Victorious Voices Returns!!

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.

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Adobe DNG Converter

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.

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Using Lightroom’s Filter Bar

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

Filter Bar and Toolbar

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Photo of the Month – Cathedral Grove

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

The Sentinel

Ancient Watchers

Ancient Watchers

Okay, that’s it.  Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.