Andrew Macpherson

After all the trouble last year I’ve been treating the MacBook Air with kid gloves, so it was with considerable horror that I felt the hinge graunch again.  This time the insurance company fixed it without prevarication, but qualified its return with “will not cover this fault again” which I think would be a prima facie case for return to vendor under European extended warranty legislation.

I don’t want to try it out.  The MacBook Air is now on Ebay and I’ve switched to a slightly heavier MacBook Pro with a nice big 500Gb disc.  The Air is beautiful, easy to use, light and just plain cool.  It is however too fragile for me.

Pros: can be taken where tripods are banned, magnetic attachment very slick, good hiking staff, easy to deploy as a stand
Cons: mount locking clip fragile and easy to lose, attachment screw for legs section falls apart

This review was first published on the Warehouse Express website

“I had a problem — I’m a dedicated tripod user, and the holiday firm advised that tripods are either a source of hassle or local revenue in Marrakech. Additionally I’m a bit stiff with tendonitis so a walking staff seemed a good idea. I spent a week on the internet looking at alternatives and the excellent videos on the Trek-tech website convinced me. (continue reading…)

There are a lot of Photoshop Video Podcasts out there, many directly brokered by the iTunes store.  I’m a great podcast fan for storing interesting speech for driving, for the train and tube, but the video podcasts are not such a great idea on any medium other than one’s laptop, or I suppose an iPad, though I’m not sure if the screen is big enough on that.

There are 2 axes they can be judged on beyond the simple quality.  One is how far away from the product they stray — are they about Photoshop, or are we in the 3D effects of Photoshop Extended, are we integrating with Adobe Illustrator.  The other noticeable dimension is the photo to artwork axis, with some of the talks being in a zone delineated by the advertising message, and using techniques that work only in relatively low resolution.

My needs as an aspiring amateur stop at presenting my photographs well, whether for club competition,  or as a gallery wrap canvas of a family portrait that someone’s prepared to pay for.  so I’m only going to point you at ‘casts which meet my needs most of the time, and don’t overwhelm the viewer with advertising — some is OK to pay for the content after all, but some casts are 75% advert 20%chat and 5% content.  I may be missing really good content because I haven’t found it (yet), but there are ‘casts that I’m deliberately not mentioning too.

So what shows am I finding Useful? (continue reading…)

NeoCube

My friend David very kindly gave me a cute toy for the Solstice — a set of Neodymium spherical magnets marketed as the NeoCube — they’re fairly small but extremely powerful. Once one gets over being able to have a handful of ball-bearings that don’t go flying off in all directions,the obvious use is for still life exercises.  One can make rather amazing structures as the photo demonstrates, and the videos on the company’s website are an entree to endless hours of frustration.

So anyway it’s a nice difficult subject to light and photograph.  highly polished spherical items.  I had fun with soft-boxes, and black and white foam boards till I got a set of reflections that I liked,  Then the fun begins, to try to photograph it.  The image will only be in focus for very slightly more than a hemisphere at F11 with a full set of macro tubes.  I’ll be making a later post with some good links about circles of confusion, hyperfocal distance and the digital vs film non-issue triggered by thinking about this. (continue reading…)

I just had a query from an obviously photoshop-savvy reader about how to use the file I provided, so in case there’s anyone else out there who does not like to ask….

The file just needs to be dropped into the same folder as any other meta-tag profiles you create to set author / address / copyright notice by saving a completed profile — then when you want photoshop to show that © copyright symbol the file will appear as an option in the Bridge append metadata and replace metadata menus — see the screenshot below  You can select a set of files in Bridge and mark them all as copyright rather than opening the properties of each individually.

Possibly worth pointing out how to save a profile — if you highlight a single photo then go to the bottom of the File menu in bridge there is a File Info option.

Select that and a form will pop up to allow you to set various aspects of the metadata.

You’ll probably want to set Author and the copyright notice and url on the general page, most of the IPTC data and possibly some of the origin data (credit / source) if you work through an agency, or need to credit your company. If you apply that to your photo you can then go to the Tools menu and, with the photo still highlighted select Create Metadata Template that will read in the values that bridge will allow you to save, and you can check the ones you really want to save for applying to other pictures.

When you save your new profile, remember what name you give to the file, and you can then search for that name to find the correct folder to put the copyright setting file you’ve downloaded from my blog (right-click here and SAVE AS), and once it’s in place it’ll just appear in your menu

Hope that helps!

What a revelation! There are speakers out there who will entertain and inform, as most do, and still mix in useful photographic, and club competition knowledge at the same time.  Until David Steel came along the overwhealming message from the club had been (continue reading…)

Well it’s all about learning and taking part, isn’t it?  Sometimes it’s also about discovering that a judge sees disinterest where you are trying to convey something rather more complex or “softness” where each hair is distinct.

Anyway on the  B&W print front, I’ve made an abominable start.  The consolation was selling 2 of the 3 on the way home, so they can’t have been too bad.

I did get 2 really good marks on colour prints, and was surprised and delighted to get nice marks on my first 2 projected images.  I really do want visitors to rate the photos I’m putting up here, so please do click on te stars or leave a comment (but not in Russian thanks )

 

The problem a refurbished flat, with plenty of space that just isn’t getting potential renters through the door to look.  The idea is to break out of the mould of sterile pictures, and try to add some aspirational zing to the advertising.

Jessica very kindly offered to do the shoot on a TFP/CD basis to build up her portfolio, with a view to getting pro modelling and film extra work.  I think that the results were worthwhile — have a look at the studio shots in my portrait folder as well — the sepia head shot makes a wonderful canvas.  Jessica was a joy to work with, and made my job much easier.  Life as a photographer is so much better when the subject also wants to look good.

Equipment: Canon 5D, 70-200 f4 L, Elinchrom D-Lite 2 Go, Chinese wireless flash trigger, shooting tethered to the MacBook Air.  Shooting tethered allowed Jessica to get a feel for how the shots were coming out, and, seeing that helped her to work with me to improve the results.

I’m watching the very good series on lighting and related ideas Jim Talkington on ProPhotoLife.com in his video library link.  The link will take you to the main site, rather than the video library as it’s only polite to see what else he have to say.  I particularly liked the very swift demo of lighting glass, and the article on using a single studiolamp to light a model, but those are only highlights for me –I’m sure you’ll all find something good, or a nice way of putting something you already knew.

Thank you Jim!  great series.

A weekend away in Hereford, and many shots with a very bright, largely overcast sky.  Not completely lacking texture, but almost completely blown by the time one’s foreground was exposed.

So the first thought is “Oh no here we HDR again,” but actually the answer is given in the Adobe TV movie “Learn Photoshop CS4 – Make local adjustments in Camera Raw“ the adjustment brush got down between the ruined walls of Llanthony Priory to let me reduce the exposure on the sky to the point where the texture my eyes had seen was also there in the image.

The skies the following day had a similar burnout problem, but in this case triggered by shooting up-light into the haze from the overnight rain evaporating which you will still see at the horizon, and for them, with their very different skyline, the answer was the Graduated Filter illustrated in the same video.