Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Nerd

Self-Portrait

Was messing around with some new gear I got after being inspired by the wonderful and talented Syl Arena’s excellent Speedliter’s Intensive Workshop which I attended at Adorama a few weeks ago, and came up with this shot of me nerding out in my office. Aside from my super-shiny face (sorry, didn’t have a makeup artist or stylist available at the time), I really like this shot. The framing could stand to be a hair wider, but my 17-55mm lens is in the shop for repairs to the IS system.

Camera info: I’m using Canon’s EOS Utility to focus, change camera settings and shoot via Live View on my laptop (because even though Aperture 3 now finally supports tethered shooting with most modern Canon cameras, it only gives you a shutter button and no other control over the camera). You can sort of see my Live View display via Screen Sharing in the lower corner of the iMac in the background.

Aperture Hot Folder is feeding the images into Aperture on my laptop. Also visible on the iMac are some earlier tests I did in Aperture, while the camera was tethered to that computer.

Feel free to check out the photo in larger sizes and poke around in the metadata over on Flickr.

Aperture 3 Unsung Feature: Simultaneous Use on Multiple Machines

Courtesy of Apple

I don’t know if I’m pointing out something everyone already knows, but one of the features of Aperture 3 that I really like is the ability to run it on my two machines at the same time, using the same license, on the same network. In previous versions, when Aperture was launched, it would detect that the same serial number was already in use on another machine on the network, flash you a dialog box alerting you to this, and quit immediately.

Aperture 3 and Syncing Multiple Libraries

Joseph Linaschke over at ApertureExpert.com has an excellent article that goes over in detail one of my favorite new features of Aperture 3: the ability to not only manage multiple libraries, but to synchronize them as well. If you work with Aperture on both a desktop and a laptop, it is now possible, for instance to have a pared down version of your library that goes on the road with you, and can be synced back to the main library once you’re back home. You can also export any project (or album or book, etc.) as a Library, move it to another machine, and open it up with no fuss. Changes made to the project — including metadata, adjustments, etc. — on either machine are applied when you sync, and Aperture does a great job handling conflicts between the two, allowing you to specify which library’s changes should take precedence. Head on over to the article for more details on how it all works.

Aperture Quick Tip: Update Your Metadata Presets

A simple tip to edit Aperture’s metadata presets via XML.

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