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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sledding: Semi-Controlled Chaos
Photo by Anthony Friedl

So, after some recuperation at lunch during last-weekend's visit to Makino Ski with Anthony, we went back for some more sledding. Anthony took the photo above as I zipped past on a world-record run.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bundled Up
( I so wanted the lady at the top to make a run, but she opted against it )

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 52 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tight Grip on the Reins

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Getting Plastered in the Face with Spray

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Thankful for the Goggles

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Daddy Trudging Up Hill
Photo by Anthony Friedl

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Daddy Flying Down Hill
Photo by Anthony Friedl
( part of a sequence that includes the photo at the top of this post, and here )

Some random pics of others sledding, having fun, and/or crashing....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 62 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pair

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
About to Lose Control

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Yup, Consider it Lost

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Fast

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flurry of Hair, Spray, Snow....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
This Can't End Well

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Listing to the Side
last moments, like the Titanic

Continued here...

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Self Portrait

Taken during a relatively calm moment of snow on a day of dynamic weather, last weekend when I took Anthony skiing and sledding.

Continued here...

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/4, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Connections Through Time
Me, with my son, his mom, her dad, and his mom
(though not in that order!)

When I started to take photography somewhat seriously (circa January 2006 when I got a Nikon D200), a long-time friend who happened to work at Apple extolled the virtues of Apple Aperture, which had just been released. It was, he said, still a bit buggy, but even so was so much better than working with files one by one in Photoshop. He had a hard time constraining his excitement of the new workflow paradigm, even if the current implementation still needed the kinks worked out.

I wasn't sold on the whole new-paradigm idea, but when Apple announced their new line of laptops in May 2006, I decided to get one so I could give Aperture a try.

Unfortunately, I neglected to notice that Apple's photo-workflow application couldn't even be installed on my new MacBook.... to run Aperture, you needed a MacBook Pro. Arrrrrgh! It's my own stupid fault for not noticing the system requirements, but come on, Apple's software couldn't even run on their latest hardware? So, I was out of luck.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wipeout
Photo by 7-year-old Anthony Friedl
me, while sledding with Anthony last weekend

Or so I thought. It turns out that somewhere along the line Adobe had put out a free public beta for a similar application they called “Lightroom” and it could actually run on my new Apple computer, so even though I was traveling (in The States at the time), I gave it a try. And wow, it didn't take long before I was as excited about the new workflow paradigm as my friend had been. It was an amazing productivity boost measured in orders of magnitude. The boost here was not Lightroom-specific, but due to the new workflow paradigm being invented by Lightroom and Aperture, so I'm sure that if I had actually been able to try Aperture, I would have been just as excited.

To make it even better, Lightroom could also run on Windows. I detest Windows, but my main workstation at home was a Windows box, so I'd be able to use my more-beefy desktop hardware once I got home from the trip. (Apple eventually came out with a version of Aperture that could run on my MacBook — which I still have and am using at the moment — but by that time I was deep into Lightroom and wasn't about to abandon my mental investment in it.)

Prior to Lightroom, I didn't know much one way or the other about Adobe except they were the PDF and Photoshop company, and that back in the mid 1990s, the guy who in put me on the road to writing my first book was a long-time Adobe employee, and when I later moved to Silicon Valley, I would visit his office at Adobe and partake in their great on-site lunch service. (His little boy was the first person to call me “Uncle Jeff”, and that he's now in college makes me feel very old.)

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/320 sec, f/2, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Some Things Get Better With Age
but most things just get old

Anyway, I apparently started twiddling with Lightroom under the hood early on. I see that in July 2006 I posted “Accessing Lightroom's SQLite DB Directly” on my blog, while still on my travels. Some time later — and as far as I can tell, based upon just that one post — I was quietly invited by Adobe to give feedback on their in-progress prototype for the next public release. Moi? Sure, cool! I got a free copy of Lightroom, but more importantly, I could more-directly help shape the future of a tool I so heavily relied upon. It was enough to make a photo/tech geek's heart go pitter-pat.

Even while doing that, the software-geek in me was still twiddling on my own. Just after Lightroom 1 was released in early 2007, I released two web tools I'd been working on on my own, a metadata-viewer preset builder (now superseded by my plugin that does the same thing), and a Lightroom Configuration Manager that allows one to customize some extra things about Lightroom.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/4000 sec, f/8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Post Processing? Me?
why no, this is exactly what the Awaji Flower Review looks like

Apparently recognizing my geeky nature, Adobe eventually hired me (for real money, woo-hoo!) on a temporary basis to consult intensively on a plugin infrastructure they were developing for what would become Lightroom 1.3. Working with it day in and day out, I developed a good understanding of the plugin system, so it seemed only natural that I put that to use for the world, and in short order after Lightroom 1.3 was released, I put out upload plugins for Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, and PicasaWeb. I didn't actually use any of these services myself, but lots of Lightroom users did, so it felt good to build something that people liked and used.

That “it felt good” feeling is what drives a lot of engineers much more than money, and is certainly the case for me. I ended up developing a lot of plugins for Lightroom, but only a few of which I actually wanted for myself (I desperately wanted geoencoding in Lightroom, and I use the Metadata Wrangler as part of my normal image export). The rest I did because I thought people would enjoy them. Read the comments left by users on the page for my plugin that allows one to extract images from Lightroom's preview cache in an emergency, for a sense of where this engineer derives “pay” for what he does.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hat Paragliding With a Stuffed Monkey
like playing with your kid, some things have value way beyond money

As nice as all the “thanks!” are, I was spending inordinate amounts of time on these plugins, and was getting burnt out with a never-ending onslaught of feature and support requests. I seemed to have found a niche in life and wanted to find a way to continue, so I created a way to make it easy for a grateful user to say thanks with a few bucks, and to encourage them to do so. I still made it so that people could use my stuff without giving me anything (I'm adamant that any gift be a gift, which means given freely for nothing in return), and indeed, the vast majority of users don't, but some do, which is nice.

Another downside to the plugin development has been that it's taken time away from diving into some other photo-related tech things as much as I'd like. Prior to doing plugin stuff, I was dabbling in all kinds of things, such as write-ups like my primer on digital-image color spaces, digging into a qualitative analysis of NEF compression, developing a kick-ass auto-focus test chart, conducting tripod stability tests, developing a Photoshop script to generate calendars, etc.

But, it seems the plugin thing has taken hold, so that's where I spend my free time.

So last fall Adobe put out a free public beta for Lightroom 3, and it includes a whole new way to export, “Publish”, and so for this they brought me on again to consult on the plugin infrastructure. I had actually reached out to them and volunteered to do it for free, just to improve the product (which then improves the tool I have to work with), but they felt better to make it official, so I it comes with a small stipend (or will, if I ever get the paperwork done). I'm sure I'll get a free copy of Lightroom as well.... I've never actually paid for the copy I use, though I have paid full retail when buying Lightroom as a gift for others.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 3600 — full exif
Life is Like a Box of Cherries
or something like that

So what's up in Lightroom's future? I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. 🙂

What's up in my future? I have no idea... I'm not doing any of this with a plan... just trying to enjoy myself and go along for the ride. I've often wondered whether I might some day write a book on photography (because most of them suck), but now the only sucking is what plugin development and consulting does to my free time. But mostly, I enjoy it.

I don't know what the future holds (it could very well be nothing), but I'm excited to find out.

Nikon D700 + Zeiss 100mm f/2 — ¹/200 sec, f/2, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Future?
it lies ahead, silly
(a different take, during a different year, on these stepping stones)

Some other random photos I prepared for this post, but ended up not using...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/320 sec, f/2, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
hey kids,
“Who Wants To Work On Photo-Workflow Development?”

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/4, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Morning Self Portrait
graffiti on the wall of an abandoned house a friend had just bought

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/40 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — full exif
I ♥ Watermelon
( not particularly related to anything, just a bit cute )

Nikon D200 + 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 @ 18 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/3.5, ISO 320 — full exif
Squishing My Nose in Early 2008
while people threw beans to drive out demons
Photo by Britto

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
not sure where this leads, but
Holding On For the Ride

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
It's a Flower
flowers are pretty

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Future
enter here

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/18, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
This is a Dragonfly Wing
and it has nothing to do with this post

Apple has just released the first major upgrade in a long time to Aperture, its photo-workflow application that fights against Adobe Lightroom for market share in the pro / advanced-amateur photographer market. This is great news if you're into photography, even if, like me, you've never used Aperture.

The list of features in Aperture 3.0 shares many things with what Lightroom already has, but includes plenty that Lightroom doesn't have (geoencoding, video support, and face recognition are a few of the headline features, but it's actually in the small details that one often finds salve to a workflow irritation).

People can get polarized about their personal choice of application (much like the stupid “my camera brand is so much better than yours” arguments one finds everywhere), but the reality — the “great news” — is that an advance for one player ups the game for all, leading to a win-win down the line for everyone. You can be sure that the Apple folks keep a keen eye on what Adobe does and how it's accepted in the marketplace, and vice-versa.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — full exif
Can't We All Just Get Along?

Personally, I own stock in both companies so maybe I'm covered either way, but it's Adobe Lightroom that I use every single day and would be completely lost without, so I wouldn't want Aperture to grow so much that Lightroom lost enough market share for Adobe to give up on it. Conversely, I benefit from a healthy Aperture because it keeps alive one of the many fires under the collective Lightroom butt, spurring them on to a better product. In a one-pony race, the winner doesn't have to run very fast to win, so in the end, some healthy competition is good for all.

Aperture has a much smaller market share than Lightroom, and for a long time Apple seemed to be letting Aperture wither on the vine, so it's good to see a new release shake things up a bit. I know of a few “celebrity photographers” (in the sense that their popularity on the web makes them celebrities among photographers) that use Aperture. Chase Jarvis, always full of infectious enthusiasm, gushes about the new features in Aperture 3. Last I heard, Vincent Laforet was still using Aperture, though as of this writing hasn't posted anything about Aperture 3. He's really into dSLR vidography these days, so I'd be surprised if he doesn't chime in with his take on Aperture's new video support.

As for me, how I got to where I am in this context is perhaps interesting, so I'll share that in another post (that contains all kinds of disclaimers and juicy tidbits, such as why I've never used Aperture, and how many times I've been on Apple's and Adobe's payroll).

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/7.1, ISO 160 — map & image data — nearby photos
Just. Can't. Decide
Lighroom? Aperture? Lightroom? Aperture?...

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Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Plummeting At Breakneck Speed

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Joy of the Crash
for Anthony, the whole point is to crash

The weather during our visit to the Makino Ski Area wasn't the only thing that was wild... some sledding was pretty wild, too.

Each run started with a long climb....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/16, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Clawing Up The Final Few Meters

It's difficult to show the steepness. It was pretty steep. Few people actually ventured all the way to the top of the groomed area, where we came a few times...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/16, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Vista from the Top

It was exactly like the safe and wholesome summertime sledding I wrote about in “Slippery Green Slidy Day of Fun”, except for two little things: the cold, and the ever-present threat of a horrible and painful death.

If you started at the top and weren't careful, you'd be completely out of control before you got half way down, and even worse, there were some spine-compressing moguls hidden at the bottom, and if you hit them at speed, you were in for a world of hurt. So, like skiing, the ever-present danger of disfigurement or death added to, er, the thrill.

I could keep control fine, so Anthony and I went together sometimes from the top, but he never did by himself. He did go from lower down by himself plenty of times...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 62 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Not Sure What He's Gotten Himself Into
he'd veered off course, to a much bumpier area near the edge

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
About To Catch Some Air

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Only Possible Outcome
wipeout

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Yup, Wiped Out

Our first foray into sledding didn't last long, but it was really fun. Eventually we went back to skiing...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 56 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/22, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Practicing Control
unlike sledding, crashing on skis not so fun

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/13, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Enter Exhibit A

He was going fairly slowly and I was planning on taking a shot as he zipped by, but he suddenly crashed — the only time all day — and did not like the experience at all, especially the super-ouchie thumb that resulted. I worried that he'd seriously sprained it, so ran to the ski patrol to get some ice (just joking, I grabbed a handful of snow, silly) and he liked that even less. So, I thought it was a good time to break for lunch.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kitsune Udon
through the fog condensing on my cold lens

He had trouble with the chopsticks at first because of his thumb, but by the time we were done, he'd forgotten about his injury. Refreshed and healed, we then went back for some real sledding....

Continued here...