Stunning tilt-shift video at the Carnival in Rio.

 
An absolutely stunning Tilt-Shift/Timelapse video of the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Shot by Sydney photographer and filmmaker Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli.

Visual Serendipity.

 
Serendip­ity: noun; the occur­rence and devel­op­ment of events by chance in a happy or ben­e­fi­cial way.

I saw this ad at a subway station, and found it really engaging. I must admit I had never realized that a) each borough in New York has its own facial hair style, and b) that shaving is now super hip hop cool. The poster is part of a huge campaign for Braun’s Cruzer 6 which apparently “delivers cutting-edge technology and performance giving you a close shave, neat trim or defined edges and provides an innovative wet & dry technology making it a convenient shaver for use under the shower.” Wow. That’s  a mouthful!

 

The million-dollar question: Where are my ICC profiles stored?

 
The million-dollar question: Where are my ICC profiles stored? And the answer is, it depends on your Operating System (OS). When you first install your printer’s driver, a variety of standard profiles are added by default to the corresponding folder on your system. You can also download ICC profiles, or create your own custom profiles in which case, you will need to drag and drop them to the corresponding folder:

Windows 98/ME
\Windows\System\Color

Windows XP/Vista/7
\Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color

Mac OS X
Username/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
or
HD/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

Now, what about Apple’s OS X 10.7? Ah, that crazy Lion…

For some odd reason, someone at Apple decided that the user library where the profiles are installed should be hidden by default, and only someone with Admin privileges should have access to it. That’s why most profile-managing and image-editing software applications (like Adobe Photoshop) that need access to the profiles are having a hard time “seeing” them.

Here’s my simplest workaround: While holding down the option key, navigate to “Go” on the menu bar, click on the ColorSync folder, and click again on the Profiles folder. Done.

I recommend dragging the (now temporarily visible) Profiles folder to your Favorites in the side bar so you can access them at any time.

Conversations with Friends.

 
Welcome to Episode 4 of our “Conversations with Friends” series, today with professional film editor Christopher Pecoraro. Ruled based art, Alfred Hitchcock, and filmmaking techniques are among the interesting topics we discussed.

Our wine was the Indian Creek Pinot Blanc 2009. It was fairly balanced and refreshing, with lemongrass and pomegranate notes on the nose, with a short finish and decent acidity. A decent QPR if you can find it under $10.

To see Christopher’s work please visit his website and blog.

If you missed the previous episodes, check them out here: Episode 001 with Justin Katz, Episode 002 with Bobbi Lane, Episode 003 with Robert Ammirati. The next Episode will be awesome!!

How to remove your Google search history (before it’s posted on YouTube).

 
For a long time I have been a huge advocate of Google products. Every single day I use Google Calendar, Gmail, Documents, Voice, Finance, Contacts, Currents, Music, among many other apps. I actually believe Google is one of the most innovative companies in the world and provides the best cloud computing experience. That was until about 30 minutes ago…

I just found out that as part of the Company’s new privacy policy unification, all the searches I’ve made, and all the sites I’ve visited will be combined with several other Google products like Google Plus and YouTube.

” When you sign up for a Google Account, we ask you for personal information. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.”

And this part is key: “March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Google Terms of Service will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.”

How to avoid this? Thankfully you just need to follow FOUR simple steps to erase and turn off your search history.

Step 1: Go to https://google.com/history

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Visual Serendipity.

 
Serendip­ity: noun; the occur­rence and devel­op­ment of events by chance in a happy or ben­e­fi­cial way.

I love reflections and colors, and also have a strange fascination with mannequins. This image, shot just a few days ago on 23rd Street near Baruch College, captures everything, including myself.

The source for the word “mannequin” comes from the Middle Dutch “mannekijn,” which means “little man,” or “little doll.” Mannequin is the French spelling from this Dutch source. Even though the word means “little man,” the literal French meaning is, “a young woman hired to model clothes.” Go figure.

Meet the all-in-one Laptop of the future.

 
Combine a laptop + a yoga mat + a tablet + an HDTV + portable speakers and you get this beauty.

Is this the future of laptops? I REALLY hope it is!

Wes Anderson, on top.

 
Just like “trunk shots” are Quentin Tarantino’s visual trade­mark, using a high-angle for the camera, and pointing it straight down seems to be Wes Anderson’s fetish. Check this out.

This is yet another of the many differences between the two great directors. If you are aware of other directors’ trademarks, please send them our way.

Testing Canon’s C300 in jail.

 
A beautiful test video shot on the Canon EOS C300 at the Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, PA. The video shows the ungraded Canon Log version and includes the ISO data for each shoot. The quality is amazing.

Also check the Penitentiary’s “360 degree tour.” It was shot by someone else using QuickTime VR technology. Historic photos accompany each of the 20 views, to illustrate how the place has changed over the last 170 years.

 

The Cloud Wars.

 
Adobe recently announce that “everyone can join the Creative Cloud,” and while customers will have access to a free membership to explore certain features, a monthly price of US$50 (based on a one-year subscription) has been set. The idea is that users can access the latest version of Adobe’s popular programs (like Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4), without  buying the boxed version and subsequent upgrades. In addition to receiving updates to the programs as soon as they are released, users also get 20GB of cloud storage for syncing their work.

On Amazon, Adobe Photoshop CS5 costs around $639. With a yearly subscription you save about $40. Not an amazing deal if you need to use the software every day, but you could  “rent” it for $50/month, and only use it when you need to meet a deadline, and then stop paying while you are working on something else. The idea is good on paper, but I am not completely sold on the benefits of a subscription system. Unfortunately, I believe that there’s no turning back. This is how we will be buying and using software in the near future.

At the same time Adobe set the “Creative Cloud” pricing, Amazon lowered their S3 storage rates. Small businesses with fairly typical 50 TB of data capacity, will see a 12% reduction in costs. Bigger companies storing up to 500 TB of data will enjoy a 13.5% reduction in costs.

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50% off on Adobe Lightroom 4, today only.

 

Here’s the deal: the full version of Adobe Lightroom is normally $299. The upgrade price is generally $99. Today only, B&H is offering Lightroom 3 for $69. If you are running an older version, or need additional licenses, you can buy version 3 today, and upgrade to version 4 when it becomes available in early April. You will effectively get the new version for almost half price.

To really understand why this  is such an amazing deal, check all the new features on Adobe Lightroom 4. Don’t wait. The deal expires tonight, Feb 15, at 11:59PM EST.

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Visual Serendipity.

 
Serendip­ity: noun; the occur­rence and devel­op­ment of events by chance in a happy or ben­e­fi­cial way.

“Feeling blue” doesn’t always have to mean something sad or negative. We just moved to a new place, and since we haven’t installed the curtains, I’ve been waking up every morning with this view. The new place is full of light, peace, silence, and positive energy. That’s the new meaning of “feeling blue” to me.

How to use Histograms to improve your images.

 
Histograms display a graphic representation of the exposure on a captured image. They provide highly accurate information, but their use is often misunderstood, or, worse yet, ignored. This is why we wrote an article for Canon U.S.A., explaining how to use histograms to dramatically improve your images.

As always, let us know if you have any questions.

White Balance on fire.

This is funny because it’s (sadly) true.

Learning from Kodak’s failures.

 

Kodak, which was founded by George Eastman in 1889, had in 1976 a market share of 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the United States. The company hasn’t made a profit since 2007, and it declared bankruptcy in January 2012.

The letter “K” was Eastman’s favorite letter, and the name “Kodak” followed his three main branding principles: the name should be short, simple enough so as not to be mispronounced, and it could not resemble anything or be associated with anything else.

Now Kodak is completely exiting the consumer photo and camera business, while trying to unload an extremely profitable chunk of its massive patent library with hopes of obtaining a financial boost from any settlement payoffs over patent infringement lawsuits against Apple and Research in Motion. If all of this works out, the company will most likely focus exclusively on digital printing as a business-to-business company, competing directly with Hewlett-Packard, Canon, and Lexmark, among others.

Kodak’s story is not unique, and it will be certainly followed by other companies who fail to react and adapt to market changes. Kodak’s failure is really a life lesson: define the essence of who you are and what you do (tell visual stories, for example), and not what you sell (film or 5×7 prints); don’t get too comfortable with what you know and do well; never settle, constantly push your comfort zone, and challenge yourself. Remember to talk to people who disagree with you, and listen to their reasoning. And most important, be open to new experiences and opportunities.

The glass is always half full AND half empty. It’s up to you to decide how to look at it.

Rode delivers a customer service lesson.

 
About 30 seconds ago, DHL delivered my new Rode Lavalier Microphones. I have not opened the box, and I already know I will LOVE them. Do you want to know why? Simply because after I ordered them last week, I got an email saying that they were backordered for 2-3 weeks (they must be selling like hotcakes!).  I replied explaining that I needed them for a shoot next week. So what did Rode do? They simply shipped them, second day air, from AUSTRALIA, at no extra charge, so I could have them on time. Unbelievable.

I could spend the rest of the day naming the companies that could use my experience as an outstanding customer service lesson, but I won’t. I’ll go ahead, open the box, and play with my brand new toys. Price is not everything, quality and support is. Keep that in mind.

Conversations with Friends.

 
For Episode 3 on our Conversations with Friends series we had the pleasure to chat with Robert Ammirati, great photographer and friend. We talked about how Red Hook, Brooklyn is now becoming the new Soho and how the magic of shooting film will be lost on younger generations of photographers.

The wine we enjoyed today was the 2009 Joseph Drouhin Beaujolais-Villages, Burgundy, France.

“The 2009 Beaujolais-Villages from Joseph Drouhin is a stunning bottle of wine that has to be one of the absolute steals of this superb vintage. The bouquet is deep and exuberant, as it soars from the glass in a fantastic blend of plums, black cherries, intense violets, chocolate and woodsmoke. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, plush and tangy, with a rock solid core of fruit, just a whisper of tannin and outstanding length and grip on the complex and perfectly balanced finish. High class juice for its pedigree and clearly a wine that will improve with bottle age- though good luck trying to keep your hands off of this gem!” 91 Points – John Gillman

 

Anatomy of a Title Sequence. Interview.

 
Peter Crandall, a great friend and fantastic artist, designed the new opening title sequences (see below) for all of our videos. After proudly sharing them with other people, we realized that we wanted to know more about the whole process, so here is a recent conversation.

Tell us a little bit about where you are with your career.
I’ve been freelancing as a motion designer in Los Angeles for the past eight years. The majority of my experience and projects in motion design have been in the entertainment industry, which has entailed designing motion graphics for television shows/networks, opening title sequences to film, TV promos, commercials, and web videos.

Apple Inc. contacted me last fall (2011) to work at their Cupertino office to help out with some projects in their marketing department. In short, I’ve recently relocated to Silicon Valley and I’m now working more regularly with Apple. The relationships I have with the LA studios are still very important to me so I do my best to continue working with those studios when they contact me.

I understand you worked on Apple’s new iPhone campaign, can you tell us a bit more about that experience?
Working at Apple for a few months in preparation for the iPhone 4S launch was exciting and unique in a few ways for me. First, the focus is not on any celebrity, television show or other consumer media, but on a product; in this case the iPhone 4S. Second, Apple has a very established and successful marketing brand. Since the overall visual language of Apple is very simple and clean, the designing doesn’t lend itself exploring a wide spectrum of creativity like other brands in the entertainment industry I’ve worked with. Overall, the experience of working with the very talented team during the launch of the iPhone 4S was simply amazing.

Could you take us through the design process of “eduardoangel.com” from the early concepts, to the development stage and final execution? We are especially curious about how you decide on specific design elements like color scheme, typography, audio, and even the length.
Just like any project I start, the first thing I did in the design process for creating the intro animations of “eduardoangel.com” was to talk with Mr. Angel about his company and the context in which the intro sequence would exist.

The key concept I came away with from talking with Mr. Angel in developing the intro animation was the importance of the content itself. The web site covers many topics, so I thought about how they could be conveyed and ultimately turned keywords from the “tag cloud” on the site into a slot-machine style animation based on the keywords.

Having many different words whiz by helps give a sense of volume to the content, but at the same time help it remain playful. Since the function of the animation is an opening sequence to video content, I wanted the length of the animation to be informative and concise. After doing some tests and getting a good “feel” for the animation I started to explore some sound effects that would compliment the motion and reinforce the professional and friendly qualities of the web site as a whole.

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Visual Serendipity.

 
Serendip­ity: noun; the occur­rence and devel­op­ment of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

I need things to be neatly organized for me to be creative. Unfortunately, the world, and especially the business world, does not often work that way. I try to maintain a personal universe where I keep books, wine, and films as oases that are always within a safe distance from the chaos of the outside world. Are you like me, or, do you thrive in chaos?

Nikon D800 officially announced.

 
After countless “accidental leaks,” Nikon announced two new cameras: the D800 and D800E. The D800E is identical to the D800, except that it skips the anti-aliasing filter, which technically will offer sharper photos, but might also introduce color moire and chroma noise. According to Nikon, the “D800E is ideal for photographers who can control light, distance and the subject to mitigate the increased risk of moiré and false color.”

UPDATED: Adorama is allowing preorders on Nikon D800 ($3000 ships next month) and D800E ($3300 ships in April). First orders in, first boxes out. Hurry up!

Video Features

The D800 video features are almost identical to the D4, for half the price.
• 1080p/29.97fps and 720p/59.94fps
• Two memory card slots: Compact Flash (UDMA Mode 7) and SD/SDHC/SDXC (UHS-1)
• USB 3.0
• Mini-HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack for live audio monitoring, 3.5mm powered stereo microphone jack, PC sync and 10-pin remote socket

Interestingly, both the rear LCD and an HDMI-connected external monitor can display simultaneously.

Interesting Features

• 35.9 x 24mm (FX Format) self-cleaning CMOS sensor
• 36.3-megapixels
• ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 25,600)
• 51-point AF system, 20% more sensitive than the D700

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A digital image in-depth look. Literally.

 
Ever wonder how images are captured inside a digital camera? I obviously understand the logic and technology behind the process, but SEEING it is something completely different (and very cool).

The video below, made by Lexar, shows the capturing process and also helps to understand how the speed on memory cards, and card readers, can affect your entire digital workflow.

To learn why the processors are the “brain” of the camera check this article “DIGIC Processors Explained.”

Shooting HDR movies on your cellphone.

 
Sony announced a new back-illuminated CMOS sensor for smartphones which supports HDR technology for movies. The eight-megapixel version will start shipping next month, and a 13-megapixel version will follow in the summer. Check the video to see it in action.

Visual Serendipity.

 
Serendip­ity: noun; the occur­rence and devel­op­ment of events by chance in a happy or ben­e­fi­cial way.

When I saw this “ad” it immediately reminded me of “Biutiful” the film by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, shot by Rodrigo Prieto, and starring Javier Bardem. The movie’s title refers to the orthographical spelling in Spanish of the English word beautiful as it would sound to native Spanish speakers.

Interesting facts: Iñárritu spent 14 months editing the film, and it is the first time that a performance (by Javier Bardem) entirely in the Spanish Language has been nominated for an Academy Award Best Actor Oscar.

Going back to my picture, I am still trying to decide if the person who wrote this did it as a joke or even as a reference to the movie, or if the missing U in “beautiful”, the flipped N on “antique”, and the patched R on “mirrors” are real mistakes. What’s your take?