“How sharper than a sermon’s truth it must have been for many human beings when they learned that bottle-nosed Dolphins may, in time, succeed battle-poised Man as the master species on earth. This prophecy is implicit in the findings of those scientists who have been studying, and interviewing, dolphins in laboratories. It neither alarms nor surprises me that Nature, whose patience with our self-destructive species is giving out, may have decided to make us, if not extinct, at least a secondary power among the mammals of this improbable planet.. As far back as 1933 I observed a school of dolphins (their schools increase as ours decline) romping, as we carelessly call it, alongside a cruise ship in the South Atlantic, and something told me that here was a creature, all gaiety, charm, and intelligence, that might one day come out of the boundless deep and show us how a world can be run by creatures dedicated not to the destruction of their species but to its preservation.” – James Thurber, 1961
I am so upset right now I don’t even know if I should be posting this. But I came across a video today that is extremely upsetting. It is footage of a dolphin slaughter in Japan. It is highly graphic, and saddening to no end. My only hope by sharing it with as many thousands of people that visit this blog is that it will enrage you as well and send a clear message.
Again, this is VERY upsetting footage, but please share it with as many people as you know.
And one of the organizations I have supported for years that actively fights this kind of madness..Sea Shepherd
p.s. (This has actually been going on for many, many years now – but I only recently came across this disturbing video)
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I have heard a couple of interviews lately where the photographers were asked what was their first experience with photography, and a couple of them referred to cameras they played with as kids. It is probably a sign of those in my generation that many of us ended up with a 110 film format camera at some point. These were the long, rectangular – somewhat flat cameras where loading film was a press of a button and snapping in this little 110 film cartridge. Other older generations may refer to perhaps a Brownie as their first camera. All of these were pretty cheap – usually bought at a drugstore for about $20.00. It prompted me to do a little digging in my closet for something similar to share.
This particular image I happen to have in a photo album – it was from a family vacation ‘out west’ in 1980. I was twelve, and armed with one of these 110 cameras. Little did I realize how pictures would become such a large part of my life decades later, or the multitudes of equipment I would eventually come to acquire. It does make me wonder – was the seed planted way back then? I can’t say I had any real ambitions of being a photographer when I was 12 – it was just something that interested me – and certainly a way to capture moments of a family of 4 plus a dog packed into a Volkwagen Rabbit driving to California from Michigan. I find it interesting in this photo album I have kept all these years that hardly a single image in it is in focus! 
With a fixed focus camera like most of those little 110′s were – I must have had pretty shaky hands. But check out that classic ‘S’ curve in the composition – ha! I supopse some Photoshop work could be done on it to clean it up, restore some color, maybe even get some sharpness in it – but for many reasons – I think that would ruin it’s character.
Although I doubt I will be blowing this shot up to 36×36 to hang on my wall, it does perhaps hold more history and memories, and maybe even hidden inspiration when compared to those that already are there. And that makes me think about that perhaps it is not our technically best images that mean the most to us, but those with a connection to a particular place and time.
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At last, Adobe has released Lightroom this week. If you haven’t heard about this program yet, it is time to pay a little attention as it could change a lot of ways you work with your image collection. Adobe has done something a bit different in the development of this software, in that it has gone through a multitude of public beta versions before this production release at version 1.0. And with a public beta, you get a lot of enthusiastic feedback from A LOT of photographers. And it is particularly nice that this program was developed specifically for the needs of photographers, with key inputs from a lot of leaders in the digital imaging fields.
For me, I believe Lightroom is going to streamline my workflow quite a bit from downloading images from memory cards, sorting and editing, keywording, processing RAW images, and ultimately getting them to their final versions. Right now I use Nikon Transfer to download images from my flash cards, I then rough edit in Adobe Bridge, add keywords in Adobe Bridge, and then do image adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw and ultimately then in Photoshop. My images are organized in folders and sub-folders by subject matter, but I have had an increasing need to have them cross-referenced, keep track of which I have granted licensing rights to, print sales, and so forth. This requires use of a database and digital asset management (DAM). I originally tried IMatch, and found it to be a pretty good program, very powerful, but a bit cumbersome on the interface and very slow to import images. Then I tried IView MediaPro (3.1.2). A very nice program, considered by many to be the standard to beat for DAM. But, unfortunately, IVMP does not play nice with Network drives – and all my images are stored on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. It basically brings the program to a severe crawl unless you employ some cumbersome workarounds. I also didn’t like how you could not group similar keywords together – they are all alphabetical. Adobe Bridge was working for my keywording, but it is pretty slow when adding them to large files.
Lightroom addresses some areas for me for asset management, even though it is a youngster in this department with a lot of growth required to really catch up to competitors features. Keywording is a dream and fast. I can group keywords together – for example to keep all my bird species in one group – as opposed to alphabetical all over the entire list. Lightroom also has categories – where I can cross-reference images with similar features that may not be stored in the same folders on my network drive. I can also keep categories for licensed images, print sales, etc. Another pretty cool sorting feature is its Metadata browser, where I can sort images by the lens I used, the date/month they were shot, camera, etc – all automatically from data already stored within the image file by the camera.
So this addresses some of my primary needs nicely, and I haven’t really touched the heart of the program in its RAW file developing, print layout, and web gallery creators. I like the interface a lot – it is sleek, intuitive, and easy to use. Most of all, it makes me look forward to organizing my images and making it fun – not a chore. And that is worth its weight in gold if you ask me.
I’ll post now and then about my experiences with this great program, but there are many other blogs and forums out there to keep you up to date on FAQs, news, tips and techniques, tutorials and a growing number of power users for Adobe Lightroom. Heck, they are even creating an entire magazine about it from the folks over at NAPP. So it is worth checking out to see if it is for you. Adobe is offering 30 day trial downloads right now, and through April, a special pricing offer. So get in on the ground floor, this program will only continue to grow and offer more for photographers.
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There is an interesting discussion going on in the Radiant Vista forums about critiques and the art vs. craft of photography. I am sure similar discussions have taken place a thousand times over, and probably over centuries. Not that I want to regurgitate any of the discussion here, but it does make me think about defining when you cross that line back and forth. Such discussions are great for hearing other’s opinions and thoughts on the matter, but they don’t ever really come to some sort of final ‘resolution.’Â. Â. They do give those that follow such threads some things to think about as it applies to their own work.
Is there really any line at all? Do you see every image you make as some form of personal expression? How do images that you consider ‘art’ differ from the rest? I suppose someone could take a picture of a penny on a sidewalk and come up with an eloquent rationale for it.Â. Â. Â. And we have all seen images like this – that are so personal to the creator that they are somewhat unaccessible to other viewers.Â. And then, perhaps one image you consider more craft might be considered more art by a viewer?
If someone was standing right next to you to make a photograph, and had the same knowledge about the technical, same equipment,etc, etc – would they make the same image? Would that image then be considered more craft vs. art if they were the same? What is it about a particular image that has your personal touch on it? Is it your particular composition, technique or post-processing? Does it then all of the sudden become a work of art? I know I probably have some images on this site that no one else in the world has, but does that make them a form of personal expression? Some I think yes, others I wonder. With that rationale, the same could be said for images of your cat or dog, no one else in the world has them.Â. Are those art?
All are questions that intrigue me, I wish I had some answers..
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Kinda funny – I griped about hating the cold in the earlier post – but coming across this story about the Sandwich Islands made me want to book a trip tomorrow.Â. This place looks just magical.Â. In particular, I immediately fell in love with Maria Stenzel’s shot of the penguins on blue icebergs here.Â. Â. This image just has an incredible mood to it – it portrays the dramatic environment, but that blue ice just creates an incredibly calming effect, and obviously the penguins think so too.
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