We’ve been sitting on this news for some time, but now that Jamie’s out of the first trimester, we can safely announce that, come May 2010, we’ll be welcoming Nolan’s baby brother or sister into the world!

Now, to head off a few questions:

1) Is it a boy or a girl?

Don’t know yet.

2) Do you want a boy or girl?

Preferably one or the other.

3) Do you have names picked out yet?

Yes.

4) When’s the due date?

The end of May, 2010. But Nolan came two weeks early, so who knows?

Let’s start with a disclaimer. I’m not a business guru. Nor am I a social media expert, or a consultant. But I do have something like ten years of experience in advertising and marketing, most recently in social media and content marketing, which is awesome because I don’t feel the need to take a shower after I get home from work every day. I also buy goods and services, watch TV and use the Facebooks and the Twitter, so I like to pretend I’ve got a pretty good idea of what goes on from the consumer’s perspective.

So based on my years of experience selling crap, researching what kind of crap people buy and how to sell more of it to them, and buying crap myself, I feel, if not qualified, at least entitled to spout off for a bit about how to not suck at this whole “selling goods and services” thing.

Here are a few ideas, just to get us started:

1. Make Sure Your Products Don’t Suck

Marketing can help propel a good product into the stratosphere by, you know, making people aware it exists.

But no amount of marketing can overcome a bad product. You may fool people once, but once they have the product in their hands and realize your ad campaign was basically a web of lies and deceit, they won’t come back.

(exception: all reality television)

2. Don’t Be a Dick

Offer a good product and do business in good faith. Don’t try to nickel and dime your customers with bogus fees, or arrange things in such a way that you can bend them over the barrel. Because they will come to hate you and take their business elsewhere.

(exception: local monopolies such as power companies)

3. Stop Doing Annoying Things

You know what I love? Being asked if I want to save 10% today by signing up for a store credit card at every store I go to. Or being asked if I want to try the random new unappealing product at every fast food drive thru I hit, even when I already know what I want.

Stop it.

4. Get Over Yourself

You know those people who, when they screw up, they always have a perfectly valid excuse? Or worse yet, refuse to even acknowledge that they screwed up (cough…Sarah Palin…)?

Those people are douchebags. And yet so many companies act just like that every single day. Learn contrition. Have the courage to admit when you screwed up, or when a product wasn’t quite the runaway success you were hoping? Most people are pretty willing to forgive mistakes, as long as you own up to them.

Want proof? Look at Ford. They admitted a while back that things had kind of gone off the rails, and started taking drastic measures before the economy hit the wall. The result? They had their ducks in enough of a row to avoid having to take federal bailouts and subsequent bankruptcy, and now they’re poised to kick all kinds of ass as the economy gets moving again.

5. Don’t Confuse Social Media With Another Press Release Vehicle

You know why I’m active on Facebook and Twitter? To keep up with people, to interact with them. To talk with them. Yet so many companies seem to see these tools as just another way to talk AT people. That’s not interacting. It’s the same crap in a different wrapper. And it’s the reason I hide and unfollow brands that don’t get it.

6. Do Something Cool and Unexpected Every So Often

Consider Zappos, and their penchant for randomly upgrading people to free overnight shipping. That’s cool, and it makes people feel a little special. Which in turn makes them like Zappos more, and makes them more likely to return there to order their next pair of shoes.

Or consider Google, which every so often will just drop a bomb of a new product announcement. Or Apple and its “one more thing”.

It’s the old idea of underpromise and overdeliver. It’s simple, and it works.

Every so often, something comes along that completely shakes up all of our established perceptions about the way the world works.

I had one of those moments this week, when GM debuted the new Buick Regal. Good God in heaven, a Buick I not only actually like, but would even consider putting on the shopping list.

It’s been a weird year for me as I’ve followed the various gyrations in the auto industry, from Honda and Toyota seriously dropping the ball (Crosstour and floormats of death, respectively), to Kia and Hyundai coming on strong, and GM and Ford throwing out not just passable, but seriously compelling and competitive new vehicles.

I can’t wait to see what the next few months hold, as we move into the next auto show season…

The hardest thing about historical fiction isn’t deciding what to include, but what to exclude. Unless you’re dealing with the absolute sparsest of subjects, there is simply no way you can ever put it all in. There’s just too much.

In this way, writing historical fiction is eerily similar to adapting a novel into a movie. When you’re adapting a 400 or 500 page book into a movie, something has to give. Compromises have to be made. And it’s no different when translating actual, recorded history into a consumable (and marketable) story.

I’ve been battling with this a lot lately with Son of the Republic. The plot is there, the sequence of events, but what I choose to bring to the top, gloss over, or leave out will quite literally dictate the tone of the entire story.

I had all this in mind when I sat down to watch my nice, shiny Blu-ray of Patton over the weekend. Now, it’s probably been ten years or more since I last saw the movie, and watching it with fresh eyes, I was amazed at the economy with which it tells its story. For such a big film, the scope is kept surprisingly small, with a laser focus on Patton for almost the entire run time. Battles are few and far between, rarely seen unfolding, more often glimpsed in newspaper headlines and propaganda reels. Patton’s drive across Sicily, up to Palermo then across to Messina, is talked about, but not much of it is really seen. And it works.

Reviewing the classic has given me a lot to chew on as far as how I approach Son of the Republic. And in all honesty, it’s sent me back to the drawing board as far as what to include, and what to leave out…

I didn’t realize it at the time, but if you look back through the pictures of me as a little kid, a theme emerges. In almost every single shot, I’m clutching a car, truck, or some sort of four-wheeled thing in one of my hands. Maybe it’s a coincidence that I grew up to be a car nut, but…maybe not.

Fast forward a few decades, and now I have a little boy of my own. And ever since he could, well, move, I’ve been watching for that interest in cars. To date, nothing. Oh, he’s shown a complete a total fascination with the Pixar film, but as far as actual cars go, he really hasn’t taken to them. Save as convenient projectile weapons.

In the past couple of weeks, though, that’s changed. And now he’s carrying around cars, kind of driving them around on the floor, running them down his little slide.

I couldn’t be happier. I mean, I want him to like what he likes, whatever that may be. But cars…that’s something I can get into, something I can nurture, something I can bond with him over.

And so tonight, after dinner, I took Nolan to Wal-Mart. Yeah, I know…shudder…but their Blu-ray prices absolutely spank Best Buy, and I wanted to pick up Monsters, Inc. So while we were there, we wondered over to the toy section to get a car or two.

I picked out one, and Nolan picked out the other.

Next up…history and sci-fi…

RAW vs. JPEG

When it comes to digital photography, you typically have two photo formats to choose from – RAW and JPEG.

But which should you shoot, and why?

The answer depends on your intentions as a photographer.

If you’re just shooting casually, if the idea of post-processing terrifies you, or if you’re the sort who likes to print photos straight off your camera, you’d probably be better off shooting JPEG.

If you want to retain total creative control over your shots, if you want to squeeze out every last bit of sharpness, or save an image from under- or overexposure, and are willing to get your hands dirty with post-processing, you should definitely consider shooting in RAW.

Okay, let’s backtrack.

Everyone is familiar with JPEG. It’s to digital photos what MP3 is to music, or .txt is to text.

But what is RAW?

At its most basic, a RAW file is the unfiltered, unprocessed data ripped straight from your camera’s image sensor and dumped onto your memory card. It’s not an image file, per se, but it contains all the information you could ever need to assemble an image.

If you have trouble wrapping your head around that, you may want to think of a RAW file as the digital equivalent of the film negative. It’s not exactly a 1:1 analogy, but it’s pretty close.

So…why shoot in RAW?

Simple. When you press that shutter button and take a picture, your camera records an image based off a whole litany of settings.

Some settings are mechanical. Aperture, shutter speed, focal length, focus. These are locked in stone. You can’t go back later and change the shutter speed any more than you can change the angle and intensity of the light. Sorry, tough.

Other settings, though, are digital. White balance, for instance. Exposure, sharpness, color saturation. When you shoot in JPEG, your camera processes the image and LOCKS IN THESE SETTINGS. Yeah, you can tweak them a bit later on, but push too far in any direction and you’ll get something out of a bad Tony Scott movie.

When you shoot in RAW, your camera DEFERS this processing. It’ll apply it’s digital settings, but it won’t lock them in.

What’s the benefit of this?

Simple. You can tweak the settings from the comfort of your computer, so if you botched the white balance, or had some pictures come out overexposed, you can dial things in the way you want with a LOT more flexibility than you’d find with a JPEG.

But wait, there’s more!

RAW files let you bypass unwanted processing, like noise reduction (which can reduce the sharpness of an image).

Furthermore, RAW files are either uncompressed or use lossless compression, so they capture the maximum amount of image detail. JPEGs, by contrast, are compressed image files. This comes into play in a big way when you’re processing and editing. With RAW files, every tweak you make is applied to a version of the master. Essentially, you’re just processing the image according to a slightly altered set of parameters.

With JPEG, every tweak actually degrades the image to a slight degree. This isn’t a big deal if you’re just bumping the contrast a bit, but make too many tweaks and you’ll start to notice a drop in quality.

To sum up, the advantages of RAW don’t really present themselves until after you capture an image. If you don’t plan on tweaking or optimizing your shots, RAW is probably more trouble than it’s worth. But if you want the absolute best quality you can get, ditch JPEG. But be warned, RAW images will suck up more space than JPEGs, so if you’ve only got limited memory, you might run out of it sooner.

RAW Processing Applications

Okay. Let’s pretend I’ve convinced you. You’re all gung-ho about shooting in RAW.  That’s all well and good, but you still have to process the images on the back end and export versions as JPEGs if you want to print them, share them on Flickr, or pretty much anything else.

But what to process them with?

If you’re a cheapskate, you’re in luck. Just about every camera that can shoot in RAW format comes with some sort of RAW processing application. These range from extraordinarily decent to utter crap, but you get what you pay for.

If you have a Mac, iPhoto can also handle RAW files, but it doesn’t give you the wealth of processing options the more powerful programs do. And besides, recent iterations of iPhoto pack your images away behind an iPhoto Library, which is the biggest pain in the ass ever, and the main reason I’ve abandoned the app entirely.

On the pay end, most of the good photo editing and management programs have a RAW processing element. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom both pack Adobe Camera RAW. You really can’t go wrong with these, but Adobe products tend to have a definite learning curve.

My personal choice is Apple Aperture, which is in most respects quite similar to Lightroom. It gives me all the goodies I need to manage my workflow, from processing and optimization to exporting and archiving. If you’re on a Mac, it’s a great way to go.

Next time around, I’ll be going over the basics of photo processing, and the steps I take to get a photo from my camera to Flickr or wherever else it needs to go.

The “How to Take Better Photos” series has been moving along quite nicely, and I’m glad to see others getting so much out of it! Thank you so much for reading and commenting, it really is appreciated.

Moving forward, I have a few topics in mind for the next posts, but wanted to solicit your thoughts. Do any of the topics listed below strike your fancy? Or is there something I haven’t mentioned you’d like to see covered?

- RAW vs. JPEG – Which should you shoot and why?

- HDR Photography – Crash course in shooting and creating high dynamic range (HDR) images

- Shooting Food – Self explanatory…

- Photo Processing 101 – A rundown of what to do after you’ve taken your photos

Shooting in low light without a flash

First, let’s define low-light conditions.

Low light is obviously the absence of bright light, but when talking about cameras, it basically entails any situation that’s not outdoors during daylight hours (unless you’re shooting in a studio or a room with an abundance of natural light). Yes, this encompasses your typical indoor shooting situation.

Why? Because, compared to our eyes, camera sensors suck at registering light. Our pupils can dilate to adjust to a staggering range of lighting conditions and, given a few minutes, we can see reasonably well in all but total darkness.

Cameras can’t.

The reason? Because exposure is a variable of three variables: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO (discussed in How to Take Better Photos, Pt 2). Put simply, each affects exposure as follows:

• Aperture: the size of the lens opening through which light passes. A larger aperture allows more light to pass through to the sensor. This allows for “faster” shooting and reduces depth of field.
• Shutter speed: controls how long the shutter opens and exposes the sensor to light. Fast shutter speeds “freeze” action. Slower shutter speeds open your shots up to blur, which you want to avoid unless it’s intentional.
• ISO: dictates how sensitive your sensor is to light. At low ISOs, the camera demands more light, but captures clearer images with less grain. At higher ISOs, the camera sacrifices quality to make due with the light it can get. A higher ISO can help you get the shot, but you’ll have to accept the image noise that comes with it.

Most cameras suck in low light because they fall short in one of these three areas, which forces compromises from the other two.

The most common shortcoming is aperture. Point-and-shoot cameras have notoriously small apertures, so in low light they have to crank up the ISO to reach a reasonable shutter speed. Many kit lenses that come bundled with DSLRs suffer similarly small apertures, and face the same problems.

So what can you do if you want to shoot in low light?

If you have a point-and-shoot, sadly, you’re pretty much limited to cranking the ISO. A lot of P&S cameras have a mode that’ll do this on its own, but you’re going to have to live with wicked noise or equally wicked noise reduction processing.

If you have a DSLR, buy a fast prime lens.

What the $*@#* is a prime lens, you ask?

A prime lens is a lens with a fixed focal length (i.e. it doesn’t zoom). Yes, this means you have to move yourself to get the shot framed the way you want, but it’s worth it, for a few reasons

- First, because prime lenses tend to boast very large apertures up to f/1.4. Paired with the right camera, they can pretty much shoot in the dark. Paired with most cameras, they’ll kick ass in 90% of the situations you can throw at them.

- Second, because prime lenses have a simpler construction (because they don’t have to zoom). This means they are smaller, lighter, and cheaper than even crappy zooms. For example, the Nikon f/1.4 50mm prime runs about $130.

- Third, because of the simpler construction (i.e. less glass to distort things), prime lenses are among the sharpest lenses you can buy. Paired with their amazing depth of field capabilities, the effect is quite dramatic.

Now, if you’re in the market for a camera, a few suggestions.

If you’re looking at point-and-shoots, I’d say suck it up and buy a low-end DSLR. But maybe you just really like being able to carry a camera in your pocket or something. In that case, I’d start with the Canon PowerShot S90, which packs an f/2 lens. Because the sensor on a point-and-shoot is so small, you’re not going to get the awesome depth of field you’d get at f/2 on a DSLR, but you’ll be able to snap reasonable shots in low light.

Another option to consider would be any of Sony’s CMOS sensor-packing Cyber-shots, which as of this writing consist of the HX1, WX1, and TX1. The CMOS sensor itself boasts marginally better low-light handling, but it’s real value is the ability to shoot at a ridiculously fast 10 frames per second. Sony has very shrewdly built in some layer processing capabilities, which give these cameras the ability to shoot six frames in a split second (at high ISO), then combine them into a single, clearer image. This approach still doesn’t hold a candle to a capable DSLR, but it’s better than what’s come before.

If you’re looking for a DSLR and have money to burn, the full-frame models (which pack 35mm sensors vs the usual APS size) offer truly amazing low-light performance. But the Nikon D700 and Canon 5D Mk II both run around $2,500 for the body alone. If you’re not willing to drop that kind of coin, you have a ton of options out there when it comes to a solid consumer DSLR. The two I find myself recommending all the time are the Nikon D90 and Canon Eos T1i, but really any DSLR paired with a fast prime lens will get the job done.

Okay, so what about actually shooting in low light?

Honestly, half the battle of shooting in low light is having the right tools for the job.

The other half? Your settings.

First, man (or woman) up and turn your mode dial out of Auto. I’d also recommend disabling Auto ISO. This may mean you’ll have to take a few test shots to see how low an ISO you can get away with, but if you’re not taking a few test shots anyway, you may as well pack up and go home.

Once you’ve disabled Auto ISO (usually buried in some menu tree), switch your camera in to Aperture Priority and crank it as large as it’ll go. Remember, larger apertures are denoted by smaller numbers.

Also keep in mind that, with a large aperture, you’re going to have some ridiculously shallow depth of field. How shallow? Shallow enough that your subject’s nose may be in sharp focus, but the rest of their face might be a slight bit blurred. You can step the aperture down slightly, but keep in mind you’ll have to sacrifice either shutter speed or ISO to compensate.

Once the camera’s set and ready to go, start taking pictures. All the typical suggestions regarding framing and such still apply. Also, pay special attention to the camera’s focus points. I’ve had a lot of great pictures ruined because the camera chose to focus on something other than the subject’s face. It may help to put your subject in the middle of the frame while you focus, then keep the shutter pressed down halfway while you frame the shot.Unless you have a Nikon D3 or D700 with the crazy 51-point autofocus system which seems to pick out and focus on eyes as if by magic.

It takes time to get the hang of it, but don’t give up. The results are worth it.

For all the upsides of fatherhood, there are certainly some drawbacks. Chief among them the seemingly endless variety of dirty diapers one encounters from day to day. This is an unofficial catalog of selected specimens.

The Footloose

The Footloose is not so much a dirty diaper as it is the combination of a dirty diaper and a particularly ornery baby/toddler.

A proper Footloose typically involves a dirty diaper of epic proportions (see “The Lahar”, “The California Mudslide”, “The Ben-Hur” and similar). A Lesser Footloose (also called a “Pygmy Footloose”) may sometimes occur with a diaper of more manageable proportions.

The Footloose occurs when, in the midst of attempting to remove a Lahar or Ben-Hur type dirty diaper, the creator of said diaper kicks and squirms with sufficient energy to break loose of the parent’s grip, and manages to plant a foot directly in the recently removed diaper.

At this point, the parent’s mind goes into red alert, and all reasoning abilities are suppressed in a desperate effort to avoid contact with the poop-covered foot while simultaneously containing the child and keeping further poop distribution to a minimum.

The Footloose is a 9.5 on the UCDD scale of diaper difficulty, and may necessitate the calling in of backup in the form of another parent, both grandparents, or a highly trained helper dog.

Don’t use your camera’s flash. Except when you should.

The flash. Just about every camera has one. And for the most part, using it is a sucker’s game.

Why?

A few reasons.

1) Limited range – Your typical onboard flash has a range of about 10 feet. Decent enough for taking shots at a party, but completely useless for shooting anything further away. So the next time you whip your camera out at a sporting event, concert or whatever, turn the flash off. There’s no way it’ll reach to the stage or field. More likely, it’ll turn that person in front of you into a pale beacon of overexposure. Besides, fields, rinks, courts and stages are usually well-lit as is. Trust your camera to figure it out.

2) Direct light – Direct lighting is bad. It shines directly at your subject, robbing your shot of any sense of depth. And since an onboard flash is, well, onboard, it can’t get far enough away from the lens to provide anything in the way of offset lighting.

There’s also the whole red-eye thing, which most cameras can counter by pulsing the flash a few times before firing it, though that basically blows any hope of candid shots out of the water.

3) Harsh light – In addition to being direct, the light from an onboard flash is also harsh, creating very sharp, defined shadows (and more often than not blowing out highlights). You can soften the light with a diffuser (a paper coffee filter works in a pinch) if you absolutely MUST use your flash.

Here are a few examples of flash gone wrong (click each to see embiggened versions over at Flickr):

Here’s a textbook case of using the onboard flash to shoot people in low light. Note the blown-out whites, the hint of red-eye, and the non-existent background.

Red-eye? Check. Harsh shadow outline? Check. Flat, uninteresting photo? Check.

What’s the lesson here?

Don’t use your onboard flash in low-light situations. Chances are it’ll do more harm than good.

Now, suppose you find yourself shooting in low-light situations on a pretty regular basis. What can you do?

First, consider a camera that can tackle low-light effectively. Some point-and-shoots do a manageable job, but their sensors are so small that hiking the ISO above 800 opens them up to a blizzard of noise (or over-compensating digital noise reduction). Your best bet is to suck it up and invest in a DSLR. The larger sensor will handle higher ISOs and low-light situations a lot better, and paired with the right glass – such as an f/1.4 or f/1.8 prime lens – you’ll pretty much be able to shoot by candlelight and still manage reasonable ISO and shutter speed settings.

Second, buy an off-camera flash. Pretty much all DSLRs and a few point-and-shoots feature a hot shoe that will let you mount an external flash. In addition to providing some offset lighting, a lot of external flashes can also be aimed in a number of directions, allowing you to fire the flash upward to bounce of the ceiling and the like. This has the effect of softening the light, resulting in a smoother, more natural interplay between light and shadow. To wit:

Okay. We’ve covered why your onboard flash sucks, why you shouldn’t use it in low-light, and steps you can take if you’re serious about taking some seriously kick-butt low-light photos. Which leaves the obvious question:

If the onboard flash sucks so bad, why bother with it in the first place?

The obvious answer is that most people don’t really care how a picture looks. They just want to capture that time they went to that place and did that thing. Doesn’t matter if they and their friends end up looking like a bunch of Powder wannabes. Or it does matter, but not enough for them to do anything about it.

But…the onboard flash actually does have some uses.

The main use case for the onboard flash is actually a bit counterintuitive. Instead of using your flash in low-light conditions, you actually want to use it in bright conditions, particularly when your background is brighter than your subject. Firing the flash in this situation will help ensure that both your subject and the background are properly exposed, so you don’t end up with a backlit subject or a washed-out background.

Depending on the type of camera you’ve got, you can also use the onboard flash to trigger a remote flash. In this case, the flash doesn’t actually illuminate anything, and instead fires a weak burst that triggers the remote flash (or flashes) to fire. But that’s a whole other topic…

Okay. To wrap up:

- Don’t use your camera’s onboard flash in low-light conditions

- If you want to shoot effectively in low-light, you’re going to have to gear up, or accept compromises

- Do use your camera’s onboard flash in bright conditions, when your subject is darker than the background.