Category Archives: Photography

Posts regarding photography and related topics.

Essentials of Digital Photography

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Hi Folks:

A little while back I was asked to give a talk to our local Photography Meetup Group on Lightroom, and so before the talk I asked people to submit questions.  My thought was that I could just stand up there for an hour or so and answer questions from people.  However, the only question I was asked (by several people) was, “What is Lightroom and why would I want to use it, anyway?”  So much for that idea…  Since it seemed I was going to have to create an actual presentation, my next thought was that before I could talk about Lightroom I needed to cover some of the basics of digital photography just so everyone was in the same place.  I created the presentation using PowerPoint, and today I created what amounts to a video version of that presentation.  Clicking on the image below will take you to the video.  It’s about 1/2 hour long, but if you’re a photographer I trust you’ll gain something from it.  This post is complementary to but different from our ‘Photography and Colour Management‘ post.

 

Essentials of Digital Photography

Essentials of Digital Photography

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. There’s some debate about the truth of ‘ETTR’ or Expose to the Right in digital photography. On one side we have people like George Jardine, Michael Reichmann (Optimize Exposure) and Bob DiNatale (The Optimum Digital Exposure) and on the other side is Michael L. Baird (Histogram Myth explicated). These people know much more than I do, so I’ll leave you to decide. For me, I expose as much to the right as possible, without clipping the highlights and work out the rest in Lightroom. Michael Reichmann’s first ETTR post was written in 2003, and camera technology has changed a lot since then. Whereas with film we could get maybe 5 or stops of dynamic range, with some digital cameras we now get 12-15 stops. This also begs questions surrounding the need for HDR, but that’s another issue.

P.S. II, the sequel 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.

The Photographer’s Assistant

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Hi Folks:

In all of my years of making images I’ve never done a lot of shooting with other people, and I’ve never had an assistant.  However, at the end of July a friend and I went out to make some photographs together and I found out how handy having an assistant can be.  All of a sudden I had someone who could…

Photographer's Assistant

Photographer’s assistant, at the ready

Checking Composition

Double check the composition

Ensure Level

Ensure that the tripod is level and stable

Press Shutter

Press the shutter

I wonder what the day rates are?

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Photo of the Month – July

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Hi Folks:

At the end of July a friend of mine and I traveled slightly ‘up-island’ toward Duncan to visit the old stone ‘Butter Church’.  It’s a church with a somewhat colourful history – built in the mid-19th-century by a Catholic priest, using Native workmen for the construction.  The church was built on Native land with a verbal agreement for it to be there.  The priest in charge raised dairy cattle on the land surrounding the church, churned butter from the milk he collected and used the money from the sales of the butter to pay the workers, hence the name.  Services were held in the church for ten years, but the local bishop wasn’t happy with the verbal agreement for the location, ordered a new church built on a different site and the existing one was deconsecrated and abandoned.  A few attempts were made over the years to restore the church, but today it has largely been left to the elements.  The quality of the original stonework is mostly what’s left to be admired.

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Greeting Cards

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Hi Folks:

As often happens with our posts, this one begins with a seemingly unrelated mish-mash of ideas that will hopefully find some confluence by the time I’m finished writing (and Marcia’s had a a chance to proofread it).  We’ll see!

To start with, today is Marcia’s Dad’s birthday.  He’s 90 years young today, and although he may not be quite as spry as he was in 1933 for example, he’s still quite vivacious and certainly not done with life!

The next thread in this post is our friend Bob.  Bob is an photographer.  An analog photographer.  Yes, that means he uses film.  He’s not adverse to digital and he does scan his work when required, but he’s in love with printing, with the feel of a photographic print.  While 99% or more of images today are seen on some form of electronic device, Bob maintains that there’s there’s something lacking in not being able to hold a print in your hands, feel the texture of the paper, to hold something ‘real’.  I don’t print much of my work, but I agree with him.  I read a post recently about another photographer, David Duchemin, who makes prints of some of his recent work and then leaves them for others to find.  He leaves them in coffee shops, on benches, wherever, and he has no knowledge or control of what happens to them after he walks away.  That, however, is the whole point, and I like the idea so much I’ve been giving serious thought to adopting it. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month: Triptychs Revisited

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Hi Folks:

For this month’s Photo of the Month’ post I thought I’d combine a Lightroom tutorial as well.  In the past we’d done blog posts on making diptychs and triptychs in Lightroom and on creating mirror images in Lightroom; this post combines both of those ideas.  So, we’ll start with the final image and then go back to the beginning:

Nature's Sonograph

Nature’s Sonograph

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Photo of the Month – May

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Hi Folks:

We’re featuring one of Marcia’s flower images as our ‘Photo of the Month’ for May.  While Marcia doesn’t share Mike’s passion for f/stops, shutter speeds and the like, she has great fun making images with her Android-enabled cell phone camera.  We both do.  Almost all of our cell phone images are made using the Camera 360 software, as ‘undeveloped’ as possible, and then brought into Lightroom for final editing.  This is Marcia’s favourite image of those she made in May.  Victoria is known as the ‘City of Gardens’, and walking anywhere in Victoria for most of the year is an open invitation to stop and photograph the wonder! Continue Reading →

Flowers for Mother’s Day

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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!

Flowers for Mother's Day

Hugs,
M&M

Photo of the Month – Oncoming Storm

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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

Oncoming Storm

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.

Adobe DNG Converter

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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

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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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