Dream Tomorrow, Live Today, Cherish Yesterday

Irish Country Town and AMAZING new Lightroom Module

Leica M9

One day the afternoon light was just too harsh for landscape, so we pulled into the little town of Allihies and just wandered around. This is my kind of shooting!

There was a graveyard, as you can see. This one grabbed me more than any other I saw on the trip. It was quiet and peaceful. Every name was so... Irish. O'Sullivan, and all that kind of thing. I had a feeling of "reverence" taking my time and just trying to soak up the moment. Thinking about these people, that had lived in this small town hundreds of years before. I hope this shot represents that.

Now onto this Lightroom 4 announcement. There is a new "Map" module, that is just amazing. Basically, your images can be encoded with their GPS information. Lightroom will then access Google maps, and integrate them. In other words, you can point at a picture or pictures, and go to the map to see where they were taken, OR, you can go to anywhere in the world, and LR will show you the pics you took there.

(You can click it for a larger version). When I was on the picture above, I clicked the Map module, and this is what is displayed. This is the small town, and you can see how many shots I took from each location! You can zoom in and out, and you can even preview your images right on the map.

As good as LR is with keeping photos by date, using keywords and so on, there are times where I say "I want to see all the images I took at XXXX place..." Now we can do that.

Some cameras have GPS built in and record this. None of mine do, so I bought a nifty little device called a GPS recorder. (Link to it on Amazon.) This device continually records my whereabouts whenever I'm moving. At the end of the day, or trip (whatever), you plug it into the computer, and export the data. Now you import this "track log" into the LR map module. LR compares the GPS time stamps with the time stamps on your images and automatically applies the GPS to the images' EXIF.

Totally magic! Life is good for photographers right now!

Snortin Norton meets Lightroom

Canon 5D Mark II, 180mm F/3.5 Macro, f/3.5, 1/5, iso 160

When I was a kid working in my Uncle's motorcycle shop (Cycle Center in San Leandro CA in case any of you knew it), we still had a few Norton's hanging around.  An English make along the lines of BSA and Triumph, Norton's were basically a pain as far as I was concerned.

Primitive and always leaking oil.  Kind of like the people that usually bought them! Ha ha. This was in the mid-70's when the Japanese bikes were just coming into their own. In short order, the Japanese bikes raced past the English ones in all categories save possibly "panache." Norton's were a holdout to a bygone era.  Unfortunately they spent more time in the shop than on the road.  But anyway, we always called them "Snortin Norton's."

This Norton is a resident of the wonderful Western Aeroplane and Automotive museum (http://www.waaamuseum.org) which I have featured here on the blog several times.  

The effect I chose is known as "high key."  The idea is not just to make it black and white, but to make all the lighter areas white. I like it for this image because it emphasizes the gritty and simple nature of the motorcycle.  And how do you do this?  Well in Lightroom it is pretty darn easy.  A strong curves adjustment, move the exposure up a bit, add some contrast.

When you have achieved a particular look you like, you can save the entire set of adjustments to what is called a "preset." Then you can apply this effect to any image with a single click. I have both presets I developed myself, as well as ones I have found on the web.

There's a great new source for quality presets, called www.presetpond.com.  This guy has done a very nice job with the presentation and the presets are really useful. Check it out!

Let's talk a bit more about Lightroom, shall we?  As you may know, version 3 has been in production release status for a couple of months now.  There are innumerable small and subtle improvements.  I believe it also as the best image rendering of any software out there (i.e. what it does with the data, to turn it into an image). 

Despite my enthusiasm (and the same by most busy professional photographers) I have found it isn't for everyone.  It definitely seems to suit "software people" better than people who are "computer users." A lot of people are more comfortable with the "single editing" nature of something like Photoshop.  I personally believe they are both wasting a lot of time, and missing out with respect to utilizing their collection of photography.

But anyway, a couple of resources have caught my eye recently that would be helpful to you if you have interest in Lightroom.  The first is an extensive review at www.dpreview.com.  The author is someone (like many of us) that heretofore lived in Photoshop.  Taking on this review project converted him. Here is an excerpt from the conclusion:

During the time that I have been working on this review in earnest, I have more or less replaced Photoshop CS5 for my personal photography with Lightroom 3. At the time of writing, I have so far used Lightroom 3 to process images from a three-day music festival, almost twenty separate concerts, and one of Europe's largest air shows, totaling well over 5000 RAW images in total.

Far from feeling handicapped I have been surprised by how much more efficient my workflow has become. What surprised me about Lightroom 3 is that although I had previously been using a primarily Adobe Photoshop CS3/4/5 and Bridge-based workflow for years, it didn't take me long to adapt to the Lightroom way of doing things. There is no getting around the fact that Lightroom is very different to editing software like Photoshop CS, Paint Shop Pro, Nikon's Capture NX2 and all the rest. The idea of importing images into a catalog takes some getting used to, as does the idea of 100% non-destructive editing, making virtual copies, and working with files as smart objects in Photoshop, but what makes Lightroom seem so different (and difficult) at first is what makes it so versatile after extended use.

If you don't have Photoshop CS5 or a similar image editing program, Lightroom 3 may be all that you need.

I couldn't have said it better myself.  When I began using LR, it was like the glove that fits the hand. The photography wizards at Adobe said "now that we know what digital photography and working with images is all about, let's design the best program to manage the entire process."  I recently had to ask my friend John Barclay how to do something relatively simple in PS because I had forgotten how.

So what if you want to learn LR? Maybe you have it, but haven't really "caught on." For my money, the best way to jump start your LR experience would be to get the Luminous Landscape LR Tutorial.  Michael Reichmann (The Man at the Luminous Landscape) has long been one of my favorite photographers, and a real inspiration to me. He's a pro at everything, and so of course when Lightroom came along there was no looking back.

Now he (above left) and Jeff Schewe have produced an excellent set of tutorials that can improve anyone's LR experience, whether you are a beginner or a user since the 1.0 days like me.

Feedback is welcome, whether on LR or that bad boy Snortin Norton.

Eastern Washington Afternoon (plus before & after)

Eastern Washington Afternoon

Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70mm F/2.8, f/10, 1/250, iso 200

We have here an image I am officially excited about. Especially the post processed version, as you see above. A lot of people tell me they enjoy seeing the original version of my processed images, and the steps I took. So we'll do that. But first, back to this image.

This was taken the same day as Thursday's "Reflecting" post, my day spent shooting with Toni Johnson.  We had driven to one of many "wide spot in the road" type towns, that have just a few small homes and a grain elevator. We had really come here to shoot a ramshackle barn type thing, pentagon shaped. Very unusual.  Starting to come undone.  As I was shooting it, I noticed this grain elevator in the background, and the wonderful sky. I used to think "Big Sky Montana" had the market cornered on America's skies. Nope, it's Eastern Washington, folks.

Anyway, I took a few shots, I wasn't super impressed, but it was a nice scene.  I also took a couple of fisheye versions.  I showed one of the originals to my tour group in The Palouse and got favorable comments. I think for one thing, it was different from anything in the Palouse.

This morning at home on my big monitor, the image really came to life.  From a subject matter point of view, of course the sky is a standout, but also the fact that each building is different. This is somewhat unique.  From a compositional point of view, what makes it work for me is the angle I have on the buildings.  This was purely accidental. Had I just driven up to them on the road, I likely would have shot them straight on, a much less dramatic scene.  So hopefully that is something we can all remember, walk back and forth on a subject like this and look for more drama.

When I first started working on it, I also took note of the power poles, and I thought maybe I would be channeling Sherri again.  (Let's hope she feels the magnetic pull!)  But Sherri's images don't usually contain this kind of sky, so I'm going to claim this one for myself.

Click on the continue link and I'll show the original, plus talk about the post.

One of those days

Canon 5D Mark II, 15mm F/2.8 Fisheye, f/9.0, 1/250, iso 100

My wife and I recently took a day off to have lunch out and just go for a drive up in the snow. No specific destination.  Brought my camera gear, of course. It was really a beaut day. "Chamber of Commerce" weather as they say. 

I took about 50 shots. I was pretty excited, the scenery was really nice. I was trying for "snow forms." Nice organic contours, maybe just a few plants, that kind of thing. 

When I got home and viewed them in Lightroom however, nothing really appealed that much to me. I tried hard to like some of them, but none of them were calling to me.  So I let it go for a week or so.

This morning I looked through them again, and this one seemed to have some promise. It's another situation where I'm kind of ambivalent and don't know if the image will resonate with anyone or not.

We had driven around Donner Lake, and were back as far as you can go. I had great cell coverage so I decided to call The Cheerleader to see how he was doing. We had a nice but brief chat. While talking with him I noticed this stand of trees off to the side of the road.  After we ended the call, I thought this seemed like a fisheye opportunity, so I mounted that lens and just walked down the road.

In Lightroom I began with a preset called Cinema Cold that definitely punched it up a bit. I made a few other adjustments, cloned out some power lines, and there we are.  I picked the title because it's one of those days when I'm unsure about my image.  I didn't think about The Cheerleader angle until I was already into post processing, so I suppose that is what is actually behind the selection of this image of all the others I took that day.

Oh. I also used the LR GND (Graduated Neutral Density) adjustment on this shot, that's what brought out the blue sky.  Since Toni asked about this the other day, let's have a brief tutorial on the continue page, shall we?

When the Magic Happens

Canon 5D Mark II, 180mm F/3.5 Macro, f/5.6, 1/2000, iso 640

On Friday night I saw we had a clear sky, after a rainy afternoon. I was determined to go out Saturday morning if it remained clear, which it did. But it was also extremely windy.  But as I have relayed here before on the blog, Dad always said "can't catch a fish if your line isn't in the water."

My real goal was to try to get some shots of leaves moving around. Slow shutter, with some fixed background, so that looking at the image you could "feel the wind."  Well, I had no success there. It was so bright out, that I could never get a slow enough shutter for it to work.  I tried a series of images stacked in photoshop to achieve this, but it wasn't working for me.

But anyway, some "magic" happened anyway. Like this shot, and several others I'll be sharing.  And even a Christmas present! I took the shot I plan to show on Christmas day.  Yippee.

So back to today's shot then, shall we? I was just driving around where I live. I spotted a pond that I had shot before. There were nice fall colors hanging over the pond, so I parked and tried shooting them.  Hmmm. Nothing spectacular.  Then I noticed all the leaves sitting in the bottom of the pond - hey that could be good.  So I shot a few of those.  Then I remembered the time I threw leaves into the pond (a different one) and shot the leaves floating away.

I tried that, but my artificial contributions looked, er, artificial. Just clumps of leaves.  As I contemplated what to do, leaves started blowing in on their own, right in front of me.  With the wind howling, I had to track the leaves, practically panning.  I loosened the ball on my tripod head and followed several.  This was the best one. I give credit to the amazing color and "sun stars" to the amazing 180mm Macro.

Are we having a time warp here? Is this Topaz Tuesday and I forgot to mention it? This image looks heavily modified, doesn't it. Well, amazingly it is not.  About 20 seconds in Lightroom.  Click the continue link and I'll show you the pre-process look, and I'm also going to do a little mini-tutorial on Lightroom.