A couple of simple shots from a trip to the Botanic Gardens here in Denver a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been planning on trying to do some time-lapse video someday.  After the snow storm on Friday and Saturday, there was a good deal of snow on my car this morning.  Around mid-morning I noticed it was melting quite quickly and decided it would be a good chance to try to make a video.  I set up my camera, shot pictures every 30 seconds for a couple of hours (automated by remote timer, of course), and made the video in After Effects.  Here it is:

Have you ever watched snow melt?

A while back, I noticed that when I exported photos from Adobe Lightroom and uploaded them to Flickr, not all of my keywords were appearing.  At first, I assumed it was just a bug with the Flickr uploader and I would just manually add the missing keywords back in.  But lately, I’ve been uploading images to my SmugMug account and I found the same issue.  Only certain keywords were applied to my uploaded images.  I finally did some research and discovered there was a bug with the initial release of Lightroom 2 where pre-existing keywords in your LR 1.0 database were set to not be exported during the catalog upgrade process.  This was fixed in subsequent versions of LR2 so if you upgraded from LR 1.x to the current LR 2.3, you are fine.

There is a fix posted by Adobe on their website.  You can find it here: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb405074

The fix actually introduced me to two features of Lightroom I didn’t even know existed.  First, if you double-click on a keyword in the Keyword List (right pane in Library mode), you get a dialog with options for that keyword, one of which is to “Include on Export”.  Nice.  Now I can use special keywords to help organize my photos, but not have to worry about sharing them with the rest of the world when I export them to Flickr, SmugMug, or Facebook.  How did I miss this feature?

The second feature was the Scripts menu that appears if you follow option one in the fix.  I didn’t know I could write user scripts that would appear in the menu.  I wonder what other kind of scripts could be written to automate tasks in Lightroom.  For instance, for trektrax.com, I have created multiple export presets to export my images in various sizes for uploading to the web, using in the video slideshows, etc.  Could I write a script to run multiple export presets with one-click rather than having to manually run each one?  That would be nice.  I’ll definitely have to look into this.

Update: Apparently others had the same idea.  Here’s a response from Adobe on the user scripts that I found in the Adobe forums:

At this point we won’t be providing any more information about this scripting interface beyond what’s available as a solution for the Keyword bug referenced in the KB article. It’s an API that the development team can use for troubleshooting or solving specific issues.

I’ve officially launched my newest website: http://www.trektrax.com.  It’s a hiking site with the goal of providing high quality images/video of the trips I take (I call them “treks”) so visitors can see what the trails are really like before they go themselves.  There are currently two treks posted.  I’m working on the images and video for the third.

I had the idea for this site about five years ago, but it took until this year to really nail down the final form it would take.  I had several false starts on it over the years, but this time I managed to take it to completion.  For the geekier among you, it’s written in C# using Microsoft’s MVC framework for ASP.NET.  The map and elevation profile were done in Adobe Flex using the Google Map for Flex component.  The images and video are hosted on my professional SmugMug account.  I use Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop for image processing and Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects to edit and create the video slideshows. 

I’ve also created a custom Windows application that helps me generate the trek data that is displayed on the website.  This is why it took me over three months to complete this project.  I wanted to automate the process of creating a trek as much as possible.  The Windows app allows me to import the GPS data from my treks, add the trek information, attach the thumbnails and picture info, and publish it all to the website.  On publishing, the trek GPX and KML files are automatically generated with no intervention required on my part.  Not counting image processing and video creation, I can publish a trek report in a matter of minutes.  It’s pretty sweet.  Too bad I can’t automate the image and video post-processing.

The first two treks only contain slideshows of static images.  The third trek will follow suit.  However, from this point forward I intend to take my video camera on hikes as well as my DSLR, so future reports should contain a mix of video and still footage.  (I’ve been watching Survivorman reruns on Netflix to get ideas on good camera angles and action shots.) :)  I’m sure my initial attempts won’t be very good, but the videos should get better in time.

The website itself still needs some work.  There are numerous features I still want to add and some I’ll need to add as the number of treks increases.  For instance, I’ll need to add some sort of search/filtering functionality sooner or later, but I decided it wasn’t worth delaying the launch to add it now since there would only be a handful of treks to start.  I’d also like to add some sort of commenting or rating system that visitors can use to leave feedback…or maybe a way for users to mark treks as their favorites…I have tons of ideas. :)  But, I think it’s time to take a break from programming and start hiking instead.  The website isn’t going to fill itself.

Here a couple of shots I took on the road to Yosemite National Park in December.  I was playing with long shutter speeds while we drove.  I was shooting from the back seat.  Unfortunately, the road was a bit too rough to get a good shot with sharp dash lights.  I tried bracing the camera against the roof of the car, but that only helped a little.  The second two where hand-held as we passed through a tunnel.  The first is looking forward as we entered the tunnel.  The second is through the rear window just before we exited.  I really love the forward-looking one.

This was the last animal we photographed at Triple D during the Outdoor Photography workshop at RMSP.  So, this is the last batch of animal shots I’ll be posting from the summer.  I still need to get caught up with posting images from the Adventure Photography workshop I took next.  Then, pictures taken from the Advanced Intensive portion of the summer, after that.  I’ll get caught up eventually since I haven’t been out shooting much lately.

These guys (there were two of them) were the toughest animals to photograph at Triple D.  They are extremely quick and they never stop moving.  It was next to impossible to focus on one of them and shoot before they had moved.  We had to basically pick a point, focus on it, and then try to snap the shutter when the racoon moved into it.  So I’ve got a lot of shots that are "almost" in focus…which means they’re useless.  The goal is to get the eyes in focus.  I’ve got some with noses, some with ears, but only a few with the eyes.

I was within 10 feet of this leopard. It walked down by us at one point and crossed in front of us just a few feet away.  It was very cool.

These leopards are very rare in the U.S.  If you wanted to go photograph one at the Triple D game farm by yourself, it would cost you $2000 per hour.  Or you could enroll in one of the "Wildlife Up Close" workshops at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography for about $1500 and get to shoot multiple animals for a whole lot less as part of the group.