Ted Dillard

The Cruse Scanner

2010-04-26T09:21:00.002-04:00

Fall 2010 Workshop on the Windjammer Angelique- Sept 13-18

2010-04-01T07:20:00.000-04:00

Join us for the 2010 Digital Photography Cruise aboard theWindjammer Angelique, in Camden Maine!

This year we're coordinating with the annual rendezvous cruise with the fleet with a 6-day digital photography workshop. Not only will we have an intensive, complete digital photography week, but we'll have the rest of the fleet along for some once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities!

What to Expect

This will be a unique opportunity to hone your digital photography skills, whether you're an enthusiastic beginner or a seasoned professional. Look for a program tailored to your individual needs, starting with solid camera skills- including settings, basic photography principles, and digital imaging essentials- through workflow options- including covering Photoshop, Lightroom, PhaseOne C1Pro and other systems- to output.

Each morning we'll start the day with a shooting workshop- introducing and covering skills and techniques you'll reinforce throughout the day on board, or ashore, as the case may be. Evenings will be time to review and critique, and work on processing, workflow and output skills. Our week will come to a close with a show of our work for the rest of the fleet to view as they visit aboard.

We will have available, courtesy of our sponsor, Head-2-Head Reviews, some of the latest camera gear on the market for your hands-on use and evaluation. We will have printers available power for your own laptops and battery charging.

Some of the subjects we will cover:

Camera setup, file management, and "Digital Hygiene"

Understanding and using Color Management

Working with Layers and Masks in Photoshop

Understanding your printer

Understanding RAW files, Smart Object RAW workflow, and Smart Filters

Rediscovering Black and White photography though the RAW file

Harnessing the process and learning to visualize

We'll also be working with some unique processes and techniques:

HDR photography

Creating digital panoramas

Digital pinhole and toy camera lens photography

Stop-action and time-lapse digital techniques

What You Need
Camera- To take fullest advantage of our workshops, you need to have a camera that has RAW file shooting capability- preferably a low-to-medium-priced DSLR.

Computer- If at all possible, bring your laptop. We will be very limited in what we can bring for student workstations, and a big part of this week will be discussing processes like working with Layers and Masks, Smart Object workflow, Color Management, software options. Having your own computer on-board will turbocharge your learning experience. Windows and Apple are both welcome!

My Pipeline books will be on-sale aboard the boat, but it never hurts to do a little summer reading in advance. Check this link for more information, and to pick up any title from my friends at Digital Silver Imaging. ...also available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

For any questions, please don't hesitate to email me here. For reservation and pricing information, contact the Angelique through their reservations page here.

...and just who the heck am I, you ask? Here's a little background:

Ted's career in Photography spans over three decades, from his first work in his grandfathers darkroom, through his early work for the local newspaper, college yearbook and through 25 years of commercial and advertising work for a national client base.

He has exhibited nationally, and has taught at the Maine Photo Workshops, New England School of Photography, The Art Institute of Boston and Northeastern University.

Ted is currently the Pro Digital Editor at Head2Head Reviews, a new, and unique digital photography website.

For a complete profile, see my LinkedIn Proflie, here.

Reserve your space now, and we'll see you there in September!

Microstock Idiocy- (You Get What You Pay For Dept.)

2010-04-01T07:15:00.002-04:00

A great bit of web detective work by Chris Barton, Fair Trade Photographer. Check out his post here, with eleventy million examples of a cheesy microstock image all over the webernet.

site- Monty Rakusen

2010-03-24T07:01:00.004-04:00

A while ago I made some posts about the impact of video in the hands of a photographer via the new DSLRs (on Head-2-Head Reviews).

Well, here's the work of Monty Rakusen, doing just that- adapting his still-photography vision to video.

Great work, Monty!

Lightoom/Aperture market share

2010-03-19T10:07:00.006-04:00

According to Infotrends, via John Nack's blog, Lightroom is now FOUR TIMES more popular among Apple users than Aperture.

This story was dated September '09, and it's really coming as no surprise. What Apple had, in terms of a following, pretty much disappeared through their own, repeated mishandling of the product... starting at the very beginning with an astoundingly crappy RAW processor and an interfaced that looked like Final Cut Pro, not anything from Adobe. When Apple decided that photographers should learn to be film editors I'll never really know...

That, and just the fact that Lightroom is a really great product. If you look at the book lists and workshops that fill up alone, it was pretty much expected news...

Oh, by the way... You seeing this Mike?

ANSWER your EMAIL DAMMIT!

2010-03-10T06:53:00.010-05:00

Right now I have about a dozen irons in the fire. Some of them are little capers, some of them are Grand Schemes. ALL of them depend on other people. You really can't get anything done on your own... even the most modest plot to take over the world needs some cooperation and communication from your minions, at the very least.

That said, it just amazes me how many people simply ignore emails. Maybe they don't. Maybe they just file them in a "emails to answer" place or something, but the end result is I don't get an answer, I don't get an acknowledgment, I don't really even know if you got the email or not. (Just last week I found that a couple of emails I sent ended up in a new spam filter...) I feel like I'm being ignored, and I don't like that. On top of that, it's now sitting in the back of my mind as unfinished business, and it's one more thing I have to keep on my plate.

I get that everybody's busy. I'm busy. And I get a whole lot of emails. However, not acknowledging an email that is dealing with important questions, even if they're not particularly important to the recipient, is just plain rude. More than that, though, it's costing me money and time.

There are some pretty significant changes in progress about how we communicate, in case you've been living in a cave (and it doesn't have FIOS). My teenage son is away at school, and there is simply no contacting him by phone. He won't pick up. He won't listen to your lengthy message, and he won't call back. He will, however, respond to a text message. Before you jump to the conclusion that it's just a teenager thing, let me tell you- some older professionals I work with who shall remain unnamed are just the same.

I appreciate that between email, IM, texting, mobile phones, land lines and even snail mail, we're all trying to figure out what works best for whatever purpose... but we also have to keep aware of simple manners. I sent you an email. I expect at least an acknowledgment.

This reminds me of a "Miss Manners" type comment when I was a kid. If someone takes the time to send you an invitation to a party, or give you a gift, you should acknowledge that effort with a thank-you note. Old fashioned manners? Yeah, pretty much, but using email it's not a lot of effort.

Inbox piling up, you say? Impossible to respond to everything, perhaps? Just remember one of the fast emerging rules of managing workloads- the stuff you can take care of first, fast and easy, take care of it. Most often you can just respond to an email with a "Thanks!", or a "Let me get back to you on that... I need to check some things out". How hard is that?

I just had a friend track down some nice fine-art inkjet paper. She, after spending some time looking up the link, sent me an email with the information. I responded with a simple "Thanks!". It took 15 seconds for me to acknowledge my appreciation for what may have been a fair amount of effort for her.

Here are some phrases you may want to think about using.

"Thanks!" has been covered.

"Sorry, I don't have any information yet, I'll let you know when I do.", or,

"Sorry, I don't have any information yet, can you shoot me a note in a month or so?"

"Thanks for your note, but I'm really not interested in ... at this point."

"Thanks for the email, you really should contact ... about this."

You get the idea.

All these tools of communication remind me of a friend's comment when cell phones were becoming a required accessory for anyone in business. "Great," she said. "Just one more way for my clients to not be able to get in touch with me." The point of all this communication is to make communication better, not to make it more frustrating.

One of the most interesting notions is to establish some guidelines on how you prefer people to contact you. Revolutionary, isn't it? Communication about communication? I was working for a small company that used IM for inter-office communications, but the big problem was that everybody had different rules. Many of us used it for the necessary chatter to do our jobs... do we have this, can we get that thing for this client, like that. Many used it for just critical questions- does so-and-so have a credit line of whatever for the purchase we're discussing (right now on the phone)? Some used it for office banter. Some used it for tech support- while you have a trouble call on the phone, IM a tech who may have the answers...

The point is, someone who uses it for mission-critical stuff is going to get annoyed if he's getting hit with office banter or tech questions... and the place I was at, rather than just say, hey, don't use this with me for that, people just got pissed off at each other. Besides that- some things are better discussed on the phone than using the keyboard.

It's easy to dismiss a call, an email, a message as not important. Think of it this way, though. It's important to the person sending it, and it's polite to respond in kind.

Besides. We all can get a lot more done if we communicate.

Secrets of Data Recovery...

2010-03-04T08:16:00.005-05:00

I'd say, on the forums and group discussions there's about a post a month asking what do do if a memory card comes up unreadable, is formatted, or the files are corrupted. Around 2000, I started doing data recovery specifically for camera media- PixelRescue.com, (...ain't the Wayback Machine great?)

There's really only one secret, and that's PhotoRescue.

PhotoRescue comes in a few flavors, a standard version and a "pro" version, but either way it does a great job, far better than anything. ANYthing I've ever used, and frankly I've used it all. I really don't understand why or how, but the software looks for, and rebuilds image files specifically, and it does a remarkable job.

As far as your chances go... If you've simply formatted a card and have not shot more images to it, it's a slam dunk. PhotoRescue will find and rebuild those files with no problem at all. If, however, you've shot to the card, then you're only going to get the files that you haven't written over- every time you take a new shot, you write over the old ones.

I've found that CF cards, if they're corrupted, recover pretty well, where the really tiny cards don't. It may be that they're simply more delicate, but if I hear of an SD card that is giving an error message, my first guess, and it's been proven out 100% accurate so far, is that the card is toast, and nothing will recover it.

I'm so impressed by PhotoRescue I've decided to become an affiliate. If you appreciate the information here, do me a big favor and buy the software through this link.

Now, another question I get a lot is on hard drive data recovery... that takes a little more horsepower, and it helps out a lot if you have a dedicated machine to chunk away for the hours it's going to take to rebuild the drive. I do that too, and it's what's called a "software recovery". Here are my rates for that, email me with any questions.

Basic rates are based on what I actually recover- no success, no charge.

1GB and below- $100
over 1GB and to 2GB- $200
over 2GB and to 4GB- $300
over 4GB by quote

If the drive has a hardware problem, that is, if the heads have crashed, the platters are damaged or something worse, you need to send it to DriveSavers. Period. This is going to cost you, the estimates are typically over $1500, but if you need a forensics-level recovery (that is, a clean-room teardown and rebuild), and the data is worth that kind of money, I wouldn't suggest dealing with anyone else. They're the best, they've been around the longest. If you do go this route, use this reference code: PixelRescue DS13970. It will save you around 10%.

By the way... data recovery is one of the most rewarding jobs I've ever done. Whether it's coming from a pro photographer trying to save an assignment that can't be re-shot, or someone coming back from a once-in-a-lifetime trip who formatted a card by mistake, it just plain makes people happy. Check out some of my mail:

I can't even begin to tell you how happy you just made me!!! My dogs are going nuts because I am sooo excited, and jumping up and down!! My husband and I would like to thank you soo so much! I will tell everyone I know about your company and what nice people you are, and how quickly you resolved my problem! Thanks again :)
Kiera & Paul Barattini

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!! I will be sure to spread the word about Pixel Rescue!"
Dean

"You da man! Hey, if you need a testimonial... I am very excited about the successful recovery of my pictures. My photos involved clinical and lab images that involved an enormous amount of work and I feared they had vanished. Your salvaging them is just awesome. You were reachable, reasonable, and fast. I feel lucky to have found your site and would enthusiastically recommend your service to others...and you can quote me on that! "
Richard M. Levitan, MD

"AWESOME!!! Thank you SO MUCH! My wife will be overjoyed to hear her pictures were rescued. We were pretty crushed when we thought the pictures from our biggest vacation in over 10 years were lost (lots of tears). I am glad we thought to look on the internet for a company like yours to help us out (saw you on a Google search). Thanks again. " D. H.

"Thanks for helping me get my images back this week. You recovered images I shot months ago...

"Take the biggest number you can think of, multiply it by three, and stick a big, fat negative sign in front of it, and you'll be close to understanding the depths of my despair when I realized the ~700 images I had shot all afternoon wouldn't be coming off my microdrive and into my computer anytime soon.

"After a day of calling everyone I could think of for help, I turned to Pixel Rescue, whom I had just heard about at a seminar a week earlier. My images were back as quickly as FedEx could move them.

"Did I learn any important lessons from this episode? Absolutely. Tops on the list is to go right to Pixel Rescue if it happens again. Which it won't, 'cause I'm being careful... right? Find me some wood to knock on..."
Thanks, Rich Obrey
Sports Editor
The Current and The American Journal

"...after photographing celebrities at Fenway Park, my card was unreadable. PixelRescue was great, encouraging and was able to recover all of the images for me without loosing one. Thank you, Ted!" Jeff Dunn, Dunn Studios

"YOU'RE A GOD!!" -shutterbabe1

pixelrescue: "I was wondering if you could do me a little favor..."
anonymous photographer: "Sure thing, what do you need?"

pr: "Well, we have a little gallery testamonial site, and I'd like to use some of your shots. We also would like to get a little quote from you, if it'd be okay."
ap: "y'mean, like, 'you SAVED my BUTT?"

pr: "...um, yeah, that'd be good!"

Shoutout to the PPA!

2010-02-28T12:38:00.005-05:00

A big thanks to the Professional Photographers Association of MA, and all the folks who came to hear me talk about Smart Object RAW processing!

Pick up Smart Object Pipeline or Black and White Pipeline here, from Digital Silver Imaging right in Belmont, MA. You can also pick up any of the NIK software tools we mentioned, that all work as Smart Filters in the workflow, from DSI as well, by clicking this link.

And, as promised, here's a little refresher on how to use the Brush tool with Masks and Layers- easy once you know it, sometimes a little confusing to learn... heck. I took me 6 tries and about a year.

Part 1- the Setup

Part 2- Making the adjustment and controlling the Mask

...and, as promised, the Leadership Lessons from Dancing Shirtless Guy.

Photoshop and Photography- NYT

2010-02-26T10:02:00.002-05:00

OK, kids... Here's a really interesting post by David Pogue of the NYT that says, simply and elegantly, what I've been saying all along about "trusting" photographs, the impact of Photoshop on photographic credibility, like that...

The thing is, though, this isn't necessarily an open-and-shut case. Ms. Leuchter's editorial points out that photography has never been strictly a "capture reality" art form. It's never been limited to reproducing what the eye sees.

From the very beginning, photographers have set up their shots, posed people and adjusted brightness and contrast in the development process. So although you may think that some line has been crossed, it might not be so easy to specify exactly where that line sits.

Here's a list of things people do to and for photographs, ranging from the innocent and traditional to the dangerously artificial. If you were running a photography contest, at what point would you draw the line and say "That's not photography anymore?"

Capture One gets an Update, H2H scoops DPR (again)

2010-02-22T07:02:00.002-05:00

I'll be running the tests today, but the big news in my book is the Spotting Tool. Look for my comments later today here, at H2H.

Q/A- a little about my books, Photography, computers and art

2010-02-21T07:16:00.005-05:00

I recently got a few questions- here are my answers.

Is your series intended to be, in effect, a building of skill or can they be taken on at anytime the need presents? Would you recommend that I get the Colour Pipeline book before I delve into the B&W?

The Pipeline books grew out of "The Pixel Institute", a series of workshops I put together starting in '01 or so to get photographers who were moving from film to digital to do so correctly. A big problem then was that these guys needed to produce high quality images immediately, to work digital into their "product" as fast as possible to be able to pay off the massive investment and to keep their businesses moving forward. Consequently it is a "hit the ground running, and start on the right foot" approach, and you'll probably notice a good deal of reference to film and darkroom concepts- both because that's what they were coming from, and that's where I came from too. So yes, RAW shooting, using Layers and Masks, and ultimately Smart Objects is the focus of the books, simply because it is the way, well, one way, a professional needs to work. The RAW Pipeline is probably the best to start with, and B/W Pipeline certainly if you are interested in B/W. Color PL is more an attempt to explain Color Management in a way that the "gatekeepers" haven't really been able to- not only how it works, but how to use it. Smart Object PL is really where it's happening if you want to go exclusive SO workflow.

And, what is your usual workflow? Aperature? Lightroom? CS4? PS 7.0? Picasa? (just kidding on that last one)

I use Photoshop CS4 exclusively for my own work, but I'm trained (Apple certified) in Aperture (hate it) Lightroom, C1Pro, and I know a bunch of other processors. I use CS4 pretty much because I use Smart Object RAW workflow almost exclusively- it's the only system that uses SO, but I need to know the rest of that stuff to do what I do. (I'm doing a full-day training on Tuesday in Phila. on C1Pro, for example).

Most hobbyists dare not venture into RAW...

On what "hobbyists" are doing... photography has always had a vast range of skills and interest levels. I've never really cared what anyone uses, just what works for me. (You may have remembered that particularly endearing trait about me... heh. ) There is a huge array of really powerful stuff out there, even iPhoto, on the Apple side, has sophisticated image adjustments, and it comes installed on any Mac now. Adobe Elements is a great consumer solution, too. The point is, photography is accessible to an absolutely astronomical number of people now, and it's one of the most exciting aspects of digital imaging. Not only can everyone take a picture now, (often with their phone) but they can manipulate it and publish it effortlessly.

And I know you use/love Mac products, I don't. Macs, for me, are artist's tools for people who just want their computers to work so they can...

Windows/Apple? Senseless, pointless conversation. First, if I had a nickel for every person who's told me what you just said, I'd... well, you know. But do yourself a favor, and don't limit your tool set by identifying yourself with some brand. I have switched to Apple for the simple reason that the systems I support are almost entirely Apple based. I continued to use Apple because I enjoy the system. As far as the perception of which system is for what- the notion that Windows is for business and Mac is for creatives is as outmoded as, well, film. And, for the record, I've been on Windows since 3.1, and continue to work with it, again, because I have to. I've also built more systems than I can remember. And I know the Apple system just as well... just ripped my wife's Powerbook past the Logic Board to replace her DC/Sound card as a matter of fact. I'm pretty much as well-qualified on the Apple IT end of it and service side as any of the Apple techs I've worked with- with the exception of about 2 of them... who walk on water... So, I think I know what I'm talking about.

It may interest you to know, for example, that Windows runs, in my experience anyway, better on my Macbook using Parallels than it ever did on a Windows box...

So, I'll say it again. Do yourself a favor and learn a little about Apple, if this is the road you're going down... it's a great machine. The integration of applications, for one small example, is not only convenient and somewhat amazing, but where computing will be in 5 years- also something that by definition, guerilla computing by instinct runs away from- I totally understand it, I'm that way myself, but at some point you begin to ask yourself why you're limiting yourself. (I could tell you the story of me resisting the switch to CDs sometime... we basically didn't buy music anymore because you couldn't buy LPs... until my wife put her foot down... heh.) And, fwiw, the way my guerilla computing manifests itself is precisely by virtue of the Apple system. My entire music collection is on a cute little "iLamp" iMac (aka the "ET" version) and controllable from anywhere in the house, wirelessly, even via iPhone. I'm cutting little Youtube videos using iMovie, and shooting them with my D5000. I'm recording the sound with my Macbook and iMovie lets me publish directly to my several YouTube accounts. Rather than hacking the hardware, I'm hacking what the hardware can do... as far as hacking hardware goes, I leave that for my electric motorcycle conversion. (Maybe you haven't seen this bit of madness- www.evmc2.com)

I do have one odd question - when does photography cease to be photography? Some of the work out there is so much more that to me, it's no longer photography, but something else. Some of own your work looks like paintings.

As far as what constitutes a photograph. It's an interesting drinking question, and one we're working with in class right now- Creative Digital Techniques, at Northeastern, but ultimately not much of a concern to me. My job as an artist is to make art. I have other jobs as an author and teacher, but as a photographer, I need to explore and understand the tools so I can use them. The whole discussion on Photoshop making photography into something that people can't believe is the "truth", well, that's idiotic. The earliest photographs of war- Matthew Brady, were constructed, arranged, by the photographer, and people thought they were real. Now, people know better, and you have Photoshop to thank. The interpretation that has always been at the core of photography is just now more obvious, ironically by being visually undetectable. But back to the point. I take pictures. Let some philosopher figure out what I'm doing ten years down the road.

Step awaaaay from the coffee, Ted.

Photoshop Trivia- Merlin Lives! (easter eggs)

2010-02-15T16:59:00.002-05:00

Airports, Routers, iBooks and Powerbooks

2010-02-12T07:22:00.007-05:00

It started with an iBook, a G4, 14" to be specific. My son said he was dropping off the wireless network, and we did a few things to try to get it fixed, including a PRAM reset and a PMU reset. It seemed to work, but got worse, and finally we just retired the thing when he got a new MacBook Pro. Recently I did a wipe and clean OS install on the iBook, and the same thing happened, except now, it wouldn't get on at all.

To be clear, the problem was not that the Airport card wouldn't see the wireless network- it could, and the signal strength was fine. The problem was that once you got on the network, you couldn't get onto the internet.

Then, my wife's 15" G4 Powerbook had a power supply issue, and the battery tanked. After taking care of that, when I booted it up it did the exact same thing- it saw the network but wouldn't see the internet.

After searching Google eleventy million times for every variation of "airport, router, internet, powerbook" I found this thread, from TechArena: "Powerbook G4 does not connect to router".

I tried, or had tried, everything on that list, with no success, except the idea of blowing out the wireless network in the router and starting fresh. I had resisted doing that simply because the network worked fine with my Macbook, and I didn't want to mess THAT up... but the fact that these two machines could see the router- but every time I went into Network Preferences and tried to get the DHCP settings right, I got some very weird looking addresses- made me think that there had to be some issue with the communication between these specific cards and the connection between the wireless and the router itself.

I'm running the Verizon MI424WR Router, by the way. And when I plugged the ethernet cable directly into the router I got access, and good DHCP addresses. Everything pointed to something inside the router not playing nice with the wireless signal from either of these machines.

So, finally, I blew out the old wireless network and made a new one. This is a process of plugging into the router, accessing the router interface by putting the "router address" into the browser bar, and then logging in with your user and password. I turned wireless off, then closed the screen. I re-opened, then turned it on with a new name and password. I crossed my fingers.

Both machines were all better. Bingo.

dumb stuff- "waiting" gifs

2010-02-11T15:30:00.011-05:00

I dunno. Every time I get stuck waiting I download the GIF. No, I know. It's weird. And by the way, don'tcha always love it when a message says "we appreciate your patience..."? I mean really, who say's I'm waiting patiently?

Here are some of my faves. More to come.

Shoot Profile: Roy Lockwood, Paintball, Casio and Olympus

2010-02-09T06:43:00.001-05:00

This guy's work is amazing.

Read more about him here.

Head-2-Head Reviews publishes Hassey H4D 40 specs, scoops DP Review

2010-02-02T12:18:00.003-05:00

Story here.

(was that bitchy of me? oh, yes. yes it was.)

Guest Post on the Gardener's Eden

2010-02-01T10:54:00.004-05:00

Check it out! Michaela let me yabber on about how to improve your garden and flower photos... check out the rest of her site, too, there's a whole lot there- including some of the best recipes EVER!

Thanks Michaela!

The Professional Photography Forum

2010-01-29T09:59:00.003-05:00

"Where pros can talk with pros - keepin' it real since 2009."

On to more positive things. As a result of all this hoo-haa, I was approached by a member of the Professional Photography Forum, and joined up after taking a look.

Here's what got me to join in:

A fresh start

by admin on Aug.17, 2009, under Uncategorized

Forums are a dime a dozen; good forums are few and far between; good photography-based forums are even more rare. Even of those that offer some value, none quite offer the right mix for a working pro (or even an aspiring pro) who doesn’t feel like dropping hundreds on a forum before they even see the contents, or whom doesn’t feel like wading through a tidal wave of dross in order to find a single nugget of value.

Fed up with the current state of the internet with regard to online sharing of information amongst photographic professionals, we have decided to start fresh – create a new forum where sharing is to be rewarded with further sharing by others and honest (which doesn’t always mean complementary) critique and/or discussion. A forum where immature sniping will be moderated and condescension banned, and where mutual respect and a common desire to raise our profession will rule.

So welcome – we are looking forward to having you join the discussion.

It's a small group and a great idea- I'd welcome any serious photographer to take a look, and if the fit seems right, join in.

Hope to see you there!

My final post to DP Reviews, and a tip of the hat to Big Joe

2010-01-28T07:43:00.003-05:00

Fun with DP Reviews? Done with DP Reviews.

I Googled my name recently (something I'd suggest any photographer do, by the way...) and came on a thread here at DP Review, now deleted, where I was being accused of using the identities Pixel Vaughmutt, WalterSobchak, SamuelElliott, and some ID he calls "Leaky". I just want to say, pure and simple, I've never, since I've joined this forum in 2002, used any name but the name shown here, and for a very simple reason. I firmly believe that if you have something to say, stand up and say it, and don't hide behind a fake or anonymous identity.

It's called accountability.

Along with these accusations were also accusations of spamming, something I also abhor, and, although I will link to other work I've done, my measure of a good post is to make a contribution to the forum, create a discussion that stays on the page, and contribute to the community. One of the last threads I started had over 100 contributions. Every group I'm on has different levels of what they consider acceptable, and I work very hard to stay within those limits. Being associated with these other identities is, at the very least, an insult to every effort I've made on this group. (I will admit, my last post here, I think, was a link directly to my Lady Gaga Polaroid video on my H2H blog- I simply didn't see any way to post the vid here, and, gee. I thought it was funny.)

I'll accept, and live within the decisions of the moderator on this group, but don't think for a minute that I will not stand up for anything I've posted here, and that I feel I need to hide behind some fake identity. Google my name, Ted Dillard, if you want to know who I am, what I'm doing, what I've done and what I stand for.

The member who accused me has no basis for this accusation other than his suspicions and coincidences. He actually said to me "Do make sure you can actually prove something a comment is slander though, before making that accusation in a public forum." (sic) Apparently that's more important to him than making sure the slander is founded in fact. Of course, his own profile is linked to a website that hasn't been updated since 2002 and there's no information on who he is or what he does. He's effectively anonymous, and I consider his comments in that context. Worthless. His behavior in this matter would have got him banned from any other forum I participate in.

I joined this group a long time ago to try to make a contribution to the digital photography community. I've taught many classes, given many workshops and clinics, written 4 books, maintain my own site and work on the H2H site for the basic reason that I'd like to give back to something I love, Photography, and help others love it too. The pathetic level of trolling, sniping and simple ignorant and asinine behavior on the DPR forums is astounding, and these accusations are the lowest point I've seen. When some member with nothing more than vague allegations can assault my name and reputation with no sense of accountability, and this is accepted by the community, it's time to move on.

My very first post at DPR was this, about DNG files, and turned into the worst thread of trolling and sniping I've ever seen, anywhere. Here's that link.

I wish I could say it's gone up from there... didn't think it could get worse.

I will say I've gotten to know, and corresponded with several great people I've "met" here, and I'm thankful for that... but enough's enough.

Ted

...by the way, it'd sure be swell if Pixel Vaughmutt, WalterSobchak, Leaky and SamuelElliott stand up and speak for themselves. ...but that's probably too much to expect from this stand-up group.

I've got to add. I'm really active on ElMoto.net, an electric motorcycle enthusiast group, and it is simply astounding to me the level of civility there. It's also amazing how little they tolerate spamming, trolling and sniping- even simple lack of manners and professionalism, and don't forget this is a group of, essentially, hobbyists. After a few months of being in that community, the Photo forum community is, well, an embarrassment, and I have to ask why that is. What is it about photography that makes people think it's alright to act like asses?

stop playing with people.

2010-01-27T11:50:00.004-05:00

Showcase: This Isn’t Show Business

via NYT LENS blog...

All I want to say is: stop playing with my people. Stop playing with my people. If you want to help, help. Don’t come here for show business. I don’t feel like anybody’s doing serious journalism work here.

They’re playing with the Haitian people again. They’re playing with them. The press is playing with them. The government is playing with them. The U.N. is playing with them. That’s the reason I’m not so excited when they talk about rebuilding Haiti.

oh wow. responsible journalism... hope somebody from PDN saw this and it keeps them awake at night.

file this under "No SHIT sherlock": PDN on Haiti photogs

2010-01-24T13:33:00.006-05:00

Photographers in Haiti Face Shortages of Fuel, Water, Housing, and Food

idiots. pure and simple.

no, seriously:

Photojournalists on the ground in Haiti covering the aftermath of Tuesday's earthquake are struggling with logistical challenges, including housing, food, water, transportation and communications. Safety is also a mounting concern.

Here's an interesting list. Staring at Death: Photographing Haiti
...photographers currently in Haiti:

How many photographers does it take to photograph a humanitarian disaster?

Juan Barreto / AFP / Getty Images
Bruno Stevens / Cosmos
John W. Poole / NPR
David Gilkey / NPR
Ramon Espinosa / AP
Luis Acosta / AFP / Getty Images
Jae C. Hong / AP
Minustah / Logan Abassi / AP
Julie Jacobson / AP
Francois Mori / AP
Chris Hondros / Getty Images
Win McNamee / Getty Images
Ariana Cubillos / AP
Ricardo Arduengo / AP
Olivier Laban Mattei / AFP / Getty Images
Sophia Paris / Getty Images / UN / Minustah
Gerald Herbert / AP
Uriel Sinai / Getty Images
Patrick Farrell / AP / The Miami Herald
Peter Andrew Bosch / Miami Herald / MCT
Carl Juste / AP / The Miami Herald
Melissa Lyttle / St. Petersburg Times
Dominic Nahr / The Wall Street Journal
Julie Platner / The Wall Street Journal
Ron Haviv / New York Times / VII
Heather L Rohan / NJ Star & Ledger
Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images
Gregory Bull / AP
Michael S. Wirtz / Philadelphia Inquirer
Federico Gambarini / EPA
Orlando Barria / EPA
David Fernandez / EPA
Juan Barreto / AFP Getty Images
Shawn Thew / EPA
Thomas Coex / AFP / Getty
Thony Belizaire / AFP / Getty
Julie Remy / AP / MSF
Julien Tack / AFP / Getty
Michael Laughlin, Sun-Sentinel / AP
Francois Mori / AP
Julie Jacobson / AP
Jewel Samad / Getty Images
Paul J. Richards / Getty Images
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Mario Tama / Getty Images
Martin Oeser / Getty Images
Jody Amiet / AFP / Getty
Logan Abassi / AFP / Getty
Marco Dormino / AP / United Nations
Frederic Dupoux / Getty Images
Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Cris Bierrenbach / AP
Jorge Cruz / AP
Maggie Steber / The New York Times
Tequila Minsky / The New York Times
Damon Winter / New York Times
Michael Appleton / The New York Times
Erika Santelices / Getty Images
Jonathan Torgovnik
Boots Levinson
Alvaro Ybarra Zavala / Getty
Jan Grarup / Time
Jeroen Oerlemans / Panos
Moises Saman / Panos
Zoriah
Carolyn Cole / LA Times
Rick Loomis / LA Times
Brian Vander Brug / LA Times
David Levene / Guardian
Francesco Giusti / prospekt
Samuele Pellecchia / prospekt
Emiliano Larizza/Contrasto / Redux
Carol Guzy/Washington Post
Lisandro Suero / AFP / Getty
Clarens Renois / AFP / Getty Images
Kena Betancur / Reuters
Ivanoh Demers / AP / Montreal La Presse
Sam Yeh / AFP / Getty
Gus Ruelas / Reuters
Carlos Barria / Reuters
Jess Hurd
Axel Oberg
(List not exhaustive)

'course, then there's always Andy Levin and his $1500 Haiti PJ workshops. Real stand up guy, Andy. Good job. With guys like you in the forefront of the journalism community, it's truly a mystery that pj is in the toilet and photographers are at each other's throats.

...really, not since the mid '90s when PDN, with no apology whatsoever, ran an interview with a photo buyer saying that photographer's pay was fine, though it had been level for 20 years, because they "had a great lifestyle" have I been so infuriated by what should be a professional publication, and by the behavior of photographers in general.

goofin with Depth of Field, small sensors and old lenses...

2010-01-21T11:13:00.003-05:00

I just HATE my Tamron 28-200 zoom, it's the very definition of a cheap lens, right down to the lack of AF and the way the zoom ring moves when the camera's (Nikon D5000) tipped down. I also have some of the best Nikon 35mm glass made. So, whether it's necessity being the mother of invention, or just plain curiosity, it got me thinking. How about I pull out the old Nikkor 50mm f1.4 and see what the depth of field looks like, wide open. Everybody KNOWS these digital cameras can't do shallow DOF, right?

Well, it's a little different from what we've all become used to, but it's hard to call it a challenge if you've shot, as I have, for 20 years with a camera without a battery in it. (Hasselblad 500C/M and Sinar 4x5). Armed with my trusty histogram and my rusty memory of approximate exposures, I started snapping away.

Here's a hand-held shot at ISO 200- 1/125 at f1.4. Depth of filed that would make even Martha Stewart weep tears of lust.

Here's a detail at around print size...

Think I'm starting down a strange, but somehow comforting new road...

(almost) Spring Color Tuneup!

2010-01-21T09:13:00.004-05:00

This is clearly a case of the "cobbler's children...", but I've been struggling with my own printing lately, what with testing a billion color management systems, updating drivers, using several monitors... my profiles drifted, my printer settings got messed up. Even my Photoshop Color Settings needed to be looked at, since I'd been doing a bunch of different things, in different output workflows.

Sound familiar?

So, I sat down and got out the old trusty X-Rite i1Pro and ran a couple of monitor calibrations, after dumping some old, bad profiles from the Library. Then I sat down with my printer, the Epson R2400 and my new favorite paper, Ultra Premium Luster, and ran some nice profiles... I did some test prints, and I'm back on target. The prints I made to test the profiles were, well, yummy. My highest quality assurance rating.

While I was waiting for the ink to dry... literally... I had a thought. How many people are out there in the same boat? You get busy, you need to get the work out, and move on. Tweaking your color settings is about one step above organizing your sock drawer, that is, until it takes you three times as long to make a good print or proof.

So here's the deal. For a $150 flat fee, I come in, calibrate your display with my big, expensive i1 Pro. I check your Color Settings and your workflow to make sure it's the best it can be, for what you need to do. And I profile your favorite paper for you...

Besides getting you a little tune-up, and a chance to get some questions answered, it gets me out of the office for a bit...

Interested in a Color House-Call from Dr. T? Shoot me a note, we'll make it happen...

Facebook Friends. and High School. (philoking blog...)

2010-01-20T12:11:00.007-05:00

This is only kind of tangential to photography, except that every photographer I know not only has a personal FB page but also fan pages and group pages and business pages. It's a great post, too, much more balanced that what I feel every time I swear I'm going to get off FB forever.

"What Facebook taught me about friends and high school" from Jason Burns site sums it up...

You've got a lot of issues going on here. They all are, for me, rooted in the idea that you've got to get your name out there, and in so doing, take all comers. After a while, though, I think the secret to managing this access is to weed contacts out occasionally. I just did so. Here were my criteria.

If I thought someone was a jerk, either back in the day, or even just recently, I give them a chance to show they're not, that I was wrong. If they re-prove to me they're a jerk, they're gone. If, after a few months, they haven't shown signs of promise- either no activity, or just the same old stuff, then they're gone.

If you have someone who just isn't active, maybe has a few friends, but doesn't update and doesn't respond to messages, they're gone. Well, they were never there, really...

If someone contacts me that I don't know, I'll usually accept their contact. If, however, they are simply "collecting"- that is, trying to add contacts just to either add contacts, or to promote themselves with no particular reciprocal promotion or support, then they're gone. This could be either a photographer or company or something, or one of the big superstars. But generally the superstars aren't going to be approaching me, I will have approached them. Same rules apply, though.

...that is, unless I get something out of the contact. John Nack, for example, of Adobe, does great FB updates- both from his blog, helping with Photoshop issues, but also just hysterical stories and photos from his family... fun stuff. He stays.

You may wonder why you should eliminate contacts. Noise, pure and simple. As soon as I got my "friends" down to a manageable level, I started seeing the feeds from the people I cared about again. You can say, just hide them. Why hide them if you don't care to keep contact with them?

A little story. I've done every type of marketing and promotion known, as far as I know. Getting a response has been increasingly hard, as we're all inundated by messages one way or another. I just sent an email out to a very select group of friends and contacts. Just 25 of them. I got about 8 people responding- emails, even phone calls. This was not a personal message, mind you, this was promoting a service I'm offering... that was OVER 25% response, simply unheard-of. Another guy I heard speak, recently, says we're back to a hand-written card. He was funny- he said it's going to stay on the desk, nobody will throw one of those away.

When did you last get a hand-written card? Still have it? I put them on my board...

The point is, blanket emails, huge contact lists, Twitter feeds and blogging and such, unless you're John Nack or somebody with some huge horsepower just feeds the wave of stuff we get hit by and ignore so effectively. Whittling down to the people who care about your message, and you care about, is the secret to making and keeping good contacts.

This, from Jason's post:
"Once you survey the landscape and figure out who is meaningful to you, drop the outliers. Build a clan, share your life and have fun.

The real value of Facebook to me is those interactions. I would wake up tomorrow a happy man if a virus ripped through Facebook over night and shredded all of the fan pages, the Mob Wars, faux-causes and quizzes. Those things are on a one way trip to ignore-ville for me anyway. But I still thank Facebook for helping me put some perspective on relationships that I have questioned for years, and helping me find new ones."

Drawdown Redux

2010-01-11T15:58:00.000-05:00