Software services/programs

Anyone who has a Mac will know about the services that run in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Over time I have tried various programs and they come and go but there are a few that have managed to stay. The main ones are Backblaze, TextExpander, Dropbox, Hazel and iStat Menus. I have included a screenshot of part of my menubar, and they are the five at the left. 

I think everyone knows about Dropbox, and if you don’t then you should. It is cloud storage for free (2.2GB for me) and it simply syncs whatever folders you point it at. I have set up a few folders so that all of my writing is synced to the cloud, as well as my TextExpander snippets and my 1Password files. I already backup all of my files with Backblaze, but Dropbox is a different service. It does act as a backup for files but works more as a central repository for files so that various programs can access them. These are programs on the Mac, and on my iOS devices. If you invite more people to use the service, Dropbox gives you more space. Files synced to Dropbox can be accessed from any computer or your phone, and you can also add security so that some folders are public and some are private. It is a great way to share really big files, because if you’ve ever had to e-mail someone a file bigger than about 20MB (especially if they are on a corporate network), it’s such a pain. This way you give them a URL and they simply download the file from your Dropbox. 

TextExpander is a program that expands text shortcuts to save time when you are writing the same thing over and over. I use it mainly for personal details such as my e-mail addresses, and the various spelling mistakes I am always making (eg email when it should be e-mail). You can configure it to expand with scripts and wait for you to insert values in the middle of an expanded section of text, but I come nowhere near that in terms of use. It sorts out my mistakes, makes it easy for me to type e-mail addresses, and that’s about it for now. My job doesn’t involve a lot of typing (on my home computer) so I don’t need it to do much more than that. 

Backblaze is my backup program of choice. I have written about it previously, but it runs in the background and continuously backs up everything on your computer that you tell it to. It can also back up attached drives which made me choose it over Carbonite (which only does the internal drive of the computer). It costs me about $60 a year to run Backblaze, and presently I have 219GB of data backed up. It works in conjunction with me copying data to the external drive here. So I have the original on the computer, an on-site backup in the external hard drive and then an off-site backup with Backblaze. The restore options are varied, on the website you choose what you need to restore and you can either download it on the spot (if the file or files are small enough), or ask them to send it to you on a hard drive. This is what I would choose for one of those catastrophic hard drive failures when the whole thing just packs it up and refuses to work any more. I keep the stuff I need to keep going on Dropbox as well so that I can get that straight away. 

Hazel works behind the scenes to keep an eye on folders you specify and perform actions on any files that appear in them. For example you can say that when a file is placed on the desktop with the name screenshot*, then these files are moved to another folder called screenshots so that the desktop does not get cluttered and all of your screenshots are in one space. Another thing it does is to watch for programs being deleted and then it removes all of the associated files. This is something that Mac OS X doesn’t do well, so it’s nice to have this waiting. 

Lastly, iStat menus are a configurable set of icons that show the status of various parts of the machine. Presently I have it watching my uploads/downloads, and the workload of each of the processors. It just lets me know that if the computer is running slowly whether it is because both cores are maxed out or something else is happening. It is a good first place to look when trying to determine if something has happened to the internet connection - is there stuff being sent/received?

There are a few other programs I really like. Hidden is an app to track your laptop. It runs in the background without showing any processes, and once you have registered your computer you can log into a website to say that your computer has been stolen and it will start to collect location information, screenshots, images from the isight camera and network activity. The website has a testing setting so that you can see what is collected. Location didn’t work so well because it showed my computer being in Darlinghurst when it was at home, but I think it is taking the location from the ISP server it is connected to. I have set it up with Little Snitch so that there are no pop up windows to show that it is running, and to allow it to connect without any interference. This information can then be used to try and find the person who took your laptop. 

Little Snitch is a program to keep an eye on network traffic, very effective especially with the malware floating around for OS X at the moment. It allows you to set which programs are allowed to access the web. You can set up whitelists so that programs that you trust do not ask to access the web, and those that you are unsure of can be restricted until you figure out what they are for. 

1Password is the last one I really like, because it stores all of my passwords, the contents of my wallet (credit cards, debit card numbers), and other secure information. It has changed the way I view security now because I put very strong passwords on everything now, because I don’t have to try and remember the password to them all. I only have to remember the master password. I can also set up web shortcuts in Safari so that it automatically logs in when I click on the bookmark. If I haven’t unlocked the program recently it won’t log in until the master password is entered. It also works on the iPhone so I can access everything on the go, and the password files sync through Dropbox.

You spelled my name wrong, again.

I want to try and chronicle all of the wrong ways that people have spelled my name. 

I will update this as I see more stupid and frankly puzzling ways to spell my surname. As you can see from the header image on the website, my surname is spelled P-E-R-T-O-V-T. Pertovt. You say ‘per-toff’, that’s a silent T at the end. Some of my relatives spell it P-E-R-T-O-U-T. It is said the same way, and I think this is just a transcription error. When I first changed my name back in say, 1988 to Leech, it was easy to spell. Then when I was about 20 I changed it back to Pertout. Note the ‘u’. Then after a bit more research I changed it officially to Pertovt. It was for two big reasons, I was about to graduate from university with my nursing degree, and I wanted to marry Ilona, so I wanted to get the name right. 

So the bad spellings that I can recall (so far).

Pertrovt

Petrov

Terovt

Perot

Petrovt

Don’t even get me started on how people seem to mis-hear my first name as Ben or Andrew. 

My first environmental portrait

Today I wanted to work on an idea that I had for getting some shots of the brigade members. In a way it’s my first environmental portrait that I have put a lot of thought into. It becomes even more appealing to me to do this after all of the info I soaked in from Joe McNally. 

FWIW I promise that soon I will stop rabbiting on about Joe McNally.

I have had the idea in my head to get some portraits of the main people of the fire brigade in position with the trucks. My first thought was to get one of Pete Jacobs next to the BA sets on the truck. So this is what I wanted to work on today. 

I took along with me one flash, the lastolite soft box, one lighting pole (with boom arm), a sandbag, reflector and a tripod for the camera. The way that the trucks are parked leaves little room in between, maybe 1.5 − 2 metres at best. The truck with the BA sets is of course parked on the left so I am working in the small area between the two trucks. If I were doing this for real I would move the other truck out to give me more room, but that wasn’t going to happen today, and it made me think a bit more about how to solve the problem. So I got there and pulled the two BA sets out of the truck on their hangers, and hung the mask of the front one on the frame, to give a point of interest. My original plan was to use the cable release to take the pictures, but again I went with the self timer as the camera was far enough away to warrant it. I was also using my hands to hang onto the reflector at one point, which would have made it more difficult. 

Slightly warmed version

The lens that is left on my camera is the 70 − 200mm f2.8, and I had a quick look with that zoomed out to 70mm but it was too tight. So I put on the 50mm f1.8 and gave it a go. It allowed me to fit in the top of the cylinder, the mask and me. I put the soft box on the top of the truck next to me aiming down and set the camera to manual, 1/250 and f5.6. My face came out a little hot and I think that is because of the black top that I am wearing. The mask and cylinders are lit up nicely though, and there is a fairly steep fall off behind the door that is open behind me (with the information on it). One thing that is nice about this shot is that I can see a little triangle of light on my right cheek, something I didn’t pick up at the time. There is also a bit of fill on the right side of my face from the reflective inside of the locker. I was worried about having to fill that side somehow, but no need! I had pre-focused on the mask so my face was a little bit out of focus, but if I had someone else in the shot that wouldn’t be a problem. So overall I was happy with this setup. 

Slightly warmed versionThe next shot I did with my jacket on because that is how I would have been taking a shot of the person, and it makes the picture much lighter. I should have smoothed down my collar, but these are things that I would notice when doing a portrait of someone else. This shot was done with me holding the silver reflector below me to bounce some light back up into the picture. This has made the right side of my face much closer in brightness to the other side, and also lit the bottom of the cylinder hanging next to me. It also creates a reflection in the mask of the BA set, which doesn’t look as good. All in all I prefer the first shot of the two. The first shot also looks a little more casual. 

Slightly warmed versionNext I decided that I wanted to get a bit more in the frame and show some more surroundings so I used the 18 − 200mm f3.5 − 5.6 consumer lens I have. I don’t like to use this very often as it is a bit soft but when I have to get in there, this is what I have to use (My next lens purchase will be the Nikon 24 − 70mm f2.8 lens). With this lens I decided to get down lower and try to shoot up a little bit. This in theory makes the person seem bigger, but because it was only the top half of me it didn’t work too much in that regard. I changed the ISO at this point to 400 because I wanted to keep the camera on f8, but the flash couldn’t put out that much light (only an SB-600).

Using this lens also allowed me to get the soft box closer to me in the picture so the light seemed a bit softer and had a faster fall off. I put the soft box on the light stand for this, and set it at my height and aimed slightly in front of me to feather the light onto me. I set the camera to f8, still at 1/250 and took a shot. My hope was to get just the items close to me lit and to leave the rest relatively dark. 

I lightened the image slightly in Aperture so that I was lit a bit brighter, and I had to this adjustment post shooting because I was planning to tether to the laptop while shooting but I wanted to be able to shoot as fast as I could, so that I could pretend there was some pressure on me.

There are two things I really like about this image - the reflection on the mask from the soft box, as opposed to the reflection from the silver reflector, and the way the lines on the BA board lead into the shot. The exaggerated perspective turns them into a kind of leading line. The one thing I don’t like about this shot is that I still have my t-shirt on instead of my blue drill shirt. 

The locker next to me looks a bit dark, and If I had another flash I would have put it into the locker next to me to light that up too, at a very low level - basically enough to let you see inside. 

Slightly warmed versionIn the last image here I changed the shutter speed to allow the natural light coming in through the windows above the truck to the left to light the rest of the bay. The sun was going in and out of clouds so I had the shutter speed initially set to 1/20 which worked out well, but after the first shot the sun went behind the clouds and stayed there, so it dragged it out to ⅛. This made the roller doors and roof much more visible and it seems like a lighter, more friendly image. This would be more likely to be used to publicise what we do over the darker version. 

I was happy overall with what I did today because I went from a concept in my mind to a few shots that I could use in only half an hour (33 minutes from first shot to last shot). With two flashes I could have done more, and with another person to help I could have mounted the soft box onto a painters pole and had a VAL (voice activated light stand). If there was someone else to act as the model that would also speed things up. 

The good thing about all of the information I have learned is that I am thinking of other ways things could be done - get a justin clamp and a small Lumiquest soft box III and I would be able to clamp it onto the rail of the truck next to me. Another flash and I could do a backlight behind me, or light up another part of the truck. I am so happy to be learning and trying apply the information that is coming in because it is the way that I retain info and consolidate it. 

Update on Saturday, May 26, 2012 at 7:32AM by Daniel Pertovt

I updated this blog entry with some slightly warmed up versions of the images after reading about it from Joe McNally. It does make the pictures more pleasing to me when they are warmed up. I have left the originals in place so that they can be compared. 

An afternoon with Joe McNally

Just the other week I had the extreme pleasure to spend an afternoon and evening in the company of Joe McNally. I went along to his lighting workshop and 30/60 keynote address at Doltone House in Jones Bay. 

I have seen a lot of the stuff that Joe does, in the Flash Bus videos, his website, and some of the videos at Kelby Training and he really knows his stuff. He is not so much a landscape photographer as a photographer of people. He used to work for Life and National Geographic, and I really want to learn some of his techniques for working with small and big strobes to make images that really show character. 

One of the first ideas that I had to grasp with his technique is that when you are working with strobes you basically start with a dark canvas and only illuminate that which should be in the image. When you get your head around this concept and change your way of thinking it really becomes much more of an easy problem to solve. He essentially started by putting his camera on manual, set to 1.250 and f8 and took a picture - black. Perfect. All of the shots he took were projected onto two screen behind him so we got real time feedback.

Some of the best of Joe’s stuff that I have seen are his character portraits - showing a person in their space, whether it be work or play. This usually means going on location and trying to get an image of that person doing their thing, in place as they would if the photographer was not there. This really fit in at Doltone House because he had never been there before so it was like being on location for him. Then seeing how he dealt with this on stage makes me realise that it really isn’t that hard to do the setups that he does. Again, it comes down to knowledge of how to light, and then recognising what is the best way to light a particular subject. 

One of the great parts of the day was getting to be on stage with Joe and interacting with him and the model Leslie. It was a demonstration of how to light a group of people by bouncing the flash back over your head. It was simple, it worked and I got to be in a picture. Plus I saw one of the guys I know from the fire brigade in there too. Cool +++. He had two models working that day, Leslie the ballerina you see below and a really gruff looking guy called Greg who was covered in tattoos. They were a great pair because he was able to show how different lighting worked for different people. 

After the afternoon seminar was done, I stayed for the keynote talk and Q&A afterwards. He essentially went through a slideshow of images from his career and there was a story and a lesson associated with each one. At first it felt like he had given the talk many times before (which he probably has), but I formed this opinion because he seemed to know everything about the pictures. I thought about this later and realised that I can recall details about images I took over ten years ago like it was only yesterday, because you know these images are keepers and the details just stick. It made me happy to come to this point because I didn’t want to think of the keynote as the same old talk that he gives every time. 

The Q&A session afterwards was also a great opportunity to learn about his way of thinking. There were some really good questions such as ‘what would’t you shoot? (cigarette ads)’. I asked him whether he felt as good about mentoring the younger members of the studio as he did about shooting in general, and he said that the whole of photography is about passing on what we have learnt in our time. I found this profoundly satisfying because it fit in with what I felt - what is the point of learning all of these techniques and styles if we aren’t able to pass them along? Not everyone wants to learn from anyone, and that is fine, but it is also one of the reasons why I blog about what I do. If someone out there in internet-land reads my blog and tries something that I did and thinks it looks good, then there is this passing on knowledge that may get re-passed on later. I don’t get any feedback from people about whether they have learnt something from me, but I don’t really want to get it either. Knowing that the information is out there is enough for me, knowing that I have tried to empty my head and put anything I know (whether right or wrong) in a place where anyone can view it is enough. 

Let me just say that I walked away from Doltone House with a greater appreciation for what it means to be a photographer. I learned some skills, I got to participate, and I got to peek behind the curtain and see why Joe does what he does. Joe is a really down to earth guy, he looks happy to be up on the stage teaching, and he even commented on this. His thoughts were that every time he gets up on another stage it’s a new place with new lighting problems to solve so he is learning as well. That sort of attitude is infectious and really motivates me to get out there and shoot. 

Experimenting with a soft box

So after taking on board what I learnt at the Joe McNally seminar, his many videos, and then watching ‘The Language of Light’ DVD, I wanted to get some soft box self portrait action going. Of course, I had no one to take pictures of so I put old long, tall and ugly in the frame.

I set it up on two occasions, once after work, and then again on a cold Sunday afternoon with nothing better to do. 

The first setup was a basic soft box above and to the right to try and get a ‘nice’ portrait. The setup is straight forward, but since this is a self portrait I started to think about what I could also put in there to represent me. Looking around, I see the bookshelf here in the rumpus room with my first SLR and some books. Perfect. That is me.

I set the soft box up on a light stand, and I set the camera on a tripod using my 70−200mm f2.8 lens, zoomed out to 70mm. I pre-focused on the chair where I thought my eyes would be and then set the camera to aperture mode (f8). I know of another way to focus in the dark involving a torch, but I was too far from the camera to use the remote release. So I put the camera onto self-timer mode, I pressed the shutter and then sat down to see what I would get. It looked pretty good, TTL mode seems to work fairly well but the left side of my face was  dark. I fixed this by putting my white reflector next to me and bouncing some light back into that side just enough. There was no scientific way to determine where to put the reflector - I just leaned it against a table and checked the result. Spot on first go, no probs.

 

The second shot was a profile, and this was also done with the soft box. I learnt how to do this from the Language of Light DVD. The soft box is set at about 2 o’clock (where I am facing 12 o’clock). Joe explains on the DVD that if it is placed at 12 o’clock there is no gradation on the cheek facing the camera and the face just gets blasted with light. Setting it where it is skirts the light around the cheek. Again, I put the camera on a tripod and pre-focused (it’s a little soft at 100%). This time the camera was set to manual (1/250, f8) to try and keep the room dark around me. There was some wash of light from the right side of my face back to the monitor above my desk. I couldn’t move the camera back any further so I changed the reflector to the black cover, and placed it on the desk behind me. 

From the back of the camera it seemed fine, until I imported it to Aperture and checked it out on the big screen. The first problem was that the (circular) reflector did not cover the whole background so I sent the image to Photoshop Elements and just painted the background black wherever it was needed. Further inspection in Aperture revealed that my nose and forehead were a little bit hot, so I used the burn tool to darken them up a little, along with my jacket, so that the focus is on my face. I also lightened the shadows just a tad to bring out a little bit of detail in my left ear. 

When I look at this picture in Aperture, it displays on my second screen a full screen version of the file, and with the sun on it you can basically see only my face and the top of the zipper. I like it. I also like the look in this picture, unshaven and with a somewhat pensive look on my face. Again, to me, it represents me.