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So far it’s not looking good for Data Robotics and their new DroboPro product. (see last post)
First let me explain how we intended to use the new DroboPro…. In a nutshell, I don’t think that the DroboPro is nearly fast enough to use as a primary storage device for professional use. Even when you can speak to a Data Robotics expert, they will admit that hands down transferring data via an internal bus (i.e. and internal RAID such as in our MacPro’s) is leaps and bounds faster than via an external bus such as the DroboPro.
Knowing this, we decided to upgrade all the internal Macintosh RAID’s from 1TB drives to 2TB drives. This would effectively double the internal RAID capacity from about 1.8TB to somewhere in the 3.5TB range for each workstation. With respect to our “EditOne” (the main video work station which has both the internal Macintosh RAID as well as a 3Ware Sidecar,) upgrading to all 2TB drives would effectively raise the internal RAID capacity from around 3.8TB to roughly 7.5 or 8TB of primary editing space.
To make this move however, we would need to first move the data off the existing RAIDs, upgrade the drives, and then transfer the data back to the new, larger arrays. (getting confused yet?)
This is where the DroboPro comes into play. The idea was to set up a 16TB array, temperarily park the data onto the array, and then move it back to the newly expanded internal RAIDS. Once this was completed, we would hang the DroboPro in the rack with the XServe, and have it act as a TimeMachine back up of both “EditOne,” as well as “PhotoOne,” (my primary photo workstation.) In effect, this would give us double redundancy. All data would be protected on each workstation via a RAID 5 array, and then it would be further protected via a TimeMachine back up on the network. For data storage above and beyond the local RAIDs, we would count on the rock solid reliablity of the Promse RAID connected to the server. If the DroboPro seemed to work out, a second unit would be fitted in the rack for even more storage space.
It seems that more times than not, this is the view from my office window. I have been doing a lot of thinking as of late… and I believe it is this view that I am most grateful for.
As photographers, we have the chance at traveling the globe and meeting all sorts of people doing all sorts of jobs. Often times these folks have views, but more times than not, they don’t. Having the opportunity to visit these different offices and experience these diverse jobs has really made me become more aware of the view out my own window.
So let me just take today and say thanks to everyone involved with keeping my window open. (You know who you are…)
Thanks!
Pelican cases are our first choice when on the road
There are so many choices for equipment cases these days, it is often hard to figure out exactly what the hell to buy. This is especially true early in a photographers career when one has to make smart decisions with the wallet.
Really there are two camps to choose from. On one side you have the hard case, and on the other, the soft.
In my opinion, the two leaders in these camps are the Air Case by Tenba, and the Pelican Case. So the question is what to buy????
For me, the choice used to be very simple… Pelican!
Pelican cases are by far the most durable, environment-proof, kick ass cases around. They have traveled with me around the planet, and have never ceased to amaze me with their professional reliability. There is one small bug that has slowly crawled its way into into our sleeping bag, and that their weight.
We do a lot of science and technology photography, and are often shooting scientists and their labs.
Of course it is easy when they have hand built some insane smoking platinum time machine, or have a grizzley robot that is controlled by mind rays, or are even spinning golden thread from crushed 55 Plymouth using a 40 foot prototype laser array.
These are the easy jobs, and obviously no one complains when there is a “cool” subject to photograph.
The real question comes into play when your mandate is to tell the story of a scientist that is involved with theory. What do you mean… “thought experiment?” “How do I shoot that?”
One of the things that we (Americans) tend to forget when we are traveling abroad is language. Now of course I can only speak for my own experiences on the road, but I think this is an important one.
As English speakers, it has been my experience that we can sometimes take it for granted that everyone will understand us. (For the most part because it is true,) most everywhere we go on the planet you can find someone who can speak at least a little English, and I think we just expect that the person we are speaking to will at least partially understand. Even when we can speak the language of the country that we are visiting, when we get frustrated, we often just default right back to English.
“Donde esta el…..el….., la…., shit…. the bathroom….”
Richard dropped me off at the airport yesterday for a solo mission to Buenos Aires, Argentina and another long ass plane ride!
Traveling is getting both harder, AND easier. Especially when traveling alone! Weight constraints are much tougher, the bags you can carry on are smaller, and there are no more peanuts.
That being said, every once and a while though you do find a stress reliever here and there. This was a small deal, but a good one. KUDOS to Boston Logan for providing a powered set of seats! Keep it up!
Anyway… Uneventful flight from Boston to JFK, a 3 hour layover and then on another jet to B.A.
Back seat of a Bell 206 flying search and rescue in Alaska, 1999
Tip number two… Don’t be afraid to hitch hike!
I have always been fascinated with aviation, and still get excited whenever I get a chance to set foot in a helicopter or airplane. Even flying commercially still makes me happy. Maybe its because its one of the few places on the planet where I can totally relax. It has to do (I think) with the fact that I am forced to just sit in one place. We are flying to Argentina on Monday, and I am so looking forward to the 14 hours or so I will spend in the plane. Seriously! People think I’m nuts…
Anyway… Here’s the tip. When your starting out, building a portfolio from the air is inherently problematic as it is a catch-22. You cant get jobs with out an aerial portfolio, and you cant get an aerial portfolio without getting up in a helicopter or airplane. And frankly, who has an extra $1200.00 per hour to hire a Bell 206 to fly you around the ball park in order to get some cool air to ground shots?
So heres the trick: Hitch hike!
Flying with "Wild Bill" into a gold mine in Alaska
(L-R) Colleague Mike Indresano, Producer Michelle, Greg (muscle pose...)
Spent the AM yesterday scouting a studio location for a cool portrait project we have coming up.
We first started last week by booking Exposure Place at EP Levine’s on Dry Dock Ave in Boston, however when our subject had a conflict, and pushed the shoot time till later in the day, Exposure Place became unavailable and we had to scramble to find another location.
This past weekend I spent some time reflecting on the year we just left behind. Richard was finally taking a weekend off so I had some time alone in the studio.
What started at an attempt at cleaning and getting more organized ended up being a walk through memory lane in the drawers of the flat file. I began pulling out a lot of old printed pieces where our photography lived, and realized that more and more of our photos were ending up not on the printed page, but solely on the web.
It’s not like it’s a surprise. I realize that most of the things we shoot these days are ending up on the web, but there was something about physically thumbing through all the old annual reports that made me think a lot about where we are as photographers and more importantly the business is going. Read the rest of this entry »
Our good friend Gary Hedrick of Elefhantworks (who has also been working with the studio as our in-house designer) played a show the other night at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA. Richard and I went in to cover the show, and I thought I would talk briefly about the “down and dirty” lighting with SB-900 Nikon flash in tandam with the Nikon SU-800 Commander.
This is a trick I was exposed to when I taught down at the DINFOS workshop from my colleague Joe McNally and has been discussed at length by both Joe, and also David Hobby of Strobist. Both of these guys have posted many many great articles about how they approach this technique with far better skill than I, so I wont get too into the process other than to point out how easy it was to use the system. I must admit, if I am working on a commercial job and need portability, there is no question that I would much rather be working with my Profoto’s for many reasons. But for this instance of wanting to work casually in a bar setting late at night with minimal gear, the Nikon Creative Light System fit the bill.
(I must also give credit where credit is due and admit that even after Joe explained how to work the 900 and Commander together, I totally spaced and had to call up my friend and fellow photographer Tom Sperduto and have him remind me of just how simple it is to use. Thanks Tom….)
You can learn more about using the Nikon system here at Joe’s blog, and also here at David’s blog.
Anyway… With the SU-800 on top of the camera, I was able to set the SB-900 on its side resting on an amp up on stage. This allowed me to walk wherever I wanted and shoot freely. Great set Gary!
SB-900 loosley placed on stage
I just wanted to take a second out of today and wish everyone a happy holiday! There is so much to be thankful for this year.
For me, this year has been a year of good friends, good memories, and good times. On a professional front, there are so many people to be thankful for. So many people got behind our effort this past year to help it be one of our most successful yet. I do however want to make one thing perfectly clear. Absolutely NONE of it could have been accomplished without the help of both Richard “The Rabbit,” and Chris.
They are not just co-workers, but my closest friends. Thanks guys! Happy Christmas!
Here are some of my memories of these two from this past year…… Read the rest of this entry »
Pre-drill self portrait
I wanted to talk briefly today about the absolute miracle of the iPhone. I just now came back from an experience we all have had at one time or another.
Now the fact that I was relaxing with tunes while I was getting drilled just may have to do with the 1mg of Lorazepam I took on the drive over, but the story is still the same.
"Whilst being butchered" Self Portrait
I find it absolutely amazing what we can do in this day and age. Folks, it is SOOO easy to be shooting photos while your out and about. Document the life around you! Shoot self portraits! The weirder the better. But don’t stop there…. Blog about the experience! Even if you think no one is reading. Just blog! It has been an amazing experience for us, and I think it will for you too!
Best of luck!
And thanks to Jess White my Butcher… I mean my lovely Dentist!
Last month I shot some aerial footage (video and stills) for a Boston client. The client was watching the budget but wanted to get some great footage of the area in order to use as “B” roll in some films we are doing for them.
This meant we couldn’t hire a larger helicopter like a Bell 206 or have a Tyler Mount (gyro.)
The weather that day was great for the pictures, however it was pretty windy. The long and the short is we ended up flying, but the footage was shaky due to the wind.
The following clip illustrates how we were able to mitigate the shake in post production.
Thanks BTW to our friends at Blue Hill Helicopters (as usual) for the flight support
I was teaching a class the other day, and was asked what the secret of success was. As I really had no idea, I had to stop for a second and really ponder the question. Alas, after a few short moments, a light came on in some distant, dark corner of my cobweb filled brain.
Socks!
Please enjoy a few iPhone photos Chris has insisted on capturing of my feet whilst on the road… There is also a shot of Richard in NYC on our last exc shoot for Corning. (although Richard doesn’t quite have it down yet…)
San Fran, CA
Corning, NY
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago
LAX, LA
Boston Logan
Richard in NYC
(OK…. YES I know I look “special” in the photo below. That is the point…. )
Ask any videographer, photographer, or filmmaker who is on the road a lot these days, and they will bitch and moan about all of the extra fees we are being hit with by the airlines. Every time we stand in line at the airport now we come away with less money, and for the most part, we have a hard time passing these costs along to our customers. There are overweight fees now, there are extra bag fees, there are even bag fees if you bring ANY bags. One airline just charged me an extra bag fee, and then on top charged me because the bag was overweight! It was a double whammy!
There is a simple solution that will help mitigate this. It seems a bit humorous, (it is…) and a bit self serving, (it is…) but it works.
For those of you who dont know, most airlines (except US Air) will allow the media to check extra bags, and some give waivers to overweight items.
This is a great help with one simple exception. If you are an independent contractor, or shoot commercial rather than news, you really dont have any ID to prove you are a photographer. And really what is the difference between a photojournalist, and a commercial photographer?
Here is the simple solution:
This ID took 45 seconds to make. Aim the laptop camera at your mug, click the shutter, throw it into Illustrator, add your type and logo, and print! Then off to Kinkos to use the lamanator and your golden.
Now whenever we fly, this comes out of the camera bag and around our necks. When the ticket agent says, “Im sorry sir, there will be an additional $100 fee for that bag,” we pull out or “official” ID’s and say, “Its all right. They usually waive those fees for us.”
Never underestimate the old “Jedi Mind Trick.”
Good luck!
We were shooting more catalogue work today on white seamless at Work N Gear, and as we were shooting larger groups of product, I decided to just mount the camera up in the air on a boom and fire the camera remotely.
I blogged a bit about this in the past when we shot that MTB rider in Wampatuck State park, but as it is a pretty cool thing to do, I thought I would bring it up again.
So heres what you need: 4 Poket Wizard Transcievers and a Pocket Wizard remote camera cord.
Connect a Wizard to the hotshoe on the camera, put that on channel 1. Connect a Wizard to your strobe (also on channel 1.) Connect a Wizard to the remote port on your camera via the Pocket Wizard cable, set that Wizard to channel 2. Finally, set a fourth Wizard also to channel 2. This 4th Wizard will be held in your hand and used to trigger the cascade. Read the rest of this entry »
With respect to my last post…. I did get on the phone this AM and called Mamiya USA to find out about using the Pocket Wizard to both trigger the camera remotely as well as fire the strobe.
As it turns out, the trick is this: You will need at least one Transceiver Plus II, as well as a Transmitter Plus II and Receiver Plus II. First, set the Transiever to channel 1 and put it on the hotshoe on the camera. Next connect the camera via the remote cord from the female mini plug to the remote port on the camera body.
Next, set the Transmitter to channel 1. (This will fire the camera.)
Lastly, connect the Reciever to the pack via the sync cable making sure the Reciever is on channel 2.
As the Mamiya tech explained it, the signal will go from the Transmitter via channel 1, to the Transciever, down the remote cable to fire the camera. When the camera goes off, the hot shoe will pick up the signal, in turn being sent out via the Transiever (automatically sending on channel2) to the Receiver (set to channel 2) on the pack, where it will fire the strobe.
I knew it could be done. I just wasnt keen enough to figure it out.
Now we know!!!!
BTW, for what its worth, the techs over at Mamiya were fantastic!!! Every time I call, they take all the time in the world explaining whatever I want to know. Kudos to Pocket Wizard and Mamiya!
