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Happy new Year!
Photo taken from Rosny Point foreshore in Hobart, Tasmania. One of my favourite spots for fireworks display.
Happy New Year!
Written by ben on January 1st, 2012Bridestowe
Written by ben on December 31st, 2011
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Nothing like a road trip to end the year. My girlfriend and I had been planning to visit Bridestowe Lavender Farm earlier in December but as time slipped away from us as Christmas approached, we decided to visit during our holidays. This turned out to be a good move as we arrived at the farm when the lavender was in full bloom and near harvest. As you can see above, the fields were a sea of mauve. Click to continue »
Sydney-Hobart Finish 2011
Written by ben on December 29th, 2011
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The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race has been run and won for another year (well nearly, still waiting for the outcome of a protest that is still in session at the time of writing this. This year saw a number of happy differences from last year:
- A close race between two maxis up the Derwent River.
- Large Gennaker sails being used – the wind was coming from the south.
- Wild Oats XI did not cross the line first again.
- An Evening Finish.
2011 Year in Review
Written by ben on December 23rd, 2011
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This year has seen me significantly wind back my photographic activities as I found myself spread across too many interests.
The year was kicked off by a trip along the upper Huon River via Judbury. This is rapidly becoming a tradition.
February was a flurry of activity with the Hobart Regatta and Wooden Boat Festival. This was followed by visiting Bonorong Park in March and a trip to Bruny Island to act as a tourist guide.
April saw the Autumn Festival in New Norfolk, and I got interested in taking long exposure photos of planes at night. Sometimes the photos didn’t come out as I wanted. This was also the first year that I had attended an ANZAC Day march and service.
I visited Bonorong Park again, but it took until June to get the photos up. I finally managed to get a good photo of the Russell Falls at Mt field and reflected on a conversation I had about whether a photo location causes IP infringement.
All of this though paled in comparison to highlight of the year – a 2 week trip to Taiwan. I took heaps of photos but they were mainly on my iPhone as I quickly found the heat of summer to hot to carry around photo gear. I did however get some nice photos of sunsets and light domes.
After getting back, I slowed down a lot. With all the new photos, I was having trouble organising them on my iDevices, so optimised my Aperture library for iDevices.
There have been a couple of things I have been to, including the RTBG Spring Festival and a trip to Lake Pedder that took me past the Sentinel Ranges, but some of the other photos I just haven’t had time to upload.
So that was the year that was. Happy Christmas and a safe new year to all, and I’ll catch you next year.
Sentinel Ranges
Written by ben on November 10th, 2011
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I’ve always maintained that trying to capture the colour and how immense the mountains are in Tasmania’s south west is ridiculously challenging. No photo could possibly do duty to the unique colours and textures and size of the peaks. This photo taken on a recent trip to Lake Pedder however is my new favourite of the Sentinel Range, taken near the old Lake Pedder track.
Captured in the mid afternoon, the weather ensured the sun was not bright enough to cause the deep contrasts I have normally experienced at this location, and at the same time the weather was good enough for the peaks not to be covered in rain clouds.
RTBG Spring Festival 2011
Written by ben on October 16th, 2011
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Every year the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden holds a festival to celebrate Spring, featuring food, wine, entertainment and of course the gardens. This festival used to be known as the Tulip festival but in recent years the tulips have been flowering earlier and as a result usually finish blooming by the time the festival comes around.
This has been the first time I have taken the camera out since visiting Taiwan, and suffered some challenges including forgetting an all important step-up ring for the filters I had taken with me. oops!
Dome of Light
Written by ben on September 9th, 2011
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The Dome of Light at Formosa Boulevard Station is part of Kaohsiung’s fledgling subway system, which opened barely 3 years ago. Even with an ultra wide lens open to it’s widest, I was unable to capture full dome – to do this I would have had to have stood back a fair way and this would have meant not being able to see the fantastic detail in the dome.
The dome is a popular place for wedding photos – and you can see a happy couple having their photo taken centre bottom of the photo.
Aperture Projects, Albums and the iDevice World
Written by ben on September 3rd, 2011It is no secret that I am a fan of all things Apple. I have at some point owned nearly every product line Apple has made in the last 10 years. It is also no secret that since 2008 I have been using Aperture for all my photo management and adjustments. To move back to PC (and therefore Adobe Lightroom) whilst not impossible would be a time consuming and tedious project.
However, Aperture interacting with the iPhone and iPad was not something I thought particularly hard about up until the last 6 months, by which point my library structure in Aperture is causing some pain. Seriously, it has taken me three years to realise how I should be using the library as opposed to how I am. This is going to be a lengthy post about all things Aperture Library.
My Current Library
I think the best way to look at this is to show you my current library. It looks a little bit like as you see on the left and generally all the sections in the library follow this format.
In the past, as I do not actually take that many photos in a year, the best thing to do seemed to be to sort everything into a date format structured by folders. If there was a particular set of photos I had taken, I would create a manual album for them.
You’ll note that the albums have a year date next to them. Theres a reason for this – and quite simply it is a case of having far too many albums to be able to easily identify them on the iDevice.
And as it turns out, my concept of albums and projects is flawed. This is particularly apparent when you start looking at the photos on an iPad.
Albums and Projects – The Future
Lets start with Projects. Projects are the ‘Events’ seen on iDevices and in iPhoto. What they should be used for is the collection of photos relating to one particular event. They should also have a distinctly unique name within your library. They should also not be so long that you need to scroll the screen in AP3 or open the project on the iDevice to work out the photos. This is something I now plan on going back to my collection and doing.
Example of project names:
- Taiwan-2011
- SnugFalls-2009
This is de-emphasise the date of the project whilst still giving me an indication of when the photos were taken
As for albums, these would appear to be used to create a specific subset of photos from a project, or selection of projects. As people know who read this blog know, I like taking photos of waterfalls, so in this case I will had use AP3′s Smart Albums to generate a “Waterfall” Album from my library. Similarly it may be good to put together a “Family” Album.
Albums now appear to be an abstraction from projects and a way to get similar genres of photos together, which is a step away from the contemporary “Heres my photo album from this location” concept. It also mean I will get away from developing a naming scheme for albums as I will now have fewer albums, with more general, discrete names
Conclusion
So as you can see, making the decision to care about how the data in the Aperture library is stored can make a significant impact to how it syncs with iDevices. It is only now that I have decided to car enough to investigate it to realise how I should be using Aperture, and as a result another piece of the puzzle goes into place in my quest for data management. Hopefully people will find this information useful.
One of these days I will complete my post of AP3 Metadata. Metadata has been another dark art to me but something that is gaining in importance with large digital libraries.
Taiwan Strait Sunset
Written by ben on August 27th, 2011
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One of my favourite photos from my Taiwan trip, this photo was taken with the sun setting as the fishing fleet was heading out to sea for a night of fishing. This photo was taken at the entrance of Kaohsuing Harbour in the Cijin District.
This is perhaps the first time I have seen the sun set over the ocean/sea – I have yet to be on the west coast of Tasmania on a day that is clear enough to observe the sun set over the watery horizon. It is just an amazing sight was the sun get lower and lower and then seemingly speed up as it hits the horizon, melting into the sea.
*Edit* Updated title to Taiwan Strait. Apparently Google Maps doesn’t know about the Taiwan Strait.
Room with a View
Written by ben on July 27th, 2011
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This is a view looking out of the window I was staying at while in Taiwan. As you can see, I am actually a fair way up, 6 floors. From here I got to look out across a middle class residential suburb towards the high-rises off in the distance.
Towards the lower left (hidden behind the copyright – sorry!) there is a lady collecting recyclables from nearby residents as a way of earning money. The shop on the corner is a shaved ice shop, selling delicious treats such as shaved milk ice and mango. The particular shaved ice here was more like an ice cream than ice and as a result wasn’t as nice as some of the shaved ice shops in Kaohsiung.
For the record, this location is looking out towards the Sanmin District.