dispatches

The latest video

The Quebecois Session from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

My next door neighbor Sue regularly hosts a Quebec music session with some of Seattle's finest musicians, and invites me to listen. Here is the video.

The making: this was my first video with the new Zacuto finder, which snaps onto the LCD screen and magnifies it. It allows me to actually focus the 5D. It  This almost makes the 5D into a real video camera. 

I shot with a plan to do cutaways. The great thing about when musicians play in a session is that they repeat the tune again and again. I put markers on the beat and layered them in the timeline. It was fairly easy to align the markers so that in any track I picked the playing was in sync with the master audio track. 

Having things like this happen on my street makes me feel spectacularly lucky to live where I do. 

No complaints

Yesterday I had what is known in the pejorative as a “grip and grin” assignment. Important people cutting a ribbon at a facility opening. Even though this kind of job may not command the reach of my creative abilities, I gladly and cheerfully took on the job.

John Harrington, in his excellent photo business blog, has a couple of posts, here and here, about the ethic of going a great job, no matter what, and of never copping an attitude of, “This work is beneath me.” Sure, a beginning pro would have done a good enough job for this client, and it would have cost them a lot less than hiring me. Being available, and being known for going above and beyond, even on a pedestrian assignment, pays too many dividends to count. Let me talk about the personal dividend.

It's harder than it looks to make these shots work. I was thrilled that the ribbon cutting was outdoors. However, the plaza was surrounded by tall buildings. The light was soft but only from overhead—I knew I'd need fill if I wanted my subject's eyes to be anything but black cavities on their faces. I shot everything with fill flash, set one stop beneath ambient. I tested the setup, and nailed down a manual exposure that wouldn't budge if I varied the shot (which would happen on AE). I figured out my angle, cleaned up the background (I moved a jacket protruding from behind a banner, and chose a position that hid a cardboard box behind the sign. The moment happened, and I got the money shot.

Then it was time to find my picture. The Husky marching band and their cheerleaders were part of the scene. What could be better? I moved close and worked the scene. When the cheerleaders performed, I quickly discovered that my preferred angle for these situations, shooting from the ground, was a major no go. Their skirts were way too short. I switched to the band, which was dynamically more interesting anyway.

I also got empty classroom shots, pictures of what looked like important people talking together, and anything else I could think of that my client might want, but didn't know to ask for. It was in service to keeping myself valuable to a client that I like, but more importantly, about keeping my own curiosity stoked by finding novelty in the ordinary, wherever I can.

Buying equipment? Buy locally!

When I decided to buy a second 5D Mark II camera body, I did not once consider buying it online. I called my local camera store, Glazer's Camera, asked them to hold one for me, and went down the next day to pick it up. I have no interest in knowing how much I might have saved. I know the savings would have cost me more than I wanted to pay.

I have been loyally buying almost all my camera gear from this store for 25 years. When I was a lowly assistant, just starting out, they gave me a credit account. When I was setting up my darkroom, they let me take home a box full of enlarger lenses so I could test which had the least falloff. I've exchanged items, for which I threw out the packaging, with no argument. They've guided my lens choices and helped me figure out obscure settings on my latest generation cameras.

One of the three 16gb cards that I bought with the camera seemed to be acting funny. On the download, there were gaps in the image number sequence. Shots I remembered taking weren't there. I kept using it, trying to make it fail again so I could puzzle out if it was the card, the camera, or the card-camera combo. Finally, I shot a series of 50 shots in my garden. 40 of them failed to record on the card. Then the card failed to format.

I'd never known a card to fail before. Neither had they. But I knew the exchange for a good card would be instant, without question. And it was.  

New Media 2012 conference

I attended the Social Media 2012 conference on Whidbey Island today. The location is no accident. South Whidbey appears to have the highest density in the world of thinkers and over-educated professionals who telecommute for employers and clients all over the world. A good proportion of them were either presenters, organizers or attendees at this conference. 

Robert Gilman posited a metaphor for human history akin to ecological succession. We have emerged from the pioneering stage where growth and abundant resources are primary, to a complex, climax ecosystem that encourages niche development, biodiversity, and efficient use of resources. It's a bit of a stretch to tie in contemporary developments in social media to ecological and consciousness transformation, but hey, we're on the West Coast. We talk that way out here. 

Joe Pulizzi, presenting via Skype from a remote location far away, remarked on the cyclical pattern of the 19th century with many voices in the media, to the 20th century of a few dominant players who controlled mass media, to the 21st of many voices again controlling the media ecosystem. He maintains that by 2012 the 70/30 split of mainstream/new media advertising will be reversed.

Tom Kennedy, the former National Geographic editor, made the point that now audience time is the scarce resource. Alexis Gerard highlighted some amazing statistics: Flickr has 3 billion photos, and adds 5000 more per minute. Russell Sparkman, the primary organizer of the conference, gave balm to my ears when he said that the trend is for increased reliance of professionally generated media. 

A consistent theme I heard from all the presenters is that, no matter the vehicle, content is what drives engagement with social media. 

What I suspect is one version of what this can look like in its maturity is the corporate entertainment social media that Brent Friedman constructs for the likes of Valemont University for MTV. There are multiple levels of viewer (hard to call them that anymore, actually) engagement in Twitter, Facebook, games, websites, plot development, backstory. It ain't just TV anymore. 

Games are huge, much bigger than I had a clue. 12 million play that Facebook Farmland game. Who knew? That's what Joseph Tringali told me. 

Marcia Hofmann from the Electronic Frontier Foundation walked us through the fine print of the T&C for Flickr and Facebook, and noted the Facebook revolt earlier this year when they tried to change the terms of what they could do with user content. There is always going to be a tension between the media channels, who require user generated content, and the providers, and the trend is going to go in favor of the providers. So she says. I'm not so sure. 

John du Pre Gauntt had the best intro. Instead of a Keynote presentation, he said, “I'm going to boot up my alternate device,” whereupon he opened a notebook. “There, that didn't take any time at all.” He warned us against confusing buzzwords (“Cloud Computing') with reality. We don't care what they call it, does it work? Do we care that FedEx has a fleet of planes? No, we just want it there the next day. The point being, service is the point, not the technology. 

George Henny, of Whidbey Island Telecom, pointed out that the technological ecosystem of south Whidbey is a result of the high broadband capacity of this unique rural environment. Infrastructure matters. 

As an aside—I avoided the ferry line by parking at the dock and bicycling the 6 miles from the landing to Langley. It was pouring rain on the return leg, which made me feel exhilarated being so one with the elements, and morally smug when I passed the mile long line of cars lined up for the return ferry trip. 

The latest not-a-video video

University of Washington, fast from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

You know how, when you're scrolling through a bunch of photos real fast, you go, hey, that''d be so cool as a video? That happened to me yesterday as I was searching for a shot.

So I made them into a video. 

I say this is the take from an assignment, but it's really about 20% of the photos. I first strung together one day's photos, thought, that's cool, but I shot this other cool thing the day before that I want in there, and before you know it I had 6000 photos strung together with the Quicktime Pro "Start Image Sequence" command. 

Those I converted to ProRes mov files, then loaded them into Final Cut. I lost a couple hours searching for music in Rumblefish, then noticed that I way too much footage. I took all my mov files and made a zillion little sub-clips, and put the best ones in straight chronologic order. 

This morning I decided three minutes was getting a little tedious, and started cutting out bits here and there (including stuff I loved--ruthlessness is mandatory when editing), and tightened up the remainder. This, finally, I'm happy with. Just don't blink when you watch it. You'll miss an important plot point. 

Snow Leopard problems: resolved?

Knock on wood, my Snow Leopard problems are largely behind me. There is no replacement for hiring outside expertise.

Steve Sorbo. aka MacS.O.S., came by and fixed a ton of issues in an hour and a half. Here's the list.

• The disk permissions: there's a checkbox under "Get Info" to "Ignore ownership on this volume." In this case, ignoring the problem makes it go away.

• Gave me the clearest explanation I've ever had on how the Mac OS stores information, and the secret lairs for settings. It would have made my life easier (maybe--one goal was to purge my system of errant app settings) had I known to just drag over my home folder to the new disk, but who knew? Not me.

• Restored my missing junk mail folder in iMail.

• Transferred my iPhone apps from the laptop to the desktop. I have always been furious at Apple and iTunes about this persnickety monogamy of iPhone to a single iTunes, and the casual neutron bomb explosion it sets off when I try to sync to the wrong machine.

• He fixed my network! No one ever believed me when I said that networking never worked for me. I always got the "Macs don't do that" response, which settled it. He immediately figured out that my Airport and my DSL were two separate networks. I had no idea, and I would never have known how to know. Networks are one of those dark arts that require incantations and spells. But now I can full access to both computers.

• Remote access will have to wait. My Netgear router apparently is the blocking agent. I'll have him back soon to cast more spells.

• Found my Transmit settings so I can upload to my ISP again. I put that stuff in there once. I have no idea what any of those setting mean, so I couldn't just re-enter the information.

• He couldn't fix the Snow Leopard bug that reverts the Line Out sound setting to Internal Speakers when rebooting. Same behavior in a pristine user account, so it's nothing I did. Nor could he keep Photo Mechanic from opening when I plug my iPhone in. "Well, it is a camera," he said. Fair enough.

• I made him make one change that drove him nuts. Change Command-Spacebar so that it doesn't open up Spotlight. My muscle memory reserves that combo for zooming in my photo and video editing. Apparently, that keeps me out of the Mac geek club.

That masked man again? Steve Sorbo. www.seattlemacsos.com. 

The wrong lens

Last week, after our spate of wet weather, the Fill was awash with birds. And birdwatchers. “There's five kinds of warblers in this tree,” one of them told me (Yellow, Yellow-rumped, Black-throated Grey, Orange-crowned and Townsends, if you absolutely must know). I only found a couple of them, plus some Warbling Vireos, which are not warblers actually, but rather are victims of a confusing naming convention that make us birders sound like the obsessed geeks we really are.

I came to take pictures, mostly, with one lens on one camera, a 50mm macro. It's been my primary lens these past few months for my Daily Photo, mostly because it's so easy to find a compelling photo with it in a very small area in a short amount of time. The burn area was loaded with Goldfinches feeding on the burnt chicory stalks, and I really wanted another lens on the camera right about then. Like my 400mm. With an extender.

Living with regret is a personal specialty, so I happily resigned myself to the photographic possibilities I did have before me. I sat by the pond, and started noticing the close-in colors of the wet foliage. Soon I was nuzzling into various and sundry twiggy places and losing myself in that wonderful Zone of entrancement with the details in front of my face.

The next day, I was prepared. With the 400mm. On a windy afternoon where there was not a bird to be found. I couldn't exactly nuzzle the foliage with this thing, but I did figure out to tunnel through it and extract abstractions with the narrow depth of field at hand. The same that I always do, but different.  

More on Flickr, here.

Block party

Photos on Flickr

The plot thickens...more Snow Leopard problems

After a day's vacation from computer woes I looked again to see what else might be wrong. It's not pretty. 

I seem to have systemic file permission problems in all of my data drives. All this time I thought, I still have my old Tiger system on another drive, if I absolutely must I can revert. Well, the file permission issues are pervasive and independent of OS. Tiger doesn't even see half of my data drives (I have 8 on two eSata Burley boxes, and several more inside the computer). 

So much for my safety net. 

Next big problem. I fired up Final Cut and a Log & Capture window to download tape from a camera. Final Cut couldn't see the camera. If I open up Final Cut in Tiger, no problem, Log & Capture works fine. It's another Snow Leopard issue. 

I haven't dared to plug my iPhone into this machine yet. Something might explode. Or it will wipe all my apps and music, which iTunes wants to do anyway no matter what. 

Turned the computer off...

...and went for a hike.