If you live in the US, today is the start of Daylight Savings Time. In addition to your house clocks, make sure to set your the clock in your camera to the new time.
Mozambique
For most of the time I was in Mozambique, I was working on a project to teach African photographers how to enter the world marketplace. My typical day looked a lot like this:
After a few days locked in a conference room, however, this group of photogaphers had to get out and shoot something. We headed out to a local music festival, celebrating National Heroes Day. This elderly gentleman was being escorted down the street. He was trying to tell me something, but unfortunately my Portuguese is pretty thin.
Click for larger image
Heading to the SPE Annual Conference
I’m flying out tomorrow for the Society for Photographic Education annual conference in Atlanta. I’ll be speaking on behalf of ASMP, telling educators what they can find in the dpBestflow website. I’m very interested in hearing how we can make the site better for educators, and understanding how the web is being integrated into curricula.
If you are going to be at the conference, please feel free to say hello.
Panorama – N1 in Northern Cape
Click for much larger image
This panorama was shot on the N1 outside Richmond, South Africa in the heart of the Karoo. I used a 14 mm lens on a D700, which really accentuated the beauty of the storm clouds moving in. I’ve prepared this file using the export tools in Lightroom, the panorama stitching in Photoshop CS5, and the Zoomify export command in CS5.
Clicking on the link will take you to a new page that has the Zoomify embedded.
The clouds in this image are amazing when you zoom in.
Richmond South Africa
Click for larger image.
Here’s one of my favorite images from my project in South Africa. Hope in South Africa set up a brai (that’s a barbecue for you Americans) at the community center. Because of recent rains, many of the kids did not come down from the squatter camps. So they loaded up the food into some cars and took it up to the camp. As you can see, it was a big hit.
And, no, the dog did not get that sausage he was eyeing, but it was close.
See it in Google maps.
Lightroom presentation at SB3 tomorrow
Adobe has asked me to make a presentation on Lightroom at Strictly Business 3 tomorrow in Philadelphia. This is free and open to anyone registered for the weekend program. I’ll be showing some of the cool new stuff in Lightroom 3, including some of the most valuable features I use on my work. I’ll also show some of the new Photoshop features.
The presentation is from 8pm until 9 pm Friday the 25th.
If you are on the fence about coming to SB3, I’d like to encourage you to take the plunge.
SB3 Review
I have just returned from the ASMP’s Strictly Business 3 conference, and several people have asked me to report on the worthiness of the event. I can say with real enthusiasm that it would be quite helpful for professional photographers of any level. Whether you are just starting out or have an established business, there is a lot to benefit from.
In some ways the event was mis-branded. It’s not just a continuation of the earlier SB1 and SB2 events, because that’s not what our industry needs. We are facing huge changes, and the conference is really geared to helping photographers understand and survive the seismic changes we are currenly undergoing. Details after the jump.
ASMP Strictly Business 3
The Strictly Business seminar ASMP created in 1994 changed my career. It helped me understand that my business was a business. It helped me see the established photographers in Washington as my colleagues, and not just my competitors.
Strictly Business returns this year in its third incarnation. It’s coming to 3 cities, and I’m happy to say that I’ll be at each one of these. My official duties include a presentation on choosing and using catalog software. I’ll be outlining best practices for catalog software, and comparing the various offerings, such as Lightroom, Aperture, Expression Media, and Extensis Portfolio.
There is a really terrific faculty, including Blake Discher, Tom Kennedy, Rich Harrington, Shannon Fagan, Gail Mooney, Jeff Sedlik, Rosh Sillars, Thomas Werner and more.
In Philly, I’ll also be offering one-on-one consulting on the Friday. (I’m not scheduled to do this in LA, due to a noon arrival at LAX, but that’s subject to change. If you are interested in a consulting session, let me know, and we’ll try to schedule it.)
Our industry is in a state of great change, and it’s more important than ever to keep a nimble and up-to-date business strategy. SB3 is a great opportunity to think about your business as a business, and to focus on the future, while you engage with your peers who are going through the same thing.
Here are the dates: Los Angeles January 21-23, Philadelphia February 25-27, Chicago April 1-3. I hope to see you there.
Sign up here.
Only 15% regularly backup their stuff
Acronis, maker of backup software, has commissioned a survey of computer users, and found that only 15% do regular backups, despite the understanding that catastrophe is only a spilled coffee cup away.
Here’s a video they produced to help encourage you to maintain a more timely backup of your computer.
Which is totally different from this:
Metadata Working Group Guidelines 2.0 released
The Metadata Working Group is an collaboration between companies in the imaging business, working to standardize the types and use of metadata. Founding members are Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Canon, Nokia and Sony. The first report was released in 2008, and it has now been updated.
One of the most interesting sections of the new guidelines deals with both hierarchical keywords and other groupings (these are called Collections in Lightroom, and Catalog Sets in Expression Media). There is now an agreed-upon syntax for embedding those tags into image files. As software gets updated, we should see more use of these tags, and therefore more interchange of metadata.
This should help people both preserve and make use of their images and image metadata.
Anyone who is interested can download the new report here.