Why did the Peacock return?

Well, Peacock was the post that started it all… My first post appeared exactly 10 years ago to this day. Around that time I was mainly posting my pictures on 500px, a photo forum I hardly use anymore. The idea to have my own blog/website came about after I returned from a vacation in 2012. I originally wanted to visit Eastern Turkey and Armenia. As the border between Turkey and Armenia is closed, the only way to travel from one country to the other is via Georgia or Iran. I mapped out a round trip that should have taken me via Georgia to Armenia and back to Turkey via Iran. However, when I was in Batumi I found out that it would take a long time to go to Armenia via bus or train and I didn’t have enough time to do that. I went back to Turkey and travelled southward. When I came to Doğubeyazıt close to the Iranian border I decided to use my visa and at least travel to Tabriz in Iran.

At that time I was working for a US company and my boss found it very exiting that I went to Iran and asked me to write about my experiences for our company blog. So I wrote about my journey and handed in my blog post. However, the marketing department responsible for the blog didn’t want to publish it because they were afraid that some of our clients might be displeased. Further I was told I could use the post for my own blog.

My own blog?

I didn’t have a blog!

So I pondered about blogging for some time and thought why not try to become a blogger. I decided that I could post some of my pictures and also some articles about travel, photography, art and similar subjects. And so, my photograph of the peacock appeared on the web. A Short Trip to Iran appeared a day later.

Looking at my stats, the story about my trip was the second most visited post that year.

My most visited post was Everything’s Gone Green. Back then I did my montages by layering pictures and deleting some colours of the top layers so the other layers would be visible. Well, at that time these montages had already become a little bit more complex and I cut out some elements and used a lot of layers.

As chameleons are masters of masking themselves, I decided to “unmask” my Coloured Chameleon. You seem to have liked the picture, so it became the third most visited picture in 2013.

Hasankeyf and Other Places in Turkey

In 2014, one of my posts with text made it to number one: Hasankeyf: A City on the Edge of Disappearing. Hasankeyf was a town in South Eastern Turkey. I wrote “was” because the original town was submerged under a water reservoir after the construction of a dam at the River Tigris. Though some of the old buildings were saved to a higher location where a new Hasankeyf was build, the original town is gone forever. For me, Hasankeyf was the most exiting city in Turkey with a lot of history and I’m still sad when I think what a loss that is to humanity. But you can read all about Hasankeyf in the post.

The Portrait of a Man was also taken in Turkey. I was travelling through a region called Dersim, or Tunceli, with some friends and we wanted to climb the mountain Düzgün Baba. At the foot of the mountain we met that man and I asked him to take his picture. I also posted a black and white version of that picture a year later which I prepared for a photography prize. (I didn’t win, but at least I made it to round three with the picture. 🙂 )

Landscape Interrupted represents my more abstract collages when I worked with a lot of lines. These pictures became more and more abstract and minimal over time, like in the picture The Dance, for example.

The Popularity of Operating Systems

In 2015 I became really annoyed with my Apple computer. I was using it for some years and it was sooo sloooow. I was using computers since the early 1990s and my first operating system was OS2. When the computer broke in 1996 I was sharing a flat with some designers that were using Apple. So I bought my first Mac before the iPhone and before the company got really popular and fashionable. With my first two computers I was really happy. But, as I mentioned, number three was really slow and broke several times and had to be repaired quite often. But when I wanted to buy a new Mac I noticed that the prices had become too high for me and I was looking for an alternative solution. Therefore I asked you: “Which Operating System Works Best For Photographers?“

The post became the most popular of my blog. It was the most visited post from 2015-2020 and became number two in 2021. Looking at the stats I noticed that most visitors came from outside our blogging bubble. What made the post even more exiting were all the comments that really helped me to make a decision.

Well, I’m sitting on a Windows computer now. It works very well with all photography software I tried. Even video editing programs run without problems.

Video editing was also what I was busy with recently: For some new remixes for my band mockART I animated some of my pictures.

You can also find the tracks on Spotify, iTunes and co.

The remixes will be part of a remix album. I will tell you more about that when we publish it later this year. But I think to see some of my pictures in action might be a great treat for my blogging anniversary.

But back to my pictures: Snowstorm in Paris was already posted in 2014, but only made the top three a year later. The picture was more some kind of experiment: I wanted to know how you would react to a picture that you cannot see. For this work I used a picture taken in Paris and painted over it with white colour.

Behind the Cliffs the Deep Blue Sea was taken in Malta. It is one of my favourite landscapes and it was also part of one of my expositions. Now the picture is hanging here in front of me and I can see it when I look up from the computer.

You should remember the most visited post in 2016, right?

Yes, it is the one about computers and operating systems.

So I will show you twos and threes for the following years.

Twos and Threes

Horse Riding Horse is one of my most beloved pictures. I must have nailed the right section of my motive. The horse was photographed in Dreieich, a small town in Germany.

The Future of Hasankeyf brings us back to my favourite places in Turkey. I did and interview with John Crofoot, one of the activists that tried to save the town from being submerged. As I couldn’t travel to Turkey it was really interesting for me learn more about what was happening. But sadly, all the activism couldn’t save the town. Around that time I also wrote a couple of letters to several politicians, asking them to talk to their contacts in Turkey about Hasankeyf. Some of them even wrote back, saying that diplomatic relations with Turkey were difficult and that they cannot discuss Hasankeyf right now.

So, again, we skip the post about operating systems and start with the second most visited post of 2017: This one is another interview. This time with German journalist Edda Schlager who I met in Almaty. She also takes a lot of brilliant photographs and I talked with here about Photographing Central Asia.

Number three is a picture of the monastery Dadivank, back then still located in Nagorno-Karabakh, now part of Azerbaijan. The monastery itself was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. As Azerbaijan doesn’t seem to have a high regard for all things Armenian I hope they will preserve it, but I’m afraid they won’t.

In 2018 you seem to have really liked my pictures from Sicily. Both somewhat darkish, I might say. But I like dark things and that is probably one of the reasons I took these pictures. The House by the Sea you can find in Syracuse and The Evening Light broke over the coastline near Taormina.

I hardly ever take pictures in portrait orientation. However, in 2019 you seemed to have liked my pictures in this format the most, apart from the post about operating systems, of course. 🙂

In 2019 I visited a light show in Frankfurt called Luminale. This festival is held every two years and different places in the city are illuminated and artists show their objects created with light. That year a lot of photographers were running around with their cameras on tripods, but most people were taking pictures with their smartphones. As you have probably already noticed, that is Contemporary Photography now.

Hiking along the River Rhine in Germany I saw this tree full of mistletoe and photographed it against the sunlight. But I have to admit that it wasn’t in The Cold Light of the Morning, but rather the warm evening sun. I thought that title was more fitting.

Focusing on Montages

Now we come to my more contemporary montages. Life as a Painting was assembled from various photos and I was including several pictures in the picture. There is of course the picture of the painter, then the picture postcards and in the background is another picture of a Roman landscape. I was also experimenting with the overall style and made the final picture look very soft.

Isolation was one of my Covid pictures. During the early days of the pandemic a colleague contracted Covid and I was quarantined as well because I sat close to her in the same office all day. When I was sitting at home by myself and wasn’t allowed to meet anyone I tried to capture my state of isolation in a picture. This time I was going for the vintage style that I was using for some of my following montages as well.

And we finally have a new winner. In 2021 I posted another piece about computers and photography. As I wanted to get rid of Photoshop and Lightroom due to their subscription model I discussed with you Post Processing Without Photoshop and Lightroom. To answer your question: I use Affinity Photo now instead of Photoshop. Lightroom I have replaced with Capture One. Sadly, Capture One will change their pricing model soon and it looks like you have to pay a lot more if you don’t want to subscribe. Probably Lightroom is the only alternative, however, with Fuji RAWs it is not the best solution due to worming…

…so if you have a tip here, I would appreciate it. For now I’m still using Capture One. Hopefully it will take a while till it is outdated.

Number two is… you know!

Number three was An Examination of Eating Habits. Another one of my montages in vintage style.

No we have arrived at last year’s pictures. I had mainly posted montages around that time. Therefore I decided to show you a gallery with photos I didn’t use for my montages. You must have been looking for Something Else: The post became the most visited one in 2022.

In a year of economic crisis you were certainly looking for Prospective Economic Advantages and you got them in the form of a picture. At this time I had already developed a new style I was using here as well: I composed the montages and then reduced them to one layer that I duplicated a couple of times. Over one of the layers I painted with “digital colour” in Affinity Photo. Then I mixed the layers in a way that some elements seem to be painted and others photographed.

The same technique I used on the third most visited picture. As there were still some lockdowns in place at the beginning of the year, you probably spend some time in front of your TV set. Hopefully the live transmissions didn’t actually transmit life.

For the anniversary I was also thinking about the friends I made through blogging and the many wonderful people whose blog posts I like to see and read. Sadly, some blogs I really liked went inactive, other bloggers – especially those posting pictures – went to Instagram and other social media platforms. I can think of the temptation to concentrate on Instagram for example because you get a lot of instant likes. But I also noticed that you don’t really get very helpful comments. To me it feels like a lot of people like a lot of pictures or post some emoji in the comment section so the algorithm shows their own posts to more people.

I also use social media – but more as a means of promoting my blog posts a little and lure my non-blogging friends here. But I always remained true to blogging because I really appreciate the feedback I get from you. And that shows me that most of you really look at my pictures or read by texts.

I also would like to share with you an article I recently found on The Verge about personal blogging. There are really a lot of good points why blogging is often more rewarding than social media.

In that sense:

Happy Anniversary!!!

The post The Return of the Peacock appeared first on rabirius.

However, when I travel I sometimes end up in little villages where you can not really do anything at night and so I like to work on some photographs that I can also upload here from the road. I mainly used a tablet computer but as you have to use several apps which all save the picture a new, the small hard drive is full very quickly. Also, some apps down-scale the photos, which is okay for the web, but not really if you want to do large prints.

Therefore I recently decided to buy a notebook which I can use for traveling. However, the price for a simple Apple notebook is very high, considering you can find a good laptop for less than a quarter of the price, which also comes with a DVD drive and a card reader.

The notebook I bought came without an operating system and I tried several Linux distributions till I finally decided that Ubuntu works best. It was the only system that seemed to have all the drivers to make full use of the hardware. I also like the graphical interface with makes it really easy to use and the office programs and browsers available all work very well.

However, when I started to try out the software available for processing photographs I was not really happy. The best program probably is Gimp which has some functions similar to Photoshop. However, cropping and masking elements in a photo is not as easy because the tools don’t work as sensitive as in Photoshop. But the lack of sensitivity I noticed all over the program and a lot of photos I tried to process with Gimp I deleted and then started again in Photoshop. Might be that the problem is that I use the advanced features too much and therefore I miss a lot of things and might get used to it over time.

But working with other programs was really disastrous: All the RAW programs available put some brownish colour over all the pictures that I couldn’t get rid of (at least not very quickly) – and the HDR program only produced ridiculous results that all looked much worse that even the high or low exposure pictures.

Windows, on the other had, I only know from work where I don’t really use it to process photographs. Though I know that with my Photoshop license I can install the program on another computer – and due to CreativeCloud I can also install the program on a Windows machine as well. However, switching to Windows would require the additional costs of the license and I’m also a bit worried about the security which is something you don’t really need to worry about on a Mac or a Linux system. (And at work we have technicians that take care of it.)

So, what are your experiences? Which operating system do you use? How does it work for processing photos? Do you think you can get used to Gimp and other Linux programs if you keep using them? Or do you think it is better to switch to Windows for the second computer where you can use photoshop and other programs as well? And, if you use Windows, how do you protect your computer?

Postscript:

1. Apple

As some of you mentioned Apple a lot: I usually use Apple computers and have been doing so for nearly 15 years now. When I bought my first Apple I was completely happy with it. I liked the simplicity that focused on the functions you really need. And so, my first two computers were just working – and were doing so very fast.

However, since a couple of years, I have the feeling that the company lost its touch. Some programs have become monsters (especially iTunes), a lot of programs take ages to start (strangely, complex programs like Photoshop work much faster than programs like Safari) and you can never have enough RAM.

Also, the hardware seems less efficient – my first two computers never had any problems as all. My current one I had to have repaired several times already and I still think that some problem was there from the start that could never be found. Also the design wasn’t changed much, except that the products get slimmer and slimmer and therefore cannot have things like DVD drives anymore.

So yes, I don’t really like Apple anymore.

2. Linux (Ubuntu)

When I bought a cheap notebook to have something to take when I’m on the road, I instantly though about running Linux. I tried various distributions, but the one I liked best was Ubuntu. To me, it seemed like they developed their own concept, without trying to imitate either Windows or Mac OS X. I installed the current version including all the drivers and everything was working instantly. The operating system was running fast, as did all the programs I tried. Problem solved, you might think…

…but now!

As much as I liked Ubuntu, as much I hated nearly every program I could find for photographers. Certainly, Gimp is not a bad program, but if you are used to Photoshop and use all the advanced features, you feel really limited. Other software I tried didn’t really do a convincing performance at all.

3. Windows

When Adobe announced their CreativeCloud I was completely against it. However, when I heard that I can run it on two different computers that run different operating systems, I thought I give Windows a go. After installing Windows, I noticed that I still have to install all the divers manually, which really was a lot of work. But finally the computer was up and running. Well, it first downloaded and installed countless updates and I had to wait hours (literally! I didn’t exaggerate here!) till I could use it. A little game that continues to play until you finally find out how to switch off live updates, because setting up Windows is not easy task. There are far too many system settings that are too well hidden. Though all the programs started very quickly, working with them seems more complicated. I have the feeling I always have to click a lot more and also open a lot more programs for one task.

The installation of Photoshop (and Lightroom) worked very well and I’m happy with that. However, on my Mac I use a lot of small programs that do some tasks more quickly that Photoshop and therefore I started to explore some other programs that were out there. However, I didn’t really find anything convincing (here I should mention that I didn’t try commercial programs with a high price, more like smaller programs or plugins).

4. Hardware

A quick word on the hardware: I noticed, that a cheap computer is not really the best choice for editing photos. I especially noticed that the display of graphics is not really good. Though I paid attention to buy a fast computer, I didn’t really bear in mind to take a look at the graphics board and the picture quality of the screen. Though it isn’t a big problem, I would advice you to consider that as well.

5. Conclusion

If you are basically looking for a computer to do some basic stuff, like surfing the internet, writing and some easy creative work, like a little photo editing, I would recommend Ubuntu (or other Linux distributions, if you think they work better for you).

If you like to edit your photos a lot and if you need Photoshop I would recommend Apple. Though it seems to get more and more flawed with the years, you still have the best choice of additional photography software, and for other creative work as well. I also appreciate that you can change things easily in the system settings that help optimize your workflow. (A thing that works well in Linux too, by the way.)

For using Windows, I didn’t really see any advantage (maybe if you are a gamer, but I’m not). Hey, wait, there is one: You don’t want to spend about 1000,- EUR for a notebook, but still would like to use Photoshop.

You certainly might have come to a different conclusion. But that is, how I experienced the three operating systems and their use for photographers.

The post Mac OS X, Linux, Windows – Which Operating System Works Best For Photographers? appeared first on rabirius.