Food For Thought

My goal today is, as usual, to showcase some of my recent images and thoughts, but particularly, to give my readers, especially those photographers among you, some ideas and food for thought.

That's always my goal. Nothing pleases me more than when someone writes and says, "I tried what you talked about in your blog, here's an example of what I was able to do". I get those messages sporadically, but not often enough!

I don't specifically come out and say, "here, try this...". But I demonstrate by example and sometimes a reader will think, "that's cool, I wonder if I could do that". Yesterday that happened when I showed a focus-stacked image. I try to give enough information with the images or story, but I don't want to bore people with excessive detail, so if you want more info on anything, don't be afraid to write. My email is photography@faczen.com.

A few random things to think on and perhaps contact me about:

• anything you see here you're not sure how to do? I'm always happy to help with advice or perhaps even a workshop if you're interested.
• I know where to get really high quality custom business cards very inexpensively
• I'm going to Newfoundland in a month.  Does your office or living room wall cry out for a specific picture from there: a seascape, blue hour or golden hour shot, wildlife, colour abstract? Tell me in advance and I'll look for that shot for you.
• for that matter, what about any of the images you've already seen here? Would you like a print (or a tote bag or a pillow or a coffee mug...)?
• The Gales of November workshop isn't full yet. October 26-29th in Wawa, a chance to share time with a dozen photographers or so in one of Canada's most scenic places for very little money. Here's a link (I have to work on this page to update it but almost everything is there)

Talk to me!

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"Spam, spam, spam, spam...."

Anyone else seeing a jump in the number of spam messages? I used to get about 20 per day and it's jumped to over 100 in the last week or so. It's annoying. A ton of messages offering me a free $50 Costco gift card...

That said, I have them well handled, or at least my ISP does. I'm set up so that they get blocked at the server and I never have to see them, except that I have a list of them dumped to a single daily email from the ISP, just in case something real slipped into that group. It takes me a minute to scroll through the list just to make sure.

But it's annoying. My email address is spread around a fair bit: I could change it but that means informing a lot of people, printing new cards, etc. Guess I'll just let it be, but it is annoying.

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Speaking of cards...

I've gotten some compliments on my new cards. I didn't change the back, but I did create a new front side. Here's what they look like:

Front of card 

Back of card 

One of the biggest compliments was from a professional graphic designer who commented on the extreme readability of the text, especially on the  white side. That's the purpose of the card and it was my goal. The only negative was the multiple fonts on that side: I had to because switching over to the Mac, I couldn't use the original fonts and the FacZen Photography logo is a graphic, not type. 

I mention this because cards are very inexpensive today. What vendors do is to gang a large number of customers' cards onto a big printed sheet, then cut them out: they all have to use the same inks, stock and coatings and then it's very economical. Vista Print is a tempting supplier but the quality of the vendor I use (my account with them goes back to the '90s when I was doing graphic design) is much better. I can do a box of 500 cards for $20 plus shipping. So if you want cards, using your own art or mine, get in touch. 

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NEWSFLASH! 

Topaz Labs has something new in the works, to be released at the end of May. It's a platform that might let you do some quality post-processing without having Lightroom or Photoshop... but if you do have those programs, it will enhance your workflow and give you some great new tools!

I'm not allowed to talk about it yet in detail. But watch this space for more information. Click the "Newsletter" button at top right if you're not already a subscriber and I'll give you a heads-up a few days before the public announcement. 

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Bird Photography

I am a mere grasshopper (so I have to be careful around some of the birds!). A few weeks ago, I proudly stated that I had counted 21 species on one trip to Carden. Only to discover that there are people out there who count over 150 species in one day! There's a pin out there somewhere to celebrate that achievement, in conjunction with Canada's 150th birthday. Crazy.

I still can't identify most of what I hear out there, or see. I do know a little more than I did before, though — by the time I'm 100 maybe I'll be more knowledgeable. FWIW, I've ticked off species I've seen in the back of my Peterson's book and my total is... drumroll... 105 species. 

I'm missing a lot of warblers. They're loud and fun to hear but damned hard to see! Patience, patience. Taking a whole day to cover the 8 km of Wylie Road at Carden Alvar is not enough... but I've never NOT enjoyed a day there!

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Algonquin Park

Speaking of patience and enjoyable days... I could say the same thing about Algonquin Park. Obviously if I were physically more able, I'd enjoy it more but I honestly love just driving slowly along Highway 60, stopping occasionally, seeing what there is to see. I went up again last Friday, got to the Park around 9am and left around 4:30pm.

What did I NOT see? A moose. I was really hoping to but I think you have to get there a bit earlier in the day. Also "papa" fox (the guy with the pink frostbite spots on his nose) and his family were not around (it's a open secret where he hangs out but I'm not going to be the one to publish it!). I didn't even see a grey jay on Friday although I did hear some. I think everyone's working on starting their families at this time of year. 

Here's what I did see.

I jotted them down on my iPhone and took a screen grab 

Here are a few pictures.

Broad-winged hawk. #105 on my lifer list! I saw two of these: one first thing in the morning and this one on the way out late in the afternoon. He was actually singing – or what passes for singing for a hawk!

A couple of roadside waterfalls. I'm not that happy with the resulting pictures so I need to work on technique a little more.  Jesse Villemaire posted this one from a few days before and I managed to find it. The water flow was a little less than he saw.

A Loon at Tea Lake. I used another shot of this guy (and his lady friend) as the header on this blog. 

A Ruffed Grouse. I've got better shots but I liked this one anyway. 

All in all, a nice day in the Park. To quote Ahnold... "I'll be back"!

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Carden Plain (Alvar)

I said I've always enjoyed every time I've been there. All true, but some visits are more productive than others. I was there twice this week (Tuesday and Friday). Tuesday was more productive.

Virginia Rail. Actually I found this on Prospect Road, about 10km south of Carden.  

I got three 'lifers' that day: the Virginia Rail, a Least Flycatcher and a Warbling Vireo. I got so many good shots that I decided to create a web gallery in Lightroom rather than post so many pictures here, and you can find it at http://photography.to/carden0516/. Go ahead, click it. I think you'll enjoy the images. Not all are birds: you'll see why you shouldn't take your Ferrari to Carden!

There's a similar gallery of pictures of the Minden Flood 2017. Here.

Carden isn't just about birds. There are flora there as well, and some insects. Some of whom you don't want to meet:

This is an American Dog Tick. Fortunately not the kind that carries Lyme disease, but it can also host other serious diseases. I found him crawling out of my hair when I got home. As far as I could tell, he didn't have any of his little buddies with him and didn't bite me.  I'm careful to wear long pants, tucked into my boots when I go out in the field.
 

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Parting Shot

I shot this after the Camera Club meeting on Wednesday. My goal in Newfoundland is to get some of these "Blue Hour" shots, inspired by the work of Ray Mackey (whose page you can find here). Ray gave me some post-processing pointers. I hope to spend some time with him in Newfoundland in July. 

Aside from the lighting and exposure, I was really careful with the composition and I reduced some of the clutter in the background in post-processing. It was cloudy, stars would have improved this image for me. I have to wait for an appropriate night to work on that.  

— 30 —

Sittin' on the dock of the bay...

...musings

I went for a swim in the lake a couple of evenings ago and it occurred to me that swimming in the lake is substantively different from swimming in a pool. My dock is in a shallow bay, so your experience, where you swim, might be a little different than mine. So here are some (a)musing points

• In a swimming pool, your eyes get red because people pee in the pool. Fish and other animals pee in the lake, but that doesn't give you red eyes. And it doesn't smell like chlorine.
• Why is it that that spot on your lower back just above your waist is so much more sensitive to cold water than, say, your private bits? I've stood there, waist deep, saying, "ok, on the count of three... one, two, two-and-a-half...". In a pool, the water's all the same temperature. In the lake, it's 10° colder when you get down two feet!
• When was the last time you were swimming in a pool and a raft of 15 ducks swam by? 9 kiddies and 6 adults. And since I was immersed in the water with only my head sticking up, they weren't intimidated and ignored me as they swam around me. Wish I could have seen them better, but I wasn't wearing my glasses.
• Loons are BIG. At least twice the size of the ducks. One swam by about 8 or 10 feet from me then dove under, looking for fish (and not my nether bits, I hope!)
• I love "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, wasting time..." (Tell me this isn't better than the Otis Redding original...)

I made a metallic print of this image a couple of years ago and enjoy looking at it almost every day.

Another shot of my dock, also quite old. This was one side of my business card for a few generations! That's my friend Sean who was up here when we attended a photo course at Fleming College with Rob Stimpson some years ago. 

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Speaking of Business Cards

I just ordered a new set, ran right out of my last ones. I get them made locally and I have a wholesale account where I can deliver a set of 500 full-coloured, double sided, Aqueous finished cards for about $25 (shipping and taxes extra but if we combine orders...). Think about it. Your own pictures...

Front and back (or back and front, you choose!) of my new cards. If you're reasonably adept with Photoshop, I can tell you how to prepare the final art for printing. If not, I can do it for you but understand that I need to be compensated for the time I spend on it. Contact me.

OK, truth time. I got my cards today. Hate them. The milky way image looks great on a lighted screen but hopelessly dark in print. The other side looks "OK" but it's not great either. It's not a quality problem with the supplier: they did their job. It was me. I had decided that I wanted a matte finish to the cards, not glossy. Nope. Also I didn't pay enough attention to the mid-tones, they're too dark. Also tiny detail doesn't work on a 2" x 3½" card. I should know better. Back to the drawing board. I'll report back when I get some new cards I like. But that shouldn't stop you! Just use a nice, bright, simple image.

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The star shot I used on the card was taken at my friend Janie's place. I had planned to head up to Algonquin Park to shoot stars that night but dinner ended late and I was tired. It was July 1 and there were fireworks going on, so I just got the camera (and the bug jacket!!) out and did some shots down by the lake. I went back in and asked the ladies to turn the lights off for a bit because they were painting quite a bit of light on the dock and boat and I didn't want it in the shot. 

I had to do a bit of work on the original to finish it for the card. I did a bit more work to make it a printable large size image. Here's the original, SOOC (straight out of the camera):

Aside from the obvious toning in the sky, and removing a couple of the hot lights, especially at right, I wanted to enhance the reflections in the lake and the distortion on the left side, caused by the wide angle lens bothered me, so I did some selective warping and rotation to straighten it up. I wanted a warmer saturation on the house lights too. Actually I masked in a flipped version of the sky into the water, then applied a ripple filter to soften it. A considerable amount of attention to detail. By the way, the finished photoshop file is over 1.5Gb in size! Here's the result:

Oh yeah. And I turned that meteor trail into a better shooting star and got rid of the second one which I found distracting. Metallic or acrylic print? I don't think it would work on conventional media. 

The same night, on the way home, I stopped at the beach opposite 12-Mile Lake Church and did these shots:

I used a humongous flashlight to point to the Milky Way. If an alien being on Deneb looks up in about 2600 years, they should see the light from this flashlight. Thanks, Fred! 

Setting the flashlight to its widest setting and lowest power, and brushing the trees for a quick half-second pass during my 15-second exposure, I light painted the trees. You need a smaller flashlight for this! 

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...more musings

{rant}

Photographers constantly bemoan the fact that people don't want to pay for their work. "We'll give you recognition..."; "our thousands of viewers will see your work..."; "you'll get photo credit...". And the photographers are right: when was the last time you told a plumber that you would tell everyone how great a job they did (instead of paying them) or tried to use your photo credit to buy a coffee at Tim Horton's?

I'm constantly inundated with invitations to submit images for competitions. What better praise could one get than to say you were recognized in an International Salon or exhibited in a museum. I had four images selected for a juried show last year at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in the Minden Cultural Centre and yes, I'm very pleased at the recognition and the positive reviews, but it cost me over $100 per image to print and frame them. I still have three of them here, one did in fact sell through the museum.

Newspapers and other media (including Network Television) encourage their readers/viewers to submit pictures and they never get paid. Facebook and YouTube are inundated with pictures and videos that people post for free. And photographers regularly complain when someone copies their work, which is inevitable. If you don't want people to steal your work, don't post it.

But the juried Salons abound. Just today I had another invitation to submit. But in order to do so, you have to pay them! In this case, $25 US per image submitted. I get that they have expenses to defray but why is it that the artist is the one who doesn't get paid? The company who runs the Salon makes money. Their employees are paid. Physical prints are displayed in a gallery and the gallery owner makes money. The director and staff make a salary. So does the mailboy and the secretary and even the kid who gets them coffee (which they pay for...). Not the artist.

That's not to say that there aren't legitimate competitions. The International Salon run by the Toronto Camera Club is in its 123rd year! Yes, you have to pay a fee to submit images but this prestigious event is different from the seemingly hundreds of imitators out there because (a) it's a legitimate and well-credentialed show, (b) a quality printed book of winning images is published and (c) it's run by a group not out to profit by the show. But when commercial outfits, including some well-known magazines, run such events for money, I have to question it.

For the record, I submitted a dozen entries to the 122nd International Salon and received seven acceptances (but no ribbons!). Dr. Ron had 12 acceptances and 4 awards! Impressive. This year I have accepted an invitation to judge the Photojournalism category for the Salon (I did two years ago as well) but new FIAP rules state that as a judge, I cannot submit images (even in other categories). :(

Anyway, I don't castigate amateur photographers for offering images for free or for photo credit – technically I fall in the same category, with my blog and social media postings and since I don't make a living from my art technically I'm not a working professional – but I draw the line when someone makes a profit from that work.

{/rant}

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Lightroom
I finally split my catalog.

I have over 80,000 images in my Lightroom catalog. Since the catalog is just a database, that shouldn't matter, and probably doesn't. But my dilemma is that the size of the photo archive itself is so big that I had to buy a new 4Tb external drive to contain it. Last year, I bought two 3Tb drives. They're full to overflowing.

So I decided to take a step back and split the catalog. One of the beauties of Lightroom is that if you keyword your images, you can search for and easily find virtually any image in an instant. For instance, there are 676 pictures of me in that 80,000 image database, but I've marked only 87 of them as not-so-objectionable (everyone knows there are NO good pictures of yourself!). I'm never going to want to see the other 589 pictures. 

Here's what I decided: I want to be able to access all the images that I've marked as "keepers" over the years (there are about 11,000 of them) and I want to see all of this year's pictures (2016) as well (about 8000 so far). The combined count is a little over 16,000 images which takes up a little over 1Tb of disk space. They're sitting on a 3Tb drive now and I'll probably go out and buy an extra 2Tb drive to use as a duplicate. That should leave me enough room for a while. My 4Tb drive and another (very full) 3Tb drive will serve as an archive for the full 80,000 images.

It was no trivial task. I probably could have taken a small shortcut but what I did was

• select the marked "keepers" in the existng catalog, spending some time deciding what to keep
• exported them as a catalog to the external drive
• same process, 2016 images
• combine the two catalogs
• set backup and other preferences for the new catalog and move it to the internal drive in the computer, leaving the images in their permanent home on the external
• make sure the links are intact between the catalog in its new location and the images on the external drive
• create a backup of the catalog on the external drive (so it's in two places)
• started the process of building smart previews and 1:1 previews (not done yet).

The final step will be to echo the external drive to a fresh one and copy a "keepers only" archive to go on another external drive that I store off-site. For now, I have all the images in 3 places. Now I need to update to the latest Lightroom CC version (I haven't yet) and I'm good to go. 

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Some pictures

But you didn't come here to read my rants and raves. You came to look at some pictures! Here are some new ones for your enjoyment.

Serious off-road wheels. Parked outside Kawartha Dairy last week, there were six or eight of these vehicles there. Still shaking the bugs out of Topaz Impressions 2... 

Speaking of Kawartha Dairy, here's a little time-lapse video I shot that day, set to appropriate music! Enjoy: 

http://photography.to/video/kawartha2.mp4

I've been enjoying my painting classes with Harvey Walker. I seem to be learning but progress is slow. I've been trying some different things to develop my skills and I have to admit I enjoy charcoal sketching:

I sketched this in graphite and charcoal while sitting at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. By the way, a sketchpad is a great chick magnet. Almost as good as a puppy.Girls kept coming over to see what I was drawing! 

Sitting just outside my front door. The beauty of sketching or painting as opposed to photography is that you can change or leave out things as you wish. On the other side of that fence is the road and the Red Umbrella Inn, which I chose not to include. Also the near tree would be much bigger if it were in the correct perspective.  The colour you see is just a reflection.

Here's my latest oil painting:

Fishing 12-Mile Lake. I shot a photo just North of Harvey's studio on the way home one day. The composition's not quite right: we decided that the boat needed to be bigger in relation to the people, so I extended the bow which put it too central in the picture. The boat, and the people, of course, were the hardest for me to render: the reflections the easiest.  

Here's Harvey's studio. I had just completed the underpainting and putting colour on the boat and people.  

Also just beyond Harvey's studio was this patch of wildflowers. I couldn't resist using Topaz Impression to give it a painted effect. 

This is half-a-dozen images focus stacked. Focus stacking gives you beautiful, soft backgrounds and tack sharp subjects. 

As long as I'm shooting focus-stacked flowers, here's an image of an orange lily right at my house:

Fourteen or Sixteen stacked images (I forget which). I actually processed three or four different shots and chose this one as my favourite. I toned back the colours and the exposure to give this a more subtle feel.  

12-Mile Lake Sunset. I was with Ann Alimi, along with her husband Fabrice and her daughter Elaine Ho (plus Tango, the wonder-dog!) at the Red Umbrella Inn following the dog workshop Ann taught. The sunset didn't look like much, but I convinced her to stay for about half an hour after sunset because I knew that's when the colours would appear. Sometimes I'm right! This really lends itself to the painted look and my favourite starting preset is "Impasto" in Impression2. I think I'll print this on canvas.

We did do a dog workshop but I haven't processed the images yet! Next time, stay tuned.

— 30 —

I live in the "705"!

New Phone Number!

I'm a procrastinator. I've been living up here in the highlands for 7 years now, you'd think I'd have a local phone number by now! My neighbours have complained that they have to call long distance to reach me and I have a certain lack of credibility because I don't have a local number (for the record, if you're grandparents weren't born here, you're not considered a 'local' anyway!). I needed to keep my business number (for the First Aid business). Up to now, that's been a Bell "SNR" number which was permanently forwarded to my cellphone.

Like many other people, I don't have an actual home phone. I live on my cellphone. There are a few disadvantages but I can live with them. Because my cellphone plan has unlimited calling, I decided to make the number known. I don't really want to type it here, so look at the business card in the picture below.

The challenge was to keep the Toronto (416) number so business contacts and people in Toronto without long distance plans could still call me toll-free, and yet have a local (705) number for up here where I live. I accomplished that by getting a new cellphone (actually, I didn't get a phone, just a SIM-card) and permanently forwarding it to the (705) number. It came with an almost unlimited long distance package. Now you can call me at either number. 

The ONLY thing I had to give up was the ability to receive faxes. The one or two people every year who send me a legitimate fax will eventually learn that they have to join the 21st century and go with email.


New Business Cards

With my change in phone number, I needed new business cards. 

Front and back (or back and front!) of my new business cards. The bottom image has a green cast to it on my screen, which shows up here but not on the original file. It could be because of changing colour spaces, from CMYK for print to ProPhoto RGB in Lightroom to sRGB when making the images for here... we'll see what the actual printed product looks like. (update: it's somewhat in-between. If I were reprinting, I'd warm it up a little).

The other thing that's inaccurate is that the actual printed cards will be slightly trimmed from what you see here. These are 3.627 x 2.127" and they'll be trimmed to the standard 3.5 x 2" when made.

I have an outstanding wholesale printing supplier who specializes in business cards. Because they gets hundreds of orders per day and can standardize inks and paper (they put all the cards on one big sheet, run it through a top end large format printing press) their prices and quality are UNBELIEVABLE.

I ordered 500 business cards, printed in full colour on both sides, on 14-point bright white glossy stock, with an aqueous coating that provides excellent rub and scuff resistance. My cost? Around $20. That's right, I said $20.

If you want cards, let me know (delivery US and Canada). You can approach this two ways: (1) you do all the artwork. I'll send you a template, just fit everything inside the lines, produce a PDF file (press quality, in CMYK: you can do that in Photoshop easily) and send them to me via dropbox or (2) send me the pictures you want to use and the text, I'll do the layout for you. If I do the layout, I have to charge you for my time, of course. I'm reasonable but not free...

Or you could use one or more of my images. There's a selection on Smugmug, here. You could also use virtually any image you've seen on my blog. Get in touch with me by email and I'll send you details...

AND they make greeting cards (folded to 5x7 with an envelope!) and a hundred other products.
Think Xmas...

Just want to go on record...

I HATE Leukemia. I just attended a funeral for someone who passed away this week, far too young. His name was Howie Mandel (not the one most of you are thinking of). He was, admittedly, more of an acquaintance than a close friend but he was close with several people whom I care about and his death had a big impact on them and therefore, me.

Leukemia or lymphoma have taken too many, too soon. My first girlfriend died of it in her 20's. My dear friend Fran was taken a couple of years ago. 

Just feeling sad and hope writing about it is somehow cathartic. 

Winter is on its way

I'm pretty well ready: we still have to address the sump pump line problem, one last small repair on the ATV but the plow is already mounted. The roof is done, at least the critical part, firewood is cut and stacked, chimney re-cemented, summer shorts and bathing suits stored, winter boots ready. Do I hate winter? Not really. I don't love it like I did up to a few years ago but I'm actually looking forward to crisp white snow underfoot.

The last vestiges of fall are slowly giving way.

This stubborn shrub is next to my fence and it refuses to drop its leaves. I think they will eventually, they're holding on by a thread, but virtually everything else is down now.

Impression is such a great program because it turns a mundane photo into a piece of art. Don't get me wrong: the picture has to be properly exposed and composed and focused... but it can do wonders with an ordinary picture of a leaf.

The forest looks like this, sun filtering between bare tree trunks, snowflakes gently falling on the still-wet ground. 

But I don't like this time of year. There are two times I don't like – early spring and late fall. The world is damp and dull and wet and chilly and grey and ugly. When I used to be a hunter, I looked forward to November. Spring was a lot warmer than winter, you look forward to summer. But November? As I type this, I look out on a couple of inches of soggy, wet snow. My hands are chilly, although it's warm enough in the house. I'll go lay a fire in the fireplace and it'll be better in here, but it's ugly outside.

On the other hand, there are days... like yesterday, as I drove into Toronto, the air was crystal clear and the light was gorgeous. I was under some time pressure but I couldn't resist stopping for a couple of pictures, and the one here is my new Blog header as of today.

I spent an hour painting this image, tweaking this and that, then I saved it and by chance looked at it beside the original, unedited image right out of the camera. Yep, that's the one I used! OK, well it's a 5-exposure HDR,  

Sometimes an image just doesn't want to look like my mind wants it to. That's the case with this one. I want the trees to be silhouetted against a dark sky but I can't seem to make it happen. HDR's like the header above look a lot cheerier, somehow. In this bottom image, which is just a single virtually unedited frame, everything is wrong technically, the histogram is way off, there aren't any whites... but it's approaching the mood that I want. I'll keep at it. 

Two minutes later, I pulled over for another shot. 

I can't explain. There was something about the light... This was the original, more or less. It's another HDR, of course.

And this is my final version of this image. I removed the gate. I leveled the combine (or whatever it's called). Both of those things were "fussy" work. I used Topaz Adjust to add colour and contrast to the sky. I thought I was done until I opened Impression to play with it. There are two layers of Impression used here, one for the sky and one for the foreground. Click to blow it up so you can see the brush strokes.

— 30 —

And the beat goes on...

Did you notice the new banner up top? Every now and then I feel the need to change it up. And when I do, I post the previous banner in the body of the blog because otherwise it disappears completely! So...

I chose the new image because (a) I had to find something that would fit in the footprint, an extremely wide pano, and (b) I like the smooth tonality and colour blend of this image. It is a picture taken from my dock on 12 Mile Lake. I've taken hundreds of pictures from the same spot but occasionally one stands out. I like how the shape of the shoreline and its reflection on the left creates a virtual arrowhead that causes the viewer's eye to move from left to right across the image and back again to pick out the structures and detail.

For those who care, it's an HDR merged in Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 from 3 exposures, shot with the 17-35mm lens at 17mm and f/8 on the full-frame D600. For what it's worth, here's the original image (well, the merge!) minus a few pixels for better framing.

I will make this available as a fine art print. I think it would look outstanding on a matte art paper. Check out the gallery link at right to find it and email me to order a print. It also makes a fine wallpaper image for your computer. Two sizes, one for normal and one for wide screens. This wallpaper image is FREE for subscribers to my newsletter, so click here or on the link at upper right to subscribe.

I'm going to start today by nagging you.

Backups

Some of my readers are diligent about doing their backups. Some are not. Some people need a subtle reminder to do it. This is intended for you!

Do your backups. My backup strategy isn't perfect but at least I do them. Today I sync'd my two external drives so I have two up-to-date copies of my photo archives. I also copied my Outlook data files to an external drive. Don't forget those, they're in a weird location (on a PC) and you don't want to go through what I did when the original got corrupted...

On a personal note, I have to sit down and create a new Lightroom catalog that contains all my "Keeper" images, then copy the whole shebang to another drive. Reason is, my external drives are getting very full and I'd really like to have a third copy of the important images, at least. 

Update: I just did that. It took about 8 hours for Lightroom to percolate and copy a little over 500Gb of data. FWIW, I have over 15,000 keeper images (ones which I had flagged earlier as 'not unacceptable')! I should have sent it directly to the external drive because now it wants another 7 hours to do that. I feel better, though. Now I have a third copy of my "keeper" files and it's going to be stored off-site.  

Anyway, do it today. I don't know what your backup strategy is, but do it. Just imagine your house burning down to the ground and in addition to everything else, losing all the images you've ever shot.

Emergency Medical Card

If for some reason you have a medical emergency, the important information about you should be available if you end up in an ER and can't tell them everything, or can't remember. You should also have contact information, a list of meds, all that stuff in your purse or wallet JUST IN CASE.

Years ago, I created a .pdf document that you could fill out (on your own computer, you don't send that out anywhere) and put it up as a public service. At one point I had a hit counter on that page and recorded over 50,000 hits: I lost it, so I'm going to start it over again.

Anyway, go to this page: http://www.faczen.com/medcard.htm and fill out the form. You simply type your info into the page, print it out, then run over to Staples and get it laminated if you want, and carry it in your wallet or purse or camera bag...

Note that this is absolutely FREE and we don't record any information about you including the fact that you downloaded the document or visited the page (except that we count how many people have done that). No worries.

You may be one of the rare people who don't have any medical issues or take any prescription drugs or have any allergies, but at least you should carry your doctor's name and contact info and who to call in case of emergency. Please do it now. And if you think it's a good idea, please tell your friends and loved ones.

OK, finished nagging...

Heads Up!

I'm going to be announcing an Algonquin Park Fall Colours PhotoWalk in the next week or so. My initial concept is that there will be no charge for my students and subscribers to my newsletter, just trying to put it together. Watch for the announcement on the Newsletter.

SmugMug has a new look

There are lots of places you can put your photos up on the web for free. Everyone's doing the "cloud" thing now, but most of the free sites have some down sides. Every day, I read about how someone's pictures were stolen on FlickR or on 500px... I've been a SmugMug subscriber for years and because that's the only thing they do and because it's not totally free, they care about you.

I had a "Professional" account there because I wanted to be able to sell images through them with a markup. They had links to a couple of really great labs, like Bay Photo in San Francisco, and you could easily order directly. I stopped doing that because, well, it wasn't a good way for me to market my images (that said, I haven't found one yet!). Anyway, I downgraded my account to something called a "Power" account which costs me $60/year. If you're interested, here's the comparison between the different accounts they offer.

A couple of weeks ago, they totally revised their interface and look-and-feel. It's really, really slick now, IMHO. Check out my site at faczen.smugmug.com. Go ahead, I'll wait right here...

If you clicked on "Browse", you would have seen some other galleries that I've put in place (works in progress...) but what I like is they are for special purposes and the casual visitor doesn't have to be distracted by them.

So one of the other things I like about SmugMug is that when you send an email to their helpdesk, a real live human being responds in short order. And it's someone who actually knows about things, not some CSR in a foreign call center (Hi, I'm Rajesh, and I can certainly help you with that problem...).

One more thing: Lightroom has a plug-in where you can sync with SmugMug. Just drag photos into it and click "Publish" and you're done. Nice. I just added the image at the top of this post to both my "New and Featured Images" and my "Fine Art Prints" galleries with a couple of clicks.

Anyway, I'm happy to recommend them to all my readers. Go to www.smugmug.com. You can play with it for free for 14 days, then sign up. If you mention me in the referral box when you sign up. Two ways of doing that: put in my email address (glenn dot springer at faczen dot com. You know what to do with that, right?) or just cut and paste in this code:  16NrueyZ8KPmc. You'll save $5 on your first year subscription.

Speaking of new looks...
Business Printing

Tell me how this strikes you:

■ 1000 double sided business cards, printed on both sides in full colour, full bleed, on heavy (16.5 point) card stock with an aqueous coating, all for $20 or so.

This is the front of the business card I printed for myself (no black border. It bleeds right off the edges of the card). By the way, shot from the same dock as the banner up above!.

■ 1000 postcards, similar to the above, 4x6 size, both sides full colour for about $50. All superb quality. That's ONE THOUSAND CARDS, folks!

Here's how it works: the supplier I deal with gangs up print jobs so he prints hundreds of cards at a time and trims them out of a big sheet. So each individual card is inexpensive and the printer is happy because he's making money. As long as everyone uses the same inks (4-colour process) and paper, he's laughing.

If you're interested, I'll send you a template. You fit your art in the template and send it back. We print it. Or you can use, for example, my photos for the background. If you want me to do layout and design work, I can, very inexpensively. Starting to sound interesting?

Have you ever seen prices like that for full colour high quality printing? This is a no-brainer, folks. contact me...

Don't say I didn't warn you!

I shot this a couple of days ago. It is coming... 

On to some images!

Kind of an unusual casual portrait... this was a mistake. For some reason I had a HUGE exposure compensation set: more than +3 stops. I think I turned the dial the wrong way. But when I saw the image onscreen, I liked it! I had to do a little work on the faces to bring them back, and it's at ISO 6400 (the D600 is amazing!). I need to try more of these high key images! Rita and Ray Felson are relatives, visiting my mother. 

Internationally renowned photographer Stu Freedman, visiting with the Felsons at my mother's. Stu's wife and my mother are related, haven't seen each other in 80 years or more. Stu is 90, he founded the Toronto Guild about a million years ago, and is still shooting pictures! Don't criticize my background, OK? It was a casual shot while chatting. At least I got the lighting right! (North-facing window, behind the Felsons above, if anybody cares). 

I know, it's just a seagull (Herring Gull, larus argentatus, if anybody cares!). But the 400mm Sigma lens can be really sharp when it wants to. And it's on the cropped sensor D5100 too, so effectively 600mm! I did some birds-in-flight too, that day. I practice on them sometimes when I'm at the dump. 

While riding my ATV on the trail near my house, I came across these giant fungi on a fallen tree stump. I didn't have anything with me to give it a sense of scale, so I put my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 in it. If you're not a photographer, that's about 9" long... if you are one, it's still 9" long but you know that!  

I went back yesterday to try again, this time I brought a tripod. Now do you see how big they are? It's weird because (a) I've never seen one that big outside of a rain forest and (b) there are no other ones around anywhere. Aliens, I tell you... 

Until next time! TTFN

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