You have to think that at some point in the past man stood on the shore and looked out across the water. Behind him was the land he knew, in front of him the water, the horizon, and the sky. Not having the ability to go to the sky, nor having the ability to travel under the water beyond one breath, he thought, I need to go across there. I need to visit the land off in the distance. I need to discover the land I cannot see. Then, having done that, having ventured across oceans and returned, the next realms were above and below.
To go to outer space, to work one mile down beneath the surface of the water, both are inhospitable environments which test the limits of our technology. Complicate each with additional risk factors, going to space with a reusable rocket like the Space Shuttle, or not only venturing one mile down but actually working there via robots and drilling for oil, and you have situations which demand great respect for planning and fail-safe backups.
The New York Times had an article recently exploring the parallels between the current Gulf situation and Melville’s Moby Dick. What has struck me though is how the oil spill in the Gulf reminds me of the two Space Shuttle disasters. Obviously, the goals in each are wildly different, science and exploration versus profit. But in each case, it was technology which brought us to the forefront of what was possible and it was human planning and decisions which determined whether it could be done safely and smartly.
The Challenger and Columbia Shuttle missions both revealed instances where corners were cut when better backup systems could have been incorporated. For Challenger, ejector seats and pressurized suits were foregone even though they had been included in test flights. For Columbia, the mission brought front and center the issues of designing a re-usable spacecraft without including a method of checking the integrity of the ship before re-entry and of not providing a way to repair simple exterior issues while in flight.
Similarly, in the Gulf of Mexico BP cut corners in its quest to turn a profit quickly and the government was lax its oversight. One would think that to drill for oil without the utmost in safeguards would be a deal breaker. While a business person might argue that the cost of that is too high, it inhibits exploration and production, what we are seeing is that the cost of notdoing that is even greater.
The leading edge of technology may make things possible but it’s the human element which will always be the mitigating factor.
I’m excited to announce that I have just joined up with Wonderful Machine, a web portal and photographers’ representative dedicated to connecting art buyers with photographers. Part sourcebook, part agent, Wonderful Machine actively promotes its photographers through its website, print ads, direct mail, email promos, and portfolio showings. It has managed to hold buyers attention in a crowded dissonant marketplace by carefully selecting its members and promoting them only within areas where Wonderful Machine sees a deep proficiency.
When you sign up with Wonderful Machine, as with any rep, they decide how you will be marketed and which images will be used. Users of the web portal can search by city or specialty, or contact Wonderful Machine directly to find the best fits for their projects.
It was great to see that Wonderful Machine’s photo editor saw the depth in my work to include me in five categories: architecture, corporate, institutional, landscape, and fine art.
For one assignment in NYC last week, it took three hours to get in (from 50 mi. away and not at rush hour). On days when that does not happen, the scenario is often killing an hour or two, finding a place to chill with the equipment for a while.
Bryant Park, NY, NY, March 8, 2010.
Proof that there are views in Manhattan where Stieglitz and photogravure are still alive.
Washington Square, New York, NY, April 2, 2010.
This past Friday I was in Washington Square; beautiful day, the late afternoon sun, sitting on the steps of a Washington Square North brownstone. No better way to pass the time than to watch the world go by in NYC.
One of the new features in Aperture 3 is the ability to create exportable slideshows. Images included can be still or moving and multiple soundtracks are supported. When you are ready to output you can choose the aspect ratio and export to different formats via presets (low res. to 1080p HD) or create your own.
It’s helpful to take a look in Aperture’s help file first to learn the lay of the land. Once done, it’s very easy. I tested this out creating a video for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, exporting it in 720p HD, and then running the video from my laptop direct into the hall’s HD projection system. It worked perfectly.
As with all things Aperture you can work from raws, tiffs, jpegs, or Photoshop format image files. Video included is similar but the controls are limited. You can trim a clip from within Aperture and that’s about it.
The video I created spans the past thirteen years. So, it covers the transition from film to digital. Still images in it run the gamut from scanned prints and scanned negatives (Nikon & Leica 35mm, Mamiya RZ) to Point & Shoot Digital (Olympus 2500L, Canon S2-Canon G10, iPhone) to DSLR (Nikon D1 & D1x, Canon 1Ds Mark I, II, & III). About half of the images are direct from raw files. There are three video clips included, the first from a Canon S2 and the last two from the iPhone 3Gs.
I used Aperture to do my edit, first gathering images already in the database into an album. I added the new scans and video clips. Then I started editing and ranking the images via the color tags (the 1-5 star based rankings were already in use and I didn’t want to disturb those settings.) I was able to quickly pare down the take from 369 images to 122 plus the three video clips.
Some of the preset export formats are *.m4v, Apple’s iTunes video format. If that’s the case and you want to use a more universal format you can open the file in Quicktime and re-save it. This will save it as *.mov.
All of the export options are video files. They can be sent automatically to iTunes and/or Apple TV, they can be shared online, or run via a computer to another device. They can also be burned to playable DVD but not within Aperture. To do that you need to open iDVD and add the movie file to a project within it.
