I love the speed that computer and related technologies are developing, we are living in an era where we are seeing science fiction become reality within a lifetime.
The standard people expect on television is high definition, yet industry is struggling to adapt and keep up with the demand for content. Not just the production industry, also the Computer manufacturers, TV's have jumped ahead, we can view, but playing back and creating bluray discs is still not a standard, what is more it may get left behind.
3D is being pushed so hard and making in roads to the consumer markets, even before the ROI can be realised on High Definition. We have been shooting and editing HD for a while now but the majority still either output to DVD or a digital files, these are the formats clients are demanding. Now all of a sudden we are being asked for 3D and it is great! The transition will have to be quick and those that can make it quick will certainly have the edge, even more so than the move to HD.
3D HD requires a whole new mind set in the pre-production; story boarding and planning is even more important, it is not simply enough to hire a rig and point it in the general direction of the action or to shoot from the hip. Then their is the matter of data management, two streams of HD needing to be backed up and archived, the need for a computer powerful enough to handle these two stream and the need to allow more time, where the transition to HD saw us having to allow 4x the amount of edit time for rendering and fx, 3D, sees the need to allow a lot more time again. Thankfully we know that the computers will catch up and eat 3D for breakfast.
The iPhone 4 illustrates this point beautifully, where 15 years ago it was science fiction, now shooting, editing and distributing HD video on your phone is a reality.
Today though I felt like I stepped in to a science fiction moment, we got an iPad in the studio! Awesome, find one, have a play and experience for yourself a moment where you think, wow, this is science fiction in my hand.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Fun shoot
On location today at Horizon Studios in StKilda shooting video for Dotti, good fun.
We are putting together the backgrounds for a series of fashion parades we are staging and for this one we had a group of dancers shot in silhouette . This will need some work in post but the stills I shot give you a feel for some of the look.
We are putting together the backgrounds for a series of fashion parades we are staging and for this one we had a group of dancers shot in silhouette . This will need some work in post but the stills I shot give you a feel for some of the look.
I must admit I am looking forward to the finished product, our Choreographer Alana Scanlan has a great vision for the finished product and the interactivity between the dancers on stage and the silhouettes should be very effective.
Shooting the video today on the Sony PMW-EX3, great camera, just takes a while to remember where everything is on it, which is always the case when going between cameras, the stills on the Canon 5DmkII, 1600iso.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
3D Editing in FInal Cut Pro
I wanted to discuss the details of this, but as it is a project still under wraps I can only talk about the technique.
We have been researching the shooting and editing of 3D for a client of ours, one of the articles I found was this one by Eric Cosh on 3D editing on the Ken Stone website. All very basic.
Well today I received some vision from an earlier using a 3D camera rig and have had a chance to play with it, sensational, I got it right first time around, thanks have to go to Eric for making his article so easy to follow. OK this is using the anaglyph technique, but for our end use this is actually what the client wants. The wow factor of 3D with the 5 cents a pair red and cyan glasses, fairly cost effective.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Not shooting
So a client brings me a hard drive with 340GB of images, some 12,000 of them, various stuff that different people in the organisation have had shot by other photographers in 2009. The issue, only one folder of images has any metadata, the rest are simply in a series of 38 folders with generic names.
The job, for me to sort the images so that they can make sense of them, catalogue, add as much metadata as I can glean from the images, without going over the top, then upload to Photoshelter.
The tool I use, Apples Aperture 3.
The process
1. Copy the entire contents of the drive to one of ours so that the original is safe.
2. I create a new Aperture library on the drive and import all 12,000 images by reference in to this library.
3. I go through each folder look for any obvious generic description and keywords that can be applied to all of the contained images.
4. I sort each folder in list mode by date to see if there is a way of breaking the images up by the day they were shot on, for a number of folders Ii can do this.
5. For the folders that have been shot over one or two days I sort by grid and the create albums based on separate themes/topics within the days shoot.
6. Based on the albums that have been created I then look for descriptions and keywords that I can apply across all of the contained images.
After sorting I have 266 separate albums, an average of 45 images per lightbox.
From an archiving and historic perspective suddenly the images are of far more value.
I have to export each album separately rather than being able to just export all 12k images in one hit. The images we upload to photoshelter rather than being the high res are only 1400pixel, enough for a comp, word doc or presentation. The reason for this is that each high res image should be processed, colour corrected and retouched. Processing every image is just not feasible, so the client chooses the ones they want and they are then uploaded as high res. This allows for many more thousands of images to be stored online for the client to readily access. OK in the ideal world all the hires would be processed and stored online for the clients to access as necessary, the reality is though that the clients will only ever use some 10-20% of images shot and that they are not prepared to pay the premium involved in having all the images process or the additional costs associated with the extra storage and bandwidth.
For me the process has been very interesting, I am getting to see some great images from other photographers and to understand my clients needs a little more.
The job, for me to sort the images so that they can make sense of them, catalogue, add as much metadata as I can glean from the images, without going over the top, then upload to Photoshelter.
The tool I use, Apples Aperture 3.
The process
1. Copy the entire contents of the drive to one of ours so that the original is safe.
2. I create a new Aperture library on the drive and import all 12,000 images by reference in to this library.
3. I go through each folder look for any obvious generic description and keywords that can be applied to all of the contained images.
4. I sort each folder in list mode by date to see if there is a way of breaking the images up by the day they were shot on, for a number of folders Ii can do this.
5. For the folders that have been shot over one or two days I sort by grid and the create albums based on separate themes/topics within the days shoot.
6. Based on the albums that have been created I then look for descriptions and keywords that I can apply across all of the contained images.
After sorting I have 266 separate albums, an average of 45 images per lightbox.
From an archiving and historic perspective suddenly the images are of far more value.
I have to export each album separately rather than being able to just export all 12k images in one hit. The images we upload to photoshelter rather than being the high res are only 1400pixel, enough for a comp, word doc or presentation. The reason for this is that each high res image should be processed, colour corrected and retouched. Processing every image is just not feasible, so the client chooses the ones they want and they are then uploaded as high res. This allows for many more thousands of images to be stored online for the client to readily access. OK in the ideal world all the hires would be processed and stored online for the clients to access as necessary, the reality is though that the clients will only ever use some 10-20% of images shot and that they are not prepared to pay the premium involved in having all the images process or the additional costs associated with the extra storage and bandwidth.
For me the process has been very interesting, I am getting to see some great images from other photographers and to understand my clients needs a little more.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Being organised
I take it as a compliment when a client says that I am very organised as this is something that I have had to work very hard on. Yes the Digital Asset Management, DAM, applications available now make it much easier, but one still has to take the time to use them.
A common perception seems to be that creative types are typically very unorganised, while there is no doubt an element of truth in this, we "creative" types cannot use it as an excuse, at least not for our professional side of life.
Of course there was the subtle suggestion by my client that another of the photographers she uses must be more creative as they are "so unorganised" and could never have their images sorted with descriptions and keywords. I actually resented this implication as it takes lots of work to deliver these additional benefits to my clients, whilst the additional info with the files may not be appreciated at first, over time the value is significant.
Now if I can only get the rest of my life sorted!
"We adore chaos because we love to produce order."
Dutch artist M. C. Escher,
A common perception seems to be that creative types are typically very unorganised, while there is no doubt an element of truth in this, we "creative" types cannot use it as an excuse, at least not for our professional side of life.
Of course there was the subtle suggestion by my client that another of the photographers she uses must be more creative as they are "so unorganised" and could never have their images sorted with descriptions and keywords. I actually resented this implication as it takes lots of work to deliver these additional benefits to my clients, whilst the additional info with the files may not be appreciated at first, over time the value is significant.
Now if I can only get the rest of my life sorted!
"We adore chaos because we love to produce order."
Dutch artist M. C. Escher,
Saturday, June 5, 2010
the power of computers
As I write this my laptop is chugging away exporting 223 hires jpgs, (21 megapixel). In the time of film the finished product was either a transparency or a print. Now most clients just want a digital file for use in documents or posters.
This does not mean that it is necessarily quicker now though, a one day shoot will see a least one day of sorting and processing images, whether the photographer does it or has an assistant do it for them. What is quicker now is doing this, when digital first came inmost of this work was done in photoshop or proprietary software that was slow and cumbersome. Now with applications like Apples Aperture and Adobes Lightroom the process of working with camera RAW files is greatly simplified.
There was a time where people thought that computers would make life easier and give us more time, whilst we lost that vision for a while, I believe that time dawning. Certainly for photographers computers are making our life much easier.
This does not mean that it is necessarily quicker now though, a one day shoot will see a least one day of sorting and processing images, whether the photographer does it or has an assistant do it for them. What is quicker now is doing this, when digital first came inmost of this work was done in photoshop or proprietary software that was slow and cumbersome. Now with applications like Apples Aperture and Adobes Lightroom the process of working with camera RAW files is greatly simplified.
There was a time where people thought that computers would make life easier and give us more time, whilst we lost that vision for a while, I believe that time dawning. Certainly for photographers computers are making our life much easier.
the more you put in the more you get back
I love the on line forums for software and equipment support, these are a great example of the more you put in to something the more you get out of them.
I regularly visit the Apple discussion groups and see what questions there are I can have a go at answering. OK typically theses are the basic newbie questions I have a go at but not always. I seem to be moving up in the level of questions I am answering. Watching the guys who have been on the discussion groups for years, those with thousands of posts behind them they typically let the newbie questions through to those who are getting started in the forum, gives the newbie a sense of achievement and saves the others from repeating themselves again and again and again. I have actually book marked a few relevant pages so that I do not have to repeat myself, just cut and paste either the content or the link. I am beginning to understand the pain and frustration of the forum gurus with those who will not read the manual or do a tutorial.
Still I support these guys, why, well I have had to ask a question on more than one occasion and yes like the others I ask them when something is going wrong and seed support quickly, and it is always there, how cool.
Me I am a Mac user so the forums I frequent most are the Apple discussion forums which are here;
http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa?categoryID=1
I regularly visit the Apple discussion groups and see what questions there are I can have a go at answering. OK typically theses are the basic newbie questions I have a go at but not always. I seem to be moving up in the level of questions I am answering. Watching the guys who have been on the discussion groups for years, those with thousands of posts behind them they typically let the newbie questions through to those who are getting started in the forum, gives the newbie a sense of achievement and saves the others from repeating themselves again and again and again. I have actually book marked a few relevant pages so that I do not have to repeat myself, just cut and paste either the content or the link. I am beginning to understand the pain and frustration of the forum gurus with those who will not read the manual or do a tutorial.
Still I support these guys, why, well I have had to ask a question on more than one occasion and yes like the others I ask them when something is going wrong and seed support quickly, and it is always there, how cool.
Me I am a Mac user so the forums I frequent most are the Apple discussion forums which are here;
http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa?categoryID=1
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Metadata in photographs
I manage the image library and image approval site for a client based here in Melbourne. Sitting and discussing how other photographers work and the need for each image to have some specific data describing it led to some interesting thoughts.
I can remember when this was hard work, like really hard and I avoided doing it myself. Earlier in my career, late '80s, I was out doing surveys of locations, photographing every aspect of an area and recording the details of where each image was taken. The idea was that I came back to the studio, printed out every image and wrote the details for each image across the bottom, now with 10 or 20 rolls of film this meant a lot of work. This process was labour intensive that many of the images just never had this information written on them, thinking that it was easy enough to cross reference the prints with my original written notes.
Even then I was able to see the potential for databases and being able to search for a specific location and recognising that this information would still have to be entered.
Well in that time many products have come and gone, each building on the other. Today the landscape for photographers is quite different and it is very easy to add metadata to photographs. Using a product such as Apples Aperture or Adobes Lightroom the process has become extremely streamlined. All photographers need to get their images from camera to end use and these two products fit very neatly in to that gap.
As the photographer we are quite often best positioned to add information to the images we shoot describing what we have captured. Why do we want to do this for our clients? Whilst a photograph may tell 1000 words, where is that river, where is that person standing, who is that person, you and the person commissioning the job may know, everyone else in the company who finds out about the shoot and visits your online gallery is desperate to know if they can use the image as well. If the answer is "Yes", you get a request for a hires version of the image and another sale, "No" and people will not bother coming back to your site.
My client was amazed at how little data most photographers were adding to the images uploaded to phototshelter.com for them to review. In one instance three days worth of shooting at a variety of locations and all of the images were lumped together with the one generic description and in the one gallery. No one had any idea where the images were actually shot, my client was very frustrated, these images were stunning but how could she use them for anything other than a generic landscape shot without caption.
Using one of the current crop of tools available to process our raw files is logical, they make it easy to batch process, well the same is true of adding descriptions and keywords, it is easy and adds value to your work.
I can remember when this was hard work, like really hard and I avoided doing it myself. Earlier in my career, late '80s, I was out doing surveys of locations, photographing every aspect of an area and recording the details of where each image was taken. The idea was that I came back to the studio, printed out every image and wrote the details for each image across the bottom, now with 10 or 20 rolls of film this meant a lot of work. This process was labour intensive that many of the images just never had this information written on them, thinking that it was easy enough to cross reference the prints with my original written notes.
Even then I was able to see the potential for databases and being able to search for a specific location and recognising that this information would still have to be entered.
Well in that time many products have come and gone, each building on the other. Today the landscape for photographers is quite different and it is very easy to add metadata to photographs. Using a product such as Apples Aperture or Adobes Lightroom the process has become extremely streamlined. All photographers need to get their images from camera to end use and these two products fit very neatly in to that gap.
As the photographer we are quite often best positioned to add information to the images we shoot describing what we have captured. Why do we want to do this for our clients? Whilst a photograph may tell 1000 words, where is that river, where is that person standing, who is that person, you and the person commissioning the job may know, everyone else in the company who finds out about the shoot and visits your online gallery is desperate to know if they can use the image as well. If the answer is "Yes", you get a request for a hires version of the image and another sale, "No" and people will not bother coming back to your site.
My client was amazed at how little data most photographers were adding to the images uploaded to phototshelter.com for them to review. In one instance three days worth of shooting at a variety of locations and all of the images were lumped together with the one generic description and in the one gallery. No one had any idea where the images were actually shot, my client was very frustrated, these images were stunning but how could she use them for anything other than a generic landscape shot without caption.
Using one of the current crop of tools available to process our raw files is logical, they make it easy to batch process, well the same is true of adding descriptions and keywords, it is easy and adds value to your work.
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