May 18, 2008
What's In My Computer?
There are a ton of stories about "what is in my camera bag" and I will no doubt do that piece also. But today I thought I would quickly share with you what is in my computer and how I use some of the applications.
First off, I have a two computer set-up, I take a Mac Powerbook into the field and have an iMac back at the office which is where I prefer to do the majority of my work.
Powerbook- Adobe Bridge & Photoshop: De-facto image editor.
- Daylite 3: Daylite is a great Customer Relationship Management project. It handles all of my contacts and calendar. It is also has project manager, notes, and tracks opportunities. What is special is that it integrates all of things and has some automation features for common tasks.
- Cyberduck: A FTP client, A great thing when you want to upload your photos "Old Skool" style to a server.
- Flickr Uploader: An application provided by flickr to upload photos.
- Browsers: Safari & Firefox, I had been a firm believer in Safari but then recently tried Firefox and was very impressed when it worked out better on some sites where I had layout issues when pages loaded.
- Image Rescue: I should knock on wood as I say this, but I haven't had to use this yet. It came with one of my CF cards from Lexar to rescue pictures from bad CF cards.
- MarsEdit: Another new tool in my belt. MarsEdit is an offline blog editor which gives me more flexibility in my writing of blogs.
- Photo Mechanic: In the field PhotoMechanic is my image management tool. I use it to bring in my photos and image browser as I look for my selects. I also use it for my captioning and keywording. It is killer fast and the work done keywording and captioning isn't lost when I bring my photos into my main digital asset manager (Aperture, see more below) on my main work machine.
- Photoshelter Uploader: An application provided by Photoshelter to upload photos.
- Soundslides: A great tool that many photojournalists use to create Flash based multimedia shows from images and sound/music.
- Aperture: I don't think that my explanation would do justice to all that Apple's Aperture. Think of it as the Swiss Army tool for digital imaging, it does more than you would expect and then a little more.
- Adobe Bridge & Photoshop: Same as above
- Daylite 3: Same as above
- Cyberduck: Same as above
- Flickr Uploader: Same as above
- Browsers: Safari & Firefox: Same as above
- Image Rescue: Same as above
- MarsEdit: Same as above
- Photo Mechanic: Same as above
- Photoshelter Uploader: Same as above
- Soundslides: Same as above
So Why The Two Machine Set-up?
Doing sports photography means that you are shooting and typically uploading photos from the field. On the upside, I have a laptop. The downside however is that it is an older 12 inch Powerbook bought when my needs were different from what they are now.
To complicate things, I also chose Apple's Aperture for my main digital asset manager. The technical requirements are too much for my little Powerbook. This is clearly not the optimal set-up, but it is what I have for the moment. I am hoping this will change soon (hint: if my wife is reading this). I am hoping to move to a single machine soon, which means a new Apple Powerbook, that I will use with a second monitor when I am back in the office.
I should also add that I have multiple external hard drives (HD) that I use to back-up my images on. Initially I had used CD and DVD's for back-up, but as the number of photos taken has increased, increased file size from my Nikon D200, I have moved to keeping my images on redundant hard drives. With the dropping price per gig of HD it makes sense to me and frees me from burning discs. Aperture's image management has also eased the management of my photos in this way.
Posted by Allen Clark at 03:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 06, 2008
Busy Day For OffWing Photographers
Saturday was a busy day for the OffWing photographers. Kate McGovern was covering the exciting the story of the Capitals getting into the playoffs by the hair of their chinnie (not sure of the spelling on this), chin chin. Don't get me wrong with that characterization, the Washington Caps have been playing great.
Alexander Semin celebrates his third period goal with Ovechkin and Green. The goal sealed the win for the Capitals at 3-1.
Photo by Kate McGovern
The Caps have completed an incredible comeback as the first team in the 30-team era of the NHL’s history to go from 14th or 15th place in their conference to a playoff spot. Kate posted a couple of other pictures that you can check out on OffWing.
At the same time Ellen Blanchard was at RFK covering the return of soccer season as the DC United took on Toronto FC. DC picked up a 4-0 win in front of the hometown, for more on the game you can check out Kris Herrell's coverage, Ellen also has more pictures from both the first half and the second half.
Photo by Ellen Blanchard
So what did this leave me? A day of spent inside a cold and dark hotel ballroom for a some continuing education. I along with about 30 other photographers participated in the Aperture Users Profressional Network's (AUPN) road tour of one-day intensive briefings on Apple's Pro photo application, Aperture, which is a great workflow tool for photographers.
With the Caps extending their season we are planning for an exciting spring and summer. OffWing and OffWing Photo will again be expanding our coverage of more sports and events.
Posted by Allen Clark at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2008
Fun With Flickr
OffWing Photo uses both Photoshelter and Flickr to share our photos with clients and with fans. Like any good handyman the trick is using the right tool for the right job.
One tool that I have started using is referred to as a Badge by Flickr. Flickr provides both html and flash versions that you can include as part of any website. They also have several different layout options that you can personalize. Photoshelter has just launched a similar service however it is not as robust as the Flickr tool.
Following is an example of a Flickr badge, using photos from the last game we shot.
| www.flickr.com |
Click through to see and learn more.
Flickr also provides a lot of control over what photos are included in a badge. For instance I upload all of my photos as sets. I then choose which set I want to include in a badge and then choose for Flickr to randomize the photos in the feed (you can also choose the most recent). You can also create a badge that pulls photos across different sets by choosing a tag.
www.flickr.com
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Below is an example of a flash based Flickr badge, again it is cool. I don't like this as much as the html version because there are fewer choices in personalizing the image presentation.
Posted by Allen Clark at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2008
Apple Introduces Aperture 2.0
Aperture is Apple's pro photo management application that I use. Today Apple announced version 2.0 which I am excited to try out for myself.
Early reviews claim big improvements in speed which will make any photographer happy with.
For more information a great resource is the Aperture Users Professional Network (AUPN), they have a lot of great resources for photographers and illustrators that use Aperture.
AUPN will be a great place to check in over the next couple of weeks as more and more people work with the latest release and report their impressions.
Posted by Allen Clark at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 10, 2008
Workflow: Image Storage And Archival
Previously we covered how to get the photos to your computer. This installment of photography workflow will cover how to best store and archive all the images.
My system for storing and archiving photos is based on a couple of principles. I have applied these principles then to my current situation which may be different than yours.
- My photos are my number one asset
- I am always looking to improve my system
- Multiple back-ups
- Images should be easily accessible
Making the back-up happens quickly in my workflow because cards and hard drives can and will go bad, guaranteed. The only question is when. For this reason I store my photos on two external hard drives (HD's).
One HD is my working drive which has the images that I will work from as I process them. The other drive is a back-up that includes the same images.
With the size and number of my photos rising and the price per gig of HD falling I chose to use external drives for my storage. In addition I back-up all "final" images that I provide clients on CD's or DVD's.
When I began with digital I used CD's and DVD's to back up but this quickly became unwieldily and time consuming. Using CD/DVD's also required another system to organize them in a way that I could quickly find an image if needed. The other thing that I didn't like is that once my images were out of site they were also out of mind.
My current pair of 320gb HDs are storing two years of images. I am anticipating that they will be filled in the next month.
There are also online services that will provide the archival of your images with the ability to access them anywhere in the world, while also providing an industrial strength back-up system. This seems beyond what I currently require but can see the benefits of this kind of system. The two leaders in this are Photoshelter and Digital Railroad.
The "HOW" of managing all the images will be my next post on workflow. While it can be done manually I have software to help me manage the thousands of images, spanning years. Stay tuned....
Posted by Allen Clark at 09:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 31, 2007
Workflow: Getting Pictures Off The Camera & Into Your Computer
While most cameras allow you to connect directly to your computer to download pictures, save yourself the headache and get a card reader that you can keep connected to your computer.
Card readers of all brands come in two real versions based on how they connect to your computer, USB and Firewire (IEEE 1394). I have been able to pick up USB 2.0 readers at my local computer store for $9.99 and typically can download multiple types of memory cards. You can't beat their price and they work fine if you are not under time restraints for downloading and accessing the pictures.
This year I bit the bullet and purchased a firewire card reader because the consistent throughput of data is faster than a USB reader. The firewire card readers I have seen will only fit one type of card. The one I use is pictured and will only work with Compact Flash cards which are the cards used in most Pro/Semi-Pro DSLRs.
The speed at which it downloads pictures is very important to me when I am on assignment and trying to quickly download the pictures so that they can be posted onto OffWing Opinion and distributed through our syndication service.
In between periods of events you will see the sport photographers running to empty their cards and upload their pictures as quickly as possible. Time is money...because editors on deadlines will run the best photos available at that time.
This part of the workflow is pretty much Straightforward. Let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to answer them.
Have a Happy New Year!
Posted by Allen Clark at 09:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack