Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

Last Sunday night, Colin Lake and Wellbottom played their first gig at one of Portland's main music venues, the Crystal Ballroom, as a support act to the Bodeans.

What made this show different from the usual old Colin gig was that he asked Christine to bring our video camera along to see if we could get some footage for a demo reel. Colin had been in contact with some people who are trying to organise bands for the 2010 World Expo – in Shanghai! Needless to say, Colin jumped at the opportunity to apply, but it meant that he had to get a press kit – complete with a live performance DVD – together in less than a week! And while he could rely on me for all his graphic design needs, he was getting a little desperate regarding the video. Christine had done a great job just the other week with an impromptu video for Kevin's benefit shows, so Colin turned to her in his hour of need.

We turned up at the show early and got some footage at the soundcheck, then hung out in the green room with the band - playing at being groupies - until it was time for the band to go on stage. It was Kevin's first gig back with the band after his recent illness and everyone was raring to go. Christine spent the entire show getting footage from every angle, climbing all over the stage, yet aiming to be unobtrusive for the appreciative crowd. Because, quite unusually, the crowd responded very warmly to the mere support act and gave them their full attention. I tried to help out by shooting some video on Christine's new little Olympus camera, but the format ended up being tiny and pretty much useless.

Christine worked hard in tandem with Colin over the next couple of days to produce the demo DVD, or - in essence - a music video for one of their songs. The audio captured by our little camera was pretty sketchy, so Christine ended up having to meld audio from a live track recorded on Wellbottom's Spring tour with the video from the show, and she did a pretty good job of matching elements up to give the illusion that they came from the one and same event.

In the end, Colin met his deadline and everyone loved the finished product - I think it's amazing, especially considering the timeframe it was produced in. I'm in awe of Christine's ability to work with time, something that this little print designer still has trouble wrapping his head around. So without further ado, I present Colin Lake and Wellbottom, through the lens of Christine:

Posted in: chaosboy, music, portland on August 21, 2008 at at 8:39:00 PM 2 comments    

Adobe has just released version 2 of Lightroom, their photography management/development application, and all I can say is that it is amazing. There are so many enhancements and upgrades that it's hard to know where to start. It's probably best to say that unless I actually want to do a whole heap of tricky retouching, I'm hardly going to fire up Photoshop at all anymore.

It's not perfect, however: a rather nasty bug in v2.0 stops all your old keywords from v1.4 from exporting with your photos, although a very simple SQL command (so simple, even I could do it!) fixes that problem. There have also been reports of Lightroom being everything from somewhat sluggish to completely glacial in performance, although my Mac Pro makes light work of just about anything, so I can't really comment on this!

Of all the tools, the selective adjustment brush was the most touted. With it, you can now mask areas and apply exposure, sharpness, colour, clariry (and more!) edits to specific areas of your photos without having to hand the image over to Photoshop. All your edits are non-destructive - just as in the previous version of Lightroom, all your edits are simply saved as instructions that are applied in real time to your image. The interface takes a little getting used to, especially for us Photoshop mavens, but once you've got the hang of it, it really is intuitive and extremely powerful.

However, my favourite tool is the adjustment brush's poorer, less glitzy cousin, the graduated filter. As its name suggests, this tool emulates the coloured or neutral density filters that you can physically place in front of your camera lens to achieve certain effects. My use for this tool so far is extremely prosaic - I use it to fix overexposed areas of sky.

We've all taken photos like this. While the foreground is fairly well exposed and detailed, the sky is completely blown out. If I had shot this picture in JPG, that would be pretty much the end of things - an 8-bit image simply wouldn't contain enough information for me to be able to regain all that lost detail in the sky. White is white, and would always remain so.

But when you shoot RAW, there is a ridiculous amount of information contained in the file (4,096 levels as opposed to JPG's 256 levels). And the important thing to realise is that most of this information is in the lighter areas of any image. As explained in this excellent article at Luminous Landscape, exactly half of the 4,096 levels of information are contained in the brightest fifth of the image, while there's a mere 128 levels of information in the darkest areas, the shadows.

What this means is that it's very possible to restore missing detail from overexposed areas when you shoot RAW. However, this was kind of a painful process before the new tools in Lightroom. To retain the properly exposed foreground but also get the corrected sky, I would have to export two versions of the file to Photoshop (one exposed for the foreground, the other for the backgroun) and then use layer masks to blend the two versions together. It's not something I'd do except for a photo I really thought was worth it.

With the new graduated filter tool, all I have to do is specify my exposure adjustment for the sky (around -2.0 to -3.0 stops, depending on how blown out things are) and drag out my gradient from top to bottom. The gradient is fully adjustable to taste after it's been applied, both in location and intensity. The results are nearly instantaneous and it's ridiculously easy to apply. Here's a before and after of the shot above, just so you can see how much detail can be regained using this technique.

This is an extreme example, requiring a full -3.0 stops to regain the detail in the clouds - probably about the absolute limit of this technique. But just think - there is that amount of information and detail just hiding in that brightest part of your image, and you have to shoot RAW if you want to be able to release it.

Posted in: adobe lightroom, chaosboy, photography on August 8, 2008 at at 9:42:00 AM 0 comments    

Last weekend, Portland played host to one of the craziest days of entertainment that I have ever witnessed - the Red Bull Flugtag. Flugtag means "flight day" in German (Red Bull being an Austrian company), and it certainly lived up to its name.

A crowd that has been estimated at being in the vicinity of 80,000 people crammed into Tom McCall Riverside Park, the Hawthorne Bridge's entire southern sidewalk and one east-bound lane, and even the Eastbank Esplanade on the other side of the Willamette River (which was jam-packed with boats both big and small) for this event, which is interesting in itself.

You see, ol' PDX generally prides itself on being staunchly anti-corporation, looking somewhat down its nose at coffee and fast food chains because we're better than that here in Portland, don't you know? Except when afore-said corporation is promising a day chock full of idiots throwing themselves and their home-made magnificent flying machines off a 30-foot high runway into the drink. Then we'll drop everything and turn out in droves.

And we did. I've never seen the riverfront so full, not for the Blues Festival, the Brew Fest, Barack Obama or anything. I arrived a little late and tried to force my way through the seething masses to take some pictures from down the front - it was impossible. I eventually found a few good locations on the periphery of the park, but things were hectic the whole time.

As for the flugtag itself, it was all about showmanship and spectacular crashes and the crowd loved it. We had a giant plane made out of "Lego", complete with "Lego Men" pilots, the Winnebago from Spaceballs (crowd favourite), pots of gold, sporting mascots, hot dogs and more. Some of the "planes" didn't even have wings! The winner flew some 60-odd feet, but no one really cared. Distance was irrelevant; the crowd only cheered for suicidal death plunges into the murky water below and everyone went home happy.

Posted in: chaosboy, photography, portland, sport, weirdness on August 6, 2008 at at 8:49:00 PM 0 comments    

Well, we've actually got a few seconds to spare and can finally post an article about our big Late Wedding/First Anniversary bash that we recently held in Boston, MA. Certain persons have been clamouring for a review of events, and we just love to share, so here we are!

Ever since our humble little space wedding atop Rocky Butte just over a year ago, we had wanted to throw a bigger and better party for all our extended families (Booth, Moore and Garcia!) to attend. As things turned out (mainly because of my parents' travel itinerary), Boston presented itself as the perfect venue and plans were set in motion. Our spies in the area (Ann Elise) searched high and low for the ideal party spot, accommodations were found, airline tickets were booked and we soon found ourselves on the Atlantic side of the USA (via Minneapolis and New York airports!).

After settling in at our comfy hotel, we ventured out into Boston in search of a restaurant to celebrate Christine's birthday. With the help of her swanky new iPhone, we located a wonderful restaurant in the North End, just off the main drag, Hanover Street. The difference this 100 feet or so made was incredible: every trattoria, ristorante and cafe on Hanover Street was spilling out onto the sidewalk, while our restaurant was only about two-thirds full and quite relaxed and romantic. The food was exceptional, and the wait staff knowledgeable and friendly. Here's a pic of us about to enjoy some delicious desserts:

Early the next day, Keener picked us up at our hotel and whizzed us off to catch the ferry from Wood's Hole to Martha's Vineyard, a small and somewhat exclusive island just off the coast of southern Massachusetts (next to Nantucket, if that helps any). Christine's Aunt Alison and Uncle Peter were to be our hosts for the this day and the next, and they made sure to show us all the sights of their island. Peter took us out on his boat and we took full advantage:

After enjoying the warm sun and water for a while, we tried our hands at waterskiing. Keener, as you can see, is obviously a salty seadog and had no problems whatsoever.

... while the less said about my attempts the better. Needless to say, I never actually stood up. All too soon, it was time to return to Boston, where we met up with my friend John who had flown in all the way from Sydney via Yosemite and San Fran for the party. As my "guest of honour", we spent as much time as we could with him and even managed to walk the entire length of Boston's famed Freedom Trail... on a day where the temperatures climbed into the 90s!

Finally, the night of the party rolled around and all our hard work and planning finally came to fruition. After some early doubts about the size and suitability of the area that he hotel had set aside for us, everything turned out perfectly and a fantastic time was has by all. In honour of our first anniversary, the theme was paper and everyone turned up wearing paper hats of all shapes and size. Some people even commissioned artists to make a hat for them! Here's a rogues' gallery for posterity's sake:

The happy couple: me in my Aussie cork hat and Christine in her amazing papier mache chicken creation.

The two mothers. Karen and Keener made hats for my parents, as they probably wouldn't have had time to do it themselves, having just flown in from France.

King Nick. Or is it a court jester? He seems to have a mischievous grin either way...

And finally, here's Peter proving that a hat doesn't have to be an enormous production number to be a winner... the happiest dang pirate I ever did see!

We finally rolled out of the hotel at around 12:30am, quite a bit later than our original booking was for! Quite a few people had been incredibly sensible and had booked rooms in the same hotel the party was in, smart thinking! The party was an incredible success and it was wonderful to see so many members of our extended family. A big thank you to all who attended and to all those who couldn't make it but passed on their best wishes - it means a lot!

Posted in: boston, chaosboy, party time, travel on August 5, 2008 at at 8:49:00 PM 2 comments