Celebrating Fathers… and Families…

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Hi Folks:

I’m old enough to remember when a family was considered to be a combination of a mother, a father and 1.8 children – although I was never sure which one of the kids lost out on that one.  But if that was considered ‘normal’, my family was, and continues to be anything but normal.  Of course, if you go back 600 years or so the word family meant ‘servants, domestics or members of a household’ (from the Latin familia) so the etymology has changed a bit over time.

In his book ‘Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah‘, Richard Bach wrote:

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” Continue Reading →

For Marcia…

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Hi Folks:

Eleven years ago today Marcia proposed to me – down on one knee and everything. After much deliberation and careful consideration (all of which took about ¼ second), I said ‘Yes’.

We continue to say “Yes!!” to each other every day.

I wrote this poem for her and wanted to share it with you:

Every morning,
as you awake,
I caress your fingers
with my face…
and know we two are loved.

Happy 11th Anniversary, Darlin’!!

Forever and For Always,
Me.

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.

Victorious Voices Returns!!

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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 →

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.

Continue Reading →

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

Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Cathedral Grove

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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.