Category: Creative Cloud

Made Some macOS Drive Icons

You'll need to download the .zip file with the original .PNG files here. They're obviously Fujifilm themed, as you can see, since they're for my Lightroom and Capture One scratch drive and high speed backup. If you're not familiar with how to change the folder or drive icons in macOS, start by saving the picture to your Downloads folder. Open the picture in Preview, hit CMD+A then CMD+C to copy the image. Right click/2-finger click the drive or folder icon you want to change and choose "Get Info" from the menu. In the upper left of the window that pops open, click the image so it's highlighted, then hit CMD+V to paste the icon, replacing the old one.

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Let Me Be Clear: Apple’s M1 CPU Signals a Revolution in Desktop Computing Unlike Anything We’ve Previously Experienced

The M1 does what Apple promised during the PowerPC transition 15 years ago but failed to deliver. What you hear coming from a millennial's face on YouTube is not hyperbole; the M1 clearly has processing power to spare since its able to translate/emulate non-optimized code at a speed where users don't even realize there's an extra computing layer in-between. In many cases, it's actually faster. Let me repeat: the M1 is running non-native code, through an emulator, faster than an Intel chip running the native code, natively, and is doing it with substantially less power consumption and with no active cooling. If a millennial is shocked at the performance of the M1 when compared side by side with an Intel equipped MacBook, they can't even imagine what I, and others my age or older, are experiencing. Our minds are completely blown. For those who aren't as tech savvy, a metaphorical example: imagine 2 people trying to read a book in Japanese. One of them can read Japanese while the other doesn't understand Japanese at all but has a device they can use to translate it for them. What's happening here, basically, is the person who needs to use a translation device is able to read the book faster than the Japanese person is able to read it directly. We witnessed first-hand this sort of wholesale transition before from the very same company. We cursed Rosetta. That was a hard shot of reality after being massaged with marketing hype, promises and a near total failure to deliver. This also came on the heels of the painful transition from Classic MacOS 9 to the Unix-based OS X, where little was offered and even that didn't work well. Once we get past the fact that we have software running in emulation at a pace that's faster than the same software being run on native hardware, we are then confronted with the fact that it's doing it cooler and more efficiently. The M1 runs harder for longer and with much less energy consumption and our imaginations are running wild at the prospect of just how much more performance we'll get once our entire workflows are coded to run natively. Even faster(?!?) and more efficiently, possibly gaining as much as 50% more battery life once Rosetta 2 is eliminated? We can't even fathom it. Hell, most of us can't even fathom what Apple has already delivered.

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Why Does the Zeiss ZX1 Exist?

The ZX1 is a $6000 time bomb set to go off in 2 years. It won't even be sellable in 2 years, much less for even half the price, as the hardware required to run the software will be considered "legacy." Zeiss will have to scrap and refresh the internals every 2-3 years to keep pace with the smartphone industry that ARM, Google and Adobe are tied to. I'm afraid Zeiss has failed to truly consider all of this; Samsung, who has their own smartphone division, tried this years ago with the Galaxy NX line of point and shoots and APS-C mirrorless and scrapped it when faced with the choice between trying to sell outdated cameras for a profit versus annual camera refreshes that made them unprofitable. Ultimately, the product cycles of digital cameras and smartphones were just too dissimilar to be profitable. If I'm not buying one for $6000, and you're not buying one for $6000, who's buying this camera?

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The Upcoming iPad Pro Magic Keyboard. A Lifestyle Choice…?

Coming soon from Apple is the recently announced Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. Like before, it's a combined protective case and keyboard, but this one will have 2 dampened hinges and a secondary USB-C port for passthrough charging. The headline feature though is the inclusion of a trackpad and accompanying, underlying changes to iPadOS and the UI to accommodate the use of a pointing device for navigation. Basically, the iPad is becoming more laptop-like since the diversion from a unified iOS code base to separate iPadOS and iPhoneOS. Now the hardware will begin to reflect that change.

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My first real, composite photograph

Today, despite watching others do this for years, I've finally started using it for its intended purpose: modifying photographs to create images that don't exist in real life.
I guess you can infer by my tone that I'm not a huge fan of photo manipulation, and you'd be correct. There's a fine line between photography and art and I feel wholesale manipulation of the image to create something that cannot be captured in whole, within the camera, as dishonest. However, I draw that line at profitability. If you're profiting from a reputation as a photographer while creating digital art and misrepresenting it as a photograph, I take issue with that. If you're creating art for the sake of it and representing it as such, for profit or not, I have no problem. The gray area is of course the line between reality and art. What I did, while photorealistic, is what I would classify as art because you couldn't recreate my result in a single photograph.

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That monochrome feeling.

High contrast scenes tend to work well when processed in monochrome format. I'm especially lucky since Fujifilm's film simulations are such great emulations of their popular film stocks. Their Acros simulation is especially good with high contrast, moody scenes and I've been processing more and more of my landscape shots with it.

A few of the high contrast shots I took while in Forks took especially well with the Acros film simulation.

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Early Tulips at Roozengaarde

After a day's break from the trip to Forks, Craig and I took advantage of a break in the rain to hit Roozengaarde in Skagit to photograph the tulips before the festival began. About half of the tulips were in bloom and the daffodils were still out, though they looked ready to wilt. Fortunately the weather and time of day seemed to keep most people away. This also gave me a chance to use my Leofoto tripod on different terrain. Again, things just happened to work out for us as the rain held off and the clouds helped give the photos a dramatic, almost ominous look that contrasts with the burst of colors below. Too bad the stiff breeze prevented any chance of getting a longer exposure, but that's fine. For tulips, it's all about the colors.

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The Second Day at Second Beach

Day 2 at Second Beach. Unfortunately, this time we hit high tide and quickly discovered the beach was a lot less interesting when the tide is in. We managed to make do, despite shooting over 200 shots, again, trying to chase waves that weren't hitting the shore as intensely as they had the day before. At least having my tripod allowed me to get some long exposures as the clouds were moving on shore fast and thick.

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A Sudden Burst of Activity

Funny how things tend to happen in spurts. I spent the past week in Forks and Mount Vernon to get some camera work in. Craig and I went to Second Beach on the Quilayute reservation to photograph the seastacks just off shore. After a day of recovery, we went to Roozengaarde to get some early shots of the tulips before the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Despite the weather forecast predicting rain for the week, we were fortunate to get some breaks in the rain that were long enough to get all of the shots we had planned for, and then some.

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All the Ingredients for an Excellent Photo Went to Waste by Me. #SeattlePlayedOut

Went to Discovery Park's West point Lighthouse to observe a confluence of events: king tide, strong wind gusts and gradual clearing of skies. The hope was to get waves crashing near the West Point Lighthouse. Unfortunately, the tide began to recede quickly and by the time the light was good, the waves could no longer reach the point. The result was a bunch of mediocre photos that I decided to use for practice in Lightroom instead.

Maybe I can sell a couple of these to a church for use as flyers or book covers or something.

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Seattle Living Up to Stereotype (Glazer’s Queen Anne Photowalk)

Cold, wet... a lot more rain fell than originally expected when I left the house. It was an absolute mess but Fujifilm proved to me how well they sealed the X-T3. Combined with the 16-55mm ƒ/2.8, the combo remained water-tight in steady wind and rain with no attempt at protection. Because of the weather, I was obviously a bit low on inspiration, but figured I'd post what I got for the sake of others who took part.

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Silent Night. #snowmageddon #seattleplayedout

Normally in Seattle, we'll get a couple of inches of snow per winter. This winter, the snow showed up both late and in force, dropping 5 inches of snow on downtown in a single morning. This is on top of a few inches earlier in the week plus a few more inches a day later. As the snow begins to melt from slightly warmer weather bringing rain in the 24 hours since, I've managed to get a few photos processed that reflect the views around downtown in the early hours, shortly after the snowfall stopped.

I walked around downtown at 4am capturing the empty city streets and landmarks between Chinatown and Pier 66. While not very significant compared to other parts of the country, and even the region, the snow was one of the largest single accumulations in recent history for downtown.

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Super Wolf Blood Moon Whatever… 2019 Western Hemisphere Lunar Eclipse

The first three were taken before the penumbra even reached the moon. The weather had just begun to clear but a few clouds still managed to cross the sky before clearing moments before the Earth's penumbra began to cast itself upon the moon's surface. The full moon's glow and reflection on the passing clouds created an eerie look that was just too good to not photograph. All three were bracketed shots but the second is an HDR stacked in Lightroom. The first and third were fully recoverable from single images at the proper exposure.

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Glazer’s Photowalk: West Seattle

It'd been a while so I decided to attend the Glazer's Photowalk on Sunday, Jan 13th in West Seattle. The weather cooperated despite being in the bowels of winter but it was a bit TOO sunny, creating harsh shadows and contrast for the outdoor exercise. I chose to shoot with my 85mm equivalent, the 56mm ƒ/1.2, allowing me to keep some distance between me and my subjects while permitting me to fill the frame with subjects should I choose to do so. The large aperture also allowed for shallow depth of field shots. To do so, I used a 6-stop ND filter, giving me the ability to shoot with a shutter speed that prevented motion blur despite the bright, cloudless skies. It also gave me enough leeway to add blur by drilling down the aperture only a bit.

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Bhy Kracke Park was a failure, Kerry Park less so

So I had this vision in mind: I wanted to get a photo of the Space Needle superimposed on Mt. Rainier. Now that I have the 100-400mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 lens from Fujifilm, I'm able to get this shot... if it's even possible. I've seen others who've composited the Space Needle onto a photo of Mt. Rainier, or Mt. Baker, and even Mt. Hood (uh, wtf?) and the results always look less than stellar, mostly because I've lived here most of my life and I know those shots weren't possible using the angles they'd chosen of either object.

I wanted to do this for real, all in camera, so I consulted a map and looked around Queen Anne hill and settled on Bhy Kracke Park.

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