XPD Adventure Race – Best Of – Images by Murray Anderson-Clemence

I have sent out my latest newsletter “Take Advantage of our Winter Blue”. An Extreme campaign focusing on aerial photographs during our beautiful blue winter weather. For more info make sure you check out the newsletter here. You can sign up for future newsletters on my home page.

Two years ago I set out on an adventure, riding my mountain bike 3000 kilometres over Queensland. See my blog (extremephotography.com.au). It is time again to set sail for another journey (ahoy there!!); this time with my good friend Alex. We have planned to ride our mountain bikes 1100 kilometres from Cairns to the tip of Cape York, totally unsupported while towing push-bike trailers.

We have come to the aid for the Queensland Cancer Council in Cairns and will be leaving from the Relay for Life on the 6th of June. Donations are much appreciated and can be easily made here thanks to Every Day Hero. Thanks for Supporting such a Great Cause!

http://www.everydayhero.com.au/hero_pages/view_posts/ridecairnstothecape

So far we have made it to Mossy for a big brekky after Our start at Relay for Life. Up Kuranda through Black Mt Rd then down the Rex. Our next step is to Cape Trib for a night on the beach.

Anyway get fit, tailwinds Muzza n Alex

If you haven’t already heard, the 5th edition of the XPD is coming to Cairns and is starting on Wednesday- yep that’s tomorrow! 47 teams of 4 competitors from around the globe trek, mountain bike, and kayak for five to ten days in this world renowned expedition. These adventurers race day and night over a 700km course pushing themselves to the ultimate limits of human endurance.

XPD is Australia’s own expedition length adventure race

Almost one year ago, after going to Craig Bycroft’s (awesome organiser of the XPD) pre meetings, I was in two minds. Either I could race or otherwise I could capture this epic event on camera. I suppose because I am a bit of an outdoor photography guru I decided it would be best to choose the latter and chase the competitors for the most important first five days of the event.

This is where I plan on excelling in providing XPD photographs online for publication. It’s been quite the little adventure so far, awesomely tired but not as tough as the competitors slogging the race out 24/7. Photographs below are available for publication.

XPD Photographs Available Here

My Exhibition

If you would like to display these images in your workplace, shopping center etc. please contact me by email or ph 0402 706 763

If you haven’t checked it out already, their is still time. Click here to open the latest newsletter or subscribe below for next months freebies.

Once in a while we all get stuck using complex programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop and get confused with the simplest way of doing things. Today I’ll show you a part of my workflow and that’s including importing files into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, renaming, converting to DNG, folder structure. If your after a super quick & easy tutorial skip to the Import dialog with the portraits.

To start off lets change one preference in Lightroom to show the import dialog when a memory card is detected. On a PC (Edit>Preference) or Mac (Lightroom>Preferences).

From now on every time you attach a memory card or camera to your computer the import dialog will show up (pictured below). There is actually quite a bit in here so we’ll go throughout it step by step.

1. File Handling – Copying the files from the card or camera. My workflow involves converting all raw files too DNG. You can read a great article on the benefits of using DNG by Peter Krough here.
2. Copy to – a location on your hard drive, this gets changed each month to keep a folder hierarchy. e.g. 09-10 folder is 2009-October.
3. Organise – These are folders that get created during the import. It’s a bit minimal on what you can do here so I just create my own.
4. Backup to – Just a safe house if your files corrupt during import or DNG conversion. Keep these for archival files if you like, personally I delete them after a week as I have my own backup in operation.
5. File naming – Hopefully you realise how important file renaming is for future use in preventing duplication, giving structure and recognition to your files. By creating a custom setting we will help resolve these problems from now on, here are the three parts to a file name.
   • Muzza – is my unique id, try not to use something to generic like John, use you initials or business name.
   • 091030 – YYMMDD that’s todays date backwards keeping all the files more hierarchal.
   • File number suffix – this is the numbers out of you cameras filenames
   • Once your done save this as a preset

   

6. Develop settings – Instead of these I apply camera raw profiles in the develop module>calibration
7. Metadata – All the metadata is applied to your photographs in bulk for each import. It is quite extensive, but will help in showing ownership of the files, copyright, location, photographer etc.
8. Keywords – To apply keywords individually you’ll have to wait after import.
9. Initial Previews – Depending on how you preview your files and how soon you need them will require different options.
   • Minimal – When speed is needed or importing a tone of files. (Thumbnails)
   • Embedded & Sidecar – Oftentimes embedded and sidecar previews are inaccurate so skip this one.
   • Standard – I use most of the time (Screen size)
   • 1:1 – For zooming in when fine detail is needed, saves heaps of time latter. (100% size)

After setting all these options up it will make life easier only having to change two steps (3 & 9) for each import. If your really not into reading books don’t read this or that, have a go at a few online video tutorials @ Kelby Training or Lynda.com.

Unsubscribe

Over the last five years of owning a computer, for some reason I have subscribed to hundreds of different newsletters, latest updates, new blog posts, twitters and so on… My mission has been to unsubscribe. Un-cluttering the inbox and freeing up an extra 15 minutes a day, trust me? every minute helps. This is where only a few have squeezed their way through. Check them out you may love them.

Newsletters

• Michael Clark Photography. A bit of inspiration to keep me going.

RSS

• Scoops, tips and comments published for friends of Scott Kelby
• Freelance Switch if your a freelancer and love business tips, this is the place to be.
• Strobist – Learn how to light

Kayaking Tully River

Last Sunday Andre and I traveled down to Tully river, his goal was to paddle and mine was to photograph the 25 kayakers carving up the rapids. My new camera lens combo (D700, 24-70mm and 70-200mm) has superseded results again in delivering super sharp action photographs. Preview above. I’ll post them online next week with the announcement of Pandora.

How’s Pandora’s Progress

She’s sweetly moving along fine with her nearly final design, you’ll just have to wait and see. All that is left is building in content pages like: fine art prints, sports portraits and outdoor advertising.

Coming soon to a TV near you.. he he

Digital Asset Management

I help out a lot of other photographers both upcoming and experienced professionals (cause I’m a nice guy) in Digital Asset Management (DAM) that’s the organisation of your photographs and also the photographers workflow.

Yesterday a photographer friend Janelle rang with a few questions on DNG’s file renaming and using them in Lightroom. 20 min latter we soothed the sores and she now has a smoother flowing workflow. Next week I’ll explain the process here on my blog.

Lightroom Workflow Explained

My little workshop went off with a blast and full to capacity (of 9). As I promised to all that attended here are a few links which may help in the future.

• Shooting Tethered – Tethering software for a MAC
• The Turning Gate – A heap of awesome galleries.
• LRB Portfolio – Portfolio website created in Lightroom
• Lightroom Killer Tips – Tutorials, tips, shortcuts & presets.
• The DAM Book – Resources, forum and of course a book.

Pandora’s Coming in November.

Featuring a brand new portfolio page with filtering of different galleries, client testimonials, re-worked contact page and a beautifully laid out blog. Of course there is are a heap of other content coming, we are still two weeks away from the final design & testing. So stay tuned in.

Amazingly designing and managing a website has become easier with the advent of free CMS’s (content management systems) like WordPress and customised themes from Theme Forest. I’d like to give my thanks to these organisation in helping me GTD.

Please check out the new page Screenshots of Pandora

So two years on I have been actively involved in the Adventure Racing community and haven’t looked back since, becoming a better mountain biker, trail runner and have kayaking skills which often get laughed at. But that’s a whole other story. As I’ve said before “this is just the start of my adventure career”.

What I really wanted to share with you is my last race the Quoll Adventuregaine, a long (33hr) or short course (15hr) depending on how fit you are feeling, this race involves a series of hike, bike, canoe stages while navigating. The real explanation from Adventure Sport website.

Like the small native marsupial that the event draws its name from, the Northern Quoll, this event is a cryptic, partly nocturnal event designed to challenge your physical endurance, team work and navigation skills while traversing a wide variety of landscapes. A sequential multiple rogaine or orienteering format allows competitors to re-group throughout the course in a friendly race format that will make the 2009 Quoll Adventuregaine a challenging yet achievable event for athletes of all abilities.

Andre an adventure specialist, outdoor educator and all-round good guy tee’d us up to compete as a team for the 15hr Adventuregaine, settling on ‘The Murray Anderson-Clemence experience featuring Andre Vogel’ for a team name. The race was very challenging with a lack of sleep and a constant burring in my legs (I guess that’s that flame I was trying to re-ignight – bugger!) we traveled on. Being the second time I’ve raced with Andre we pan out to be a relaxed well oiled team and in the future we will race on.

See us in action below, thanks Darren Osmand for theses awesome images.