Blue Planet Photography

There are several applications out there for processing multiple image files to stretch the dynamic range of a scene (HDR, or High Dynamic Range). The two most popular are Photoshop and Photomatix Pro. Generally, the reviews of Photoshop Merge to HDR are less than stellar while Photomatix Pro is all the rage. I use Photomatix Pro for most of my HDR processing, and I own Photoshop, so I thought I’d see for myself what the issues were. I believe you should use whichever application best suits your needs, but also that one application is not necessarily all you need.

I selected one of my 6-shot HDR image series and processed it three ways. I used minimal settings adjustments in Photomatix (strength 100, luminosity 4, light smoothing v.high, micro contrast 10, gamma 75, white point .250, black point .092, all other settings default or 0):

1. Photomatix Pro
2. Merge to HDR in Photoshop then further processing of the 32-bit HDR file in Photomatix Pro
3. Merge to HDR in Photoshop and further processing in Photoshop

The results are below. Additional comments following the images.

Processed in Photomatix Pro only

Processed in Photoshop using Merge to HDR, then through Photomatix Pro

Processed in Photoshop using Merge to HDR after color balance adjustment in Camera Raw, then further processing in Photoshop (duplicate layer, blend=multiply, adjust color saturation)

As you can see, the series processed in Photomatix Pro alone has a marked yellow cast from the ambient lighting. One of the cons of Photomatix Pro is even though you’re shooting in RAW and using the RAW image files to create the single HDR photo, when Photomatix processes the images it doesn’t take into account any of the Camera Raw adjustments you might have made. So, if your white balance is off, there’s nothing you can do about it until after processing is complete. I tried making color balance adjustments in Photoshop after the Photomatix processing, but apparently I’m not very much of a Photoshop wizard and couldn’t remove the yellow/orange/red cast effectively so I left it as is. This issue could have been compensated for, somewhat, by adjusting the in-camera white balance (I was shooting on auto white balance), but I think if you’re looking for accurate color representation you might still end up with a less-than-accurate final product without the ability to further compensate in Camera Raw.

With the other two, I started with Photoshop Merge to HDR, which does take into account all Camera Raw settings, so I was able to remove the color cast caused by the ambient lighting. Running the 32-bit HDR file through Photomatix Pro resulted in a good looking image, but with a bit of grunge while the straight Photoshop-processed image looks very clean. In both Photoshop files I created a second layer, used the multiply blend mode and adjusted opacity to increase contrast slightly, and increased color saturation on the brass.

These are simple examples, but show the different looks you can achieve by using more than one application (or one application rather than another). It comes down to the final look you’re trying to achieve.

photo © Nick Brandt. Portrait of Lion Standing in Wind, Masai Mara 2006

Great work from a photographer promoting wildlife and environmental conservation. His work is beautiful and thought-provoking, with the feeling of 1800s era exploration and the wonder (and probable fear) felt by those early encounters with new, unusual and dangerous animals. However, this is the 21st Century and these animals and their habitat are under continuous pressure and encroachment, directly and indirectly by humans.

From my wildlife biologist’s perspective, Nick Brandt’s photographs capture an essence of the animal in its environment in a way we, as photographers, dream of. It’s obvious from the deliberate and careful treatment of each photograph that this is a photographer who “gets it”. Through knowledge of his subjects and time spent in the field, his eye has captured the subtle gesture of each animal defining its tie to the environment in which it lives. These photographs simply and powerfully illustrate the majesty, drama, and struggle all nature’s creatures (including humans) must participate in for survival.

As a photographer, I can fully appreciate the passion, dedication, preparation, and time required to produce such excellent work. His passion for African wildlife is openly visible in his portraits which tell their story in the simplest and most captivating way. We get a sense of the animal and its place, feel the wind, the weight and power resting on the earth, speed, delicacy, intelligence, and grace, the intimate connection animals have with their environment (that many of us seem to lack), and a bit of implied sorrow or tiredness caused by the unceasing drive to survive compounded by relentless pressure on their habitat.

Arriving on the scene with his “On This Earth” series in 2005, he has continued photographing African wildlife in “A Shadow Falls”. He has published two books of each portfolio series. View his portfolios on his website at www.nickbrandt.com.

Back in July I posted a list of iPhone Apps for Photographers and my initial review of those apps. Now, after a couple months using them and finding a couple more, here’s an update on what I think of those applications now.

MotionX GPS: This is a good application with lots of features. However, its downfall is it appears to rely on having cell service to be able to work. When I was in Africa without cell service or internet access this application just took up space. It didn’t work at all. Reading some of the reviews after returning seems to have confirmed the suspicions I had, that the app triangulates cell towers and needs to be on network to work. Why doesn’t it just use the GPS in the iPhone? I don’t know. It’s usefulness, then, is very limited even for people who venture into the mountains or wilderness areas where there is no cell service. If you’re a biker or hiker or driver in the city, then this application will be well worth it. Otherwise, you’re still better off with a stand alone GPS unit.

Ayetides: $9.99. Tide tables for nearly 10,000 tide or current stations worldwide. The bonus is Ayetides does not require internet access to work. Worth the money and I use it along with TideGraph (which does need the internet).

Focalware: I’m really pleased with this app. A new graphic interface makes this application look sharp. Calculate sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, elevation, azimuth, and shadow length for any date or location.

PS Mobile: Free. Adobe enters the iPhone app arena with this post-processing application that also allows uploads to www.photoshop.com. I like it, but I expected more. Adjust exposure, saturation, tint, convert to black & white, add special effects of sketch or soft focus, vibrant color, pop (”andy warhol-ish” four-frame multi-colored rendition), square white border, vignette blur, warm vintage, rainbow, white glow, and soft black & white. You can also crop, rotate and flip your iPhone images. Then, save them to the camera library and/or upload them to a free photoshop.com account where you can make further changes online and display your photos in a gallery. I hope future versions will add more features, like curves adjustment and sharpening, but I don’t think the iPhone needs a version of Photoshop.

Photogene: Pretty much my go-to app for final post processing; sharpening, levels, saturation (except now I use Mill Colour for saturation and fine levels adjustments), and photo frames (though I only use the square with inside shadow, and maybe the Polaroid now and then. Somebody needs to build an app with useful, not cheesy frames).

Mill Colour: Free. This is a new app that I like a lot. Just for adjusting saturation, lift, gamma, and gain, this app allows you to make fine adjustments to each with a well-designed interface. For these fine adjustments I’m now using Mill Colour before I take the image to Photogene.

EVCalc: deleted. This is a useful app for beginners, but for me I can use the space for more productive apps.

TackSharp: deleted. Another useful app for beginners, but I don’t need it.

CoolFX: I rarely use this app anymore and will probably delete it in the next month if I don’t use it more often.

PhotoCurves: I also rarely use this app even though it does allow curves adjustment (which none of the other post-processing apps do). I have the free version. I’ll probably keep this and try to use it more, but if I find it inconvenient to use more than a couple apps to work on a given image I’ll likely delete this one also. Hopefully, Adobe will add curves adjustment to PS Mobile.

Skype: For all the apps I have loaded on my iPhone this one has saved me the most money. Phone calls from Africa, had I been able to get cell service, would have been $4.99/minute. When I had wifi access I talked on the phone back to the U.S. for over an hour each time for free. This one’s a keeper.

Google Earth: I’ve used this both on my desktop and iPhone to find information on locations and scout locations. Also a keeper.

Weather Bug: Very useful and seems to be very accurate.

Convertbot: Useful for the more popular conversions, but limited when it comes to currency. Nice graphic interface, but I might move to Unit Calculator which has more conversions available. Seems that all the conversion apps lack comprehensive currency conversion, though.

Survival Pocket Reference: $0.99. I don’t have this one loaded, but if you’re the adventurous type it might be a lifesaver. Over 500 pages of first aid, medicinal and edible plants, basic survival skills, compass and star navigation, and more.

I finally completed transfer of my newsletters to a new provider, got a design made up for 2 of the newsletters, began rebuilding my mailing list, and sent out 2 campaigns (one for each completed newsletter). The provider I selected to go with is MailChimp. I almost went with Vertical Response, but they didn’t have the one feature I wanted (discriminating unsubscribe). I have 4 newsletters I send out; a monthly newsletter (Blue Planet Photography Newsletter), a bi-monthly (PhotoCrawl), a quarterly (Workshops), and an occasional (Gallery shows). With Vertical Response, if a subscriber unsubscribes from one list they are deleted from everything and to be re-subscribed they (not me) have to contact customer service to be reinstated. I was told they are working on correcting that, but not within the time frame I needed.

MailChimp allows subscribers to select the interest groups they want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from, update their email address and other fields (If I have them available). I can also integrate Google Analytics (just getting that started also). I can use MailChimp’s templates as is or modify the layout with their simple and easy to use editor. Photos and graphics can be edited online using Picnik, resized in place, or uploaded from my computer ready to go (or combination).

Pricing is good, too. If you have less than 100 addresses, you can send emails free (up to 6X/month). Other options are pay-as-you-go and bulk ($10/month for 0-500 addresses and unlimited sends/month up to $240/month for 25,001 - 50,000 addresses). Pay-as-you-go starts at $9 for 300 credits (1 credit = 1 mailing to 1 email address).

I find the integration of the sign-up form, unsubscribe, forward-to-a friend, archives and other notifications very easy to accomplish. Automated reply emails and pages hosted by MailChimp can be customized to match the colors and appearance (mostly) of your website to minimize the feeling you’re yanking your visitors all over the web (swinging from tree to tree as MC might put it).

It took a day or so to get used to the new interface at MailChimp, understand how to make changes to templates, import graphics and HTML, but once I got the hang of it things went smoothly. I had to contact customer service three times and each time they were prompt, patient, and friendly. The tutorial videos are well-done and treat what could be a dry subject with humor.

Overall, I’m pleased with the performance and ease of use so far. The one thing that is lacking that Emailbrain allowed me to do, is drill down on individuals who opened and clicked. I would like the ability to know exactly who opened, unopened, clicked (and on what link) so I can direct other contact information to those individuals if needed. I’ll be requesting that, as if they probably haven’t heard that request before.

For small businesses (and larger ones), non-profits, and individuals, MailChimp has the features and convenience to make the newsletter/email campaign process enjoyable.

You can view my archived newsletters (just the 2 I’ve sent so far) Here. If you have comments about the newsletters or MailChimp, I would appreciate them.

Way back in January, 2007 and again in March, 2007, I wrote some glowing reviews of the Nexto CF Ultra ND2525 portable storage device from EastGear.com. Recently, I gave a show-and-tell to a group of photographers, again extolling the virtues of the Nexto - very fast upload, more than great battery life, replaceable hard drive. I even went online with someone interested in purchasing a Nexto and walked them through to make sure they found the right device. However, shortly after that, when they actually ordered the device, they were told they didn’t have any available and ended up purchasing a different model that performed much less satisfactorily.

That concerned me, so I checked with EastGear and found out they no longer make the CF Ultra. Bummer. It’s still a good product. There are other similar products, like the Wolverine and JOBO devices, but I was hoping to find something similar to the Nexto. In the process, I found the Sanho Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA. About $50 more than the CF Ultra 80GB version I have, but with more features ($349 for the 120GB version). Where the CF Ultra had just a B&W simple LCD screen (I’m not that interested in flashy screens for viewing - or showing off - images, playing videos or MP3s) the Colorspace has a large 3.2″ color screen for reviewing images, a superfast upload like the Nexto, a battery rated to upload 250GB worth of image files, user-replaceable hard drive, among other nice features.

My needs for portable storage are different than some. I want fast uploads, long battery life, the ability to replace or upgrade the hard drive, and a reasonable price point. Nothing too fancy. That’s why I like the CF Ultra so much. It’s not flashy, just business. The Colorspace, while a bit more flashy with the large color screen and other functionality, still retains the business end without going over the top like some other brands seem to do. This isn’t a status symbol for me, it’s a tool that’s going to be in a case on my belt or in a pocket or in a bag out of view so it doesn’t need to look pretty or have lots of fancy looking controls like a touchscreen. However, that technology is becoming more mainstream, so it’s inevitable these devices will incorporate those features as they become more affordable. Not a bad thing, I just don’t think it’s necessary for these devices to be first adopters. Leave that up to the iPhone.

I haven’t gotten my hands on one of these to see for myself, but the reviews I’ve read are glowing. If I were to need a replacement device, I believe the Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA would be my first choice.

My wife told me about an interview Charlie Rose had with Bill Gates the other day. Bill said we are heading toward a time (I think we knew it was coming) when we will be using one hand held device for nearly all our needs, phone, music, news, video, image capture, etc. That will probably be a good thing as long as we have the ability to choose among several devices, not just one or two.

Jorg Colberg has posted a lengthy, informative, and updated piece on his experiences using some of the oft-cited self-publishing outfits such as Blurb and MyPublisher. His article is Here.

I’ve used MyPublisher before, when they first got started several years ago, but have not used them since. I’ve seen more recent books created by my friends using MyPublisher within the last year and they looked good, the same or slightly better quality than my first several books. I’ve not used Lulu.com, but did purchase a book from them that was made by alternativephotography.com that had some of my images in it. I was happy with the production value, quality, and image reproduction in the soft cover editions (2) I purchased.

I “joined” AsukaBook early on, but have not created a book with them as yet. I’ve been looking into creating a self-published book (at least one) and had considered creating my own handmade book of Polaroid transfers (good luck with that one). Maybe I’ll still do the handmade book but with self-printed images instead.
Of additional interest are comments and additional information from aphotoeditor.com related to Jorg’s post. In particular, read the comment by The Jackanory (#6) regarding his experience with Blurb.com and Ed Panar (#20) about Lulu.com.

As is being said, not just in these comments, is do your research. Not all self-publishing outfits are for you, not all provide consistent results, some that were good seem not too be as good anymore, and new ones will always be cropping up. The best way to determine quality is to create a book and get it in your hands, although that in itself is not the entire test, as you’ll understand by reading the posts above.

Digital technology is making publishing a book much easier and less expensive than it has been historically, but it’s not a perfect process yet. You still have to stay on top of things, expect lower quality than you would like, and as one commenter put it, remember that your viewer is likely only to have seen the one image in the book for the first time and doesn’t know the color is a little bit off. Perfection can be a curse.

More and more tools are coming available to allow the stock photographer to present images to potential buyers and attract them to your libraries of images for licensing. Photoshelter just released a new viral widget (see at right) which displays an ongoing slideshow of a Photoshelter contributor’s entire catalog of images in the Photoshelter Collection, which is a catalog of edited and approved images separate from a Photoshelter subscriber’s individual portfolio. What makes this slide show viral is that anyone can can click on the “get & share” tab at the bottom the window and receive the code to embed it into theor own blog, website, or wherever. So, theoretically, this could allow your portfolio to be “passed around” in many more places than you could on your own (the definition of viral marketing, more or less). Flickr has a similar device, but I haven’t looked at it or tried it.

I’m also looking into a new offering by Microsoft called Silverlight (www.microsoft.com/silverlight/) that is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for displaying media content on the web. I’m going to experiment with creating online slide shows using an application from Codeplex called Slide.Show. It’s open source, which can make it a bit more difficult to work with since you have to pretty much do all the tweaking yourself. But, it looks interesting, so I’ll see what it takes to get it up and running. You’ll probably see something here on the blog first before I take it to my website.

I do have a couple Flash slideshows now on my website, created with Proshow Gold, a nifty PC-only slide how creator from Photodex. The nice thing about Proshow Gold is you can easily incorporate music into the show and create multiple outputs for display on a website, projection, or even on a cell phone. You can see an example below:

Keywording is the bane of all professional photographers (well, maybe not all, but most that I know, including myself). Using consistent keywords, compiling keyword lists, locating and researching the right words, all tedious and potentially frustrating tasks.

I know I’ve been looking for a Controlled Vocabulary keyword application for Photoshop for some time now. Mostly, applications were available for iViewMedia Pro, Photo Mechanic, BreezeBrowser, even Aperture, but not for Bridge, or Lightroom.

Now there are.

Controlled Vocabulary (http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/) has keyword lists for all the above. The tools contain abut 11,000 terms in a hierarchical structure of more than 30 top level categories and costs about $70.

Keyword Catalog (http://www.keyword-catalog.com/) is new and the keyword lists are specifically for use with Bridge and Lightroom. This tool contains about 37,000 keywords, phrases and synonyms, U.S. and U.K. variants. Bundled as a unified catalog or as 39 separate modules that you can load individually or collectively to fit your needs. This tool costs $89.99 for a personal version license and $189.99 for a business version license.

I have not used either of these tools, but they are both likely to save bundles of time and irritation to the photographer in need of a detailed keywording help application. Keyword Catalog is available as a demo.

One more and I’ll let it rest.

This is about writing and opportunity. In the episode “Ice Worlds”, during the emperor penguin segment, spring has arrived in the Antarctic, chicks have hatched and are growing. Some were lost in a storm, some killed by females that had lost chicks and were over-enthusiastic to adopt an orphan, others die because the female or male doesn’t return with food and the remaining parent has to abandon the chick to survive.

The narration, talking about the young penguins: “Those that survive their first year have the best possible start in life”.

Certainly, those that survive their first year are better off than those that don’t. I think it goes without saying that the above statement applies to all new life on earth, not just penguins.

There’s something about this show in that the self-praising seems pompous and empty since, overall, the series dumbs down the relevance of the imagery. To be honest, educationally, Zoboomafoo is a more intelligently written show than Planet Earth. There is so much more potential with this mini-series and Discovery Channel botched it. I think they had to rush it in post. Had to quickly scramble to write something once the film was in. Editing also seems rushed, with some segments slopped together, starting and ending abruptly with little lead in or lead out.

I do like most of the aerial work, mainly because it’s a different point of view.

So, I’ll stop beating this series up. I’m disappointed. It looked promising, but like a bad movie, the best shots are in the trailer.

A good friend of mine is a nature cinematographer. Over the past few years we’ve bemoaned the fact that nature programming on television has become a joke, me from a content position, he from an income perspective. Nature just doesn’t seem to be as popular in the current realm of reality television, unless it’s reality nature I suppose. Gone are the days of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, even National Geographic. Now we have shows less about education wonderment and more about spectacle.

It really began with the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. As much as his knowledge, care and concern for the animals he profiled got back to the core values of what a nature show is supposed to be about, he did stray into the realm of spectacle with his antics and the “character” of the Crocodile Hunter. However, I think becuase of his background, he did do enormous benefit to educate and inspire people about nature and conservation. Many others followed, trying to capitalize on Steve Irwin’s personable approach, from recognized authorities and real biologists trying hard to create entertaining and educational content to guys dressed in loin cloths getting their nipples tweaked by monkeys. It takes a unique individual who can be both goofy and entertaining as well as a teacher. None of those who followed in Steve Irwin’s footsteps have been able to fill them. 

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