Photographer Elliott Landy is known for his classic images of Woodstock generation music legends. He began his career in 1967 as a photographer documenting the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US and the underground music culture in New York City. Then, from 1968 to 1969, he photographed many underground rock and roll superstars – including Bob Dylan and The Band, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, Richie Havens, and many others who epitomized the classic rock and roll music scene. Landy also has the distinction of having been the official photographer for the 1969 Woodstock Festival.
photo:© Elliott Landy
At the end of the Sixties, after Woodstock, Landy moved on to other types of photography, wanting to return to his original inspiration – to share beauty. He chose to photograph his wife and two children while traveling together in a 40-passenger bus for seven years in Europe. Over the years he has continued the trend of photographing mothers and babies, as well as creating impressionist imagery of flowers and kaleidoscopic impressions of New York and London. He has created a large body of music film work, and makes his own music as well.
photo:© Elliott Landy
His photographs have been published worldwide for many years in all print mediums. He has published five photographic books, and has had photos in and on the cover of many major magazines worldwide, as well as on album covers, calendars, etc.
Over 35 years of photos – from classic rock star portraits to scenes from the civil rights era to loving images of children and flowers – require a serious photo management system. Landy has been using iView MediaPro almost since it was released to help him manage, edit, annotate, store and share these images with art galleries and collectors of books, magazines and prints.
iView is a brilliantly designed and conceived program… it has so many options that I can configure it to work the way I need it to work.
Recently, Landy took time from his busy schedule to speak with us about how he uses iView MediaPro to help him stay on top of his many projects and ever-growing library of images.
“As soon as I found iView, I started using it exclusively,” Landy told us. “I can do anything and everything I need to do to catalog my images, keep track of what I have done with them in the past, and share whatever portions of this information I want with my clients. And because the program is so user configurable, I can do it in my own way, not tied to structures created for ‘everybody’ – which never seem to work perfectly for me. With iView, I decide what type of information I want in the catalogs and what I want to show to others to whom I send my catalogs. And it is so totally easy and logical to use.”
He said that early on many of the leading vendors had given him the opportunity to try their applications.
When ever I use it, I am always very grateful that iView exists. There is nothing else like it and without it I could never keep track of all this work. There's nothing I need that MediaPro doesn't have or hasn't been willing to make when I ask for it.
“Before I found MediaPro, I had looked at them all – Canto Cumulus, ACDSee, iPhoto, even an early Extensis Portfolio, and several others, from the largest to the simplest. I was desperate to find a program which was configurable enough so I could use it the way I wanted to use it so that it would fit my unique needs. Each program had its own ‘way,’ – its own built-in logic and underlying system of organization theory.
photo:© Elliott Landy
“First of all, iView is a brilliantly designed and conceived program. It allows me to do everything I need simply and intuitively. Second, it has so many options that I can configure it to work the way I need it to work – it does not force me to adhere to its workflow as did several of the other cataloging apps I have used. Third, it has features that I never even thought about but once I found them, I could not do without. That’s what’s so special about iView: it’s personally configurable, extremely intuitive, its interface is organized so that I can do the tasks I do most often simply and quickly, without going through a lot of menus and submenus to make a simple change. As well, it has unique and brilliant features which have eased and quickened my workflow incredibly. I chose MediaPro because of its flexibility and features – it does everything that any other program does plus more and in a better way. AND they keep improving it. Whenever I have written to them, I have gotten a human response and an improvement in the next version when they agreed with what I suggested.”
As soon as I found iView, I started using it exclusively.
Prepping for Gallery Shows
“I use iView MediaPro to assemble shows of my photos which I send as catalogs to galleries. I might start with a basic catalog of 500 of my favorite classic rock photos. I will have to narrow this selection to the 60 prints that the gallery has space for. Using iView’s easily configurable color labeling and sorting system, I make my first selects – lets say 80 – and label them red. Then I go back and label my second select set as green, and so on until I reach the 60 that I need. What is great about iView is that I can label them with a single number key (NOTE: The number keys on a keyboard within iView correspond to preset defaults that the user can customize as desired.). No mouse, no option key, etc. Quick and easy. I can create my own user annotation fields to tell the gallery the captions, sizes, types of prints, and prices for each. Then I can configure iView to show the photo captions, sizes of the prints, or anything I want it to show, without being forced to show what the programmer thought I would want to show. In other words, I can control its final form. I can create either a .PDF, an .HTML page for a Web site, or a text list which I send to the client for review. I can also send the iView catalog itself along with a free reader (available for both Windows and Mac). All in all, I can send this in various forms to them both as a text list or an illustrated catalog. iView lets me print it out in many ways and sizes as well as create an HTML catalog to post on a server.
That’s what’s so special about iView: it’s personally configurable, extremely intuitive…
“At every step of the way, I can decide, and easily change the information I want visible for a certain type of catalog or sorting operation. I love the way you can so easily change the thumbnail size from tiny – so I can see hundreds of photos on my screen at once – to nearly full screen size. I use it to keep track of the thousands of photographs I have scans of; to sort and select the best images; to keep track of the images files or prints sent to each client (galleries, museums, collectors, publications); and to organize photos I want to include in my new projects. I also use it to keep track of my film and music files as well.
photo:© Elliott Landy
“The batch feature is great – it lets me handle a thousand images at one time – with it I can add information such as copyright, phone, name, and other information into a text file with basically a keystroke. The structure allows me to move images around in the computer and it keeps track of them. I can make different size images from my master file – let say my master scan is 100 MB. After sorting thru images, I decide on 35 that I want to submit for something. With a few simple clicks I can create small JPEGs of these files to send via e-mail or CD-ROM. At all points of my iView workflow, nearly everything I do is user configurable.”
Workflow
“For my ongoing photo work, I’ll shoot 35 mm film, then scan all the film, putting each roll into a separate folder. I then make a MediaPro catalog of all the rolls from that year or that project. Next, I’ll edit them roll by roll, made easy by the iView “Organize” panel which allows me to see and sort one folder of photos at a time. I use the color labelling feature to organize them, which works similarly to the way I used to do it on a light box. I make my first selection, which is broad. These are Red color (# 1 keystroke default color in iView). Then I isolate all the Red labeled images in the particular catalog and look through them again, comparing all my favorites, and make my second choice, which I change to Green (# 2 keystroke default color in iView). I do this a few more times until I have the best of the best – the final choices for the project. If I need to go back and get other photos, I simply sort by label color to see the second best batch.
photo:© Elliott Landy
“I often have multiple scans or versions of the same image file: one at 150 MB; again as a small JPEG; a third as an original unretouched scan; then as an adjusted file, ready for printing; another for Web use; another for e-mail only, etc. iView MediaPro, with its brilliant organizational vision and user configurable, intuitive interface helps me keep track of all this easily. When ever I use it, I am always very grateful that iView exists. There is nothing else like it and without it I could never keep track of all this work. There's nothing I need that MediaPro doesn't have or hasn't been willing to make when I ask for it.”
