Website upgrade

I am busy with a fairly major upgrade to this site. Currently I use Adobe Dreamweaver to update news and images on the site. As the layout is fairly prescriptive, updates have to follow the same layout. This limits the scope of changes that can be made. It is also becoming imperative for me to have a blog which I can update regularly with news on new projects that I am busy with and also to bring you updates on techniques that I am employing. The blog will also cater for some quick previews on new images. So keep a watch out for a revamped website and blog. In addition this should give me the opportunity to provide links to eBooks that I am busy writing. By the way .... the Herons are very busy with breeding activities.

Digital Workshop and School
   

I have always worked from home where I had a good computer set up and just about enough space to do the things I was doing. However as the computer system grew with multiple screens and more and more digital storage needs, never mind the space requirements for large format printers, I have decided to move into a suite of offices here in George. This now gives me the opportunity to do what I have always wanted to and that is to teach!
I continue to offer individualized tailor made tuition – whatever your need may be. From understanding your point-and-shoot to sophisticated post processing using layer-based PhotoShop techniques or the digital workflow offered by LightRoom. This will be on a one-on-one basis  or very small groups. Some pupils have made extraordinary progress towards becoming accomplished photographers.

Adobe Lightroom
Whilst being a reluctant starter, I am becoming more and more convinced that Lightroom will best serve most serious digital photographer’s workflow needs.  It is in essence a workflow tool for digital photographers. It is a one-stop all-encompassing program that downloads your pictures, backs them up simultaneously, organizes them, manages the meta-data and keywords, processes the RAW file if that is the format you captured the images in, produces slideshows and web galleries and a lot more.  If you are serious about digital photography and you are considering a major software purchase, then  I don’t think you can go far wrong with Lightroom. The Mac and PC versions are covered under one licence. Version 3.4 now available.

Computer system


I have more recently gone the Apple Mac route with my laptop and upgraded to a 17” MacBook Pro running both Windows 7 64 bit and Mac OS X v 10.6 Snow Leopard in parallel. The graphics are superb but  do think Windows slows things down a bit when using Parallels. Seems faster just using BootCamp but then you have the hassle of re-booting into each system.

My love affair with Mac continues. I now have a dual quad core Xeon 2.93 Ghz Mac Pro installed with 16GB of memory. It has two display cards driving two 27" NEC MultiSync PA 271W displays and one 24" Apple LED display which makes editing an absolute pleasure. The Windows 7 system certainly runs Photoshop better than the Mac version even though it is now also 64 bit because many plug ins for Mac don't yet work with Mac 64 bit PS5. Lightroom (Mac version) is a 64 bit application and is my main program for sorting and RAW conversion. PS5 and Lightroom 3 both now have the same excellent RAW conversion engine. Two internal 2TB storage drives have been added.

Networking with the 17" Mac Book Pro is easy to set up and works very well.
Enough about hardware and software – after all we are here to get great images first and foremost!
     

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