Category Archives: Photography

Posts regarding photography and related topics.

2013 Photo Calendars

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Hi Folks:

Update: If you’re looking for 2014 calendars, please click here.

If you’re looking for templates for Lightroom/Photoshop, please see the bottom of this post.

As I’ve done for the past two years, I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars.  There are usually a number of people who generate templates for Lightroom/ Photoshop as well, and while I haven’t yet encountered any this year, I’ll add them to this post when I find some.  I used MS Word 2007 to make the template, but saved it as both a Word 2007 file and a Word 97-2003 compatible file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this: Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – A Return to Film

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Hi Folks:  According to Wikipedia, it was 120 years ago (1892) that George Eastman first began supplying Thomas Edison and William Dickson with 35mm film for their movie projectors.  Film was around before that, of course, but in a variety of sizes and feeding systems; 35mm film became a standard in 1909, and in 1934 the 35mm film cassette for still photography was introduced.

So, in honour of 120 years a group of us met on a rainy afternoon in November at Ross Bay Cemetery to celebrate a (temporary?) return to film and to the days of B&W.  Some had never shot film before, for some it took a while to remember how to work a film-advance lever, and for others film is still in daily use.  For the most part there was no autofocus, no LCD screens (“you have to look through the little viewfinder there”), and no ‘instant’ results.  Those who had film cameras brought them, and those who didn’t were welcome to bring some film and borrow a camera from someone else.  I brought six cameras (five 35mm and one double lens reflex) and loaned out three.  For those who just can’t get into film, they were welcome to bring their digital cameras and there wasn’t a bucket of tar nor a bag of feathers anywhere about.  More on that in a bit.  Overall it was a lot of fun.  Continue Reading →

More on Lightroom and Metadata

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Hi Folks:

Someone on Twitter recently asked about understanding Lightroom’s various metadata fields.  I responded by providing a link to our Lightroom, File Management and Metadata post.  She wrote back and basically said, ‘Thanks for the information, but what I really want to know is what all of those fields are for…”  So I wrote the following.  She seemed to appreciate it, and I thought it might be of use to you as well. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – August

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Hi Folks:

Since we profiled one of Marcia’s cell phone camera images for July, it seemed only fair to use one of my cell phone images for August.  I saw this leaf as I was walking down the sidewalk one day, and it reminded me of a little lizard sunning itself on the concrete – blended in really well with the background, too!

Leaf Lizard

Leaf Lizard

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
Mike.

The ‘Orton Effect’ in Lightroom

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Hi Folks:

As with many photographers, almost from the time I started making photographs I also began playing with them.  For negatives this involved darkroom work, with slide film I would try mounting two images in the same frame, but all of this became a lot easier when I got into digital processing.

In Lightroom 2 (I think), Adobe introduced the ‘negative clarity’ slider, and while it was fun to use on its own, one day I wondered what would happen if I made a virtual copy of an image, overexposed both the original and the VC slightly (dual mounting slides in the same frame holder made the overall image darker), and applied negative clarity to one, then combined them using the LR/Enfuse plugin.  The result was this: Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – July

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Hi Folks:

End of the month again, and that means it’s time for my favourite image made in the past month.  This month is a little different because the image of choice was sort of a collaborative effort between three people: Marcia, Freeman Patterson, and me.  Granted, my input was limited and Freeman Patterson’s was purely inspirational, because this is Marcia’s image, made with her cell phone camera.  For some inexplicable reason Marcia doesn’t share my fascination with f/stops, ISO and shutter speeds, but she has a very good eye.  To that end, I borrowed a copy of Freeman Patterson’s “Photography and the Art of Seeing” from the library for her.  It remains one of my favourite photography books of all time, and it’s now one Marcia appreciates too.  It’s changed the way she looks at the image in her viewfinder.  As I said, she has a good eye.

This image was taken at the rose garden at the Empress Hotel here in Victoria.  You can see some more images of Marcia’s, made the same day, here: Empress Rose Garden.

Ladybug

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Photo of the Month… Memories

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Hi Folks:

Every photograph has some significance to the person who made it; there’s a ‘story’ attached to every image. Those viewing the image may have their own associations or memories that lend significance to the image, but it’s often said that a great photograph can stand on its own, without explanation. Perhaps. As both a writer and a photographer I like to think the image and the story go hand in hand. Continue Reading →

Collections in Lightroom

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Hi Folks:

I’ve done a few tutorials on what I consider to be among the most important of Lightroom’s features – digital asset management (DAM), and how you can use the various options to help you organize your images.  Among the benefits are being able to find ONE image out of 10,000 or 100,000 or… Lightroom allows several different ways of classifying your images – folder structure (on your hard drive), keywords, colour labels, pick flags, metadata (capture date or camera serial number for example) and more, and the filter bar at the top of the Library module allows you to quickly highlight specific images based on these criteria.  However, there are times when one wants to create a, well, a ‘collection’ of images that share some theme or purpose from across different folders, either temporarily or permanently.  This is where Collections come in.  Lightroom works with two types of Collections – Standard Collections and Smart Collections, although the Standard Collections include one special variant called a ‘Quick Collection’ or ‘Target Collection’.  Because this post is going to be long I’ve broken it into three parts. One can read down or click on a specific section. Continue Reading →

100 Photos

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Hi Folks:

Rather than doing a ‘Photo of the Month’ post for May, I thought I’d profile someone else’s work instead.  Actually, a lot of someones.  A non-profit group in Sweden called ‘ADay.org‘ asked photographers around the world to make photographs on one day – May 15, 2012 – and upload them to the group’s website. Although a day is 24 hours, because of international time zones it actually worked out to a 48-hour period.  Each image had to fit into one of three categories: home, work or connections, and there were various sub-categories for each.  Each photographer was allowed to upload up to 10 images of his/her work.  All of the images will eventually be displayed on the group’s website, and selected images will be put together into a book.

All of the images are currently being gathered, organized, etc. and they’re expecting to launch their full website in June.  In the interim they’ve provided two links: 100 photos and 100 profiles.  The first link shows a selection of 100 images made that day and the second shows profiles of 100 of the photographers who submitted their work.  Clicking on an image will show a larger version, as well as the categories and description of the images (in one of a number of languages!)  Clicking on a profile will show the image(s) uploaded by that photographer and other relevant information.  Those who submitted work run the gamut from the very old to the very young, of every ethnicity, income bracket, etc.  And their images are all personal glimpses into the lives of these people.  People made photographs and described moments of birth, life, death, joy, sadness, work, play, religion, the environment, concerns… the entire panopoly of events, all happening (in the annals of time) more or less simultaneously.

We’ve looked at a number of the images and several of the profiles so far, and we’re amazed both at the diversity and the closeness of the subjects.  A little girl having breakfast in Portugal could be seated in the United States, and grandparents giving their grandson a bath in Japan could be doing the same in England.  It shows us how incredibly diverse we are, and also how much we all share the same hopes and dreams, the same caring for each other.

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. You can see our May 15th contributions here:

Marcia
Mike

Photography Apps for Android

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Hi Folks:

There are probably enough apps in the world today that if one were to compile a list it would rival the average encyclopaedia for size.  You do remember what an encyclopaedia looks like, don’t you?

I honestly have no idea how many Android apps are available for photographers, and I admit to using only a few of them myself, but I thought I’d start with a couple of suggestions and those who are interested can add their own recommendations in the comments.  I  prefer my digital images ‘uncooked’ so to speak so that I can use the processing power of my computer to tweak them rather than the processing power of my camera (or phone).  Even .jpg images can be processed better in Lightroom, so I tend to start with as few processing options in the camera as possible.  Making images with a cell phone camera poses its own challenges, in part because the files tend to be small, flat and low resolution.  Still, it’s the one ‘camera’ I have with me almost all the time, even when my camera is at home.  So, here are a few of the apps I appreciate (all available from the Google Play Store).  Some are free, and some are a few dollars.  Some offer both versions (with and without advertising). Continue Reading →