Photography: March 2004 Archives

Last month I was in Boston for some meetings. During this time a friend and co-worker from Florida, Troy was kind enough to bring his new digital rebel along and let me test drive it. Due to our schedule we were only able to get out at night, but it was a lot of fun and we got some decent photos. My favorite is the first which was an accidental one I took while trying to figure out the myriad buttons.

I take quite a few digital photos. Periodically someone asks me what I do with them, so I thought I would take a minute to document my workflow.

I take all my photos at the highest jpeg resolution available. I don't use the raw setting vey much for two reasons.

1. I almost never plan on printing larger than 8x10.
2. It takes about 40 seconds to save the photo, thus preventing me from framing the next photo. (This problem will likely be solved by my next digital camera.)

The photos are then downloaded in mass to the hard drive. I store them in a folder hierarchy that is based on date.

2004
    2004-01-31
    2004-02-04

When I manipulate an image I put it into a sub-directory typically called mod.

I then use a program called Thumbs Plus to delete seriously flawed photos and to rotate photo's that are in the wrong orientation. Thumbs Plus also makes web page galleries, slide shows, and will annotate photos etc.

Then I backup on CDR, periodically taking a copy to an off site location. Offsite storage is key if you ask me.

For editing I use both Thumbs Plus and the Gimp. Usually Gimp get's pulled out for more complex fine editing, while Thumbs is for adding borders, cropping, and re-sizing. Thumbs is especially good at batching up a process and applying it to a whole folder full of pictures.

To print them, I run them through a program which is not very friendly, but is very useful called QImage. Although this program is not very friendly it does a number of things well once you figure out the quirky interface. Among the things I like, really nice upsampling of images, great print queue (although I wish you could assign the temp space to a different drive), excellent paper utilization, and easy color tweaking. On top of all that, it saves your printer preferences for you so that no matter what you do outside the program, your print drivers are set up the way you like when you run the program.

I print them on an Epson color printer. Recently, I have been trying digital output at big box retailers like Target and Sam's Club. I like the prices, archival quality and turn-a-round time, but the jury is still out on overall quality.

When my company conference ended last week, my wife and I took the weekend to do some sight seeing on the Hwy 1, south of San Francisco. Here are some photos.

One highlight was eating at a restaurant named Napenthe. More later.