Out of the Woods

My very favorite photography magazine has always been Popular Photography. I currently subscribe to the print version, and receive regular e-mails from them. When I saw an e-mail about their Digital Days seminars coming to both Boston and NYC, I jumped at the chance to attend one (I’m located about halfway between the two cities). I went to the Boston seminar a few weeks ago, and wanted to describe my experience.

The Saturday session is supposed to be for beginners and runs just in the afternoon. The full-day Sunday session covers more advanced topics and includes a live model shoot. Having never photographed people beyond your typical snapshot, I was anxious to try my hand at shooting in a makeshift studio.

I went into the Saturday session with very low expectations. Having shot a film SLR for over 20 years and a digital P&S for almost eight years, I already know the basics. However, I find that when listening to even very basic information, I sometimes pick out a gem that I didn’t already know. The instructor was well seasoned, having been a professional photographer who’s worked in the field for many years (he’s now an editor at Pop Photo), and was very comfortable with the subject matter and the audience. I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, and actually did pick up on a few new nuggets (such as why a grey card is 18% grey; I already knew it was 18%, but didn’t know why).

I was really looking forward to Sunday. Most of the morning was spent with the same instructor as Saturday, and he indeed did cover more advanced topics (such as color balance and flash). Unfortunately, this time it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. A lot of time was spent on the technical side of things, but very little was spent on what goes into making a better picture. Oh sure, there was mention of the rule of thirds, but I was hoping for more tips and ideas for composition and lighting.

Late in the morning, we went into the model shoot. There were five shooting stations set up with backdrops and modeling lights. There were seven models and a variety of outfits and props. Here again, I was disappointed. At no point were we given pointers on what would make a high-quality shot. After spending two half days learning the technical side of things, we were let loose and simply told to take pictures.

I was also frustrated by the setups. First, there were about 80 people attending the seminar, all trying to get the best angle at just five shooting stations. I spent half the time just trying to get a clear line of sight past everyone’s arms and shoulders to even take a photo. The other bigger frustration was the lighting. Each station had just two modeling lights providing illumination, and sometimes one of those lights was turned off. We were told to set our cameras to ISO 800 and to open our apertures full. Even with that, I had a terrible time holding my camera steady enough to get a sharp picture with no camera shake (and I have a VR–vibration reduction—lens). I did OK with a wide angle, but switching to a longer lens to get in close on the model was a disaster. I took over 240 pictures in less than an hour and was happy with fewer than a dozen of them. So, having that many people shooting at once and without strobes was an experience I thought was a limited success. You can find some of the photos I felt were good enough to share on Flickr.

After lunch, things got much better. There was another instructor who specialized in the software side of things, and he went through a complete workflow using Adobe Lightroom. Since I also use Lightroom, I really enjoyed learning some new techniques. He also used some of the photos taken during the model shoot for a critiquing session, which is what I’d been hoping for earlier in the day. He gave us some tips and pointers that would have been helpful before the model shoot. He even used one of my shots to explain an artifact that I’d run into in the past and couldn’t figure out how to get rid of.

The fun didn’t end when I left Boston. We were told that there is a Facebook group where seminar alums can gather and chat, but I prefer Flickr. I was able to find photos on Flickr taken by other photographers at both this seminar and others around the country. However, I was surprised that there was no Digital Days group. So, I started one. There are close to 100 photos there at this writing, and I’m hoping more people search for such a group when they get home from their own seminar and add their photos.

Overall, I was very glad I attended and truly enjoyed the majority of the seminar. While the first day was billed as for beginners, it definitely was not for point-and-shoot users. Since most of the seminar dealt with the technical side of things, anyone planning to attend really needs to be using an SLR with its power and flexibility to appreciate the information being taught. Finally, I thank Popular Photography for the opportunity to attend.

I’ve had a passion for photography since childhood. I remember my first positive camera experience was during an elementary school field trip to a farm. I had my cheap little plastic camera filled with 126 film. At one point, I saw a mother horse with her foal standing next to her in the classic horse pose. I excitedly framed and took the picture. I couldn’t wait to get the prints back. When I finally had the photo in hand, I was sorely disappointed to discover that while my viewfinder had a clear view of the animals, the lens the film used to see the world was smack dab behind a part of the wire fence. My classic picture had a big line through the middle of it, but I was hooked just the same.

In my early teens, I found an old 35mm camera while cleaning out my grandmother’s house. It was a completely mechanical rangefinder camera with no flash or light meter, but I was eager to start experimenting. In those days, the boxes that 35mm film came in included some exposure guidelines printed on the inside. So, using those guidelines, I started taking pictures, recording the exposure settings for each photo so I could match them up with the print and could fine tune my exposure guesses. I took quite a few nice pictures with that camera, including one of Cinderella Castle at Disney World that hung on my bedroom wall for years.

When I got my first summer job at age 16, the first thing I bought with my newly earned money was a Minolta XG7 SLR and flash. Automatic cameras were just starting to appear on the market, and the XG7 was an early aperture-priority model. That camera saw me through high school (where I was the yearbook photography editor), college (where I won an on-campus photography contest), and the births of my first three kids.

When digital point-and-shoot cameras started becoming affordable, I jumped at the chance to go digital, so bought an Olympus D460 in 2001, just in time for the birth of my fourth child. I actually had both cameras in the hospital with me because I was scared to death I’d do something stupid and lose all my digital photos.

I didn’t miss the expense of film and processing, nor the restriction to carefully pick and choose what I spent exposures on, but I did miss the features, power, and flexibility of an SLR. I kept an eye on the market, but with four young kids, spending a four figure amount on a camera just wasn’t in the cards.

Last summer, I began noticing how much the price of entry-level DSLR cameras had dropped. I fixed my sights on the $450 Nikon D40 and began scraping together the cash to buy one. An unexpected Christmas bonus came along, and I went straight to the camera store to finally get my digital SLR. I was able to move up to the D80, got a free zoom lens in the deal, and was in heaven.

So for the past four months, I’ve been rediscovering creative photography and have been living on Flickr and Twitter, looking at all kinds of photos and listening to lots of podcasts. I’m planning to add a photo gallery here on the blog shortly, but you can also see my stuff over on Flickr. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m loving it.

Nothing irks me more than to walk into a convenience store, parched and with no cash, grab a soda or iced tea, go to the register, and be met by a sign that reads “$5 minimum on credit cards.” There’s one store down the way from my office that has a $5 minimum on debit cards but no minimum on credit cards! I do everything electronically these days, including using a debit card for 99% of my brick-and-mortar purchases. It’s easier and often faster than cash and it makes getting those transactions into Quicken a no-brainer as I can download them directly from the bank.

Taking it one step further is the KFC I sometimes go to. They have signs everywhere that read, “ID required for all credit and debit card purchases.” That’s BS. The card companies guarantee payment to the merchant as long as normal procedures are followed during the transaction (the card is swiped, the slip is signed, and the signatures on the card and the slip match).

I did a quick search on these practices because I had a hunch they violate some credit card company rule, and I was right. The following comes from Visa’s own “Rules for Visa Merchants” booklet:

Always honor valid Visa cards in your acceptance category, regardless of the dollar amount of the purchase. Imposing minimum or maximum purchase amounts in order to accept a Visa card transaction is a violation of the Visa rules.

Over at MasterCard’s site, I quote from their “MasterCard Rules” booklet under the “Prohibited Practices” heading:

5.9.3 Minimum/Maximum Transaction Amount Prohibited
A Merchant must not require, or indicate that it requires, a minimum or maximum Transaction amount to accept a valid and properly presented Card.

How about asking for ID? Back to the Visa book:

Although Visa rules do not preclude merchants from asking for cardholder ID, merchants cannot make an ID a condition of acceptance. Therefore, merchants cannot refuse to complete a purchase transaction because a cardholder refuses to provide ID. Visa believes merchants should not ask for ID as part of their regular card acceptance procedures.

Now, I realize that trying to buck a store’s policies by arguing with the poor, minimum wage cashier will probably get you nowhere. However, you can still print out the relevant sections of the manuals and ask that they be given to management. You can also complain directly to the card companies, which I’m planning to do. I picked up the following information from an accounting information web site:

When merchants violate the policies described here, report them to Visa, MasterCard, and  American Express.  Address your letter to:

Visa USA
Consumer Relations
P.O. Box 8999
San Francisco, CA 94128

MasterCard International
Public Relations
2000 Purchase Street
Purchase, NY 10577

American Express
Customer Service
PO Box 297812
Ft. Lauderdale, Fl 33329-7812
1-800-297-1234 (U.S.) 336-393-1111
(collect) 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m., EST

In your letter, give the name and location of the merchant and a copy of a credit card sales slip. The sales slip is needed by Visa and MasterCard to track down the offending merchant. American Express provides card-members with a toll-free number to call if they have difficulty with a merchant. Make sure you have the complete details about the merchant and the problem before you call.

If a merchant is uncooperative, take your business elsewhere.

‘Nuf said.

Now here is somebody who is truly dedicated to a particular piece of software. I’m a fan, but not that much of one. I do find it very pretty, though. And yes, it is real and permanent.

Well, another one bites the dust. One more venerable magazine that started back when you needed to actually know something to build and use a computer has ceased its print operation and gone to a scaled-back digital version. It started with an e-mail a few months ago:

As a valued reader, we regret to inform you that Dr. Dobb’s Journal ceased its standalone monthly magazine with the February 2009 issue. The quality editorial coverage you have come to expect from Dr. Dobb’s Journal continues in its sister publication. InformationWeek will now include Dr. Dobb’s Report once a month.

Today, I received another e-mail that reads:

You may have noticed that you stopped receiving your print issues of Dr. Dobb’s Journal as of February this year. Well we are proud to announce that Dr. Dobb’s has gone Green! Going forward, Dr. Dobb’s will be available exclusively in digital format as Dr. Dobb’s Digest! Subscribe Now for your FREE digital subscription!

I still fondly recall the days of BYTE, Creative Computing, and Kilobaud. The personal computer grew up at the same time that I did, and I was happy to be a part of it. I was entering programs into a simple computer one byte at a time in binary using nothing but switches and lights when I was in middle school. My next computer ran BASIC, but the interface was an noisy, mechanical teletype machine with paper tape storage. FORTRAN on punch cards, batch processed on the downtown mainframe was the norm in high school. I was always the most popular guy in my college dorm on snowy, windy nights when people could access the school’s mainframe using my Apple ][ and 300-baud modem from my room instead of trudging down to the computing center to hunt out a terminal.

I know everything, including magazines and newspapers, is going digital these days. I’m the first to sign up for on-line bill delivery and payment so I can stop all that paper from invading our mailbox. But there will always be a place in my heart for page after page of program listings that you had to hand type into your PC, and those back-of-the-book ads showing all the newest gadgets and toys and endless lists of prices.

About 15 years ago, a colleague asked me, “Have you ever had the dream?” When he explained what “the dream” was, my jaw dropped because I had indeed had it many times. Now, “the dream” has been put to paper, and it’s even more widespread than I’d imagined. Normally, I find xkcd to be stupid or annoying, but this time they hit it spot on.

On this inauguration day, I just received a Twitter tweet from a breaking news service that I follow with the following text:

Israeli President says Obama was "chosen by the whole of humankind," says it is the correction of "one of the greatest mistakes in history."

My immediate thought was, "Boy, that’s ballsy to call Bush one of the greatest mistakes in history, especially coming from the president of another country." Then I read the rest of the released statement, and the sentence following the above quote starts:

What made history ugly, unmistakably, was basically slavery…

Oh well. I still like my original thought. )

Several years ago, when digital cameras were starting to make inroads into the film market, old-timers claimed that, while digital was indeed improving, it would never replace film for clarity, color, and sharpness. Well, The Gadget Show, based in England, decided to put the latest technology to the test. They used a pair of Nikon bodies, one digital and the other film, with a common lens, studio, and subject matter. Then they blew the images up to several stories high, hung them outside, and compared the images. There is a clear difference between the two, and the results are both surprising and, for me, extremely pleasing. Give it a watch.