the ginkgo blog

David Attenborough in association with the BBC to start filming a new natural history series - Life on Earth II - An attempt to understand Westminster - the animal interactions and behaviour that no one yet understands....

Sadly not! But, I for one would record every episode, purely to repeatedly watch in the vain attempt to try to understand the unearthly animals that make up the Palace of Westminster.

This is a close second though - [Viewer discretion is advised, contains nudity, old no longer acceptable non-PC jokes and worst of all - satirical humour]

   

With the country in the midst of the worst economic downturn in living memory and possibly in history, it would seem, that those we know as MP’s of any persuasion have totally dropped the ball because they have been found out to be the animals that we always suspected they were. 

A Million Little Pictures : Global Documentary Project - Get signed up quick...

   

Want a fun distraction for the summer - Well this could well be it - A million Little Pictures: Documentry.

Arthouse co-op in Atlanta... You send them $18 and they send you a disposable camera with 24 shots to document your life this summer. You + 999 others from around the world get your snapshots in a gallery show on September 25th, helping to build a picture of life in 2009.

Go on - for the cost of a pretty standard disposable camera you get to participate in a global project and something that could give you that exposure you have always been looking for...

[Yes - 1000 X 24 exposures is 24,000 shots - They know that, but a million 6x4 prints would just be taking the piss to sort out really wouldn't it...]

     

A fix for the MacBook Pro black screen / screens not working after installing Apple OS X Leopard 10.5.7 update... MackBook Pro 3,1 with NVidia 8600M GT graphics...

 10.5.7 Update - Has it bricked your MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 3,1 ?

       

[UPDATE]  4 days later and the problem has returned - Dropped it in to the Apple store and they did a free logic board replacement. Looks like the fix below was just a temporary reprieve from the blackness. Still, they fixed it the same day and it works great - can't argue with that. Plus the service (West Quay store, Southampton) was amazing, friendly and very welcomed.

Just a note of caution, this worked for me. I hope it works for you but obviously I can't guarantee that. I just thought I would share it in case, like me, you now probably need a wig to cover up the excess loss of hair over the last few days. There are without a doubt a lot more steps below than is necessary. Given that I'm no techie, I'm simply putting down what has worked to me. If you know more about the OS X. platform, you can obviously take or leave as you wish.

 

Read more if this has affected you - Click below....

    

Top advertising photographer shoots the president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, point-blank... in black and white of course...

Nadav Kender, received a commission of epic proportions to shoot President Obama and his staff.

Already his work is becoming increasingly sought after by art and photography collectors.

Diane Smyth of the British Journal of Photography meets up with Nadav and Cathy Ryan, director of photography at the New York Times Magazine.

Cathy explained that she was looking for someone who could photograph barack and 52 of his aides and advisors. The thought came to her shortly after Obama won the US presidential election but before he and his team came to power. Initially inspired by Richard Avedon’s Power Portraits shoot a Rolling Stone, where the resulting images will be published in a special issue of the magazine. It was also the first time Rolling Stone had devoted a whole edition to the provider of a single body of work.

“It was amazing,” admits Nadav Kander, the lucky photographer (slight understatement) he got the assignment. “I had to pinch myself”.

To read the article in full,  click here to be taken to be British Journal of photography website.

 “Obama’s people” by Nadav Kander is now on show at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery In the UK until 31 August 2009.  visit  the Birmingham museums and Art Gallery website for more information. also to see more of Nadav Kander’s work, go to www.nadavkander.com.

Steffi - A beautiful subject, model and person...

  

This isn't my usual kind of shot that I'd share - I just happen to really like this one and Steffi is just great in front of the camera and to work with.

She's a young aspiring model. So if there are any 'High Quality' model agencies out there that would like to get her signed up on their books. Drop me a line and we can talk.

Panasonic GH1 Joins in with Nikon and Canon - More Video DSLR's...

 

   

Well, I almost missed this one... Looks like Panasonic's marketing team are going for the low key, low budget stealth approach in the launch of their new vDSLR offering in the form of the Lumix GH1. Admittedly it isn't being launched until the end of May, so there may well be more glitz & hype to come. 

In the meantime, they are touting the following...

_HD footage with autofocus. 

_a "multi-aspect"sensor. Short version of explaining this is that you can change aspect ratio's (eg to 16x9) without losing resolution from the chip.

_an electronic viewfinder. That is, when you pop your eyeball up to the viewfinder, you see an electronic image, sorta like you're looking at the back of the camera.... Hmmmm. Not personally convinced by this one.

   

For a few more reviews, thoughts and opinions, check out Chase's blog, Pogue seemed to really like it - and again. Gizmodo have had a good hands on play, as have Engadget. And, finally, Philip Bloom has had a good look at what it is made of.

   

Personally, I'm still waiting for a more main stream medium format HD hybrid. Likely to be provided by Red - But time will tell....

Aperture 3.0 - June 2009 Pro App Release at the Apple WWDC? More importantly - What are we going to get?

    

Recently I have read a number of articles regarding the likely upgrading of Apple’s Pro Apps in June at the WWDC. There seems to be lots of excitement and discussion around Final Cut Studio, Logic Pro etc. But nothing about Aperture 3.0 - Even though this too is anticipated to be launched at the event.

Why is this I wonder? Given that Aperture is one of Apples flagship apps and a definite entry excuse to the world of Mac. I seriously would have expected a lot more buzz with only just over a month to go.

Now, Aperture 2 is a wonderful application and has served my business extremely well - Especially with regards to large catalogues of work. It has it bugs and gremlins just like any other application. A fair number of which have been ironed out along the way with the updates. But there are still some fundamental elements lacking. And ones I would love to see in an Aperture 3.0 release.

There have been a few clues as the updates shipped over the last year or so. And if you have a peek at what the developers are revealing about Snow Leopard, the interface changes to iLife and the inclusion of the ‘Events’ Style interface quietly introduced to Aperture 2.1.3 last month. I am beginning to think we are possibly about to see something quite significant appear out of the ever secretive gates of 1 Infinite Loop, Redmond.

But, I’ll come back to that later...

First - What I would love to see above all else in the upgrade from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3 are the following:

Totally non-destructive workflow for everything - Plugins, roundtrips to editing software like Photoshop.

Complete DAM (Digital Asset Management) included. eg. If I archive a project, gallery album, whatever, I can keep low resolution copies in Aperture for reference and search. And if I ever want to retrieve them, it will tell me where they are. Archive 4, Disc 6.

Speed & Efficiency - On a MacBook Pro, your battery life will be sucked down to nothing and your thighs will burn while beads of sweat drip from your nose to provide additional cooling as it seeps between the keys into the carcass of your notebook. What the hell is it doing in there?! To use 140% of processing power and three giga watts of heat generated to build previews and thumbnails... The OS that it runs on seems to achieve the same super efficiently with the power drain of an LED - and yet Aperture seems to require it’s own nuclear power station with supporting cooling towers to achieve the same task - Very confusing and the most important fix in my book.

Theft of some of the goodies in Lightroom - Everyone seems to steal Apples ideas in the pursuit of ‘cool’. So when someone like Adobe get something right in their implementation of tools within Lightroom - let’s just hope that the Redmond guys don’t get too moral on us, tear that thing apart and steal the good stuff and leave the rest for the wolves. Then pop it all in Aperture 3.0.

To be honest - If they just fix these four elements - I will be a very happy man and get my pre-order in just as soon as I read from from one of the journalists who gets their hands on it early, confirming that this has happened. 

Or, Steve, if you’re reading this while your chilling out and getting yourself back on an even keel. Feel free to send me a copy and I’ll happily give it a good thrashing for you.

Anyway - Back to the ‘Sexy’ changes...

If I am totally honest, I don’t think there really will be any - At least I hope not as I would rather they sorted out the biggies, just as they are doing with Snow Leopard and left the sexiness to the minimum for now. This, after all is a Pro App and takes its interface largely from the OS. And I for one will not be disappointed if it remains that way.

What I really want is the same tool, to do the little extras that I want to help me me more efficient, organised and have more control to enable to focus that much more on the creativity. Rather than the desk work.

And you know what - I for one think tat is exactly what is going to happen...

What do you think?