Tuesday, May 5, 2009

A Bigger Problem than Bit Rot


In the computer world, many people worry about "bit rot" (data erosion) when it comes to archiving old data.  And that's a good thing.  But there's an even more serious threat to data life than bit rot... it is format change.  Somewhere upstairs I have a low-density floppy disk of a paper I wrote on an Atari 1040ST using WordPerfect.  The data is intact... but I defy anyone to read it!!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Fast Image Selection: Take off your Glasses

 Here is a technique I learned many years ago to help me quickly select my “keeper” pictures from hundreds of images shot in the field, thinking "I'll choose the good one later".  Well, the more pictures you shoot the more time it takes to weed out the good ones, and after awhile you find you're spending way too much time in front of your computer. 

Friday, May 1, 2009

How to shoot a bust

I had the honor of photographing the work of Sandra Shaw, a talented bronze sculptist who was preparing for a museum opening and needed “head shots” of several of her pieces. One of the pictures can be seen above, and the somewhat-chaotic-looking garage in which it was shot can be seen below.