ultental, ferragosto 2006

Ultental_4285.jpg

Originally uploaded by aadm.

Dopo un’ingloriosa ritirata dalla cresta SE del Cevedale causa maltempo, io e Giulia ci siamo ritirati verso valle percorrendo il sentiero dei Laghi che parte dal rifugio Larcher.

In questo slargo poco prima del Lago Lungo c’erano dei camosci che appena ci hanno sentito arrivare si sono arrampicati su questo sperone roccioso immerso nella nebbia.

british museum – volumi sbilanciati

All’inizio questa foto mi piaceva, adesso pero’ la trovo forse un po’ sbilanciata.

Mi piace il taglio diagonale, ma c’e’ quella (parte di) statua sulla estrema destra che da’ un senso di incompiutezza. Il problema e’ che se la taglio via poi tutto il resto e’ leggermente fuori fuoco, visto che l’effetto (voluto) era quello di sfocare in maniera progressiva le statue che seguono.

Che fare ? Ritorno al British Museum giusto per rifare questo scatto ?

Questa invece…

…mi piace un sacco, pur se tecnicamente insignificante.

ducati speedweek 2006 pictures

Speedweek_1986.jpg
Originally uploaded by aadm.

I’ve (finally) subscribed to flickr, so now I’m a ‘pro’ user. Following the same ligthroom workflow that I’m describing in this blog, I have uploaded a few pictures taken in the last few months.

This shot is from the recent Ducati Speedweek, a racing event which was held in Hungary at the end of July.
I joined a group of friends from the Multistrada forum and raced in the class B (two-cylinder engines, 2 valves per cylinder; in other words all the bikes with the usual air-cooled desmodue engine such as Supersport 900 and 1000, Monster 1000, Monster S2R, plus anything fitted with this engine, i.e. the brand new Bimota Delirio).

More photos, including some very nice shots taken by Gardello during the race, can be found in this flickr set:

Ducati Speedweek 2006 (flickr set)

For more info please use the links below:
www.ducatispeedweek.org
www.ducatimultistrada.it

breviario di inglese tecnico

Le fonti da cui ho attinto sono “senior professionals” dell’azienda presso cui lavoro.

Grammatica di base

Verbi: uso arbitrario della terza persona singolare e selezione casuale degli ausiliari (es.: “it doesn’t goes”).
Sostantivi: abolizione della rigida distinzione tra forme singolari e plurali. La ’s’ finale va messa a seconda delle fasi lunari.

instead to+verbo: lett. per “invece di” (e.g., “instead to have”)
before to+verbo: lett. per “prima di” (e.g., “before to start”)

Alcuni verbi cambiano rispetto all’old english:
to send: regolare (I sended a letter).

Si introducono nuovi verbi, a piacimento dell’oratore:
to posseed = to have (the istrument possiids two sensors)

Poi non mancano le bellissime forme mutuate dall’inglese francofono:
what’s mean (what it means is…)
what’s happen (what happens is…)

Immancabili vocaboli tecnico-manageriali da usare a mitraglietta nelle riunioni:
niz: needs
no’ au: know-how

Frasario tecnico

The saignal can arrives at the surface where is storied in digital format.
The tool generates currents that’s goes into the rock.
Sometime it generates a vrong response.
If you don’t performs this step.
It detect the diameters (o “diameter’s”; non so bene, mancavano i sottotitoli) of the borehole.
We have logs that posseeds different property. So before to start we …
Forced agan the wall.
Must necessary falls on this calibration line.
The neutron logs is a logs that…
So if you goes in the chart and you take a points there…
(filofosico) Remember, the matrix is speed, the water is slow.
Assolutely no.
Disposition of points on the graph.
Saimbols.

Per finire una citazione direttamente dal libretto con le procedure di evacuazione distributi alla divisione di recruiting/addestramento interna:

Italiano:
In caso di allarme abbandonare immediatamente in maniera ordinata l’edificio usando le uscite di emergenza.

Inglese:
Please leave the building immediately in orderly fashion using the emergency exits.

lightroom workflow

Introduction
Thanks to Lightroom and its beta status (which for me translates as ‘free’) I now have finally found a nice way to organize all my photos.
This is an attempt to illustrate my workflow; I will tray to add in the future some more things with a litte bit more detail.
I shoot with a Nikon D70s, and I’ve set up the color mode II (i.e., Adobe RGB color space).
In this way all the jpegs and raw images that I shoot are tagged as being in Adobe RGB color space, but there is actually no color profile attached to the files. So I have to manually attach the proper color profile once I download the files to my computer.

Hardware
The computer I’m using is an iMac with intel core duo processor 1.83Ghz with 1.5Gb of ram; I use an external 200Gb lacie firewire hard disc for backups.

Software
I’ve always tried to stick with non-commercial software, even though I have to admit it’s hard not to use Photoshop. Gimpshop is a free alternative to Photoshop; it’s the well-known gimp (which many linux users may be familiar with) but with a redesigned interface which makes it similar to Photoshop; it’s also intel-native for mac users, so I think it’s a good alternative to Photoshop even if it’s not as polished as the real thing.
Other nice command-line applications are Imagemagick and jhead. They could be perfect for fast batch processing, but I’d like something more visual.
Of course all the macs have iPhoto installed, and even if it’s a nice piece of software especially in the latest release, I still find it too basic for my needs.

So here comes this new product from Adobe, Lightroom; as far as I’m concerned this is the best piece of software to quickly sort, organize, rank a long shooting session; and on top of this it has some basic retouch capabilities which are everything that the average Photoshop user might ever need.

It also feels lively with my hardware configuration (which is not exactly top of world); having struggled with an old G3 iBook and a mere 384Mb of ram first, then with a G4 macmini 1.25Ghz, this is by far the best system that I’ve ever had, which allows me to really work through a 100+ shoots in a breeze.

The workflow
1) import with image capture, I’ve set the option to automatically assign to all the downloaded files the Adobe RGB profile.

2) copy all the files in an appropriate directory under the Pictures folder. I have setup a directory structure which I’m comfortable with, but not sure whether it’s worth sharing. Let me know if somebody wants to know.

3) Import photos in Lightroom referencing from their original location; I usually assign the same shoot name of the subfolder name created in step (2).

4) in the library module I quickly scan all the photos, marking with 1 star (key “1″) the photo that I want to keep. At the end I activate the filter to show only the pics with 0 stars, select everything and then delete them all. At the emd I have only the 1-star rated photos (1 star means for me: worth keeping it !).

5) I go through the remaining photos a second time now, shifting between the library and the develop module (alt-1, alt-2) if I need to straighten or crop the photo or fix the colours, brightness etc. At the same time I also increase the star rating to the pics that I really like (but so far I tend to use as little stars as possible; 2 stars are for the ones that I want to upload to flickr o print, 3 for the really good ones).

6) I move back to the library module and now I assign some keywords; the following is an example of the keywords that I’m using — you may notice that even here I tend not to over-create (too many keywords are just plain useless, and you may be better off finding your photo just by scrolling through the library).

d70s –> photos taken with my Nikon D70s
coolpix –> photos taken with the small Coolpix
moto –> everything related with motorbikes
ale –> photos featuring me !
panorama, water, rocks, climbing –> self-explanatory
flickr –> the ones that I want to upload on flickr
print –> the ones to print

And then I’m ready to export the photos; I should add a few notes on the only bit of processing done externally (the evergreen Unsharp Mask, folks !), but since I’m still experimenting with a way to automate it with gimpshop, that’s gonna be for the next time.