after a bit of thought + talk it’s official – we’re relocating full time back to my hometown of portland, or. couldn’t be happier. it’s been 14 years since i lived in oregon for any extended time but managed stints in japan, seattle + montana along the way so feel it’s a full circle kind of thing.

looking forward to being closer to clients, the coast, voodoo + the freaks. sad to see the office go as it’s been a great space but it’s up for the taking now.

large shout out to everyone around whitefish as the last decade+ has been unbelievable. couldn’t have done it without you. stay tuned for the thank you show later this spring.

dose of motion tech for monday. word just in from our man ross in CO on his new FCP blog, called youdownwithfcp. he’s the man with his fingers on the keys 24/7 so it’s tech heavy + uber insightful for anyone up to speed.

more basic yet, only four steps to digging into FCP from larry jordan.

Nicholas Jacobs writes:

My 10 year old ACTRA actress daughter (acting since she was 5) wants to produce films. She’s very creative and a good actor and very good with voice work.

It was suggested that she write a short story and use stuffed animals as characters, film it herself, do the voice work and then work with Dad on an iMac to produce a film. We have not bought the iMac yet, and will probably start with iMovie, but may move to Final Cut Express if we need to.

Can we do this with Final Cut Express (not the pro version).

I want to get her started, hopefully with our Canon (as there are just too many options on HD right now) camera and hopefully iMovie and grow from there.

Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Larry replies: Thanks for writing – and my best wishes for Elizabeth’s success. At ten-years-old, even a highly motivated kid may not be ready to make a dedicated career commitment. So, as the father of a daughter myself, here’s my take:

1. The hardest part of producing a movie is PLANNING! Thinking thru clearly what your story is, how you want to shoot it, and how you want it to look. Draw sketches of key scenes. This does not require any software – pencil, paper, and brainpower is all that’s necessary. This process is frustrating, difficult, time-consuming, and absolutely necessary. Oh, and it is also great fun.

2. The second hardest part of producing a movie is getting it shot. Making it look right. Telling your story the way you want. This, too, does not require any software; just a camera.

3. If you survive step 1 and step 2, the editing is the least of your worries. I would opt for cheap and easy – iMovie is fine. So is Sony Vegas on the PC. Don’t get hung up on tools at this point. You are deciding if you like the process.

4. If you can plan a movie, shoot a movie, and edit a movie that others want to watch — and you want to do it all AGAIN — that is the point to invest in the tools to become successful.

For now, it is enough to try.

more inspiration on mediastorm if you’re just into the viewing experience.

+ a surprising spot of goods in this month’s digitaljournalist issue including tools such as zacuto’s z- finder + the zoom H4 that i’m down with.

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TEN is an ongoing serial effort to highlight points of value within a topic without watering anything down or writing a full blown novel. Obviously there are more factors involved with some decisions and less with others. But in a nutshell creatives in general and the world on whole have a tendency to make processes more involved than they need to be.

The previous TEN post was on saying no and the power it holds. This time around I’m highlighting a number of issues that affect every photographer at some point in workflow though aren’t all that well known. Be it a lack of manufacturer presentation, spotty resources or simply oversight on the user end I’ve come across these issues numerous times and still hear the same questions almost regularly.

1: computer investments should put processor power ahead of RAM – most systems, including mac, don’t allow you to swap processors later but you can always replace and upgrade RAM.

2: lightroom catalogs max out at around 40,000 images. this number is from an adobe tech and i have also heard 25,000 as a limit though have well over that in more than one catalog. the future number, according to beta rumors, is one million.

3: lightroom is not (yet) a network based application – meaning your catalogs can’t be on an external drive. the images themselves can be but none of this works on a network across several computers.

4: retrospect works only with external drives that are directly connected to the computer you’d like to backup/copy/duplicate. again, no network love here.

5: mac pros, at least the newest ones, take PCI E for express cards – don’t be fooled.

6: even the new firewire 800 drobos don’t cut it as main drive material – they are for secondary storage or archiving only.

7: the latest iphone incarnation is dialed in with reqall reportedly – will be testing this soon.

8: since Western Digital makes drives themselves, not just shells like LaCie and others, they tend to use higher end units in their own systems and sell lower end units to the other companies to put in their snazzy shells. they also make a new green power series of drives. interesting spin for the my book series.

9: mobile me will take some tweaking to get in order, especially if you have multiple machines to sync.

10: the latest update to heathkorvola.com is iphone compatible – enjoy.

The recent discovery of Robert Capa‘s negatives and pending auction of Edward Weston‘s work got me thinking about history. Not in general but in terms of photography and one’s personal tie to it. With the changing of the medium I’m curious how history will work out. Will we ever discover a suitcase full of hard drives that weren’t quadruple backed up somewhere?

What about the masses devoid of ever spinning a role of film through a camera and waiting for days to see the results. Are we simply changing tools or are we changing vision? Is there more to history than what we imagine at this point in time?

I know my tie has been fortunate. Like it or not I was in the darkroom, I inhaled. And I’ll never forget running slide film to the lab and having them imprint someone else’s copyright on my images. Talk about a loss of control. The subsequent transition to digital wasn’t that big a deal. An investment maybe but a needed step in the evolution of the medium.

I always wanted to be one of the photographers in interviews that could simply say, “I’ve known I’d be be a photographer since I was three.” Truth is, however, that nothing was that clear for me. Grade school I remember thinking I would be an astronaut hands down. Took me a long time to come around to realizing that the fascination I have with visual media could be backed up with a proper business.

Came across this image of my grandpa Art lately (thanks mom) and was good to see that I did pickup a camera as a kid. “Heath took this picture all by himself – Dec 17 1978.” I was almost five then. I don’t remember it as being pivotal in my career – I don’t remember it at all. Does this count as history? Did it start the fire? Where is photography going and what is our history going to look like? Is it important?