the move is done. the remodel has begun. summer is no time for sleep.

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.

it’s all laid out here by the well named heath brothers. the idea being you have to have indicators. who has low budgets despite what they say? who has the skills beyond the resume? who can produce the project despite the weather? to really make it work these days you have to be able to read all of this.

talking with my wife who works in medicine, she says it’s amazing what you can tell about how people take care of themselves simply by how they relate to time, ie, whether they’re on it or not. i’ve found it uncanny the other way around as well that when you’re sitting in a medical office or the hospital how they relate to customers by how well the plants are taken care of. i’m mean really, a dead plant + i’m supposed to trust you with my health!?!?

van halen + specifically david lee roth had the m+m’s. i’ve got a thing or two i’ll run by you next time we meet. you?

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.

just looking at the images from an older post with stuff from se asia + the warmth of the images is undeniable. i’ve read this in a ton of places but seeing it with my own work really spoke to me. (check out ape’s interview with sam jones for more on this.)

and in this age of hi speed, digital wizardry where everything happens so very fast it brings a smile to my face to think of shooting film, taking notes + then delivering to the lab only to have to wait a few hours or days for results. maybe that’s why christmas seems so much sweeter now as we’ve lost the hundreds of christmas’ we all used to have.

talking with a client lately i was initially surprised to hear + to be honest, a bit put off, by his mention of using film. but in the course of our conversation – this is the beauty of collaboration – i came to greatly respect what he was doing. not only did he care enough about the brand to genuinely seek out a unique visual voice but he was willing to find that voice in film. the value he put on the visual media part of the campaign is inspiring. if only we as visual content creators could all be so lucky to work with brands + clients that care about visual media + it’s messages.

at a roundtable discussions i put together to hash over ideas of green practices, or lack thereof, in photography there were numerous good ideas we came up with – carbon credits, recycling specs, battery concepts – but the most interesting piece was is below. this hypothetical situation was off the top of my head and the point lies not in the specific cause nor the roots behind it but rather with the decision making process.

if you as a photographer were approached by a large corporation that specializes is razing old growth timber for massive scale developments to photograph a project for them what would you say? the scope of the project is one day and the use is very reasonable but the fee is quite considerable – say $50,000 for the single day.

how do you react to this? why? where exactly would that money go if you did accept?

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.