The Truth about Digital

To put it simply: digital photography is very time consuming, if you want to get the most out of your images. The file from your camera is only the starting point on the way to creating the finished product. For one thing, it needs to be properly sharpened since digital camera files are all a little soft.
Since I am a portrait photographer, my workflow is geared to making skin look its best. Just working with huge 12meg Raw files and very huge 150megs or more 16bit Photoshop psd files takes a lot of time and disk space.
Time is money and I spend way too much time working with my digital images, so digital is very expensive in terms of time. Of course the equipment is expensive and has to be replaced more often than film cameras to keep up with the state of the art.
Of course, I would never go back, and will continue to pursue the Holy Grail of the perfect Workflow.

Photoshop CS3

I have been using the beta version of Photoshop CS3 that is freely available on the Adobe site. My initial impression is that it runs faster and has a few interesting new features. My favorite improvement is in Adobe Camera Raw. The new controls make it a lot easier to extract a better file from a Raw file than before. The new controls are similar to what is already available in Bibble Pro. The beta ACR is pretty buggy, especially when working with multiple files, so I am careful with it.
I still prefer retouching my images in CS2, because it is more stable. I'm sure that when the production version is released, those problems will be worked out and it will be a pleasure to use. For example, the CS3 Liquify filter is MUCH faster than before. And the new selection tool is pretty amazing from what I have seen, even though I don't use that feature very often in my normal retouching work.
Bottom Line: I can't wait to get a hold of the production release. It is a major advance for Photoshop users.

Black and White photography

What's old is new again. Isn't it interesting how black and white photgraphy is so popular again? Even with the proliferation of digital cameras that only take color pix, there is a tremendous interest in the old school. Before color came about, photographers developed their own film and made their contact sheets and prints. It was all done inhouse. Then with color film, they had to send it out to a lab for processing and printing. In many ways, this was much cooler because it freed up a lot of time, although it increased the overhead due to lab processing charges. Basically the photographer became a runner for the lab...a middleman as it were.
Now the situation has come full circle. The digital photographer "develops" his own "film" in his darkroom (Photoshop), shows the proofs online, and prints on his Epson 2400. He only uses the lab for very large prints or for proofing.
And now, eveyone wants black and white prints. Creating a great b&w print is not that easy. There are at least ten ways to convert a color image to b&w in Photoshop, and only a couple of them are really great. And they rely on some decisions by the photographer to pick the best contrast settings. Then there's the challenge of printing on a printer that was designed for great color. It takes a lot of reading and testing to achieve acceptable or great results, but it is possible.
Look at the work of this Austin portrait photographer to see what is possible.