DOC GLIDEWELL'S SHOOTING BEAUTY

Seeing The Light

Welcome to the updated Shooting Beauty. In addition to coverage of photo techniques, people, and equipment, I've added a section, Shooting Beauty-Edit , on building and modifying computers optimized for photo editing. Beast I, our cost-effective PC, and Beast II, featuring the best gear made, will serve as platforms to try out the latest equipment and software.

Over the next week or two, I'll be fleshing-out these pages with many new articles and reviews. You can see Beast II here and Beast I will appear shortly. Join me as I search for the best, and the best buys, in photo editing.

Next Up: Monitors
Next week I'll tackle monitors. Your average $150 LCD computer monitor does a poor job of displaying photos. They are bright and colorful, but the tonality stinks and the colors are invariably over-saturated and inaccurate. To see what a photo monitor can do, I'll look at two of the best, the NEC Multisync LCD2690WUXi2 and the Eizo ColorEdge CG222W . These are expensive monitors that will serve as our standards by which to judge others. Then comes the real challenge: finding a modestly priced monitor that comes close to these beauties.

Manfrotto's pistol grip ball head

Horizontal & Ambidextrous
Several years ago Manfrotto introduced a ball head with a vertical hand grip between the ball and the camera that made positioning the camera faster and more intuitive. But I was never happy with the way the camera teetered on the top of the handle, swinging around at the end of the long grip. Good news: Manfrotto has just solved that problem and greatly improved the device.

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Byron Newman: Playboy's London connection

Byron Newman's road to Playboy was unusually direct. Born in London, Newman discovered graphic design and photography in college and began commercial work by interviewing and photographing rock stars for Cream magazine in the late 60s and 70s. After college he founded a London-based fashion magazine Deluxe (1977). The magazine, which he calls a "punk Vogue," lasted only two issues.

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Who Really Shoots for Playboy?

Who does, who doesn't, and contacting those who count.

It's a problem for aspiring models and a bigger problem for Playboy Enterprises: photographers who misrepresent themselves to models as "shooting for Playboy magazine." Or a photographer, manager, or agent who claims to "have connections" that can get a girl in the magazine.

Here is the truth of the matter. As of this moment, January, 2011, there are only nine people in the world who can approach a model and truthfully say "I shoot models for Playboy magazine."

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Platforms for photo editing

Performance and Price
The Beasts are easily constructed, custom-built computers designed for photo editing. They are built from components that I have tested and recommend. Each will be benchmarked to measure the performance that changes can make and each will be a platform, optimized for photographers. There is nothing sacred about the initial configurations and components, these will be continually upgraded as new and better components come along. The focus here is how well a computer runs photo editing applications and accommodates a range of input and output devices that we use to enhance images. With real-world testing, SB can show the digital photographer which components can really upgrade your system and which are unneeded.