Namibia Portfolio [update]

Since I announced my Namibia portfolio last month, I have had wonderful success in finding these collections photos new homes. If you are interested in having your own, please note that I will be on safari for 3 weeks. I am fulfilling current requests for the next few days, and will have some time to print a few more before I depart.

More info on my Namibia Portfolio.

Arches and Canyonlands Workshop Photographs

I have finally found the time to process a few images from my November Arches & Canyonlands National Parks workshop. Here are just a few of the ones that I have processed.

Canon 1DsMkII, 24-105mm, 1/15 @ f/10

Hasselblad H1, Phase One P45 digital back, 80mm, 1/40 @ f/16

Hasselblad H1, Phase One P45 digital back, 35mm, 1/5 @ f/19

Hasselblad H1, Phase One P45 digital back, 35mm, 1/6sec @ f/32

Canon 1DsMkII, 24-105mm, 5sec @ f/14

El Groupo (missing Dwight, as he was usually off in the distance)

New Epson 3800

I have an Epson 3800 on its way to my door, and I thought I would jot down a few thoughts related to this purchase.

I currently have an Epson 4000 as my main printer, and I have been looking for an upgrade in print quality for a few months now. I was all enthusiastic about purchasing either a 24" or 44" wide printer, but after careful size calculations I cannot find a place for a larger printer. So 17" wide it is, at least for now. My options were to upgrade to the Epson 4800, Canon IPF5000 or the new Epson 3800.

I passed on the 4800 for a few reasons. I print on different types of papers, mixing between matte papers and semigloss/luster papers. This would require switching out the photo black and matte black cartridges often, which is both an expensive and time consuming endeavor. If you have ever primed the lines in a 4000/4800 printer, you know exactly how much time it takes to lift up and down the levers over a 20 or 30 minute period. Huge pain in my side. I would gain better out-of-the-box black and white printing, but that is about it. The minuses are more than the pluses.

 

Drive-in Theater, 2003

The Canon IPF5000 caught my eyes, but between Canon's poor documentation, software driver communication issues, and a smaller community of users, I chose to pass on this printer as well. I passed mostly because of usability issues, not print quality. I have seen wonderful output from all of the 17" or wider pigment printers on the market, and I have to say that there aren't many differences between all of the offerings.

So then there is the Epson 3800. It is crippled in a few ways from its more robust brother, the 4800, but there are some improvements in there at the same time.

Pros:

• Lightweight compared to the 4000/4800 printers. UPS or Fedex can deliver. No shipping pallette required.


• Better for out of the box black and white printing, when compared to my Epson 4000.


• Auto photo black / matte black switching


• Built in ethernet port. This is a requirement for me, as my printing stand is stored inside of a closet on the other side of my study.

Cons:

• Cannot use roll paper with the 3800. Not a big deal, because I never use roll paper to begin with.


• Build quality is not as robust as the other pro level Epson models


• 80ml cartridges are slightly more expensive per ml than the 110ml carts. More details below.

When I need to print larger prints for print shows, I will outsource the printing to somebody local that has a larger printer. I will have to work with the printer on the black and white prints, as I am very picky about the quality, and will want to be a part of the process.

I did some research on the cost per ml of competing printers, and here are some ink cost numbers.
$1.35 / ml for HP B9180 ink cartridges
$0.95 / ml for Epson R2400 ink cartridges
$0.75 / ml for Epson 3800 ink cartridges
$0.65 / ml for Epson 110 ml ink cartridges used in 4800/7800/9800
$0.58 / ml for Canon iPF5000 ink cartridges
$0.51 / ml for Epson 220 ml ink cartridges used in 4800/7800/9800

Interesting data. I am not one to count pennies on the cost per print, but I had always made the assumption that a printer like the R2400 would have been more expensive than that. Or that using 110ml cartridges would have been much more cost effective. Very interesting.

I will be posting my experiences on the Epson 3800 in the coming weeks. I am not sure I will have much to write about, as I anticipate the 3800 won't be all that different than other Epson printers I have used. I will focus on differences and surprises, rather than rehashing what it is like to print with an Epson Pro Stylus printer.

Darkroom Magazine

Darkroom Magazine has just been announced by The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), and it targeted to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom users as a how-to resource.

From their web site:

"Darkroom" is written for professional photographers who want to get the most out of Adobe's groundbreaking Photoshop Lightroom workflow application, and published 8 times a year by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Each issue features in-depth tutorial articles, innovative digital photography techniques, and timesaving shortcuts written by the creative experts behind Photoshop User and Layers magazines.

"When you look at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you're looking at the future of the pro photographer's workflow, and a year or so from now if you're not using Lightroom, you're going to be left behind," said Scott Kelby, editor and publisher of Darkroom, NAPP president and the #1 top selling computer book author worldwide. "The integration between Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS2/CS3 creates the seamless, consistent, and efficient workflow that today's professionals need, and we launched Darkroom magazine to help these pros make the most of using these two amazing tools together."

From the Archives

Bay Bridge at Night, 2001

Nikon N80, 80-400mm VR lens, Fuji Velvia

Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibit, Houston

The Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year roaming exhibit is coming to Houston, and will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science from January 19 until May 6, 2007. More information on this exhibit can be found here. I am planning on heading over there at some point with another local photographer, Lazslo Perlaky, who also has an image in this year's exhibit.

My 2007 Resolutions

I have a long list of items that I either need to get done or desire to get done. Some are professional growing opportunities in my safari business, some are opportunities for me to grow in my creative photography, and others are just plain silly goals. So here are some of my 2007 resolutions, better thought of as goals.

At the top of my list is the management of my stock library. I have roughly 30,000 photographs taken in Africa, and they need to be organized, tagged, rated and edited. I suspect the tagging will be the most difficult part, as each and every image will need to have some fields attributed. Country, location and species are essential for each image. Once all of my images are tagged, I will go through and rate the images from 1 star to 5 stars, and then I will spend some time editing the raw images. The edits will range from simple exposure/white balance/contrast edits to more complex masking techniques in Photoshop. This will take a ton of time. I am thinking of only spending a few minutes per image if it has 5 stars, and much less if 4 stars or less. Keep in mind that I can have a range of 10 images that all have 5 stars, and they might be in a series, which means I can make nearly the same changes to all 10 images with the click of a button.

The purpose of organizing my images is primarily for easy retrieval by me or my stock buyers. I am now a member of Photoshelter.com, and will be uploading a massive amount of images to their servers in the coming months. My image archive will be available 24/7 for anybody who wishes to license an image of mine, and will be able to download a full resolution file quickly and easily. Photoshelter will also enable my print sales, and I will do the printing/signing/shipping from my studio. They do allow me to outsource the printing of my images, but I am never comfortable with anybody printing my images, as I need to be able to inspect each and every print that has my name on it.

Another goal for 2007 is much less cerebral. I have been working on a black and white look to my African safari images, and I need to get it to a point where I am happy with it. I am 80% there, but I just need some more time on it. I cannot wait for this to be completed.

I would also like to visit more locations in Africa in 2007, but this might not happen. My safari schedule is very full for 2007, as I am leading 5 safaris already. I might spend some time wandering around Tanzania for a week, photographing everyday life in rural communities.

What are *your* 2007 resolutions?

My digital filing system

I often get questions related to how I store my digital images on my hard drive, and why I do it the way that I do it. Keep in mind that this is my system, and not necessarily something that will work for other people. In the absensce of database driven applications such as Aperture or Lightroom, using a physical file structure has been a necessity for me.

First off, my folder structure:

_Photos\year\yymmdd 'job'\filename.xxx

All of my digital photos are stored underneath a folder called '_Photos'. I put an underline before the word Photos because it will sort to the top if there are other folders near it. After that I have all of my photos separated into different folders by year (4 digits, such as 2004, 2005 or 2006). Then I have a folder for each day or each job in a given day (if I happen to have more than 1 job or separate shoot in that day, they will be separated). For example: '06.22.02 Serengeti'. If this folder somehow gets separated from my '2006' folder, I know where it should go. I guess I could put in MMDDYY format, but this is how I started off organizing my images way back in 1999 with my first digital camera.

Then my file naming logic:

yymmdd_hhmmss_job_imagenumber.xxx

So, the year at the front of the filename, then the hours, minutes and seconds, then the job name, and then a 3-digit image number for that day, starting with 001. Why do I put the hours, minutes and seconds into the file? Simple. I often shoot with more than 1 camera, and this allows me to have all of my images in chronological order, even if I am sorting by filename in either OSX or Windows XP.I do have separate folders called 'Portfolio - Africa' and 'Portfolio - Africa Misc' that I place all of my converted raw files into. These are mostly layered Photoshop files in 16 bit, converted by whatever raw conversion application I was using at the time. This approach is going away, as I adopt a more database-driven approach, where it is not necessary to always export an image to be worked on in Photoshop.Well, there you have it. A simple, well defined structure on my hard drive for all of my images.

"Which Way?", Cape of Good Hope, Africa, April 2006
Canon EOS 5D + 24-105mm f/4 L IS