Capture One 5 Workshop

Since taking the Advanced Digital Workflow Class at Cypress College, I have been introduced to many new and fun programs. One of them being Capture One 4. It is a great raw processing engine for photos and with the pro version shooting tethered to a computer is a breeze. While surfing the net and Calumet’s website, I just happened to notice that they were have workshops on the new Capture One 5 software. The closest one to me is the Calumet Los Angles workshop on Feb. 1, 2010. After seeing the deal that everyone who takes the course gets a free copy of Capture One 5, I was hooked. The normal cost of the program is $129.99. Registration for the workshop is $49.99, so you get the software and two and a half hours of training on the software. If anyone from the Digital Workflow Class is going to be going let me now. Right now Grace and myself have signed up for the Capture One 5 Workshop.

Flickr War

Well, another month down in Grace and my Flickr war. Only three more to go.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Racket Ball Challenge

Clifford Lester has been playing racket ball for a while now. He has gotten really good at the sport. So when Luis Munoz challenged him to a match, it sounded like it was going to be a good competition. Luis had been playing up the challenge all day trying to psych Cliff out. He new that Cliff played a lot, but Cliff didn’t know that Luis had never played before. It wound up being less of a match and more of a practice for Cliff. At the end you could see who won by who was sweating less. During an intermission for Luis, Grace went in and gave it a try. Wearing completely the wrong cloths and having no shoes did not help her game either.

Most of the time while Luis was playing Grace was shooting video with the Canon 5D Mark II. She is trying to get a feel for it so she will be able to show students how to work it. I on the other hand decided to shoot with the Nikon D700. After a few minutes of getting use to Nikon’s ergonomics, it was a good and responsive camera. The autofocus was very quick and the aperture priority seemed to give pretty good exposures. It was fun to use something other than my regular old Canon 5D. If I hadn’t already invested so much money into Canon I might have gone over to Nikon. But at the time I went with Canon they were to only ones with a full frame digital sensor. Now that times are changing it seems that both camera systems are equally as good now. It is now at the point were Canon and Nikon are just playing leap frog with each other. Canon had full frame sensors then Nikon made one. Nikon had amazingly high ISO’s and now Canon does also. My best advice in getting a camera is to get whatever feels good to you.

Our Broken Window

On the same night of the Available Light Class we had a problem at the Cypress College Photography Department. Grace went into Studio 2 and noticed some glass lying on the floor. It didn’t look like any of the typical glass that we have around the department that might have broke. On closer inspection, she noticed that it had the same tint as the large plate glass window that are in that studio. Once she opened up the blinds there it was. A perfect shaped hole that fit the glass found on the floor. Grace immediately called campus security and talk to the auto body department to make sure no one was standing under the window. From upstairs the window seemed to be fluctuating with the wind and seemed like the rest could fall out at anytime. When Campus security arrived, they decided to break the rest of the window out just to be safe. So with all of the excitement going on, Grace and I decided to document it by photographing upstairs and from ground level. After patching the hole with some black plastic the nights excitement ended. The next day a plywood board now sits where the window us to be.

Available Light Field Trip

A couple of days ago Clifford Lester took his Available Light class on a field trip. The trip was to a building he had found that was still under construction, but the walls there were great backgrounds for a fashion photo shoot. I came along because I wanted to see the class in action. While I was there I also worked as Cliff's Digital Tech for the first part of the class. It was actually fun being on location as a tech. Since we didn’t have any outlets, it was a new experience trying to set everything up and try to conserve power. Cliff had Krista and Chris scout the models that we were shooting that day. After Cliff’s demo I took part in some of the shooting. I mostly focused on taking pictures of Krista’s model Courtney. I really like the class and next time it is offered I will see about enrolling in it.

Flickr War - October

Well another month down in Grace and my Flickr war. Now there is only 5 more months to go before our year long battle is over. Since we started I have been in the lead and she keeps talking about when she is going to pass me up. Hopefully she will start that soon. It isn't really fealing like a challange anymore. Come on Grace you can start anytime now.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Time Lapse Photo Shoot

Time Laps from John Halligan on Vimeo.

I have been wanting to do a time lapse of a photo shoot for some time now. Krista allowed me the opportunity to try this on her photo shoot with Ross Davidson. I wanted to make a video showing how the setup, shooting, and tear down goes. Because of sometime consternates on my part, I wasn’t able to start shooting before everything was setup. Next time it should go a bit smoother now that I know how to get everything setup. Now I just need to learn how to actually use my video editing software.

Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta

What is new in Lightroom 3 Beta - Part 2 - Part 3

An instructors of mine told me that he never looked forward to Photoshop upgrades because he had to almost relearn everything. Once he started to use Lightroom all that changed. He actually started looking forward to updates and upgrades. Everything new that was put in to Lightroom just help to improve the program without changing much of the layout and feel of the program. Well, now it the time to start testing out the next version of Lightroom. The Public Beta was just released yesterday, so do not need to have a previous version of Lightroom to try it. All you need to do is go to Adobe Labs to download it. Some of the new features in Lightroom 3 Beta that are listed on the Adobe Labs site are:

• Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
  
• State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
  
• Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
  
• Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
  
• Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
  
• Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
  
• New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
  
• More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) have already released some new videos to help get people up to speed with the new changes to Lightroom 3. The videos are demoed by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski who are great speakers on anything Photoshop and Lightroom related subjects.

If you do decide to use Lightroom 3 Beta it will be valid until April 30, 2010. So it seems like the new version will be out hopefully be fall of next year.

A New Use of an Old Toy

My friend Robert Williams needed some help with a project for the Advanced Digital Workflow Class. He needed a partner for the midterm practical and his schedule was booked solid because of work. I decided to help setup a shoot so he could tech for me. I really had no idea what I was going to setup for the shoot. He wasn’t able to make it to the fashion shoot that I setup with Krista Skustad, so that left me with one day to think of something. The day before Robert and I were going to shoot I received the Drobo that I had order a couple of days earlier. I had planned on replacing my HP MediaSmart Server with this new fine and shiny Drobo, which gave me an idea. This would be the thing we would shoot. After all, from the time that I got the thing, it was a little bit of a pain to manage. Most of the time I just left it shut off because I was tired of having to trouble shoot it. Now I finally manage to find a use of the old thing. As a Prop it worked fantastic. It never beeped at me, got angry and flashed red lights at me, or just constantly give me warnings that it processer was working at 183 degrees Celsius. Now I actually like the thing. More or less as a paper weight now.

The New Pen and Paper

(Update the video has been pulled because of the unauthorized use of the Nike symbol.)

Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

This maybe a conceptual idea from Microsoft, but I really like it. I hear everyone is waiting for Apple’s announcement of a new tablet computer, which from rumors will be I big iPhone, but I think I will like this a little bit more. If it come to market the way it is shown here then it would be an amazing thing for me to use at school to organize my notes. The old pen and paper notebook might just become a thing of the past. One of the key features that I like about this design is that it looks like something that I am already familiar with. The good old pen and paper. A problem that I might have with Apple’s Tablet is that none of the rumors talk about it having a pen. I think it would be easier for me to jot down notes in a class with a styles then it would for me hitting a virtual keyboard. The interface of this device also seems to be a little more appealing to me. I like the idea of two screens. It is the way I look though most binders and note books right now. Plus when I open an application or program it should not cover up the whole screen like it might on a single display screen. I am really looking forward to this technology. Right now I am thinking this would be a good way to draw up comps and sketch ideas for some of my photo shoots. Hopefully this come to market the way it is looking in the concept video and not some watered down version of this.

Original story about the Microsoft “Courier” can be found on Gizmoto.

Living Art Media

Living Magazine Cover & Spread - Outside Magazine from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

I was looking through some blog feeds this morning and came across one that really caught my eye. It was an article about Alexx Henry and his work with the new media, living art. He was a guest speaker at Image Mechanics Collision Conference up in Los Angles not that long ago. That is where I first got introduced to this new media of living art, or sometimes called living canvas. It is the hope of the print world that with new technologies that are in development that one day bring our magazines and news papers to life. I really like this concept since it has been around for years in many movies and television shows already. Right now this is still in its infancy and the market for selling this kind of stuff is not there yet, but it is coming. Now as photographers it seems like we are going to go through another transitional period of stills to video. It should be a fun time ahead.

The original post was from Photography Blog.

September Flickr War

Well this month I hit a new mile marker. 7000 hits and just at the nick of time. Almost didn’t make it this month. Hopefully I will get a good surprise when I see Grace’s blog and see her almost caught up to me.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Small Problem on the Set

Krista has been working on her portfolio this semester as part of her independent studies class. Where she has worked with many female models in the past, Krista has wanted to start working with more male models to diversify her fashion portfolio. This was the first shoot that I am aware of that she setup to shot with a male model. The start of the morning went great. We actually got to the school a little early that day. Krista’s wardrobe designer Nicci arrived shortly after we did and her model said that we was going to be running a little late, but he would be there. Since we were going to have some time before he arrived, Krista had us hold off on setting stuff up the background. She wanted to wait until she could see him and get an idea of his outfits. The time for the shoot was originally set to start at 11:00am and the model say he was going to be about fifteen minutes late. After an hour or so Krista tried to call him and see if he was still going to make it to the shoot. He didn’t pick up, instead he had texted Krista that he was on his way and would be there soon. At almost two hours late he called Krista because he had gotten off the freeway and didn’t know which way to go. After a bit of a struggle to get him turned in the right direction, he was on his way. By the time he had finally arrived it was past two hours late and Krista was not a happy person anymore. She had stopped really caring about how the shoot was going to go before he had arrived. Once he was there and the shoot started, that feeling really didn’t change much at all. He really didn’t take directions from her that well, and his phone kept going off while Krista was shooting. He even answered it while he was in front of the camera. This was driving her crazy. When I chimed in about tech issues where we might need to adjust the exposure slightly or maybe move a light just a bit I got the response of “I don’t care”. I really didn’t push the point to much after that because I did agree with her. The shoot was really finished even before it had started. All of our excitement was drained by having to wait of the model. Krista also mentioned that he just passed over the fact that he was late and didn’t really seem to care much about the shoot. Hopefully the next male model that Krista works with won’t be as bad. As for this one, I don’t think she will ever work with him again.

On most of Krista’s shoots that I work on with her it is hard to edit it down. There are a lot of good pictures and it comes down to just having to pick one moment in time over another. That was not the case this time. It was hard to find any really good shots from this shoot, but I did manage to find about a handful to post.

A little Less Fun with Cature One

Awhile ago, I worked with Krista on another photo shoot. This was the second time that I was using the software Capture One Pro 4 on a shoot. I was still excited about using it from the late photo shoot that I work with Krista on. Unlike last time though, I had a few more problems with it this time. Once I got everything connected, I found that the software was not detecting the camera. I tried restarting the camera and the computer with no luck. I then remember that Cliff mentioned that sometime the preferences can get corrupted. After taking a moment to try and remember where the file was on the Mac, I trashed it. Once Capture One started up again, all was fine for the rest of the night.

Krista’s shoot that night was to take some pictures of a drummer named Emilio who is a member of the band Fire Rocket Red. The set up with the dark background made for a great low key photo shoot. Emilio brought the props to help with the shoot.

A little while after that shoot, Krista was going to also going to do some head shots of Chris. If I remember correctly he needed some new head shots to try out for a part on the show Heroes. Here is hoping he gets it. All of these Images were shot by Krista and have my post processing added.

Camera Obscura

This semester I am taking a Photo History class at Cypress College with Jonathan Fletcher. One of our first home work assignment was to make a camera obscura and then photograph the results. My place had a horrible view of walls and more walls were I live, so I asked Krista if I could use her place. Setting up the camera obscura in her room was fairly easy. We just had to take down one set of curtains and cover two window with black plastic. It was great fun up until it started to heat up the room. During my first test shot I turned off the light at the wall even though Krista told me if I turned it off at the ceiling fan I could still have some air circulation. That was a long five minutes baking in that heat. After checking my test and I looked good I decided to reposition the camera and take a couple more shots. This time I was smart enough to leave the fan on, but it was still way to hot. Grace also joined me for the last couple of shots. During one of them, she tried to take a picture of me taking a picture of the camera obscura. I don’t think it worked out the way she was hoping.

Fun with Capture One (Continued)

Here is a selection of Krista’s images from the shoot the other day. More can be found on my Flickr site.

Fun with Capture One

On Wednesday, Krista had a photo shoot and I was working as her digital tech. She also had a hair stylist, make-up artist, and a wardrobe stylist to help her get the model ready for the shoot. Because there was going to be a limited amount of time that the model was going to be able to stay, two different backgrounds setup at one time for this shoot. This made changing out backgrounds a snap. There were three different shots that required wardrobe, make-up, and background changes. With two backgrounds up, we only had to worry about changing one. Also during this shoot, I got to play with some new software. Normally I would use Canon’s capture software and have Adobe Lightroom import the images. This process was slow to setup and took a long time before you can see anything on the screen. This time I used Capture One. It was pretty much plug-in play. The images loaded very fast, about a second or less. This gave Krista almost instant feedback on how her images looked. She also like that she could hear the excited from everyone right after she took the shot. This was an amazing shot to work on and I can’t wait for the next one.

During the setup, I shot a couple pictures of Krista.

6000 Views

I just got the bench mark of 6000 views to my Flickr today. It feels good to have my stuff seen.

August Flickr Count

Well it is that time again. Posting the end of the month results of the Flickr war that I have with Grace. It has been five months since we started this and it has been a fun little competition. We are trying to see who can get the most hit in a year’s time. It started with my birthday gift to Grace and turn into a fun little sport. It has also been getting the both of us to shot and look at how to show our work in a way that will actually be seen by as many people as possible. As it stands sometime early next month I should hit over 6000 hits. Hopefully it will be double to triple that by the end of the one year challenge.

Grace's Flickr

My Flickr

Cypress College Photo Dept Staff

Cypress College Photo Dept Staff, originally uploaded by pinlux.

Grace has been scheming to get a photo with all of the cypress college instructors in it for quite a while. This summer she had her opportunity. With a little bit of sweet talking she got Greg Fulton to agree to let her use his studio. After a grand tour she decided on the location of the shot and how she wanted to light it. When it got close to the day of the shot Grace enlisted the help of Craig Norris and Vergil Lam to help with the lighting. It was a full day and night event getting the lighting setup. Even then it still need to have minor tweaks the morning of the shoot. Once everyone got settled in and found there places the first couple of test shots started. Again with the lighting correction and the angle of the camera. This went on for a good amount of time, so people got bored and played around during the testing. Once the lighting was finally set and the group got its composer back the final shot was taken. Then five to ten more were added just because. During one of the shot, everyone had post-it notes on their heads for fun. With the day winding down, the refreshments were severed and everyone gathered around the laptop to have a look at all the images. It was a great day.

Appearing in the photo

Top Row: Greg Fulton, Ronald Miller, Clifford Lester, Jonathan Fletcher, Greg Bumatay, Mark Chamberlain
Stair Case: Rob Johnson, Grace Suphamark
Chairs: Max Gerber, Jerry Burchfield, Elizabeth DiGiovanni, Susan Skaar, Davis Barber, Clayton Spada
Front Row: Krista Skustad, John Halligan, Greg Rager

A Video on Social Media

I ran across a video today on Geekbrief, a shinny, happy tech news blog, that made me think of Grace. She is always going on and on about how people need to use social media outlets like: Twitter, Facebook, Google wave. It is a useful an powerful tool to market one’s self these days. While I don’t really take full advantage of these tools yet, I do agree with Grace. So getting back to the video I saw, it was a presentation by Giovanni Gallucci, a social media expert during WordCamp Dallas 2009, on how to promote yourself effectively. There are some good tip on using the systems that are in place without getting yourself band. Hopefully some of you will find this useful and informative, namely Grace.

The Kate Reid Quartet at Steamers

I got a call from Grace asking if I wanted to go to Steamers in Fullerton, CA. She told me that Kate Reid, an instructor that I took for Jazz History Class at Cypress College, was going to be playing. How could I pass up an opportunity like that? We were going to meet up with Ron and Nancy Miller and just relax, listening to some great jazz. When Grace and I showed up, I was thinking about leaving my camera in the car and not shooting that night. I still feel kind of awkward shooting around other people that are just trying to enjoy themselves. Since we were already at the back patio we decided not to go back to the car. It was for the best though. Grace was the first to bring out here camera and start shooting. After a few minutes she wanted to use my camera because it is better at shooting in low-light situations. With my camera already out I decided to snap a couple of shots. It wound up being a great night of shooting and music. I am hoping to go back and do this again sometime. Also, I want be as camera shy next time.

You can see more photos on my Flickr

The Flickr War as of July

Well, this month Grace has been really started to close the gap in the Flickr war. She managed to get over a thousand hits in just one day. The funny thing is she has not uploaded much of anything lately. Hopefully we will be seeing some new photos posted by Grace soon. When that happens she just might over take me in this fun fight.

Grace's Flickr Photostream

My Flickr Photostream

Summer Dance Concert 09

This weekend is the Cypress College Theater and Dance Department’s Summer Dance Concert. It will be showing Friday the 31st at 8:00 pm, Saturday the 1st at 8:00 pm, and Sunday the 2nd at 4:00 pm.

You can see more photos on my Flickr