It’s been relatively quiet on the photography front these past days, so here is an older photograph that I’d like to share with you. I like it very much and would have put it into “Best of 2007,” but it’s from 2006.
PS: I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas!
As I woke up yesterday the world outside appeared magic — everything was covered with a thick layer of white frost. This happens about once every two years around here, so I grabbed the camera and hurried outside. Instead of the 70-200/4 I put the 100/2.8 Macro in the photo bag, and even though there was enough light for shooting hand-held, I took the tripod along.
Both turned out to be good decisions: the macro allowed me to get really close, showing the structure of the frost crystals and the tripod allowed me to get more DOF and to work slowly, easily switching between the camera and my cardboard viewfinder.
After about two hours my fingers were really frozen, so I chose the short way home, where I was able to capture this trotting pony.
About a week ago I saw a short report on TV about a photographer from Bangladesh named Akash, who spent 2007 living and working in Hamburg. The report showed a few of his images (a mixture of images made in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Hamburg), and I was stunned. I got online, found Akash’s web page, and looked and looked…
Akash does not make pretty pictures. He photographs almost exclusively people on the edge of society — the exploited, poor, old, weak, the homeless, the forgotten — calling our attention to aspects of modern life that should be urgently addressed. Yet many photographs are positive in nature. They show that no matter how hard life might be, people manage to make ends meet, no matter how weak you might be, someone still lends you a hand, and no matter how alone, there is at least one photographer who cares…
Think of Akash as Steve McCurry, but with a passion for his subjects. Most amazing to me however was that Akash managed to keep his style even when photographing in Hamburg and his images lost none of their poignancy, even though life here is so very different from life in his homeland.
I wished I could meet Akash, maybe get to know him a bit, so I wrote hims an e-mail and he replied quickly. He was about to leave Hamburg and return to Bangladesh in a few days, he wrote, but suggested that we meet anyway. Amazing, taking the time when he surely had ten thousand other things to do in his last days here!
Last night I visited Akash and we talked at length. It was amazing to meet such an incredibly kind and caring person. I’ll say no more, but I’m so sad that he is leaving…
I looked at Akash’s web page again today, and I know that I’ll be visiting India again and probably some of the other south-Asian countries. I also know that my images will never match Akash’s (probably because I lack his background and his compassion), but I do have my own view, so I’ll be looking for my own images anyway.
Anyhow, a warm farewell to Akash and best of luck for him and his family!
PS: By the way, I’m not the only one fascinated by Akash’s photographs. His work has been featured in over 40 major international publications including Time, Newsweek, Geo, Stern, Der Spiegel, The Economist, Die Zeit, FAZ, Westdeutsche Allgemeine, Frankfurter Rundschau, Hamburger Abendblatt, El Mundo, etc.
PPS: Till December 28 there is an exhibition of Akash’s work in Hamburg’s City Hall. That’s only a week from now, so hurry up and don’t miss it!
Ten days ago I gave myself an assignment: build an online-portfolio with the 12 best images that I took in 2007. The first version of the portfolio is now online, and let me tell you, it was not an easy assignment! I had to decide which images to show, how to show them, and build a functional web galley.
I stared with about 40 images, a very simple HTML page and two Photoshop actions, one for producing a thumbnail and one for making the larger image. What followed were no less than 50 iterations of moving the better images towards the beginning, deleting the last image, improving the look of the web page, and refining the action that produces the thumbnails. When I was down to about 20 images, the HTML was already looking good, so I started experimenting with CSS and Slimbox.
I’ve now chosen the “winner” 12 images, finalized the appearance of the web page and I think I’ve got all the technology playing together. The result can be seen here and I’ll be very thankful for feedback.
The next step is to revisit the RAW files and try to produce nicer JPGs from them. And of course at some point in time I’ll make paper prints too…
I’ve been working with Photoshop CS2 for a few years now. At first I was struggling with all the options, settings, tools, palettes, etc., but having read Bruce Fraser’s “Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2” and “Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2” I felt much more confident, and since then sorting, rating, searching, adjusting a RAW image, editing a PSD file or producing JPGs or various sizes have become second nature to me.
But when Lightroom and then CS3 came along, and many people upgraded. I didn’t want to spend any more money on software, so I’ve been waiting patiently. But I’ve read and watched enough tutorials to know that ACR 4.x offers some very welcome new features.
Now that I am finished with looking through my past images and want to start editing the winners, I would like to have access the new “recovery”, “vibrance” and “clarity” sliders, the new B/W capabilities and split-toning in ACR, the loupe in Bridge/Lightroom, the spot editing in Lightroom, editing JPGs in ACR and so on…
So I’ve been thinking of purchasing either Lightroom or the CS3 upgrade. But Adobe is being ridiculous with their European pricing. In the USA Lightroom costs $299 and the CS3 upgrade is only $199. In Germany each one costs a whooping 296€, the equivalent of $430!!! I know, I can get a slightly better price be Amazon.de, but that’s not the point — CS3 is still double the US price!!!
Anyhow, I decided I’ll try Lightroom anyway. I’ve had it for about 5 days now, and I am impressed. It’s a very slick and functional piece of software, much more user-friendly than Bridge 1.x and ACR 3.x. If one doesn’t already have Photoshop, it’s easily worth its (US) price.
But I do have CS2, so for me the question was, what does Lightroom get me? I thought, I’d use Lightroom as the front end (Bridge and ACR) and CS2 as the image editor (layers, masks, actions, soft-proofing, etc.). This setup works well, but it’s not optimal. You have to turn on “Maximize compatibility” in CS2 so that Lightroom is able to import and preview your PSD files, and before opening a RAW file in CS2, Lightroom creates a PSD file (which you might not want to keep).
About 6 months ago Adobe quietly released ACR 3.7 and the release notes said that the new version is able to read Lightroom’s XMP-files. I wanted to try that, so I edited a few RAW-files in Lightroom, opened them in Bridge and ACR 3.7, and sure thing, all the edits, including spotting, were there — cool! But JPG edits didn’t survive… 
For whatever reason, Lightroom does not write XMP files for JPGs, so CS2 has no way to know about your edits.
The “Slideshow”, “Print” and “Web” modules are also very good, but I can print better from CS2 (soft-proof) and make my own Web galleries. I won’t be as fast, but definitely more flexible. Lightroom’s slideshow functions is surely better than the slow and inflexible one CS2, but CS3 will surely be an improvement.
So now I’m simply confused. If I didn’t already have CS2, I’d probably get Lightroom immediately. But since the combination of Lightroom and CS2 does not offer any significant advantages over CS3, I guess the real question is … “When will CS4 be available?” If soon, I’ll wait and go for CS4 directly, but since I guess that’s at least two years away, I’ll probably have to bite the bullet and upgrade to CS3 soon.
