This and That

Feb 182012

Been working on creating more download packs. Tedious work. But I should have them finished tomorrow. Two more color download packs, and two more b&w packs. All with the same idea, 11 files for $10.

Yesterday, had a long interview for an upcoming book about photography. Very pleasant. You can pretty much just ask me the first question on your list and then worry that I'm going on too long. I'd hate to be the guy that has to transcribe it all and make sense of it since I do digress all over the place though eventually make my way back to the start of the story.

And then I even managed to find time to go out and take a couple of pictures this afternoon. Got out around sundown which along with dawn would be the best times to shoot if there's nothing in particular going on and you're just hoping for good light.

What we used to call "the magic hour."

So I found a good old gnarled tree and did some HDR with it. It's not really "painted" or anything fancy – just run through Photomatix with an preset I created for trees at sundown.

Anyone notice the other day that B&H had Lightroom on sale (the full version) for like $70. One day only. What's up with that? New version about to be released?

Anyway – this is Fifth Avenue looking into the park around 100th street. It might be better in b&w – I may play around with it some more later.

But as I say – main thing to get done this weekend are the download packs. They have worked out well so far, and since the process is entirely automatic once the package and programming is put together – i.e. the link goes out without me having to answer any email – it has possibilities. I was thinking yesterday – during that interview that they'd be a great resource for anyone that had nice big digital frames.

I was asked if I thought it was worth learning how to print – and I have to say – I begin to wonder about the life of the paper print. I really think it will go the way of the paper book. I just don't know whether that will be within the next five years or the next 40 years.

I mean – what percentage of your images do you print? Do you print them if you don't have a customer requesting them? In my day – which wasn't all that long ago – the print really was the final piece of the process. When you had a good fiber print – you were finished. Now I don't know anymore. You may be finished when you've displayed it in G+.