RB|Design

Okay I am about done with my rant on Adobe. I was so enraged that I almost forgot to post a quick discussion on my Fuji X100 and X100S settings that I promised someone yesterday. Here it is. This will probably be disappointing for most of you as I don’t have a bunch of super secret combinations that make everything just flow with effortless ease but I will share how I found it works best for me and my stubborn brain. I will also share a couple of thoughts on post processing RAW files. Unlike a lot of stuff here lately I will be using Aperture 3 instead of any Adobe products. I like Aperture better anyway. At least most of it.

I just have to get this out of my system. The Adobe Creative Cloud scam - yes scam. This is not about helping all of us long time customers out. Not about giving us more value for our dollar, it’s not even about some “new” technology. This is all about more revenue and more control for Adobe from it’s existing mostly long time customer base. If somehow you think it’s some gee-whiz new tech because of the whole “cloud” thing in the name get real. This is a throwback to the way IBM leased software way way back in the Mainframe days dressed up with some new hip cloud-y words.

I know I did one of these film zealot posts not too long ago. I thought another short one wouldn’t hurt too much. I shot this image almost exactly a year ago, maybe a little tiny bit less - like 11 months ago. Granddaughter Leela chowing down on a slice of watermelon. I love this image not because it is the most fantastical photo I have ever made. I like it because it’s my granddaughter in all her glory at 5 months old gripping a piece of watermelon with all she’s got.

Just had a conversation on what lights should I buy with a photographer on twitter. I figured I would put up a quick post with a few thoughts on the matter. Like most things in photography gear the answer always depends. What you shoot, what budget you have, your priorities, how lazy you are, etc. Here are a couple of recommendations that are all over the map with a few factors for consideration.

In the same spirit as my last post on the topic here is a completely different animal. This time I will get the techno babble out of the way first since it was the essence of simple. Shot on my Fuji X100, aperture priority 1/450s @ f2 ISO 1600. I did dial in 2/3 additional exposure compensation. Post processing VSCO film 02 using the new Fuji profile version of Portra 400NC. Actually the “++” version of that emulation.

A quick update for all you Fuji X series camera fans. As you \ may have heard VSCO has released an update to VSCO Film 02 with dedicated Fuji camera ACR profiles. While this was certainly great - as it was with their initial release of 03 that included fuji profiles as well as the update to 01 a short while ago - there is actually bigger news that wasn’t in the headline.

I was going to follow up a post where I referenced conscious, semi-conscious, and subconscious things going on when I make a photograph with a post that delved into that a bit more. In a way this is that post but while writing it I pulled a thread of thought and that lead somewhere else, which lead to yet another thought, and that lead to curiosity, and a bit of quick internet research which ultimately ended up surprising me - the end result filed away into my “you learn something new everyday” category.

Needless to say, this is a completely different post than I started writing yesterday. It somehow morphed and twisted back onto the initial intent just in a way that was unexpected. It turned into a brief discussion on photographic influences and inspiration. I’ll discuss mine mostly to cause you to think about your own. Feel free to explore mine - I love ‘um.

Meet Leela. She’s sixteen months old and a complete dynamo. I have three daughters and understand how difficult it can be to make photographs of them. I happen to have made 1000’s of really great images of my daughters but Leela - my granddaughter is even tougher. At least she is at this age. To get used to the characteristics of my new X100S I decided to give it the acid test. Some pictures of Leela. Of course I confirmed what I already knew. We’ll get to that at the end.

I manipulated the image at the top to stop her in her tracks for about a second. I out smarted her not easy to do as she is a woman not easily influenced. Leela is especially difficult because if she sees a camera she will make a beeline towards it in order to press the buttons. Yep she knows the playback button on every camera and just must push it. That’s her itchy button pushing finger. You can see her surprise that I stood up and she cannot push the intended button.

In the darkest coldest depths of the winter of 2013 I found myself actually making photographs. Thats atypical for me. I tend to hibernate during the winter as I have mentioned more than a few times. The reason for my somewhat energetic activity this particular winter is twofold. First I gave myself a project. A photography related project but not really a project to make any particular photographs that I would consider real photography work of my own. The intent was to produce illustrations for my lighting field guides. Workman like, illustrative of a particular technical thing in isolation but not complicated or nuanced in any visual sense. Second is the banter between LaRoque and I that I have referred to in many posts.

I never delete images, especially in camera. Probably a hang-up from my film days in more than a few ways. Getting rid of one image in the middle of a roll was more trouble than it could possibly be worth. Why would anyone bother? More so, as I gained some perspective with time a lot of shots I payed no attention to, never printed, became quite interesting for me. Some of them are actually my favorite images now.