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As I am going through the thousands of shots I’ve made in the past few weeks, I realized that the Nikon D300 has made my post production process a nightmare — not because it generated any lesser quality files or colors, but rather the sheer volume of shots I’ve made by taking advantage of its relatively huge buffer — six burst shots a second for a few seconds, and do it abundantly throughout the day — I ended up with hundreds of similar-looking shots I have to go through and decide which ones I want to keep (being as indecisive as I can be)…

Fuji S5 (and previous generation S3 and S2) owners have a saying that “it’s not the number of shots you can make, it’s the quality of shots you capture that matter” And this trip has certainly made that philosophy sink in that much more.

When the D300 and D3 came out, I asked myself if I’d upgrade to them had money not been an issue. Though the D300 is a really solid camera, I now no longer believe the D300 being an upgrade because I just like the files that my Fuji generates more (the film-looking grain, excellent white balance, incredible handling with high ISO… etc). I’ll probably get another Fuji if they ever made a full frame camera. Until then, my next move would probably to get another S5 so I don’t need to swap lenses as often on the field or during sessions.

So I survived the early morning flight, the long drive from the airport to the hotel, and the frustration of the GPS unit running out of battery in between destinations. And i haven’t seen my first tornado yet. The images below are far from the quality I’d like to show. I’d planned on editing all the images shot in the same day at the same night. But because I’ve had to bring a lot of equipment with me, I forgot to bring my monitor calibration kit; so the colors are going to be off, images unsharpened and a few other quirks. But I really want to post some of the stuff I’ve seen here. So I’ve decided to go ahead and post them first and swap them out later on Flickr (since as a Pro member, I have that feature available to me).

Hit the link to read additional notes on this image at Flickr (mouse over the image once at Flickr to see the notes).

A few interesting observations I made in the first 3 hours of arrival:
1. Interesting signs are everywhere!
2. Local radio stations have more country music than anything else combined.
3. Local car mechanics advertise not only to fix your car, but also your tracker on the radio!
4. I couldn’t find NPR on any of the local stations. The only thing closest to it is some feminist station talking about all things Girl Power (or at least in the 2 hours that I tried listening to parts of it).

So tomorrow is going to be a full day at the practice range… Bang! Bang! Bang!*

*Good thing my client offered an old pair of her ear muffs to me…

I think this is a happy news. But this came at a time when I am also the most stressful — my photography seems to have taken on a life of its own.

While I am not all booked up or anything for sessions, I do have a pretty important assignment during the 3rd week of May that requires me to be away for a full week to complete. The pay is extremely well, and the assignment itself is also very interesting. Needless to say, pictures will be posted for preview when they are all fully processed.

This assignment is important enough to me (and the client) that I will be renting backup equipment from a local shop here in the area. Since they don’t carry Fujifilm S5 Pro, I will get a chance to try the brand spanking new Nikon D300 and see how I like it compare to my Fuji in terms of picture quality (I already know its speed and file size nail the Fuji hands down). Another thing I want to find out is how its dynamic range and high ISO noise compare to my Fuji.

I can’t wait!

Continuing my following of Firefox’s beta graphics, here’s another for Firefox 3 Beta 5.

It can be seen here.

This has to be one of the best public pranks ever!

It was part of Improv Everywhere’s gigs. I wish I’d been part of that (or at least been there to see it in person). Artsy people rock.

I quietly launched my photography site yesterday without making a fuss about it. I still think it’s not quite ready for “live”. But I am already three weeks past my self-imposed deadline (two days past the 2nd deadline). So it had to be up just as a matter of principle.

So I finally added a portfolio/gallery, added more blog entries (which I had to backdate for chronology’s sake) and made a bunch of enhancements to the backend management console. But I still have a bunch of stuff I need to do with it: Most noticeably — Trim and organize the portfolio in a meaningful order (Prof. Randy Akers would probably have something to say how the portfolio is ordered right now), further streamline the pricing section to make it easier to follow (possibly replace text with some kind of meaningful graphics or illustrations)… etc. I mean, that’s probably what Steve Jobs would have done!

Curious where my professional photography site is? www.shunchu.com

DUH!

I wanted to love Aperture. And I did. But it’s time to let go.

I was going through a few thousand images that I’d rated and enhanced in Aperture to look for stuff for my portfolio. I wanted to polish up a few images that I thought were good enough to make it into the professional portfolio. But it soon became evident that even 3GB of fresh RAM doesn’t satisfy Aperture’s hungry appetite for more! Spinning arrows, lagging waits and delayed responses were frequent. Somehow I don’t remember Aperture being so unpleasant to use — and this was Aperture 2.0, the version that supposedly offered performance enhancements.

Another bummer I discovered with Aperture 2.0 was that its new RAW engine v2.0 doesn’t support my Fujifilm S5 Pro at all. This means the RAW image rendering on my camera’s RAW files still looks very weird (blocky, blotchy and making images more like JPEGs) — basically when used with my camera’s RAW, it’s the old v1.1 engine with features enhanced around it.

So this drew the line for me. I am officially dumping Aperture. I will spend the next few months retrieving all the RAW masters and bring them in to Adobe Lightroom as their permanent home. Unfortunately this means I will lose ALL the edits and enhancements I made to all the images. But the upside is the images will probably look better with Adobe Camera RAW’s rendering engine. And I’ve gotten fairly efficient in using Lightroom that I can probably zip through those edits pretty quickly anyway.

The war is over. Adobe Lightroom has won. This proves that having a beautiful, extremely streamlined and intuitive user interface isn’t everything. Performance and proper support of RAW rendering, even with an inferior interface, can do wonders in a photographer’s workflow. I will just have to be more selective in what I deem “edit worthy” when I port the images over from Aperture.

Apple, I love you and all. But Lightroom will probably take over the professional photography workflow application market when Lightroom 2.0 is introduced. You can safely kill off Aperture now — it gave Adobe a good run for its money and made them haul ass on a software that was supposed to be dead. Gently unplug Aperture’s life support and put your resources elsewhere (i.e. save up to buy Adobe out right!).

I am almost two weeks late on getting my photography site up. And that upsets me.

I had almost everything ready to rock until I hit a sudden insecurity in myself — Will people really pay for what I want to charge for my photography? I had all the content thought through, written and even posted, all ready to beg a few friends to proof read them for me. And then I hit the “pricing” page. Then all wheels stopped turning as if someone turned off the steam engine (or snatched the hamster out of the exercise wheel) that was plowing ahead.

So I started to ask people around me to brainstorm on the feasibility of my business model, which is quite a departure from how photography is traditionally priced with other photographers. My core beliefs wants me to do one thing, but the standard practice in the industry wants me somewhere else. I was torn.

So I bummed around professional photography discussion websites for a week. And I spent a lot of time explaining to anyone who’d listen about my ideas and why I felt so confused… much of that time was waiting for people to get online, to reply my emails or just to meet up and talk… Ya know, just talk…

Finally I have arrived at a good place where I feel comfortable in putting up the pricing again. The up side is my original intuition about what I should do was right, but not without some modifications to minimize risks and to address some potential concerns. So I am ready again. And the site shall be fully functional by the first half of this week (fingers crossed).

I have to say that reading some of those professional photography sites also reassured me that I am heading towards the right direction. Some of what those photographers say made me realize that there is indeed a difference between art and ego. By being able to let go of my ego, I can breathe easier and feel better about myself, not to be caught up in a intellectual property fight with my customers. I will probably write another post about this later (or possibly even on my new photography blog). But the “slowing down” of that one week, now I understand, was needed for me to feel the conviction and feel better about myself as an artist.

So. I am back.

BIG thanks to: Grace (Mrs. Pragmatic), Jason and Alicia (the dynamic duo and sometimes my conscience), Brian (my Euro-American half brother), my cousin Alex (for casually dropping a bombshell which required me to address an important issue), and Miho (Ms. GREAT ideas mixed with an artistic twist).

And the following who actually provided advice a few months prior: Mari & Dave (great insights and business sense) and Christy (my #1 spy with insights of a “typical American mom” flavor).

You know that feeling when you’d like to get your hands on something for yourself, but it seems like everything else is just in the way?

That has been the case for the past 3 months with my little photography site. I mean, the site is setup and almost ready to go, but I have yet to go back to Aperture/Lightroom to locate and publish all the images that I’d like to show in the gallery section. And then I will also need to print some promote cards from Moo Cards to distribute and litter the city with. I am all nervous and jumpy about this.

So today I finally finished the last of all those programming gigs I’ve been buried with (they help pay the rent though; so I am not complaining). When I wake up, it’d be a brand new day, and I shall complete my site this week! Yoohoo!

One of my longest running clients just emailed me about another set of feature extensions they’d like to do for their site. So I better finish the photography site before they slap me again with another contract gig!

I’d been following the opening of The Secret Workshop in California so that I can attend one and learn more of what I can’t get from other professionals. I am not so worried about the technical stuff in Photoshop or lighting stuff — it’s the meat on how to get into the commercial and editorial industry that I am most interested in. Also the bits on how to photograph infants that will be a boost in the right direction.

But I’d been so busy with other stuff that I’d forgotten to follow up with the site and COMPLETELY missed out on the signups for San Francisco, San Diego, AND even Phenix, the next closest thing to anything California! I am so bummed! The only opening they have is in Michigan, but it’s going to be held within weeks after Grace giving birth, which means it’s probably not a good idea to leave home for four days…

Maybe I will bum around trying to get on a waiting list (if I am so lucky)…

ARGH!

Just out of curiosity (and because I am a new-tech whore like that), I downloaded Firefox 3 Beta 2 to check it out. I was surprised to be greeted with its “welcome” page upon first launch. It’s got a nice retro illustration of a robot destroying some high rises.

Seems like going retro is hip again.

Some quick thoughts on Firefox 3 Beta 2 on my Mac:

1. Snappier performance;
2. Some nice visual effects (like the tabs sliding from side to side);
3. Crashes from time to time;
4. Bookmarks a little messed up; but I simply used the “manage bookmarks” feature and reverted back to a previous backup the Firefox had made when I installed the beta;
5. Many addons don’t work; I had to use about:config to add a new Boolean variable extensions.checkCompatibility and gave it a value of false so that Firefox won’t check for addon compatibilities and disable them. Some addons still won’t work, but most will likely work as advertised. Others already have un-advertised beta versions out for this beta release!

So far I like it enough to want to keep using it full time.

I finally got around to processing the twins I shot in early January. The lessons learned here is that infants are incredibly difficult to shoot — even more so than toddlers. Here are a few of my personal favorites from the session.