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Every year at the University of Calgary, a lucky group of students are chosen by their peers to represent their graduating class. How does one get elected to be a Class Ambassador? By being awesome.

I had a blast spending an hour with this energetic group of students. Congratulations to this year’s winners: Amar Deshwar, Eric Termuende, Caitlin Kane, Tsering Asha Leba and Jay Wang.

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11 Comments

  1. Bernardo Bonelli
    May 21, 2014

    Hello, can I ask you a suggestion?. Can I use Darktable for photo management instead of shotwell in elementary os?

    • rileybphoto
      May 21, 2014

      I do.

      However, I never really used Shotwell very often because it isn’t color-managed. So I can’t properly compare the two. I rename all my photos and folders with the date and a description, thus darktable works for me as a photo manager (though I would love a proper search function).

      • Bernardo Bonelli
        May 22, 2014

        Hi Riley, thanks for your reply. I’m interested in using rapid photo downloader, Darktable and gimp on elementaryOS for my little photo workflow. I am not a professional photographer and take pictures with a compact camera (canon sx 220 hs).

        • rileybphoto
          May 22, 2014

          That is a great combination! I use those same programs ;)
          You can actually import photos from your camera with darktable, but it won’t rename them so I use Rapid Photo Downloader because I like my RAW files to have proper file names.

          • Bernardo Bonelli
            May 22, 2014

            I was thinking to import and rename photos directly from rapid photo downloader and then import them into Darktable …
            Ops, sorry, I had not translated well what you said.

  2. Jorge
    May 17, 2014

    Hi Riley, hope you remember me, still no new entries? well, hopefully that means you have a lot of work and for that I’m glad. Visiting your site to see if there was a new entry on your blog, took another look at your photos, and they are wonderful, I’m really jealous but in a good way, hopefully one day I would be able to do so my self. I’m starting to loose the thread here, the point is there is one I really like and it is also on your slideshow at the home page, it’s the image of the girl in the lab, I would like to know how you took that, because I would really like to start experimenting with environmental photography, did you use flash, only a reflector, or a mix of everything with the window light? thanks in advance.

    • rileybphoto
      May 18, 2014

      Hi Jorge,

      I know my posts are really irregular ;) It just means I am busy. I do plan to write more blog posts about open-source photography in the future.

      If I remember correctly, the photo of the girl in the lab was done with the available window light, plus a flash off camera shooting through an umbrella. The light was placed to the left of the girl, which is why you can see a shadow on the right side of her face.

      I hope that helps. Good luck with your environmental portraits!

  3. Jorge
    March 27, 2014

    Hi Riley, great images, are all of these edited using open source? or lightroom?, It’s been a year since I found your blog and was really relieved to see that linux can now be used for a decent photography workflow. I use Aftershot and Gimp, although I find Darktable really appealing. Would you consider making a post about your current workflow? I’m very interested on seeing how things are going with linux for photography. By the way, great post on the transition from photoshop to gimp.

    • rileybphoto
      March 27, 2014

      Hi Jorge,

      Thanks for the comments. When I redesigned my website, I did everything in Linux. Mostly with GIMP, WordPress and Aftershot Pro. Though most of the images were originally edited with Adobe software, I reedited many and prepared everything for the web in Linux.

      The photos in this post were first edited in Lightroom. I planned to finish them in GIMP, but for some reason the Mac version made my images lose sharpness when I resized them. I don’t have that problem in the Linux version.

      I’ve recently started giving darktable a serious shot because the newest version finally has selective editing (aka local adjustments)! It is a powerful, full featured program, but it is a serious challenge to learn the user interface. I don’t plan on doing a post about my current workflow because I am transitioning to darktable. However, I do plan on recording some screencasts in the future.

      • Jorge
        March 28, 2014

        Thanks for the quick reply. Your website looks great, the colours and combination with the images are really catchy and elegant.
        People mostly ignore that anything you can do in windows and mac you can also in linux, the only drawback is the availability of some software you usually would use on those first two platforms, because for me sometimes wine or vm are not an option or can’t be used without having some major glitches.
        About the images, it is very difficult to notice they where edited using different softwares, I guess the key is to find the way to maintain your editing style intact within the platform and software transition.
        I’ve tried darktable a couple of times but as you said, it’s a serious challenge to learn, and since aftershot is compatible with my camera and most of my edits are basic I haven’t found the need to learn to use it, but I know eventually I will have too since darktable is growing so much and because I’m really not sure about the future of aftershot, and besides that, what a joy would it be to have a truly 100% open source workflow.
        I’ll keep an eye on your blog to keep reading the nice posts and for when the screencasts are available.
        Thanks again and thankyou also for being bold enough to make the leap and to prove that it can be done in linux.

        • rileybphoto
          March 28, 2014

          Thanks! I am pretty happy with the website redesign (I just want to update it with better photos ;). And like you said, I am sure no one can really tell which software applications I used.

          I am also worried about the future of Aftershot Pro. The .deb packages for Linux on their download page don’t even work anymore because they rely on ia32-libs package which has moved to the multiarch system. Supposedly, they are working on a new and improved version.

          I plan on going the darktable + GIMP route. The latest version of darktable is great. It’s really mature now and the community is starting to grow. I just which it had ASP’s simple UI.