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Showing posts from June, 2014

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Aperture is Dead. Long Live Aperture. For Now.

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Aperture 3, when it came in a box Kind of out of the blue today Apple seeming announced that Aperture development is dead and that those resources are being put to the excitingly named Photos app briefly shown at Apple's recent World Wide Developers Conference. On June 2, shortly after the keynote that didn't mention anything about Aperture, I wrote an email to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, to see what was going on with Aperture. I'd like to think this morning he replied to me. A couple sporadic posts back I theorized that 1 or more Apple photo applications would be going. My thought then was since Photos was new Aperture or iPhoto would get the boot, and that Aperture would be the one based on user install base. Turns out I was half right. It sounds like iPhoto is also being terminated. The Loop has the story here . So what does that mean for pros, semi pros, or photographers like me who enjoyed the top level tools offered? Can one program really fill both shoes? I find th
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Guardian of the Fleet

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Guardian of the Fleet This is a shot I've been working on for awhile. Both behind the camera and in front of the computer. The odd shaped rock has always drawn my eye, and the fishing and crabbing boats behind it make for an interesting scene. Going through my library I found a lot attempts of doing something with, but none that really worked out. This was shot back in January! of this year, and had been forgotten fairly quickly, unfortunately. I'm glad I've been going through the archive to clean things up and found it again. The photo, not an HDR, was taken during Golden Hour, which makes for some great colors in the sky and some nice natural highlighting for the rock and some boats. I did remove a boat from the right side using Snap Heal Pro which is AMAZING for removing things and filling the space. I don't own a Photoshop version with the Content Aware Fill feature. Then it was just a matter of taking it through my  +Topaz Labs  plugins after getting exposure
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In Silhouette

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Pewetole in Silhouette I don't know what it is, but this year just isn't the year of photography for me. I've not felt as motivated to shoot, and it shows not only in the quality of my shots but in the numbers when I compare just raw numbers of photos I took in 2013 and look at where I'm at now, at about the halfway point of 2014. Not to mention noticeable by how often this blog gets updated. I'm annoyed with myself on that. Last year was a banner year as far as number of posts and page hits were concerned, probably because I was posting 2-3 posts a week. I don't think I'm posting an average of 1 a week this year, so all that work has been flushed. So the photo. One of my favorite subjects when I get the chance to shoot it, Pewetole "Island". I was going through my archive of this year when I came across this. I had actually already processed it and had it ready to post, but it got lost in the cracks. Which brings up another post regarding A
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Aperture at WWDC

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Don't worry, you didn't miss any Aperture news from Monday's World Wide Developer's Conference. Or at least not any direct news. A quick history lesson: Aperture 3 was released in February of, wait for it, 2010. It's current version is 3.5.1, which was released in November of 2013. There's been a steady stream of primarily small updates, mainly to accommodate for new Mac hardware. That's 4+ years of the same basic set of tools, user interface, and backend. I assume the backend part as I don't really get into the code level of Aperture. That's a long time to go without seeing a refresh and when the competition has been elevating it's game. And I catch a lot of grief from photography buddies who have been using Lightroom wondering when (not if) I'm going to switch over. Here's the thing, I spent a considerable amount of time and resources (money) learning how to use Aperture. I don't consider myself an expert, but I feel very c
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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca
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