John Borwick's blog

Over winter break I got Aperture, Apple’s photo “workflow” tool.  I didn’t really know what Aperture was, or why you might need a “workflow” tool.  I thought Aperture would be a lot like Adobe Photoshop, where you do lots of fancy editing of your photos.

Well, it turns out tools like Aperture (and I believe Photoshop Lightroom) are their own thing: they are tools to help you go from the image on the camera to the completed roll.

As a way of explaining what Aperture is, I’ll explain my “workflow” based on what I understand of Aperture so far.  My logic here is that I shoot in RAW format, I want Aperture to have every non-horrible picture I have taken in RAW format, and then I send the best ones to iPhoto.  iPhoto then has a JPEG, finished version of every nice picture, and I show my iPhoto library to people.  iPhoto then sends the pictures to flickr, for now using the flickr uploadr.

1. Take photos
2. Import photos
   1. Connect camera to computer.  I have my computer set up to run Aperture when my camera connects, in “space 2″ on my computer
   2. Still in the “import images” pane, Tell Aperture to “stack” all photos taken within 15 seconds of one another.  (An Aperture “stack” is a group of related pictures, e.g. if you took three pictures of the same building.)
   3. Still in the “import images” pane, review the stacks Aperture created and modify as needed (with command+K to stack, option+K to split stacks)
   4. Create new project(s) for the photos to be imported.  Currently I am using the following folder layout: “YYYY >> MM >> DD PROJECT NAME” e.g. “2010 >> 01 >> 01 washington park” for shooting Washington Park on 2010/01/01.  Also, I have a couple of generic projects for relatively timeless stuff e.g. “SUBJECTS >> ANIMALS >> FRED AND EMMA” for random pictures of our cats that I don’t want to make into their own project.
   5. Import photos.  Watch the import via the “Window > Show Activity” menu if needed
   6. Disconnect camera.  On the camera, quick format the card.  (For my Canon XSi, Go to Menu > first “wrench” menu > Format > uncheck “low level format” > OK.)  This is different than my previous workflow, with iPhoto, where iPhoto would format the card.
3. Review the photos
   1. If I imported the photos into only one project, then go to that project.  Otherwise, go to  “All Photos” and search by “Import Session” for all import sessions I just created.  I want to make sure I look at all the photos I imported and don’t miss any.  Now I should be looking at all the photos just imported.
   2. Go through each photo, beginning with the first.
   3. Rate each photo: 9 = rejected, 1 = for my eyes only, 2 = OK to share with others.
   4. For non-rejected photos, white balance the photo.  For a set of photos use “lift and stamp” to lift the correct white balance from a good photo and stamp it on the others.
   5. For non-rejected photos, check the exposure and use “auto-expose” if needed.  (I am still learning about proper exposure, probably because I do too much spot metering vs. evaluative metering.  Use option+shift+H to see the hot and cold areas that I need to pay more attention to next time.)
   6. Crop the photo with “C” if needed.  Try to keep the 2×3 or 3×2 ratio, so 4×6 prints would come out OK.
   7. Straighten the photo with “G” if needed.  (For some reason I take a lot of crooked pictures.)
   8. For each stack, “pick” the best photo with command+\
4. Search for rejected photos (Library > Rejected) and delete them.
5. Post the best photos.
   1. Create a smart folder for your project(s) called “two star” that only shows images with two or more stars.
   2. Aside: If you haven’t done this before, then in Aperture go to “Aperture > Preferences” to the “Previews” tab and make the Previews the highest quality and don’t limit the preview size.  These previews are what iPhoto will import here in a minute.
   3. Open iPhoto.  Go to File > Show Aperture Library.
   4. In iPhoto, find each “two star” folder, and drag them one at a time to the iPhoto “events” area.  iPhoto will import each folder as its own event.  (Note: I have iPhoto copy the images rather than link to them.  Maybe I will eventually feel more comfortable linking.)  My thinking here is that I want iPhoto to have all the “good stuff.”  iPhoto makes it easier to share the photos e.g. with slideshows and face recognition.
   5. Now the photos go on-line.  Open “Flickr Uploadr” and drag the photos from iPhoto to the uploadr.  Title them and tag them.  I tag them with my camera plus the lens and any flash, e.g. “canon xsi 35mm 430ex flash” for an indoor flash that used the 430ex.
   6. Any photos that are primarily of people, select in iPhoto and export them: “File > Export…” with JPEG quality “High,” Size “Large”.  Export them to the desktop, upload them in Facebook, and then delete them from the desktop.
6. Done.  Whew!

For Christmas I received a Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash.  We anticipate taking lots of indoors pictures this year, since we’re expecting in May.  I haven’t learned much yet about the flash, but even in full auto mode the flash looks really good–much better than the built-in flash.

The flash attaches to the flash mount on top of my Canon XSi.  It takes four AA batteries–I’m not sure how many flashes you get out of one set of batteries.  The flash is divided into two parts–the bottom part has the controls, and stays stationary.  The top part rotates 360 degrees and can be positioned straight up, straight out, or at several angles in between.

When you turn it on, and it auto-magically communicates with the camera body.  If the flash is pointed straight forward it tries to figure out the length of the lens to understand how powerful the flash should be.  My understanding is that the flash figures out how much light would be required to bring the camera up to the “proper” exposure, so you can shoot ISO 100 + f/11 at night and see something.

The tricks I have learned so far are

• Use either the flash control, or the camera body control, to adjust the flash exposure–rather than bringing you up to “+0″ exposure you can have the flash bring you up to “-1″ or “-2/3″.  This works better when there is a second light source and you can capture a little of that other light source’s light at your ISO/f-stop/shutter speed combination.
• Point the flash straight up to bounce light off the ceiling, which looks more “natural”
• Point the flash at an angle forward or at an angle so you get bounce from a wall.
• Put your hand behind the flash so that some of the light bounces off your hand and gives you a more flesh-colored light.
• Put a piece of paper behind the flash so that light bounces off the paper (similar idea to using your hand)

I don’t want to know much about post-production photography right now.  However, I would like to know how I one day could learn more.  To that end, I just discovered thePSpod, a blog with Photoshop basics videos.  So far I’ve done the first three episodes, which introduce layers and selections.

Flowers and butterfly, originally uploaded by borwick.

This picture comes from Winston-Salem’s “Bethabara Park Medical Gardens.” When I was shooting, I was trying to be very careful about a couple of variables:
* don’t shoot “wide-open” (this photo was taken at f/7.1)
* shoot at a high shutter speed (taken at 1/320 with a 55mm zoom=88mm-equivalent)
* keep ISO low (taken at ISO 200)

That said, I’m trying to figure out why this photo doesn’t look better. My guesses are
* photo overexposed–should have stopped at f/8.0 or smaller ?
* bad focus ? I think I focused on the butterfly, but even the flower the butterfly is on is not particularly clear
* shot in JPEG ?
* bad lens ? This is the Canon 55-250mm/f4-5.6, which is essentially a kit lens

My takeaway from today is that I am going to start shooting in RAW. iPhoto can handle RAW photos. That way I will at least eliminate JPEG capture as a possibility for poor image quality.

Plastic flippy cat, posing, originally uploaded by borwick.

Lauren got this toy when she went to Raleigh last Friday. You crank it up and it does flips! It’s fun to photograph: at 1/60 you can capture the motion and still tell what it is (sort of). However the continuous drive on my camera “only” shoots ~3 photos a second (I’m shooting JPEG and it might be faster if I were shooting RAW because there wouldn’t be any post-processing, but I digress). Because I can only shoot 3 pictures a second it was a tiny bit hard to capture this toy in mid-spin.

Lauren in a guitar, originally uploaded by borwick.

Here’s a Flickr photo of Lauren in a guitar!

I haven’t used the blog in quite a while.  My latest idea is to use this blog to document what I’m learning… which right now, is photography.

I couple of months ago I got a Canon EOS Rebel XSi digital camera, plus three Canon lenses: an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 (kit lens), a 55-250mm f/4-5.6 (sort of a kit lens), and a 35mm f/2 prime.  I got them all from B&H photography, because they were having a deal on the camera plus the two kit lenses.

I’ve been posting the better photos on flickr.com/photos/borwick.  Here are a couple of things I’ve learned to date:

• Shoot on manual mode all the time, to learn.
• Pictures can look blurry when a lens is “wide open”–stop down the lens whenever possible
• Pictures definitely look blurry when the shutter is slow
• White balance while shooting in JPEG mode is your friend.  However you don’t necessarily want to white-balance a campfire because then it will look like white flame.

Now I’ve added to my wishlist a few additional supplies, most notably an external flash.  Leroy from work talked about how much an external flash has helped with his photography.