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Since I've been blogging for, gosh, over ten years now in various forms and at various URLs, I'm hip to the various ways to post and get information: blogs, rss, tweets, status updates, etc, and I long ago fell in love with a Mac application called NetNewsWire, one of the first best RSS readers. I've got thousands of website feeds in my subscription list and can skim them all in a manner of minutes if necessary. For me, however, NNW didn't make the transition to iPhone app very well (I've had slow and buggy experiences with it). NNW was bought out by NewsGator several years ago and now syncs your lists between devices with Google Reader (this is a good thing). NNW for Mac is still a fabulous application and well worth an investment. But for staying connected with all the latest information while on the go, my new favorite RSS reader for iPhone is Reeder.

The Reeder app is fast (even with thousands of feeds), has a pleasing minimal interface, and really killer functionality! It can take any interesting link and make a note, share it, post it to delicious, save it to instapaper (more on that in a minute), tweet it, open it in safari, and copy/mail links/articles as well. And more. The experience is, as I said, fast and sleek and simple yet with enough power to do whatever you wish. It, too, syncs up with your Google Reader account keeping everything up to date between devices.

If you like a more glossy experience with your news and updates, you'll want to consider using the new Pulse app, especially if you are mainly now using an iPad (it works the same on the iPhone, but the smaller screen makes it feel cramped). Pulse is a visually pleasing presentation of your feeds (but is limited to 20 of your favorites) so you'll want to use it for the stuff you like to spend a little more time reading.

For creating and catching up on your various tweet streams, I can highly recommend Twitterific for iPhone/iPad. There are plenty of other apps for tweeting (even one just for writing tweets, Birdhouse), but I've never felt lacking with the design or feature set of Twitterific. It just works, with multiple accounts, and it looks darn nice. The official Twitter iPhone app is nice, too, and free.

On the desktop side of things, I'm a big fan of Seesmic. Others might recommend TweetDeck, but for me Seesmic fits my style and has all the expected features of multiple accounts, searches, hashtags, retweeting, URL shortening and the like. Works pretty well and the price is right (free).

But lately, what with the multiple social media accounts that I manage or am involved with, I've desired something a little more powerful and found it in HootSuite. Because I've got my personal/business account (@tweak), my other business account (@viewville) and my feature film project (@triumph67film) as well as the various Facebook pages that go along with those, I needed a tool that could handle them all as well as do scheduled postings for future dates/times. HootSuite does all this and more (including managing your other team members and assigning tweets to them)! And while their companion iPhone app does cost a few bucks, having all those features in my pocket means I can more quickly and efficiently manage my various social media accounts when I've got a spare minute here and there.

Oh, and instapaper. Well, this is one service you've just got to try. It'll take your interesting links you come across and save them for later so you can flag a long story and have it all ready to go when you actually have the time to dig into a longer article. Simple, easy to use.

PS - this entire post (and most of them, in fact) was created using MarsEdit.

Now that everything has been wrapped up in regards to the first Moving Into Motion DSLR Video Workshop, it is time for a brief recap.

There was building tension in the community about still shooters being asked to "just shoot some video" on set and how to best handle such requests. Some felt that this growing change was going to be even more disruptive than the transition from film to digital (I would agree). At the prodding of Bruce from MN Digitechs and several client requests, along with support from George and Karin at Studio 1414, it was decided that a crash course in HD video production for photographers should be conducted as soon as possible. Just a few weeks later, the first Moving Into Motion workshop was held.

The evening event, which covered all (pro and con) aspects of shooting video with DSLRs through post-production, was very successful, with 55 attendees of various backgrounds (although most were professional photographers). Most were Canon owners, many had started dabbling with video already, and they were all eager to learn everything possible.

The collected feedback was great, with most comments asking for an even longer session and even more information, which was much to my surprise as I thought three hours was going to be long enough (to be honest, I did create a very dense curriculum).

This in-depth session will be repeated again in the near future and due to the high demand, an all-day real-world hands-on workshop is in the works as well.

Things I learned in the process: a short-throw projector lens is desirable for a larger image, a last-minute order for even more chairs and tables is expensive, double-check on all food orders the day before the event, have better event signage on the street for parking, and having a good network of friends with various talents truly is priceless.

Much thanks for support goes to Bruce, Nate and David of MN Digitechs, George and Karin @ Studio 1414, Chris @ Shelter, Raoul @ Flashlight, West Photo, ThinkTank Photo, Adobe Lightroom 3, ASMP, MN WIFT, 4i Production, Handy Filmtools, Camera Motion Research, Karl, Donn, Jack, Emily, Craig, and Stefan.

    

If some very unscientific testing in the studio the other day, it would appear that the latest beta 2 of Adobe Lightroom 3 with tethered shooting support is just as fast and often times even faster than any other method, including Capture One Pro 5 and the official Canon software. Looks to be a very promising release when it comes out and I know several people that will likely switch to only use Lightroom as soon as it is feasible. Especially since it also appears to more stable and less buggy then certain other apps (ahem, C1P). Tests done on a current PC laptop and a Mac Pro with 12 gigs of RAM and two Canon 5d Mark II cameras. Have you tried it and would you concur? What other things would make you switch? Overlays? Color rendering tweaks?

The past few months have been focused on finishing editing the feature film project on which I shot and co-produced late last summer. TRIUMPH67 is shaping up to be a very good film, accomplished with a small budget and a huge amount of passion on all fronts. I've been so eager to get it done and release it to the world, to show you all what we created, but it has to be finished and polished to a certain level before outside eyes see it. Still, I can give you sneak peek at how some of it looks with this 1-minute raw scene of Mohannad arriving at his brother Sami's house. I'll probably post more here soon as we get ever closer to a finished film, but to really get all the latest news and updates, go to the main TRIUMPH67 film site and join the T67 email list and facebook fan page!

Paul Boag wrote an article a while back entitled "The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS" over on Vitamin/Carsonified and I really thought it was a useful item to ponder over as a CMS user. Then I thought, "This totally applies to digital asset management software as well, somebody should write up the same thing for DAM." So here goes (with all due respect to Mr. Boag):

The 6 Hidden Costs of Running a DAM System

The ever burgeoning amount of digital items generated by a person or company is quickly outgrowing our ability to handle and track them. These assets (digital images, designs, layouts, training clips, music tracks, digital videos, presentations, documents...) are quickly filling up our CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, external drives and server space and we likely don't have any idea where a particular file might be, much less have any useful information attached to it. We may well be recreating assets that we have lost or don't know exist in some other division of the company. So we naturally turn to digital asset management (DAM) software and hope it will streamline and organize our work.

Besides the initial price tag, there is a lot more to consider when making a DAM investment and achieving a successful implementation:

• The cost of training
• The cost of ingestion
• The cost to quality
• The cost to functionality
• The cost of redundancy and flexibility
• The cost of commitment

Let's take a closer look at each of the six cost areas...

I've been hearing stories from various sources lately about customers asking photographers to slash their budgets, even going so far as to completely slash the funds needed for the digital tech on the photo shoot. Bad economy all around, I guess. Selfishly, of course, I think this is a bad idea. After thinking about it in further detail it truly is a bad idea not just for digital techs, but photographers and clients alike. Here are six reasons you need a digital tech on-set:

1. You need a lab

In the days of film you wouldn't have even considered trying to slash the photo lab's budget, or even omit the photo lab entirely, from your photography process. The lab (digital tech, in today's parlance) ensures you get a properly exposed, focused, color-accurate, clean, high-quality image for your business use. This hasn't changed in results, merely in name and location.

2. You need another set of eyes

To ensure you receive a usable, printable, transmittable, high-end image, you need somebody who isn't worried about operating the actual camera, or the studio/location lighting, or is in constant discussions with the client or art director. You need somebody whose role is to take care of only the images. After all, you are already spending enough on the entire photo shoot. Rely on the digital tech to ensure it is money well spent. See reason 1 above.

3. You need graphic ability

In today's digital world, everything can be fixed in post ("Fix it in Photoshop!"). Not that everything should be fixed in post, far from it, but with the pace of the world today and the rapid cycles of the internet (and reduced budgets), it is in your best interest to rely on your digital tech for image processing before final image delivery to you or your production personnel. Depending on the level of comfort and experience with your team, and your business agreements, you may have retouching and color-corrections, perhaps even compositing, done right in the photo studio. This could pay for itself on the spot as you save an exponential amount of time in avoiding the inevitable in-house production logjam (and all that messy paperwork).

4. You need repurposability

Ok, that probably wasn't a word until now (it is), but what you need is somebody who understands the various ways your images are going to be used: the print process (hey, a huge part of the world is still ink on paper, despite the huge contractions in the news/media landscape), the web process (color-space, compression, file formats, delivery formats), and even the video process (similar to the web). A great digital tech knows these things and gives you exactly what you need right from the start, saving you time in the production process.

5. You need metadata

To get the various images into the various modes of delivery, you probably also need to find a particular image at any given moment in your ever-growing archive of assets. To do this, you need metadata (data about the data). Your digital tech knows efficient methods of entering this data and can accurately tag and keyword your images during, or immediately after, capture. One less thing for you to worry about.

6. You need redundancy

Your digital tech is also responsible for ensuring you have complete and accurate backup copies of your photo shoot. These are your negatives, if you are still thinking in terms of the film days. The beauty with digital, however, is you actually have more than one set of masters. Your digital tech makes these backups, perhaps even delivering a set right to your hands.