Just came back from a press release of Aperture 3 and to add a bit to what I posted earlier. Nothing much new that you can’t get from the web but having someone go through it was quite an experience. A lot of emphasis was given to the iPhoto and Aperture compatibility. If you use iPhoto and the Faces and Places features a lot, you’ll be very impressed with these. The face recognition algorithm is much more advanced and you can manage it at the project level instead of library level.
What I found impressive was the Places feature. As long as you have a GPS enabled camera, you’ll have a lot of fun with this. Here’s a screenshot of my iPhone images with the location service enabled and the places tagged. You can use it even in the slideshow where your slides can be automatically captioned with the location. Very impressive indeed.
Aperture 3 screenshot showing the Places feature
So Faces and Places are cool. Just that as a professional photographer who works mainly in Singapore and who catalogs images based on event instead of faces, I can’t say I can find a lot of use for it. Sure, if I’m a National Geog photographer, Places will be extremely useful or if I go vacationing a lot. Or if I constantly take pictures of my friends and family, Faces may be useful. But counterintuitively, I find that because the face recognition processing is done all the time, I feel it slows down my other processing. I can see that processing in the status. I’m not sure but perhaps, that can disabled.
Continue reading 'APERTURE 3.0 MEDIA BRIEFING'»
Had someone check out my light that did a nosedive a few weeks back. Conclusion: it’s still working fine except there’s this piece of plastic about the size of a key on your keyboard that came loose. It was the source of the rattling sound and it seems to be some spacer or something like that. Do you know what this is?
A piece from Elinchrom BX500Ri light
I’ll probably keep it for awhile before I junk it.
I still like to tell the story of how this light of mine fell 4m and suffered only a cracked shell and this loose plastic piece. Next time I tell it, it might have fallen 5m or more….
Oh what a hilarious time I had with this family. Fun-loving and spontaneous would best describe them and that made it a very enjoyable shoot last weekend. The shoot was at their house and I set up two lights, after rearranging furniture. Midway through the shoot, we gave it a different feel by using a black backdrop. Here are a few images from the shoot:
This is how you do it
So what's next?
Nope, not right
The girls' version of Charlie's Angels
The whole family
The whole family, not so serious after all
More of family photography images can be found in the Family Photography category of this blog.
I blogged about downloading Aperture 3.0 last week for evaluation. The conclusion, don’t bother during Chinese New Year. Too much eating, drinking and socializing that period. So I finally sat down to evaluate it today. And…one word..IMPRESSIVE! Ok, this comes from someone who have not been using the fastest and best tools for processing so this is a big leap. I’m halfway through the door, with a few hundred bucks in hand, heading to the nearest Apple shop. Until someone suggested I try Lightroom too. Can anything be better than Aperture? I’ve to check that out.
Screenshot of Aperture 3.0
Here’re the things I really like about Aperture:
Continue reading 'APERTURE 3.0 TRIED AND TESTED'»
Wishing all readers a very Blessed Lunar New Year! And a Happy Valentine’s day too!
Shot with Canon G9, balanced on the balcony, Tv, 8s, -2EV
At the strike of midnight on the eve, the sky in Penang lit up with fireworks. Reminded me so much of my childhood. I missed the sight, smell and sound. Of course, I had to settle for ‘moon travelers’ last time, unlike the variety I was looking at last night. And they said fireworks is banned here! I gotta find some and relive that childhood of mine 
I’ve just checked out videos and testimonials on Aperture 3 and that’s it, I’m convinced I need it! I don’t quite care for the faces and geo-tagging….not for now, but the editing is way cool. It seems to score on the cataloging feature too. For years I’ve been using Expression Media, ever since it was called Iview Media Pro to sort through my images, make selects, convert to smaller files, etc. Adobe Bridge is too slow for me and for going through a thousand over images after a shoot, I could find better use of my time than to wait for it to render the thumbnails. Expression Media does the job really well, but it’s an additional software to run on top of Canon’s DPP raw processing software and Photoshop. Too many apps requiring too much resources.
One look at Aperture 3 and I think I can retire all my other software. I’ve downloaded a trial version and I can’t to put it through its paces in keeping up with all the processing I do. It’s supposed to be optimized for Intel Macs so I’m looking forward to a better performance.
Continue reading 'APERTURE 3'»
Paris. City of Romance. Maybe cliched, but nevertheless a most beautiful place for your pre-wedding images.
After an amazing time there last year, we’re planning another trip there in September 2010. September should be a great time, not as crowded as summer, cooler weather and lighting should be great. Exact dates are still on the drawing board but we have kicked started our planning. So if you are considering this, let me know and lets discuss further. Places are limited so sound me out as soon as you can.
A second with the gymnastics and disaster struck! Just as we were ready to start, one of the coaches dragged a mat across the cables, pulling the light down. Ouch! It was setup for the rings so they were pretty high up, 3m maybe. And the light came crashing down from that height. My heart dropped about the same height too. The damage? A cracked light, but thankfully still working and a semi-circular reflector. The reflector was really soft, which is probably a good thing: it cushioned the impact and made it easier to bend back to shape. Here’s what they look like:
The imperfect one on the left, after some work on it
The cracked light
I’ll probably have to send the light in to have it checked out, else, it’ll gaffer tape all the way.
Here’re a few prep shots:
SFooling around
Setting the right width for the parallel bars
This is the angle I decided to shoot from
Tiring day today with shoots at Siemens and Google, before the YOG shoot. I can almost see the light at the end of this long YOG tunnel. It’s been taking longer than usual, with a lot more logistical than technical hurdles to cross. Today was the track and field team’s turn. We had a sprinter and a few long distance runner to model for us. The long jump was a no-go as the athlete was resting and couldn’t give us what we would like. So that’s slotted for next week.
I must thank Liz for being so sporting. We did this to test the lights before we got the athletes to do the same thing. I wanted a more edgy feel instead of even lighting. And Liz had to run a couple of times to get this perfect. We got what we wanted in the end. Thanks Liz!
En Garde, Prete, Allez….it’s a good thing I had Joel to assist me today. At least as a fencer he was able to communicate what Claire and I had in our minds to the fencers. Very useful to get good shots fast. Technically, it wasn’t too difficult as most of the action happened in the same plane, so fix the focus and watch the action happen. And if they were required to lunge towards the camera, it was “hang on, hang on, stay there…” until my 5D can catch up on focusing. Visions of a 1D Mk IV always cross my mind in situations like this. Man, am I seriously considering this camera…but for now, I’m just happy to tell them to act and hold for the camera.
The girls were great and played their part to try to hold their balance as much as possible for the camera. I just used as little power from the elinchroms as possible to reduce recycling time and just time my shots well when they were competing. After awhile, I got the hang of it and it was plain sailing after that.
Briefing the fencer. On the left is what you did...on the right is what we like to see.
Locking focus on Joel
After a hard day's work with a few of the fencers
For those of you interested in keeping a copy of Scene City: Singapore, the DVD will be launched tomorrow!
Here are the details:
When: Thurs 4 Feb 6pm-8pm
Where: Objectifs 56 Arab Sreet Rooftop
I should be there if I can find time away from my work which includes a corporate tour of Lenovo, Google, Nokia Siemens, Rolls Royce, Siemens…all in one crazy week! Seems like everyone wants to have pictures taken just before CNY. Ouch.
More importantly, Tom Ang will be there too so if you want to see what he’s like off-camera, now’s your chance. He’s a great guy.
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