>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

It happens…

One day it’s going to happen to you, if it hasn’t already. You turn on your computer and try to access your image files, but all you get is an error message.

My turn came on Saturday. One of the large external hard drives on which I store images had given up the will to live, taking with it around 60Gb of RAW files.

I tried all of the simple (and free) ways to restore the disk and retrieve the data, which I’m sure is still there on the disk, but in the end I gave up. Fortunately I think I have a backup of everything (or almost all) that was on it, and as I type I’m copying the files in the background to be sure I’ll be protected in the case of another failure.

Few things in life are sure – but there is a moral in this. One thing you can be sure of is that all systems will fail – in time.

I’m fortunate – or well prepared – thanks to an accident in the first few weeks after I switched to digital, which made me embrace the idea of redundancy.

Earlier in the week I was reading a sorry series of messages for help on an on line forum from a photographer who had suffered a similar catastrophe following the failure of his RAID backup system. He’d relied on the limited redundancy built into this, which meant the data could recover from a hard drive failure, but something else – probably a controller failure – had gone wrong and the array was now unreadable.

I hope there will be a happy ending for him, but it may require the four-figure assistance of a specialised data retrieval service to get his work back.

Off-Line Storage

For some years many people were telling me that external hard-disk storage was the safest way to store my files. As I’d already had a problem with it, I wasn’t entirely convinced. Now all the experts tell me that on-line storage is the way to go, with services offered by various companies at various prices. Some of these companies have been very keen to tell me of all the safeguards that are in place to ensure my data is safe, and it sometimes seems convincing.

I think they provide a useful service, but I don’t feel I want to rely on them. Conditions change, companies go out of business, and of course at some point their services may become too expensive for me.

So although I will increasingly be storing work on line – if only on various agency web sites – my main storage will continue to be on a do-it-yourself basis.

Redundancy the Key

There is much to be said for keeping things as simple as possible, but always bearing in mind the principle of redundancy. As soon as my images leave the card or camera I want to have at least TWO copies on fully independent media.

Lightroom has a useful option to make a backup as it imports your images, and I make use of this, with one going to one of the drives on my second hard disk and the other to an external USB hard drive.

Write Once Media

There is also a great deal to be said for using media that can be written to once only and do not allow deletion, such as CD and DVD. Much has been written about the problems of using these media, but they still seem a good medium-term solution.

The only CDs I’ve had a problem with are early ones written using UDF. The good-quality disks I use are, according the manufacturer, good for a hundred years, though that doesn’t necessarily mean the data will be, but nor will the photographer last that long. I write them disk at once, finalise the disks, verify every bit, label with a permanent CD marker pen and store them in hanging inert plastic files in cases in the dark.

CDs don’t hold enough files, so I’ve now moved to using DVD in the same way. I’ve been writing these for several years now and have yet to have a problem in accessing a single file. But of course it will happen one day.

Once I have a copy of my files on DVD (as well as on the external hard drive) I can delete the copy of the raw file on my computer hard disk, making space for new work.

At the moment I keep all of the developed files (anything from 1 in 3 to 1 in 20 of what I shoot) as full size ‘quality 11’ jpegs on another hard drive in my computer system, but as this fills up I’ll need to transfer older work to DVD and external drive.

External Hard Drives

Apart from this, I also use USB hard drives, which can easily be attached to any computer I want to use. Currently I’m using Western Digital 500Gb drives which cost around £60. Its a simpler (and cheaper) solution than many, but one that gives a reasonable level of security – and would be even better if I could keep those DVDs at another location.

While writing about this, The EPUK newsletter arrived, pointing me to a useful detailed article by AP photographer Ben Curtis on his SnapperTalk blog on his equipment for archiving. Its a good example of a rather more involved (and expensive) approach than mine, at the centre of which, attaching to his Mac is a very nice looking SilverSATA II running a RAID 1 two disk mirroring array, while he also makes backups on another hard disk.

Key Points Of Possible Failure

However you decide to look after the future of your images, there are some key points of possible failure to consider:

hard disk and controller access
power failures (which can damage hardware and corrupt files)
human failure
theft, fire, flood
obsolescence

Notes
UPS
We should all be using uninterruptible power supplies to let our systems shut down gracefully in the event of a power cut. Its something I’ve never quite got around to doing on my home systems, though I implemented them at work. One of the few advantages of notebook computers is that they keep on working when the power goes.

Obsolescence
There are so many CDs and DVDs in existence that readers for these media are likely still to be in production for quite a few years after these stop being a standard – in much the same way as we can now buy decks to play our EPs and LPs and record those to current media.

So although at some point it may be necessary to move data away from these media. Hard disk standards are also changing, and USB or Firewire will become technologies of the past – just as few computers now have serial ports.

Smash EDO

Brighton residents who had marched against the war in Iraq formed ‘Smash EDO‘ in 2004 when they learnt that a factory in their city, EDO (since taken over by ITT and now known as EDO/ITT) was responsible for making guidance systems and other components that made the bombing of Iraq possible. They began a continuing series of regular demonstrations against the company that was profiting from killing people there.

As well as regular weekly ‘noise’ demonstrations, they have organised other events and meetings around the country, and made a film, ‘On The Verge’ about the campaign. They successfully fought an injunction by EDO that would have prevented demonstrations and got the local council to pass a motion upholding their right to peaceful and lawful protest following some very questionable police activity and arrests during demonstrations.

Around 600 marchers walked and danced along the main road towards EDO

On Wednesday I went to Brighton to photograph the ‘Carnival Against the Arms Trade‘ which Smash EDO had organised. It started as a lively fun event, but got a little out of hand when police tried to stop the marchers before they had reached the EDO factory.

Police tried to stop marchers

The marchers pushed over the police barriers and past the police who made only token attempts to stop them at that point. At two other points in the remaining two hundred yards or so the police again made a rather half-hearted line across the road, delaying the march slightly until people again pushed through to the factory gates.

Batons were used

Although there had been a little pushing and shoving, and police had certainly extended and used their batons, I only saw banners rather the demonstrators being hit and in general tempers had remained fairly cool and behaviour relatively restrained, rather as if in a slightly unruly rugby scrum, although with rather more shouting. There were a lot of police, but most were just standing and watching their colleagues getting pushed back

Eventually around 300 of the marchers reached the gates (others had waited further down the hill or gone home), which were protected by a triple line of police, with more in reserve. I went back and up the hill to get an overall view and discussed the situation with some of the others around.

It looked like stalemate – but how wrong could I be!

The general opinion was that little further was likely to happen. The factory was surrounded by a high and secure fence and there were more than enough police to hold the demonstrators at bay, with now quite a few taking a rest further down the hill.

So I thought I’d more or less done all I could and walked down the hill to catch a bus. Maybe get home and file some pictures…

But apparently as soon as my back was turned, someone mysteriously opened a gate and demonstrators rushed in, soon followed by police. A few windows were broken and there was considerable violence, with police using batons and pepper spray as well as bringing in police dogs. It seems just a matter of good fortune that nobody appears to have been seriously injured.

Ten people were arrested, mainly for minor offences, though they were all held for 30 hours before being released on police bail without charges being laid, to return to the custody centre in early August. While they were being held, police raided a number of their homes and seized several computers, mobile phones and clothes.

You can see more of my view of the events on My London Dairy, and reports mainly about what happened after I left the scene early on Indymedia. I should have stayed until things were more obviously over, but it was a nice day and I had other things I wanted to do!

Seven Years in Parliament Square

Brian Haw started his one man protest in Parliament Square on 2 June, 2001. Despite police harassment and vigilante attacks (ignored or even encouraged by police) not to mention an Act of Parliament designed to get rid of him, he is still there seven years later.

I can’t remember when I first saw him there, or when I first photographed him, but I have many pictures from over the years. You can of course read more about him and the Parliament Square Peace Campaign on the Parliament Square web site.

I was among those who went along on Sunday afternoon to mark the occasion, joining him and his regular supporters in the square. Brian himself was marking it by fasting and praying until Monday 2nd.

You can see a few more pictures on My London Diary. It was a dull, drab day with not a lot happening – as must have so often have been the case over the 2561 (and counting) days that Brian has been there.

This was at the 5th anniversary in 2006:

2006 Parliament Square

And one from the 6th anniversary:

Over the years Brian has seen and taken part in many of the political protests in Parliament Square and around:

With peace protesters at the Cenotaph in 2004. Brian holds a placard “War Kills the Innocent” in front of Cenotaph in Whitehall, where the Code Pink wreath reads, “How Many Will Die in Iraq Today?”.

My favourite picture of him was taken during the rally against the replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles in March 2007.

Brian Haw

Brian’s T-shirt in this picture carries the message “Find Your Courage; Share Your Vision; Change Your World” which seems so appropriate. It – and the quote – was produced by US disablement activist Dan Wilkins, who was delighted to see Brian wearing it when I sent him a copy of the picture.

OjodePez 13

Should you ever need to know the Spanish for ‘Fish Eye lens‘ it is ‘objetivo ojo de pez‘, which explains the name of the Madrid-based OjodePez magazine (link is to the English version) which recently invited Aaron Schuman, the Editor of the on-line SeeSaw Magazine to guest edit Issue #13, and you can now see work from it on line (and perhaps be amused by its little Capa falling soldier logo.)*

OjodePez13

Schuman’s issue is ‘This Land Was Made for You and Me‘, and his land is of course America, as seen by Ryan McGinley, Alec Soth, Jessica Ingram, Richard Mosse, Stephen Shore, Colby Katz, Kalpesh Lathigra, Todd Hido and Tim Davis.

It isn’t actually the work by the best known and most fashionable of these that appeals to me most, although all of the stories have their interest. I’ve seen this work by McGinley too often before; perhaps this isn’t Alec Soth at his best (though there is one image I like very much,) and certainly Stephen Shore‘s work here will not enhance his reputation.

But anyone with an interest in documentary photography will find much to attract them, and I particularly liked the work of Kalpesh Lathigra on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Tim Davis‘s ‘Retail’, night images of simple houses in small-town America, their windows reflecting the garish retail neon of petrol stations and fast food outlets.

Also on the site are two videos related to the issue, with a 10 minute feature ‘Two Way Street’, shot for public broadcasting in California, in which Todd Hido looks at how he takes his pictures of models in carefully chosen hotel rooms and outdoor scenes, mainly at night, as well as editing them for a book. It is a video I found of considerably greater interest than the on-line page spreads. A shorter piece looks at ‘Hunting Rabbits‘ by Colby Catz, and there are other videos related to earlier issues – work from which can also be seen as well as other material on the site.

Although you can see a good selection of images on line, the text is reproduced too small to read easily, and you will need to buy the print edition for that and the essays by Geoff Dyer, Joerg Colberg, Michael Famighetti, Robert Fitterman and Aaron Schuman. Someat least of these writers appear prolifically on the Internet (who doesn’t these days) so you will have a good idea what to expect. There appears to be no UK distributor for OjodePez, though it is available in USA, Switzerland, Germany and Australia as well as Spain, but it may be available through some gallery shops etc.

Aaron Schuman‘s own Seesaw is one of the best of on-line magazines, and it’s a pleasure to view and mention again the Winter 2008 issue, including work by Reiner Riedler who I met at ‘Rhubarb’ last year, and others including ‘Lot 116′ an intriguing set of black and white images found in Brighton (UK), 2007 by Schuman.

* Note
The interface for OjodePez uses a lot of java, which on my machine it isn’t quite fast enough, and certainly not always intuitive. At first I got the impression that there was very little content on line and thought that perhaps I needed to subscribe to see more, but after a while I realised how it works. Regular users of the site – and I suspect the site designer – will doubtless regard it as a model of elegant and clear interface design.

Click on the picture to go to the first page of the story, then page icons in green at top right (though the may go on to the next line at the left) show the available pages – click the second of these to go to the next and so on.

Yard Sale Weegees

I’ve found the story from the New York Times about the lucky find of 210 vintage prints by Weegee, along with a number of letters written by him mentioned in several places. (Some features on the NYT require you to register.)

Two women from Indiana were driving back from a camping holiday when they stopped at a ‘yard sale’ outside a house in Kentucky, and a zebra-striped trunk caught the interest of one of them, so she bought it. Inside she found some old clothes, letters and photographs and almost threw the whole lot away.

Something made her feel they might have some value and instead she took the letters and photos to a dealer in Indianapolis, and the Museum of Art there now has the new items in their collection.

Apparently there are no unknown images among the prints, and the letters are not exactly enthralling, but it is still quite a find to pick up as junk when someone clears out their attic. They are thought to have belonged to Weegee’s companion in his later years, Wilma Wilcox, who died 25 years after him in 1993, but how they got to Kentucky has not been determined.

Weegee prints typically sell for around £5000 each, so that’s quite a trunkload, even if many of the images are from his later and hopefully less collectable work when he had decided he was an ‘artist’ rather than a photographer.

Usher Fellig was born in Gallicia, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, later (and previously) Poland and now in the Ukraine in 1893, but came with his family to New York’s largely Jewish Lower East Side when he was ten – and they changed his first name to Arthur to avoid anti-semitism. By the time he was 14 was supporting his family, taking on a number of badly paid jobs on the streets of New York, including working as an assistant to a street photographer, who taught him his trade.

In 1923 he got a job in the darkroom of Acme New Services, where he stayed for 12 years, although he apparently he occasionally got to take pictures when had to dep for photographers who were to drunk to work or otherwise unable to make their shift.

In1935 he left, and tried to find work as a freelance photographer. (Although in the radio interview – see below – he talks about sleeping on a park bench, things were not quite that tough and he had a small one room flat, but the bench was probably more comfortable on hot summer nights.)

For a couple of years he spent a lot of time hanging around next to the teletype desk at police headquarters, waiting for news of crimes to come in that he could rush out and cover. They should have thrown him out for not having a press card, but he managed without, and once he got a few pictures printed in the papers he managed to get one.

It was perhaps because the police got fed up with this guy hanging around that they allowed him to fit a police radio into the boot of a car – which was otherwise illegal. Although Weegee had undoubtedly developed a sixth sense for when and where he could find a picture on the street, it was this radio rather than a ‘ouiji’ board that enabled him to get to crime scenes before the pack.

The car also carried a portable darkroom a in the boot so he could develop his film and make contact prints, and a portable typewriter for captions and text – a full press kit which meant he could file almost as fast as today’s digital photographers.

He became known to everyone by the nickname ‘Ouiji (for what these days we more often call it a Ouija board) but then styled himself ‘The Famous Weegee‘ as people had trouble with the spelling. From 1940-44 he was on a retainer to the New York left-wing daily PM (for Picture Magazine, a loss-making newspaper which had no advertising on principle, but relied on support from an eccentric millionaire Marshall Field III, grandson of the founder of the famous Chicago department store.) It was during these years that he produced his most memorable work from the streets of New York.

He became well known, with a show at the Photo League in 1941 followed by one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1945. Getting assignments for Vogue in 1946 was probably the beginning of the end so far as his serious photography was concerned. He became convinced not just that he was a great artist, but that in order to be one he had to stop taking the kind of pictures that had made him one.

His book Naked City, which came out in 1945 (and is still in print) made him even more famous, and was the inspiration for the film of the same name (they purchased the title from him), a film noir classic shot on the streets of New York in 1948, which later spawned a TV series. All of human life is certainly there.

Weegee himself became the model for a photographer in the films of the period, complete with cigar and “4×5 Speed Graphic with a Kodak Ektar lens in a Supermatic shutter, all American made. I always use a flash bulb for my pictures, which are mostly taken at night. I work alone and don’t use extension lights, tripods, or exposure meters. I get snappy results from using Number 3 enlarging paper. ” As well as acting as a technical advisor in Hollywood he also had a number of small parts in films

Recommended Web Sites

ICP – Weegee’s World
http://museum.icp.org/museum/collections/special/weegee/weegee.html

Amber Online – Weegee Collection
http://www.amber-online.com/exhibitions/weegee-collection

Sound Portraits – Radio Interview from 1945
http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/weegee/

Humans say NO to Heathrow

NO to a third runway at Heathrow

I took this picture with one hand on the camera, the other holding a large sheet just like those in the picture, taking part with around 2600 others in the large human ‘NO’ that was being recorded live on BBC News TV when I made this picture. I checked to make sure that my own ‘NO’ was the correct way up, but not everyone was so careful, not that you could have seen in the view from the cherry-picker or helicopter.

It was an event at which most of the protesters were local people, many who will lose homes if the runway goes ahead. Of course they will get compensation, but the terms are often far from fair financially. Some have long links with the area, many with parents or spouses and other relatives buried in the Cherry Lane Cemetery, opened in 1936, which may be covered by a spur road to the airport if plans go ahead.

Activists on the march from Hatton Cross to Sipson

The march and rally attracted support from MPs of all parties with constituencies under the flightpath. Surprisingly one of the closest boroughs to Heathrow, Spelthorne (until 1995 boundary changes it included the site of Terminal 5) where I live supports the development – along with its MP. This will probably change once the plans for the fourth Runway through its centre are leaked!

MPs Justine Greening (Con, Putney), John McDonnell (Lab, Hayes & Harlington), and Susan Kramer (LibDem, Richmond Park) at the front of the march in Sipson
I’ve written about the proposed development and Saturday’s demonstration on My London Diary as usual.

No Third Runway

Today I photographed a demonstration against the continuing expansion of London Heathrow, certainly one of the worst located airports in the developed world.

I grew up under its flightpath. In my back garden in Hounslow I would imagine myself reaching up and touching the planes as they passed overhead. It wouldn’t have needed very long arms. I dreamed (or nightmared) of them passing over in flames (though sometime it was true) and jumping across the sky as flaming fragments.

Heathrow was established by deception – as a miltary airstrip for which there was no military purpose. It has grown by lies. The third terminal was all the airport would ever want, but as soon as planning permission was obtained, in went the application for a fourth. Of course that would be enough. But somehow we have a fifth, and the sixth will soon be with us unless we stop the madness.

The quiet Middlesex villages I cycled through as a child – and by the time I was ten I was roaming through them all on my bicycle and further afield – are either already gone or under threat. Longford, Sipson, Harlington, Harmondsworth and more.

Harmondsworth, 2003

Harmondsworth, 2003

Look at the placard at the right of the picture. Here is a detail from another frame that states clearly what the BAA, responsible for Heathrow, promised about the possibility of a third runway there:

Detail of BAA's view of a third runway at Heathrow
Rule out third runway say BAA

I hope today’s demonstration – in which over 3000 people gave a resounding ‘No’ to the idea of a third runway will cause even our un-green government to think again. It has been clear to anyone who took a careful and balanced view that Heathrow was in the wrong place since the 1950s – if not before. Government after government has refused to grasp the nettle and start to develop another London airport on a more suitable site. We now have a different situation, with increasing oil prices as we go past ‘peak oil’ as well as an much greater appreciation of the catastrophe approaching through climate change. From every point of view – even a strict economic one that ignores environmental issues – Heathrow needs to shrink rather than expand.

I’ll post some of my own pictures of today’s demonstration shortly. For the moment you can see a few my pictures from the march from Sipson to Harmondsworth in June 2003, and you can also see the BBC’s video coverage of the event, in which I appear rather too prominently, immediately after the huge ‘NO’, taken from a cherry picker, as a photographer in a blue check shirt, first walking towards the camera and then walking back into the frame to take another picture.

Pagan Pride

Pagan Pride, a procession of pagans (or neo-pagans) around London’s Bloomsbury has a certain colour and charm. It’s a celebration of spring, the public part of an annual ‘Beltane Bash‘ event, with elements that come from our Celtic past.

Pagan Pride (C) 2008, Peter Marshall
Dancing around the fountain in Russell Square

Efforts have been made to restore the garden in Russell Square to its original plan. It was laid out by Humphry Repton in 1805-6, although his original planting of lime trees were fortunately replaced by J C Loudon with London planes in the 1860s – so they are now fine, mature specimens. Camden council added a central feature of three ‘modern’ fountains in 1960, which were certainly not to everyone’s (or possibly anyone except the Borough architect’s) taste. Fortunately funding from the Urban Parks Programme in 1996 enabled these to be removed (and the original garden layout to be restored) and the park reopened in 2002 with a modern computer controlled fountain designed by Land Use Consultants (LUC).

This fountain could hardly have been designed more appropriately for the Pagan Pride parade – which I think began shortly afterwards, with phallic water jets emerging, rising and falling from a number holes in the York stone paving creating a truly organic (or orgasmic?) effect. When I first photographed the event, the jets were following the normal erratic (if not random) pattern, but this year the gardeners appear to have been persuaded to turn them on more or less full for the duration of the event.

You can see the effect on My London Diary. And yes, I did get wet, both from the fountains and the rain.

Better Digital 2

The second instalment of a short series of tips on digital images – see also Better Digital 1

Image size and Resolution

Image size is measured in pixels. When supplying images you will seldom if ever be told what size is needed. A rough guide:

· Full page 3000×2000 px or larger
· Half page 2400x1800px or larger
· Quarter page 1800x1200px or larger

Always set the resolution of images at 300 dpi unless specifically asked to use another figure. Most editors etc have no idea what resolution means, and few seem to know it can readily be changed. Much of the confusion comes about because in Photoshop the ‘Image Size’ dialogue box can be used to do two rather different things. It can change the image resolution and it can ‘resample’ your images. Resampling alters the number of pixels in the image, making it larger or smaller (with photographs you will always want to use either ‘bicubic’ or ‘smooth bicubic’ resampling in Photoshop, although other software offers algorithms that may at times give better results.)

Changing resolution doesn’t actually alter your images, but simply changes a few bytes in the file that contain the resolution figure, which is an instruction to the output device about how to work out the size to make a print. Make sure you un-check the resample box in Photoshop when changing resolution – or you will also resample and thus alter your image size.

Various programs claim to work magic when resizing your images, and over the years I’ve tested and reviewed most of them, usually getting a free copy. My conclusion was that for any normal purposes you don’t need them, but that some, particularly SizeFixer will give a better result if you need to blow up a small image for a giant print – and have a very long time to wait for the result.

Image Quality and Format

Unless specifically asked for TIFF files you can supply JPEG. If awkward customers particularly want TIFFs you will find no problem in converting high quality jpegs to tiff format in Photoshop and sending these!

For supply on CD I would normally use Jpeg quality 11 in Photoshop or 92% in Lightroom
For e-mail, I cut down the file size depending on the page size requested as above and supply at quality 9 or 10.

TIFFs should be supplied uncompressed, in PC byte order. All files should have the appropriate colour profile, sRGB or Adobe RGB, embedded in the file.

Sharpening
Images for reproduction should normally be supplied unsharpened, or only with very slight sharpening (use unsharp mask or smart sharpening or a specialised sharpening plug-in – my favourite is Focalblade. In Lightroom I always apply ) There should be no visible sharpening artefacts.

You should leave it to the printer (or whoever is preparing work for the press) to apply appropriate sharpening for the printer and output size.

If supplying images for presentations or web use, sharpen these appropriately for use on screen. Again there should be no visible artefacts.

Black and White images
Black and white images are also usually best supplied as RGB files, using the appropriate colour profile, sRGB or Adobe RGB, embedded in the file.

If you know your colour images are going to be used as black and white, it is best to do the conversion yourself. Photoshop offers various ways to do this, and one of the simplest that gives you decent control is the ‘Channel Mixer.’ Lightroom and CS3 have a superior ‘Grayscale Mixer’ and plugins such as B/W Styler give ease of use and special effects as well as similar control for users of earlier versions of Photoshop.

If your black and white images are to be printed as colour, you can produce richer results by the use of small amounts of colour in highlights and shadows – as we used to produce by selenium and other toning methods.

CMYK
Normal colour printing uses the 4 inks Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK, and the printer needs images that are separated into these four colours. However this is a highly technical process and depends on the inks, printer and paper, and it it usually best to supply files as Adobe RGB (or possibly ECI-RGB for European printers.)

If you have to convert to CMYK, you should try to find out from the printer the appropriate CMYK colour space to use, such as SWOP Coated V2 CMYK.

Metadata
Never let any file leave your hands without appropriate metadata. The proposed ‘orphan works’ legislation makes it even more essential to ensure as a minimum that your name, copyright details and contact details are included.

Metadata includes both EXIF data and IPTC data. Cameras write EXIF data into the file on every image that you take, but scanned images don’t have it. Some cameras enable you to write a comment into every file – and mine is my copyright notice. However most software seems unable to read it.

IPTC stands for International Press Telecommunications Council. IPTC data is written into the image file, either as an IPTC header, or using the Adobe XMP format. You can download an IPTC metadata panel to add to recent versions of Photoshop (CS and later.) Some older software cannot read the XMP data, but this is now the standard format.

The uploading module in Lightroom and similar software makes it very easy to set up presets for regularly used metadata (such as photographer, copyright, contact details etc) and also add keywords during the uploading of batches of images from memory cards. You can also easily add headline, caption, country code, date etc.

Workflow
Workflow is a consistent series of steps that you carry out on each image. Mine relies on Adobe Lightroom and can be summarised:

Import copies to hard disk, makes backup, adds keywords and other metadata, adds to image catalogue
Selection – deletes unwanted images, gives others a rating (keep, process, etc)
Processing of selected images adjusts exposure, brightness, curve, removes dust, red-eye etc,contrast, reduces noise, sharpens, chromatic aberration, vignetting etc (some handled by presets, some automatic, other image specific)
Output writes files of preset size, quality, colour space etc for particular usage to selected locations

Recommended Software

PC Users: Adobe Lightroom
MAC Users: Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture

A very few selected images will need local manipulation in a program such as Photoshop. A good cheaper alternative that can do virtually everything most of us need is Photoshop Elements. There are other programs, but these are so commonly used by photographers that they are usually the best choice.

Other RAW conversion software may sometimes give better results than these, although the differences are generally not great. But none offer the ease of use and in particular the ability to catalogue your images. For Nikon cameras, the ultimate results seem to come from the Nikon Capture NX software, but its a pig to use compared to Lightroom.

I routinely process everything in Lightroom, writing full-size jpegs at quality 92 of selected images – that can be resampled if necessary if I need larger files for a particular purpose – or even converted to TIFF if necessary.

I run a second selection on these results and resize and convert to sRGB for web use, using ACDSee Pro (I got a free copy of this, but had previously bought it as my general purpose image viewer.)

Those few images when I want a high quality print – perhaps for exhibition use – I’ll try using Capture NX, and see if I can get a better result. Then I’ll do a little tweaking in Photoshop before either printing or sending out for printing.

Some free/cheap software for PC:

Raw Therapee
This looks excellent for converting RAW files to jpeg, giving results on the few images I’ve tried as good as the most expensive software. Where it seems to miss out is in workflow and speed.

PTLens
A dirt cheap plug-in for Photoshop (it can alsobe run standalone) that, when I tested it, out-performed a commercial program costing over ten times as much. It automatically corrects pincushion or barrel distortion and has the great advantage that it can work for any lens on your camera. If you have a lens that isn’t already covered you can take some suitable pictures and get it added.

Irfanview
This is a good file viewing program that also allows you to do some basic image correction, as well as allowing you to use some Photoshop plugins. It is free for private, non-commercial use and very cheap for business use.

There may at some point be a Better Digital 3 in this series – but don’t hold your breath!

Justice for Darfur

The genocide in Darfur has being going on for so long that it seldom makes the news, which is perhaps why none of the newspapers could be bothered to send anyone to cover the demonstration in London calling for ‘Justice for Darfur’ and for those accused of war crimes there to be sent for trial at the International Criminal Court.

Although over 50 people haven been listed for investigation, so far as I am aware only two arrest warrants have been issued. Ahmad Haroun is a minister in the Sudanese government, and rather than send him for trial, the government response has been to promote him. Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb was actually being held by the police in Sudan on other charges when the warrant was issued, but they have since released him without charge.

As I said to one of those on the demonstration and march, it is hard to see why an event like this isn’t news when celebrities only need to sneeze to make the front page. As so often to find out what is really going on you have to look on the Internet rather than rely on what the commercial press thinks we want to know – or wants to tell us. I’m a great supporter of press freedom, but at the moment most of the press is hardly worth fighting for, and we often have to rely on non-commercial news media such as Indymedia for news.

More about the event and more pictures on My London Diary