You can be anyone for a day!

If I had to pick a theme for this past N.Y. Comic Con, this would be it: Be anyone for a day. Or anything for that matter, anything goes. In fact I think the Cosplayers outnumbered those who didn't dress up at the Con! Estimated attendance at 100,000+ that's a lot of costumes! But the most stunning event to me happened Sat at the south staircase to the lower level. Here there was a gathering that took over one side of the staircase by the windows. I've been to many cons but never seen this particular group before so I inquired what was going on. It turns out these folk where from a web comic that I never heard of called Homestuck! And boy were they organized, they drew attention of passers by with loud roars from time to time. You will know them by the candy colored horns and grey appearance most of them wore. Led by a guy dressed in black with blue markings, they organized into mythic groups and families from the series to take family pictures! Now this is the kind of devotion I would love fans to have of my work one day, this is for sure! But this goes to the main fun of shows like this, and that is that for a day you can be someone else, not worrying about your own struggles and losing yourself in the moment. That for a day you can be that superhero or Villain or movie star or even a droid. For a day you can be a kid again who dressed up as anyone on Halloween. For a day there can be magic, for a day you can be anyone!

Another X in the wall

I've used Final Cut Pro since 4 so when X came out with its new interface like many others I groaned and was lost just like them. No upgrade for me. It was version 0 and was missing many features from its previous incarnation. Well months later I figured that I test the waters and cut the stuff I shot at New York Comic Con on the trial version instead of iMovie, here we go. After two false starts I got the hang of this beast, I took all my source video from iPhone, NEX5N, and the Canon 60D and went to work. Rendering is done in the background while you're putting the movie together, individual clips can be worked on, video fixes, audio, color correction, stabilization all can be done in the background. Titles as well, using the included fonts or your own. Everything runs pretty fast, of course dependent on your hardware. After a couple of hours I had a finished video with titles and music. Over all not the bad experience I thought it would be. If you're into doing video and are in the Apple environment and are looking to step up from iMovie FCPX might mark the spot.

N. Y. Comic Con 2012

Wow. 4 days, and lots of gigs of photos and video to go through, no doubt becoming the East Coast version of the San Diego Comic Con very quickly! I had an awesome if not exhausting time but as with these shows , I could not see everything. And I only got to see a couple of friends in the business this time out . But for me the show was about coverage. Shooting, shooting, shooting. Rarely taking my hand from the shutter button, what a great event to shoot at! More soon.

Pre Con

This is the first post in my Comic Con coverage. Enjoy.

New York Comic Con

It's that time of the year again, one of the biggest shows since the 90's is back and I'll be there for all the fun! I'll be posting tons of pics and video from the show floor this year so if you can't make it watch my feed for updates. And if you're going drop me a line so we can hook up. This years show looks to be a blast so stay tuned ! http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com

Trolls, wars of Patents, whispers of doom

       It was the late 60's as in 1960's, the age of space, threats of nuclear wars, and the peace and the civil rights movements. A little show called Star Trek ran an episode called "Taste of Armageddon". In it war was the most terrible thing ever, so terrible that conventional warfare was no more, instead it was fought by computers that decided the fate of people. If the computer said a section of the city was hit or destroyed the people in that section would line up to get atomized neat and cleanly. No mess, no disease no problem.Present day. These days it's hard not to think that one day this may become our reality in the future. We live in a world that is fast becoming rulled by Tech Giants who wage wars not in the conventional sense, but with Patents. They buy Patents like ammunition or file patents to use as deterrents. But mostly they are used to lodge against other companies like missiles. They also use them to stop competing devices from being sold in certain markets. Where this ends if at all is anybody's guess.                    And of course there are Trolls lurking about as well.  The last time there was a troll I had to deal with was long ago playing D&D now there are all kinds of Trolls! Patent Trolls, blog Trolls, chat room Trolls, Trolls everywhere. It seems there will always be Trolls to deal with. 

  Star trek c.2012 CBS

Nexus 7

Admittedly we knew there would be a tablet coming from Google, it really wasn't a surprise to anyone. In the past few weeks we've seen keynotes and gadgets galore, os's and show business from all these titans of tech. Microsoft tried but fumbled in their presentation of the Surface tablet. They really wanted to showoff not one but two keyboards ooh! Two different tablets and I admit I was intrigued by the "pro" version when I saw Lightroom on it, but then reality sets in, wait did they say a price? Did I miss it? Are the keyboards that they loved so much included or separate? Shipping today! No wait that was an Apple thing! A... No set date, but the pro ships 3 months after the arm version and I'm sure double the price of it if not more! So can they hang with Google that they tried to prempt with Surface? No. No way they can match price because Google is selling Nexus 7 at cost! I have one on order to replace my aging iPad 1! Can't beat the price and with all the Google integration a no brainier. Won't need the camera on the back I have an aging iPhone for that and my 2 main cameras Canon 60D and the Sony NEX 5N for that!

Vivian Maier

    Vivian Maier 1926-2009. And this would be all that anybody would know of her. No family, no known friends, never married, worked all her life as a nanny. Except for a secret life she hid from everybody. Hidden in storage lockers, whose contents where auctioned off for non payment, were thousands of negatives and undeveloped film. And if it wasn't for John Maloof, they would be lost for all time.
     The other day at a Barnes and Noble, one of the last bookstores now, I stumbled on a book about her work. On its cover is a striking self portrait of her, half in shadow, holding the Rolleiflex she had used to take most of the shots with. I can only imagine what people in those days thought of her walking around taking shots with a big camera. Those same looks happen to this day to me. Upon opening it and reading the bio I was awed! Inside the book was the most awesome array of photos of a time long gone to history, in stunning quality and detail that would put most pros to shame today. And this was a simple woman, self taught by all accounts, she processed her own film, a nanny. And in the end those three boys who thought she was Marry Poppins  to them when she was their nanny, took care of her till the end. No one knows why she told no one. But today her work lives on . 
The book is published by Powerhouse books. Its a must have for your library.
  http://www.vivianmaier.com/
http://www.vivianmaierprints.com/index.html
http://www.powerhousearena.com/products-page-2/?category=11&product_id=704

A little 5DM3 envy

I follow Nikon, Canon, and Sony, as far as camera's go. The latest releases, news, and rumors. I love it.   And I freely admit to loving the latest tech gadgets and software as well. And since the latest Nikons were released, I've yet to see them in the wild or know someone who has them. The D4 and the D800 respectively. But lately I've seen, and held, ( more on that in a minute ) the Canon 5DM3. So this passed April At the N.Y.C. Auto show I saw someone with it. so I asked if I could check it out, I hope he didn't notice my sweaty hands! wow! Heavy, but not too much for me. Awesome viewfinder with all those auto focus points. A big diference compared to my 60D. Anyway the guy never took it off his neck and who would blame him! I wouldn't either, and good luck getting it from my grip if I had one!!!  But this week not one but two. at Union Square a woman had it with a grip and long lens. And at the local Starbucks before my eyes, an unboxing, as I was writing a blog post on my first gen ipad! Time to rub those pennies for some luck!

LR4

Making the jump to Lightroom 4. After testing the waters I've found that while there was a bit of a learning curve coming from Aperture 3 and Photoshop it's worth every penny. More bells whistles and power than Aperture. Also not sure what Apples' end game is with their app.?

Surface me a pc

Mystery guest is....well hello mr. tablet. oh wait you brought a friend, well hello mr. portable pc. So today,  after what looked from the pictures that were live blogged, to be a rave or a fashion show, was Microsofts big event. And in what seemed like a big kick to its hardware partners, now being more Apple in their approach to doing software and hardware integration,  The Surface in two forms. The lesser Windows RT with ARM processer from Nvidia, and the Pro version running Intel's i5 processer, basically making it a portable pc. In fact running Lightroom 4 at the event! Now how well these things function in the real world is anybody's guess. Will the next ipad run Lightroom or Aperture? Who knows, but if the Surface makes it, it had better!  ( photo from +The Verge )http://live.theverge.com/microsoft-live-blog-tablet-announcement/

MacBook pro or not to MacBook pro

I've had MacBook pro's since the first 12" model came out, miss the little guy, mom has it now. I have a 15"about 4 yrs. old. It has, don't get mad, Windows 8 dev on it! Don't ask me why I hacked it but I did. Lastly I've got a 2011 13" MacBook pro with a 128 ssd and 8 gig's of memory. Its pretty fast but has 2 drawbacks. One the low res screen, why Apple?. Two no dedicated graphic card. Well maybe three, the weight. It is my main workhorse. But now comes this 15" retina monster, if you tricked it out all the way, is about $4000 with apple care, that you must get with this thing because it can't be fixed only replaced. So while it's nice to look at and drool, it's not a must buy at all for me right now.

And the mystery guest is.....

Your invited to our event, you will want to be there! Don't miss it! It's in L.A. Oh it's on Monday at 3:30 pt. See you there. Thanks Microsoft! And basically that was their invite to the tech press. No location and not much heads up that it would take place at all. Guess we will see tonight.

colorblind pt.2

In my opinion it is retarded that Apple took the RAW fine tuning out of the inspecter window. You must now select it , not on the right pull down menu, ( where it was ) but now on the left. If this is supposed to be a pro app, or was, RAW fine tuning should not have to be found but instead be already there to use right away!

Windows 8 the new fiasco

Soon Microsoft will launch it's most schizophrenic operating system yet , one that forces it's users to use two interfaces at once. Having tried the dev. Preview and hearing that not much has changed other than it's Metro interface having a firmer foot hold on it , can mean only trouble ahead! It seems Microsoft is not letting either succeed with this OS. Those still running XP, well it's time to give up the ghost! Running 7? You're in some luck , it's still under the hood. But you have Metro and charms and other goblin magic in order to get to it ! Sounds like fun no? I Think not. Lion seems like a kitten walk compared to this coming hell on wheels.

colorblind

Is someone color blind at Apple that they need to monocrome the icons in all their apps? The new Aperture interface .

Stung

Our curious Pixel got stung by a bee today and is now resting at the vet . Send her get well wishes .

Over Atlas

The other day at the mall.

One shot

Sometimes it's good to have your DSLR in your favorite coffee shop !

Inks

This is the inked version of those pencils . Since I'm doing some shooting tomorrow I won't be posting much . I hope you like.

The Comics

This is the cover of issue 2 of a book I'm working on in pencil form. I hope to have it ready to go by the end of the year. Online only. And since I ink myself the pencils are rough with the little x's marking blacks.

Processing

Same shot in raw just starting to process. Usually I start with sharpening or cropping , white balance , exposure and contrast and go from there to more heavy lifting.

New picture being processed

This shot was taken at the Memorial for 9-11. Working on it in Aperture3 . This is the jpeg of it in the cinescene picture style that I shoot with all the time.

Testing

Just testing mobile .