After almost 650 posts, a few thousand comments and seven years, I’m finally bidding goodbye to this particular blog.

It’s been a long time and covered a vast portion of major events in my life. Some happy, some sad and some unpublished.

As it cliché this time of year, I’ve resolved to write more. Right up until the point that I had to pump out an entire Doctoral thesis I enjoyed writing and sharing. Since that time, it’s been hard work. To change this up a bit, I’m narrowing the focus a bit from general life and nerdy pursuits down to my primary hobby: Photography.

Given the sentimental value these posts have for me, I’m going to leave them up and available here. I still refer back to some of the information in them every now and then, so I hope other people find them useful as well.

If you have the time and feel so include, stop by the new blog at http://blog.timpokorny.com/.

At the beginning of this year, rather than making a bunch of trite, all too common resolutions about exercising more and trying to drink less coffee, I decided that I’d focus on one area specifically: my photography hobby. With this in mind, I came up with a bunch of photo projects to keep me occupied over the course of the year.

Posing for photos is uncomfortable for most people, myself included. As some of my project would require people to pose at various points, I thought it a bit unfair to request this of others without putting myself in the same uncomfortable position. In order to guarantee that I followed through on this point, I required some sort of incentive, some external force I couldn’t say no to. I required obligation.

To achieve this, I vowed that if 52 people (one person a week) donated just $10 each to the RSPCA, I’d nude up for a photo. If I’m going to embarrass the hell out of myself, I should at least ensure it is for a good cause.

I wasn’t really sure how this would go, and after a cracking start, a final generous donation helped reach the total back in April. I’ve been extremely lax on getting around to taking the photo itself, and I apologise for that. It was part work, part procrastination and part cowardess.

Well, all that has now been put aside. With help from my girlfriend, Emily, I finally got around to baring all and making good on my promise.

I’d like to thank everyone who has been supportive. If you all promise not to laugh at me, I promise not to look at any of you differently after getting considerable encouragement to get naked. Let’s just have a brief awkward silence and let that be the end of it, shall we?

*awkward silence*

There we go.

For those brave enough to burn their retina’s… this is what you’re after. You only have yourselves to blame.

It’s trite and old to trot out the “I’m busy at work” line when complaining that you’ve been far too quiet on the blog front. Sadly, this is actually true and although I do intend to get better, I don’t promise that posts here will ever be a regular event again. They’ll come in fits and spurts, but I can’t see there being a consistent flow. I also have a couple of projects I’m working on that I’d like to put out there, it’s just a matter of finishing some things off.

That said, as something approximating sanity slowly starts to peep over the horizon of my work world, I do have a few things I’d like to put out into the world in the near future.

For the time being, photos like this are driving a desire to get back out into the world with the camera again. I won’t rule out another trip away to indulge this, and just looking at the shot below makes me want to book flights. When it comes to mountains, I’m a weak, weak man. Emily wants to drag me off to Bali at some point, so hopefully we can compromise and visit some higher altitude places in between lazing on the beach. That said, I’ve heard rumours from my best mate that a Tekapo/Queenstown return for the AFL Grand Final (it’s becoming tradition for us now) could be on the cards. Too many places to visit, too little money!

Since its release a couple of weeks ago, I’ve spent a bunch of time playing around with Aperture 3. With the exception of one problem, I absolutely love it.

The library import/export/merge functionality is exactly what I need to manage multiple libraries from my desktop and laptop. The selective brushing in and out of any adjustment you can put on an image has allowed me to become a lot more creative with how I edit up my shots. I used to spend about 5 minutes tweaking shots in Aperture 2, playing with colour levels, shadows and highlights, white balance, etc… With the tools Aperture 3 has made available, I now spend considerably longer, not because they’re harder to use, but because it has opened up a whole new level of control for me to exploit

All in all, I am amazed with how good Aperture 3 has been. However, there is one major exception that is just about ruining the experience for me at the moment: the application (or lack there of) of the sharpening adjustment when exporting images.

Selective Sharpening and Aperture 3

I’ve started to make pretty extensive use of the Aperture 3 sharpening adjustment. I like to brush it in over items in an image with a bit of texture or focus. Hair, eyes, that sort of thing. In Aperture 3, the images look fantastic and I’m really happy with them. This happiness quickly disapates when I export the images when preparing to upload them to my Flickr stream.

While all the other adjustments made in AP3 end up reproduced in the exported image, sharpening does not. Let me give you an example.

The follow image is how I see things in Aperture 3. It was obtained by going to full-screen editing mode and then doing a screen capture, thus by-passing any Aperture exporting. (click on images for full size versions to really see the difference)

In this image, I have added some sharpening to parts of the hair, the eyes and hands. All in all I am happy with what I see.

The next image is the result I get from exporting the image using the standard File > Export > Version… method.

Notice how soft it is around the afore mentioned areas where I applied sharpening.

If I go into Aperture and disable the sharpening adjustment, the resulting image is exactly as it appears in the standard exported version. Without knowing anything about the innards of Aperture, it seems as if any sharpening adjustments are not being applied on export.

The same behaviour exists regardless of:

• Image format on export (jpg, tiff, png)
• Image quality level defined in the export presets
• Image resolution (half/full/in-between)

Whenever I export a version, it always comes out WITHOUT sharpening. The only workaround I have at the moment is to go fullscreen and take a screenshot. This gives me something to upload to Flickr, however it does mean I lose all the EXIF data. While OK as a temporary solution for that purpose, I do wish to have some photos printed at some point soon, and in this case, I have no workable solution.

If anyone else using Aperture 3 has seen the same problem, I’d love to hear from them. I’ll be posting a link to this description on the Apple forums, but thus far I have only been able to find one other person describing a similar issue.

I am running Aperture 3.0.1 and OS X 10.6.2 (27″ i7 iMac). The files themselves are Canon CR2 RAW files (from a 5D Mark II) and were imported from the camera through Aperture.

As I first mentioned in my 2010 New Year’s resolutions post, I’ve begun undertaking a number of themed photo projects. One of these has the dual purpose of giving me a little more understanding of the world on the other side of the lens, and in helping me conquer a little personal fear.

I love taking photos, but if there is one thing that I am deathly scared of, it’s getting on the other side of the lens. Although my photo has been taken numerous times, I always resort to pulling some sort of goofy, over-the-top pose in an attempt to deflect the fear of being shot. If I’m just fooling around, it doesn’t matter that I look like a idiot… right? RIGHT!?

*Sigh* This has to stop. I can’t reasonably expect others to feel comfortable posing for me if I don’t at least have some level of appreciation for what they’re going through. All that ends now. It’s my turn to suffer the insecurity and terror of having my photo taken properly.

…

That was a nice little speech and all, but without the proper motivation I know I’ll never do it. So, to ensure that I do actually go through with this particular photo project, I will now make a pact designed to force me into realising this goal through the magical power of peer pressure. Naturally, I need the help of you, my peers, to apply the pressure.

Telling me to “man up” isn’t going to cut it for this task. I need to create some sense of obligation, and when thinking about it, I could only conjure one thought: Money. Convincing people to part with their hard earned cash puts a level of pressure on me that I can’t in good faith refuse. At the same time, when asking people to spend money, I have to make some sort of sacrifice myself. A simple self-portrait doesn’t provide enough amusement to motivate people to spend.

So… here goes nothing…

The Pact

People of the Internet: If there are 52 of you out there who are willing to donate just $10AUD each to the RSPCA, I promise to get in front of the camera for a self portrait… nude.

Yes, you read that correctly. I’ll buff it up for a self-portrait and post the results to my Flickr stream if just 52 of you can pony up a little cash for all the abandoned and abused animals out there. That’s one person a week over the course of the year.

The Conditions

1) When I say nude, I mean “tastefully” nude. No boy-bits, just my pasty, plain self.

2) The financial goal is to raise $520AUD for the RSPCA, so I will accept less than 52 individual donors if the total dollar amount reaches $520.

3) This offer is valid for the entire year. It will only expire at midnight, January 1st 2011 (Perth, Australia, GMT+8).

4) $500+ is a lot of money, so I’ll do my level best to make sure that the goal is reached. Yes, I won’t try and shy away purely because my hairy butt is on the line. I promise to contact various prominent photographers I know of through Twitter and the wider web in an attempt to get them to draw some attention to this act of tomfoolery, thus giving it the best possible chance of succeeding. If you’re going to toss in your money, the least I can do is try to make it worth while.

5) For your donation to be considered valid, some proof must be emailed to me (tpokorny ^^ gmail). Whether this is the tax invoice they send you, or a screenshot of the confirmation page, I just need some sort of proof that you have donated. The subject of all emails should be, or contain the text: “Raunchy for the RSPCA“. Please be sure to scrub any personal information you don’t want me to see. When I receive an email, I’ll just be noting the name and donated amount before immediately deleting it. Naturally, no details at all will be passed to anyone else for any purpose whatsoever.

6) I’ll only be taking the photo AFTER the $520 goal has been reached. Each time I receive confirmation of a donation I will reply via email to the donator, informing them of the current amount raised. Each time the total climbs by another $50, I’ll post a message to my Twitter stream.

If/when the goal has been reached, I’ll post the best shot I can manage to my Flickr account and a notification will be sent via Twitter, as well as an email directly to anyone insane and generous enough to donate.

A Final Word

This is scary as hell, but it will force me to step outside my comfort zone while having the far more important benefit of helping a kind and caring organisation. I’ve set the bar pretty high, so I’m really not sure I’ll get enough people to donate. If nothing else, remember that it’s tax deductible, which is more than I can say for my dignity.

There are many reasons to participate:

• Do it for the animals
• Do it because you want to be blinded by my casper-like levels of whiteness
• Do it because you think I’m all talk and want to see me squirm

Whatever the reason, I both encourage you to participate and urge you to think carefully about the horror you are potentially unleashing upon the world before you do.

Yours Nervously,
Tim.

Update: For anyone outside Australia who wishes to donate, you should also feel free. My personal suggestion is to donate to the Humane Society. The same concept applies. Just donate and then email me some sort of confirmation so I can add you to the tally!