Author: James Vornov

Dutch Portrait, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

With the release of Aperture 2.0, I can finally put Aperture back into my workflow. In it’s absence, I’ve gotten used to the RAW -> Capture NX -> TIFF -> Photoshop -> PSD -> JPEG -> Flickr workflow. I’ve put Aperture back in at the front (receiving and cataloging the RAWs) and at the back (importing back the final, flat PSD from Photoshop). That leaves me with an external folder set of work files from Capture NX and Photoshop. It should actually help keep things orderly and the Aperture library file size down.

Moving Still Bicycles, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

It’s nice to be back with a few hundred images to work through. I need to remind myself to get out and continue to get the Suburban images when the light is right. Tomorrow looks like a good bet, with relatively warm temperatures and sun in the afternoon.

In the mean time, I’m developing this theme of motion in the black and white urban travel series. I’m working on gesture here mostly.

My way of working has been to load images into Aperture for scanning, rating and cataloging, then going to the rated photos to choose one for post processing. It gets exported, opened in Capture NX and optimized as a Color NEF. Then exported as a TIFF and opened in Photoshop.

In Photoshop, I try a few approaches, but leave it full screen on the big monitor unmanipulated until the next day. By then I generally have picked a firm direction to take the image.

Vicolo del Mol?, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

After assessing a solid year’s work of building a portfolio, I decided that I was evolving two bodies of work: a color series documenting the Suburban Landscape and a black and white series documenting my urban travel. It was clear that some photography didn’t fit, as it was to document family or vacation.

When I brought the D300 on my long business trip I knew that I was inviting crossover images by switching tools. When the Leica M6 with C41 process black and white film came on a trip, I had no option for doing color studies. But since I’ve been so happy with the utility of the Nikon D300, I brought it and just the 24mm and 50mm lenses, as if I had the minimal Leica kit.

When I shot this image, I recall thinking “red scooter, red trashbag”. I was creating a color study, something I would not have done with the usual travel setup. It turned out to be a striking image, fitting in more with the light and color aspects of the Suburban Landscape project.

I’ll call it a travel photo in the style of my Suburban Studies and continue to create monochrome conversions from the bulk of the urban images where form, not color, is dominant.

View from the Val Grande, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I had been in Europe for almost a week before I saw my first sunny day.

FInally, with the release of Aperture 2.0, I can catalog and scan the D300 images easily. So far the new release seems stable and reasonably more capable. There are a few raw decoding glitches, but mostly the D300 images are appropriately rendered.

However my experience with Capture NX and the in camera settings of the D300 will probably reduce my use of Aperture post processing. In a scenic landscape like this, I can very quickly create an image with some snap. But the saturation and D-Lighting effects that I get with Capture NX in combination with the local control of the Efex filters within Photoshop will generally limit Aperture to cataloging and quick conversions- like this one.

The Dark Bench, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Another image from Amsterdam. Again with the D300 and 24mm f/2.8. As I expected, the combination was not really much heavier or bulkier than the Leica with the 35mm Summicron, providing the same field of view, but a stop slower. With ISO 800 on the D300 being cleaner than the ISO 400 (or ISO 320) film in the Leica, speed is no different between the two systems.

By continuing to convert to Black and White by policy for these travel images, I have greater control of rendering by converting to black and white in Photoshop. So the Leica has lost it’s prime role as a travel camera to the D300 on the basis of image quality.

Dutch Pussywillows, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This is a more thoroughly processed image. I started with a conversion in Capture NX, trying to capture the most information in the color image. Then in Photoshop I created the independent conversion layers that Vincent Versace describes in “Welcome to Oz”. My intent was mostly to create a well graded and fully toned black and white image. The rest of the PS work was to bring out the light that was in the scene, using some selective sharpening using Nik’s program.

All in all it’s a less casual, more controlled approach than shooting with the Leica and a C41 process BW film like Kodak CN400BW.

Dutch Portrait, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I’m back from my very extended travel. Berlin, Amsterdam, Milan. The D300 was a perfect companion and I returned with about 750 images captured.

In Amsterdam, I played a bit with capturing the Dutch on their bicycles by using a slow shutter speed, here about 1/20th second. While my intent going in was to keep the city travel portfolio as black and white, seeing images in color makes it a bit more difficult to stick to an arbitrary convention. I converted and processed this one quickly just to get an image up tonight. I’ll be working through the images over a few weeks, trying to get at least one per day online.

More extended business travel here. It’s overcast, intermittantly rainy and a bit raw here in Berlin. In a break from my ongoing business travel project with the Leica and BW film, I brought the D300 with me instead. Since I’ve been watching the PMA announcements with the thought of adding a compact camera for travel, I tried the iPhone camera for a quick capture this morning. It’s a view of the sunrise through a hotel window, 8th floor. No editing.