I submitted the Marmot and the image below, neither of them were selected.  The reeds on water were seen to be too abstract, too graphically designed.  Ok, so it is a matter of personal taste but I did not expect a photo to be thrown out because of that.  I like the image still, not my very best but good enough to be a print on a wall maybe.

But I understand why the marmot was not taken.  His left eye is a little dark and there is only a little lightness in the right.  The background, while out of focus, is bright which can distract the eye.  Those are real photography issues and in this style of competition, it can of course not happen.  But the judge also danced around the topic of “cuteness”.  The marmot is not cute.  The eyes are too small for he the head, the teeth are too big and the “expression” is not one that says “awww” like photos of babies do.  In an open competition, this matters.  If I had chosen a puppy dog or something else with a higher eyesize / headsize ratio it may have stood a chance.  A classic case of neoteny.  Am I bitter?  No. I know the rules and could have anticipated it.  The winning photos btw, were abstracts and excellently made so cuteness doesn’t always win.

But it makes me want to submit a puppy dog image just to prove the point

Reeds on Water - Rocky Mountain National Park, CO

I came across a shop window displaying a Rollei 35T. The shop was tiny, in a side street and closed, so I had to come back the next day and play with it.  I could not get over the compactness of the camera, the elegance of the pulling the lens out and the intuitive way the light meter worked.  The shutter sound was just a faint zzzzt and it was perfect for candid shots, street scenes and the like.  Nobody would take it seriously and it was in that space between an antique and modern, hence thieves would not look at it.  I am not sure when it was made (it has the Tessar 3.5 / 40 lens, so it was made in Singapore sometime after April 2974, Ref.   Rolleiclub)

I had to have it and of course, still do and yes, it works perfectly now.  I think in 1992 I changed the battery for the light meter – yes it has one – and I had it professionally cleaned but that’s about it.  It has the elegance of a brick, is surprisingly heavy and has been with me on all pre-digital trips – often was the only camera I took.  It now has wear and tear and would not qualify as a collector’s item but man, its still a cute camera.  The biggest pain though is to put a film in, yes, even with experience but its still tedious.  I can see the engineers at Rollei fighting for the last mm of space and something had to give, its a compromise.

My Rollei 35 T is just like my Leica more of a memory how solid mechanical devices could be made than my go-to camera. But if I really needed to rely on a camera to get something done, I am pretty sure that it would find its way into my gearbag – if I can find film!

Every time I hike into mountains, I feel I am visiting someone else’s home, that of the animals, the plants and the “spirit”. Far from “foreboding” it is welcoming but demanding respect. I always imagine that the inhabitants look at me with a slight wry smile, what takes me tremendous effort, they do in 5 jumps. An example of this was a recent encounter with a Marmot – normally a very shy critter foraging on high mountain meadows. I had actually never seen one close-up, just in the distance as a fast disappearing large shape. And so, I was very surprised when we ran into one during a day hike up to Timberline Falls in Rocky Mountain NP. The marmot was very content to forage in our presence and at some point re-emerged from his den, plopped himself on a large rock and enjoyed the afternoon sun. I approached carefully and watched for sign of alarm, ready to retreat if I was disturbing him. Not a chance. I got withing 5m, he watched me but really did not care all that much. And that is the story of the marmot portrait below. By the way, a shoutout to Erik Stensland from Images of RMNP in Estes Park, CO.  Not only are his photos technically perfect and extremely well mounted and presented but as an autodidact and lover of the mountains he brings out the beauty of the mountains in a very raw form that showed his effort and dedication to them.  Great work!

This year, we kayaked out with friends (who own a fleet) into Annapolis Harbor.  It was an awesome experience, close to the water, (really close), with unobstructed views of the fireworks and amazing reflections on the water.  Kayaks really allow you do anywhere and we had superb “seats”.  Drinking beer is more difficult since the beer has nowhere to go – so we stayed sober.

Below is a video shot with a little Panasonic Lumix, quality is awful but no matter – it was a great evening out.

Bored with boats, I strolled a little and came across a mob holding smartphones up – looked like some for of pagan worship to the goddess of 3G.  Thumping music, impossibly skinny teenagers on stilts (well, 5 inch heels) and proximity to a bar suggested celebrities in the vicinity.  I found a higher spot and saw the famous Stanley Cup being hoisted by (hopefully) tanked up Bruins hockey players.  (note – I always thought hockey players don’t have teeth.  They do.   Maybe they put them in when they go out but they clearly own teeth).  So, away I shoot and with some patience, ISO800, 200mm lens and VR, I even get a few decent pictures.  Unfortunately, I have no idea about who is who there – I am hoping the wise internet can assist.  I recognized Dennis Seidenberg, Brad Merchand and maybe Rich Peverley but without the beards they wore in Vancouver for the Stanley Cup Finals 2011, they looked quite different!

The atmosphere was great, the players walked around the mob shaking hands, signing t-shirts and generally had fun.  They really looked like a nice bunch of guys and I am glad I was there to see them relaxed and at ease.  Godspeed Bruins!

But Apple’s iCloud had me irked a little.  More precisely, the press around it that hails it as the end of things to come or the tool to save the planet, depending on whose boots the journalist licks.  There isn’t anything really new for photographers, amateurs or professionals and if you have been using google docs or Dropbox, I can’t really see a reason to get excited.  See, photographers are in a weird and unusual position.  We have a gigantic stash of bits&bytes that we deem highly valuable but rarely – if ever – look at again.  And if someone outside our immediate trusted circle views the photo – rejoice!  Someone cares!  Contrast that to the sad and lonely world of accountants.  They create very small files that they really don’t want anyone to see.

It gets worse.  The average word length in the English language is 5 letters.  In modern computers, that translates into 10 bytes / word.  A single image is 19MB.  Case closed.  Pictures in the cloud are a massive waste of space.   But hey, its not my space is it? So, bring it on.

I have been listening to TWIP which really is a show where professional photographers compare the size of their …. lenses.  And talk about who had iPad 3 first.  But aside from the nonsense, they have real needs to rapidly and reliably back up data for it is their source of income.

Not surprisingly, these photographers rely less on the cloud than on in-house backup, racks of drives, NAS systems and so on.   The net is simply too slow for the onslaught of data that a single photoshoot brings.  Add the unreliability of the internet connection and the constant worry – “will my data be there when I log on” and in-house backup simply is still the norm.
For me as amateur, I have never done anything else of course – with the exception of using Mozy since I am a sucker for redundancy.  Mozy however is awful unreliable, incompatible with Ubuntu and has also gone quite expensive.

So, my workflow.  I have an ordinary PC with bits built from various old computers.  It runs Windows XP or Linux, depending on how I feel in the morning.  All my photos are stored on a second drive (i.e. not the drive that holds the operating system).

In the basement lives a NAS box with about 1TB on it.  Quietly humming away, it can be addressed via my wireless.  I use Cobian Backup – written by someone in Sweden and hence it has the lightness and elegance of an Ikea table.  But its free.  As in beer.  I love it.  Nightly, it compares my photo drive to the one on the NAS and updates where necessary.  My other computers also of course have access to this NAS and I can pull images onto my laptop.  There are some interesting things built into the NAS box – such as a DMZ that would in theory (and with a static IP) allow me to access it from outside the firewall but I have never needed to do this – just more headache.  If I really wanted to do this, I would just take an old linux computer and make it into a file server.

So, back to the cloud.  Of course, I use facebook, Picasa and Flickr.  Who doesn’t – and thats the cloud.  But I don’t like that the images are outside of my control and if Flickr tomorrow is bought out by the Chinese government and shut down for some reason, there is nobody who can stop that.  A little bit harder with my NAS in the basement.

One thing the cloud does bring other than backup is of course functionality. Programming CSS and other weird stuff to build your own slideshow is so 2008.  This site has a decent gallery function but it is neither easy to use, nor does it have the features that one expects nowadays from e.g. FLICKR.
And hence here is an embedded FLICKR show of recent photos – from the cloud, to the cloud. And backed up in the basement.

Since everyone has a “smart” phone and there is no such thing as decency on the net, becoming a published photographer is a matter of seconds, requires no skill, photographic talent or audience.  They can be online and never or rarely viewed (like the ones on this website) or viewed by millions like some stuff on Flickr or youtube.  In fact, it is probably easier to publis than “not” to publish.  But then again it is not that different from the film days where countless Kodachrome shots of grandchildren fill basements never to be viewed again.

So, a published photo is one that is used by someone other than the photographer for the intent of the photo, not the photographer.  I don’t think I ever had a photo until the National Park Service used my photo in their “Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail Interpretive Plan“.  Granted, a friend who works there asked me if I was interested to volunteer my photos for the purpose and of course I agreed but seeing “my” photo now in someone document is weird and in a way rewarding.  The photo isn’t that great but it does convey the mood of the situation fairly well – dedication of the historic reenactors and combination of static soldiers and the kinetic gun blast.

Cannon Shot

So, with this, I count myself as a published photographer and hope that whoever views this photo enjoys it and that it reflects well on the work of the National Park Service.

And so during our trip to Peru, the Old Man presented himself, suitably leaning against a wall in the warm glow of the early evening.  Clutching a coat (stereotype intact, old people are always cold), the photo is exactly as expected and as cliche as could be made.  In fact, I was wondering if he actually was not a wax figure positioned by the tourist buro but no – he moved occasionally (this doesn’t mean he wasn’t paid for that job).

I took the photo from the window of a small restaurant that tried hard to be a tourist trap and failed charmingly.  The light was perfect, the pose contemplative, I felt that I had taken the required photo and would not have to watch out for other codgers – this box was ticked off.

It made me think though, why are photos of the Old Man so common, so cliche and yet still convey such a serenity?  Why do I still think that this is a good photo?  It has – of course nothing to do with the Old Man himself.  He is most likely not contemplating deep mystical wisdom but wondering what kind of beans the Old Woman made him for dinner.  He is as serene now as he presumably was when he was my age – which is not very.  But in the photographer’s mind, he embodies a transcendence not of space but of time.  The same Old Man stood at that corner when the Spanish lived in the town and tried to force their way of life onto him.  We – the audience and the photographers – want this moment to last forever, a timeless capsule in the world that inevitably will take our lives, obsolete our photos, thoughts, ideas and blog posts.  The Old Man stands for immortality precisely because he is old.  And we want the photo since we can not have the serenity that we read into him.

It is almost embarrassing how painless the transition from Windows to Ubuntu was (specifically – other Linux “distributions” are different and seem to require more skill). There are many, many excellent guides on the net and the Ubuntu Forums brim with useful advice – if you can find it.  The problem of course is that everyone has different hardware and requirements and the number of permutations of computers is almost limitless.  I won’t write a complete guide – that has been done by others much better but list the sequence of events and some basic principles.

First Step: Inventory & Backup

Whenever messing with a computer, a backup should happen first.  I once lost a decent chunk of my PhD thesis because the fan of my PC blew out and I had backup – not sure the world would have cared if I had not included these chapters in the final print but I cared and hence had to write it all again.  Backup is crucial.  All my photos are – for now, about that later – on three different places.  Firstly, they are on my PC – the one I am about to install Ubuntu on.  Secondly, they live on a Thecus N4100Pro Network-Attached storage system that in turn is attached to my wireless router by cable.  It has ~680GB space which nowadays feels a little quaint but it quite sufficient for me. Thirdly, all my photos live on Mozy – a online pay-for-service backup company that has a good reputation – but is by far not the only one.  So, I feel confident that my photos are secure – even if I set fire to my PC.

Second Step: Making Space & Install Ubuntu as a second boot

Once the data is secured and the breathing is a little easier, I installed Ubuntu on my PC as a second boot operating system.  The idea was that I try out if all my hardware (and software) works before I get rid of Windows entirely.  To do this, go to Ubuntu.com and follow the instructions.  The guys there make it so simple that no amount of me summarizing can make it better.  Just make sure you have enough free space on your main drive.

If all works well and Ubuntu finds your hardware, all is well.  Working with Ubuntu is markedly different than Windows and about 1 hour reading about  things like Synaptic Package Manager, Wine (no, not the stuff that you drink, its a program) is probably a good idea.  There are oodles of helpful websites out there – google is your friend. This is the point where I pulled out my list of “things I do” and see if I can do it on a Ubuntu system. It had helped dramatically that even under Windows I had tried to use only programs that I knew would work under Ubuntu.

So here is my list:

Note that most things work quite well under both Windows and Ubuntu and hence the transition is painless. But I have yet to find a way to synchronize my iPhone under Ubuntu and to find a replacement for Mozy – the backup program.

Update

3 weeks into my Ubuntu experience the brand new hard drive died and when Linux breaks, it is truly spectacular.  None of that tame “blue screen of death” nonsense.  The Linux equivalent is called “Kernel Panic”.  Even the word can not describe the excitement that ensues, the blizzard of command lines presenting themselves, the cryptic messages displaying as if some underworld demon is trying to communicate with a wizard master.  I wrestled with the demon for a little bit trying to see if I could somehow fix the problem and in the end fixed it the easiest way possible, unplugged the drive and threw my old XP drive back in (which is what I am writing this on now).   My love affair with Ubunut was intense, brief and passionate and I long to repeat it as soon as I find a few hours and a new hard drive.