Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 - Available Now

Well, the day is here. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has graduated beta and is available for download this very moment.

I'm sure you already know the run-down of features, so there's no need to rewrite the litany of improvements. The only feature I wanted to highlight was the lens correction addition. It seems that Adobe has taken the time and energy to implement an addition that makes our lives easier - kudos Lightroom team. The setting allows you to select the make, model, and profile of the lens, adjust the profile, or even manually adjust the lens correction and save it as a new one. I recall reading something from a company that creates software specifically for this cause - and that company was not impressed with this feature. From what I understand, it's too complicated for end-users and it should be left to the professionals, so they say. Wrong. Anyone with the willingness to learn how to correct lens imperfections is better for it, it'll also teach you a great deal about optics in the process.

The obvious relation between this feature and real estate photography is just that - obvious. Real estate photography demands the accurate recreation of reality and most lenses distort reality in one way or another. Even if the lens is 'perfect', the photographer probably isn't. I'm not suggesting you should ditch PTLens or DxO Optics just yet, I'm just saying that there's another player in this game and so far it looks very promising.

So check out Lightroom 3 here, it's well worth your time and energy.

Networking: It Takes Time

I wanted to take a moment to share an opinion that I feel a great number of seasoned photographers already know, but for those who are just getting started, this may be news: networking takes time. This concept may seem simple and obvious, but I think it's often overlooked when emerging photographers are six-months into their new profession, low on clients, and trying to pay their bills. I'm just here to say that it may take a full year before your name has established a solid reputation in your area, but once you've reached that point, things will more than likely pick up. It's not luck that takes your business from low volume to high volume, it's good work, strong business skills, and an expanding network.

So how do you expand your network? Well, first and foremost, just do a good job and people will spread the word. That's a good example of passive networking where the only role you play is behind-the-scenes. What about active networking? Here's one: keep your business cards on you at all times - next time you engage in a conversation with someone new, make sure they leave with your contact information. That connection may or may not mature, but you'll never know unless you reach out.

Just remember, it takes time and energy - work at expanding your network, your business will thank you later.

Podcast in Blog Form: Using a Drobo as a Primary Hard Drive for Photos

So here's the deal, I've been working 13-hour days for the past three weeks and it's beginning to get to me. To thwart the upcoming burnout, I decided to get away for the weekend - gone, out of town, adios. The one task I didn't complete before I left was, of course, recording this week's podcast. Instead of waiting until next week, here's this week in a blog post since visuals aren’t really necessary for this one.

I've been using a Drobo (2nd gen) for a little over a month now. There’s really nothing special about that fact, lots of folks use them. The differentiating factor is that I use my Drobo as the one and only location for my photo library, sync it with Lightroom, and have removed every single photo from my computer's hard drive. If that piqued your curiosity, read on…

During the busy season, I put on about 8-10 GB of photos each weekday, then about 20 GB on a Saturday wedding (all shot in RAW, of course). There's no way my seemingly measly 500 GB internal hard drive can keep up with that pace, especially during the backup process. My former workflow had me exporting JPG's and dumping RAW's about every other day to conserve drive space, not so much anymore.

So there's the setup - lots of photos, not enough space.

I looked into running my photo library on an external hard drive, but hated the idea that the hard drive could fail at any given moment, which would make me want to back it up, which would then be more cumbersome than just keeping them on my internal drive. That's about the point where I noticed the Drobo. See, it's a little different in the fact that it backs up the data from one drive to the other(s) on-the-fly, no software, no worries (unless all of the drives crash at once, that is) - it’s a RAID for the rest of us. After learning that the Drobo was a safe place for my photo library to live (still vulnerable to fire, flood, or theft, but super-protected against crashes), I went through the process of picking my components.

First, I picked the Drobo 2nd gen (at least) as it has 4 drive bays and the coveted FireWire 800 port, assuming you have one of those on your computer. Running your photo library on an external drive requires a great deal of through-put, and FW 800 can handle it (more on that later). When selecting drives, I didn’t get the 7200 rpm drives as 5400 rpm are plenty. Why not more power, you might be wondering? The bottle-neck of this setup is not the speed of your drives, it's the cable connecting your Drobo to your computer. Getting 7200 rpm drives will only make your Drobo's fans run more often as the drives run warmer - they will also give you the illusion of a performance increase, but I’m not really into that. As a matter of fact, I recommend using 'green' drives/drives that advertise super-low power consumption - those drives will give your Drobo's fans a rest and won't impact your performance in the slightest.

The biggest apprehension I had going into this setup was performance - how well would my library load, import and export my photos, the develop module's adjustments take effect, etc.? The short answer: perfectly. I haven't noticed a decrease in speed since I began using this setup. It's surprising, I know - I was just as shocked. But it works, it genuinely functions just as well on the Drobo through FW 800 as it does internally. I'm sure someone could spit out some statistics that would say otherwise, but as the end-user, my experience has been seamless and smooth.

So what happens when (not if) a hard drive fails? Well, that’s the beauty of a Drobo - if one drive fails, the other(s) will still have all of your data ready for you without a hiccup. Just pop out the old, slap in the new. Same thing if I run out of space - just pop a new one in - it doesn’t even have to be the same capacity as the others. It’s because of the combination of redundancy, stability, and performance that it makes perfect sense to use a Drobo as your primary photo drive.

Marketing Materials: The Portable Portfolio Continued - The iPad

I posted a little while back about the importance of owning and using an iPhone/iPod Touch/Android Device to showcase your portfolio when you’re out and about. Well, add the iPad (or any other tablet device for that matter) to the list, because I have a feeling this sort of presentation method is going to catch on. 

When I told my wife I was thinking about getting an iPad, she wasn't surprised - but she didn't really know why I wanted one. She thought I just wanted one to play games and surf the Internet while she was watching terrible reality TV shows - which was partly true - but those were just the side benefits of having one. I wanted it for a presentation device. I want to put my portfolio in a potential client's hands and let them swipe through my portfolio at their pace. Sure, you could have them 'click' through it on a laptop, but an iPad is more interactive and holds their attention in a different and, I think, better way. No plugs, no arrow keys - just an intuitive touch-based interface. 

So that's in-theory, what about in-practice? I went to a coffee shop on Monday evening to meet with a couple about photographing their wedding, I showed up about 10 minutes early, sat down next to two complete strangers, got into a conversation, 5 minutes later they had already cruised through my entire portfolio and asked for my business card. The key differences between the iPad and a laptop presentation is, a) the iPad isn't threatening and, b) doesn't turn me into a salesman in the same way a laptop does. The laptop is a complicated device, the iPad is an intriguing device. The laptop presentation requires thought and motivation to produce a slideshow, the iPad allows you to give a presentation on-the-fly, if you even want to, that is. I’m not on display when people look through my portfolio on the iPad, my portfolio is.

I'm advocating that you consider the iPad for your business, but at the same time, I'm suggesting any tablet device that allows you to present your work in this fashion, the iPad currently happens to be the one I decided to go with. Another reason to give this presentation method some serious thought is the fact that our competition will probably be doing the same thing.

Yet Another Reason to Use PogoPlug...

This week's podcast was devoted to explaining the benefits of using a PogoPlug (plus a USB Hard Drive) as a server that would allow you to share photos with your clients - simple, easy, no learning curve, reliable, etc. The list goes on. Well, today my PogoPlug icon told me there was an update waiting, and guess what, this one brought the heat: Automated backups. Well, they all it 'Active Copy', but it's the same thing.

The three folders it offers by default are your pictures, music, and movies - although you are free to add any folder you want. This is a dream-come-true for someone who wants an additional level of backup and doesn't want to pay for a service like Carbonite. Don't get me wrong, I like Carbonite, but it's not for me, and it's also no their fault. The bottle-neck in off-site backup solutions is most often the ISP - they cap the maximum amount of data that can be uploaded per day. I found that I got about 3-4 GB/day uploaded successfully - not great seeing as how I added between 4-8 GB/day in photos. At that rate, I would never catch up. The PogoPlug backs-up through the LAN, so it doesn't need to go through the ISP, saving me from the same problem as off-site backup.

Keep up the good work CloudEngines.

If you're interested, check out the PogoPlug here.

Marketing Materials: The Portable Portfolio

Here's how conversation usually went when I first began in photography:

Q: So what line of work are you in?
A: I'm a photographer.
Q: Oh really, what sort of photography?
A: Just about everything - real estate, weddings, portraits...Let me show you, do you have a computer? Oh, right, we're outside, of course you don't - I'll send you an email.

Argh. So what's the solution to this conundrum? The portable portfolio.

Do yourself a favor right now: Go out and buy an iPhone, iPod Touch, or some sort of Android device with a great screen.

Be Prepared:

If the conversation prompts someone wanting to see your work, you're ready. You don't have to ask them if they have a computer, you don't have to email them a link, you don't have to let the conversation dwindle - you can grab their attention immediately and make your pitch.

Update it Regularly:

Now that you have it, update it. Allocate 15 minutes each week to adding your new top picks, dropping your new low picks, and rearranging the rest. This will keep your portfolio fresh and reflect your best work to date.

Digital vs Print:

Nothing beats your work in print. The look, the feel, the smell, the sense of finality - it's unbeatable. It's also inconvenient, time-consuming, and expensive. The digital portfolio is all about instantly being able to showcase your work anywhere at anytime. It doesn't attempt to replace your printed portfolio, it supplements it for brief encounters.

So if you don't have a portable portfolio already, get one.

Netbook as a Backup Device

I think by now, we all know the importance of backing our data up. Additionally, I think many of us have begun taking extra steps in the field to back-up our photos in case a memory card becomes corrupted, or more likely, goes missing.

Enter the backup devices. Surprisingly, there's not much of a selection. Check it our for yourself, there are only a handful of reputable devices on the market. And guess what else - they're expensive.

If you read the title of this post, I'm sure you've already caught onto what I do: I use a netbook as a backup device. Why? A few main reasons:

1. They cost less than the majority of photo backup devices that offer comparable storage. Case in point - my Dell Mini 10v cost me $334 - 10 inch screen, 160 GB Hard Drive, 6 hour battery life (with wi-fi turned on). An Epson P7000 would have cost me $725 - 4 inch screen, 160 GB Hard Drive, no idea what the battery life would be (every review I read reported it differently due to the fact that every photographer uses the device differently). Even the P6000 would have cost $530 and only offered 80 GB of storage.
   
   
2. They are infinitely more useful than dedicated photo backup devices as you can compose emails, browse the web, check the news, uh...I think you know what a computer can do at this point. Essentially, these little netbooks can keep you from lugging your 15" or 17" notebook around all day - so long as you don't attempt to actually do any post-production work on them.
   
   
3. (This one only applies to a certain audience) If you pick the right netbook and are willing to take some risks, you can make yourself a neat little hackintosh. You probably already know by now that I'm a mac-person, and that while I'd live with Windows 7 on a netbook, I'd much rather be using a mac.

Make sure to consider netbooks when you're shopping around for a backup device, you may be surprised at what you find.  

Lightroom 3 Beta: Impressions

I waited until the hype wore off to post anything about Lightroom 3 Beta. Yeah, it's out. Yeah, it's 'neat'. And yeah, it's buggy. Come on, it's a beta, that's to be expected.

To be blatantly honest, it's a minor upgrade with a few additions. The adjustment brush interface has been tweaked, it can now export to Flickr within a window, you can now see sharpening at any percentage, noise reduction has been improved, importing is faster and more pleasing to the eye, it asks to back-up when you exit the program as opposed to when you open it, there are new slideshow exporting options, etc. The list of significant, but small, improvements goes on. What does this mean for real estate photographers? ...Um…watermarking…?

I couldn't think of anything else, that's really why I said watermarking. I don't watermark my images before they go to the MLS, but some do, so it should be a welcome addition not to have to rely on LRMogrify (it only exports 10 at a time unless you donate). Lightroom 2 offered us the adjustment brush - one of the single-most useful tools in Lightroom that enables us to spend less time in Photoshop. I guess I was just hoping for another big change like the adjustment brush. I do see the video slideshow's being useful to some, just like watermarking - but again, not for me.

In all seriousness, I imagine Lightroom 3 will be a great program that will, in fact, make our lives easier. If the program I spend 95% of my time in is stronger and more user-friendly, count me in.

Check it out here.

Shooting Subjects Other Than Interiors and Architecture

So I was reading Larry's post the other day on PFRE about the fact that some real estate photographers seem to wonder if other real estate photographers shoot anything else other than real estate (what a sentence). I thought I'd give my opinion on that one: Yes, and I'm proud of it.

Take this whatever way you want, but I like doing two things: paying the mortgage and photography. It's because of one that I can do the other, and vice vera. My view is that if you can make a living taking pictures - no matter what particular area of interest - you're doing just fine.

One drawback, and there's truth to it as well, is that a jack of all trades tends to be a master of none. Look at it this way - Person A shoots architecture full-time for 5 years while Person B shoots architecture, portraits, and weddings full-time for 5 years - all things being equal, Person A will be ahead of the curve when it comes to architecture. There's really no disputing it. Hey, I admit it, I'm Person B and I love what I do. How about you?