2008-12-09: The on-line version of the Canadian Geographic magazine features a virtual PHOTOCLUB which periodically highlights real photo clubs in Canada. The RA Photo Club was recently profiled in their featured Camera Club section. The gallery associated with the RA Photo club includes two of my images: Hagia Sophia Dome Support from our trip to Istanbul in late 2007, reproduced here
and Labnaha Cenote, Tulum from our trip to Quintana Roo, Mexico early in 2008, which you can still find at the 2008-03-26 entry on this page.
©2007 Marshall IkonographyFinally, the first few photos from the Ireland trip have made it to Alamy and World of Stock and the first processing and selection pass is complete. A showcase or two will be arriving shortly. This took a lot longer than expected partially due to the number of multi-image shots:
- I used the multi-shot mode a fair bit to try to get fewer camera motion artifacts, which then requires the slow process of picking the best from the two or three similars. I did find that I could batch the preview building by selecting a few hundred images and then have Lightroom build 1:1 previews for them all while I made and ate dinner or at least stayed away from the computer for a while. Of course, a quad-core processor might help with the speed that Lightroom builds the preview and everything else. Perhaps in 2009! Then we can look at Lightroom v2 too.
- I also experimented with HDR or High Dynamic Range photography on the Ireland trip. That requires you take a number of shots of a scene at very different exposures (by varying the shutter speed) and then merge them into an image with 32 bits of floating point information per colour per pixel. This compares with the 8-bits available in a JPeg image or the 12 or 14 bits available in the RAW precursor image. This can allow you to more accurately render a photograph that looks more like what the eye would see as you open up shadows without loosing the highlights while keeping the smooth transitions between the two. I haven't had much success with the technique so far, but I keep on trying!
- Ireland's landscapes pushed me toward panorama shots. The landscape is big and a wide angle lens doesn't always capture the sense of place. Using a slight telephoto and making the image of a number of overlapping shots can provide a view camera-like look from a portable and relatively small camera, like the Canon 5d. More on panoramas in another entry.
2008-10-25: The election is over and nothing has changed. We were actually happy to have missed most of the campaign while we toured Ireland in ignorance where, if we did see a news report, it never mentioned Canada. As usual intentions of doing updates from the road just didn't materialize. Although we had pretty good borrowed WiFi connections at many locations across the country, there just wasn't time. Most of the daylight hours were filled with shooting and touring. Evenings were taken up with pub crawls, CF card downloads, minimalist tagging and a few emails and Skype calls. Even our few wet days coincided with washer and dryer availability so that another vital chore took the time. It also overlapped our time travelling with another couple which meant that trips out in the evening were even more fun.
Standby for some short shows from the trip. Giant's Causeway was awesome (again) and the Dingle shone. And as the photo of our drive down toward Dingle town shows, there's lots of green and many greens in Ireland.
I'm not yet sure of the efficacy of my sensor cleaning (see below). Weeks into the trip (I should have looked earlier) I found that small aperatures included a loop of dust that came out almost totally in focus at f/25. A sweep of the sensor brush seemed to clear it away for the last week, but may have introduced some smears. A quick check shows that it may have appeared shortly after the pre-trip cleaning. It seems to show up on even early small aperature shots (not too many of those of course since it rained for the first couple of days). I've resolved to check the sensor more often on future trips (and to eventually get a self-cleaning (read, Mark II) sensor).2008-09-09: Well, we're deep into preparations for our next trip to Ireland. Our last trip in the spring of 2005 was a great sucess and we're really looking forward to some great images with a better camera and lenses. We're off this evening via Philadelphia and should be settled near Dublin by tomorrow afternoon.
This time we'll be spending much more time in the south including Wicklow, around Dublin and the south west including Dingle. But we'll also be revisiting some places in the North like the Giant's Causeway, finding some new ones (for us) like the Antrim Coast road and, if the weather holds up spending some more time in Donegal too.
If things work out, we might get an on-the-road entry in this news section. WiFi seems to be wide spread in the Emerald Isle.2008-08-30: I've lately learned that if the original Eclipse fluid didn't ruin the 5d's sensor the first time it is used then it won't. I've switched back from E2 to using that isopropal alcohol-based fluid and I'm happier with the results. So my current cleaning procedure is a swipe (or two) of Eclipse and then a swipe with the static brush. A look with a magnifying glass and then another static swipe. At that point I check with the lens stopped down to f22 to see if the remaining spots are light and tolerable. I still don't seem to get it as clean as the 300D, but I'm getting there!
2008-07-17: I've been frustrated by the difficulty in keeping the Canon 5d's sensor clean since I purchased the camera. The excellent cleaning tools from Copperhill worked well on the old Digital Rebel/300d, but even with a wider spatula and swapping from the original Eclipse to the new E2 formulation it has been a continual battle to keep the dust spots and smears from the 5d's sensor. Perhaps the edges are too close to the edge of the chamber to get a good cleaning in there. Or it is just a particularly attractive surface for dust! Or my hands are less precise than they used to be.
In frustration with the wet cleaners that were always leaving streaks I decided to order the static brush with Rocket blower from Copperhill. Interestingly it came with a set of long Q-tips for cleaning sensor edges. (Not so interestingly, it came with a multicoloured, plastic slinky (tm) too.) I don't know if the q-tip cleaners were sent because I was complaining about the edges of the sensor or not, but I did a dusting and cleaning today using them and I think that I have a pretty clean sensor again. As for the static brush, there seems to be some oil in the 5d that all of these brushes stir up. I tend to see streaks after their use. Cleaning sensors is very stressful for me. I can't wait for a camera that does most of this work for me!
2008-06-23: I've assembled a new showcase of images from our visit earlier this year to the states of Quintanta Roo including Tulum and Yucatan in southern Mexico. These images were chosen primarily to allow one of my major patrons to choose two prints for her growing collection of my work. A previous entry here highlighted the dry Cenote at Labnaha so I'll illustrate this one with a moonlit scene of the Castillo of the Tulum Ruins from our dare-devil, after-hours trip to that famous archeological site.
©2008 Marshall Ikonography
It was just past a full moon and our guide, a Canadian, who is now a semi-permanent resident of Tulum, insisted that he knew the back way into the site that avoided pesky things like guards, tickets and even parking fees. It seems that in 1994 the entrance to this most visited site was redesigned to keep the massive numbers of cars and coaches at a distance, but the old entrance was never quite completely closed. As we motored up the back road sometime after 2200 toward the old entrace he doused the lights on the old van. Of course it was a van temporarily imported from Canada and so had daylight running lights so we weren't all that invisible. But perhaps the guards didn't care. Once out of the van we made our way in almost pitch black darkness (the moonwould rise high enough to provide some light by about 2240) along a fairly well built stone path and then, with short busts of light from our flashlights, though a mesh of yellow Do Not Cross tape and some tree branches splayed across tunnel-like passage through the thick walls. ("Tulum" in Mayan may mean a walled place...) Our guide said that if we were challenged we just had to say that we were going to the beach. All beaches in Mexico are public and access to them must be allowed. A moonlight swim with a Canon 5D, a few lenses and a tripod ...Hmmm...
©2008 Marshall Ikonography
After an abortive attempt to leave via the new touristic exit, scuttled when our guide poked his head above the walls to see a guard doing his rounds below, we emerged, close to midnight, the way we came without incident. We sped away, past the downed barrier gate with our still-lit van. And this was all despite our feeble lighting of the monuments with flashlight beams and lots of flash shots from our accompanying travellers with their point-and-shoot cameras.
Images from this series (and most other images highlighted on this site) are available as high quality limited edition prints at our regular prices. To order, please contact me atand quote the image number which appears below each image.
2008-06-13: We sometimes shoot with a tiny, pocket-sized Sony T1 camera that is often with us when the big, hulking Canon 5D is safely tucked in its bag at home or in the trunk of the car. Last year, while at at a conference in La Jolla, California, a walk along the cliffs toward the town from our hotel on the beach produced some intersting shots.
The morning light was beautiful, there was a bit of salty fog in the air that probably deposited a bit of a film on the T1's tiny (folded!) Zeiss lens. The photos of the rocks and the sea lions had a wonderful painterly glow to them that I never see with Canon's "L" lenses. I really liked how the camera had captured the morning light, the details of the rocks and animals and emphasized the glow of the faint morning mist.
©2007 Marshall Ikonography
A dusk walk along the very different shore of Ærø (AEro) island in Denmark made me think again of this smooth painterly T1 effect. I thought that it might be just the thing to capture the special soft evening light and the look of the row of poplars, a couple of boats and even a duck in the harbour. It was getting dark so without a tripod using the Sony wouldn't have worked (the T1 has no tripod thread), and anyway I did clean the salt spray off the lens shortly after the Califonia coastal walk! So I took the image with the Canon 5D (hand held, but at f2.8 with the 50mm f1.8 lens) and thought of ways to post process it to try to match the feeling of that quiet place.
I developed the image in Lightroom using a tinted monochrome preset, Antique Light, as well as some vingetting and contrast tweeking. The Lightrooom result was then exported (as a 16bit TIFF) to Photoshop where I used a digital Orton technique along with some hand tuning of the effect for some of the sharp dark edges. This produces a soft, warm, brownish-red toned monochrome photograph with a bit of a glow. The image displays both a sharpness and softness that I find very pleasing. When reproduced large 16 inch prints on Epson's Matte Paper - Heavyweight the image looks quite stunning. The small screen version looses some of the effect: the sharpness and detail is less pronounced. After working with the digital Orton technique a bit I put together a series of images from the Denmark trip that seemed to glow nicely with this technique. The result is a small group of images in the Denmark Dreams showcase.
Images from this series (and other images highlighted on this site) are available as limited edition prints at our regular prices (unchanged since 2006!). Please contact me to order.
2008-05-20: A simple mis-step while out for a neighbourhood walk a couple of weeks ago left me with a very painful sprained ankle that has kept me from walking much. I did get some indexing done (more from Turkey), with
©2008 Marshall Ikonographyice and a foot brace and a raised leg. After healing for about a week I did manage to hobble down the street in an older part of west Ottawa. There's a beautifully preserved patch of forest named Elmhurst Park there and I managed to just catch it before all the trilliums finished. The leaves on the trees were out and the light was muted and green. Once the wind came up the mosquitos scattered but at the slow shutter speeds that I was working at I had to be very lucky to get a sharp image. Of course, a little flower shake can work too (try mousing over the picture at the right).
This was the first use of the Seagul right-angle viewer on the 5D. I wasn't sure about how well it would work on the full-frame camera, but for low camera angles on a tripod it worked well. In this case it turned out to be essential since I was dealing with a very inflexible left foot. It has been over two weeks now since the sprain and I'm walking pretty well again, but still feeling the pain on occasion, especially in the morning. Perhaps it really is a hairline fracture.
My first tearsheet! I've sold quite a few photographs through both Alamy and World of Stock, but you usually only get very vague information about how the images are actually used. It produces a strange disconnect from your work. You know that the image was supposed to go into a travel brochure or a textbook in Ireland, but you never actually see how it serves that purpose.
Yesterday I was browsing around using the interesting search engine at a9.com which includes in its search the contents of some books on sale at Amazon.com. The search engine reported that my image of a hand with a beer mug made it into the 3rd edition of the Rough Guide to to Montreal on page 116. It's probably the 2007 edition -- someone bought a 3 year licence to that image in 2006. Alamy said that they licensed it for 1/4 page size, but when I looked up the page (using Amazon's Search Inside feature) it looks more like like 1/3 of a page to me! The picture wasn't taken in Montreal, nor even in Quebec. We were sitting on some nice Adirondac chairs at Ottawa's Britannia Yacht Club's open house enjoying a couple of beers a few years ago.
2008-05-03: Spring is finally here! The last of the snow left our property on April 21st and sudden warmth had flowers pushing up even before all the snow was gone. It has gotten a little cooler since those summer-like days in late April, but great beds of tulips were up and in bloom in time for the opening of Ottawa's Tulip Festival yesterday. I took a walk around one corner of the Experimental Farm and found a few very bright red beds. Since it is still early there were lots of daffodils too. So it is a tulip on the front page and one of my favourite ones of the daffodils for this page.
©2008 Marshall Ikonography
The stock collections at Alamy passed the 1500 image milestone over the past few weeks and the collection at our Canadian agent, World of Stock is nearing the 1000 mark as we finalize the stock images from Denmark and Mexico, continue to make headway on the photographs from the Turkish trip and mine some of the older images. Of course there's a few images illustrating the near record Ottawa snow fall thrown in to illustrate the exotic nature of this corner of Canada to the world-wide audience. MyLoupe, our American distributer continues to underperform so we've virtually stopped submitting images there.
Planning for the fall trip to Ireland are progressing well. It looks as if it may be Ireland only, with the original side trip to Cornwall left for another trip. The logistics of getting back and forth and the short timeframes involved meant that it was just easier to plan for about 4 weeks in the emerald island. Our time will be split between the north and south with probably 2 weeks in the west centred on Westport.
It is beginning to look as if a long spring trip might prove too hard to organize, but unless the price of gas gets to be too much we'll probably take a short road trip or two. Watch for the images!
I've decided that this news page is getting way too long. So I've deleted the older entries.2008-03-29: For some time now it has been clear that with high resolution cameras like the Canon 5d and the type of shooting that I tend to do when on trips that trying to keep everything backed up and safe was getting to be a major headache. At about the same time that I switched to the Digital Rebel from the the old Nikon Coolpix 990 I also started using DVDs for backup rather than CDs. This provided a 8x capacity increase per disk. But as I switched to RAW shooting on the Rebel and then upgraded the 5d, it was very clear that the management of all of those DVDs and the splitting into carefully managed 4.4GB DVD-sized chunks was becoming getting too difficult. Access to the DVDs was also very slow. I suppose that an obvious backup medium would have been writable blu-ray disks, but they're still very expensive and the writers too are pricey and relatively slow.
Instead I've opted to use multiple, inexpensive, USB2 hard drives. I'll buy them in pairs and keep one copy of the archive locally and one off-site.
I purchased a pair of 320GB TekStor disks when they went on sale at Future Shop earlier this month. I had them shipped since none of the local stores had two in stock... Unfortunately, they weren't packed for shipping very well (one crumpled piece of newsprint in an oversized shipping box) and one died before I could finish a full reformat on it.
A couple of weeks later Best Buy had 500GB LaCie drives on sale for a similar price per GB so I tried again. It turns out that there's no sleep mode on these drives so it makes sense from a power perspective to write them and then store them on a shelf. This I've done, one here at Marshall Ikonography and another stored safety off-site. These two basically archive work to date and will be periodically updated as they reach capacity (they're about 80% now), I'll get another pair. Now we have disk chunks with over 100x the capcity of a DVD... a real step up in chunk size!
The working TekStor, in contrast to the inexpensive LaCie drives, spins down and just keeps a rather bright blue LED running when the system sleeps. Thus that disk has become my new near-line storage. It currently provides a more convenient access to the archive of CDs and DVDs that line a shelf in the office.
With the main (fast) internal disks freed of a lot of archiving work I've finally been able to move the images from Turkey and Mexico from the little portable 2.5" 160GB drive onto the main disk drives. This should provide faster access as I process these. I've only done a little work in Lightroom with the new arrangement and I haven't noticed a big difference yet. SATA disks should be much faster, but perhaps Lightroom is just a little too much for my sluggish hyper-threaded (not dual or quad core) CPU.2008-03-26: Finally I'm back writing here! We did the Detroit trip and have been back for most of the heavy late winter snows here in Ottawa. I've just been concentrating on snow shoveling (driveway and cottage roof), indexing stock photos from Washington, Denmark, Turkey and Mexco and revamping my backup system. More on that latter project in another post.
Back near the end of February I was awarded three ribbons in the RA Photo Club competition "Eyes":Somehow I don't think that I'll do as well in the RA Photo Club's March Faces and Figures competition.
- A wonderfully detailed glossy print of the dry cave or
cenote at Labnaha (see www.labnaha.com) won a first place and the Print of the Night ribbon. The thumbnail at the right doesn't do it justice. The print that was entered was 12"x18", but I think that a 16"x24" or larger print (24"x36" perhaps) would really draw the viewer into this eerie, otherworldly place. It is an incredible underground environment. Each of the images that I took were about 25s time exposures from a slightly unstable wooden walkway. This particular one used a 100mm Canon macro lens which provides an excellent corner to corner full-sized sensor image even when focused well beyond the macro range. Its f2.8 maximum apeture means that the 5d uses its high precision auto focus (but as I recall, I manually focused this shot).
©2008 Marshall Ikonography
Shortly after I took this image and just as I was readying for another shot, I guess that our underground time was up and the really rather dim lights went out. I had no luck in trying to get them turned back on. I had to navigate my way out by continuing to moving toward the bright light of the exit. We hope to be back to revisit this cave (I've heard that the owners have extended the path inside since we were there in January) and view some of the other caves in the Yucatan around Tulum.- A print of the ceiling of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul pulled in a 2nd prize ribbon. It was printed on matt paper but exhibits much of the detail and complexity of the decoration of that majestic space. As with many of the ceiling images from Turkey (see the showcase Looking Up in Istanbul) it used my set the timer, set the wide angle zoom and exposure, place the camera lens up on the richly carpeted floor, trip the shutter and stand back so as not to include yourself in the shot while hoping that others (including camera thieves!) do the same technique of tripod-less photography in museums that prohibit steadying devices.
