On 2nd chances & imperfections.

NOTE: If you’re planning on using an Eye-Fi card to shoot tethered, I have an update at the end of this post… PLR

Editing is hard.

I’m not talking about post-processing but the act of culling, of singling out a handful of images from a drive full of material. Working alongside photo editors, seeing how they process your work and having to live with the decisions they make is probably the best school you’ll ever find. It often takes you down a couple of notches. But eventually you begin to understand how others view your work, what it means and how it all fits together. It’s like being given hints to a puzzle.

There’s a school of thought that claims you should be merciless with your images, keeping only the very best and deleting anything that doesn’t make the grade. I tend to lean the other way: I’m a pack rat. I keep everything, apart from forgotten lens caps and accidental self-portraits of my shoes (!). Not because I can’t make a decision but because I firmly believe in the powers of distance and perception:
Time = distance = modified perception.

The fact is: we change. We change as individuals, as craftsmen and artists. My eye doesn’t see what it was seeing five years ago. Hell, even ONE year ago for that matter. Photos originally dismissed can suddenly surface to become hero images. It happens.

I don’t consider myself a technical photographer; I mean I’m perfectly comfortable with the technical stuff — I have to be — but I tend to favour emotion over technical perfection when I can. I don’t care about focus as much as I care about intent. I don’t pixel peep beyond what’s necessary to do my job correctly. It’s not what I’m after. Which is probably the reason I’ve fallen in love with the Fuji cameras and their ethos. Soul over speed.

I tend to believe our biggest strength as photographers is in seeing the potential of an image where most people would see a mistake and hit the delete button. But sometimes this doesn’t happen on the first pass. Sometimes it’ll happen years later, simply because we’ve changed or had time to disconnect ourselves from the captured moment.

This past weekend I did some further organizing of my library in Lightroom, tagging, keywording, building collections and smart collections. I looked into my France collection and disabled the filter that was set to 4 stars and up, just for the hell of it. Again, I found images I’d dismissed. There’s nothing perfect about any of them but for some reason they suddenly spoke to me and I couldn’t understand why they’d flown under the radar all this time.

If I’d been merciless I would’ve missed out, completely unaware.
Here’s to second chances…

P.S. There’s something slightly disturbing about picture #8… Can’t quite put my finger on it…!

UPDATE: I did some further testing with the Eye-Fi card (btw I’m using the older 8GB Pro X2 not the newer 16GB). Bottom line: if you want to use this for tethered shooting use an ad-hoc network. I’m not talking about a small speed increase, on my network a single raw file transfer went from several minutes (!) to under 30 seconds. JPEGs just zip by. Here’s a quick primer on how to create an ad-hoc network on a Mac:

- Click the wi-fi icon in the menubar and select Create Network…

- Choose a name, select 128 bit security and choose a password. The Mac will create the network and the wi-fi icon will change accordingly.

Once this is done you’ll need to add this new network to your Eye-Fi card by plugging it into your computer like you did the first time you set it up. You’ll only need to do this once so it’s no big deal. One thing to remember: you can’t save an ad-hoc network configuration, it needs to be created each time you want to use it. So make sure to note the name and password you entered in Eye-Fi Center and use this every time you create the network — otherwise the card won’t regognize it and you’ll need to plug it in the computer again.


An Aperture to Lightroom addendum | & some archive diving.

Sorry for the lack of content this week: I’ve been struggling with a nasty bug while trying to work on a new project. I’ll have more on that later but let’s just say it also explains the lack of updates to the EDITIONS site. Something to do with overlapping mandates…

I’ve also been knee-deep in the Lightroom switcharoo and I thought I’d give you a follow-up on that process. I was supposed to write about the processing differences this time around but it’ll have to wait. A lot of ground to cover on that front and too little time. So this is more about my import strategy.

My biggest fear with this move was obviously losing all the edits I’d done in Aperture over the years. I had three choices:

  • Keep the files edited in Aperture where they were and only add new files to Lightroom.
  • Export rendered images of my Aperture files to Lightroom.
  • Edit all the images again in Lightroom.

Now, I’m pretty sure you’re thinking this last option would be DOA. I mean, who wants to go through that, right? Well… Me? Turns out it’s pretty much what I’ve been doing. I’m not doing it systematically for every image I’ve shot mind you, but I am revisiting what I consider my best images, reprocessing each one in Lightroom.

The first option of having some images in Aperture and others in Lightroom didn’t work for me. I like having access to everything in one place. The second option would’ve meant a lot of disk space in lossless format (TIFF or PSD). A lot. So I settled on a strategy that may seem strange but works for me:

  • In Aperture I filtered all the 3 stars and up files from 2012.
  • I exported all these files as high quality JPEGs into a new folder called 2012 AP3 Renders.
  • I imported this folder in Lightroom and labeled all these files blue so I could easily identify them later.
  • Then I proceeded to import my 2012 folder (the one on my external hard drive) into Lightroom.

By doing this I can easily identify my best Aperture images in the Lightroom library (they’re all in blue) and since I always use the All Photographs view sorted by capture time, I get the rendered Aperture images side by side with the original masters, no matter when they were imported. Here’s what I mean:

The Aperture renders have kept their 3 stars rating (on import, this is in the metadata) and as I reprocess the masters in Lightroom, these new versions get 4 stars. So a quick 4 star filtering shows me just the newly processed files. When I want to see everything again I turn off the filters altogether (Command-L).

When I’m reprocessing those files I can also easily compare them to the Aperture version which is a nice bonus. I just hit the left arrow key for a quick look, go back with the right arrow key. To be honest I relied on this heavily at first, making sure I could replicate the same look and not stray too far away from what I’d done previously. But I’m now much more confident with LR’s toolset and don’t need this as much as I did. In fact I’ve been very surprised at how quickly I can go through this reprocessing, even with local adjustments taken into account. It’s not anywhere near as nightmarish as I thought it would be.

I imagine you’re probably wondering why the hell I’m doing this in the first place… I’d say refining. With new tools come new possibilities and with distance comes a better understanding of the bigger picture. So the result is that I feel I’m doing a better job this time around, as well as making everything more consistent. This has nothing to do with one application being better than the other, it’s just the ability to see the same images from another angle in these new surroundings. A bit like an old couch in a new apartment.

Speaking of apartments: at the Apple Event this week I’m sure you all noticed the Aperture cameo and it’s repeated description as a PRO application for PRO users. Hopefully this bodes well for the future. I’m just sayin’.

It’ll be too late for me though.
I know, I know: never say never.

I’ll end with some bonus images to make up for this slow week. New photos from last year’s LUTETIA series that I found while archive diving (it’s the new pastime!) in Lightroom. Nothing like moving stuff around to uncover misplaced items.

Later

My one Aperture 4 wish | and how Lightroom still doesn’t do it for me.

My trek into the Lightroom universe happens with every new release of the software. I’m always curious to see how the other half 95% live. And of course I like to know what I’m missing out on - if anything.

So yesterday I did just that. Downloaded the trial, loaded some Nikon and Fuji files. To be perfectly honest I didn’t look at the new Book and Map features in Lightroom 4. I’m sure they’re perfectly fine but they wouldn’t be a reason for me to switch. What I’m truly interested in is image rendering and editing: is it better than Aperture? Can I do more? Will it make my images look better?

At the risk of rumbling a few feathers… Nope. In fact my impressions of Lightroom 3 still stand completely:

 

“Does LR3 sometimes do a better job? Yes. Same goes for Aperture. Does LR3’s built-in NR/sharpen and Lens Correction trump Aperture? Hell yes and I wish Apple would take notice. I’m using DFine, Sharpener Pro and PTLEns but would very much welcome not having to render TIFFs for those functions, to say nothing of the ability to go back and tweak.

But for my use Aperture is a better tool. And the good thing about all this is that in trying to replicate certain LR3 functions, I’ve found new ways of working with AP3 and have also revisited areas of my workflow.”

That was back in 2010. My take on NR/Sharpen hasn’t changed. LR is king on this hill compared to AP3. I also noticed a slight edge in micro-details but that may be due to the sharpening adjustment being on by default (there’s auto sharpening in Aperture’s raw brick as well but frankly, it’s barely noticeable) . Camera profiles would also be a nice and much welcome addition, especially for Nikon cameras - Aperture does some weird colour interpretation with NEF files. It would also allow the amazing VSCO Film to be even more precise with its emulations.

But the bottom line for the way I work: I can still do more, faster in Aperture 3. In most ways, I find it to be a much more versatile tool, contrary to popular opinion. And for some reason, everything feels sluggish in LR. I know, this is what everyone condemns Aperture for… but there you go. I can’t argue with what I see and experience, at least on my machine. If I were to switch to LR, I also suspect my use of Photoshop would go way up. I used to live in Photoshop. I don’t anymore.

The big question on every Aperture user’s mind though: what will Aperture 4 look like? Or for that matter, when will Aperture 4 look like anything? We’ve been hearing rumours here and there about Apple actively working on a next version but the direction it will take… That’s the big mystery.

FCP X is on everybody’s mind. As is the focus on iOS and the recent release of its skeuomorphic version of iPhoto. Apple seems hellbent on redefining workflow paradigms which can either lead to interesting advances or… piss a lot of people off to put it bluntly. I don’t mind learning new ways of doing things. What I do not want is Apple taking away essential, more complex features for the sake of catering to a newfound $79 audience. As a working photographer with so much invested in Aperture, that prospect has me very, very worried. 

I. Don’t. Want. Magic. Anything.

If Apple wants to add cutesy features for iPhoto upgraders, I can live with that. I’m all for allowing more folks to express themselves more easily. But we need them to remember the basic, important stuff as well. We don’t need to use Aperture to post to Twitter. We do need it to kick serious butt in IQ and make our images shine, not just look cool but shine. This means concentrating on features that matter to people selling their photography. Not just posting to Facebook.

I know most professional photographers have switched to Lightroom. But there are some pretty big names still on Aperture’s bandwagon. It’s an amazing application that, to me, is still leaps and bounds over LR in several areas. I could go into an extensive wish list but I won’t. I’ll keep it down to a single one: please Apple, please keep Aperture in the pro category.

Whatever that actually means nowadays.

Below are some pics from yesterday morning. I was in a japanese etchings kinda mood…

P.S I hope this post won’t come off as some sort of snobbish tirade against newcomers or change. I simply think anyone interested in learning any type of craft will benefit from having tools that will go further than one-click enhancements. And I hope Aperture builds on the great tool it already is.