thedude.com

thedude and Kelly joined about 1,000 others last night to show our respect for His Dudeness at the first San Francisco Lebowski Fest.

Yes, there were plenty of Jeff Lebowski and Karl Hungus look-alikes. Music was provided by the hilarious Meshugga Beach Party. Primal drum beats and sexual energy came by way of the fabulous Extra Action Marching Band. NEW! Now with Video!

We tried our best to get close to Jeff Dowd, to get a shot of thedude with thedude, but no luck. Perhaps we’d have been able to better focus if we hadn’t consumed those last two caucasions. “Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”

The shots taken by the professional photographer were finally posted today. I hate to say it, but I’m not sure that he made the most of the terrific photo-op. In addition to some tighter shots, I would certainly have made at least a couple panoramic shots of the event and stitched them together. This would have allowed him to get higher resolution and better coverage of this unique event. The good news though, is that he got lots of shots of thedude gettin’ goofy in his little car! :)

The other thing that would have made these shots even better is if Kelly had been there, but she wasn’t feeling well this morning. :(

I got up extra early today to take part in a record-breaking photo. I had the chance to appear with a large group of Smart Cars two-abreast winding all the way down the “crookedest street in America“. I was not going to miss this!

The event turned out to be better than I had hoped - in spite of the typical San Francisco summer weather. What made it really special for me is that without making any effort to do so, I found myself in the absolute prime location for the photo. Me and my little car are not only in the first row, but we are in the position closest to the official event photographer. I can’t wait to see (and share!) the results.

But then, any event that includes 133 Smart Cars produces plenty of fun photo opportunities.

This photos-for-food-and-drinks deal we have with our friends at MoNO is working out very nicely for us. Yum!

Well, I finally bit the bullet and changed the site’s look-and-feel. My motivation is only partly driven by aesthetics. The other reason is that WordPress 2.5 is just so dang good. It’s much nicer to look at and easier to use than the latest MovableType release. They seem to have fixed the problems with the WordPress Visual Editor, which makes editing a lot easier. There are thousands of attractive (free!) WordPress themes, and a growing user-community. Importing my old site into WordPress worked extremely well. All I needed to do was make some minor tweaks to the stylesheet to make my images fit perfectly, and BAM! New layout.

I really like the clean look of this theme. The newspaper layout seems to add credibility to my words and pictures. It showcases my photographs nicely, and encourages me to post larger images! Who knows - all of this may inspire me to post more frequently!

There is still some work to do. I may adjust the look of the header slightly - perhaps play with typography a bit. I’ll have to create and get used to a modified workflow. It’s not clear yet how I’ll deal with uploading images. I need to weigh the value of using tags. And, of course, I need to figure out how and where to incorporate the Kellypic!

So, please bear with me while I experiment with the site. You may visit and find things have changed again. I’ll try not to break things too horribly while I sort out structural issues like those broken comments. You can help motivate me to do all this by providing feedback. What do you think? I really enjoy your comments, and I know my readers (That’s you!) enjoy reading them too.

I was asked at the very last moment to shoot a few pictures of the new restaurant for an upcoming issue of Bon Appétit. With the deadline literally hours away, I went downstairs to see what I could do. The funny thing is that I was apologizing for the photos all the while I was shooting them, fearing that I’d get lousy results in the less-than-ideal lighting.

Shots like these are simply not possible without the Nikon D3 and the its spectacular 14-24 mm lens.

A coworker recently asked for photo advice after seeing the pictures I shot at our company Christmas party. I took the time compose a lengthy response, and figure I might as well share it with my regular readers too!

Hi thedude,

I was looking at the pictures you took at the party. They are amazing. How in the world do you get pictures with the color, contrast, and clarity that you captured?

I’m using a D70, as opposed to the D2x, but figure there is more to it than that. Is it in the lens? Post processing?

I’m looking to upgrade soon, and was hoping you had a minute to offer some advice as to why my pictures have a slightly washed out / less life-like look - regardless of the level of flash.

Thanks!

Where to begin? Well, first - thanks for the very kind words.

There are many pieces to this. Briefly:

ALWAYS shoot RAW. This is not just for the added sharpness, but most importantly, so that you can make tweaks to the color temperature and exposure.

UNDEREXPOSE. In a situation like this where the majority of the image is almost black, the camera needs to know that this is what you want. I underexpose flash shots by .3 or even .7 stops. All of the Affy party images were underexposed by .7 stops. This prevents blown out highlights.

Use a MANUAL setting. Shoot some test shots with the camera. Find an ISO/shutter speed combination that will capture some of the room light. Choose the slowest shutter speed possible and stop down the lens a couple stops from it’s max. The idea is to get the best sharpness and depth of focus while capturing as much ambient light as possible. The Affy party images were shot at f4 at 1/25th of a second with a Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8 lens.

Use the most powerful flash you can find and attach the Gary Fong Lightsphere with an AmberDome. This will warm things up a bit so that the color of the light from the flash is close to the color of the ambient (incandescent) light.

Compose quickly, get in close, push the shutter release at exactly the right moment. :)

Post-processing:

Open a few of the best-looking images in the PhotoShop RAW converter. Adjust the color temperature until they look just right. I like my images to be a bit on the warm side. For the Affy images, 3700 degrees produced the results I liked best. Apply the same color temp to all flash images.

Adjust exposure individually in the RAW converter. Underexposing has its drawbacks, but blown out highlights are really bad. Nothing worse than super-shiny reflections on faces. If highlights are blown out, there is no easy way to repair them.

Create a PhotoShop Action to reduce the image size in steps and apply a tiny bit of smart sharpening filter as you go. In this case the original ~4200 pixel wide images were reduced to ~1800 pixels. Done properly, this will greatly enhance sharpness.

Practice, practice…

Good luck!

For the last few years I have been hosting a web site featuring the work of an extremely talented illustrator named Charlie Powell. I have always been a fan of his work, so when he offered to paint a portrait of thedude in exchange for web hosting services, I jumped at the chance. Now thedude joins the likes of Bono, Howard Stern and Oprah among the celebrities he’s painted.

I am so very happy with the results! I think it’s an excellent likeness of thedude enjoying three of his favorite things - wine, cameras and computers! This is especially amazing when you consider that Charlie and I have never met. He painted this based solely on images from thedude.com!

When deciding where to display the 11 x 17″ painting, Kelly’s first suggestion was was, “How about above the toilet?” Nice. Well, I have a few ideas of my own.