Using the iPad preview photos while shooting the Philadelphia skyline.

It’s New Year’s Eve 2011, a time for looking back and looking forward. Photography has always been a technological medium. Digital has made photography both simpler and more complicated.

I use an Apple iPad with Shutter Snitch software to preview images from my Canon DSLR. Being able to see the images on its large 9 inch screen helps clients and me see and select images on a shoot.

The small size and weight of an iPad along with its day-long battery life make it a great choice for previewing images on location.

The best explanation of how to see up a Canon Wifi transmitter, a battery powered router and Shuttersnitch on the iPad is on Rob Galbraith’s web site.

This combination has been my favorite tool of 2011. I look forward to new and undiscovered tools in 2012.

Happy New Year.

Luc Renambot’s plugin Dossier de Presse works by giving Lightroom the ability to automatically upload exported images to your WordPress blog. Lightroom has an excellent Export function that allows for saving presets and the real power comes in combining the power of these presets with the Dossier de Presse plugin.

Lightroom Export dialogue using Dossier de Presse plugin

Once Dossier de Presse is installed in Lightroom you can create a new Export Preset using the plugin. First set the “Export To” dropdown to “Dossier de Presse” and then fill out the rest of the export parameters to set the size, compression, and sharpening of the image to export. The final panel requires entering the address of the blog and then a valid login and password.

Selecting multiple images in Lightroom for WordPress Export

Selecting multiple images and then choosing the correct Export Preset makes very quick work of uploading images directly to the WordPress Media Library. You can skip the steps of exporting the images to some temporary folder, navigating through the WordPress web interface to the Media Library, finding the export folder through the upload dialogue, etc. With Dossier de Presse the images will be comfortably waiting in the Media Library ready to be inserted into your next blog entry.

Tintype of Henry Stehman and John Stehman, Lancaster, PA circa 1870s

Using the internet I have discovered the following. Gill’s City Gallery was a photo studio run by William L. Gill from 1859 to 1882.

Reverse side of paper holder for tintype from Gill's City Gallery, Lancaster, PA

The names Henry Stehman and John Stehman are written on the paper holder. The two men in the photograph certainly look like brothers. Having asked several people, the consensus is that these men are somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-eight years old.

There was a Henry B. Stehman who was born in 1852 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania who went on to become a famous doctor who treated lung diseases and who founded a sanatorium in Pasadena, California. While I don’t have definitive proof that the man on the left is this Henry Stehman, the other evidence supports this possibility. If Henry was twenty-five when the photo was taken, then the photo was taken in 1877, a date that is consistent with the years of operation of Gill’s City Gallery and the use of the tintype process.

Tintype circa 1870s

Unlike many photo processes, which have a negative and can easily produce multiple copies, tintypes are one-of-a-kind. Often a multiple lens camera was used to simultaneously take four images onto one metal plate. The developed image was then cut with tinsnips into four separate photos, hence the name “tintype”. With a black border on the left and top, the Stehman portrait looks like the upper left corner of a larger plate that was imprecisely snipped from the larger sheet.

A photograph has an uncanny ability to capture personality and detail whether it’s a tintype from the 1870s or a digital image from 2011.

Four lens tintype camera cira 1860s, image courtesy of The National Museum of American History, creative commons license.

Image from flickr.

Leslie Neilsen speaking at Penn Law School about Clarence Darrow in 1999 © Greg Benson

Actor Leslie Nielsen died at age 84, on November 28, 2010,  of complications from pneumonia. He was a late bloomer. His comedic roles in the movies, Airplane and the Naked Gun series gave him fame and fortune in his later years.

In 1999, I had an opportunity to photograph him when he spoke at the Penn Law School. Nielsen had a serious side and used his Hollywood earnings to present a one man show on the early twentieth century lawyer, Clarence Darrow. Darrow is famous for defending a teacher on trial for teaching evolution in the 1920s Scopes Monkey trial in Tennessee. Darrow was also against the death penalty and defended many people in capital cases including Leopold and Loeb, wealthy Chicago teenagers who kidnapped and killed a younger boy.

Retrieving the 1999 image of Nielsen from my archive is illustrative of how much the technology of image making has changed in eleven years. The original is a color negative that was in a job jacket in my studio attic. Once I found the negative, I scanned it, a process that took me around fifteen minutes. A digital original would have been much quicker to find, view and post.

At the end of the day, technology only matters so much, Nielsen’s deadpan comedic delivery brings laughs or groans, whether on film, DVD or youtube.

Neilsen in spoof of Vanity Fair photo of Demi Moore

Exterior view of Girl Scouts' Science & Technology Lodge. Hockessin, DE

In 2009 we photographed the Girl Scouts’ Science and Technology Lodge in Hockessin, Delaware for Re:Vision Architecture and S C & A Construction. This building was the first to qualify for Platinum LEED certification in the state of Delaware. LEED or “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” is a certification process for green buildings, with Platinum being the highest ranking.

In this time of rising energy costs and stress on the environment, LEED certified buildings are a way to create more sustainable structures.

Science Classroom, Girl Scouts' Science & Technology Lodge. Hockessin, DE

Part of a larger camp, this building is used for programs that instruct Girl Scouts in science.

Multipurpose Room, Girl Scouts' Science & Technology Lodge. Hockessin, DE

Natural daylight supplies much of the building’s lighting, reducing the amount of electricity needed.

View of the deck and green roof of Girl Scouts' Science & Technology Lodge. Hockessin, DE

View from deck of Girl Scouts' Science & Technology Lodge. Hockessin, DE

Having a green building is a hands-on way for the Scouts to experience environmentally friendly architecture.

Bathroom, Girl Scouts' Science & Technology Lodge. Hockessin, DE

A rainwater harvesting system collects water that is used to flush toilets.

Email I don't Miss

Enter Google Apps for domain names. I was able to configure my email with Google’s gmail servers and still keep my gregbenson.com domain name in my email. I set up my iPhone, my desktop and laptop computers for IMAP email. Now I see virtually no spam and if I read an email on my desktop, my mobile phone shows it as already being read. Not having to scroll and delete interminable spam emails saves me time and aggravation.

To use Google Apps you can sign up here.