Shifting To The West Coast

If you have been to my website lately, you will notice that Brunswick, Maine has been replaced with San Diego, California.  That’s because as of this coming Thursday I will no longer be calling Maine my home.  I’ll be well on my way back to San Diego. 

Maine has been a great opportunity to learn and grown with respect to my photography, but once you are exposed to 75 degree weather year-round, it’s hard to really adjust to anything different.  I will be back in San Diego in late September and I hope to grab some amazing images at some really awesome places along the way.  I’d love to tell you where those places are, but I know you’ll understand that you will have to wait until after I’ve been there.

I hope you guys have a great summer and I will be bringing you updates from different parts of the globe as I am able to.  I will do my very best to update the blog at least once a week if not more.  It just all depends on the schedule and how it plays out.  I’ll have my camera with me every step of the way and I know there will be plenty of photo ops, which is a recipe for great images. 

See you on the other side! 

Stephen

Need Something Fun to Shoot? Shoot Children!

If you are ever in need of a really fun subject to shoot, you can always get kids to pose for a frame or two.  Not to mention that they are usually very playful with the camera and love to have their picture taken.  It’s one of the reasons that I practice a lot on my own kids… they really get a kick out of being photographed!

Here’s a few shots that I took for some friends back in April when I was out in San Diego.  Little Miss Caitlyn was a lot of fun to work with and he was such a ham!  What do you think?

Preparing to Depart Maine

I wanted to write today to let you know that my time in Maine is up and it’s nearly time to get underway and start our trip to San Diego.  I have really enjoyed my time living in Maine and got the chance to take some wonderful shots.  Maine truly is a very beautiful State and the weather isn’t that bad (four months out of the year)! 

I will be sailing away with my new ship shortly and I’m looking forward to getting back out to sea and doing some more shooting in the ports we stop and visit.  I promise, there will be more good things to come! 

With all that said, I won’t be able to update the blog as much as I would like to so I hope you will stay with me and hold out for the updates (when they finally do come).  I’ve slowly been bring my personal effects on board the ship and stowing them securely.  As a matter of fact, I recently picked up a Microsoft Zune to provide me with some underway entertainment.  It’s got a 3.2″ screen and plays mp3 files as well as video so I can watch TV shows, podcasts, and movies.  I’ll probably review that here later, after I have a little more time to play with it. 

I hope you all have a kick-ass week and I look forward to keeping you abreast of what the Navy is doing with it’s newest Destroyer and I’ll be sure to have plenty of great images (along with all the tech data about how I set up for them too) for you to enjoy.  See you tomorrow! 

My "Big Project"

I know you have heard me mention before about this “Big Project” I’ve been working on.  Well, it’s true.  I have been quite busy working on the Commissioning Book for my Command.  Now, I haven’t been specifically working on the book portion but the photography instead.  You know all those portraits I wrote about?  Yeah, that’s them.  I think I shot around 300 or so.  This all in addition to my normal duties as a professional Sailor!

The Commissioning Book is sort of like a ship’s Cruise Book and documents all the people, places, and events of a deployment and in our case, the commissioning process that a new ship goes through.  I have really put a lot into this book and the photography that went into it as well.  Not only did I take the portraits, I also took most of the candids and most of the event photos.  I know it sounds nuts, but that’s kind of what happens when you’re the ship’s photographer. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining at all.  The experience that I have gotten out of this project is worth more than it’s weight in gold.  Sure, I didn’t paid for it but it will pay off later on when I retire from the Navy.  Then I can collect on the experience gained.  Once the book is out, I will post some images of some of the pages and work that went into it.  I worked a little in Adobe InDesign which was very cool, as I had never used that program before.  It took a little getting used to, but since I’ve worked with Adobe products for quite some time now it was pretty easy to pick up. 

I edited the last few portraits today and got them to the book coordinators to include in the book.  I will probably have a few more to take of late arrivals, but I consider my part of the project done.  No more late nights on duty spent in Photoshop and Lightroom into the wee hours of the morning!  (At least for this project anyway.)

I hope you have a great weekend and don’t forget to get out and get some pictures taken!  I will be doing the same.  I may head down to the Portland Headlight in Cape Elizabeth, ME to shoot some family photos before we sail away.  More on that to come!  See you next week! 

Killer Deal on Drobos!

Hey, I had to post this and I want to give a huge “Thank you” to Tom at Data Robotics for posting a comment on my post from Monday.  He listed a URL that takes you to a page on Data Robotics’ website that lists some great deals on Drobos loaded with Western Digital hard drives.  Right now you can pick up a Drobo loaded with 2 – 1TB Western Digital drives for $749.00 after a $50.00 mail-in rebate!  That rocks!  Thanks again Tom for that great information.  You can check it out for yourself by clicking here.  At this price, it’s hard not to justify the purchase!

Photography Permits: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

Among all the hot topics in the photography business, permits has got to be close to the top of the list.  It’s hard to find information about them and there is no guarantee that you will be granted one for your shoot.  But you don’t want to have your shoot interrupted by a police officer or a security guard much less have your camera confiscated, right?  Yeah, neither do I. 

Scott Kelby wrote an awesome article on his blog about permits and disclosed everything he knows about them and even cited some personal experiences.  It’s highly worth the read!  You can check it out here. 

That’s it for today.  We’re halfway through the week and it’s almost time for the weekend!  Charge your batteries, get your models ready, and plan to shoot like heck this weekend!

Tuesday Photo News

We made it through Monday and so here is some of what is happening in the world of photography this week!

• One of the photogs that I follow, Ken Rockwell, recently had a new baby girl.  She was born on May 28th, 2008 (my birthday)!  He’s already got a few pictures up of her, so go check it out!
• Scott Kelby posted a short video of what it’s like to be at Photoshop World!  I highly encourage you to watch the clip, but I’m warning you now… it will REALLY make you want to go to Photoshop World!  (As if you didn’t want to go already, right?)  Here’s the link!
• Check out the review that Steve Anchell wrote in Shutterbug of the Nikon D3.  I have been waiting to read this for quite some time and here it is!
• Jessica Claire, named one of the top ten wedding photographers in the world by American Photo Magazine has recently started consulting other photographers.  Here prices are steep, but if you want to learn from one of the best in the biz, that’s the price you pay!  Click here to find out more.

That’s it for today’s edition of Tuesday Photo News, stop back by tomorrow for more gouge from the digital photography world!  I’ll try and write something interesting!  Have a great day!

Simple Data Redundancy For Your Photos

I’ve been harping a lot lately about backing up your data and your photos.  If you’re like me and work mostly on a laptop, you can’t afford not to back up your computer.  This is because we typically use our laptops to connect to the web, read e-mail, download, etc.  This makes us vulnerable to hackers, viruses, and more.  Having one copy of your backup is good, but two copies ensures that your data is very safe.

Most of us can’t afford to drop $1,000.00 on a nice system like the Drobo, which uses multiple hard drives and constantly monitors the health and status of each drive and moves your data to the other drives in case of a drive failure.  That said, you can pick up a 500GB external hard drive for about $120.00 these days.  Buy two of those and you are more than on track for data redundancy.  But that still leaves one problem: redundancy means having an exact copy of the data on both drives. 

You could manually copy the data over using copy and paste, but what a daunting task and a waste of time!  Mac’s use a little app called Automator which will allow you to set up just that.  For those of us using Windows XP and Vista, it’s a little more involved but still very simple.  All you have to do is create a simple batch file to do the work and you can schedule it to run automatically or you can simply double-click the file and run it yourself.  I know what your thinking… “There’s no way I can do this!”  Actually, yes you can!

Windows uses a Command Line interface to run a little program called Robocopy.  What Robocopy does is automatically copy and move data as the user specifies from a source to a destination.  Here is a sample of the code I use to move my data once it is backed up:

robocopy “f:\Backups” “g:\Backups” /E /MIR

The way that string breaks down is like this: [command] [destination folder/directory] [arguments].  The argument /E tells Robocopy to copy all subdirectories, including empty ones.  The /MIR argument tells Robocopy to make the destination exactly the same as the source and only moves new or newly modified files from the source to the destination.  This means that my computer isn’t moving ALL of my data every time I run it.  It only moves new data or data that has been modified and is newer than the data that’s already in the destination folder.  Pretty cool eh?

Now, to create batch file all you need to do is open NotePad and use a string similar to the one above and when you save you click File > Save As > [type whatever filename you want] > Change file type to “All Files” > add a .bat extension to the end of your filename > click Save and you’re done!  Now you can double-click it to run it or you can use the Task Scheduler in Windows to have it run automatically.  I use the backup program Acronis True Image 11 Home which allows me to run the batch file once my backup is done.  So once my backup is complete, it automatically mirrors my data on both of my external hard drives.  Easy enough!

If you use a setup similar to this, you are well on your way to maintaining the integrity of your data and will be able to sleep at night knowing your photos are safe and sound. 

"Digital Negatives" in Lightroom

After my post yesterday, I had a few people e-mail and ask about how to create those “digital negatives” with Lightroom.  So today I’m going to explain how to set up Lightroom to do just that.

When you are in the Library module in Lightroom, click on the Import button at the lower-left side of the screen.  Lightroom will then prompt you to choose the location from which you are going to import your images.  After you select it, you will see the Import dialog box.

Ensure that you check the box next to “Backup to:” and choose a folder on your external hard drive as the location where you want to send those digital negatives.  (I circled it in red above.)  Then simply continue with the import as you normally would and Lightroom takes care of the rest!  Pretty simple eh?  (Okay, I’ve really been in Maine for far too long.)

Have fun storing your brand new digital negatives and as always you can leave a comment or shoot an e-mail my way if you have questions.  Have a great day!

Backups: Why They’re So Important

The Digital Age has brought us technology that we would have never imagined 20 years ago.  Today you can put your entire record collection and then some on a device the size of stick of gum.  The conveniences provided by that same technology also come with a certain price.

Digital photographers can get lost in the bliss of being able to click the shutter release on their camera until their heart’s content.  Being able to store thousands of digital images in a hard drive that takes up little more space than a deck of cards is what we dream of.  However those dreams can be crushed in a matter of minutes due to a failure of that hard drive.  That being said, I’m going to preach (yes I said preach) to you about the importance of backing up your computers and photos.  Hear me out here, you may thank me one day! 

Maintaining the integrity of our images is more important now than ever since most people have made the move from film to digital.  The nice thing about digital is that as long as you take care of your gear, it’s likely to last a really, really long time and they will be in the same condition as they were the day you captured them with your camera.  To ensure our images are safe it is imperative that we do daily back ups.  Even if you only take pictures for personal use, it can be devastating to lose all the images of your friends, family, vacations, etc.   Not to mention those who make their living with their images.

OK, you have me scared into submission… but now what? 

In order to give you some insight on how to properly back up your images, I’ll explain what I do and hopefully you will get an idea of what you need to do.  I currently work from a laptop with a 250GB hard drive which is pretty good sized, but can still fill up quickly.  Besides, I don’t want my entire image collection stored on my laptop.  It could get dropped or stolen and all of those images would be gone forever.  Therefore I use a couple of external hard drives.  I only store images that I’m working on currently on my laptop, which helps minimize my risk.  After I fill up a memory card, I insert it into my card reader in my laptop and import them using Lightroom.  As I’m importing them into my library in Lightroom, they are simultaneously being backed up to my external drive.  I think of them as my digital negatives.  After I’m done working with the images in Lightroom I export my finished images as high res JPEGs to my external drive.  I then delete the working images off of my hard drive on my laptop so that I have room for more working images.  The second external drive I use mirrors the first one so that I have two copies of everything.  This way if one drive goes bad, I have the other one with all of my images on it.  Hard drives are pretty reliable, but they can still fail and data recovery can be very expensive.  We’re talking a couple thousand dollars here.  (Yikes!)  I also perform daily backups of my laptop using Acronis True Image 11.  It’s well worth the $50 bucks!  (Here’s the link)  This takes care of all my other files that I use on my laptop and ensures that I will always have them in the event of a hardware failure.

Like your parents who used to tell you to eat your vegetables and drink your milk, I’m going to tell you to back up your images on a daily basis or else!  Believe me, it will save you a lot of stress when the day finally rolls around (and it will) that you have a hard drive failure.  That’s it for today.  Now go perform a backup!!!