Rankin photographing Umbruglia: behind scenes

Short behind the scenes video of the British portrait photographer Rankin shooting Natalie Umbruglia. Educational. Especially her comments and self editing towards the end, and his at 2:25 onwards which I related to.




Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Twitter over capacity....

In my best Stephen Colbert voice: Damn you, OPRAH!!!!!!!!!

** Shakes fist....

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

twitter is down at the moment

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

An Oasis in Hell: Dubai

uncredited image of the Burj hotel

This has nothing to do with photography, but this in depth article in the online version of The Independent newspaper, covers the horrid, hidden and brutal side of living in Dubai.

If this were written 50 years ago by a Heinlein or Asimov, it would have been fanciful piece of science fiction. An opulent modern city, in a desert where none existed not long ago, with the world's tallest building, massive artificial islands, indoor ski hills with real snow, and golf courses. All built entirely by what are essentially slaves lured to Dubai with the promises of high wages and then trapped without passports and not allowed to leave. In 2005, the Indian consulate recorded 971 'accidental' deaths of Indian workers.

The conditions described here are brutal. Not just for the workers doing hard labour building the towers and infrastructure, but also the foreigners doing service industry work. And if you get in trouble and run out of cash while working. There is no bankruptcy there. You go to jail if you have debts and are not allowed to leave the country.

This is one of the best articles I have ever read and one of the most insightful. This is the side the Discovery Channel and TLC programs on construction of the Burj, the Palm Islands etc., don't show. An Oasis in Hell.

If newspapers fail, it won't be because of the writing and reporting of the likes of Johann Hari.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Going to Williams this afternoon. Interested?

Going to be down at the Williams on Wonderland later this afternoon for a coffee and to take a last look at my exhibition pics while they are up - it comes down tomorrow evening. If anyone is interested in meeting up while I am there, let me know. Should be there around 3-5pm.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Google Wave

Last night I finally watched the whole video of the developer conference preview of the new Google Wave. Really, really, interesting. Was only demo'd first time on Thursday at the Google I/O.



This is a 1 hour 20 min video by the way, so grab a coffee and a comfy chair. But if you are a geek its worth a look see.

If you are a Project Manager or work on collaborative teams for anything, this will change your world when its released for use generally. Live collaboration on documents. Concurrent editing of the same live document. Built in time lines that your can scroll through. Embedding of content live. Posting live to a blog... Responding on a blog and it appears on the document on everyone's screens live... The list goes on. Even an improved spell check and Google translator bot that works live translating IMs.

Very, very cool stuff here. A huge security can of worms perhaps and hopefully there will be admin level rules and safeguards built into it, but I can't see anyone on a project not wanting to give it a go. Will ultimately work with spreadsheets, databases, Powerpoint like slide shows, pretty much anything. And its smart phone enabled ( they demo'd it on an Android and an iPhone). Not sure if the individual home user would want to use all of this, but it is a powerful beast they created.

Oh, and Wave is open source and all browser based. They were going back and forth between Safari and FireFox in the demo. Curiously not Chrome however. ;)

Wave was designed a team lead by Lars Rasmussen and his brother who came up with GoogleMaps. Lars blogged the Wave on Thursday here on the Google Blog.

Everyone at the conference got an account to play with Wave. Wide release is scheduled for later in the year. :)

Oh, and Microsoft released something too this week. I think it was called Blip or Bleem! or was it Burp.... Uh no... it was Bing... Interesting idea, but something named after that annoying default Windows noise when you hold a key down too long probably won't be a Google killer in the verb department. But I can hear someone saying "Google it on Bing and see what results you get..."

** Those seeing this post on Facebook will have to go to the blog to see the video as they don't reliably import.


Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Shut off a site stealing Flickr pics

I noticed in my Flickr stats on Thursday night that one of my images had been linked to or posted on a page in Germany. So I checked and found quite a few there. And then dug further, and this particular German corset fetish site had a gallery of over 60,000 images and all from Flickr.

I contacted the site owner via email, and told him to remove the images. I received no response back. I then I posted information on this situation in the Flickr Help Forum as I assumed the site was misusing the Flickr API to pull keyword content from users regardless of whether they were CC or ARR images. Well as of a few hours ago - while I was on my walk, the site's gallery now reads "Die Flickr-Bilddatenbank ist momentan nicht verfügbar!" or roughly via Google "The Flickr image is not currently available!"

62,472 images down to zero in twenty hours. Someone is going to be pissed. But since they were not his pics in the first place, he doesn't have too much cause to be justifiably pissed. He just got caught.

Big thanks to Heather and the other Flickr staff for taking care of this so promptly.


Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Leo Laporte all a twitter over Twitter

So Leo Laporte ( the tech guy) has his shorts in a knot about Twitter having a similar sounding name to his TWiT (This Week in Technology) show. Well, while this is getting a lot of buzz now -I heard about it on the technewsblog Twitter feed after Leo posted a stir the pot question on his friendfeed page, it didn't even occur to me to connect them till that.

I think both have built their brands, both have similar sounding names but are completely different - other than both being on the internet.

To take his argument further, isn't TWiT an acronym? Shouldn't TWiB (This week in Baseball) be concerned in going after Leo if he wants to go on mainstream TV - and not Leo being concerned about Twitter? Leo's is clearly a play on theirs, and TWiB (pronounced phonetically 'Twib', the acronym is often familiarly used by viewers, and came to be used by the host also) debuted in 1977.

Either way, Leo got a lot of free press for his show out of this. And by 'press' I don't mean dead trees, I mean the stuff that matters.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Best Ratings book ever for CBC Radio and still cuts.

Gary Sandy as Andy Travis on WKRP

So in a follow up to my last blog post, I find it quite interesting and ironic that on Q this morning Jian announced that CBC radio - and his program Q too of course - had the best ratings book ever. Did CBC radio programming director Chris Boyce not know the book was coming out this week? Surely he did. Even WKRP's Andy Travis knew when the book was coming out. Don't you think Boyce will get more flack for his choices now? If not, he should.

Edit#1: My friend Amanda suggested he in all likelyhood did know it was coming out and he canned the people before it did as it would be a tougher sell to do so after the fact. Even Colder.

I sent a comment on this to the Q web form and got an error after submitting it. Oh well. Maybe the web designer got laid off too.

Edit #2: I did get eventually an autoresponder email from the Q mailbox saying they had received it. Doubt the letter will be read on the air tho.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

CBC cuts jobs & trashes schedule

CBC announced that they are cutting up to 158 jobs from the English language service and more to come. Familiar faces and voices like Don Newman, Brian Stewart, John McGrath... Gone.

That's just brutal. My thoughts go out to the CMG employees at the CBC who got cut ( or made redundant) and those left behind who will try to pick up the slack. I have listened to and watched the CBC in all provinces but one -PEI, and the local flavour, mixed with the national reporting will be missed.

Shows on the radio were eliminated, so the afternoon is pretty much all repeats now ( no matter what CBC radio programming director Chris Boyce says in this story "It's not just repeats. We think it's a very vibrant interesting block of programming." But in fairness its just like the evenings currently repeating the mornings.

Local noon programming is now down to an hour, they kill off The Point, The Inside Track, and Outfront, and yet they keep that brutally annoying Wiretap. DNTO seems to be shrinking again too. No word on the Vinyl Cafe. No word on CBC Radio 3 or their Sirius contributions in general.

I guess the recent slogan "Canada Lives Here" that they have been using isn't exactly true anymore. Shame. Canada did live here.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Just a bw pic of tracks and an inspirational kid...

Opportunity Tracks, Mars, Aug 29, 2008.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It's just a pic of vehicle tracks in the desert. But they are 200million miles away - give or take. Can you imagine? :)

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed out of "Victoria Crater" August 29th, 2008. It was following the tracks it had made when it descended into the 800-meter-diameter bowl shaped crater nearly a year earlier.

Came across the image posted by NASA's Mars Rovers account on Twitter last night and later here on the Mars Rover Press release site.

That was after MarsRovers tweeted a drawing done by an 7yr old sent to NASA offering a suggestion on how to get the other rover Spirit out of the sand... :)

© Julian, 7yrs old, Earth

Spirit and Oppy are the Energizer Bunnies of Space exploration, and now have the next generation of scientists helping them out now. :)

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Rural fog

Abandoned barn wrapped in fog, 2008

There was one day last winter, December 27th, 2008, to be exact, on which it was incredibly foggy here in London, Ontario. While we do get fog, and it causes all sorts of headaches when it is normal fog, this was like classic Pea-Soup-imported-from-our-namesake-in-the-UK fog.

After shooting a private event at the Civic Gardens complex, I went for a drive and photographed some farms properties on the outside edge of the city. I also did a couple of laps of the Woodland Cemetery - those will be in a subsequent post.

Bare tree in fog with snow, 2008

Old barn in fog with snow, 2008

Old farm buildings with distant silo, 2008

Uneven tree and foggy barn, 2008

Fog is a pain to drive in, but great for photos. :)


Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Chanel # 5 video advert with Audrey Tautou

Released on 5th of May (5th month), this Chanel #5 video stars Audrey Tautou, and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He was also the director Amélie. At one point in the video she is using a really nice Leica Rangefinder (I think). :) I really just liked the cinematography in this 2:22 long video.

Found via thephotographylink.com


Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Solo Exhibit will wrap on Sunday

Leaving the Mountains Behind, 2007

My solo show at the Williams Coffee Pub comes down on Sunday evening. It was great fun having over 25 prints up, and having people come out and appreciate the work. And on a personal note, it was pretty cool to sit in a restaurant on more than one occasion surrounded by your own art.

If you have not been by Williams this month, there is still time to check it out. 3030 wonderland Road South, London, Ontario. Its in the plaza with the Loblaws and the LCBO on the South East corner.

Hopefully I will have details on my next show soon!

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Faerie in the details

Faerie in the details, 2009

Similar the other coloured apple blossom shot from a few days ago. BW high contrast conversion of a different branch, rotated and mirrored. When I did that I found the faerie. At first I described it as an angel, but my friend Tawnee, who is my American Faerie expert, said it was a faerie and I stand corrected. The faerie was perhaps waiting to be discovered in the post work when the thin branches holding it disappeared and set it free.

Mallory says that there are several others visible in the really big version. I think that this might make a cool very large print.

Close up of Faerie in the Details.

Sometime its the deity in the details and not the devil. :)

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Two BBCnews photography related videos

Leanne © David Rann

BBCnews has a couple of completely different photography related videos up on their site.

First one is about a Ginger hair photography exhibit that took place last fall in Wolverhampton in the UK by photographer David Rann called melanocortin-1 (but more popularly and incorrectly called Gingerfest). Being a (former) ginger, and having an affinity for photographing them myself, I thought it was about time. :) David's page on the show is here.



The second one is a photography exhibit called Sight Unseen at the California Museum of Photography which showcases the work of twelve blind photographers from around the world.

Both clips are about two minutes, and its a shame the one featuring the visually impaired shooters one isn't longer with more examples, but you might have more luck at the exhibit page at CMP. I couldnt determine who shot the above image as the gallery was lagging huge when I was viewing it

The BBC News site doesn't do embedding so you will have to follow links.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone. :)

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

the Long Exposure experiment

Night farm, view #1, 2009

On Friday night I decided I was going to try doing long exposures for the first time. Not just long, but really long. I had one location in mind, but apparently the police thought I was being suspicious parked in a private parking lot looking at things in an industrial area at 1130pm and so I sorta had to leave. You can't really stare down someone watching you from a police car and win. :)

So I went for a drive and came across a farm building I had photographed before, but had not seen recently. It is, of course, being torn down and will probably be a Tim Hortons or a gas station or something in the future as it is in a good location for that...

So I parked, did a quick walk around with my flashlight in hand. It was pitch black, 75% overcast and no street lights for at least 150m ( and not falling on the building at all).

I set up the tripod with the intent of doing some straight on images of the farm house with trees. So I tried several exposures of 15 -30 seconds at different ISOs to see what was what, and slowly increased the time. Past 30 seconds, I switched to BULB and used the remote. I tried to keep to ISO 100 or 200, fully manual at between F4 and F6.3 (for a little depth).

The first image above was a CR2 raw image was shot at 0141hrs: 563 second exposure (around 9mins) done at F5.0, 0ev bias, fully manual, on BULB, with a wireless remote, ISO 100, 24MM. All I did in Lightroom post was clean up a little noise, adjusted the white balance (distant lights of Highway 401 were causing an orange tint), and added a vignette.

I had to contend with cars coming by and so several of the shots I did I cut short as a car turned down the road and I got lovely but damningly unwanted light trails and headlights on the house...

I eventually repositioned the camera to a slightly different vantage point about 30m further down the road so as to capture the excavator on the property as well as the house. The change in angle gave me a view in the distance of the 401 and its light trails in one spot. So I collapsed the telescoping legs of the tripod and that allowed me to not see anymore light trails. It also altered the perspective of the shot as I was now closer to road level which was about 1m below the bottom edge of the house.

The image below, which was the last of the night, was a CR2 raw image shot at 0242hrs: 600 second exposure (ten mins on the nose) done at F5.0, 0ev bias, fully manual, on BULB, with a wireless remote, ISO 200, 24MM. Same post work as the other image.

Night farm, view #2, 2009

One interesting and unexpected thing I encountered - aside from a fox, were the write times to the card. The long exposures - about 8- 9 MB files each time) at 100 and 200 ISO would take several minutes to record to the CF card (a SanDisk Extreme II). Regular 8-9MB shots same ISO during the day don't take anywhere that long, but it was perhaps not surprising given the amount of data that was being written.

The images are not sharp and I was disappointed by that. Even with a tripod, in near total darkness, focusing manually is pretty much impossible. I put one of the focus marks on the house - as best as I could tell. I shined a flashlight in one hand and tried to see the light falling on the house through the viewfinder but it was still pretty iffy.

For composing the shots, I quickly came up with the following technique. Shoot a frame at ISO 1600 for say 20-30 seconds. It will buffer much faster, and while it won't be a useful image, it will actually allow you to see what you have in front of you. You can then make any slight pan, tilt, or swivel adjustments to the camera as needed. I did that and then shot another test, and there you go. I am sure thats nothing new to a lot of you out there, but I came up with it on the fly - mainly because I didnt want to wait 6-10 mins to see if something was in the frame, was level and such. I had never shot using Bulb before last night either.

I stood around a lot doing this. I was there about two and a half hours, and shot only about 25 images. And several of those were the short targeting ISO 1600 ones. The waiting while the exposure was taking place, and the waiting while it was buffering was interesting. As was the light amount of tension (pun intended) caused by hearing cars and hoping they would not come down the road and ruin another shot.

Recommendations: Flashlight with a red filter. Turn off the display on the back of the camera so your eyes adjust. Remote trigger for the camera. Sturdy tripod. ISO 1600 for framing. A powerful light and someone else to aim it for initial manual focusing. A warm jacket -depending on the season. A road less travelled. And a good deal of patience.

I had almost all of those last night. An assistant would have been helpful though. You can only chant so many mantras in ten minute blocks, and having someone to chat with would have been good... :)


Mike

Mike Wood Photography

First and Last use of Embassy

Ambassador Sarah #11, 2009

These were the last images taken - that I am aware of, using the old Embassy Hotel here in London as a backdrop. They were shot five days before the fire that destroyed the place. Closed since February of this year, the fire precipitated an earlier than planned demolition: the block it was on is going to be turned into a multistory 150 unit condo/apartment building.

These images were shot mainly behind the Embassy and in adjacent alley areas, and on the fire escapes. They certainly showcases some of the vibrant creative graffiti and wall art that was present back there.

It was my first time shooting behind the building. And last. I was lucky that circumstances fell together that I had someone so photogenic to work with that afternoon. Another few days and none of these would have been possible.

Model is Sarah and the makeup, hair, styling was done by her. One of her images from our portrait session last fall is part of my current show at the Williams Coffee Pub at 3030 Wonderland Road South here in London. It runs till the end of the month.

Ambassador Sarah # 2, 2009

Ambassador Sarah #4, 2009

Ambassador Sarah # 3, 2009

Ambassador Sarah #5, 2009

While the wall art and graffiti demanded colour, I would be remiss if I didn't process a couple of shots in black and white.

Ambassador Sarah #6, 2009

Ambassador Sarah #9a, 2009

Ambassasor Sarah #1, 2009

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Sometimes a flower is just a flower.

Blossoming Ovaries, 2009

Same day I photographed the church, I photographed an apple tree covered in blossoms in an orchard I probably shouldn't have been in near London. I found a nice isolated branch and shot the base image for this.

Bright blue sky, circular polarizer at a good angle from the sun, upped the contrast and saturation in Lightroom, then rotated and mirrored in CS3. I felt that the final image had a slight reproductive diagram composition, and my friend Stacey in Florida suggested something in commenting on the image which resulted in the title I am now using.

Looks great large and I don't mean click on the image large, I mean the original 8021 x 2387 pixels large. :)

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

High speed synch

Was going through my blogroll (on the right of my blog if yer reading this on FB) and came across a video done by noted National Geographic photographer Joe McNally. He is into high speed synch for capturing movement and posted a video of a shoot in the desert with a couple of dancers. Check out his lighting rig with the bank of flash heads on a mast held by an assistant. First seen at :48sec. The final image was 1/8000th of a second. :)



If you are on FB, you won't see the video so check it out on my blog.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Blue and Onions

Blue and Onions, 2009

Russian Orthodox Church of Christ the Saviour here in London Ontario. Built in 1959.

It was a blue sky kind of day yesterday. I went for a short drive to clear my mind and redeem myself after a disheartening photographic setback the day before. It was really quite windy and cold for May - like 40F / 8C and so after a quick foray into the countryside, and an in car lunch with a green thumb friend, I headed back through town and came across this church - located close to where I now live.

I had first seen this church about 13 years ago when I first visited London, and thought about photographing it at the time- but that was in my 'not really into photography' days. The only angle at the time I liked wouldn't work for a good exposure as it was slightly up hill, always facing South into the sun, had power lines in the way and so on.

Well yesterday and 13 years later, I decided to give it a go and found this relatively square structure has impressive entrances on all sides. And this particular angle, framed with the trees and free of power lines, is much more appealing than the one I wanted before. I beleive it is the front entrance of the building too given the placement /orientation of the building sign on the lawn (not visible).

Checking the church's web site just now, mine is similar to the official image they use. Though mine is perhaps a little better. :) However, check out the construction images of the church they posted. They are pretty cool.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Thomas Hawk's photo workflow

Thomas Hawk, the San Francisco area photographer that I first encountered on Flickr quite a long time ago, blogged an updated version of how he manages and edits his photos. The workflow is from the gear he uses to shoot, right through archiving to publishing. I'd like to learn more about his backups with Drobo devices which to this point I had not heard of.

It's pretty straight forward - and aside from the gear envy I had, a good read. Especially if you use Lightroom. :)

Found via a post on FriendFeed. Not sure what to link to on that for stories etc, but I created an account on that site last night.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Hubert Van Es dies at age 67

Photograph by Hubert Van Es/Bettman - Corbis

The maker of an iconic photograph died yesterday. Hubert Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist working for UPI who covered the Vietnam War, and took one of the best-known images during the Fall of Saigon in 1975 — died in Hong Kong on Friday, May 15, 2009. He was 67.

Until I read this page I was convinced, and would have described the image as US citizens and staff of the American Embassy getting into a helicopter on the roof. However, Van Es said it was actually an apartment building for the employees of the United States Agency for International Development, its top floor reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy chief of station. The address was 22 Gia Long Street, not the embassy. And the people on the ladder were Vietnamese and not American.

It was shot with a 300mm lens from half a mile away. He shot 10 frames, then went to the dark room and processed them and transmitted the image via telegraph to Tokyo. One 5x7 print with a caption took 12 minutes to transmit. And I complain when loading images off the CF card into Lightroom takes too long... :)



Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Day after the Embassy Hotel Fire

Frontside, Embassy Hotel, the day after

I shot these this afternoon, in a light rain, the day after the Embassy Hotel fire that I posted yesterday/this morning. Dundas Street was still closed off to traffic East and Westbound between Elizabeth and English, but you could walk on the South sidewalk.

Not as much exterior damage as I expected, but you can see through some of the upper windows that the roof is gone, and I imagine from above it would look quite bad. Did black and white this time, just because it suited the mood of the place.

Still blocked off 20 hours later...

In the above image, in the right set of windows, the left pane looks like melted glass as opposed to the right one that is clearly shattered.

Firewalker

... and his disciples.

What light through yonder window broken...

Cutting for Jesus...

Red 7. Exiting the scene.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

Embassy Hotel in London Burns

View from South side of Dundas, West of Embassy

The Embassy Hotel here in London burned last night. It had been closed since February pending demolition and conversion into 150 unit apartments or condos, it, like the Wick before it, went up in flames.

I went out n shot some images once I heard it was on fire and you could smell the smoke from as far as Adelaide south of Hamilton. At that point after 1030pm, the fire was down to hot spots and they were just dumping tons of water on it. There were six trucks, plus support vehicles and a St John Amb relief station for the firefighters.

Dundas was closed off from the Palace Theatre to English, English and Hewitt were closed in the blocks leading to Dundas and the rear of the Embassy was closed mostly as well. I couldnt get too close (aside from asking a seargeant to cross a police line once and he OK'd it due to the dSLR mainly I think), and the ISO was grainy and noisy, but here you go.

I circled the fire to see what I could get from multiple angles, but No flame visible in any of the shots. And in the back the smoke was rather heavy and it had little appeal to me to breathe in burned up crack needles and god knows what else, so I decided to leave eventually.

Ironically, I did a photoshot outside of the Embassy Hotel just last friday. I will post some of those when the model has received them all. I was probably one of the last people to shoot there.

View from rear close to Palace Theatre

Firefighter at rear of Embassy

View of rear of Embassy

View from corner of English and Dundas. East of Embassy.

View from close to Hewitt and Dundas.

View from close to Hewitt and Dundas.

View from close to Hewitt and Dundas.

Aerial ladder on Dundas Street above Embassy

View from close to Hewitt and Dundas.

View from close to Hewitt and Dundas.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

When he says it, he means it

Tim Berners-Lee saying as part of the intro to his talk "I invented the World Wide Web." Not pre Global Warming Al Gore foolishly taking credit for it in the 1990s, but the man who actually did it. A 16 min video from his appearance at TED this year. Talking about how hypertect came about, how the web started, where he thought it was going to go and where it might still go.

If you were around to see the early HTML and the net before it was the web, it's worth looking at. Even if you were not, its an interesting watch.




Mike

Mike Wood Photography

G-10 or LX3?

I have been looking at cameras recently. My Olympus PnS has finally become so unreliable that I am swearing off the Stylus line after close to 20 years of different models. I want something bigger but not dSLR sized. Rangefinder sized.

My initial thought is for something like the Canon G10, 14.7MP camera. Looks slick feels good in the hand with its magnesium alloy body, but there seem to be some concerns in the noise caused by cramming of all those pixels on the sensor. That seems to be the only drawback. I want something I can carry around unobtrusively while, say, shooting on the streets of Toronto or on trips without drawing attention to myself etc.

A couple of good reviews are here and here of the G10. Noise is the issue mainly, as I said before. Check out this side-by-side noise comparision at iso800 of the G10 and the LX3 and the Nikon Coolpix P6000 on dpreview.com. iso1600 is brutal for all three but the LX3 seems to be least horrific...

All things being equal, I might go for a Panasonic LX3. The full review of the LX3on dpreview starts here, and as with all their reviews its uber detailed. There are some good points in the comments in this post too.

Canon G10 is $579.99CAD and the Lx3 is $599.99CAD at Henry's. At B&H online the prices are $449 and $459USC respectively.


If anyone has any thoughts on either of these cameras - especially at the higher iso's I would love to hear them.

Mike

Mike Wood Photography