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I've had Light Science and Magic on my shelf for a couple of years and I have not yet read it. Just took it down and hopefully I will crack it open tonight. Gotta try something to get back into photography, I've been neglecting it for a while.
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Nov 29, 2020 08:11
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ExecuDork posted:Gotta try something to get back into photography, I've been neglecting it for a while. This is basically me since March or so. I mostly liked traveling to new cities and taking pictures around the area, which naturally hasn't been an option since quarantine started. But staying home so much has also killed any motivation I would've otherwise had to go out shooting. I live about an hour from San Francisco, and the past few months would've been the perfect time to take advantage of the reduced traffic to go around the city and get all the shots I've wanted to try, but the psychological weight of being told to limit travel as much as possible has had a profound impact on my motivation.
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Nov 29, 2020 10:02
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Definitely feels weird going out but I've tried to keep trips short and avoid making any stops where I would have to go inside. The hard part is getting started but I'm usually glad once I start shooting.
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Nov 29, 2020 17:13
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As long as you stay local and keep a mask on it's going to be pretty much okay. It's when you go long distances and have to use restaurants or hotels that things get sketchy. Yes there's always a small chance that something goes wrong and you get sick anyways, but that's also true for doing yardwork or getting groceries or getting an amazon box off your porch. If you're still doing those things guilt free, a walk in a nearby park shouldn't bother you either.
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Nov 29, 2020 17:20
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-"limit travel as much as possible" != don't travel -"essential travel only" = your well-being is essential, so if you must be outside for your well-being, go for it. If you practice social distancing and wear a mask, you are already well ahead of the curve -I use my occasional commute, and Google Street View to do as much scouting as possible to minimize my time on location I stay local - 15 minute drive to a larger town where I walk around with a mask on. I bump into police officers all the time (and my film medium format gear + tripod does not exactly allow me to blend in) and so far nobody has batted an eye.
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Nov 29, 2020 19:53
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Pay at the pump, wear a mask, use hand sanitizer when touching things that aren't yous, stand upwind of everybody, try and keep 6' distance from masked people, 12'+ from unmasked people (feel free to passive agressively glare at them), don't go indoors and if you need food, get it from the drive through. Outdoor spread of covid is not super common between masked people in passing, but the #1 biggest risk is spending time indoors with people you don't know, even if you have a mask on The main reason they don't want you to travel is not so that you won't get it, it's because you may be an asymptomatic super spreader introducing the virus to multiple new households and towns or ecosystems like the local grocery store etc It seems unlikely that you're THE super spreader, but if you're an Iowa citizen, for example, there's a 1-in-49 chance statistically that you have covid and you're infectious right now The "uncontrolled" part of "widespread uncontrolled spread" is people leaving their normal A-to-B patterns to go on vacation somewhere that didn't currently have active cases, and lighting a viral fire there We've done a couple of photo safaris away from the house but other than the drive through window at McDonald's (wearing a respirator) we never come within 12' of another human or go near the indoors Obviously stay home if you have any kind of cough, even if "it's just allergies" or you went to Thanksgiving with more than 4 people etc
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Dec 1, 2020 00:53
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Hadlock posted:Pay at the pump, wear a mask, use hand sanitizer when touching things that aren't yous, stand upwind of everybody, try and keep 6' distance from masked people, 12'+ from unmasked people (feel free to passive agressively glare at them), don't go indoors and if you need food, get it from the drive through. Outdoor spread of covid is not super common between masked people in passing, but the #1 biggest risk is spending time indoors with people you don't know, even if you have a mask on Sticky this. Gold it. Give it some reddit badge or whatever. This is good life advice right now. Also, I'm in total agreement with others that it's been really hard to find inspiration lately. Hell, I was here* on Saturday, and was like "meh...no good places to take a picture." *not my photo
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Dec 1, 2020 02:15
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404notfound posted:This is basically me since March or so. I mostly liked traveling to new cities and taking pictures around the area, which naturally hasn't been an option since quarantine started. But staying home so much has also killed any motivation I would've otherwise had to go out shooting. Bay Area goon checking in, and yeah, this is pretty much how I feel. I'd have to think back but I'm pretty sure I haven't been 20 miles from my house since this started. I mostly shoot nature but I've done it almost entirely in the regional park right by my house. It's gotten to the point where my car battery crapped out because I haven't been driving my car enough.
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Dec 1, 2020 02:16
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404notfound posted:But staying home so much has also killed any motivation I would've otherwise had to go out shooting. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.
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Dec 1, 2020 15:16
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InternetJunky posted:Glad to hear I'm not the only one. same
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Dec 1, 2020 15:54
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InternetJunky posted:Glad to hear I'm not the only one. Same here. Ted Forbes recently posted a video that speaks to this and it was actually a bit inspiring.
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Dec 1, 2020 16:20
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But 2021's gonna turn things around, right? Right??  edit - it doesn't help that this is by far the ugliest time of year in the midwest. Skies are 100% flat featureless grey and all foliage is gone so nature is an endless sea of brown chaos.
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Dec 1, 2020 16:23
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I've shot way less than I wanted to this year due to Covid. I've been stuck at an impasse: I need to shoot but Covid limits my shooting. It's just depressing. I legitimately feel my progress as a photographer has been hindered due to it. I'm also scared to get close because of Covid. It's just one giant poo poo sandwich.
Jupiter Jazz fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Dec 2, 2020 |
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Dec 2, 2020 05:58
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Where I am - regional NSW, Australia - we've avoided COVID almost entirely. But my car died at the end of July and we haven't bought a replacement, so I'm travelling just as little as those of you in places overrun by plague zombies. My problem, I think, is the mental weight of my tens of thousands of unedited, un-looked-at, images on my harddrives. I literally have somewhere north of 40K photos that I've never looked at on my computer, never mind sorted and organised and edited, plus that many again that I've done a quick accept/reject pass through but not edited nor uploaded any. I dump the memory card into a folder by project (big trips, local wanderings, special days) and by date, so there's some basic organisation already, but so many photos have nothing else about them, yet. The amount of work to reduce that problem by even a little bit feels overwhelming so I just don't bother. Then I think about these thousands of photos when I've got my camera in my hand, and I don't hit the trigger as much. Ugh. I can't even blame a global pandemic for my photo-ennui. Just me. Things overall are pretty good for me, but my photography is in a rut. And that advice from Hadlock needs to get spread around the forums and social media like... uh... um... a virus? Sorry. But it does deserve being spread widely. President Beep posted:Same here. Ted Forbes recently posted a video that speaks to this and it was actually a bit inspiring.
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Dec 2, 2020 08:01
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For sure. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rwz1kbW1_I
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Dec 2, 2020 13:33
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ExecuDork posted:Where I am - regional NSW, Australia - we've avoided COVID almost entirely. But my car died at the end of July and we haven't bought a replacement, so I'm travelling just as little as those of you in places overrun by plague zombies. My problem, I think, is the mental weight of my tens of thousands of unedited, un-looked-at, images on my harddrives. I literally have somewhere north of 40K photos that I've never looked at on my computer, never mind sorted and organised and edited, plus that many again that I've done a quick accept/reject pass through but not edited nor uploaded any. I dump the memory card into a folder by project (big trips, local wanderings, special days) and by date, so there's some basic organisation already, but so many photos have nothing else about them, yet. The amount of work to reduce that problem by even a little bit feels overwhelming so I just don't bother. Then I think about these thousands of photos when I've got my camera in my hand, and I don't hit the trigger as much. Ugh. As someone who just had to buy more hard drive space because 8TB wasn't enough to hold my photo collection, I feel you. At a certain point I just gave up trying to organise my collection because culling thousands of shots is draining and demotivating. Instead, once in a while I go into an old directory and find some gold in there (or find some junk that might be worth tinkering around with to salvage). It's liberating not getting bogged down dealing with that aspect of shooting. As for covid, I can't blame it much either for my lack of shooting. It's not like the animals I shoot need social distancing. But covid killed all the art shows I do, so now I'm forced to examine if I was just shooting to make money or if I actually still enjoyed it. I'm starting to get my motivation back again though so hopefully I can use that introspection to push myself a bit harder.
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Dec 2, 2020 15:14
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ExecuDork posted:Where I am - regional NSW, Australia - we've avoided COVID almost entirely. But my car died at the end of July and we haven't bought a replacement, so I'm travelling just as little as those of you in places overrun by plague zombies. My problem, I think, is the mental weight of my tens of thousands of unedited, un-looked-at, images on my harddrives. I literally have somewhere north of 40K photos that I've never looked at on my computer, never mind sorted and organised and edited, plus that many again that I've done a quick accept/reject pass through but not edited nor uploaded any. I dump the memory card into a folder by project (big trips, local wanderings, special days) and by date, so there's some basic organisation already, but so many photos have nothing else about them, yet. The amount of work to reduce that problem by even a little bit feels overwhelming so I just don't bother. Then I think about these thousands of photos when I've got my camera in my hand, and I don't hit the trigger as much. Ugh. ive had to deal with a ton of poo poo during lockdown and literal isolation, but recently i had one good day where there was just enough motivation to build an adobe portfolio website for the 'best' of my photos. nobodys going to see it and even fewer people will care or buy a print, but it was something to do. having to fill the site with some photos was enough of a fire under my rear end to at least open lightroom and export everything i'd marked with 4 or 5 stars. i spent a few hours categorising them and writing pretentious captions but it made a lonely sunday go by a bit quicker since then i have occasionally gone back on good days and just set a milestone of sorting/culling 100 photos at a time, or one shoot day. many drops eventually fill the bucket, and all that. maybe that could help you?
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Dec 2, 2020 17:02
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InternetJunky posted:As someone who just had to buy more hard drive space because 8TB wasn't enough to hold my photo collection, I feel you. At a certain point I just gave up trying to organise my collection because culling thousands of shots is draining and demotivating. Cull with IrFanView, it opens raw files in a split second and lets you delete without having to click any prompts, much faster than LR culling. Or get an M2 and cull from that, it dramatically increases LR speed.
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Dec 2, 2020 18:10
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Why delete, though? Just mark the ones you like and move on to the next photo. I've found that my perception of what was a good photo and what was not, in the same set, has changed quite a bit with time.
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Dec 2, 2020 18:22
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Ineptitude posted:Cull with IrFanView, it opens raw files in a split second and lets you delete without having to click any prompts, much faster than LR culling. Health Services posted:Why delete, though? Just mark the ones you like and move on to the next photo. I've found that my perception of what was a good photo and what was not, in the same set, has changed quite a bit with time.
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Dec 2, 2020 18:28
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Cull before import. It doesnt load the entire resolution so its primarily for the initial cull that gets rid of duds, poor poses and the otherwise worst ones, its not for deciding on the best photo between 2 great ones
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Dec 2, 2020 18:34
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Typically quick culling programs are just pulling out the jpg embedded in the raw file, which is fine for a first pass. Your raw developer may do this for thumbnails before you edit a photo too, which means the preview from the camera created embedded jpg and exporting an unedited photo are going to be noticeably different.
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Dec 2, 2020 19:24
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I've just recently started being super aggressive with deleting. If I'm not gonna process it and share it, I'll just delete the raw. Once I've processed and shared it, i move the raw to a new location, separate from my mass storage. I only recently decided to start doing this after realising I have thousands of raws, taking up terabytes that I've not looked at in years and it made finding those I actually liked and wanted to go back and edit impossible.
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Dec 2, 2020 19:53
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I like to savor my failures, so I import in lightroom onto a NAS, wait to let it build previews on my SSD, and then cull 99% of everything I took. You really start to appreciate how bad you are when it takes an afternoon to go through all the trash.
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Dec 2, 2020 19:53
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xzzy posted:I like to savor my failures, so I import in lightroom onto a NAS, wait to let it build previews on my SSD, and then cull 99% of everything I took. You really start to appreciate how bad you are when it takes an afternoon to go through all the trash. The worst is when your coming up to a shot in your import which, in your head thought was gonna be amazing, and it's a dud.
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Dec 2, 2020 19:55
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Mega Comrade posted:The worst is when your coming up to a shot in your import which, in your head thought was gonna be amazing, and it's a dud. please dont doxx me
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Dec 2, 2020 20:52
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Photomechanic is always getting high praise as a culling method but then I look at the price and no thanks.
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Dec 2, 2020 21:02
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Ineptitude posted:Cull before import. I really need to get into this habit.
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Dec 3, 2020 00:19
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The cull: I mark the lovely photos with 1 star, good-enough-to-show-other-people get 5 stars, stuff in between is for things that *might* have something about them to save them. Stuff that gets 1 star and is deleted is mostly out of focus or otherwise badly missed shots, especially for the macro and wildlife photos that rapidly fill my memory card - "spray and pray" is a legitimate technique!  I had been ignoring the "your online backup is over quota! you will be charged money for this!" emails from my backup provider (iDrive), intending to delete enough from the four most recent big trips to get me back under quota, but then I a) realized my own procrastination on this and b) realized this upper limit was preventing me from shooting more so I plumped for the upgrade. Now I have filled just over 2 TB of 10 TB of storage, for about $30 more per year. Hello Spaceman posted:since then i have occasionally gone back on good days and just set a milestone of sorting/culling 100 photos at a time, or one shoot day. many drops eventually fill the bucket, and all that. Last night I sat down with a glass of wine and cracked open Light - Science and Magic (the book that started this discussion of photo-ennui - somebody coin a term for this poo poo). That helped. The first two chapters are really good, very well written and I'm planning to spend some time today in my photos. I don't know yet whether it will help or not that some of my work involves image-analysis, which is a task I need to ramp up at work as I finish making images using the scanning electron microscope. Knowing that it's helping with my work productivity - which is also A Thing in my mind - should, should help with motivation. That, and plenty of coffee. It's off to the (socially distanced but mostly maskless) cafe!
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Dec 3, 2020 00:21
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ExecuDork posted:I had been ignoring the "your online backup is over quota! you will be charged money for this!" emails from my backup provider (iDrive), intending to delete enough from the four most recent big trips to get me back under quota, but then I a) realized my own procrastination on this and b) realized this upper limit was preventing me from shooting more so I plumped for the upgrade. Now I have filled just over 2 TB of 10 TB of storage, for about $30 more per year. would be interesting to see the chart attributing sales to this same reasoning. 2020 would be a vertical line ExecuDork posted:this discussion of photo-ennui - somebody coin a term for this poo poo General Photography Questions Megathread - First our shutter buttons were depressed, now we are
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Dec 3, 2020 01:22
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Hello Spaceman posted:General Photography Questions Megathread - First our shutter buttons were depressed, now we are Ugh. 
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Dec 3, 2020 03:25
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Understanding Exposure is fantastic. Level me up, baby. I didn't know the exact amount of light when you change an f stop is half or doubled for instance. I just you got more light if you went down versus up but not a quantifiable amount. Game changer. Jupiter Jazz fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 3, 2020 04:12
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Jupiter Jazz posted:Understanding Exposure is fantastic. Level me up, baby. It's the same for shutter speed, shutter speed is more obvious 1/15 to 1/30 is 1 stop less light and ISO 800-400 is 1 stop less. Also because f number is a ratio of iris to focal length the light is the same at each aperture on different focal length lenses. This also means that macro lenses which focus much closer actually increase the effective aperture meaning that at macro distances you are getting much less light probably around a stop less at 1x. Nikon cameras will compensate for this and tell you the effective aperture, Canon doesn't leading to much confusion amongst some macro photographers comparing settings.
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Dec 3, 2020 09:42
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ExecuDork posted:I had been ignoring the "your online backup is over quota! you will be charged money for this!" emails from my backup provider (iDrive), intending to delete enough from the four most recent big trips to get me back under quota, but then I a) realized my own procrastination on this and b) realized this upper limit was preventing me from shooting more so I plumped for the upgrade. Now I have filled just over 2 TB of 10 TB of storage, for about $30 more per year. Whoa, iDrive seems cheap compared to... well, everything else. I need something that'll let me backup from my NAS (most things like Carbonite/Backblaze limit you to devices connected to the computer), but have struggled to find something more economical.
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Dec 3, 2020 16:32
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Yeah some feedback on iDrive would be good as I’m more down with a set gb setup that I’m hoping won’t try to screw me on speed or ability to recover from, unlike the ‘unlimited for cheap!’ providers mentioned above which I’ve generally found to suck. 5TB sorts me nicely. Bonus points if the software is pretty invisible and just works well.
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Dec 3, 2020 16:49
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jarlywarly posted:It's the same for shutter speed, shutter speed is more obvious 1/15 to 1/30 is 1 stop less light and ISO 800-400 is 1 stop less. This book is amazing. It's full of nerd poo poo I never gave a gently caress about. Like I knew about triangle but not in such an elaborate way.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:14
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Jupiter Jazz posted:This book is amazing. It's full of nerd poo poo I never gave a gently caress about. Like I knew about triangle but not in such an elaborate way. You'll figure out that anyone who is any good at anything is in some way a nerd.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:24
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EL BROMANCE posted:Yeah some feedback on iDrive would be good as I’m more down with a set gb setup that I’m hoping won’t try to screw me on speed or ability to recover from, unlike the ‘unlimited for cheap!’ providers mentioned above which I’ve generally found to suck. 5TB sorts me nicely. I took the plunge as the 5GB free let me test the software, then you get the option to buy in at a cheaper rate than on the website. So far all seems fine, the software isn't causing me a headache and speed wise it'll have done just over 50GB in the space of an hour which isn't bad at all for these services. Far better than what I experience elsewhere, so this should do nicely.
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Dec 3, 2020 19:13
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jarlywarly posted:You'll figure out that anyone who is any good at anything is in some way a nerd. i dont think skill and knowledge should be the sole barometers for nerdery. heck id rather nerd out with somebody who loves photography but is clueless than some guy whos just a pretentious jerk because we are not on his nerd level
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Dec 3, 2020 19:53
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jarlywarly posted:You'll figure out that anyone who is any good at anything is in some way a nerd. Sure. But gear nerds don't seem to be the best photographers and this factors into why I avoided the technical aspects so long: a dislike for gear nerds.
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Dec 3, 2020 20:36
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