Monday, January 25, 2010

Making Changes

Little surf and a little snow this weekend. Equally average conditions, but still a good time. Also started a new project this weekend and it's turned out to be a pretty big one- cleaning up my catalog of images. I'm not trying to implement anything different than what most serious photogs do, just better than what I've been doing. Basically it involves a lot of re- naming, importing, converting, and saving, a few hundered gigs of images.

Jetty, Westport, Surfing, Washington

Lost Images: honestly can't remember taking this. Nothing special other than single dude out catching a bomb.

In the past I imported all my RAW files, converted to DNG (with the embedded RAW file), processed the selects, upload a full res copy of the JPG to online site, backed up everything on mirrored drives, and save in batches to DVD. Sounds like a lot, but it's not bad as long as you stick to your plan and set up your programs preferences up correctly. I've done my best to stay consistant, although I'm not always perfect.

kook, westport, jetty, leash
Lost Images: No matter how many times I see this one it still makes me laugh.

So I'm changing my naming convention, updating and syncing meta data, creating multiple catalogs in Lightroom to keep the file size down to a minimum, and making sure everything is once again mirrored. Some old scripting skills have really made the job a lot easier. Not going to worry about the DVD backups right now. Hopefully I never will have to.

Best part about the whole process is coming across some hidden gems I've forgotten about.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Trying New Things

If you ask my wife what the plans are for the weekend she'll typically say she's going to try and get up to the mountains and I'll be surfing. This weekend I did my best to expand my horizons and take in a few different activities.

Monster trucks, el toro, tacoma dome

We never even made it to our seats...because with action like this you are always on your feet!!!!


Wade's guns, zombies, shane peterson
A Buck Hunter tournament was also on the agenda for Saturday night, but few tumbler glasses full of Jager got in the way. I was told I had a good time. Only thing I have to confirm that is a few bruises.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Keywords

Courtesy of StuffSurfersLike

Since I've just recently started contributing to this blog again its' been awhile since I've checked Google Analytics. The best part of G.A. is the breakdown of keyword searches that brings traffic to your site. Generally some results are informative, some disturbing, and at least one that makes me do a little research to figure out how the hell they ended up here. This time the lucky winner is "SURFERS PEE".

So when I searched for "SURFERS PEE", Slidesideways was #12 on Googles links. What does one need to know about surfers pee that they would need to check the second page of links? Here's what beat me out:

The Butthole Surfersx4
Stuff Surfers Like
FaceBook
Suite101
Daily Stoke

Anyone know anything about SEO? It may be tough to beat out the ButtHole Surfers, but how cool would it be to have the #1 blog when it comes to searching for "Surfers pee".

Monday, January 11, 2010

Grindstone

Back at it. Started a new full time gig with Voxmobili- small French company that provides mobile applications for T-Mobile in the US. Pretty stoked on job and work I'll be doing. It's not photography, but...

Not sure what the work schedule will be like. I do know I'll be working from home a good portion of the time, which means random trips to the coast when the surf is good. It just may be awhile until I feel the situation out with crew overseas.

Biarritz
They've mentioned a trip to Paris to visit the home office. Of course a trip to France would include a few days in Biarritz and it's surf soaked beaches.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Last Seasons Shots

Shooting bikes is fun. Not much has come from it so far other than a few published pics and some new friends. I'm still pretty pleased with the results considering how much, or how little, time I've invested. Here are two shots that just made it into a UK downhill mag - Wideopen.

Adam Frink, Downhill, bikes
Adam Frink - Fluidride Cup

Adam Ransavage, Downhill, bikes
Adam Ransavage - Trail 27

The Downhill race schedules for next season are out now and it seems like an event every weekend. There's a few that I'll defiantly make, but would like work more on individual planned shots instead. I have a tough time going through hundred's of pics after a weekend of shooting. Process too many shots they all look the same.