TWiP #198 – Viva Las Vegas

On this episode of TWiP, can you tell the difference between the Las Vegas Statue of Liberty and the real one in New York? If so, the US Postal Service could use your help. onOne introduces layers to Lightroom, and Bruce Clarke sits down with photographer Matthew Jordan Smith to pick his brain about all things photography.

Hosts: Frederick Van Johnson, Alex Lindsay, Richard Harrington, Derrick Story

NEWS & DISCUSSION

US Postal Service Uses Wrong Image of the Statue of Liberty on Stamps
The USPS used an image of the Statue of Liberty they selected from Getty Images on 3 billion stamps they recently issued. The problem was the image they chose was of the replica Statue of Liberty in front of the New York New York Hotel in Las Vegas instead of the actual Statue of Liberty. With all the photographs that exist of the real thing, was this the best that they could do or was the US Post Office just being lazy? Derrick thinks that it speaks to the way we are doing business in general with not enough time on our hands and a flood of information to sort through.

onOne Announces Perfect Layers to Add the Ability to Work with Layers in Lightroom
One Software, Inc., a leading developer of innovative, time-saving solutions for professional and advanced amateur photographers, today introduced the Perfect Layers Public Preview. Perfect Layers gives photographers the ability to easily create and work with layered files in their workflow application of choice. A 2nd version is coming that will also work with Aperture and Bridge. Will this change the way people use programs like Photoshop? Richard thinks that you can do the same thing with Photoshop Elements for $79 rather than spending $159 on another plug-in. Derrick thinks that the round-trip capabilities in Aperture are broken and would rather use a plug-in that makes it easier so he's looking forward to trying this program out. Alex likes the idea for light editing but if he is going to do any heavy-duty work then he'll use Photoshop. The panel then discusses some of the advanced features of Photoshop that many power users will still want to use including the ability to do channel editing. Richard has done many videos on working with channels in Photoshop to make selections and adjustments which you can check out on iTunes.

INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW JORDAN SMITH

Over the last 20 years, Matthew Jordan Smith has worked with a A-List celebrity clientele such as Oprah, Jennifer Connelly, Halle Berry, Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, Jamie Foxx and many more.. He has appeared on The Tyra Banks Show, E! Entertainment, America's Next Top Model and Good Day New York. TWiP Staffer Bruce Clarke sat down with Matthew at a photography conference in Banff Canada to pick his brain about all things photography. To learn more about Matthew, visit his website at http://www.matthewjordansmith.com/ or you can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/matthew_jordans

LISTENER QUESTIONS

Question #1 – Backup Solutions During Long Travel
Brian writes: A good friend is planning to travel the world for a year filming a lot of footage on a Canon DSLR. I'm helping him plan his gear & workflow. My main concern is the amount of footage he will gather and how we can ensure he doesn't loose anything. As he will be on the move for a year. He will be in a number of countries where Internet may be questionable such as Vietnam. Others will be fine such as the UK. I thought a cloud server would be great just not sure if that's realistic or cost effective uploading & paying for such large amounts of data transfer. Hard drives are going to be necessary and wondering if he fed ex them to me if I could archive the material and send it to his next destination so it's waiting for him. He will probably have a set number of SD or CF cards. I want to make sure the footage has a back up and I'm concerned that if we post drives it could get lost and put the copy he has in jeopardy. This project is for a worth while charity organization so his budget is limited. Would a portable satellite modem work?

Richard: I tend to bring two laptops with me when I travel. I will shoot on cards and backup on multiple drives using a disk cloning utility. If I'm really feeling paranoid, then I'll start to burn things to optical disk and I'll ship a hard drive back home via UPS or FedEx for an additional backup. Another option is to get some USB memory sticks and ship those back as you fill them up.

Alex: My typical way of handling it on the road will be to bring two brand new drives with me. By the summer I hope to have Thunderbolt drives. One will hold my Aperture Library and the other one will hold my vault. At NAB I saw a 4 slot CF reader with a Thunderbolt connection which will make it much faster to copy data from your cards to your computer and external drives. If I have a good internet connection, I will try to upload my selects to the cloud. If Brian is doing some charity work then he might be able to make some connections in the places where he will be to gain access to some fast internet connections.

Question #2 – Mounting Large Prints
Can anyone offer advice on mounting larger prints? I have shot a nice pano and I'm thinking of having it printed large, perhaps as wide as 60 inches. I obviously want the print to lie flat and otherwise look professional. Although I've heard canvas prints are a good option, I'd rather not go this route. I want to preserve as much sharpness as possible.

Derrick – he could check out Sizzlpix. They start with polished aluminum and then put a coating over it and they really retain that sharpness. They can go up to 60 inches on these things but they are not cheap.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Richard – Manfrotto M8-Q5 Tripod Head & Clearcam for the iPhone

Alex – Red Giant's Software for the iPhone called Noir

Derrick – Canon 18-135mm IS Zoom as Kit Lens on T3i & 60D

Frederick – Letterpress business cards from Dolce Press

WRAP UP

Follow us on twitter.com/ThisWeekInPhoto. Join the Flickr critique group. You can also join our Facebook group.

Richard Harrington – http://www.richardharringtonblog.com and http://www.3exposure.com or http://twitter.com/#!/rhedpixel

Alex Lindsay – http://www.pixelcorps.com or http://www.twitter.com/alexlindsay

Derrick Story – http://www.thedigitalstory.com or http://www.twitter.com/derrick_story

Frederick Van Johnson – www.frederickvan.com or www.twitter.com/frederickvan

CREDITS

TWiP is brought to you by the following sponsors:

Hover.com – domain name registration and management that's simple.  For Hover's “transfer concierge service”, free for our audience, go to hover.com/twip.

Squarespace.com – the fast and easy way to publish a high-quality website or blog.  For a free 14-day trial, go to Squarespace.com/twip. And be sure to check out their annual plans for savings of up to 20% off!

Pre-Production and Show notes by Bruce Clarke www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclarke

Producer: Suzanne Llewellyn

Bandwidth provided by Cachefly

Intro Music by Scott Cannizzaro