25 April 2008
TWIP Podcast Episode #22 - Christian Bloch
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Scott under:
Audio Podcast
Alex and Scott invite Christian Bloch to TWIP. Plug-ins for Aperture, one last dip into HDRI, and super big prizes for the Flickr contest. The show is available in the iTunes feed and at Pixelcorps.tv/twip.
Hosts: Scott Bourne & Alex Lindsay
Guest: Christian Bloch
Contributors: Fred Johnson, Ron Brinkmann
Locations: San Francisco & Hermosa Beach
Intro Music by Scott Cannizzaro
Producer & Show Notes Author: Aaron Mahler - Twitter: halfpress
Bandwidth for This Week in Photography is provided by Cachefly.
TWIP is sponsored by Audible. For a free downloadable book visit www.audiblepodcast.com/twip
Our guest this week is Christian Bloch, VFX artist and author of The HDRI Handbook.
Strap in, listeners… this is a pretty raucous show. It must be something in the water at Podango this week.
Oh, and one more thing: NODAL! (it’ll make more sense later… it’s all about the nodes, folks)
NEWS & DISCUSSION
- Breaking tradition, three of the cast members of TWiP have somehow managed to be in the same room together while recording: Scott, Alex & Fred.
- Apparently, Skype makes Fred sound like he has a lisp, so he’s apparently in the studio today to set the record straight. 
- Time is running out on TWiP’s link contest. You can win a one-year subscription to Lynda.com by linking to the TWiP blog. Need to be 18 or older to enter.
- Aperture 2.1 SDK creates a buzz and dvGarage is already there!
- Alex’s company, dvGarage, has released a plug-in for Aperture 2.1 - the day after Apple released the plug-in SDK. The plug-in is called dpMatte and brings greenscreen keying (normally associated with video) to the still image realm. Aperture’s plug-in architecture allows for full Cocoa apps to be embedded, so the possibilities for future plug-ins are rather awe-inspiring.
- Scott is, for some reason, bothered by the phrase “nodal compositing“. Alex and Ron, on the other hand, are quite fond of it.
- The guys gang up on Fred and start dabbling with the idea of embedding Photoshop… or possibly even Lightroom… -inside- of Aperture (again, thanks to the Cocoa API in OS X). On a more serious note, Alex thinks Pixelmator or Acorn would be likely candidates for this kind of plug-in embedding.
- Additional Aperture 2.1 plug-ins either shipping or announced:
- Tiffen-branded DFx Plug-in
- Power Stroke - stroke-based interface for targeted adjustments
- Light! - Add shadow and light patterns to photos (editorial note: this looks quite cool!)
- Ozone - Flexible color manipulation
- Ricoh releases the very durable, dust-proof, five-foot-drop-tolerant, non-protruding-lens G600. Quite cool if you live in the UK or Ireland (currently the only places you can buy it). Maybe we’ll see it in the US sometime soon, but no word as of yet.
- Congrats to Strobist for their profile in USA Today. Granted, we had them as our site of the week 14 episodes ago… but the mainstream media eventually catches up.
- The new Nikon firmware we mentioned last week? It got withdrawn, but has been pushed out again with a new version number and corrections to an apparent image corruption problem.
SITE OF THE WEEK
- JPG Magazine - This is the website for the print publication. One fun aspect of the site is the ability to submit photos that the community votes on. Those votes add weight to the editor’s selections in choosing images that eventually make it into the print publication.
- Scott submitted a -gorgeous- photo, so give it a look and, if you’re as impressed as I was, cast your vote in his favor!
- If you, the TWiP listener, submit photos to JPG magazine, let us know so we can all see the shot and support you!
- We want Site of the Week recommendations from our listeners! Send them by email and be sure to tell us WHY you like the site you are submitting.
FLICKR CHALLENGE UPDATE
- The current challenge (Animals) has ended and we have our winner:Remus in Water by s.schlackman
- Our Runner Up: Untitled by Maurice Moore
- Our new two-week challenge: The Color Red. You decide what it means and post your images to the TWiP Flickr Contest Group.
- WHOA! The hosts are trying to outdo one another by kicking in prizes here. The winner of the next challenge will receive the second edition of Ron’s book on compositing, a copy of dvGarage’s new dpMatte AND a full copy of Photoshop Lightroom (courtesy of Fred at Adobe). See what happens when you get these guys together in one room? Apple has also agreed to kick in a copy of Aperture. Christian (our guest) responds by kicking in a copy of his HDRI Handbook! (editorial note: The winner of this week’s challenge better be a Mac user…)
- Ok, let’s review the prizes (jeez, this is nuts): (1) of Ron’s guide to digital compositing, (1) copy of dvGarage’s dpMatte plug-in for Aperture, (1) copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and (1) copy of Christian’s book, The HDRI Handbook.
- We’ve got videos to help you sign up for Flickr as well as videos showing how to upload to Flickr.
- Our TWiP Flickr! group is nearing 3,900 Members with over 1,400 in the TWiP Flickr! Critique group.
CURRENT POLL RESULTS & THE NEW POLL
- What is your favorite photographic subject? The overwhelming choice of TWiP listeners was Nature at almost 32%, followed by People at 27%. It falls off from there to Travel at 14.7%, Other at 9.4%, Wildlife at 6.7%, Macro at 5.7% and, finally, Sports at 4.6%.
- The new poll: How do you listen to TWiP?
- We’re curious how you listen (iPod? Zune? Computer?) and do you get it from iTunes, Pixelcorps.tv? This is very useful information for us, so please participate.
GUEST INTERVIEW: CHRISTIAN BLOCH
- Christian, a native of German, works in Hollywood as a Visual Effects artist and happens to be one of the foremost authorities on High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI), something for which there has been no lack of discussion on TWiP in recent months. He is the author of The HDRI Handbook, the definitive book on the topic and an absolute joy to read (editorial note: both in terms of words and gorgeous illustrations, I might add).
- Christian’s work can be seen in StarTrek:Enterprise, Smallville, Invasion, Lost, 24, and a growing number of movies and commercials.
- Most of the HDR shooting that Christian does utilizes his Nikon D200 via bracketing. Due to the design of this particular camera, he can fairly easily bracket across nine exposures which, for a particularly dynamic scene, can be very beneficial. Much of the time, however, he can easily get away with using every other exposure across that recorded range.
- Christian’s HDR app of choice? Photomatix. Much of his work also involves combining HDR with panoramic photography.
- In his opinion, HDR will become the standard in photography in coming years. It eliminates so many limitations in dynamic range associated with current digital photography that integrating the process within the camera and photo processing workflow is, quite simply, a no-brainer as the next step in the evolution.
- His book, in his words, is targeted at a more technical crowd. It does not contain tutorials, per se, but is focused more on fleshing out the technical details behind the inner workings of the HDRI process, formats, applications, etc.
- Christian has a class he will be teaching at Siggraph 2008: High-Dynamic-Range Imaging for Artists.
AUDIBLE PICK OF THE WEEK
- This week’s Audible pick: Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres.
- From the Audible description: “Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted? In this brave new world of equation versus expertise, Ayres shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate, us.Gone are the days of solely relying on intuition to make decisions. No businessperson, consumer, or student who wants to stay ahead of the curve should make another keystroke without listening to Super Crunchers.”
- Alex also kicks in a book he’s been absorbing (and loving): The Spartans by Paul Cartledge.
- Support the show by going to http://www.audiblepodcast.com/twip to sign up for a free audio book!
- As with our Site of the Week, we’d love to hear listener recommendations for Audible books!
LISTENER QUESTIONS
- Coard Miller asks: Hey guys, Love the show, but I do have an interesting question (maybe). How do you guys find the things you photograph? For example, what do you look for in an opportune photo? Thanks very much once again!
- Fred’s main subject happens to be models. No, it’s not all about being stunningly beautiful… it’s about style, composition and creativity. He reads a ton of photo magazines and, when he comes across something inspiring, he rips it out and sets it aside for his “things to try later”.
- Scott: Much like writers are inspired by the things they read, he spends much of his time looking at others’ photos and making note of unique styles, subjects, etc. It’s an exercise in pre-visualization.
- Ron: It’s a mindset. Exercise your brain. Spend your time - even when just walking down the street without a camera - considering how you would make a photo of a given scene. Think in terms of composition.
- Alex: In a similar manner, Alex saves photos online that he sees that really impress him. Over time he’s begun to see stylistic elements that appeal to him that are common to many of these images. As a result, he’s begun to develop a style and way of looking at things that reflects these patterns in his own photos. Much of his photography has become a process of documenting the experiences he is having at any given time. It’s less about the composition and more about capturing things the way he is seeing or experiencing the right at that moment.
- Fred: In response to Alex’s line of thought, Fred points out that his cameras reflect his approach as well. With his point and shoot camera, he’s often just trying to document what he sees right then and there. With his digital SLR, it becomes a more creative process where he gets far more serious and looks for a more creative approach to a given image.
- Ron Boyd asks: Hi Guys, My question is when do you delete? Right now my rule of thumb is “if it looks bad in the camera it will look really bad on the cinema display”, so a lot of my photographs are deleted in the camera. I am not sure this is wise. Also, I often wind up with 3 or 4 versions of the same image, raw, psd, and jpeg for print and/or web. So when, if ever, does a pro discard images?
- Scott: He only deletes images where the subject is utterly out of focus or some other technical train wreck has made it so that even “God can’t save it”. (editorial note: I have to second this approach as well… you never know until you’re back on your computer whether there might be some use in a shot)
- Ron, Alex and Fred echo the same stance… unless it’s utterly screwed, don’t delete it in the camera. Someday, you might be able to fix those shots.
COMING UP NEXT WEEK
- We’re going to try to clear some of the listener question backlog that has been piling up on our internal wiki (where we organize each week’s show): An all listener Q&A show! No guests… just us focusing on YOUR questions. We’re going to try to do this every three to six months (at least).
TIP OF THE WEEK
- Scott: Research. Everything you shoot will be improved if you research the subject. (editorial note: be sure to listen to this in the show… it actually involves references to eagle poop… I kid you not).
WRAP-UP
- Fred Johnson can be found at http://www.frederickvan.com/.
- Scott’s photography can be found at http://avianstock.com. Twitter: scottbourne
- Alex can be found at http://www.pixelcorps.com and http://www.pixelcorps.tv. Twitter: alexlindsay
- This week, Ron points people to his normal site’s (http://www.digitalcompositing.com) amusing alter-ego: http://www.digitalcomposting.com. Twitter: ronbrinkmann
- Christian Bloch can be found at http://hdrlabs.com
Send your thoughts, suggestions and questions to: twip at pixelcorps.com
Story ideas and other items of webly interest can be submitted via the TWiP Ideas Del.icio.us bookmarks
Share photos with your fellow TWiP listeners through the TWiP Flickr Feed
Submit your photos for “ruthless compassion” through our TWiP critiques forum.
22 Comments so far...
Steven Says:
25 April 2008 at 11:05 pm.
Since you have so may prizes have you considered giving the winner the choice of either Lightroom or Aperture and giving the other to the second place winner?
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Scott Says:
26 April 2008 at 6:11 am.
The prizes aren’t ours to give. They were donated by the owners to give to the winner. Be happy there’s so many.
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Bwana Says:
26 April 2008 at 11:04 am.
To be honest I had to skip past the interview, unintelligible due to the sound quality, and have only been able to make it halfway through Giggle-Nation so I should ask. . . does it get better in the second half?
What happened to the usual standard of professionalism I’ve come to expect?
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Scott Says:
26 April 2008 at 11:36 am.
Bwana we had audio trouble which we’re trying to correct. Sorry for that. As for the rest - I don’t accept criticism from people who haven’t listened to the whole show. If you don’t like it, I’ll personally refund every cent you paid to listen.
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Bwana Says:
26 April 2008 at 12:39 pm.
It was $1.50 (bandwidth is scarily expensive here) but I wouldn’t accept it even if you were sincere. I love the show, of course I’ll gladly listen to the second half, and I’ll keep any future criticism to myself.
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Joel Says:
26 April 2008 at 6:13 pm.
I listened to and enjoyed the whole show. However I found the interview very frustrating. I will forgive the technical problems if you can tell me what software Christian mentioned he used for HDR and panoramas.
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Flounder Says:
26 April 2008 at 7:25 pm.
Scott, can you please keep those guys separated (of medicated) in the future so you can get down to business. Less jocular banter, more show! thanks for being the anchor.
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Alex Says:
26 April 2008 at 8:15 pm.
Photomatix and PTGui
Sorry for the technical issues. We won’t let it happen again.
As for the frivolity…I take full responsibility. I was just in a fun mood. I think we can be a little dry at times and, while I don’t expect to wander quite so much in the future, I do think playing a little doesn’t hurt.
a
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Alex Says:
26 April 2008 at 10:09 pm.
For what it’s worth I don’t mind tangents (or is it ratholes? 
) or being funny. It gives life to the podcast and is more enjoyable to listen to, provided there’s content - which, in your case it is. The audio quality for the interview was quite poor but considering how good it is normally, no big deal 
I think we can survive. Besides, hasn’t anyone heard of the fastforward button?
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Bwana Says:
27 April 2008 at 12:56 am.
Apologies if I came off too strong in my earlier post - lets just say this weeks show was unusual and leave it at that?
Thanks also for reminding me that the show was also available via Pixel Corps - I was able to pass that onto my Linux friend (every mac user should have one! :D) and also create an audio only pipe at Yahoo Pipes . . . of course I also subscribed via iTunes.
Any chance for a transcript of the Bloch interview?
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thirtyfootscrew Says:
27 April 2008 at 3:38 am.
Great show, personally I love all of the banter and the rat-holes as well as the ’serious’ stuff. I learn something from every show, you’ve really helped boost my interest in photography and with time I’m sure that your tips will help improve my photos. That you do all of this for free is simply astonishing, thanks guys.
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ron Says:
27 April 2008 at 12:43 pm.
Hey, WE had fun. Don’t you guys realize that that’s all that matters
Incidentally, the audio quality on Christian’s interview does get better after a couple of minutes - the worst part is right at the beginning.
-ron
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Liana Says:
27 April 2008 at 2:43 pm.
Thanks for a fun show. I always appreciate the information you all share, and it was nice to hear your fun personalities on this one. Keep up the great work.
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Barrie Says:
27 April 2008 at 9:39 pm.
I loved this episode! It was a total riot and still full of great info!
Great podcast!
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Alex Says:
27 April 2008 at 10:27 pm.
I really enjoyed this show, just like the others! I’m always interested in reading the new tips and stuff, thanks guys
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Tony Says:
28 April 2008 at 6:23 am.
Scott, just wanted to let you know to let the banter happen. I know you are trying to run a professional show, but the fun banter helps make it a show, and I find it entertaining….my 2 cents.
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Scott Says:
28 April 2008 at 7:05 am.
Tony thanks. I tend to like some frivolity - but always strive for balance. We didn’t plan this. We just got a little loopy and it may or may not happen again. We run the show organically - come what may. In fact, part of why all of our shows do well is that they’re based on the simple premise that we’re a bunch of friends getting together to talk about stuff we’d naturally talk about. And of course - joke about
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Telfa Says:
28 April 2008 at 1:38 pm.
Hey guys, great show - very enjoyable and ‘upbeat’. Keep it up.
The audio quality of your show is so freakin good that anything below it seems ‘maggoty’
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George G Says:
28 April 2008 at 9:57 pm.
Have not yet listened, but I just wanted to say…let the ‘frivolity’ live on. It is one of the reasons I like this show and others that you all are doing. I don’t have an iPhone, but am a regular listener to the Apple Phone Show. Twip is great and an occassional audio problem is no big deal. You guys always put on a top notch program.
I want to give yo all a VERY BIG THANK YOU!
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George G Says:
28 April 2008 at 9:59 pm.
That last line sould read:
I want to give YOU all a VERY BIG THANK YOU!
My fingers cannot keep up with the brain…
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Josh Says:
29 April 2008 at 10:47 am.
I don’t mind the banter, keep it up — as long as it doesn’t get quite so bad as the many many ratholes on MBW. It’s not even the ratholes themselves on MBW; I also enjoy that show, but the 1:30-1:45 length can get tiring after awhile. It’s also tough to find enough time to listen to the whole show when it’s that long. I don’t mind the 1 hour episodes of TWIP so much because I learn a lot even during the tangents.
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Thom Says:
1 May 2008 at 1:28 pm.
Great job guys! Personally I don’t trust or pay any attention to anyone that can’t have fun and laugh.
My commute to work is always over an hour one way so I can listen to your show twice in the same day and come away feeling like it all is starting sink in. Which coming from a guy that has spent the last 35 years in the dark… um, that would be a darkroom, means you guys have some kind of special powers.
This ‘new’ way (digital) is SO MUCH MORE fun than silver based photography, I wish I was 35 years younger and could start all over, I’d be an obscenely wealthy old geek instead of having stop bath stained fingers that the girls run away from and racks of 4×5 negatives that haunt me nightly.
Keep up the fine work, I learn more about digital photography from listening to your podcast and then experimenting with my camera every day than any other method.
As for the jocularity, keep it up! I feel like we really get to know all of you better because you guys really do open up and share what’s on your mind and have fun with it. And yes Scott, your hat, shirt and dark shades really change your image!
PS I wish Nikon and Apple would send you guys commission from all the gear I have purchased over the past 4 months, it’s all your fault!!!
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