Most of my time in Australia has been in Sydney, and I never get tired of the Harbour, or it’s famous bridge. The two images here were both taken with Fujifilm Velvia at ISO 50, one at dusk, and the other at dawn. For me, they show how the mood of a place can change dramatically in the space of a few hours with the changing light.

Screenshot from strobox.com

Just discovered Strobox.com, a website linked from LifeHacker this morning.

Fantastic!

I find the use of flash one of the most challenging aspects of photography, and I have said as much in the past. Strobox.com allows you, the budding photographer, to browse or search for particular lighting setups and see how other do it. You can also upload your own creations.

A community written lighting and flash photography recipe book effectively.

They even have a free iPhone App to help you diagram your various lighting setups.

BTW: Example in the screenshot above is an excellent Family portrait from David Pinkerton Photography.

I Hate Flash…

Why? It scares me, it defies me to control it, demands manual control for best results. And mostly, it beats me… so much so that I bought this book, this flash, this camera, and finally, this lens to wrestle back control at the darker points of the my photographic adventure.

If I am honest with myself, I don’t know how to use it correctly, and have the photographic evidence to prove it! This post from Photocritic.Org might just put me on the path to flash redemption, and cure me of my past sins..

It can cast harsh shadows, especially when you forget to remove the lens hood!

It can wash EVERYTHING out. And off course, there is Red Eye!

It can reflect in glasses, windows… even been known to sparkle of the odd shiny nose or forehead.

And if you are using it, so is everybody else. Flash attack from all angles!

Occasionally…

Just occasionally…

It can work out all right

The eccentric Duke Special now features as a new gallery on JonathanBourke.Com. This is a repost of an earlier Flickr based Gallery as I slowly migrate my portfolio content to my own website. In this gallery, I try to capture the eccentricity, the motion, and the colour of Dukes’ performance at Dolans that night. Some of the images could be perceived as being blurred… but for me this accurately reflects the feeling of the gig.

Back when I originally posted this I said:

Duke Special wowed the midweek crowds at Dolans Warehouse in Limerick on Tuesday 9th of December. This time he had his band with him, and the percussionist, “Temperance Society”, entranced people with clattering, banging, shaking, twisting, roaring, scraping, and more. He was brilliant. It was a poignant night for Mary and I, as it will be our last concert in Dolans for some time…

In some ways, “Temperance Society” stole the show, using everything from pots and pans, assorted sticks and whatnot to create an eclectic sound. From Wikipedia:

He is most often accompanied by percussionist “Temperance Society” Chip Bailey, who plays cheese graters and egg whisks, a Stumpf fiddle and a Shirdi drone box, as well as the more typical drums and cymbals.

Jack L @ Dolans Warehouse

Jack Lukeman (or Jack L) is pretty much unique amongst the artists I have seen perform… he can hold a venue on the power of his voice alone. I must have seen him perform 10 times now; he certainly ranks as one of my favorites. Check out his music at www.jacklukeman.com.

Be Careful With The Delete Button

Would you believe that I had deleted this photo?

Nope…  Well, I had; didn’t like it in colour, so it was trashed.  Only I made a mistake. I only removed it from my Adobe Lightroom catalog rather than from disk, so I was more than surprised when it popped back when I synced folders.

A little tidy up with spot removal, some localised sharpening, and the Glow 10 preset from onOne Software (free download, by the way), and I am left with this.

Feel like I won the lotto… of course this little boy makes me feel like that every day.

Susan sneaking out…

I have tinkered with getting into Wedding Photography from time to time, and have gone as far as doing a wedding photography course, buying wedding photography books, and attending a wedding photography trade show.

It might surprise you that for something that looks so easy, it is possibly one of the most difficult photographic assignments:

• Sometimes difficult clients
• An event which is a once in a lifetime occasion (mostly, here in Ireland)
• Low light environment with plenty of fast movement (the Church)
• The Competition (i.e. people like me in the crowd who have the equipment and by god, they are not afraid to use it!)

But it all pales into insignificance to the exercise in stamina, strength, perseverance, quick thinking, and late night singing that is required to attend and participate fully in your cousin’s wedding!

Congratulations Gary & Susan!

Mundy @ Dolan’s Warehouse

I just posted some new shots on Flickr from a concert by Mundy at Dolans Warehouse in Limerick. Enjoy!

Yet again, this is the place to be for intimate live music. All shots taken with a Canon EOS 20D using a 50mm F1.4 lens.

Feel free to comment on these here, or on Flickr.

Is this my best photo?

Is this my best photo?

It is if you are to believe the hive mind of Flickr, but I am not sure. Rating your own photo’s, filtering out the good from the bad, is possibly the most difficult photographic skill in my opinion. Nowadays, with Digital Camera’s we can easily take more and more photo’s, we can store them, organise them, and manipulate them easier than ever. In order not to be overwhelmed (or to overwhelm others ) with this volume, we need to choose the best and discard the rest. Whittling them down to the best of the best is fraught with emotional baggage, what if’s, “I can fix that…”, and “safe it for later” moments. I really struggle with this, and I am guessing I am not alone…

There are many guides on how to use rating systems in Adobe Lightroom, Aperture, or whatever… but very few guide the aspiring photographer on how to apply ratings? What makes a one star, a two star, etc? Should it all just depend on technical merit, sharpness, exposure, etc. When do artistic considerations come into it? Rule of thirds, negative space… What about simple emotion? Does simple mathematics have any place? The definitive guide on managing and sorting “Digital Assets” is The DAM Book by Peter Krogh. This is an exceptional book which I would recommend to anyone wanting some pointers on everything from file naming schemes to backup strategies. In it, Peter takes a more commercial point of view to sorting the levels of ratings applied to his shots. What I find most helpful though is the mathematical approach which is built into his system. He suggests applying ratings in a semi fixed steps:

1. One star is what’s left when all technically deficient photo’s are deleted, i.e everything after the first pass
2. Approx. 10% of 1 star make it to this level, which are the better shots from a shoot
3. Again approx 10% of 2 stars make it to this level

And so on. Blogger, Fraser Spiers, has a less mathematical approach, focusing on whether he would share an image on Flickr or not. In his blog post on this topic, there were some very interesting comments from other readers.I think a combination of all these approaches works for me, using the descriptive definitions to decide which rating a photo gets, but with mathematical quotas to force decisions, with the emphasis on not awarding a higher ratings for the sake of it. As mentioned above, Peter Krogh with his huge commercial library goes with 1/10th of 1/10th of… etc. This would mean that I would have a single 5 star image in my library of over 10000 images. A bit extreme, so I will shoot for a 5 fold reduction at each level. With this approach, I am forced to get over myself and down select by a factor of 5 with each pass. My library of 10400 images would break down as follows:

Now for an example:

So how do I work with this in practice? Assuming a typical import of 100 photo’s, these are the editing passes I would make:

1. Import all related photo’s from cards. The Lightroom import dialog is imensely powerful, and after this step, you should be able to tick the following of the list:
   1. Copy to single directory in Lightroom Managed Photo’s
   2. Rename
   3. Convert to DNG
   4. Backup
   5. Apply basic Copyright and Metadata
   6. Apply initial keywords
   7. Generate 1:1 previews
2. Quickly scan through, removing rubbish, duplicates, blurry, etc. Mark as rejected using “X”, and then deleting. Assign all remaining 1 star, let’s assume it is 95, resulting in the following ratings: (*:95, **:0, ***:0, ****:0, *****:0).
3. Scan through again, stacking similar, or edits (shouldn’t be any at this stage), put best on top. Assign selects or those that might be ok with some processing, cropping a 2nd star, ratings are now: (*:76, **:19, ***:0, ****:0, *****:0).
4. Third pass, these are the photo’s good enough for Flickr / Sharing. Give them a 3rd star (*:76, **:15, ***:4, ****:0, *****:0).
5. Picks of the shoot, not picked immediately, but perhaps a reflection of views on Flickr — 4 star (*:76, **:15, ***:3, ****:1, *****:0).
6. After time, best of collection — 5 star