Spinning Plates

while you make pretty speeches
i'm being cut to shreds
you feed me to the lions
a delicate balance

and this just feels like spinning plates
our bodies floating down the muddy river

-radiohead, Like Spinning Plates

Aperture 2.0

i've recently become somewhat disenchanted with Aperture and the reasons why are in accordance with what has been widely discussed about Aperture across the web. i've got about 30,000 images cataloged and organized within the library and having all of these photo at my finger tips is a real joy.

however, there are some real annoyances, chief among them, speed. Aperture gets so tied down in loading images and loading sets of thumbnails where Adobe Bridge merely breezes through loading the same size RAW images. Apple needs to fix this. This is a tool for professional photographers and we don't have time to waste.

next, is overall RAW support for new cameras. the Aperture team needs to disconnect itself from OS updates that are tied to numerous other bugs unrelated to a select few applications' abilities to read and manipulate RAW file formats. Apple did it before with an off-cycle update that brought support for new cameras. why can't this be the norm? in a world where competition among photographers can be fierce, it can be sometimes damaging to wait on adopting new technologies. i recently purchased a new Nikon D300 camera body and it has a different RAW format that's not recognized by Aperture. Adobe Camera RAW and Bridge support it and have now for a few months. so for now, that's what i'm using. its an incredibly crippling workflow, with images spread across two different collections and locations. very unsettling.

the last thing i'll talk about is book printing. i recently attended the Photo Plus Expo in NYC and was astounded at the multitude of options and sizes for printing books. some of them looked way, way better than the few samples i'd printed from Aperture! my chief complaint here is that the books are too small and the printing process is not all it could be. we need matte finished paper, larger book sizes, and a better, more flexible layout engine. Apple's CoreImage technology builds Photoshop-style filters right into the OS for any application to take advantage of. why does Aperture not let me apply these filters to images in my book layout?

the thing is, i think that all these concerns will vanish and become a memory when Apple releases Aperture 2.0. at least, i hope it will address my concerns. i'm fairly certain that an upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.5.2 will include support for the D300. and PMA 2008, one of the larger professional photography expos is coming up. i would be surprised if Apple didn't use something like this to introduce a new version of Aperture. its long overdue for a v2.0 update and i could use it now more than ever!

Photography Is Social

on monday of this week i did three separate photo shoots in one day.  the first was with Nori, a really good friend of mine.  having her come to work as a figure model really is just hanging out with a good friend.  i wasn't sure what i wanted to shoot until just after i got up that morning.  when she showed up at 9:30 a.m. i was still working out the details.  but i really didn't have to worry about it at all because we've worked together so many times that when we can collaborate we usually find the voice for the shoot rather quickly.  

so while we were shooting, i was helping her install Leopard on her MacBook Pro, telling her how she should handle her recently burst battery, and having breakfast.  for me, i just feel a bit of confidence in my ability to create now that i didn't have a year ago.  and i can allow myself some of these distractions and still work out a good shoot. it comes down to trust in friends that you know will work well with you and help you execute your ideas.

later that day, i had a shoot set up for Lehigh Valley Living magazine.  i had to shoot with a woman who is trying to setup a center for performing arts in the area and we wanted to shoot around the location where the arts center will hopefully locate.  she immediately recognized me as someone who went to high school with her.  however, i couldn't place her at all.  but after talking more, it suddenly dawned on me that this was Irene's younger sister!  i always get thrilled when the connections start to fall into place.  and it started to dawn on me that photography is causing me to make many more social connections than i ever have in my adult life.

later that evening, i was supposed to shoot with Leah, another friend and local model that i collaborate with from time to time.  we hadn't shot together for a while and when she showed up to my New Year's Eve party we decided to get together to work on some art photography.  however, she thought that we were doing it next monday not this monday!  but knowing Leah as well as i do, it was easy enough for me to say, git yer butt over here and let's get started!  and again, it all really felt to me like just hanging out with a friend.  we were making jokes, laughing about the fact that she couldn't pinch an ounce of fat on her tummy, and i just rolled my eyes when she told me how awful her skin was... when she signed the model release, in the space for photo session description, she just put "f*@%'n around".  indeed.

New Friend, Same as the Old Friend

so, i had a chance this weekend to work again with carly erin who is just a load of fun to have around. we did some fine art figure work to round out her contribution to the black/white series. carly's work was really wonderful and i've had a chance to work on a few of the images, though i'm struggling through the workflow since the Aperture Team over at Apple hasn't seen fit to update their RAW processing engine to support the D300 i just picked up. so i'm using the much less familiar Adobe Bridge and having a tough time with the somewhat less capable workflow.

i was a little nervous when i started yesterday because i was faced with using a new camera in a professional situation where i was hiring a model. if i screwed everything up and couldn't work the machine, i would be wasting her time and more importantly, my money. in the end, though, it worked out quite well. Nikon did such a wonderful job maintaining the familiar controls and operation of the D200 in its successor. All the controls seemed to be right where they belong and the few controls they did add (like the directional pad on the vertical grip) provided amazing utility when switching orientations. there were moments when i had to tell myself, "use the directional pad on the grip now...", but that's just part of the familiarization process. in the end, i was quite pleased with the results.

Noisy Ninja Rabbits!

so, i just took delivery of my new Nikon D300. i've been listing lots of old junk on eBay that apparently someone likes! subsequently, i've raised enough money to offset the cost of buying the D300 and decided to take the plunge.

the D300 is a wonderful camera and i'm not going to post a D200 image here to taunt you with. instead you'll have to wait until later this week when i shoot with carly erin to see what it can really produce. low noise, 12 megapixels, and a really amazing 51-point autofocus system that will probably give me a lot more flexibility to choose where the camera focuses without having to move the AF areas to the eyes, then hold and recompose.

so, i spent the night tonight kicking the tires, so to speak. i use a Photoshop Plugin called Noise Ninja a lot to help smooth out some high-ISO shots and also, to eliminate some noise from the shadow areas of certain shots i do in the studio. Noise Ninja works best and fastest when you have the appropriate noise profiles for your camera. i assumed that the NN guys would have a set of profiles for the D300 at this point, but there wasn't a set available at their site. However, simple instructions on creating your own profiles are available at their site, so i thought i'd give it a shot. i printed the calibration sheet, set up the camera on a tripod and put a softbox directly behind and slightly above the camera. then i fired away, maintaining the same exposure for all the different ISOs that the camera can shoot at. This is a bit tricky especially at ISO 6400 where the studio light is at its lowest setting and the lens is stepped down to f/22!

in any event, i finally have profiles for each ISO setting and the results of reducing noise at ISO 3200 and above are really wonderful. i can absolutely shoot at ISO 1600, capture plenty of ambient light and still get low noise and really outstanding color rendition. this was not possible before a camera like this came along.

i've sent my profile images to the Noise Ninja folks, but if you want to download my noise profiles for the D300, i will make them available here:

Noise Ninja Profiles for Nikon D300

in order to install them, follow these instructions here and you'll be on your way!