So why bother, really? Photography, I mean. Spending hours sifting through literally thousands of of globs digital dross in the hope of finding some kind of gem - always assuming I be able to recognise a gem if I found one, and of course ignoring the point that the question should be addressed before pressing the shutter. It often feels more like an obssessive compulsion, this hobby of mine, rather than a source of satisfaction and fulfilment. I do usually enjoy the process of taking the photos, but that may be more to do with place than process. And when it all comes down to it, I’m left feeling that it is all chaotic, purposeless, blindly repetitive: in summary, I just haven’t got a clue. At all.

Successful photography has direction and theme. In my opinion although individual photos may be successful, even greatly so, successful photographers need to demonstrate, repeatedly, that they can assemble a coherent body of work. They need to be able to convince the audience that they have pursued a well formulated intention. Throwing together a few photos after the act just doesn’t cut it. In other words, developing a conscious style is fundamental, and that’s where I really run into the buffers.

I’m pretty sure than any style I might be perceived to have is dictated by the camera. I mean, I’m pretty likely to take 4:3 ratio photos with an Olympus DSLR, and I’m going to tend to go for well lit and/or fairly immobile subjects.  I suppose I could argue that it was a conscious choice, but really, I just like the physical look, feel and style of the E-1 and it just carried on from there.

With the double blows of broadband internet and affordable digital cameras, photography has become very, very competitive, and is becoming much more about the photographer than the photograph. In fact there’s precious little danger of the camera being more important than the photographer these days - the camera is just another prop for the narcissistic. Just take a look at the most popular accounts on the major photography sites, and tell me that it isn’t all about ego and self-promotion. I mean frankly, are Rebekka’s photos that awesome ? Basically, no, they’re pretty average, actually sub-average considering the raw material she’s got to work with. And I don’t have anything against her (well, apart from the fact that she irritates the hell out of me), it’s just an example - but really, her fame has more to do with her, shall we say, personal characteristics, than her photography.

Whatever. Should it bother me? No. Does it? Well, clearly it does, to some degree.

The problem is there is just so much pressure to compete, and the sheer impossibility to stand out, or to do anything unique, or be part of any kind of meaningful community, is just wearing me down.

Of course, I’m starting to ramble. I’m losing the thread. I’m engaging in unwarranted and unfair diatribes against a person I don’t know in any way. I guess it’s symptomatic of the frustration of being unable to progress, unable to get noticed, unable to decide if I want to get noticed, and unable to decide if what I do has any merit.

Hey. Maybe I should buy a new lens.

It seems that the Olympus E-Club has been shutdown. There are no links to it any more, except the “Who is a Pro” thing you can find somewhere. On the old E-Club page, registrations are disabled, and there is no login, just this:

“Dear customer,

we apologize but this service is currently not available.

Thank you for your understanding
Your OLYMPUS Membership Team”

What, pray, My Olympus Membership Team, am I supposed to understand ? (that “Team” bit is a dead giveaway that they’re Germans, by the way. Germans LOVE teams.)

I think I’m supposed to understand you couldn’t find your arsehole with both hands and a flashlight. Or indeed with a fabulous Olympus endoscope.

There IS still a “Customer Login”, on various European pages, and it accepts my password, and it has my address, but all the serial numbers I have registered are completely gone.

This goes beyond clueless, beyond incompetent. Olympus has always been absolutely hopeless on the web site front, but they’ve really plumbed the depths now.

Unbelievable.

Finally…

New life for Expression Media, as PhaseOne takes it over from Microsoft.  I don’t know quite when I suggested this might be a good idea, but it was a long time ago. Not that I’m claiming any great, unique insight, as it was so obvious.

Now the big question is what will they do with it ?  If they integrate it with CaptureOne - and without throwing out the support for non-digital workflow - it could be a serious challenger to Aperture & Lightroom. But I’m afraid it’s all too late.  The support for non-photographic media assets must open up some interesting crossovers for professional users though, for example managing client paperwork alongside shoots.

The quest for the perfect solution for managing (digital) photos never seems to end. Aperture and Lightroom have brought integrated organisation and non-destructive editing to us, which should be a big step forward from the multiple tool workflows using combinations of Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, iView Media Pro, Extensis Portfolio and others. But I’m not convinced that it is all beneficial.

I would like to keep track of all of my photo library in one place. And this includes photos taken on film, both old and new, as well as digital, more recently processed “non-destructively” with Aperture but previously export with baked-in adjustments from Camera Raw, Capture One or Iridient Raw Developer. Aperture is sort of able to do this, but frankly it isn’t ideal. Aperture’s - and Lightroom’s - promise of non-destructive editing has a downside, and this is that it doesn’t really cater for the idea of a “finished” image. Neither are particularly flexible when it comes to free-form labelling. Lightroom is a bit better in this respect, but not much. With Aperture you can use albums and smart albums, but then again with some limitations.  Neither have the subtle but extremely effective depth of support for cataloging found in iView Media Pro (sorry, I should say Microsoft Expression Media). But Expression Media is (a) apparently dead, acquired and smothered by fucking stupid Microsoft, and (b) doesn’t have any concept of linking different renditions of the same source.

Beyond the grave: iView Media Pro 3 still works fine in OS X 10.5

Ideally Aperture 3, if it ever appears, will extend cataloging functionality and add the concept of a “final master”, but I doubt it. And Aperture is never going to be anything other than a very clumsy way of dealing with scanned images. I could live with a solution where I feed masters from Aperture to Expression Media. In fact I could even imagine creating a “bridge” with AppleScript which would allow me to generate catalog numbers and save them in a database. But I have serious doubts about the continued existence of Expression Media.

So what alternatives are there ? One possibility has been AtomicView from AntZero. AtomicView looks good in theory, as an Expression Media for the future, and it’s even Swiss. But it is let down by a very debatable user interface, which seems to screaming for attention and badly detracts from using it in any kind of of serious photographic context. It also has a weird import and organisation process, and finally it is much, much slower than Expression Media. On the other hand it is the advantage of youth and enthusiasm.  But on balance, version 1 is so poorly conceived that I can’t see it will ever get significantly better.

Atomic View would be so much better without the juvenile non-standard GUI

Major issues with the Atomic View GUI include floating panels which are confined within the main window (see at the bottom right of the screenshot above) and a frankly hideous default colour scheme (look at the highlighting of the selected image) which doesn’t get much better even with full use of the limited customisation options. It’s a pity because all of this must have taken significant resources, which could have been devoted to core functionality if the standard UI Toolkit had been used.

A very interesting glimmer of hope presents itself in the new (beta) Mac version of the veteran Windows tool, ACDSee Pro. However, although it does seem to have some nice features, and a major opportunity to attract Expression media “orphans”, I’m afraid that despite the “Pro” tag it is going to end up trying to compete more at the consumer end of the market, and will spread itself too thin.

ACDSee Pro Mac Beta in “manage” mode

ACDSee does seem to be more of a competitor to Adobe Bridge. It does not import images or build catalogs like Expression Media, so it cannot be used in “offline” mode in the sense of a traditional Digital Asset Management tool. It is much slower at building thumbnails than Adobe Bridge, and so far it does not appear to be offering much beyond very basic metadata management. However, it is a Beta, so maybe there is still an opportunity to influence development. In any case, it is nice to see such an established Windows developer enter the Mac market.

So the search goes on. While there remains an outside chance that Expression Media will be saved I guess I will continue to use it (or rather iView Media Pro v3), but I’m concerned about investing a lot of effort in a tool that may soon stop working.

I thought that my next post would be about film cameras, in particular about using one of the ones I own.  Well, it is about film cameras, but not quite in the direction I imagined.

I enjoy using film cameras, and I like the quality of film. It isn’t better than digital, in any absolute sense, but it is different. To me the difference is a bit intangible. I know it exists, I can see it, but I can’t really describe it. There are photos I’ve taken on film which I would - or could - never have taken on digital, and indeed vice versa.

But this is about to end, because I’m planning on selling all my film cameras. There are two reasons for this: reason 1, I need the money. Reason 2, I have far too many cameras, and this is stifling my creativity.

The vast majority of my photography is done with the Olympus E-3 with either the 14-54mm or 50-200mm lens. I occasionally use the E-400 when I want to travel light, or be unobtrusive, or use the Lensbaby. I also use the Ricoh GRD quite a lot.  But I never use the Olympus E-1, and that’s already on eBay.

But the following are going to be looking for new homes too:

• My Hasselblad ArcBody, with 45mm Rodenstock lens and all the accessories, with an A12 back, a Polaroid 100 back, and the quite frankly weird Hasselblad ArcBody inverter mount.  And the whole lot neatly packed away in its custom Pelican case.
• My Hasselblad XPan (version 1) with 30mm, 45mm and 90mm lens, centre ND filters, 30mm finder / level, all packed in a nice Hasselblad leather shoulder bag.
• Fuji SW670II 6x7 rangefinder with fixed 90mm f4 lens - possibly the best lens I’ve ever used (and it’s got some stiff competition in this list)

I’m not sure if I will use eBay. It’s a bit scary.

Then I’ll see. Maybe getting back to basics will help me find some inspiration. Or maybe unloading all this stuff will turn my growing disaffection with the whole business into actually giving it up. I’m also planning on offloading some Olympus lenses, including the 8mm Fisheye, the 7-14mm zoom, the 11-22mm zoom, and probably the 50mm macro and extension tube. If I haven’t got a cupboard full of expensive toys making me feel guilty about not using them, then maybe I can finally get it out of my system, and just enjoy looking at others (considerably better) photography.