This creative was with Colleen Napier.   I let her loose on Teal to do any look she liked and this was the result.

I had some nice pieces of jewellery from Carola Bun from a previous shoot, so I thought i would put the choker to good use again.  Both images were shot against a white background with the add’l effects added in Photoshop.  I’ve been on a trend lately of desaturating my images and dialing the color temperatures down.  The top image has a bit more green in the undertone… I wanted this look to approach an ‘old photograph’ with fogged highlights, but with a modern look.  Traditionally aged images have bluer blacks and yellowed highlights… which is why i went green/yellow.

I tried a couple composite images with this next shot, but since i did not originally plan on changing the background, it was hard to  separate her hair from the similar toned background (would of normally shot this high key).  I saw a neat filter once on a website: Auto FX Mystical2 … although the program is a bit pricey ($200),  and you can certainly achieve the effect in Photoshop manually,  you will be getting to your results much faster.

Every now and then something comes across your desk that changes the way you work; the brick phone,  dial up internet,  facebook,  angry birds, etc.    I’m gonna put this app in that group… it feels like the edge of change!  Right now the current version is about three bucks at the app store (their competitors are charging $30!!).   The nice thing is it’s universal for PC’s and Mac’s alike… and even android users.   I have to say however that my Mac experience linking it to the Ipad and Iphone was seamless.

After you download the software online and install onto your device, there is one more download to the computer you want to sync to.  You are able to sync to as many computers (Mac and PC) as you like and access them all through this interface.

The nice thing about the computer install program, is that they also include an uninstall script.  This program is downloaded from their website.

Click on the computer you wish to access ( I only have one set up at the moment), and you are taken to this window asking for your access code which you set up on you computer.   This can be auto filled or entered each time you access, but I highly suggest manually entering an intricate password  each time… it is the internet after all.

Voila!  you are now remotely controlling your computer (this take your system out of sleep/screensaver mode… keep this in mind as your system is now unlocked wherever it is)  What I find amazing is that you can operate any of your programs as if you were there… even ram hogs like photoshop and lightroom on your ipad(android, iphone, etc)

This is the window that shows up with a three finger tap.  My screen is set to native resolution which displays my entire (home) monitor, and can be switched between monitors (I have 2).   You can also choose  between ipad resolution and a fixed resolution.   The desktop can be scaled and moved between two fingers so you don’t need a magnifying glass.

So why do this anyway?    If you have ever had to help your parents or anyone over the phone  for ‘tech’ help?  Now they can watch live (and there is live voice too) while you navigate around the computer from another location.   Personally, I think back to my last trip to Mexico when I had a magazine call for some images and  could not get to my raid array to send them.   Now it’s as easy as signing in, accessing my files and remotely sending them from my home email.

So far Wifi has worked very well.  Now i need to experiment with my phone on the G3 network.   It would also be worthwhile to have a mouse with the ipad which would make this program so much more functional, but currently that is only available through a jailbreak.

Downsides:

• I am not able to activate my screen saver and lock the computer remotely (takes 15 min to fall in to sleep mode) because the screen does not let me put it all the way into the corner to activate the hot button… it may work in other screen resolutions.
• It’s challenging to get use to tapping instead of ‘clicking’… prefer a mouse option!

Upsides:

• everything else!

You can read more at http://www.splashtop.com/

I sure hope you are regularly backing up your data!  For years i had thought CD’s were a safe choice to keep my important files.  Back then we were led on that this was the best choice.   Not until years later after backing up data to a raid array did I discover that certain brands of CD (Ridata for one) had high failure rates (5 discs / 100) starting to show up after 4 years.  Two more years later it was 7/100.

Now everything is safely backed up on a Raid array… or so I thought!  One day when two computers simultaneously accessed the same file… Boom!… Lost the Raid.  It took three months and two data recovery companies (Was going to cost me $3K) before i realized it was unrecoverable.    I though using a raid with a hot spare drive kept me safe with an archive of dvd’s as backup.    Now there are three raids on premise all mirroring each other… maybe overkill but better than then lose all those years of hard work… keeping my fingers crossed we don’t get that big solar flare but we’d all be screwed at that point anyway.

I have never been comfortable with shipping my info into cyberspace to backup companies (icloud)  and i did not like how Time machine kept filling up my entire hard drives.  I have tried so many backup programs that have fallen short.   At a recent seminar i was turned on to Chronosync… I tried the demo software and was impressed enough to buy it… and write about it!

It’s really impressive how much control this backup software give you.  One really great feature could be backing up your data to a laptop from your tower,  taking the laptop home and working on files, then the next day ChronoSync will update your laptop files back onto the tower, keeping everything current.

For my own situation with Raids topping 3 TB of data,  doing a full backup literally takes 6-12 hours.  ChronoSync intelligently looks for ‘Changes’ between files update and can  delete them from your backup drive to mirror you master drive.   The first time pressing the ’sync’ button was scary and I tried to call the company to make sure all the settings were right… sadly they have no phone support.  I diligently  read the manual a few times… not that this was a difficult process, but when it comes to this much digital info, you really don’t want to make a mistake.  In the end it was easy and I was impressed that it could scan  two 3TB raids,  disseminate file differences and do a  50 GB backup all under 30 minutes.

The program is $40… heres’ the link:

http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html

What an amazing app for the phone and Ipad.  So many times i have had to work with existing lighting that was not quite where i wanted it.  You start by either finding your current location (GPS) or searching for a specific location.  The one downfall i have noticed is when you move locations on the map by scrolling manually,  you must remember to hit the ‘update’ icon or your values will not be correct… hopefully that will be fixed in an update.

The Yellow line is the angle the sun rises in the morning, the red is the current sun angle/elevation and the blue is where the sun sets.   You can manually scroll the sun throughout the day to see where the elevation and angle is at for specific times of the day.  In the example below i was trying to figure out what time to shoot on the roof of the building below  (along the linear skylights)  for the sun to be at my models back…  approx 8:40 pm which was very close to sunset.

You can also move the calendar ahead days, months and years (if you do lots of scrolling).  It’s a simple app, only a few $ and for those times you need it totally useful.

Heres an image from that rooftop pictured in LightTrac: