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Hi Folks:
We started this project by making a photo book for our mothers for Mother’s Day. Marcia’s mom is no longer with us, but wherever she is now, we trust she appreciates it! Mike’s mom is still here, so this is dedicated to her and to all of the other Mothers out there today (including Marcia!)
We made this book in Lightroom 4, using images made by both Marcia and Mike. Thanks also to ‘The Board of Wisdom‘ for providing the quotes for us! If you click on the image below it will open the e-book as a .pdf file. We trust you’ll enjoy it!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
This image was made on April 7, down at Clover Point and looking back toward Victoria. I was out for a walk that day without my camera, but the wind was really blowing and the clouds were just incredible so I made a number of images using my cell phone camera. It was blowing so hard I had to lean against lamp posts and the like to hold the camera steady, but I think the results in this image at least were worth it. This is a six-image panorama, stitched together in Autopano Pro and pushed around some in Lightroom. This is the first image I’ve posted that was processed in Lightroom 5 Beta (some great new features, BTW – can hardly wait for the final product!).
 Oncoming Storm Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
One of the ‘challenges’ of living in Victoria is that it’s such a culturally rich, diverse place to be that there are times we want to befriend Hermione Grainger. We’re sure she’s a lovely young woman, but our ulterior motive would be to see if we could borrow her Time Turner. We’d even invite her along; she could just slip the chain over all three of our heads… One case in point is that this past week marked the 4th Annual Victorious Voices High School Slam Championships. Mike was able to be there last year, but Marcia wasn’t: an event we wrote about here. Monday night was the Semi-Finals, with eight teams from five schools, plus a ‘wild card’ team made of students from other schools. Monday night was also the monthly Pen in Hand Poetry and Prose Readings at Serious Coffee in Cook St. Village. Tuesday night was the Youth Slam at Solstice Café, but there was also a talk at the Royal BC Museum (with Sierra Club BC) on the ecology and preservation of the Flathead River ecosystem in southeastern BC. However, nothing was going to keep us from attending the Victoria Event Centre on Wednesday night to attend the Victorious Voices Finals.
Continue reading “Victorious Voices Returns!!“
Hi Folks:
This was planned as a fairly short blog post (for me), but it didn’t work out that way. It describes an experiment that I thought would work, and it does. Before we get started we need to iron out a few terms. A ‘RAW’ file in the world of digital photography is essentially the raw data from the camera sensor. In order to be able to see that raw file as an image, it needs to be run through some software called a raw converter. Don’t worry, we’re not going to be throwing around terms like linear demosaicing here – suffice it to say that the raw converter takes the original image data and massages it into an RGB image that looks like a photograph. Now, one of the challenges for people that make raw converter software (ACDSee, Adobe Camera Raw/ Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Bibble, Capture One from Phase One, etc) is that camera companies regularly put out new camera models and these same companies seem to take great delight in creating new, proprietary raw formats for each camera they release. In response, the software companies need to regularly release updates to their software that include these new camera profiles. Going from Lightroom 3.x to Lightroom 4.x for example is a software upgrade and includes a number of new features. Going from Lightroom 4.3 to 4.4 includes some bug fixes and updates, but it also includes profiles for two dozen new cameras.
Continue reading “Adobe DNG Converter“
Hi Folks:
Last month we did a series of posts on “The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets”, but there is one other area in Lightroom where you can create presets that we set aside because it deserves its own space. That’s the Filter Bar. As seen below, you’ll find the filter bar in the Library module at the top of the screen. If you can’t see the filter bar, press the backspace ( \ ) key to reveal it. One aspect of the filter bar connects to the Library module’s toolbar options; if you don’t see the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, press the ‘T’ key. Together they look like this:
 Filter Bar and Toolbar Continue reading “Using Lightroom’s Filter Bar“
Hi Folks:
March has been a busy month for us, but we did take one day toward the end of the month and head ‘up island’ to Cathedral Grove. A part of MacMillan Provincial Park, Cathedral Grove has been ‘gentrified’ to provide easy access to a stand of several-hudred-year-old Douglas fir and cedar trees. Unfortunately many of the trees are suffering from root rot/fungal infection, and a heavy wind can bring down a rain of branches. Fortunately for us, on the day we were there we had sunshine (it only rained while we were driving), little wind, and not many other people. I made over 400 images that day, almost all of them for HDR/panoramic images, and collapsed that number down into less than fifty composites. I’ve joined them all up but have yet to push them around in Lightroom. I do have a couple, however, and thought I’d share them here. Both are 3-shot bracketed exposures (HDR, at +1/0/-1) and converted to B&W in Lightroom.
 The Sentinel  Ancient Watchers Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
Here we are, with the first week of March come and gone already and we have yet to do a ‘Photo of the Month’ post for February! Egads!! I do have something to share with you, but it has less to do with a particular photograph and more to do with the way it was processed. The image below is one I captured using my cell phone camera – nothing new there – but it was also processed in the phone using ‘Photoshop Touch‘ software for Android phones. There are iPhone/iPad versions of the software as well as a version for Android tablets, but since my Samsung phone is what I have and use, I figured it was worth the $5 to give it a try. Continue reading “Photo of the Month – February“
Hello, Dear Readers!
Marcia here. I’ve been having a delicious conversation – in poems – with a friend and I wanted to share one segment of that with you! Enjoy!
wiggles & jiggles & giggles galore
laughed ever so hard & still wanted more
so in order to keep the momentum flowing
i thought to record what i thought to be knowing
as i reached for a pen something soft i did touch
it startled me ever so, ever so, ever so much
that i started to giggle all over again
realizing where i was now & where i had been
my feet had been planted quite firm on the earth
yet with all of our banter, camaraderie, mirth
bubbles of giggles expanded inside
and with highest vibrations taken me for a ride
with my head in the clouds and my toes in the sea
what touched me was water, yes water! you see
and i know that you know what i know to be true
’cause we live magic lives, we decidedly do
the water of life fills our glorious cup
for you see we are blessed in the world of UP
In Light and such glorious Laughter!
Marcia 
Hi Folks:
This is part 5 of a 5-part series on Lightroom presets. The segments are:
Export Module
Well, we’ve come full circle. Your images have been imported, selected, keyworded, marked, processed, output, etc. and none of them have been touched by Lightroom (except if you specifically instructed to delete images from the hard drive). The most common way of showing your images – whether in an online gallery like Flickr, Smugmug or 500px, on a site like Google+ or Facebook or simply on a flash drive or by e-mail is to export them from Lightroom. When you choose to export an image, Lightroom takes the initial information from the image file, applies the Develop settings and other changes you’ve made and creates a copy of each image that is then exported to an external plugin, a publish service, website, hard drive or e-mail location. While Photoshop has a facility to export multiple sizes of an image or image simultaneously, Lightroom does not. Lightroom does however allow you to create presets with various export options. Continue reading “The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: Export Module“
Hi Folks:
This is part 4 of a 5-part series on Lightroom presets. The segments are:
Slideshow/Print/Web Modules
The Slideshow, Print and Web modules all use presets in a similar manner, although the outputs of each are quite different. In these modules the presets are called Templates, and in each module Lightroom ships with a certain set of standard templates. One can also create user templates based on the sliders in the right panel, and/or download presets online. Templates for each module are available for free and in some cases for sale. In each module one can also create a ‘Saved’ output – i.e. a Saved Slideshow, a Saved Print or a Saved Web Gallery, and in doing so Lightroom will create a speciall Collection that combines the settings for that output module with the image(s) associated with it. As with the Book module, these Collections are merely collections of images and more can be added or images removed. Continue reading “The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: Slideshow, Print and Web Modules“
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