Yes, I know you don't expect German content on this blog, but here's what happened: When I went through some old (OLD!) backups, I came across a text that I wrote about ten years ago and that I never finished. So I finished it today and due to a lack of other good places to post it, I decided to put it here. My apologies. For those really interested, it's about a shark in my head. Maybe try Google Translations?

Der Haifisch in meinem Kopf

Montag, 27.12.99 – Timing ist manchmal alles. Zuhause bin ich telefonisch eher selten zu erreichen. Aber heute dann eben doch. Eine Einladung zum Nudelauflauf. „Du, ich hab’ da einen Anschlag auf Dich vor”, säuselt Valeska während wir kochen. Na hatte ich mir’s doch fast gedacht, daß hinter dieser Einladung noch etwas anderes steckt. “Nein, eigentlich zwei. Haifisch. Merk’ Dir Haifisch.“ Dann, während ich noch über diese Andeutung nachdenke, schildert sie mir Axels Computerproblem und ich stochere mal wieder professionell im Nebel. Im Laufe des Essens habe ich den Haifisch natürlich längst wieder vergessen, als sie mir plötzlich beim Nachtisch mit dem Zeitungsausschnitt vor der Nase wedelt. „Haifisch im Kopf“, lautet die Schlagzeile und darunter der Artikel über den Wettbewerb. „Interessant“ - „Da mußt Du mitmachen!“, meint sie enthusiastisch. „Wieso ich?“, frage ich und sie antwortet: „Weil Du so schreiben kannst, denk’ doch nur mal an Deine Sofa-Mail!“

Vor ein paar Wochen hatte ich mir dieses aufblasbare Sofa gekauft. Bevor ich weiter erzähle muß ich allerdings gleich eines vorwegschicken: es war ein Reinfall. Man sollte ja bei einem luftbefüllten Möbel annehmen dürfen, daß es einfach und schnell aufzubauen wäre. So wie eine Luftmatratze hatte ich mir das vorgestellt. Aufblasen, fertig. Aber falsch gedacht. Diese schwedischen Designer scheinen von ihren Chefs die Maßgabe mit auf den Weg bekommen zu haben, daß man – welches dieser Möbelstücke man immer auch zusammenbauen will – mindestens 2 Stunden dafür benötigt. So auch in diesem Fall. Um nach diesem traumatischen Ausflug in die Welt der do-it-yourself-Möbel wieder meine innere Ruhe zu finden, hatte ich die Gedanken, die mir beim nicht eben einfachen Aufbau durch den Kopf gegangen waren aufgeschrieben und das Resultat an ein paar Freunde verschickt. Das glaubt einem aber auch wirklich niemand, wenn man erzählt, daß einem ein aufblasbares Sofa in insgesamt 28 Einzeleilen aus der Packung entgegenpurzelt. 13 Luftsäcke, 13 Stöpsel, eine viel zu kleine Stoffhaut, in die die vollen Säcke dann wie beim 3D-Tetris hineinmanövriert werden müssen und einen Überwurf mit Klettverschluß. Den Karton und die Meßlatte zum zielgenauen Aufblasen noch nicht einmal mitgerechnet.

Und das soll jetzt die Rechtfertigung sein, daß ich über den Haifisch in meinem Kopf schreibe? Wo der doch zu diesem Zeitpunkt schon längst eingepflanzt ist. Denken Sie jetzt mal auf keinen Fall an einen Haifisch! Und? Schon drin. Und gar nicht so leicht wieder rauszukriegen. Versuchen Sie das mal!

Während des Essens erzählt mir Valeska die Geschichte von dem Mann, der zu einem hingeht, der Gold machen kann und ihn bekniet, ihm das Geheimnis zu verraten, worauf dieser ihm sagt, daß er mit dem Wissen um das Machen von Gold gar nicht glücklich werden könne, aber der Mann gibt nicht auf und fleht solange weiter, bis ihm der Goldmacher schließlich erklärt, wie man es anstellt und es ist tatsächlich eine ganz einfache Prozedur und dann kommt der Mann ohne es versucht zu haben am nächsten Tag zurück, weil er glaubt, daß das doch viel zu einfach sei und er beschwert sich, daß ihm sicher etwas verschwiegen worden wäre, worauf der Goldmacher meint, daß er zwar recht habe, aber er würde mit dem Wissen doch wirklich nicht glücklich werden, worauf der Mann noch mehr fleht und bittet, worauf dann der Goldmacher ihm letztendlich sagt: „Na gut, wenn sie es unbedingt wissen wollen, sie dürfen dabei nicht an Eisbären denken.“

„Oder an Haifische,“ denke ich. Und ein einziger reicht vollkommen.

Mein Verhältnis zu Haifischen war bislang immer ein recht ungespaltenes. Das Wasser ist nicht unbedingt mein Element und darum sind meine Chancen, einem Hai zu begegnen im allgemeinen eher gering und im speziellen weitestgehend auf Bücher und Filme beschränkt. Der Weiße Hai zum Beispiel. Als ich den zum ersten Mal gesehen habe, muß ich wohl so etwa 12 Jahre alt gewesen sein. Ich fand ihn damals mehr interessant als beängstigend. Diese Tiere haben einfach etwas faszinierendes. Nicht soviel, daß ich mich unentwegt mit ihnen beschäftigen würde, aber noch heute bleibe ich beim Zappen manchmal an Haien hängen.

Und jetzt krieg’ ich ihn nicht mehr los. Festgebissen. Mit diesen fiesen hintereinander aufgereihten Zähnen, die einfach so nachwachsen. Haie sind beneidenswert. Wenn denen die Zähne schlecht werden, lassen sie sich neue wachsen. Wie am Fließband. Und unsereins muß sich mit künstlichen Ersatzteilen rumschlagen.

Und aufs neue stellt sich mir die Frage, was ich wohl anstellen muß, um den Hai wieder loszubekommen, raus aus meinem Kopf, denn alles, was ich bis jetzt in diese Richtung unternommen habe, hat sich bei näherer Betrachtung als ausgesprochen kontraproduktiv erwiesen. Da lege ich zum Beispiel auf meinem PC eben dieses Dokument, welches Sie gerade lesen, mitten auf den Bildschirm. Eine Ikone – auf neudeutsch würde man wohl Icon dazu sagen. Damit ich schön einfach drankomme, falls mir mal schnell mal was zu dem Thema einfallen sollte. Doppelklick und los geht’s. Der 15. Februar ist ja auch nicht mehr sehr weit und wenn ich an den Jahrtausendwechsel denke, und daß nicht mal mehr eine Woche Zeit ist, um die letzten Vorbereitungen zu treffen, dann ist dieses Jahr wohl sowieso nicht mehr viel drin mit schreiben. Ach, werden Sie denken, schon wieder einer, den die Jahr-2000-Paranoia erwischt hat. Naja, vielleicht ein bißchen, aber doch nicht allzusehr. Ein paar Liter Wasser habe ich mir auf Vorrat gekauft und Kerzen habe ich sowieso zuhause, nur jetzt etwas griffbereiter als sonst. Aber zurück zu der Ikone: Da lege ich also dieses Dokument mitten auf meinen Bildschirm und wie nenne ich es? haifisch.doc. Fehler! Ganz großer Fehler! So bekommt man doch keinen Hai weg.

Stöcke mit elektrischen Spitzen sollen gegen Haie helfen. Und ruhig bleiben. Und nicht auf einem Surfbrett auf dem Bauch liegen, so daß man von unten wie eine Robbe aussieht, die im Wasser paddelt. Das mögen Haie. Und dann kommen sie und beißen ab. Bestenfalls nur ein Stück vom Surfbrett..

Ich werde wohl von Haifischen träumen.

Dienstag, 28.12.1999 – Nicht von Haifischen geträumt. Seltsam. Und den ganzen Tag reichlich Ablenkung gehabt. Wieder nur Jahr 2000, und ich kann es nicht mehr sehen! Wer beruflich mit der Computerei zu tun hat, wird mir zustimmen, da gibt es genug zu tun, um nicht an Haifische zu denken. Zumindest solange, bis mich dann die Mail von Valeska erreicht, in der sie mittendrin schreibt: „Apropos, von Haifischen geträumt?“ Nur gut, daß das kurz vor Feierabend ist. Auf dem Heimweg schaffe ich es dann doch irgendwie nochmal, das Thema in meinem Kopf zu verdrängen. Ziemlich genau bis zu dem Zeitpunkt, als ich dann zuhause meinen PC einschalte, um noch mal eben Mail zu checken. haifisch.doc. Nein, das ist einfach nicht wahr! Das wird jetzt umbenannt in eisbär.doc – Basta!

Vor einiger Zeit wollte ich das Rauchen aufgeben, indem ich alles verbannt habe, was mich daran erinnert hat. Alle Aschenbecher und Feuerzeuge mußten dran glauben, oder zumindest tief in irgendwelchen Schränken verschwinden. Das hat aber auch nichts gebracht. Ganz im Gegenteil… ich hatte ab diesem Zeitpunkt dann immer das starke Bedürfnis, die Aschenbecher und Feuerzeuge bei Freunden mitzunehmen. „Stellen Sie sich vor, ich habe mir kürzlich abgewöhnt, an Haifische zu denken!“ – „Ach, was sie nicht sagen, und?“ – „Ja, es fehlt mir eigentlich überhaupt nicht. Am Anfang, jaaa, da war das schwierig, ich habe überall nur noch Haifische gesehen. Aber mit etwas Disziplin habe ich es schließlich geschafft. Der Trick dabei ist, daß man auf einen Schlag komplett damit aufhört. Langsam reduzieren bringt üüüberhaupt nichts. Und heute, selbst wenn mir mal jemand in Gesellschaft so einen kleinen Gedanken an einen Haifisch anbietet, da kann ich ohne Probleme nein sagen. Und ich fühle mich auch schon viel besser seither.“ – „Ach, wirklich?“

Gleich auf dem Merkzettel notieren: Zur Apotheke fahren und nach Haifischpflaster fragen.

Donnerstag, 30.12.1999 – Wenn man etwas verstecken will, dann sollte man es an einem offensichtlichen Ort unterbringen. Dort rechnet niemand damit und es wird übersehen. Das hat schon früher mit den Weihnachtsgeschenken meiner Schwester immer wieder aufs neue funktioniert. Die offensichtlichen Dinge sieht man nicht, und wenn, dann dringen sie nicht bis ins Bewußtsein vor.

Für Allergiekranke gibt es die Möglichkeit der Desensibilisierung. Dabei wird der Patient sukzessive mit höheren Dosen des Allergens konfrontiert und entwickelt so mit der Zeit eine höhere Toleranz gegenüber dem jeweiligen Übeltäter.

Was leiten wir daraus ab?

Wenn ich mich systematisch abhärte werde ich vielleicht irgendwann den Hai ganz automatisch ignorieren und so etwas wie eine Farbenblindheit für Haifische – eine Haiblindheit – entwickeln. Ich muß mir nur mehr Haifischmaterial besorgen. Bilder, Poster, Bücher, ein Haifisch-Badehandtuch, Haifisch-Geschirr, eine Haifisch-Klobürste. Überall in meiner Umgebung muß es von Haifischen nur so wimmeln.

Sonntag, 2.1.2000 – Auswege, es muß Auswege geben aus dieser Situation. Gestern dachte ich an Haiverlagerung. Ist der Haifisch denn wirklich in meinem Kopf? Ich meine, wo befindet sich dieser Gedanke denn genau? Irgendwo zwischen meinen Ohren? Im Gerhin? Im Bewußtsein? Und wenn ja, wo befindet sich das dann wieder? Vielleicht ein Weg, an den Hai zu denken und ihn gar nicht im Kopf zu haben? Zen-Buddhismus. Das könnte vielleicht der Ausweg sein. Den Kopf leeren. Keine Gedanken haben. Alles wegwischen. Ich sollte einen Meister befragen gehen. Und dann vermutlich ein Leben lang lernen, um den Hai loszuwerden. Das muß doch mit weniger Aufwand gehen. Drogen vielleicht? Selektive Amnesie? Ein Anaesthesist hat mir erklärt, daß sie einem bei einer Operation mit der Narkose immer auch etwas verabreichen, das die Erinnerungen an die Operation selbst unterdrückt, weil es viel zu traumatisch wäre, wenn man sich hinterher vielleicht an irgendetwas erinnern könnte. Aber im Nachhinein genau einen Gedanken wegstanzen? Ob das geht? Ich weiß nicht. Dann könnte ich vielleicht nie wieder an Haie denken. Müßte ganz von vorne anfangen. Was ist das für ein Tier? Sieht böse aus. Hat viele spitze Zähne und schaut mich so fies an. Ja wo ist er denn der kleine? Ist das ein Delphin oder ein Hai? Ei dutzi dutzi duuuu.. Oder ein Goldfisch? Blödsinn, ich kann schließlich noch einen Goldfisch von einem Delphin unterscheiden.

Montag, 3.1.2000 – Kürzlich schenkte mir jemand einen kleinen Stoffbeutel, in dem kleine Puppen steckten. Fingernagelgroß waren sie und aus Holz, Stoff und Bindfaden gemacht. Er sagte, es seien peruanische Sorgenpüppchen und man müsse ihnen abends vor dem Schlafengehen von seinen Sorgen erzählen und sie in den Beutel stecken, den man dann unter das Kopfkissen legt. Und wenn man morgens in den Beutel schaut, sind nur noch die Püppchen da und nicht mehr die Sorgen. Ein bißchen drastischer ist da vielleicht die Maßnahme, die Sorgen zu verbrennen. Man schreibt sie auf kleine Zettel und übergibt sie dann feierlich dem Feuer. Mir fällt in diesem Zusammenhang aber noch etwas ganz anderes ein. Aufessen! Aus Haifischen soll man doch die leckersten Sachen zubereiten können. Haifischsteak. Haifischsuppe. Die Rückenflosse ist angeblich besonders schmackhaft. Der Haifisch in meinem Topf? Ich könnte ja symbolisch einen Hai verspeisen und ihn damit dann vielleicht loswerden, beziehungsweise ihn auf diese Weise von meinem Kopf in meinen Magen verlagern. Und ein bißchen später wird er dann mit lautem Getöse der örtlichen Kanalisation anvertraut… aber lassen wir das. Warscheinlich endet die Geschichte sowieso nur mit einer gehörigen Magenverstimmung.

Freitag, 26.3.2010 – Ich habe mal gelesen, dass man das, was man anfängt, auch zu Ende bringen soll. Und sei es auch in einer anderen Rechtschreibung. Es ist wohl doch eher gefährlich, sich in alten Datensicherungen zu tummeln und dann auf nicht zu Ende gebrachte Texte zu stoßen. Der Wettbewerb ist längst vorbei. Teilgenommen habe ich nicht. Und der Hai? Der ist dann wohl doch dem Eisbären zum Opfer gefallen. Wobei die Datei in der Datensicherung tatsächlich noch haifisch.doc heißt, jetzt aber in Pages auf einem Mac zu Ende gebracht wird. Zehn Jahre hinterlassen ihre Spuren.

Zur Haifischsuppe hat es bislang immer noch nicht gereicht, aber an das eine oder andere Meeresgetier habe ich mich mittlerweile gewöhnt. Und ein paar davon - speziell die in roher und aufgerollter Form - möchte ich mittlerweile gar nicht mehr missen.

Früher stand ADD noch auf manchen Compact Disks und bedeutete Analog-Digital-Digital. Und je mehr von den drei Buchstaben ein D waren, desto besser. Heute steht es eher für Atention Deficit Disorder und bedeutet übersetzt so viel wie “hui, lässt der sich aber leicht ablenken”. Daran könnte der Hai bei genauerer Betrachtung vielleicht zu Grunde gegangen sein. Zumindest hat er mich in den letzten zehn Jahren nicht weiter belästigt. Oder die Datei wurde aus irgend welchen Gründen vom Schreibtisch meines damaligen Rechners getilgt. Aus den Augen aus dem Sinn.

Die genauen Ereignisse, die letztendlich zum Verschwinden des Hais geführt haben, lassen sich heute nicht mehr wirklich rekonstruieren. Irgendwann war er einfach weg. Vielleicht war es ja einer dieser aufblasbaren Haie fürs Schwimmbecken, oder eben doch nur ein Hirngespinst. Obdachlos und einsam hatte er mich zum Freund auserkoren und für die Woche vom 27.12.1999 bis zum 3.1.2000 war er dann bei mir ins Oberstübchen eingezogen.

An sich kann ich stolz sein! Wer außer mir hat schon seinen ganz persönlichen Milleniums-Hai. Na?

Was sich in den letzten zehn Jahren übrigens auch geändert hat, ist die Art und Geschwindigkeit, mit der sich verlorene Haie wieder aufspüren lassen. Danke Amazon.

Der Haifisch in meinem Kopf
Texte zum 9. Württembergischen Literaturpreis.
In sechzehn Erzählungen, szenischen Beiträgen und Gedichten findet die Auseinandersetzung mit den Untiefen der menschlichen Seele statt.
Gebundene Ausgabe: 208 Seiten
Verlag: Swiridoff (Oktober 2000)
Hrsg. von Aras Ören
Derzeit nicht verfügbar.

Meine heutigen Haifische suche ich mir übrigens fast alle selbst aus.

Okay, so I record an MP3 for the Daily Photo Tips With Chris podcast using VR+ (my favorite voice recording app on the iPhone) and send it off via email to Posterous. I've done that for a long time and it has never failed me.

Normally what happens is that Posterous picks up the email, extracts the MP3, hosts it, adds it to the according blog and then my dptwc site picks it up from the RSS feed that Posterous automatically generates for me.

When I posted the last entry, it came up without the MP3 link in the RSS. On closer inspection I found that the entry on the Posterous site was not hosted by Posterous but by some third party and that Posterous didn't include the MP3 link.

My first assumption was that Posterous had changed their process without telling anyone, and I got quite frustrated to find out that the very service that I had built an entire podcast on was now broken for me.

Had I been aware of how wrong I was, I wouldn't have gone out on Buzz and Twitter and on this blog entry to talk about it.

AvirajPosterous was quick to react on Twitter and forward it to their dev team and I thank him for this, because it saved me a lot of embarrassment in the long run.

Turns out it was my own fault all along. The VR+ recording app can send out MP3s vie email, which is why I love it so much. One feature I never used was to send the MP3 as a link, in which case they upload it to their own VR+ servers and then send the link via email. I had accidentally enabled that feature and by doing that I broke the entire process.

All I can offer are my sincere apologies to Posterous, I should have done a much more thorough root cause analysis before I went out and made so much noise about this. I like the service that Posterous offers a lot, it enables me to do so much and I'm happy that they are around.

Note to self: Social media are a great way to generate buzz about things and the companies who get it and react fast are going to be the winners in the long run. Social media are also dangerous when it comes to spreading false information. Always (ALWAYS!) make sure you check and doublecheck the facts before you complain in public or it can backfire.

For months and months all your gadgets work like a charm, then all of a sudden everything breaks at once. Ever happened to you?

It's pretty clearly my turn right now.

It all started with my trusty HP B9180 photo printer. It behaved nicely for about two years, then all of a sudden gave me a blank stare and a nasty SERVICE STALL message on its display. I tried Google and everything to find out if there was an easy way to reset something or clean a specific part that was causing this, but to no avail. No warranty of course. So I was really pleased to find out that HP has an out-of-warranty replacement program in place, where you get a refurbished or new machine for some €130,-, which is not too bad given the price of a new unit. The replacement printer arrived without any accessories, only a set of ink cartridges and a pack of paper for the print head alignment and color calibration. First I had to move the print heads from the old printer into the new one though.

Slightly unnerving fact: from the time I filled out the replacement form to the time the replacement arrived, the process took more than two weeks, which means some of the printhead nozzles were actually clogged now, because the printer wasn't able to do it's daily quick maintenance cycle. Bad process design HP, someone should've put a bit more thinking into this. Took me almost the entire set of inks, some manual nozzle cleaning and an additional 10 sheets of paper until the print results looked good again.

What I also found out in the process is that the B9180 seems to be discontinued now. Looks like HP is pulling out of the prosumer photo printing segment, and that's a pity because I really liked this printer and what that means is once this unit breaks, I'm out to find something else from a different manufacturer.

Next up: Mac Pro. My workhorse. My Precioussssss.. after almost three years of tugging along like a real worker bee, it died. Just like that. Click. Off. Turns out the power supply was gone. Which is a good thing compared to the bill a motherboard replacement would've come up to. Only €240,- in total. Plus 1.5 hours of driving time of course, because that's how far away the next official Apple partner repair shop is from here. A bargain!

Now they say that all good things come in threes.

What's next? Got a good guess? Leave a comment!

Update Feb/25: It was all my fault. Read the latest blog entry for more details.

Posterous just lost a huge amount of its awesomeness for me.

I used it to receive my Daily Photo Tips With Chris MP3s via email, and bake them into an RSS feed that I could then read over at the Daily Photo Tips web site and create the feed from.

They have now decided to remove an important element from their RSS feeds, the media item which previously contained the link to the MP3 file. As a result all my RSS processing is dead and people cannot get the latest photo tip as a podcast anymore.

I'm pretty sure this change breaks a lot of things for a lot of people out there.

Can you recommend a good blog service that accepts MP3s via email and bakes them into an RSS feed with an actual link to the MP3? You could be the one who saves the Daily Photo Tips!

Leave your comments below.

Okay, now "past" is a very relative term and given that the last Abbey Adventure workshop has taken place just about half a year ago, you might think that's no time at all - but given the fact that the new workshop season is in full swing already and that I have been spending most of that last half year to get everything ready and up to speed for 2010 (yes, that's twenty-ten), half a year feels like a very long time.

Which makes this video even more fun. It was entirely shot and edited by Ingo, one of the participants, and it just brought back a ton of great memories about a fun workshop group.

Oh, and sorry, there won't be an English language Abbey Adventure this year, and the German one is already sold out, but if you're interested in any of the other workshops, just follow this link.

2009 Abbey Adventure Workshop

Picture: typographica.org

Do photography and typograhy have more in common than the "ography"?

I remember back in high school I used to doodle my own fonts on checkered paper instead of paying attention to the math lessons. And not just individual letters, I drew entire alphabets. Numbers and special characters and all. Many of them were quite similar, rather geometric, and I distinctively remember trying to make them look well balanced and getting the distance between the individual letters right.

This all came back when I ran across an article on typographica.org titled Making Geometric Type Work.

I knew almost nothing about typography back in high school, and it was years later that I started to read up on the subject. However, what I did know was what I liked. And I tried to figure out why I liked things.

Typography is everywhere. Look around you, the world would be quite a different place if you removed all the written words from it.

Typography is about design as much as it is about helping to convey messages. If you talk to type designers, you'll hear them use words like balance, width, joins, alignment, spacing - the exact same terms that we photographers use in the context of image composition.

And yes, it isn't that much of a difference - actually learning about typography and other visual media will inevitably influence the way you compose your pictures. Mind you, not always in a conscious way. I often catch myself almost accidentally having applied some of these principles when I revisit my images later.

Having made these principles conscious while learning about typography has helped slip them into my subconscious without me even knowing it.

And when I notice the results, it makes me smile.

Do you have anything visual that influences your photography? Let me know in the comments.

It's pixel peeping time again. And today's question is: How accurate do the colors in our pictures have to be?

Compare the following two images and then tell me which of the two is more accurate.





Hard to tell, right? Both images are based on the same RAW file from a Canon 5D Mark II, managed in Lightroon, neutrally white-balanced using Lightroom's WB eyedropper on the middle grey patch in the lower of the two rows of grey patches in the color chart on the top. Both files were then exported to JPG with sRGB profile embedded. The only difference is that the top image uses the camera profile that Lightroom assigns to camera images by default ("Adobe Standard"), and the second image is based on a custom-built camera profile based on the ColorChecker card present in the image.

(Note: Lightroom's "Camera Profiles" are not the same as ICC profiles)

The differences between the two images are subtle indeed, the camera and the Adobe Standard profile that gets applied in Lightroom do a remarkably good job, especially with a custom white balance. In fact I'd happily use this outcome for all sorts of professional projects (and have actually done so in the past) - as long as the spectrum under which those pictures have been shot is at least somewhat daylight-ish. With daylight-ish I mean an as full as possible spectrum, one that you'd get outside in the shade at 3pm on a summer's day. Not one that you'd get from a yellow sodium light at the side of the road.

So the question is: why would anyone want to use a camera profile if the output is as good as it is?

Let's first take a look at what profiling does. Consider the color chart in the image below.



In the lower half it shows four rows of color swatches, and all of these are very precisely manufactured to be of a very specific color. Whenever you take a picture, there is an analog process involved where photons hit light-sensitive cells that accumulate a charge based on the amount of photons, and are then read by circuits and converted to numbers. These numbers are then read by software, magically converted into other numbers and finally interpreted as colors and translated into brightness levels of individual red, green and blue pixels on a screen. Or converted into various amounts of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink and squirted onto paper. It seems like a miracle that in the end we get to see our pictures at all.

But I guess you get the idea, it's a very complex process with quite a few areas of variability, and in order to make sure that we get consistent results, a profiling process can be of great value.

So back to the color swatches. The manufacturer knows pretty much exactly what color values the individual swatches have. If you shoot a picture, it's very likely that your camera and the attached software don't interpret the colors exactly the same way. Blue tones might be a bit more violet than you saw them, greens might be a bit less vivid and reds might be slightly over-pronounced. In an every-day snapshot type of situation this is no biggie, in the analog world, this is even the norm, because every film you choose will have different color and contrast characteristics, but we're in the digital world here and what if you want to get just that little bit more accurate?

Here's where the profiling software comes in. It looks at the picture, finds the swatches (that have been shot with your specific camera under specific light conditions and therefore look slightly different than expected) and it can easily tell that the blue in your picture is different from what it should be and the green is too bright and the red is too dark and so forth. Based on this information the software builds a profile, which in fact is just a lookup-table with mappings from wrong to right color.

All in all this used to be a tedious process that required a great deal of care, expensive software and hardware, and could only be afforded by the professionals who had to get color exactly right, for example in areas like product photography.

Enter ColorChecker Passport by x-rite. After reading up on it and receiving a few recommendations I've finally spent the 100 bucks for this little gadget, and I must say I pretty much instantly fell in love with it.

The chart comes in its little rugged plastic case, so the delicate color swatches are well protected, and it can be swiveled so you can set it down and it will stand by itself.

And if you are a Lightroom user, the process couldn't be easier. In fact this solution is built around Lightroom and RAW and it won't make much sense on its own.

All you have to do is install the software (make sure you download the latest version from their website) which adds an export plugin to Lightroom. Then during your photo session (which ideally takes place under consistent light conditions) you shoot a well-exposed reference picture of the ColorChecker chart and that's all you need to think of during shooting.

After importing your pictures into Lightroom find the one with the ColorChecker, and export it using the ColorChecker export preset. Within less than a minute the software will analyze the picture, find the ColorChecker automatically, create a new profile and prompt you to restart Lightroom to make it aware of the new profile.

Now all you do is switch to the develop mode, select the newly created profile from the Camera Calibration section and you're mostly set. For more accuracy you can also white-balance based on the grey swatches in the upper chart, the bottom middle one is neutral, the ones to the right create warmer tones, the ones to the left make the image slightly cooler.

Still sounds difficult, but after working with it for 5 minutes it was second nature.

This is the first camera profiling solution that I can envision using regularly because it's not only fast, it also almost seamlessly integrates into my existing Lightroom-based workflow.

Move your mouse over this picture to see the differences the profile can make:



Is the difference so big that I'll from now on use it everywhere I go? Absolutely not. It's great to get that extra bit of accuracy where it's needed, and it's definitely quick and simple enough for me to use, so it'll be more than just a paperweight (believe me, I have too many gadgets that I don't really use because they are either too complicated or because they don't add enough value to my photography). It'll clearly help me get better colors in some situations where the light spectrum is difficult, but on the other hand there are many light situations that I don't want to correct for, many of them for creative reasons, so that's where I will happily leave it in the camera bag or at home. And this is true for both my personal projects as well as customer projects.

Is it as accurate as the bigger and much more expensive systems? Probably not. I've never had the need to work with one of those, and with the type of photography I do, I doubt that I ever will. But under light sources with an uneven spectrum (fluorescents for example) it's clearly more accurate than just using the good old white balance and it renders very pleasing colors. It's a logical next step that is lightweight enough in its approach.

Is it for everyone? No. It only makes sense if your workflow is RAW + Lightroom. There it integrates nicely and takes a lot of pain out of the camera profiling process.

Will you be a better photographer if you use the ColorChecker Passport? Let me ask you this: Has buying that new lens made you a better photographer? How about that new camera body you got for yourself last Christmas?

In short: nope.

Photography is still about capturing wonderful moments, telling stories with your pictures and making an emotional impact.

And I would even go further and argue that getting more accurate and neutral colors in your pictures can do both, help the story and the emotion or be completely in the way of telling the story that you want to tell.

Try to imagine the following images perfectly color balanced - I bet you most of them would lose their impact right away.

Yeah, it's all in caps. Because I can :)

A BUNCH OF LINKS is the newest project. Actually it's not a big project, it came to me one night and didn't let go of me until I had it finished. Call it a newsletter or a monthly email or my personal digest of photo-related stuff that I stumbled across over the last weeks.

Because that's exactly what it is: I spend an awful lot of time trying to stay on top of news, blogs, press releases, web sites. Most of them circling around photography, visual stuff, technology. And out of that comes a ton of links. About once a month I grab the best of those links, somewhere between 5 and 10 to keep it at a manageable size and wrap them up nicely in the A BUNCH OF LINKS newsletter and send that out to you.

And anything goes. Sometimes tech, sometimes art, sometimes just a great picture I ran across, sometimes videos, sometimes even totally silly stuff. My criteria are simple:

1. If I don't like it, it won't make the newsletter
2. There is no 2.

The monthly frequency isn't fully established yet, let's see where this goes. But I promise you can always easily and quickly unsubscribe.

» To subscribe, go to the home page

Four hundred episodes of Tips from the Top Floor. That's over four years, and you ain't seen nothing yet. Tips from the Top Floor has evolved and changed and morphed over that time and has become what it is today. I thank each and everyone of you for listening to the show and for making it into what it is with your questions, your inputs, your support both with the donations and through your moral support. I couldn't wish for a better audience!

Questions (and answers) on this episode about filters (square or round?), cigarette roll paper (to clean lenses), manual focus (and how to make the most out of it), the truth about where Chris comes from (is he really Indian or Pakistani?), some thoughts about model releases (see the links below), breaking beer bottles in Utah (thanks Trucker Tom) and ways to earn money with your photography.

» Download the MP3 for this episode

Show Links:

• Cokin Filters


• Lee Filters


• The Tech Guy Show with Leo Laporte


• Model Release on Wikipedia


• Basic Model Release


• The Southpark Casa Bonita episode

» Get the show for free in iTunes
» Get the show for free using RSS

Didn't find the time to participate?

Or just completely missed the entire thing?

The Marquardt Scale is .. well, that's what I'm looking for. A good and family-safe explanation that also explains why it starts at 1.0 and ends at 2.0. Or does it? Some say it extends beyond those values...

Explain what the Marquardt Scale is and win a hand-embroidered Tips from the Top Floor Everest Trek t-shirt! Bonus points if it's whacky, funny and .. completely harmless.

Missed what this is all about? Read the rules here and let's hear your very own version!

The contest has been extended until November December 3rd.

It is one of those things that are very dificult to explain. And if you try to explain it, you will almost inevitably end up in the realm of NSFW.

I am — of course — talking about The Marquardt Scale.

If you followed any of the recent Everest Trek coverage over on The Rest of Everest or if you have listened to the Everest Trek 2010 announcement on Tips from the Top Floor, you will already know what that scale is about. If not, it's about time you found out.

I came up with the scale on the Trek in May. Even though it was a silly idea at first, it almost immediately stuck with everyone on the trek and it was used daily by virtually every trek member.

During our dinner in Lukla on the last day of the trek, the usage of the Marquardt Scale finally found its culmination in Jon Miller's immortal words: "I just had five one-point-eights within thirty minutes!"

Well, but what is The Marquardt Scale?

In describing what that scale is lies my biggest difficulty. I would love to be able to explain it in one or two short sentences in a way that is completely family safe.

Can you help?

Here are the rules:

# Leave a comment to this blog post with a short explanation about what the Marquardt Scale is.

# It should be no longer than 25 words.

# Make it funny, make it wacky, make it family safe.

# Only one entry per participant.

# Update: the scale officially starts at 1.0 and ends at 2.0 because it should be analog to "number one" or "number two", which is used by parents in some English speaking countries to avoid having to say the more obvious words in front of their children. Massive bonus points if you manage to work that into your explanation. If you already submitted an answer before this update, your personal number of acceptable entries is automatically extended to two. (e.g. feel free to go again)

# The jury (Jon Miller, Monika Andrae and myself) will choose the winner based on a top secret selection process.

# The jury reserves the right to not use any of the handed in entries for any reason.

# All entries have to be in by Nov/27. Later entries will not be accepted unless the jury really loves them.

# The prize is an awesome TFTTF Everest Trek t-shirt that was hand-embroidered in Kathmandu.

# Anyone apart from jury members can participate. This includes the 2009 Everest Trek participants.

Now DIG IN!

Video is wonderful. It lets you develop this quick feeling for something, usually much quicker than reading through paragraphs of copy or listening to lengthy audio. And social video is even cooler, as it lets the producer get his video out to so many more people, and collect inputs and get social linkage, and sometimes... very rarely, one might even go viral.

The flood of video sharing sites also has its drawbacks of course, as you might eventually end up with quite some fragmentation as to where your videos are. I sure experience that. Some videos are on Youtube, some are on Vimeo or Blip.tv, just to name a few. And pulling those together into a coherent user experience has been pretty difficult in the past.

Has been.

Because now there is yubby, a free online service that lets you quickly and easily create a channel with videos from all types of sources, that you can then embed in a web page as a widget.

I have just done that. Thanks to its great search capabilities and somewhat consistent tagging of my videos, it took me about five minutes to pull together a channel of the videos that I (and others) produced at various workshops, and place it on my main workshop page.

Yubby lets you then choose one of several ways to present your videos, from a grid down to a small player, which is the one I opted for. I should actually even be able to embed it here. Let's try.

See? It's that easy.

» The widget in action on the workshop page

» yubby.com

Workshops, workshops, workshops... 2009 was such an exciting year in so many respects and I am very grateful for being able to do the things I do.

With Brooklyn Cookin', the workshop that I held together with Chef Mark, this year's season is now over, and what a great final workshop that was. Both Mark and I found that we'll have to do a workshop along the same lines again next year. The concept is perfect: the target audience is couples where one half is into cooking and the other half is into photography, and here they have a way to learn and spend time together.

Even though this year is over from a workshop perspective, it actually isn't. At least not for me. I am going to spend most of November preparing everything for a smooth 2010 launch. My goal is to have everything ready by December. And there are a lot of things to be worked on. Luckily most of my workshop locations are already nailed down, some helpers need to be briefed, and then there's the whole registration process. I have looked into offers in the cloud, but there is no workshop/seminar management system that even remotely seems to fit the bill.

All I need is to manage the registration process and payments for about ten workshops. Internationally. With deposits. And limited number of seats. For a decent price. And no, in an economy where everyone needs to think twice before spending anything, I consider taking 10% of the workshop fees *not* decent, because that would eventually increase the workshop price by that same amount.

So in short, I haven't found a good and easy way to automate this yet. Which is why I've taken things to the cloud in a different way for 2009 and why I'm going to go even further in 2010. In short: I'm using online services and forms to handle the sign-ups, I have simplified the confirmation and registration process using Services on Mac OSX Snow Leopard, I use PayPal to handle the bulk of the payments, and I use my own time to keep it all together. Not ideal, but workable. The KISS principle applies. Keep it simple, stupid. I don't need a full-fledged database to handle a couple of hundred participants. Every participant ends up in a spreadsheet with a status field depending on where in the registration process they currently are, and if I need to send out a bulk mail to all participants of an individual workshop, a simple copy/paste of the email address column for that workshop will do just fine.

The biggest item are the workshop pages on the web site. This is where everything is supposed to come together in a nice and easy to navigate way. I have spent hours and hours to design something that ties together everything from basic information about the workshop ("why would I want to come to this workshop?"), the agenda ("what are the workshop details?"), timing ("when does the workshop start and end?"), accommodation ("what hotel is near by?"), navigation ("how do I find my way to the workshop?") and pricing.

Obviously I design this once and duplicate it for all the workshops, but the content will be different for each workshop. The overview, the detail description, the example images, the example video, the FAQ. And the language.

So I guess I better get busy and finally start tying all those lose ends together to bring you not only an excellent 2010 workshop season, but also a great experience when it comes to finding the right one for your needs and going through the registration process.

If you want to be notified as soon as the 2010 workshops are ready, please make sure you are on the newsletter (get the newsletter here).

Got a way to help me simplify the registration process? Leave a comment!

I've just found the solution! You can help me save a lot of time, which in turn will allow me to concentrate more on the production side of my shows instead of the planning side. And it's simple: all I need is the help of 94 of you clicking a vote button.

update: just one day later and 34 of you awesome individuals have already clicked. thanks!!

Okay, hear me out, my logic on this is impeccable, I'll just need a few sentences to explain.

If you've read this post about my new iPhone calendar app you know I've become a big fan of Pocket Informant on the iPhone. And you also know that I am still searching for an app to help me with year planning. Each year around this time I'm knee deep into planning next year's workshops. And each year I spend hours trying to find out if anyone has written an app that will help me doing that.

I have very simple needs:
- a view that shows me the entire year with my workshops as time blocks
- a fast and simple way to move around these workshops
- calendar data linked/synced with my existing calendar (currently Google cal)

There is no such application for the Mac. Or the iPhone.

So every year I fall back to a stone-age year spreadsheet and changing cell background colors to indicate events. This takes time. Lots of it. And this is valuable time that I can't use to bring you exciting episodes of TFTTF, HS, Daily Photo Tips and so forth.

Here is where you come in.

If you're a fan of any of these shows, or the workshops, you want to help me finally get such a year planner, right? (See? I told you my logic was impeccable!)

But this is not just for me, it's useful for everyone. Plan out vacations, keep track of your kids school projects. Name it.

So you can imagine how happy I was to find the Pocket Informant feature request list. If anyone can pull off that year planner feature, it's these guys with their mad coding skillz! The feature request list is powered by Uservoice and you can vote for features. Three votes per person and feature. 280 votes to get to the top of the request list and a chance to be looked into. 280 / 3 = 94 people.

Please help vote this feature request up to the top of the list!

Instructions

1. Go to the log in page of the voting site


2. Click the login provider of your choice (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, OpenID,...)


3. Once logged in, enter "year planner" in the search box


4. Click the vote button next to the "Year Planner" title and leave three votes.

Let's move it up to the top of the list!!

Here's another post that's not about photography. I promise, I'll stop talking about geeky infastructure as soon as finished testing my latest acquisition: a sensor loupe and a Sensor Klean .. errr.. sensor cleaner.

This post is about some more recent infrastructure changes though that I put the finishing touches on over the weekend. Did I mention last weekend I was super productive with both, fixing my iPhone and switching my calendar infrastructure? Oh, I have? Never mind.

I recently installed my own URL shortener. It helps me paste short links into Twitter or other short form communication, it lets me get some basic stats on these links, and in general I get a lot of fun out of dabbling with these sorts of things. If I can find the time for it. Luckily I didn't have to write my own solution, as there is YOURLS. And as I happened to own the tfttf.com domain, which is reasonably short, I thought "why not?" and went ahead. It works flawlessly.

The other tool that I wouldn't want to miss is Textexpander. It runs on the Mac and what it does is simple: it replaces short strings with longer ones as you type. So if I send out an email to someone in Germany, instead of copying/pasting the signature for that, I type siggg and Textexpander automatically replaces that with my full German email signature block. For the English signature I use sigge. To insert the current date I defined the shortcut ddate and so forth. A big time saver and totally transparent. Works system wide.

Textexpander can execute scripts too. And this is where the magic starts. It comes with a script to shorten URLs using bit.ly. All you do is copy a long URL into the clipboard (CMD-C) and then type /bitly at the place where you want the short URL to be pasted.

/bitly is the trigger for Textexpander to execute an Apple Script that takes whatever is in the clipboard, hand it to the bit.ly API for shortening and returns this to wherever the cursor was.

If you are as keyboard-focused as I am, this is bliss. (And believe me, I am keyboard-focused. I even use the jkhl keys in vi so I won't have to move over to the cursor keys and leave the 10-finger base position on the keyboard)

Long story short, I have adapted said AppleScript to run in conjunction with YOURLS and it works like a charm.

» download the script here (instructions inside)

And that's it. If you have YOURLS installed and use Textexpander, this ought to make your life quite a bit easier. It sure does that for me.

And please note: I'm not an Apple Script developer, this script is part of the Textexpander distribution (I hope I'm not gonna get into any trouble by posting it here in its modified form) and I merely adapted it ever so slightly for use with YOURLS. I will not be able to provide you with any scripting support whatsoever. Believe me, you really don't want me to give you scripting advice...