Light Walk » Technology

Digital Negatives

wblj — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:29:54 +0000

So, you’ve bought some digital negatives from your photographer. What do you do with them? It’s essential that you take the effort to preserve them! You have some prints, you have perhaps an album or two from the day and you have the digital negatives. One idea behind the digital negative is that you can recreate an album or a print if needed in the future, say, when someone spills coffee on the album, or your kids think it might be fun to color on the pages… You might be tempted to think that the computer is a safe place to store these digital negatives, after all, it’s new and cool technology. It will take care of you! Well, read on to see some ideas to make things more secure than that.

Computers have a wonderful capability to help us organize and structure our lives, but they also have a dark downside; they fail and data disappears. If you load your files onto your computer you run an almost certain risk that at some point in the future the files will no longer be available to you. It’s almost comical the things that can go wrong in terms of long term preservation of your files:

Hard drives fail
You or someone else might accidentally delete a folder
Software gets updated
Power supplies fail
Computers are replaced and files are forgotten
Fire, floods, other disasters destroy

The list can go on. So, I’d like to offer my best recommendations for you as you attempt to hold on to those files. First and foremost, you need to make sure that there is a duplicate copy of the files somewhere away from the computer where you have them stored. Easy enough if you get the files on some kind of removable media like a DVD; just put it over at a friend’s house after you load it. But really you need a long term strategy and you need to check up on it from time to time. I recommend using one of the online backup services to keep your files safe. Check out the following list:

There are others. Some are free, some cost but give stronger protection or larger online storage options. If you think of this as a part of a larger overall data protection strategy for your whole computer you can secure all your digital life far better than just leaving it about on the one computer.

Digital negatives are a great investment, but it really pays to protect them.

Texas State Capitol

wblj — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:48:59 +0000

Last night we had a great sky, so I ventured down to the Capitol with my lovely wife and we photographed from several directions. Here is one of my early favorites. If you haven’t been, it’s a very interesting place to visit and it is a great spot for family, wedding or corporate portraiture. This image was captured as 9 consecutive photographs, all combined to create a single image.

The North Side of the Texas Captiol

Light is Everything

wblj — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:18:45 +0000

If it weren’t for light, we’d have no photographs… Aside from that, it’s important where the light comes from and where the light doesn’t come from; light directionality brings shape and interest to a photograph. One of the distinctive features of a beautiful portrait is the difference between light and shadow and where the light falls on the subject. In the case of people, it is generally more realistic and natural for light to fall on the person from a different direction than the camera. If the light comes from the camera direction it’s usually very “flat”; there is no shape to the face and we don’t see something that looks like reality. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where all light comes from when you use a simple point-and-shoot camera; the flash is right there on the camera!

When we photograph people, we shape the light so that the portrait has a natural look to it. Here are some examples:

Light is coming from a large flash on the ground to the left of Cindy. Note the shadow on the left side of her face.

The light is coming from a small flash to camera right, creating a nice glow on Adam's left side.

Light for the floor is coming from camera left, creating a nice shape on her face.

We have light coming from directly behind Halei as well as from the general direction of the camera, creating a nice hair glow and sunset burst.

We've hidden a small flash in one of the windows to cast light directly on Halei's face.

Show-off

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:49:40 +0000

Ok, so I have an iPhone and this new blog. Turns out, it is possible to create entries in the blog from the iPhone. How cool is that! It means I’ll have a better shot at keeping it updated with what I’m doing.

Yes, I wrote and published this post using the iphone…