still doing tests. The problem with CLS is that in order to communicate with all the remotes, the commander unit sends out pre-flashes (very short flashes milliseconds before the actual flash burst). If your stobe is set to dumb optical, it’ll trigger at the first flash it sees – a pre-flash – and you’ll be out of sync (meaning the strobe’s light won’t be part of your picture). To go around this problem, the BXRis have something called smart optical that allows the units to learn the number of pre-flashes and set themselves up accordingly.

Needless to say I’ve been going through a crash course in Nikon’s pre-flash language this past week. I was going crazy until I realized a few things:

1. The number of pre-flashes change with the number of groups the commander is controlling. Makes sense but not that obvious at first.
2. The strobes have no problem calculating the right number of pre-flashes when groups A and B were active but give an incorrect reading when adding group C.
3. Adding group C messes everything up, big time.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on with group C. Both groups A and B (or A+B) give out 3 pre-flashes. Once set, the strobes work every time. But for some reason as soon as you add group C, it changes to 5 pre-flashes but the strobes see it as 4. I had to set them manually to find that out since they simply weren’t syncing properly. And even after setting them on 5 I get random off-sync problems. So for now, no group C in CLS. The joys of tech…

a nice surprise

Elinchrom use 7mm umbrella shafts instead of the more standard 8mm. So I thought my 46′ Photek Softlighter II 8mm would be relegated to SBs, a pity given how much better the spread of light would be with a strobe head instead of a speedlight. Well, turns out it works perfectly – yay!

The 8mm model comes with a two-part shaft that can be unscrewed to allow for closer use of the Softlighter to the subject. But that removable part (the longest one) is actually 7mm (!). The trick I found works best is to unscrew the 7mm part, insert it in the strobe head from behind the unit and then screw the softlighter back on. The light is beautiful and much more even than with one speedlight.

46' 8mm Softlighter with BX500Ri head

a word about mobility

Elinchrom doesn’t make a battery pack for the BXRis. They’re marketed as studio strobes. To go mobile you’re supposed to go into the Ranger Quadra units, like a lot of big photographers are these days. But there are ways around that here and here. I’m thinking Vagabond II eventually. Obviously I won’t be getting Ranger performance but… we’re talking $2500 cheaper here (!). Of course, if I hit the big time…

It’s been a verrrrry long time coming. But having spent the past hour playing around with the new version of Aperture, all I can say is: thank you. My stubbornness feels completely repaid.

This upgrade adresses everything that was lacking and adds a ton of features, big and small. It’s as though Apple actually read every article, blog and  forum post about Aperture 2, made a checklist of everyone’s wishes and added them one by one. But the amazing thing about this new release is they’ve managed to add all these while keeping the UI just as streamlined and refined as before – in fact it’s cleaner and easier to read.

I’m not going to go through everything so I strongly encourage you to look at the new online tutorials and extensive feature list. But here’s a quick rundown of my favorite new stuff.

destruction be gone

Ok, name the key feature every Aperture user has been asking for since Lightroom 2′s release?  Yup: non-destructive local editing.

Well, every single adjustment brick in Aperture 3 now offers non-destructive local editing via the new Brush tool. You can paint an adjustment in or out using the same tools as the previous Dodge and Burn plugin (brush, feather and erase). Once you’ve applied localized editing, a new brush icon appears on the brick – clicking the icon brings the Brush HUD back for further tweaking.

Beyond the main adjustment bricks, you can also access brushes for individual adjustments (Dodge, Blur, Burn, Color etc). These then appear in the Adjustments HUD like any other brick and you can change the amount of effect applied. This is all in real-time, non-destructive and it flies.

The other huge change regarding adjustments? We can now duplicate any brick. Combined with the new brushes feature this means we now have something akin to layers within Aperture itself. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

Current plugins still require the creation of a TIFF or PDS file though. I don’t know if third-partys will have access to APIs allowing non-destructive editing – it would be pretty huge, but I’m not holding my breath. Still, I have a feeling my use of plugins or round-trips to Photoshop is about to diminish substantially.

full screen. all the time.

There are a lot of nice UI touches in Aperture 3 that give it even more polish than before. But the one I’m most excited about is the new Full Screen mode. I always loved full screen mode. But in my day to day workflow it was rarely used, mainly because I kept having to go in and out of it all the time – no longer. Apple have made Aperture 3′s full screen mode more productive than ever with new browser and project views, a navigation toolbar and a refined thumbnail view.

It is really, really nice.

real life printing

The print dialog has received a massive overhaul: picture packages, autofill multiple shots according to size, brightness, saturation and contrast adjustments, the list goes on. For instance, I can now skip the book tool and create a contact page template complete with logo, title, subtitle, watermark and my choice of metadata – all within the print dialog. This is going to be a huge timesaver.

it’s the little things

Small details count. Because little things tend to add up. I use a lot of Smart Albums but often find myself having to go back to a picture’s original project. In Aperture 2 I had created a metadata view assigned to Tooltips (T) that included the file’s path so i could at least find out where the picture was located in the database. Every time I used it I wished for a “Reveal in Project” command. Every single time.  So I was ecstatic to find out Aperture 3 now had a command called… yes: Reveal in Project!

This is just one little thing. But man, am I ever happy about it.

labels! flags!

Yes. We can now assign labels and flag photos. No more weird keywords meant solely for organizational purposes appearing on Flickr. There were workarounds (custom metadata views) but this is welcome indeed.

faces, places, movies, fast switching libraries etc…

All These are just the tip of the iceberg. I could write ten pages on the new features and possibilities in Aperture 3. I haven’t talked about Faces and Places, the new book plugins that allow the use of the book tool with third-party suppliers, tons of refined metadata tools, IPTC compliance, fast switching libraries, searchable project description fields, Flickr and Facebook integration, a slideshow editor that’s essentially a built-in iMovie complete with video and audio, refined import panel, and presets…. oh! goodness… PRESETS!

Needless to say this is a milestone release that  - in my humble opinion – leapfrogs Lightroom by several meters at least. I’m pretty sure Adobe are scrambling right now. If they aren’t they’re being complacent.

I for one am glad I didn’t jump the fence. Lightroom? What’s Lightroom?

P.S. My library has just finished upgrading. It took several hours but everything seems in the right place. It’s now performing a face detection operation. I’m going to let it work and see how it goes. Hearing my new iMac’s fan for the first time (!)

Apple – Aperture – Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity.

Two words: non-destructive :-)

Apple these days look like they’re all about consuming content. The topic even came up on the Aperture forum the other day, with some seeing this as proof that the company no longer cares about the application. When Steve Jobs presents Apple as a “mobile company” it suddenly becomes quite easy to get caught up in that mindset. But one has to remember Jobs is a master showman. This little tidbit allowed him to position the company way above some very targeted competitors.

Because while they’ve managed to become a juggernaut in consumer electronics and media distribution, I still believe their DNA is very much rooted in the creation of content. When Jobs describes his company as being “at the intersection of technology and liberal arts”, I think it goes beyond Apple the so-called gadget maker – it paints a picture of what they offer as a whole. And the empowerment of creators is very much part of that whole.

where’s my toolset?

Which brings me to the main topic of this article: the missing tools. These past few years have seen the rise of Web 2.0, the advance of Javascript libraries (both in power and speed) and now HTML 5. All these new technologies enable the creation of interactive and social content without relying on proprietary plugins – yes, I’m talking about Flash.
I was, in another life, a strong proponent of Flash. Not because I was particularly fond of (at the time) Macromedia, but because I was able as a designer to use Flash and do pretty much what I wanted visually, either in a web page or a standalone app (which I believe contributed to the demise of Director with its cross-platform nightmare). Until the advent of AS3, Flash was very empowering for designers. The WYSIWYG factor was very strong throughout the application – so much so that for years I was able to create immersive applications for extremely high-end clients with a minimal knowledge of the AS2 programming language.

I’ve now grown weary of Flash for several reasons:
- It’s a resource hog.
- It sucks on the Mac.
- It’s proprietary.
- With the advent of AS3, every new version of Flash seems to be less and less geared towards designers (I’m sorry, but I don’t want to code tweening or linking between scenes).

But the biggest reason of all: I see all that’s possible with Javascript and HTML 5. Problem? There are NO CREATIVE TOOLS out there. None. I don’t get it. Where’s Apple here? Shouldn’t they be all over this?

Here’s a pretty simple example: I’ve been looking to replace Flash on my studio site. I’m not using it out of choice but because my Photoshelter account’s embeddable slideshows are Flash-based. I love the simplicity of using Photoshelter to manage slideshows for my site, but I just don’t want Flash anymore. What I want is a photo manager that exports a custom embeddable Javascript slideshow. Can’t find one. The best slideshow manager I know is Slideshow Pro and it exports as – yes you guessed it – Flash. There are tons of beautiful Javascript slideshow solutions but all of them require manual coding. I could use JAlbum with Galleria but this creates a full-blown web page with thumbnails. I don’t want thumbnails and I don’t want to extract code every time I want to change a picture.

It’s frustrating.

the flash conundrum

Right now the hard reality is that if I want to quickly create a custom interactive application, my only choice is Flash. It’s the only environment that allows me to point on an object, assign an action and have it play back. Give me an hour and I can build a completely customized interactive web site without typing a single line of code. But of course, it’ll be a swf file. And it won’t play on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad
I would love to create an interactive magazine or photography book for the iPad. Something like the NYT demo but geared towards photography. I have tons of ideas. But the tools to build them are beyond me. I’m right brain. I don’t know C++ from C#. I’m a designer, not a programmer. Even though I’m geeky enough to be able to fiddle with some code, the SDK is way over my head.

touch studio pro. please.

So I keep hoping Apple are working on something. That somewhere deep in Cupertino there’s an iSomething killer app waiting for everything to be in place. That once Big Media and Big Publishing are all nice and comfy the floodgates will open, and the power to create will fall back to the individual. It could even be rolled into iWeb and be totally logical. See, I want the tools to build the kind of interactive site or application that Apple uses for itself. I want to embed a javascript slideshow on a web page by drag and drop. I want a Pages or Keynote document to which I can assign touch actions and have it run as an iPad or iPhone app. As Scott Bourne recently wrote, If iTunes or iBooks were to distribute user generated books or magazines, it could do for self-publishing what Podcasts did for radio-type content.

I want Hypercard for the iPad. I want Touch Studio Pro.

Maybe the time is near. Maybe Apple is preparing to pull out iLife and iWork 2010 with all that functionality built-in. Maybe there is a Touch Studio Pro that will allow me to export to an app, a web page or as iTunes Extras. In my mind it would make total sense. It would put a big nail in Adobe’s coffin with regards to its web stranglehold, as I’m sure many designers would jump on the opportunity.

If they build it, I will come.
C’mon Apple. The liberal arts are waiting.

Everyone’s talking about the iPad right now. So I’m not going to pretend I have anything to add that hasn’t already been said at some point during the last 18 hours or so. But for what it’s worth, here’s my take:

• This past year I moved my reading habit to my iPod Touch. I’m the first one to be surprised by this because I’ve always been a book junky. You know, the kind that likes the smell of books. I like how they feel, how they look in a room. I’m a book addict. But I’ve now read over 25 novels on my iPod and I’m completely hooked. So I wanted a bigger iPod Touch so I could read more comfortably. Check.

• I also wanted a bookstore that felt right and was a pleasure to browse (sorry, the Kindle App’s not it). From what I’ve seen of the iBookstore: check.

• As a photographer I’ve often used my iPod Touch to show off my portfolio to potential clients. The iPad is going to be a serious asset for this task. Check.

And that’s it. Honestly, that’s all I was looking for. Everything else is icing.
Lack of Flash? Don’t care. I was a Flash developer for a long time and now I just want to move away from it as fast as I can. I don’t seem to be alone there. I love the UI in the new apps (Calendar anyone?), I love how everything seems to flow. I love that I’ll be able to use my iPhone apps (Bento, Soho Notes, 1 Password) out of the box.

Other notes of interest:

• The custom designed A4 processor. This is the first product to result from Apple’s purchase of PA Semi and, according to John Gruber, the payoff is gigantic. interesting move for the future. Maybe Intel’s days on the Mac are counted.

• iWork. I use Pages extensively. This is a very nice surprise. I like how they’ve de-bundled the suite too.

• The potential for enhanced gesture interactions. When demoing Nova, the guys at Gameloft showed off a three-finger rotation to open up a hatch on -screen. As noted by iLounge, this is very Minority Report and could hint at an interesting future as developers start taking advantage of the technology.

And of course the price point: $499 to get your foot in the door is pretty impressive as far as I’m concerned. I paid $650 for an iPod Photo some years ago – remember those? We’ve come pretty far since then.

So naysayers aside this device has me excited because it does exactly what I needed, both professionally and personally.

I’m now waiting to be notified.

It wasn’t premeditated. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to drive around with a camera in my hand. I was just stuck in traffic one day, heading for a shoot with my camera bag right next to me on the passenger seat. While waiting at a red light I took out my camera out of pure boredom – intending to snap a pic of the garbage truck in front of me – when traffic began moving again. Instead of doing the right (and safe) thing, I started firing away left and right.

When I got home I was surprised at some of the shots I had taken: there was an immediacy and a randomness to the process that had yielded quite unexpected results. For one, the mere act of driving meant I hadn’t seen everything in the frame while shooting. There’s the fact that the vehicle itself was… well… moving, with all the technical angles it implies regarding shutter speed and motion blur. And the point of view was new: how often do you get to shoot in the middle of a busy street? I was hooked.

There are several “intellectual” layers to this too: voyeurism, confinement, the hit and run nature of disappearing as soon as a picture is taken. And there’s the frame of the windshield and windows often giving a fishbowl aspect to the scenes. That’s a disconnection that I find appealing in a strange, twisted way. This is point and shoot taken to extremes.

I’ve done it a few times now and I think I have a series bubbling in the back of my mind. Not sure what form it’ll take.

I just need to watch out for tickets…

Full gallery here

A year ago today I was sitting in front of my television, watching history being made. A lot has changed since then and looking back,  it’s hard not to feel a tinge of sadness. Change is hard apparently.

To commemorate this day, I’m reposting through my plasma screen | a moment in history. It now all seems so very far away…

Backstory (from last year):

Mise en abime.
I wanted to be in Washington. Badly. But an expired passport and the need to oversee the end of a contract kept me at home. So I decided to use my tv as a window, a privileged vantage point. I used the 70-300mm lens I would’ve used if I’d been on location. I set ground rules for myself – no PVR, everything had to be shot live as if I was there. I used the HD feed from ABC News and got to work, reframing as I would on the street, using the tv screen as my outside world and grabbing portions of it with my lens. I made it a point to stay zoomed in to the picture, moving around as much as possible, essentially shooting inside the tv in hopes to bypass the cameraman’s original frame. The only exception to these rules is the first picture in the set: a self-portrait taken before the ceremonies began.

This is obviousky an odd point of view. It’s a camera within a camera. An eye within an eye. And while it is a poor substitute to actually being there, it’s given me the strange sense of somehow being a part of history.

I love Redux Pictures. I love the photographers and I love the blog where they display the magazine articles and covers where their work appears. And since I’m not yet a part of that exclusive group (!) I decided to fake it.

Enter FAKEZINES –  Fake magazines. Real pictures.

The idea here is simply to put my photography in some sort of context. I’m always visualizing a story when I take photographs, real or imagined. I’ve also always found that photography tends to live in relation to something else. Even on it’s own there’s always a subtext, whatever the subject. I think our brain, which is wired for associations, jumps into overdrive in front of a picture. This is my way of pushing an interpretation.

It’s all tongue in cheek of course but who knows… maybe it’ll give a creative director out there a few ideas ;-)

Check it out here.

P.S Notice the self-promotion cover? I’m doing a Hitchcock…

For the past year – and more so these past months – the debate has been raging around Aperture and Lightroom, mainly from AP2 users who feel abandoned by Apple. The silence surrounding a new version of the application has been deafening, forcing a lot of users into the arms of Adobe for many reasons that have been discussed to death at this point. If you read this blog you know I’ll be sticking it out unless physically booted out of the Aperture camp.

There are a lot of technical reasons for my decision. I’ve mentioned them in other posts. But one thing that never seems to enter the debate is something less tangible: the fact that software can be an instrument in its own right.

flugelhorn?

I’m not talking about software as a tool mind you, but as an instrument. Like a violin, a piano or a… flugelhorn?
You see, through all my experimentation with various incarnations of Lightroom one thing has always been quite clear: I get very different results than I do with Aperture. Some of it has to do with my varying comfort level between the two apps. And some of it is purely technical, differences between RAW converters and such. But I’ve also come to believe that software – creative software – has a footprint and flow that affect the output. Software has tone.
I’m a musician. My guitar is a Fender Stratocaster. Everything about this instrument impacts what I do with it: the neck, the spacing betweens frets, how the body feels in my hands. All these design choices mould the way I use the guitar. In fact, over the years they’ve moulded the way I play guitar. I’m now convinced Aperture shapes my photography in pretty much the same way.
In the great debate between Lightroom and Aperture we seem to forget that they each have a very specific signature. The philosophical differences in design, the choice of available effects and the way they’re applied all contribute to shaping pictures in a very distinct way. In my mind they’re not instantly interchangeable, as many seem to imply. This, I think, is why I’m having such a hard time contemplating a switch. I’m not so sure I want to change oils for water-colour, Strat for SG.

the homogenous pool

Why do we feel this need for one app to rule them all? If everyone uses a brush, isn’t there a case to be made for using a palette knife? Ok, it’s not as clear cut as that. These applications can obviously be twisted and turned in ways that can make them much closer to each other in the end. Plugins are certainly an equalizer. Same goes for round-tripping to external editors.

But right now I can’t help looking at my choice of Aperture as a plus, something that puts me in a particular mindset that’s philosophically different from a Lightroom user. I see my photography in another context, I use other tools that work in other ways, I interface with my work through another window. Interface as zeitgeist so to speak. I’m not trying to delude myself into being some sort of rebel soldier either – I’m simply contemplating my choice beyond keywords, metadata and organization.

full of what?

I know, maybe I’m full of it. Just rationalizing my decision to stick with Aperture. But perhaps I’m on to something. Perhaps software design has become a much more intricate part of our creative process than we give it credit for. Perhaps it impacts our vision and field of view as well.

And perhaps I can wait a little longer.