Once I read an article where the author stated a reason why people love a still image. He said that the human mind is one that remembers moments in singles frames, one image that will tell the story for the rest. This got me thinking. Give a person an image and they can stare at it for hours, give a person a video clip and they want more. It’s almost as though we consistently miss the still points of life and seek the more action that a video clip gives us.The Interpretation:A special aspect of photography that I find intriguing is that of interpretation. Everyone interprets a still image differently. I find a video will interpret itself, where a still image will leave a freedom to the viewer to make up their own interpretation. Ask ten people what they feel an image is saying and you will undoubtably get ten different answers. While the photographer will tell one story, the audience will interpret it slightly different. A type of paradox that we as photographers need to deal with on a daily basis.The Story:Being able to tell a good story, that is a true gift. Following in after interpretation we come to the point in interpretation where the photographer wants to tell his/her’s own interpretation of the events happening. Speaking in a very general terms, the story that the photographer will tell is one that will speak through a single image. One moment in time that encapsulates millions of them. The story behind an image will sometimes be clear within seconds of looking at an image, other times it will take hours or even the photographer telling the backstory behind the image. Photography is creating meaningful stories out of unused/unseen moments.There is always something alluring about a still image. One image that I constantly think of in this instance is the image of a girl from Afghanistan that Steve McCurry took for National Geographic. One thing to clarify here, I am not talking about the attraction of an object or person, I speak in terms of the ability to connect with a object or persons being. Now I may have just lost some of you on that statement, but stay with me. As I was speaking before, a still image gives us the ability to freeze moments and tell a story through a single moment. The ability to do this is invaluable and gives us the ability constantly go back and reconnect with a moment or through our interpretations connect into what the real moment felt like for the photographer.As you look at the image of this girl, your first feelings are probably that of her eyes. Yes, she has beautiful eyes, but is that what is really drawing you in, or is it that an amazing story is being told through this stilled moment. The colours combined with the facial expression and the slight bit of dirt on her face compliment what we already feel through looking at her eyes. The attraction draws us back again and again. The romantic affilation with a moment in time we had nothing to do with but in a way we feel we do, after looking at the image.The Conclusion:Sorry, this didn’t really need a conclusion mainly because I feel my thoughts are not yet out in full, nor do I feel this is in no way a conclusive statment. This is merely my way of verbally getting out ideas or thoughts that I have, and I hope for others to maybe join in on the conversation about it.More to come, soon… Cheers!- Jordan N.

It all started just over one week ago. I was walking down the hallway of Pacific Woods Lodge when the ever wise Jim Badke (also known as JimBad) grabbed my attention. We sat down in the library to chat for a bit. It was at that time that Jim spilled the beans, the Kaleo leadership team wanted me to be the male Kaleo intern for the next 16 months at Camp Qwanoes. He gave me a timeframe for which to get back to him, 2 weeks - it seemed like a long ways off and turned into feeling like it was the next day.

After asking lots of question, listening to lots of people, thinking even more the listening, and pondering some more. I came to the conclusion, I would accept the position as the male Kaleo intern for the 2007/2008 Kaleo year. Crazy eh?!? (I can’t believe I just wrote "eh" on my blog)

If you’re wondering what Kaleo is, it’s an 8 month youth leadership program put on by Briercrest College. And it’s a complete honour to be asked to be apart of the leadership team for this coming year.

So what will I be doing? Basically I am to be the big bro to all the Kaleo guys. Going on crazy adventures with them and just walking alongside them as they go through this amazing program. I am amazingly excited to see what this year has in store for us all!

So, there’s a quick little update on the happens over the next 16 months. I will be living at Camp Qwanoes on Vancouver Island going on some wild adventures! Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Ever since I got Lightroom I have been playing around with the presets a lot. As well I have talked to a lot of photographers so who use presets a lot as well. One thing that we all agree on, is that when you use a preset - it almost feels like your cheating a bit. Going from a basic RAW/JPEG to a very refined look in one click. Let me explain.

Before Lightroom and Aperture there wasn’t really any programs widely available for a photographer to use to enable them to make a nice refined image in a few easy steps. Having to open up Adobe Photoshop to do the edits could sometime take 30 minutes to 1 hour. So imagine using your workflow this way, then you get Lightroom or Aperture. You spend the time working your workflow around Lightroom or Aperutre, refining, testing, refining more. Suddenly your 30 minutes per image has turned into 5-10 minutes on one image then "syncing" 15 other images to those edits you did to that one image. Your workflow has just gone from hours upon hours of work to almost under an hour.

Now there’s presets. We now refine our workflow to an even smaller amount of time. Now instead of spending 5-10 minutes on an image editing it, you just click a button apply all the adjustments you want and suddenly you have a mere perfect edited image. Possibly spending 30 seconds to tweak the black point, exposure, etc.

If you are like me, you feel a little guilty inside. It almost feels like you’re using a tool to cheat. So this is where I am at personally on this conundrum:

I believe there is a thick solid line between cheating and efficient productivity. What programs like Aperture or Lightroom allow us to do is do what photographers do, take photos. They give us the tools to spend less time infront of the screen getting lazy and more time to get out and shoot pictures. Going from a 30 minutes edit down to a 30 second edit is an amazing tool, one that will benefit any photographer.

Another point is that it’s all about simplicity. A simplistic workflow is a productive workflow, an efficient workflow and a fun workflow. Going from capture to output in a small amount of time is very rewarding and less backbreaking. Digital promised us a more simplistic approach to photography and now we’re wading neck deep in tens of thousands of images without a workflow to properly manage them. Use tools that are given to you to better simplify your life.

While I realize that this isn’t necessarily everyones opinion but I would love to open this up for a bit or a lot of discussion. This is an art form that on the technical equipment aspect is going through drastic changes
and I feel that we need to have an open discussion about it.

Recently I have been a constant visitor to the website “Inside Lightroom“, and for a good reason. They have a great selection of Lightroom develop presets to put on your images. One of which is turning into my personal favorite; “300“. It is a basic copy of the effect in the movie 300 that was released a little while back.As seen in the image, it create a super contrasted moody image. I have found it works amazing on images that are a bit over exposed to start with. As well I have tested it on some concert pictures and have been very impressed with how it pulls out the lighting and mood of a concert.Viewing an image in a different spot light, thats what presets are all about. I would definitely recommend going to the Inside Lightroom website and test out some of the many presets that they offer for free!Cheers!- Jordan N.

If you’re a user of Lightroom then you will probably understand me when I say, one of the coolest features is the ability to customize the look of the GUI a bit using the Custom Identity Plates feature. You can do this one of two ways.

1. You can input text into the custom text field. This way you can easily customize your identity plate with different fonts, colours, etc.

2. You can create a PSD file in photoshop at 72 dpi (I bold that because for it to work you really need a 72 dpi .psd file) with a height of 60 pixels. And make sure to use a transparent background as well, I find it looks best when your text looks melded into the Lightroom GUI :)And if you work in a multiple job environment you can save your identity plates as presets so you can have one for each person you work for if you wanted to.And there you have it, a fun easy way to make Lightroom look and feel more personal to you, the creative professional.

If there is one image that sums up what a summer camp counselors life is like during the summer, it has to be this image that I had the privilege of taking last summer. There’s not much to over look in the image. You have the counselor who looks weary and probably a bit over tired, campers who just ate a ton of candy surrounding their counselor waiting to see what they’re going to do next.Tommy was the counselors name (if you were wondering), and he was one of the most laid back counselors we had last summer. He was known as a laid back gangster with a little pinch of surfer. A counselor who would devote almost every hour of his day to his kids.Who are the campers? I’m not really sure, but it’s not completely their identity that I was going for but rather, how they were surrounding their counselor and looking at him like he called the shots in the universe. And in a way, it’s true, the counselor does call most of the shots, but it’s that the humility within that power that makes a good counselor a great one.It’s a huge responsibility leading people, young or old. Having people look up to you with wide eyes, hoping you will be their perfect hero. To often this type of “power” is misused and or not even recognized. A scary issue for a world that searches constantly for that perfect hero.This is why I have posted this image. I have it on my wall as a constant reminder of how important it is to lead and be a humble, caring leader and to recognize that even though you may not have a kid hanging off your arm with chocolate covered lips, smiling at you with wide eyes, you may have a follower watching you from across the room, wanting to be just like you. A good challenge to keep in mind, and keep yourself in check.

So unless you have been living in a hole for the past little bit, then you will have noticed that Photoshop CS3 has been released. And of course like a bleeding edge techie, I decided to opt for the digital download and jump on board at 8 AM the day it came out. I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning. Eager to get up try out my new toy.

Then it happened. Like a freight-train over my excitement, I got the dreaded Photoshop CS3 Beta uninstall issue. The now infamous words have been burned into my skull, "Do not drag the Photoshop CS3 application folder into the trash and delete". Thus I spent the next 2 days trying to figure out how to get rid of this darn Photoshop CS3 Beta.

In the end, it all came down to re-formatting my entire HD just to get rid of this "adobe diarrhea beta code".

But I digress, after all this headache there is light at the end of the tunnel. As soon as the reinstall of my system was done and I had installed CS3 without any complication I was once again a happy camper.

At first glance, Photoshop CS3 looks a lot different from its predecessor. With a bit of a cleaner look and a different what it displays some of it palettes. But after a couple minutes of messing around with the GUI you will begin to realize that it’s good ole faithful Photoshop.

A couple of the features I enjoy most about the new release:

1. Panorama Stitching: In this new release, panorama stitching has had some much needed love. I am blown away by how well it stitches together photos now. I can stitch 5-10 photos together without having to go back and re-edit a lot of the minor detail glitches.

2. Smart Filters: It just works. Using smart filters on a sharpen layer or a shadow/highlight layer will tremendously increase your fine tune-ability in Photoshop. No more having to re-do a layer just because you had your sharpen a tad to much or your shadow/highlight detail a bit off. It’s just a matter of double-clicking on the layer and you can readjust easily.

3. Intel Support: If there was one thing I dreaded about getting an Intel Mac, it was thinking about how Photoshop CS2 ran in Rosetta, and it was painful. With this new release of Photoshop CS3 it runs completely native on my Intel Mac and it purrs like a kitten. There are still a few hangs here and there, but a major improvement in speed

Well those are some of my random thoughts on the launch of and running Photoshop CS3. It has been a rather love/hate relationship thus far but I imagine over time it will just keep getting better and better. If you had any adventures with the CS3 launch, or are scared about making the transition, I’d love to hear your feedback and comments.

Well - yes, I have been avoiding my blog - I admit it. And recently with my three days off I have been thinking creatively in how I can revamp my thoughts on my website and how it’s setup. Now not all of the changes will be immediate, but soon they will come out into the open.One big change is that I have created two new portfolio slide shows - as you will see on the left bar of the blog under the “Portfolio” section. And yes, there is colour in the blog now. I broke down and decided to add a bit of zest to the blogs image. Is two shades of blue zesty?I will also have a few new Lightroom shortcut posts up as well. Sorry I have been so lax like ex lax lately, just that time of the year at the Camp Qwanoes where things are ramping up into full gear for the summer camping season.