Music for working on photos

I'd call this post semi-off topic, but it's my blog and I post what I want here anyway. :D I'm posting this because music has always been one of my greater passions (in fact, it used to be my own creative outlet before I started with photography), and with the internet there's been a remarkable shift in the availability of music - free music, to be precise.

I'm listening to music most of the time when I'm working on photos, but it has to be music that is not too obtrusive. And I admit I'm a huge fan of electronic music in general, and goa/trance in particular (and I mean the oldskool stuff with that) but a thumping 4/4 beat with swirling acidtrance riffs is not really the soundtrack and background music for working on photos. At least not for me.

To work on photos, I prefer the Ambient and Chill-Out genre*, and I'd like to list some of my favorite blogs and sites that offer high quality "mixtapes" and releases for the digital age. I prefer downloading mixes and digital albums over listening to endless internet radio streams - simply because there's a track list that allows me to go back after a couple of listens, and identify one or the other outstanding track and artist. [and I always like to give any mix a couple of chances. Sometimes a mix might not fit my mood right now but works very well for me when listening to it again later.]

And as I always use to say: if there's just one person out there that will benefit from what I write and share here, it's a good thing and my "mission" is accomplished. :) Anyway... enough babbling.

• Peter van Cooten runs AmbientBlog with reviews, mixes, and whatnot. He even has an Android app so you can stream his mixes. And his mixes are outstanding: not just one song playing after the other with some gently fading, sometimes there's three or four pieces of audio overlapping and playing together. Awesome stuff.
• The Hydrogen Cafe stopped publishing new mixes unfortunately, but the old ones are still there.
• PsyAmb is another blog that offers mixes of Psychedelic Ambient and Chill-Out (a genre that evolved from Goa and Psychedelic Trance.) - you can also get the DIFM "psychill" channel mixes from here.
• Ping Things is another weblog, and a netlabel as well with releases you can download.
• Dave Michuda offers his Low Light Mixes in a blog.
• distance recordings is a net label with a very enjoyable output.
• Passage is another net label with nice ambient electronica goodness.
• The Internet Archive has a good amount of the old Serein net label output available. One of the most outstanding pieces IMHO is the Nest album "Retold" from 2007 (I bought the FLAC download but a part of the tracks is available for free as an EP.)

I like these mixes so much because they're mostly unobtrusive background music that floats along nicely, doesn't get tiring, or drawing too much attention and thus helps me to stay focused on what I really want to do: work on photos! Maybe the most important aspect is that I really do not recognize too many of the songs in these mixes and can just enjoy them without being distracted.

*) it's highly arguable how to keep the genres apart, and as with all things that you want to put into drawers, they might fit into more than one. :) Personally, I decided that "Ambient" is the mostly beatless and/or non-percussive stuff, while Chill-Out has some drums and percussive rhythm elements.

Macro lens considerations

I've been asked by a Picasa Web friend for a little help in the decision-making when shopping for a macro lens. He was looking at the 100mm Tokina lens and asked me what I think. I looked up that lens, and it's not stabilized. (you know, that thing that prevents blurriness of the image due to camera shake; Nikon calls it VR, Canon calls it IS, Sigma calls it OS, and so on - the most amazing part is probably how each vendor came up with his own two-letter acronym:-)

There's just one question, really: do you want to take images handheld? If yes, get a stabilized lens. And as of this writing, there's not really a lot of stabilized macro lenses in the 100mm focal range available with a Nikon F-mount. Actually, there's just one if I'm not mistaken: Nikon's own 105mm AF-S Micro Nikkor (IF-ED G VR something blabla.)

EDIT: I just remembered that Nikon does have another stabilized macro lens: the AF-S DX Micro Nikkor with 85mm focal length. So if you're on a budget (see the paragraph below the 2nd picture please) and/or using DX sensor cameras only, anyway, you should definitely consider this alternative. The test site photozone.de has an English test of the lens on a DX camera.

Why is stabilization so important in a macro lens? Because you get so damn close to your subject. If you get very close to your subject, you have a very short so-called "distance to (the) focus (plane)". The smaller the distance to focus is, the smaller is the depth of field. For a macro that's not just some abstract with a hair thin focal plane that is actually sharp (photos like that can be highly attractive of course!), you need more depth of field. And for more depth of field, you need to stop down the lens. But if you stop down the lens, you lose light. And less light means longer exposure times.

How long can an exposure time be so that you can make the photo hand held? The rule of thumb for a safe handheld exposure is 1/(focal length * crop factor). For a 100mm macro lens on an APS-C sensor camera, that means 1/150s (the real-world exposure time that is available on cameras is 1/160s second then). On a full frame camera, it means 1/100s. Now let's have a look at a photo.


"Yellow Day-Lily" // Nikon D700 @ ISO200, AF-S VR Micro Nikkor 105mm @ f/16, 1/60s handheld

That was morning light, the bright sun was illuminating this Lily directly from behind, and I was looking into the Lily with my 105mm macro lens. The lens was stopped down to f/16. Have a look at the limited depth of field! At the base ISO of my camera, it would have required a good amount of luck, or a very steady hand to get this photo sharp at 1/60s handheld. And I don't know about you, but I for one have quite a hard time holding the camera steady when I'm kneeling on the lawn in front of a flower in some odd angle while focusing manually (because auto focus will drive you insane sooner or later, I promise.)

To be fair and cover the crop factor: the same depth of field would have been achieved on an APS-C camera with f/11, which is exactly the 1-stop advantage you need to get to 1/100s - but on the crop sensor, you need at least 1/150s to be safe. It just doesn't get any better. :)

Organizing Photos (Steps 1, 2 and 3)

After my occasional philosophic musings and rants about photography as an art form, back to something more down to earth. :)

Most recently a friend of mine let out a "semi-public sigh" :) why it is so frustrating to organize and edit photos. Of course it all depends a lot on personal preferences, and in this post I just want to share how I do certain things in my workflow. It's just a description, I'm not trying to sell my way of dealing with it as the ultimate truth. There are other ways to organize photos that work just as well, I'm pretty sure about that. But maybe there's something in here for someone out there that's useful. :) And I'm only looking at how I do things here with Lightroom and leave out Picasa entirely*.

A story of boots and slippers

The last hike before I left Germany brought me to the beautifully located Gotzenalm high above the Königssee in Bavaria's Nationalpark Berchtesgaden. If there's one thing I miss from Germany (not talking about people, of course), it's this region without doubt. These old mountains with their peaks and the lakes, rivers and creeks in and around it. The following story is how I was there "just in time" to make this photo:


Capricorn (NIKON D700, 1/250s @ ISO 2000; f/7.1, 300 mm (in 35mm)
(Buy the print)

Driving to the Nationalpark Berchtesgaden from Burghausen takes about 1.5 hours - and when I drive I'm usually just wearing some sandals or running shoes, but not my hiking boots. Unfortunately, I had my hiking boots in my apartment (because they needed some cleaning and care) and not in the trunk of my car like usual... and so, I forgot them at home. :P

(to my own embarrassment I have to admit: yes this has happened to me before, and one of the results is this photo which was later featured on the Explore page of Picasa Web Albums.)

The entrance to the Königssee is a very touristic place with all kinds of shops, and for the first time I was thankful for that. :) I went to the nearest outdoor equipment shop and bought new hiking boots (the old ones were overdue for a replacement anyway), and 15 minutes later than planned, Toni and me mounted the cable car that would comfortably bring us upwards to our starting point, the "Mittelstation" of the Jennerbahn.

It was around noon, the hike to Gotzenalm is something like a relaxed 3.5 hours, so I would have all the time in the world to make some photos, enjoy the splendid views from the "Feuerpalven" vista point, later make some photos in evening light, and so on. Now, when you stay over night in these alpine refuges, there's some rules you have to abide, like bringing your own sleeping bag, or not wearing boots in the dormitories. The latter requires that you bring some slippers - and as I sat there in the small cabin of the cable car I realized that I also forgot my slippers. Great!

The owner of the Gotzenalm didn't have any slippers to lend, but he had some very cheap "things" made from fabric, with a thin rubber sole. Which is good enough if you stay indoors anyway. I took off my hiking boots to check out the room I had reserved for Toni and me (hiking with a dog is a bit of a problem, you always have to make reservations) and then went outside again with just the camera to stroll around the area without the load of the backpack. I left the slippers in the special shoe room (where the hiking boots can be stored warm to dry overnight).

When I returned for dinner, the slippers were gone. Apparently, my shoe karma was not very positive that day, and I should have been more alert by then already...

I asked the folks sitting in the dining room if someone might have accidentally taken them. After some 5 minutes of rather perplexed disbelief a fellow hiker entered the dining room - wearing my slippers. It turned out that he thought those were the refuge's slippers for anyone to take and use. I told him to buy his own, changed from my hiking boots to the slippers (leaving the hiking boots in the shoe room) and ordered dinner.

I shared the table with a friendly couple and we had some beer and liquor together. Around 9pm I left the dining room, went to my room to get my camera and the tiny featherweight tripod I carry with me on these hikes. I wanted to make some night/long-time exposures, particularly star trails. I should have paid more attention to the shoe karma thing though, because when I went to the shoe room to put on my hiking boots, they were gone.

The hiking boots were gone! I had put them in a spot where no other boots were - and someone took them from there. Unbelievable. I was slightly pissed off now, because the best I could do photography wise was to sneak around the house in slippers with a veeery thin rubber sole! (the Feuerpalven vista point is a 10 minute walk uphill from the Gotzenalm refuge.)

This is the point where you're beginning to smell conspiracy. Most of the guests had witnessed the story with the slippers and the other guy, and of course I had told them the thing with the new hiking boots and the shoe karma of that day. Was this a collaborative prank? I went to bed, angry and anxious, hoping that the darn boots would reappear by morning, because I intended to make some sunrise photos.

When I woke up, the boots were not there. The sun rose without me making photos. I walked Toni around the house in these darn slippers. In the distance I saw and heard the Black Grouse making their funny and cute sounds. Too far away to make photos - at least when you're wearing slippers!

I had breakfast and was really really angry that the boots were still not there when I was finished. I urged the owner of the hut to scour all rooms with me until we would find my boots. We didn't. When we returned from the tour of all the rooms and dormitories, we passed through the shoe room and... was I hallucinating?! My hiking boots! There they were!

I grabbed them. They were wet on the outside and warm on the inside. Some other guest had mistakenly put them on at night in the dark when he went to the side building (which has further rooms and dormitories). So that guy prevented me from making startrail photos, sunrise photos, and photos of the rare birds with his careless mistake. Thanks a million.

I started one hour later than expected towards the Landtal trench. And arrived just in time to meet the young Ibex in the photo above. And he slowly passed me by, allowed me to switch to the telephoto lens, and positioned himself proudly on that rock, posing for me.

Nothing but a photograph

Each time that a photo made it through the approval process at SeenBy, I'll show the original, unaltered (as far as possible) version of it here in my blog. I consider this a part of my pro post-processing advocacy (which might turn into a Don Qixote like fight against the illusion of "landscape photography per se" wind mills.)

There's an article "On Porn" at The Online Photographer - it sums up some thoughts of TOP readers after Geoff Wittig wrote a book review on David Noton's "Full Format" landscape photography book. Some readers expressed the view that David Noton's photography is "landscape porn".

What is meant with that is of course how landscape photographers (in general) serve exactly the kind of successful "highly saturated" and/or "low and wide (bringing down a bright sky with a graduated ND filter)" and/or "longtime exposure including clouds and/or water" and/or "vivid closeup of some leaves/plant/rocks" type of photo that usually are successful (that list clearly shows that there's something formulaic in there.)

Such photographers and photography is nowadays bred in Flickr groups like "Luminous Landscapes" (and just to make it clear: I like the stuff there, contribute to it myself, and IMHO, they're doing a great balanced job on the moderation of their group pool). What used to be the domain of medium format landscape photographers is nowadays claimed by a lot of hobbyists thanks to the digital evolution of photography.

I don't know if it actually requires "talent" to make that type of photography, but it certainly requires skill to practice the craft of photography that leads to these results. Because after all, photography is a craft. (Playing the piano is a craft too, in a way. You have to know where these damn notes are, and how to skillfully reach them with your fingers just when you need them.)


"Layers and Light (Warm Gradient version)" • Nikon D700, 1/200s @ ISO200, 70-300mm lens @ 125mm, f/11

And it's quite amusing to see the hypocrites that are against post processing and digital image manipulation being attracted to that type of "natural" landscape photography. It seems that there is an invisible fine line which you should not cross so that people are actually "buying" what they see. A limit of allowed betrayal, where people still consider a landscape photo being of a "documentary" character.

While the real documentary photo is often just boring as hell. If you ever used a compact camera in plain old daylight while hiking and made some snapshots, you know what I mean. :P So here's the "real" the documentary shot of the above photo:

Scattered City - Perspective Correction

Lightroom 3 saw the introduction of Lens and Perspective Correction. Finally! (in the past, I've been relying on the wonderful and inexpensive PTLens for that task; it can also be used as an external editor for Lightroom in case you're still on version 2 of LR) This is a useful feature even for landscape and nature photographers - lets say if you want to correct the perspective of some trees, or straighten a bent horizon line from a "low and wide" shot at the beach.

But it's real power surfaces when you tune architecture photos with it. Below is an example (as usual, a jump break with the link to the article on the blog so that the mouseover script can do it's magic - sorry, Buzz and RSS readers.)

Yes we do

I almost forgot: yes we do decorate our home with prints of our own photos. For Christmas, we treated ourselves with a big (as you can see) framed print of this photo . :)



These Imagekind prints do look pretty good. It's a pity that glass is not an option at the size we bought this (it would most likely break during transport), but the actual print is still behind an UV protection acrylic board. I also like the appearance of the frame. It's called "Distressed Maple" if I remember correctly.

I love Feeds!

I just browsed through about 100 new photos from interesting people and groups on Flickr. That took me about 5 minutes. Yes, it certainly says something about the average quality of uploads, but that's not my point. :)

Participating on sites like Flickr, Picasa Web Albums etc. means interacting with others. I call it "social photography" - it's more than sharing photos with the public. One of the challenges of the social web in general is to keep up with what's happening (a/k/a making you waste way more time on them sites than you originally intended to), and it's especially challenging for the social photo web - because it involves the loading times of photos, the performance of the site, the presentation... social photo activity is not just some text and status updates in your browser.

Now... I limit this article on Flickr and Picasa Web Albums because those are the two services that I use the most. But be honest: neither of the two makes it really easy to follow the activities of interesting people. You get these email notification summaries of new uploads ("xyz has added at least 5 new items..."), you can start browsing the photos of your contacts through a page or section dedicated to their activity... but it's just not very efficient. And efficient is what I want.

Enter Feeds! Wait... what's that? There's a website that answers this question, of course: What Is RSS? And there's a Wikipedia article about it too, of course.

Addition: fellow German Blogger NoodleGei pointed me to the (German version) of a nice video that explains what Feeds do and how to use them. Here's the English version, from Common Crafts: RSS in plain English.

I'll try to explain it with the social photography web in mind:

You get a notification every time when someone adds a new photo to their albums (more about that, especially with Picasa Web Albums, below.) The notification contains a thumbnail of the photo, and a link to the larger image. It's similar to the automated activity messages from Flickr or Picasa Web Albums, but it's not a summary - you get one notification for each new item. Sounds like overload? On the contrary! Because each photo is in a separate notification, you can browse through them really really fast. Like I said above - 100 photos in 5 minutes (I even made comments on some, added some to my favorites, and so on...)

Sounds good? Want to know more? Then read on...

Labyrinth

The title of this post comes from the photo (available as a mouseover after/before comparison after the jump break), but it's a very fitting description of how I felt when I made the collection of my Top 10 photos of 2010 - trapped in a labyrinth of photos, too large a number to choose from, and in a constant quarrel with myself about which to pick, and why, and which to leave away, and why.

I've written here before that you should be your own worst critic when selecting the "keepers" in your collection and picking photos to publish.

But the one thing that I'm only now beginning to realize is how much impact the selection of only TEN photos from a whole year of photos (Lightroom says 6659 photos are in the 2010 folder structure) had on how I look at my own photos. It sounded like an impossible task at first and I spent a lot of time on it. And I can tell you now that it was absolutely worth every second. If you have not done something like that, I strongly advise you to try it.

I thought I make a tight selection when I publish to Flickr and PicasaWeb already - but looking at the photos that are there now, I think it wasn't tight enough. Of course I do have the problem that I sometimes wish to "just document" my hikes and/or travels, while at the same time trying to show more art-oriented renderings of the photos I made.

And I have the feeling that I fail on that quite often - the combination of both just does not work. That's why my Flickr photostream seems to get the better photos - simply because it's fewer photos, and they're free from the context in which they were taken.

The other thing that really helped me throughout the year to critically evaluate my photos was submitting them to SeenBy. It's simply very very different if you publish whatever you choose in your own online photoalbum, or if you have a jury decide if it should go public (the photo below was accepted by the jury, that's why I picked it for this context.)

Looking back: Blog Stats

Since May 2010, Blogger.com has statistics - and I just had a look at the statistics for this blog. In the tradition of year's-end/new-years posts, here's an insight. All of the following numbers are for the time span of May 2010 through January 2011:

• 39,697 total page views - wow! That's amazing! I would've never thought that (yes, I'm completely clueless. I mean... after all, it's just a hobby blog.)
• July 2010 was the "busiest" month with almost 8,000 page views alone (the rest was a mostly steady 5000-6000 page views per month.)
• The most popular post still is the one about Picasa and raw data :) with almost 1,000 views alone. I'm just sorry for all the people who are using Picasa and are confronted with the truth that Picasa is simply not a raw converter... or at least not one that I would recommend to anyone. :P
• The most direct clicks (almost 400) come from the Picasa FAQ page that the Top Contributors in the Picasa forums (I happen to be one of them:) have compiled.
• The #1 referrer site is - what a surprise - google.com and it's local flavors like .de and so on. Proof that search engines are the most important way to find content on the Internet.
• The most traffic comes from 1. the United States (almost 10,000 views), 2. Germany (almost 6,000 views), 3. United Kingdom (a little over 2,000 views) - dear English readers, if I make a spelling mistake or something is grammatically incorrect or I use a wrong word, please drop me a note or a comment please. :)
• Most people still use Internet Explorer (51%), Firefox is second (25%), Chrome is third (12%).
• Operating systems: Windows 86%, Mac 9%, "Other Unix" 2%.
• Of the static pages that I use, the one that links to the various sites were I offer prints of my photographs gets the fewest visits by far: only 150 (compared to almost 2,700 to the Home/Tenset page) - not a big surprise though considering the more "techie" nature of the site/blog, but I think that the generalization that people are not THAT interesting in photographic prints anymore is not all that wrong, nevertheless.

Thanks to all the visitors, readers, subscribers, I hope you found something interesting here. :)

PS: talking about prints, all the photos from the Top 10 set of 2010 are available as prints on Imagekind now, I added direct links to them in the original post.

My top 10 photos from 2010

This article/album has moved to my main website.

Not technically correct

Shuwen said I shouldn't tell. But this photo really was, exposure-wise, an accident. I'm using the camera in fully manual mode most of the time when I'm using a zoom lens and Auto-ISO, and for this shot, I simply forgot to set the correct exposure time.

However, the soft and bright light had something very appealing when I looked at the photo, and a conversion to black & white (which I consider as an old and dirty trick to counter the effects of overexposure if they're ugly enough but the photo otherwise is worth keeping) brought out that quality quite nicely. Please also notice how converting to black & white made that big fat ugly lens flare on the left (yes, the Tamron 24-135 is very prone to flare!) almost disappear. :)