via Gadget Lab

Flickr. Been using it for years – with periodic hiatus[es] – always worried about losing pictures to sneaky internet thievery – and at the same time wondering how to keep a proper archive of my photos.

Restricted access to Flickr

Well – I can use Flickr without worrying about the first point. Just found out that I can select who from my contacts or the whole universe has access to the see all sizes/download this picture option.

I’d looked for this feature before – last time must have been at least year ago – without finding it. I guess it may be a “new” feature – or just a very well hidden one – as there were so many photographers’ photostreams that I had download rights too.

Time to backup

So now – slowly does it I can backup my entire photographic history to Flickr and get decent off-site cloud based backups. Delicious.

All that’s missing now is to find a plug-in for Bridge/Lightroom/Aperture that will sync changes in my master archive with the Flickr one…

p*orkflow anyone?

Or so it seems. There have been many quality compacts produced since digital imaging came of age. You know those arrogant/insecure youths stutting about showing off their CCDs, talking the talk and trying to walk the walk. Er, I digress. Of these wonders the Canon G series (currently the G10) has been the most notable in terms of being photographer friendly. Until now because because to this photographer light should not be squeezed: nothing has come near the gorgeously wide-angle and fabulously bright optics of the new(-ish) Panasonic Lumix LX3. And those optics are wrapped in a small and functional form. Am I gushing? Oh dear…

f2.0-2.8, 24-60mm

How much?

Somewhere around 450 euros. Not bad.

Who needs an SLR? With this kind of glass – I could lose about two kilos from my camera bag. Let me rephrase: I could lose my two kilo travelling camera bag.

So, why the hog of a workflow?

Needs are tagging, editing, pixel pushing, publishing and archiving. Some kind of database to keep track of it all.

My problem is that I seem to be using a raft of applications to achieve this, applications that do not seamlessly integrate with each other or meet all my needs. I find I’m fighting the software and repeating myself.

Adobe’s Lightroom seems to be the best contender and can do most of this*. Along my path to digital photo nirvana I have met many software applications. Some have become firm friends. Others; well, I’ve followed the Yellow Brick Road and met a couple of wicked witches too. Problem is these witches don’t look like witches – they (usually) look lovely but cast a strong frustration spell (Extensis Portfolio ≤v.8 – I’m talking to you. Roundtrip Metadata. My arse.) .

I currently use Adobe’s Bridge, Photoshop, Apple’s iPhoto and Flickr. Occasionally I’ll use Graphic Converter because I love the ease of Geotagging therein.
Bridge is the daddy for tagging, rating and adding metadata. It provides hooks into the most useful Photoshop batch processing options – particularly the Image Processor. Keywording could have an easier interface – lists of Keywords and keyword sets quickly become unwieldy – but there’s always the File/File Info… menu to add keywords by hand to any selected files.
Photoshop – the only tool allows masking and selective edits the only serious image editing software I’ve ever used.
iPhoto – for want of a better DAM – it’s free easy to use and useful for minor edits. Anything I want to keep on my laptop lives in my iPhoto library.
Flickr – Flickr is fun – you know – relatively cheap online storage and publishing if you like. I wish it would allow me to restrict access to high res version of my photos – and allow me to offer photos for sale on-line. But it doesn’t. So while it’s fun – it’s of limited use.

Recently I’ve been giving Lightroom another go. At work on a quad core G5 it’s great. Here on my 12″ PowerBook it runs like an old dog. An old dog with three legs. And two of those have arthritis. I’d love to try Aperture – but my PowerBook doesn’t make the minimum requirements.

I guess the most important feature of all is the publishing. I’ve only just realised this. The rest well – the rest just helps. I used to publish to .mac with iPhoto. But was getting unwieldy with limited options re controlling the look of it all. I figured damn the control and moved to Flickr. With Flickr I conceded control over the look of the all important first page. I loved the Flickr community – but sitting behind a firewall or being away from an internet connection several days per week has taken the social network shine off it and my Flickr pages’ interestingness is suffering. I suppose we’re supposed to suffer for our art. Now I’m back with the presentation problem. It really is important to me and Flickr doesn’t let me present images. With Flickr you upload and that’s it. A bucket of photos. Perhaps I should acknowledge I’m not taking enough interesting photos!

*It doesn’t do geotagging or masking (a vital part of any virtual darkroom).

iPhoto printing with Apple.com

1 Medium Softcover Book (size of this is not quite 8″x6″), 100 pages €40.19 + €6.00 shipping + VAT(16% ES) €7.39 = total: € 53.58

Printing with blurb.com

Square format (7″ square) 81-120 pages €16,95 + Swiss Post Economy (nontrackable option) €5,66 + VAT (16% ES) = total € 26.23. Add a euro and shave a couple of days off the shipping time.

Blimey. I’m going to try the Blurb folks…

For the full experience you’d need a canvas (or theme) that accommodates the Flickrslideshow minimum dimensions which are roughly 580px wide x 360px high. Right now this site’s main content div is only 500px wide – so there’s a bit of clipping on landscape images. But not enough to worry about too much just yet.

The code is this: <iframe style="border:0" width="500px" height="400px" src="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazydada/sets/72157603491230286/show/">

Currently here. Childrens’ TV from way back in the seventies. You remember this one? I do. The theme tune is baked into my memory for ever.

Flickr viewer

Tiltviewer is a very cool way to see your Flickr stream. Or mine. I like what it does; somewhere between a slideshow and browser. Much cleaner interface than Flickr’s pages. Smells of the future. Very clever. Here is their ‘ome page, Mr ‘iggins.

Carbon Copy Cloner

I’ve stumbled upon the fact that this backup software stalwart for Mac OS X has finally been updated. Time to give it a whirl again. Which reminds me …

Hard-drive upgrade. Again.

Not quite two years since the last upgrade I’ve done it again. This time not precipitated by a dead-disk but by a severe lack of space. 160GB drive swapped out from my LaCie external drive. Not a quick fix but a good one. And I took to opportunity to give the old girl a good clean. How nice. Shinny Aluminium. Thanks to the folks at iFixit for the online guide.

Photogasm

Last but by no means least. My friend Mick Partridge created Jude Edginton’s website. Jude’ photo’s are really very good. Really. Nice site Mr. Partridge.

Anyway – I’ve found a newspaper here that I like to read. It’ll do wonders for my vocabulary. And it’s free. And it’s lovely to look at (seeing as I’m in that game).

Given away outside the FNAC (the best consumer electronics and media shops in Spain) in La Cañada, is a stand with ADN. I don’t visit La Cañada too often and ADN isn’t always there – but it is a very well crafted Berliner. The Edition I get is Malaga-centric, but with a good national and international coverage.The penultimate edition I grabbed (the November 19 edition) was full of very strong photography. The cover image was ZP (The man Zapatero) in a black suit giving a thumbs-up salute against a black background. An almost awkward composition gave half the frame to that plain background. His face well lit but half covered by the raised hand. Striking, perhaps twisted, composition very apt for politician’s portrait. On p.2 ADN reserves half a page for La fotographía. There, an arresting photo of a Canadian infantryman in Afganistan. Piercing blue eyes looking out from a heavily bearded face. Looking out of the page and straight through me. Licenced by Reuters, Finnbar O’Reilly the photographer.  A bloody good one too.