Denver Street Art.
Pentax K-01
Finishing up big jobs always takes me by surprise. I shot for four days last week and ended up with about 4500 images. When the shooting is all over and the cameras are tucked into their mink lined enclosures and locked away in the vault it also seems shocking to me that I have to change gears and get cranking on post production. So, on monday I started making Lightroom galleries by day and event. I do them that way because it seems to help clients find the images they want quicker.
The first step is to make a quick look through all the images I am about to import and throw away as many as I can. Near duplicates, blinks, inappropriate scratching (which never really happens with my clients) and bad composition gets trash canned before I hit "import" so I don't fill up my hard drives quite as quickly.
I spent all day monday crunching images. The GTech drives kept me warm and the i7 processor and full complement of RAM kept things moving along at pace. By mid day tuesday I had the images in folders and inside an overall folder and ready to deliver to the client. I seem to buy 32 gig memory sticks the way some people buy coffee these days. Way too often. But I burned 25 gigabytes of large, minimally compressed Jpeg files onto two different sticks and delivered them to the client. One stick for my direct client and one for her boss. Not having to share memory sticks is part of providing customer service, right?
With that job delivered and the paperwork done it was time to get back to my happy routine. The schedule up until Tues. precluded swim practice, the absence of which makes me really----prickly. But man oh man! A week out of the water takes its toll. I attended the Executive workout on Tues. and this morning. We call it the Executive workout because it is from 8:30 am to 9:30 am and it seems that most swimmers in that time slot don't really have a pressing need to go into work...at least they are in no rush..
We knocked out 3200+ yards in each of the workouts and it felt like swimming uphill for me. You lose conditioning quicker than you think at my advanced age. Still, 3200 yards in an hour is good work.
I also had time for the first time since last Weds. to sit down and have coffee after the workout and to read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Wow, a lot happened while I had my nose pressed against the LCD of a camera.... I tend to forget that the world marches on.
Yesterday evening the USPS mailman delivered the Fotodiox 508AS LED light from Amazon. The package was double boxed and the exterior of the outer box looked like it had been handled by surgeons every step of the way. Not even a microscopic box dent. I am charging the two, chubby batteries now and will start playing around and testing the light this afternoon. I will tell you that I am very happy with the product's presentation. It comes with a padded case, padded dividers, straps to hold the batteries and chargers, etc. The unit comes with barn doors and a diffuser panel for the front of the light. It also comes with both a double battery smart charger and a separate AC adapter. Nice.
I turned it on and it works! Yay.
We got our first cold spell and lots of great rain that started Tues. night. I love it. The Studio Dog hates it. She doesn't mind the cold at all but she is very mistrustful of rain in general and thundery rain in particular.
I think it's about time I grabbed a camera from the stack and headed out the door to make some images just for me... later.
5 comments:
Do you encrypt the drives Kirk? I'm having a think at the moment about it - trouble begins when one sends from my Mac to a PC owner of course... I use registered post now after a thumb drive went "missing" once - the packaging I sent it in was torn open at one corner and the drive removed; the rest of the contents (such as they were) were delivered. But I'm not sure registered post is a secure enough option. The jobs I do at the moment don't tend to justify the cost of a courier, especially as I'm now located in Wales and nearly all my clients are in London. I've tried Dropbox but my whole machine freezes up and I find it hopelessly slow.
Hi Patrick, I don't encrypt the drives. I haven't had any go missing yet so I hadn't thought about that. I send everything that goes out of town via FedEx and they seem to be good about security. There's always a first time though.
For up to 2 gigabytes of fast, free transfer you might look at a web based service called WeTransfer.com. I like it much better than Drop Box because I can use it from any computer, I don't have to "join" anything and it works well for my clients.
The drop box interface is weird. Not so with WeTransfer.
I will be very, very interested in your thoughts on these lights. I was looking at both these and the updated 312's. The addition if barn doors and a cheap fabric diffuser are exactly one of the items I lacked on the original unit. I'd like to have a portable lighting system for doing some interviews and even for trying to capture some short sequences as part of a documentary I'd like to make.
Encrypting drives is something I would only do as a last resort. Keys get forgotten or you find incompatibility with other people's computers, etc.
Thanks for the reply Kirk. I'll try the service you mention.
Dave, I'm kind of dancing around the edges of them right now and trying to figure out the best test. I'll work on it a while before I make any sweeping statements. I will say that I've gotten a lot of great use out of the original 312AS lights.
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