Stuff You’ll Like

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

  • 10,000 Birds: Inaccessible Island Rail. excerpt: The Inaccessible Island Rail is perhaps the coolest bird that neither I nor anyone I will ever meet will ever see.
  • Audublog: Klamath settlement could benefit habitat for California migratory birds.
  • Google: Google Voice, explained. I’ve been using Voice for a while to manage the fact that I deal with multiple cell phones now, and I’m happy with how it centralizes and simplifies my telphonic life… Which is way more complicated than I ever expected “a phone” to be…
  • Strobist: it’s time for the PC jack to die.
  • Rick Sammon: Quick Tip on Fill Flash
  • Michael Zhang: Use Bicubic Sharpener for web resizing
  • Chris Brogan: attention as a currency and noise
  • Mark Williamson: They closed Death Valley
  • Jim Goldstein: Mavericks — impact of scale
  • Scott Bourne: better skies with lightroom’s graduated filter
  • Alan Murphy: Using a water drip to attract birds
  • Rick Sammon: Q&A on color space
  • Kent Newsome: how to vastly improve your Facebook experience with filters and lists
  • Trey Ratcliff: Trey Ratcliff Speech at Google (I had a chance to see Trey speak at Apple on this trip, and had to cancel to go to a meeting I ended up not needing to be at. oh well)
  • Trey Ratcliff: how to make a web portfolio (the joys of Smugmug)
  • Syl Arena: Speedlighting — learning Canon Flash Photography
  • Merced Sun Star: San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge. This’ll give you a feel for what it’s like being at a fly-in. Until you experience one, though, you don’t really understand just how it affects you at a visceral level…
  • Adactio: testing huffduffer’s sign-up. Interesting rethink on a signup sheet. The A/B test is intriguing.
  • Digital Photography School: Taking Stock of your own photography
  • Michael Frye: Oaks. (going to look for this tree next week…)
  • Brian Auer: Tone Curves: final tips, tricks and things to avoid.
  • Outdoor Photo Gear: Setup Heaven in South Texas
  • Michael Zhang: Stop Motion Post-It Animation by Disney

When your workflow implodes, bad things happen…

One of the reasons I’ve been somewhat missing from the blog is that my photo processing workflow imploded — I came to realize it was broken beyond repair, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

That’s not a fun place to be.

The final straw was trying to integrate some more complicated processing techniques into the workflow, specifically handling multi-image processing for panoramas and HDR. The way I had everything set up in Lightroom just didn’t work for managing all of the pieces well, and everything I tried — well, all of the solutions were ugly and I realized they wouldn’t scale.

Ultimately I came to realize a decision I made when I first migrated to Lightroom was the failure point; I made a decision to use collections to store groups of photos instead of folders. Collections are a virtual grouping, folders are a physical grouping. I felt it made sense to import into a YYYY/MM/DDDD folder, and then use collections to pull related images together. Overall, that worked well (for a while).

Lightroom, however, has a — quirk — a design decision that is impacted by this, and that’s how sets can be used. Sets is another virtual collection that work within folders, but sets are incompatible with collections. that means when you pull everything together, you have to chose collections or sets (but not both). I chose collections. That works, until you need sets. Then all hell breaks loose. It really does make sense to use a set to pull all of those pieces together and tag them with the resulting image as the top image.

Unfortunately, you can’t do that if you use collections. sigh.

In researching options on how to do this (and more importantly, how to do this without tearing it down to ground zero and starting over), I finally decided the workflow I liked best was one outlined by Hal Schmitt at Digital Photo Experience as part of his Panorama screencast. But that meant — of course — starting from ground zero.

So I finally decided I needed to, and I’ve been spending my evenings recently taking everything in my Lightroom libraries and converting all of the collections to folders, one at a time. Of course, once you decide to open up the hood, you don’t just fix what’s broken, you start tinkering, and I did, restructuring my keywords, rethinking a few things in my metadata presets. Little things that flit in and tweak everything to some degree.

This, by the way, makes Time Machine crazy. That reminds me that I need to start planning to upgrade my disks to larger sizes soon. This means I have to think about my backup policies, and… and down the rabbit hole we go again. Fortunately I have a couple of months before I have to worry about the disks, and I’ve got everything back under control (well, mostly. I have a couple of thousand photos flagged with special keywords defining various “needs to be looked at and fixed” to-dos).

I’m happy with the structure of the files on disk and how the workflow gets me from import to flickr, and with the keywording and metadata (to a point; there’s more detail that I’m still thinking through and implementing, that’s the “to do” on a bunch of images…).

What I haven’t yet done is take it from “post to flickr” stage to the full portfolio, but that’s the part I’m starting to work on now. Most on that, hopefully soon…

Yosemite on the horizon!

So having mentioned it was time for vacation a couple of weeks ago, I’ve actually done something about it. I was able to grab three nights at the Lodge on the valley floor, so I’m taking the week of March 1 off and heading off to Yosemite in about a week to get away from email and everything else, and just unplug and unwind and focus on recharging the batteries and taking some photos.

It’s still a ways out, but the ten day forecast for that period (3/1-3/4) is encouraging: maybe some overnight snow but temperatures above freezing during the day, and it looks like a storm will roll through during the trip, which I’m hoping for. Nothing scary in the forecast, and encouraging for landscape potential. So we’ll see.

What’s not settled is what to do around those days. I sat down and wrote up all of the things I might want to do and then started pruning out stuff that didn’t seem to make the cut from a time/energy/interest level:

  • Grand Canyon (too much driving, too little time actually there)
  • Bryce/Zion (ditt0)
  • Vegas for birding and hiking in Red Rock (intriguin, but.. not this trip)
  • Disneyland (I don’t want to “go urban”)
  • San Diego Zoo (ditto)
  • Salton Sea and wandering the deserts for wildflowers (tempting on any number of levels; ultimately more driving than I wanted to do)
  • Carrizo Plain wildflowers and then SLO/Santa Barbara/Morro Bay (too early for Carrizo by a couple of weeks, and a bit of been-there-done-that on the central coast. It’s been where I’ve gone to hide a lot the last couple of years, so time to do something different…)
  • Out to Tahoe/Reno, then down the 395 to Morro lake and Bishop and out the other side (ultimately, it’s too early in the season for some things I want to do in the Eastern Sierra like Bodie, and just way too much driving, much as I’d like some winter time with Mono Lake; Devil’s Postpile is also buried right now…)

As it turns out, I got invited to go birding with a group down in Monterey on the 7th, so that was encouragment to stay a bit more local. Much as I’ve wanted to get down to Salton Sea to bird for a while (it was the trip that got canceled by my dad’s final hospital visit), I find myself interested in driving less and “doing” more. I’m not making final decisions about what I’ll do until I leave Yosemite, but I’ve got a few informal plans I’ve framed out depending on what I feel like and what the weather dictates.

  • Plan A: overnight near Galt so I can spend more time with the cranes and geese at Woodbridge and some of the northern Sacramento flyway stops and do some birding photography and try to observe one or two fly-ins and a dawn up there, then home.
  • Plan B: go home (but don’t tell anyone), and daytrip. Lots of things I want to do, from the SF Zoo and the aquarium to exploring the marin headlands and presidio or even play tourist from Pier 39 to Ghirardelli… tempting.
  • Plan C: change my mind and head down to Morro Bay (because ultimately I really love it down there…)
  • Plan D: who knows? I’m open to suggestions…

In any event, I’m really ready and looking forward to this. Definitely planning a busy week, just a week doing stuff I want to do… Blogging may continue to be light as I get things prepped at work and here at home for the trip; then again, maybe I’ll just start a cube sabbatical and get my blogging caught up…

Stuff You’ll Like

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

  • Dak Dillon: A Photographer’s Guide to Working with Magazines
  • Jeff Revell: HDRSoft makes HDR easier with Photomatix Light
  • Ed Finkler: We are the stupid ones.
  • Heather Morton: Doug Menuez and his new Stock Site
  • Peter Carey: How to control multiple flashes wirelessly with a Canon 7d [[ good timing!! ]]
  • Kirk Tuck: My idea of a great workshop. Collaboration is key
  • David Hobby: After the Light: High Pass Post Production
  • Kurt Repanshek: 15 years into the wolf recovery program
  • Moose Peterson: What’s the best investment
  • 10,000 Birds: Help! It’s raining Brown Pelicans!
  • Jeff Atwood: Cultivate Teams, not ideas
  • Michael Frye: Coyotes
  • Juan Pons: Recording Audio with your video
  • Brian Auer: Nonlinear Curve Adjustments and histograms
  • Round Robin: We Love Birds launches
  • Matthew Ingram: Don’t let the Good Become the enemy of great
  • Harold Davis: Split toning in a winter vista
  • Paul Burwell: top ten ways to make sure you’ll never be a pro

Stuff You’ll Like

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

What’s on my Pre?

The fun guys at Precentral have done an article where they all talk about the apps that live on their Pre or Pixi, so I figured now was a good time to chip in and do the same.  Do I need to attach a disclaimer here? Nah. you all know the drill — and I pay for all my apps, no freebies out the side door on weekends…

Here are the apps I keep close and handy:

  • To Do Classic — relatively new to the catalog, but I like it because it’s simple. I’ve used a number of other to do apps but this one is my current favorite because I don’t need the extra power some of the other apps have. I also like GroceryList.
  • gDial Pro and Visual Voicemail — connects me to google voice, which connects me to the thirty-seven-gazillion phone numbers I seem to own now.
  • TVMCalc — my current favorite calculator
  • Twee — my current Twitter client. Because I know you folks can’t survive without constantly hearing what I have to say, even when I’m at a hockey game.
  • FourSquare — who knew? people volunteer to be stalked! (but it’s fun!); I’m also starting to experiment with FourSquare as a location tool for birding, and it looks promising.
  • Where I’m At — I’m experimenting with location based services and the GPS as tools for my birdwatching. This one is my current favorite tool for grabbing location data and archiving it.
  • MediaClock — my travel alarm. One less gadget I have to carry in my bag!
  • StopWatch — which I use primarily for timing captures for night photography.

Below the fold, where you can’t see them:

  • textPress, because a way to quickly take free form notes is amazingly useful
  • Evernote, because you need a place to store your stuff. Having your stuff available on all of your devices rocks.
  • The Weather Channel, because when it rains, you get wet. So go inside.
  • TealTime, because when you work with people in five different timezones on a regular basis, knowing when they’re at lunch or asleep rocks.
  • Parking Place, my current “where in the HELL did I leave my car this time?” app. Now, if I could just teach it to automatically figure out it needs to take a location, I’d be really happy.
  • Preware and AppScoop, because we aren’t afraid of homebrew here.
  • SuperSudoku, Free Klondike, and Mine Search because, well, sometimes those important staff meetings run a bit long. I’m glad my boss doesn’t read my blog.
  • OpenTable, because dinner isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law.
  • Flashlight, because I don’t see those funky menus as well as I used to. Isn’t middle age fun?
  • DOF Calculator, because I’m a photo geek.
  • Yelp!, because I need to know where to get a good plumber who makes lattes.
  • Tip Em!, because the pre can never have enough Tip Calculators and this is my current favorite.
  • Backgrounds, because plain and grey is boring.
  • Sunrise Sunset, because knowing when it’s dark is useful for a photographer for some reason….
  • Friendsbook, my current favorite Facebook app
  • DirecTV, so when I remember I forgot to schedule that show, I can fix it.

What’s NOT on my Pre? As most of you know, before I came to Palm I used “that other phone”, but I believe in eating my own dog food, and I’ve been chowing away. But there still are a few things on that other phone I can’t do yet. Here are things I really wish I could do on my Pre, but nobody’s written them yet:

  • BirdsEye and iBird — my birding field guides. We just don’t have these resources on the pre (yet).
  • Best Camera, Focalware, Magic Hour – Photography apps I use once in a while.
  • Darkslide — there just isn’t a Flickr browser as good as Darkslide yet. Ditto one for Smugmug.
  • TideApp — another useful thing for a nature photographer and birder, because it sucks to get your feet wet for the wrong reason…
  • Sirius/XM Radio – 24 x 7 hockey sports talk, baby!

Given I own about 100 apps for “that other phone” (yes, I’m an app slut), that’s actually not bad for a new platform out less than a year. I figure it won’t take too long because I’ll have alternatives. Right, developers? RIGHT? Don’t make me hurt your dog… (and if you think about it, all but Darkslide are what you can charitably call “niche” apps for a specialty audience. they normally trail in availability while we build the audience for them…. ). My “other phone” now lives in my bag, relegated mostly to iPod duty and when I need one of the specialty apps, and if I wasn’t so lazy about it, I could move the music onto the Pre, but I just haven’t bothered…

Of course, I’m constantly trying out new apps and shifting stuff around, but isn’t that half the fun? These, however, are the ones I lean on and use on a regular basis these days.

The lens is back..

I’m a bit surprised, but my lens is repaired and back in my happy little hands. Total turnaround time is under a week. Tota cost was about $115 including diagnosis and shipping costs. According to the return info no new parts were needed so whatever broke was likely a screw that came loose and let everything slide out of position, and the tech pulled it apart, put it back together and did a full optical alignment and cleaning.

Hopefully will get out a bit tomorrow and take some test shots and see how it goes…