Back on the Road
I am back working for the AUDI MedCup, this will be my fourth year with the organisation and during this time the TP52s have become faster and more exciting every season.
The demands for imagery have become higher, we are delivering larger image files quicker than we ever have done before, and having been to every location at least once (and for some venues this will be my fourth time) finding a new view point to shoot from can be a challenge.
On the odd days when I am looking for inspiration I think about the opening credits of the Simpsons, if Matt Groening and his team can come up a different phrase for Bart to write on the chalkboard at the beginning of every episode then I should be able to find just as many ways to shoot the regatta!
This year there are a number of new team at the event, Nikklas Zennstrom’s Ran, complete with a golden keel, and Tony Langley’s Gladiator (ex Artemis). Alberto Roemmers is back with a new boat and a new name, Audi Azzurra Sailing Team (Alberto’s previous TP52’s have all been called Matador).
On Monday there will be official boat christenings for Audi Azzurra Sailing Team and Audi Sailing Team powered by All4One. Shall I go for the smashing bottle shot, or is it too much of a cliché?
I have made a number of changes from last season, I have started tweeting and I have redesigned my website so that it now has an integral blog (kind of obvious because you are reading this!), much more information on the home page, and is generally much more flexible.
Unless you are a photographer and a bit geeky you might want to stop reading now…
I have also made some workflow changes, the changes are all on the editing side, starting with a new 15” MacBook Pro 8Gb memory with a 500Gb 7200rpm hard drive, (the two year old 4Gb memory version could just not keep up!) I have attached two Lacie 2Tb external hard drives for image storage and backup.
This year I am editing with Lightroom (LR), but as LR is slow to ingest (see earlier blog) I am ingesting with Photo Mechanic (PM) and only importing my picks into LR. I will also be using PM to input all my Metadata.
I have bought a Wacom Intuos4 pen tablet. I have found the pen to be the easiest way to make adjustments to the LR settings, and the extra benefit of the tablet is the ability to customise the keys on the side of the tablet, which can make rating images in PM and cropping images in LR a single keystroke process.
Enough of the geeky stuff, I will be reporting back soon on how everything went.
