Racing Days

Went racing with some friends last night to Knockhill circuit in Fife. Great fun, and super photo opportunities too.



*Canon EOS 30D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS @ 200*

*1/500 @ f/7.1, ISO 800*

Mugabe: Nice chap, really.

Nice to see the BBC getting the ball rolling on rehabilitating Robert Mugabe's image. Turns out it was all a misunderstanding and Britain's fault, really.

Personally, I'm relieved. I was worried that we had finally found a problem in the world that couldn't be directly blamed on Britain or America.

In other Zimbabwe news, they've just launched a banknote with a face value of 200,000 Zimbabwe dollars. What does that buy you in Mugabe's paradise? A bag of sugar - if you can find one.

Triggering FlickrExport with Quicksilver

I figured out today how to get Quicksilver to trigger FlickrExport. Here's how:

• Get the User Interface Access plugin installed
  
• Enable "Proxy Objects" in the Quicksilver section of Catalog prefs.
  
• Launch Aperture
  
• Invoke Quicksilver, type "current application" and perform the "show menu actions" action.
  
• Now type "Flickrexport" to bring up the menu item.
  
• Hit escape to back out of actually invoking it.
  
• Invoke Quicksilver again and hit Cmd-, to open prefs
  
• Add a new HotKey trigger
  
• Here's the trick: the last displayed action is still visible in the trigger setup sheet.
  
• Hit return and assign a keystroke to it. I chose Cmd-Ctrl-E.
  

That's the insight right there. I don't otherwise know how to get to proxy objects in the triggers setup sheet.

I haven't yet imagined what happens if you invoke this without Aperture as the current application. Probably bad things.

Disclaimer: Quicksilver is deep and complex. If you're a QS beginner, the above will seem obscure to you. Unfortunately, I simply do not have time to school you in Quicksilver 101 via the comments on this post. Merlin can show you, though.

Sunrise

Started working through a large backlog of photos to post to Flickr from various recent trips. Here's one from an early morning in San Francisco:



*Canon EOS 30D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS @ 60mm*

*1/1000 @ f/16, ISO 100, -2EV*

Taken a few minutes after this one, which has been pretty popular on Flickr. The time is wrong on the photo, since I had only stepped off the plane about 10 hours before this and forgot to reset my camera's clock (and further forgot to compensate for that in Aperture).

My first morning on the West Coast of the US is about the only time I am ever up and about early enough for dawn photography in the summer. Photographing dawn and sunset in Scotland is easy in the winter - they're only about six hours apart.

Simplicity

Nobody ever really admits to wanting to buy a DSLR just to take photos of their kids but, sometimes, I can't really think of a better reason. A couple's second child usually has fewer photographs and keepsakes made, but I'm trying to buck that trend with Beth. I really wish I had photographs this good of April when she was a baby.



*Canon EOS 30D, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8*

*1/200 @ f/1.8, ISO 400*

Shot with the Child Lens (a.k.a. the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8). People are probably sick of me boring on about this lens, but it really is sensational. One of the beauties of this lens is the lightning-fast autofocus. It's really, really, really fast and this makes it one of the best of all my lenses for keeping up with flying children. Beth doesn't move that fast - yet - but even babies don't sit very still for very long.

If you're looking for a nice prime lens for portaits, I'd really recommend looking at this lens.

I've been on a bit of a simplicity kick in photography recently. I discovered the Monochrome picture mode on my 30D, which is pretty cool. I don't know what it does when you're shooting JPEG, but when shooting RAW it causes the LCD preview to be rendered in B&W, so it feels like you're really shooting Black and White.

When you pull the shots into Aperture, the RAW data still has the colour information, so the images show up in colour. My next step is usually to apply a Monochrome filter to the first image, then lift it with Lift and Stamp and stamp the filter onto the rest of the images in the project.

Aperture tip: Did you know that, when stamping onto multiple images, you can stamp one image, then shift-click on another image and the stamp will be applied to the intervening range of images? Think of it as analogous to shift-click to extend the selection. That way, you can turn an entire project into B&W with two keystrokes and three clicks. (See: Performing Image Adjustments manual p13-14).