Cornell Capa & Alfred Eisenstadt, Gallery Opening of Eisenstadt’s Work, Late 1980′s, Soho, NYC

Cornell Capa, photographer and founder of the International Center of Photography.

The New York Times obituary has a couple of interesting things. Cornell and Robert Capa’s last name was chosen by Robert as an homage to Frank Capra.

When Cornell started to work for Life magazine in 1946 he and Life, “agreed… that one war photographer was enough for [his] family. [He] was to be a photographer for peace.”

I’ve been meaning to write up my thoughts/review of Aperture 2 for a while.  I will in good time; suffice it to say I am very happy with it overall and it’s got some great improvements.  I basically live in Aperture when downloading, editing and optimizing my assignments and personal work.  Photos still go to Photoshop as needed but Photoshop’s role is relegated to final file prep of custom files (as has been the case going back to Aperture 1.5 or so).

There is room for improvement in Aperture 2; features that need to be added, features that I had hoped to see corrected.  One of latter is the web gallery output.  I should be clear, in Aperture’s parlance I am referring to the “Web Page” output.  You and I may think that a web gallery is a web gallery is a web gallery but to Aperture a Web Gallery is a gallery that is tied into .Mac and nothing else.  I am not writing about the .Mac option.

The .Mac option according to Apple creates “sophisticated” web galleries.  To a certain extent this is true. The galleries tastefully incorporate the Apple design aesthetic and they now have web 2.0 options that let the viewer decide how he or she wants to view the content.  The galleries are the same as can be created in the current iPhoto. As a professional though I still find the options and controls lacking in the .Mac based galleries.  You cannot upload your logo or contact information, you cannot have an email link back to you, the galleries can only reside within .Mac which can run slow and will often have very long domain name addresses.

For these same reasons every pro I know that uses Aperture for web galleries uses the “Web Page” format. This will export a gallery to a folder that you can upload to your own server.  For reasons unknown Apple’s options for Web Pages have remained unchanged since the program’s launch a few years ago.  While it does offer nice clean design options the problems with it include what I mentioned above (no logo, no photographer contact information, no email link back to the photographer) and a few others.  The program always defaults to the same web theme, “Stock”.  If you are like me, you use one web gallery format for just about everything.  Apple needs to let the user select a web page default.  You also have no control over font size, font colors nor the background color of the web page within any of the web page themes.

This past Thursday I got off on a tangent and ended up creating my own Aperture web page template.  Now that I have done it, it’s one of those things I should have done much sooner.  It let me correct what I feel are the most glaring omissions in the web page output.  I was able to take my favorite template, “Proof”, and have it mimic the feel of my web site.  I added my contact information, logo/type treatment and I was able to add live links to my regular web site along with an email link on every page.

To do this you do need to know some html coding and have a rough understanding of CSS style sheets. You also need to remember that you are working under the hood, so be sure to back up the files needed and work on a copy of your in-use files.

There is a file called “Localizable.strings” in each of the language folders.  I did edit this file (it opened in Omni Outliner) to change the “ThemeName” to “JRP”.  I don’t know if this is necessary or not but I did it anyway.  Once done and saved I had to edit the extension back to “strings”.

In the language folder you’ll also see two Tiff files.  These are previews that appear when selecting a web theme or a web journal.  You’ll need to take screenshots of your new custom gallery and then size, save and rename them exactly the same as the Tiff files if you want accurate updated previews to appear.

Once complete do two things.  Copy your new web theme back to the WebThemes folder. Save a copy of your custom web theme somewhere permanently.  This is needed because it’s possible that a future update of Aperture could overwrite your custom theme since it resides within Aperture’s package contents.

The window showing my custom theme, “JRP”, as an additional option:

The detail page of my custom theme next to the standard Aperture “Proof” theme:

The new “JRP” gallery page:

I hope that Apple will pay some attention to the Web Pages in a 2.x update. Users should be able to choose font colors, the background color, add their contact information, have links to the their web sites and their email. Users need to be able to choose a web theme that Aperture defaults to whenever a new web page is created.

There is room for other improvements as well:

Web Page thumbnail and detail images need additional sharpening.  They come out a bit too soft.  I always end up batching the detail images through Photoshop to add a 0.3/25-30% Smart Sharpen to each one.

Web Pages need the detail image names to match the file/version names.  Currently, the web page themes change the name of a detail image to “picture-___”.  The metadata on the web page and the page title shows the correct name but if a client drags the picture out of the detail page to use for a FPO or to put into a folder of selects then the name they see is ”picture-___”.

Web Page creation needs to be faster.  If your raw images have highlight/shadow parameters set or some of the other raw controls then the web page export can be very slow.

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I’m fortunate to have some long term clients who have been with me over ten years.  We’ve made the transition from film to digital together and they’ve given me the opportunity to grow creatively.  Fordham University is one of those clients.  Over the past fifteen years I’ve moved from the kid who covers events and public relations to the photographer who helps create their marketing imagery.  They’ve never pigeonholed me and it’s let me expand my experience, my skills and reach new clients in other markets.

While I don’t cover events like I did when I first started I do cover Fordham’s Commencement.  Fordham gives me rough guidelines and lets me roam.  I’m not tied to covering the stage area and there’s often nothing that is a “must get.”  My task is to try and find some art in the annual rite of passage.  I’m often looking for a mix of images:  moments that capture the feel of the event, details that can act as metaphors, photos that have some humor to them, patterns that can be used in marketing materials and images that incorporate Fordham’s branding.

Here are some images from this past Saturday:

On assignment yesterday in New York City.  The forecast for the evening was at first good, then bad, then good, and then, once again, bad.  The skies cleared and good weather smiled on us.

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You turn around and 2008 is almost halfway over… Here are a few new portraits from the beginning of ’08.

Stuart Orefice, Director of Dining Services, Princeton University, Cover Story

Jack Schweberger, IT Manager, Barrett Paving Materials, IBM Custom Magazine

MaryAnne Gilmartin, Executive Vice-President Forest City Ratner, overlooking the Atlantic Yards project, Fordham Magazine

Practical Accountant Cover Story

As a photographer in the digital age it’s easy to forget to print your images.  99% of what I shoot for clients is destined for print (cmyk) but 100% of what I deliver are digital image files.  My images get to clients on DVD, hard disk or via Internet transfer (client downloading from my server or me ftp’ing to their server).  Couple that with screen evaluation of the image on the camera’s screen when shooting, the laptop’s screen if shooting tethered, and my calibrated displays in the studio; most image files pass through color managed, optimized and retouched but unprinted.

My personal work is similar.  These days most of it appears on my web site long before it gets printed.

Why print?  Because it will tell you things that seeing the image on a monitor will not.  It will remove the digital factors from the equation.  It will ground you and bring you back to the most basic of photographic mediums – the image on paper, held in your hands.

In 2008, I shoot with a 21mp camera.  It generates a 60+mb file.  It’s huge and incredibly detailed.  With the current software I can do almost anything with it; manipulate it and control it in ways that never existed with film.  But with all that data, all that visual detail, all that control and finesse you can get led astray.  Seeing a 60mb image file at 100% on your monitor you can burrow in so far you can get lost.  Is the grain and noise I’m obsessing about when evaluating an image at 100% really a factor?  How sharp is sharp?  What is sharp enough?  When does the feel of an image override its technical attributes or lack thereof? With all the control I have I can make it so that there is full detail in almost any image.  Is that good?  Would the image be better off with some of the blacks and/or some of the whites clipping as would have been unavoidable with film? When I view an image at 100% on my 30″ display it pretty much fills my field of vision.  How accurate is that?  It’s the equivalent of a print larger than 4′x6′ which should have a viewing distance of at least 6′ and I’m looking at it from 2′ away.  How can that not skew the way I evaluate an image?

One of the best ways to bring yourself back to reality when working on an image is to print the image.

I had the honor of photographing Emmylou Harris on Tuesday night while she performed a short set.  The client requested that I get the usual “I’m singing & playing” shots like this,

but that I also try to push it by telling the story through the details.  Here are a few more images.

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