I consider myself lucky to have been include in a select group of folks randomly selected at the Adobe Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration to receive a copy of Photoshop 1.0.7 for the iPhone. Thanks to Adobe’s Russell Brown for the creation of this retro application for the iPhone (or at least announcing the news of it… seeing as it was actually made by development firm named Corona). So what’s the fuss about this app?
First let me burst most people’s bubble…
This app is not a full version of Adobe Photoshop 1.0.7 and only provides basic levels adjustments. (No cropping, no image rotation, no resizing, no curves, etc.)
Touch screen controls on the iPhone are quite clumsy to use
It’s not being distributed beyond the select pool of people who were given the opportunity to receive it at the 20th anniversary celebration
The app is not being further supported
The app is tied to specific iPhones ID’s.
Now that I’ve laid the ground work as to why you shouldn’t be upset Photoshop 1.0.7 is not widely available let me tell you why it’s cool.
For those who used the first or early versions of Photoshop the user interface is a real flashback
The startup sound is another great flashback and reminds Apple/Adobe fan of Pavlov’s theory of conditioning.
Adjusting levels by color channel (red, green and blue), in addition to a master adjustment is nice be able to do.
Really? That’s it?
Yup that’s it. This app highlights one function of the original Photoshop app. Nothing more and nothing less. Other photo apps that are currently available do tons more. This app hardly will become a part of my standard iPhone photo editing workflow. But if you’re a tech geek… meaning you grew up using Photoshop & old macs and still hoard old equipement and software (please don’t tell my wife) then you’d love this app. How long I’ll be inclined to show my buddies this app at bar-b-q’s and various tech events I don’t know. The shelf life might be quite short, but the inner geek in me loves it.
The South Dakota Badlands have a menacing beauty. Colorful, rich in texture and expansive, the Badlands under the right conditions can provide a landscape photographer endless opportunities. Having visited the Badlands National Park in the spring I was happy to find intense green grass dotted throughout the landscape. Recent rains and overcast light enhanced the intensity of the green grass providing a nice offset to the rusty red color normally found in the sedimentary layers of the eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires. Spring in the Badlands is certainly not a bad place to be with your camera.
Stormy Badlands - Badlands National Park, South Dakota
Technical Info:
Canon 1Ds Mark III, 16-35mm f/2.8 II USM, f/22, 1/10 sec
Looking back for an older photo in my library I rediscovered this gem of my two dogs. Zoe, the German Shepherd… an adolescent at the time, and Moe, the Jack Russell Terrier playing ball. Well from the look of this photo it looks as though Moe is about to be lunch for Zoe. Rest assured they were playing and this brief moment looks fierce, but they’re best buds and no one was hurt.
Top Dog - Zoe the German Shepherd chasing Moe the Jack Russell Terrier
I look at this photo and I can think of a ton of captions:
Pays To Keep an Eye On Your Competition
Keep An Eye Over Your Shoulder
Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer
etc.
Any captions I’m missing?
Anyhow the moral of the story here is always look to rediscover photos in your library as you’re finding older work. You might surprise yourself as to what you find.
Yesterday the professional free skier C.R. Johnson died in an accident on the slopes of Squaw Valley, California. My heart goes out to his family and friends. I first crossed paths with C.R. while shooting the 2005 Icer Air event in San Francisco. In 2005 Icer Air caught the attention of millions of people who were witness (in person or on TV) to the odd juxtaposition of extreme skiing and snowboarding against the backdrop of steep San Francisco hills, mansions and iconic landmarks such as Alcatraz. The scene was surreal, but the energy was intense. At this event C.R. Johnson won the skiing competition. His enthusiasm for the sport was palpable and his energy lit up those around him. I never knew C.R. other than this one time we crossed paths, but seeing how his influence in this sport grew and his incredibly positive energy impacted others it’s obvious now the sport has lost a great ambassador. More on C.R. Johnson can be read over at Chase Jarvis’ blog
C.R. Johnson being interviewed after winning the 2005 Icer Air skiing competition in San Francisco, California
Before I got too enveloped by some domestic distractions over the past week or two (moving my home office, caring for a sick dog and tending to my pregnant wife) I read a great post by Jay Goodrich titled “Where Does Your Inspiration Come From?” I’ve had this blog post open for a couple weeks and I’ve reread it and rewatched the video numerous times.
Clearly if I kept this blog post open on my computer for this long it struck a nerve. Laughably it struck quite an odd nerve in me too. As a child of the 70’s I wasn’t exposed to 600 cable channels and simple things like the advent of color photography and color movies captured my imagination. With no video games at hand I often watched TV with an interest in a variety of old movies & sitcoms. At the time there seemed to be an equal number of black & white shows on TV as there were color programs. Between this and looking at old photo albums the world seemed to magically turn color only a short time before I was born. The more contemporary programs I’d watch were mostly sports focused and fed a youthful addiction to memorizing baseball & football team rosters and stats.
What does this have to do with Jay’s post? My “child of the 70’s” brain instantly thought of two programs that inspired me early on and later have surfaced in my photography efforts. Any guesses to the programs?
ABC’s Wide World of Sports
Replace “sports” with “photography” and “athletic” with “photographic” in the opening sequence of this show, as seen in the video below, and you’ll step a little closer to my mindset and inspiration. Photography has always been a technical challenge, and for me a sport unto itself. Plus who can forget/love the classic quote “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”. If you want to know what goes through my head when I get a shot or miss a shot the imagery of that sequence is what plays in my head every time.
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom
As if I haven’t dated myself enough, most of my earliest exploration to the world of wildlife was through National Geographic magazines and books. When I first caught a glimpse of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom I was hooked. It was fascinating to see 1) diversity of animals 2) wild animals in context to man made objects (ex. a Rhino slamming into jeep/rangerover) and 3) the active efforts of conservation. My interest in exploring nature (studying ecosystems, understanding animal behavior, even learning about geography, etc.) can be traced back to programs such as this.
By today’s standards these shows would hardly grab the attention of most youth, but back in the day they were inspiring. Little did I know that they’d inspire so deeply or for so long.
Fitting a huge eye-catching scene into a 35mm frame can often be a daunting task. I routinely see photographers attempting to do this and missing the mark. Experiencing a grand scene and capturing it effectively for others to experience often eludes photographers. One trick of the trade is to leverage a component of your scene for scale. In many instances the object included for scale is the element of focus and other times it can be a secondary object lending itself to provide viewers an anchor to make sense of the scene.
As an example photographers photographing Mavericks will either shoot a close up of the surfer losing all perspective to the scene or they’ll include a view of the massive wave with the surfer. The later can produce some jaw dropping images highlighting the size of the waves in relation to the surfers.
2nd place finisher Shane Desmond surfs a giant wave in the second heat of the 2010 Mavericks Surf Contest held in Half Moon Bay, California on February 13, 2010
Another popular technique to exploit an exaggerated sense of scale is to utilize a tilt-shift lens or employ a faux tilt-shift effect. Capturing an image with a very shallow depth of field or mimicking a very shallow depth of field can make normal photo subjects look like toys. To exaggerate the sense of scale, in the previous image, I used Photoshop to apply a Gaussian Blur to a duplicate layer of my image. I then applied a layer mask to show all but a thin ribbon of the blurred photo… revealing the in focus layer behind. The result is the following version of the photo.
Toy effect added in post-production of 2nd place finisher Shane Desmond surfs a giant wave in the second heat of the 2010 Mavericks Surf Contest held in Half Moon Bay, California on February 13, 2010
If you’re looking for a quick and dirty way to apply a faux tilt-shift effect check out this online tool to upload a photo or use a photo from the web to create your own – TiltShift Maker
So which do you prefer, the original or the faux tilt-shift version of the Mavericks surf photo?
In February 1990 Adobe released Photoshop 1.0. 20 years later the landscape of photography has forever been changed. “Changed” is too light of a term… Photoshop revolutionized how people manipulate pixels resulting in an edited image file. The cultural impact over the past several years has been quite pronounced as “photoshopped” or “’shopped” is commonly used in every day language. In fact it’s fair to say that most people now are on some level subconsciously aware of Photoshop even if they have never used it as they determine if what they’re viewing is authentic.
Going back in the way way back time machine I was in college when Photoshop came out. It was the coolest thing I ever saw. I used to go to computer software stores (they actually had such stores back then) and I’d pine over the application. Of course this was also in the day when to have color on my Apple Macintosh II (the first color Mac) I had to upgrade from 1MB of RAM to 2MB. That extra 1MB of RAM cost me $500. Once I made that upgrade and got a hold of Adobe Photoshop my life forever changed. I could never foresee that digital photo editing could be done as easily as it is today. What amazing features were in Adobe Photoshop 1.0? See the demo below that was shown at last nights NAPP Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration:
Having used every version of Adobe Photoshop since its launch in 1990 I’ve been aware of every feature change. Even still over time its been easy to forget how it all pieced together. At the NAPP Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration last night Scott Kelby MC’d a series of demonstrations by Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, Julieanne Kost, Rafael “RC” Concepcion and Terry White highlighting the major enhancements of each version of Photoshop. It was a great reminder of how the application has evolved over time.
Still even with all the enhancements since the release of Photoshop 1.0 the core of Photoshop functionality is the same. Scott Kelby in 2-3 minutes summed it up at the opening of the Photoshop Celebration by quickly editing one of his photos… adjusting levels, converting it to B&W, cropping, expanding the canvas to create a border around the image, moving the image within the canvas, and adding text. Everyone of these types of edits can be done today. 20 years ago it was monumental to be able to do these things. The persistence of this functionality speaks to its core usefulness of Photoshop to photographers and designers alike. Everyday we make such edits and never think twice about it.
A quick side note, once I started working with Photoshop in college I knew I wanted to do something with it. I knew I’d be working with Photoshop before I knew I’d be pursuing photography. I never thought about that until now. Shortly after I learned the ropes with Photoshop I was shooting film and scanning photo prints to edit and share. Later I was scanning slides and later still editing digital files straight from my camera. The convergence of digital photography and digital editing solidified Photoshop’s place as the essential tool to have, but it also became an important thread in the fabric of our culture. Is there a day you don’t think about Photoshop these days?
2 Key Highlights
Beyond the walk down memory lane in demonstrating the evolution of Photoshop there were two key highlights to note from the NAPP Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration:
1. Kevin Connor, Senior Director of Product Management for Adobe conducted a live demonstration of “Content Aware Fill” also (called PatchMatch) functionality in the “White Rabbit” version of Photoshop (AKA Photoshop CS5). This functionality was demonstrated in removing a person who was standing against a wall. Rather than the background color showing through it auto filled with the texture of the wall. Another demo was conducted with an imprecise panoramic photo that had been stitched together. Empty areas were automatically filled in between and around the completed stitched photo. To give you an idea of what this functionality is like here is an earlier video of a demonstration:
2. Russell Brown put on one of the most creative and funny demonstrations I’ve ever seen. I really hope Adobe puts a video of it up on YouTube. As part of that demo he showed Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (the original application) running on an iPhone. 40 or so lucky individuals in the audience received commemorative USB thumbdrives that doubled as a ticket to receive a copy of the “Adobe Photoshop 1.0″ iPhone application. The full application, in its classic UI, runs on the iPhone. It was incredibly cool to see in action. Russell was kind enough to give me a thumbdrive and a means to get this application during a pre-event interview. As soon as I have the application on my iPhone I’ll find a way to share a video of it in action. Unfortunately I didn’t get the vibe that this app would be released to the general public through the Apple App Store given the increasing tension between Apple and Adobe (see What Steve Jobs Said During His Wall Street Journal iPad Demo). With a little luck it’ll find its way out for others to use.
I was able to squeeze in a few short interviews at the event so stay tuned for those conversations as part of future episode of EXIF and Beyond.
John Knoll, Russell Brown and Tom Knoll at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Adobe Photoshop
I could generate a laundry list of thoughts as to why the Mavericks surf contest is one of the more amazing events to cover, but in the end it comes down to the sheer spectacle of man vs. nature. Having photographed every Mavericks Surf Contest since 2005 I’ve covered most every angle except from a jetski and the water itself. This year I was very fortunate stay dry on the media boat to get some killer photos.
Chris Bertish, the first place finisher & champion, on the lip of a giant wave at the 2010 Mavericks Surf Contest held Saturday February 13, 2010 in Half Moon Bay, California
Gear Information
Camera
Primary: Canon 7D
Backup: Canon 1Ds Mark III
Lenses
Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS
Alternate: Canon 300mm f/2.8
Canon 7D Pros & Cons:
Pros: - 8 frames per second
- 18-megapixels
- Small & light
- High ISO sensitivity
- 1.6x magnification factor
- UDMA CF card compatible
- 100% view from ViewFinder
- HD video at 30 fps
- Easy to configure
Cons: - No audio annotation feature
- Only 1 CF card slot
- Mode knob does not lock
Start to the Day & Camera Gear
Covering the event is as fast paced as the action itself. The day started early at 4:30am gathering my gear and driving to the Pillar Point Harbor. Still dark outside at this hour there is no way to see what conditions look like other than reading the surf & weather report. Talking with friends and event staff the night before, while picking up my media credentials, I heard it was going to be big… as in bigger than any year prior. While waiting on the dock to board the media boat I could take in the beautiful sunrise. The coastal mountains were shrouded in fog and golden light was beaming through revealing a hint of the day’s surf conditions. Surf was certainly up, but how much compared to years past it wasn’t clear.
The call came to board the boat, I grabbed my gear and I did my best to carve out a place to take position for the event. After the safety briefing on the boat it was all business. As the boat was leaving the harbor I made sure all my gear was in order including a Canon 7D provided courtesy of BorrowLenses.com and my Canon 1Ds Mark III. Also set up was a hot-shoe mounted Sony HXR-MC1 HD video camera on the 7D. By the time I adjusted camera settings, checked/cleaned lenses, and hunkered down for the long haul we cleared the breakwater and headed out into very choppy water.
Conditions & Challenges
Conditions at the surf break, roughly 1/2 a mile from shore, were picture perfect with amazing golden hour light, clear visibility and GIANT waves. Everything that had been hoped for seemed to be coming into place. Unfortunately for those on shore looking to get a glimmer of the action from the cliffs the large surf was generating tons of mist hindering the view in combination with the slow to dissipate low lying coastal fog. Eventually the fog lifted for those viewing the contest from shore, but for the 20-25 media photographers/videographers on the boat there was nothing holding us back
The blessing of huge surf created the curse of rough shooting conditions. It wasn’t uncommon for the boat to bob up and down from 6-12 feet. In many regards I felt like a rodeo cowboy with one hand on the rail and the other keeping my cameras from hitting the boat and near-by photographers. I carried onto the boat only what I planned to use, so no camera bag was necessary. Others took bags and monopods to lay on the deck that were constantly sliding into others and getting under foot. To get a solid photo I had to jam my foot against the edge of the deck/railing and pin my back to the cabin of the boat. This served two purposes… 1. To keep from going overboard when shooting and 2. To enable me the ability to use both hands to stabilize my camera as best as I could. It was a very physical day.
Alex Martins drops into a huge wave at the 2010 Mavericks Surf Contest
Surf & Surfers
Mavericks is a unique surf event in that once they determine that conditions are right they announce the contest date to take place in 2-3 days. Contest participants are pre-selected and expected to arrive in Half Moon Bay, California with in 24 hours no matter where they happen to be. This year’s Mavericks Surf Contest winner, Chris Bertish of South Africa, flew 30-plus hours on Thursday to arrive in time Saturday morning for the start of the event. Bertish and the other participants are hand selected world class athletes. The 50-58°F water requires all northern California surfers to wear 5mm wet suits hiding much of their athletic stature.
All the effort to make the event is paid off with giant waves rivaled only in a few places world-wide (Hawaii, Indonesia and South Africa). On this day the surf was reaching epic heights of 40-50 feet. Note that a rough rule of thumb is multiplying the wave height by ~2 to get the range of height of the face of the wave. A 40 foot wave can have an 80 foot face. Unlike past events the waves just kept getting bigger throughout the day. The tides were working in the favor of the contest. The only downside to the day was that as the day progressed the intervals of the swells seemed to extend creating larger lulls between sets. By the time the final heat rolled around there was more waiting than surfing, but when the waves arrived they were epic by any standard.
More Camera Gear Info
I can’t thank BorrowLenses.com enough for the use of the Canon 7D. It was the primary camera that I used. In the past I’ve used my Canon 1D Mark II with great success. I had but 45 minutes to spare after preparing my gear to learn how to configure and use the Canon 7D. Canon has continued to make it simple to configure its dSLR settings. The use of the Quick Control screen to easily access all basic camera settings was of great value throughout the day. In reviewing the camera’s feature settings, the night before the event, I disabled the on camera flash & Live View, set the AF mode to Quick, set the color space to AdobeRGB and specified centered focus points to be used. I checked for dust spots in a few test shots and found the camera to be in great working order.
Why did I chose to shoot with the Canon 7D? Three things come into play when I photograph sports subjects (or wildlife for that matter) from a boat: shutter speed, resolution and frame rate.
Shutter Speed
Capturing my subject at a high shutter speed is essential to offset movement of the boat. This is especially true when you’re fighting a substantial pitch due to high surf. In addition to water conditions facing unpredictable coastal weather where the lighting can become dark can also negatively impact ones ability to keep a high shutter speed. Noise free high ISO functionality is key to adjusting to weather conditions. I prefer to shoot in Aperture priority mode (occasionally in Shutter priority) while manually fine tuning the aperture settings to strike a balance between needed depth of field and shutter speed.
Resolution
The higher the resolution of the camera sensor the greater flexibility I’ll have to fine tune my composition in post-production by cropping photos. Higher resolution photographs allow me to correct poorly composed photos resulting from unpredictable movements of the boat. While I can line up a composition in a split second I can’t predict how the boat will move due to the surf. It’s not uncommon to look at photos in post-production and notice substantial movement or in extreme cases lost shots.
Frame Rate
For many it might seem that the 5fps of a camera like the 1Ds Mark III or other body would suffice for a sports event, but this is not the case. 3 to 5 extra frames per second can make the difference between getting the shot and not. This is particularly true when photographing an extreme sport such as surfing, let alone dealing with unpredictable movement of your shooting platform.
On all fronts the 7D handled the job nicely. Is the camera up to snuff for landscape work? I couldn’t tell you at this point, but for sports photography I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again.
Photos
Throughout the week I’ll post some of my favorite photos from the 2010 Mavericks Surf Contest to the blog, but in the meantime I’ve embedded a larger set of images below for you to enjoy. Let me know if you find a favorite and feel free to embed this slideshow elsewhere.
I would rather say: buy...
