Month: October 2011

Diwali Pictures | Seattle Photographer

Diversity, My work, Still photography

Shot for ZUMA Press. If you want to license these images please contact sales@zumapress.com.

 

Happy Diwali!

These Diwali pictures are from celebrations near Seattle on the first day of Diwali, October 26, 2011. Special thanks to the Hindu Temple & Cultural Center as well as the Gurudwara Sikh Centre of Seattle for your hospitality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scholarships for Photojournalists Returning to School | Seattle Photographer

Still photography, Uncategorized

Six grants of $4,000 each. What a great way to support photojournalists who want to be more educated and be industry leaders.

Why did they have to wait until after my graduation to create this fund?? Well it’s too late for me, but you should apply! See the full announcement below from the NPPA’s National Press Photographers Foundation.

I returned to the University of Washington Bothell to pursue a master’s degree and to be a Seattle photographer again after working at my first newspaper job at The Park Record in Park City, UT; I would have loved to see more scholarships supporting photojournalists who want to be more informed and educated.

 

 

Here is the info:

 

New Scholarships Available for Photojournalists Returning to School

The National Press Photographers Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of new scholarship money for photojournalists who have returned to school.NPPF president Mike Smith said the funds are being made available through the Foundation, the National Press Photographers Association, and a grant from the Author’s Coalition of America.“If you are a photojournalist with three years experience and your work has been published in newspapers, magazines or through agencies, and if you have returned to school in the past year, you are eligible to apply,” Smith said.

“These scholarships are particularly important now when so many photographers have been forced to learn new skills just to keep their jobs, much less find a new one. We are fortunate to have some money to support photographers who are trying to keep up with the head-spinning changes in their industry.”

Six grants of $4,000 each, called the NPPF-NPPA Career Expansion Scholarships, will be awarded this year.

The application deadline is November 15, 2011. Applicants must include a resume, completed application forms (which can be downloaded at http://nppf.org) and recommendation letters from their instructors.

Send your application materials to: Tom Hardin, NPPF vice president, 1622 Forest Hill Drive, Louisville, KY, 40205. Hardin can be contacted by eMail to answer questions about applying, and his eMail address is hardin@aye.net.

 

Final Cut Pro X Review | Seattle Photographer

Gear, Multimedia, Tech stuff, Thoughts, Video

Update 11/14/2011: Final Cut Pro 10.0.1 brought good updates and changed my outlook somewhat.

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After using the software for a few months now, I finally feel that I can write a well-informed Final Cut Pro X review. Let’s get right to it: don’t buy Final Cut Pro X. Not just yet.

This was a massive overhaul of the software and anyone should know that it’s risky to jump on the bandwagon with a 1.0 release. Don’t get me wrong – I like Final Cut Pro X and I think it has a lot of potential, but there are too many bugs right now. Extremely frustrating bugs. Bugs that make this software a huge waste of time and inappropriate for professional use.

The trailer you see below is one I made for With Nature in Mind using Final Cut Pro X, along with a full 7-minute video that is almost finished. It was fun to learn the new software while creating these videos, and there are a lot of great features in the software, but this is an honest Final Cut Pro X review so I have to tell both sides of the story.

The bugs are frustrating. The worst one happens when using the lower third templates (the little name and title animations for interviews). What happens is that I insert a lower third over someone talking, type in their name and information, and then move along with my editing. But after a while, the changes to the lower third get lost over and over again at different times in the editing process. Sometimes, I’ll have the video project completely finished in Final Cut Pro X and I’ll export it. Everything looks fine. Then I go back in to change something small – and completely unrelated to the lower thirds in the project – but what will happen is the lower thirds reset themselves and just say “Name” in place of the interviewees’ actual names! This has happened too many times. Often times the formatting that I have applied to the lower third is also lost. See pics below.

Another weird bug that happens that I haven’t read in other Final Cut Pro X reviews is that the audio becomes distorted upon export and upload to YouTube. When I export a video and watch it on my computer, it sounds fine, but when I upload to YouTube, often the audio gets very scratchy. I know this is a transcoding problem because I found a way to work around it. The problem disappears if, after export from Final Cut Pro X, I open the video in Quicktime and use that program’s “Save As” function and select “1080p.” This essentially re-transcodes the video file and somehow fixes whatever Final Cut Pro X is doing wrong. Very weird. And another time waster.

The funny thing is, I started using the software in order to save time, but this Final Cut Pro X review is sadly going to tell you that Final Cut Pro X wastes more of your time than it saves. Yes, it’s true that you can sync an audio track with a video track in one click (something huge for DSLR interview shooters like myself). Yes, you can edit h.264 footage without having to first transcode to something like Prores 422 via MPEG Streamclip. And yes, it’s true that you don’t have to wait for Final Cut Pro X to render (at all). But what they don’t tell you is that the program becomes quite slow during the “background rendering” that Final Cut Pro X uses, but this is probably not a big deal on newer machines. My Macbook Pro is from mid-2008, but still is generally quite fast and does great with the previous versions of Final Cut Pro. Also, in general, Final Cut Pro X is just slow overall compared to previous versions. Again, yes, my machine is older, but comparing Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X head to head … the older version is way faster.

So here is my advice – since you have invested your time in reading this Final Cut Pro X review, do you yourself another favor and save your time by avoiding Final Cut Pro X until 10.1 comes out. If you don’t like that, then switch to Adobe Premiere. Call me too patient, but I’ll wait to see if 10.1 works or not before I switch. Unlike many, many other photographers and video producers out there.

Canon 1D X camera announcement | Seattle Photographer

Gear, Still photography, Tech stuff, Thoughts

Exciting news – I just saw the announcement of the upcoming release of the Canon 1D X, which combines the 1Ds line of camera bodies and the 1D line. You can see the official press release here.

Before I can actually get my hands on it (can I borrow $6,800?) I’ll have to say that the Canon 1D X will be a useful update for photojournalists and filmmakers/videographers because of a few new things – first, it is now a full frame camera body, unlike the 1D series, which had a 1.3x crop factor. That meant that you didn’t see everything the lens gave the camera; everything was cropped/zoomed in by a factor of 1.3. Now, the 1D X matches the 5D mark II in full frame capability, so the image will be much nicer. Additionally, you can adjust the audio levels on the 1D X while recording video. Before – and with the Canon 5D mark II – you had to pick an audio level setting and leave it. On-the-go adjustments are crucial for filmmakers, especially when it comes to audio.

Another great thing is that the 1D X shoots 60p video, which means you get 60 frames per second so that you can get more out of your slow-mo shots, especially with the help of Final Cut Pro plugins like Twixtor. Again, the 5D mark II lags behind – with a max of 30p (though the 7D shoots 60p as does the 1D mark IV).

There is a whole host of other new features and crazy upgrades (14 frames per second for sports … or LOTS of pictures of your cat), but I just wanted to highlight a couple of my favorite things. We’ll see how the thing functions when it actually comes out and if there are any issues like with the last time Canon released such a heavily redesigned product. 1D mark III auto focus defection nightmares anyone?

 

Occupy Seattle Protest Photos | Seattle Photographer

My work, Seattle, Still photography

Shot for ZUMA Press. If you want to license these images please contact sales@zumapress.com.

This is a selection of images from the ongoing Occupy Seattle protests here in Seattle, Washington that are organized in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. Protestors on Saturday, October 15 illegally set up 150 tents and stayed in Westlake Park until police finally removed them Monday morning.