Where there's smoke...

Musings

I promise, I'm not turning this into a "food blog". But I had a great dinner the other night and so I was thinking about it and so...

Do you like sushi?

I do. I'm a little picky, though, I won't eat squid or eel or anything really exotic. But I love salmon and tuna and butterfish and shrimp and crab and... since I'm a 'healthy eater' (which means I eat a lot, not that I eat healthy!), I'm an "All you can Eat" kind of guy. I like trying a whole bunch of dishes.

If you're ever in the Thornhill or Aurora area (OK, this is for my local readers! The rest of you will have to experience this vicariously), I have a couple of recommendations.

First of all, there's a place in Thornhill, on Centre Street just west of New Westminister, with the unlikely name "HOCKEY SUSHI". They have learned to make OUTSTANDING 'kamikachi rolls'* (spicy salmon rolls), my favourite. They don't have sashimi at lunchtime but they do at dinner and they know how to buy quality ingredients! Also at dinner (I was there last night) you can get some more traditional oriental dishes such as their General Tao Chicken which I couldn't stop eating!

* I was first introduced to these at Ginza Sushi at Yonge and Clark in Thornhill but they've changed a lot over the years and we don't go there any more. I mention it because the owner's name is Alice and we were regulars and got personal service. They opened a number of additional places and it isn't personal any more. By the way I gave them a CD of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" to play on their sound system but I guess they didn't appreciate his music! You might, though, so click the link! It's better if you're high. Just sayin...

Don't knock the iPhone shot. Besides I was more interested in eating than in photographing.  You can tell by the fact there are only 3 spicy salmon rolls left on the plate! The dish in the back is beef udon which I also enjoy.

In Aurora, there's "SUSHI DEN TEPPANYAKI" on Wellington Street just East of Yonge. I first went there with Dr. Ron and absolutely love the quality of the place. Their food melts in your mouth!

Let me know if you want to join me when I'm next in the area. I don't need a lot of arm-twisting as an excuse to go there!

What does this have to do with Photography? We should all take a lesson from the Sushi houses who pay a great deal of attention to plating and presentation. They're doing "Composition" right there on your plate! Worth considering next time you're setting up a shot!

Aurora Presentation

I did a presentation last night to the Aurora Public Library Camera Club, invited by Ronen Grunberg to speak. It's hard to turn down a chance to show off your work!

Unfortunately, there was a timing misunderstanding. I thought I had more time and was taken aback when I had about 15 minutes of presentation left and the guy walked in from the library and said "we're locking up the doors and kicking you out in 5 minutes!".

So I didn't get to the "meat" of the presentation, and skipped through the Composition portion much, much too fast. So today, I took the presentation, annotated it a bit (since viewers wouldn't be there to hear me speak), converted it to a PowerPoint Slide Show (you don't need PowerPoint to watch it) and posted it online here:  www.photography.to/presentations/onlineaurora.ppsx. It's about a 75Mb download. Feel free to watch it, just don't steal any of my images, they are copyrighted, OK? Near the end you'll hit a slide that says "My ECLECTIC Mix". When you exit that, there's a 5-minute automated slideshow with one of my favourite music tracks, Moe Koffman's "Swinging Shepherd Blues".

Facebook: the good, the bad and the ugly

I hate to admit it, but I've become a Facebook addict. I have a couple of hundred people I've "friended", either they're people I actually know or photographers I've had dialogue with and am impressed by their work. 

The frustrating parts are (1) the "Ugly", FB really does degrade the rendering of images, and (2) the "Bad", which has two subgroups: (a) stupid people who make stupid comments, some of them mean-spirited and (b) people who seek validation and are so insecure of their own vision that they put up things like, "does this look better in black and white or colour?". 

On the "Good" side, first there are some absolutely OUTSTANDING images posted. Both for viewing (I'd love to have that on my wall!) or for learning (how'd s/he do that? I'll file that away next time I'm shooting that kind of subject, or "that gives me an idea, I'm going to try that!"). There are also new people who are stuck and looking for help, although sometimes typing their question into Google would get 650,000 answers... 

It can be educational: where do you think I learned about back-button autofocusing? My black and white flowers on a black background came from FB when Antony Northcutt posted his images. I've been in touch with him, even suggested some alternate techniques. I've tried skin softening using Frequency Separation and it's filed away in my toolbag next time I need it. Today I saw a Milky Way shot much better than mine and in a dialogue with the maker, I learned his approach is different (a little) than mine and I'm going to try it next time.

It can be inspirational. I read some of the street photography groups because I'd really like to learn how to do that better. There are some really great studio shots out there (and some bad ones: what "not" to do!). And people posting Icelandic landscapes and aurora borealis shots that make me go and stare at my bucket list.

I participate in 3 or 4 groups, I thought I'd share some here.

• the "Photoshop and Lightroom" group which just passed 90,000 members. There are inspiring images and ideas there.
• Topaz: both the "Users" group and the "Impression" group, to see what others are doing and get ideas
• of course the "Haliburton Highlands Camera Club" private group for members only, as well as a few other local groups, and
• The Big Bang Theory because I love that show (although not as much since Kaley cut her hair! OK, I'm shallow. I admit it).

The trick is to simply scroll past posts that make you shake your head or anything with a cat in it. Move on to the interesting ones and the things your friends are posting. It's a great way to keep up with what's going on in their world.

Now that I've written this, I've got an idea for my next newspaper column (you think it's hard coming up with stuff to write here? Try writing general, not-too-technical photography articles every week!). 

Speaking of my Bucket List

Mine is mostly about places I'd like to go (and photograph) rather than things I want to do. Partly because that sentence usually ends "...while I still can..." and that's beginning to be a little in doubt by now.

If you've been reading me for a while, you know that I want to start painting (like with real brushes and paint). Yesterday I bought an easel. Next week, some paints and brushes, but I'm going to drop into the Cultural Centre on a Monday because they have painting classes there an I want to pick peoples' brains. Technically that's not a "I want to do this before I die" thing, though.

Again if you've been around here for a while, you know I want to do Iceland. And New Zealand. I've been to Newfoundland three times and want to go back again. Africa and Alaska are there too, but further down the list. And I've never been to New Orleans. Photography and music combined.

Speaking of New Orleans: I'm thinking "Road Trip", maybe late summer. Gas is cheaper now. Anyone interested in coming along? Contact me...

I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things. But as Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over until it's over".

Published again

The GTCCC (Greater Toronto Council of Camera Clubs) has posted a short version of my tutorial on High Contrast Black and White images on Black Backgrounds on their website. Check it out here. You can find the full length version on my technical blog here and I'm available to come out to clubs to talk about it and other topics live. I'm scheduled to go to Bancroft next week, FWIW. 

GTCCC also put up some images from our club in their gallery and one of them is mine. Just so you know, our club executive chose the four images but I recused myself from voting for my own image, so I'm honoured that they liked it.


Some pictures...

Fun with Cows! Reworking an earlier image using Topaz Glow. Just for fun! You can get a 15% discount on any Topaz product by using this link (or the one at right) and entering "faczen" in the code field on the order page. 

Does anyone want me to write up how I do my signature (lower left of the picture) or the grey 3D frame and title on my images? I can do a short tutorial and post it on my tech blog, but not if people don't ask me for it. Comment here, or send me a note and I'll do it.

I'm in a bit of a lull. Busy with other things so I've not gotten out to shoot much in the past couple of weeks. This is just about the only shot I liked, done today (February 2):

It's an Impression-edited image of a snowbank. I just kind of like the way it flows from lower left to upper right. I left the blue in the shadows on purpose because it could also be clouds. FWIW, I used the Monet-Impasto preset.

Here's another reworked image from a while ago, using Impression:

 A couple of people said, "Wow! How'd you get that shot of Leonard Cohen?".  But some of you know who this is (Steve Weiman, lead guitarist for FOG) and where I shot it (Hugh's Room in Toronto). Shooting in concert lighting is challenging, but Impression helps a lot. I used one of the Chiaroscuro presets to focus the light on his face and guitar, then one of the Impressionist presets (could have been Monet) to give it the painterly look.

Where there's Smoke

And finally, Mark Girard posted some work he'd been doing with smoke. I didn't feel like copying his setup, besides I didn't really have anything that would give me continuous smoke: I had to light and then blow out a candle to get some! Here's one setup attempt:

I thought of trying this oil lamp. When you crank the flame down it gets really smokey at one point. But I had to be really careful not to set fire to the nylon tent! (I'll bet you were thinking that's what I did, right?)

How's this for a neat lighting setup? I haven't worked on this image yet... 

However i did work on this real surprise image. Believe it or not, this is basically straight out of the camera!

This was in my light tent, but with a black background. Illumination came from my ringlight which I had dismounted and was holding off to the left. This is the original shot SOOC (Straight Out Of the Camera) except I cranked the blacks and shadows and then straightened it up a bit.  

I tried a bunch of edits and crops and in the end, I like the original much better! Even the lumpy cloth at the bottom. I couldn't do this again if I tried! Going in my "Best of 2015" list, for sure!

— 30 —

Did you miss me?

After I finished the fourth Lightroom article, I had to pay some attention to other things. So I haven't posted in a while. A few things did happen in the meantime...

Note: I added this little section after the fact. I had a few calls about the Lightroom articles so I wanted to make a quick response here. The articles don't "Teach" LR. They just summarize a few of the features and pitfalls for thos contemplating getting their feet wet in LR or who are new at it and are lost. The articles are supposed to be read in order, 1 to 4, but the nature of this blog means that they're posted in reverse and in fact, the first article has fallen off the bottom. Here's what to do: click on February in the Blog Archive at right (not in the screen capture below!)  to expand it, then click on the article itself, starting with #1 at the bottom.,

It's nice to be recognized!

Remember the "Mountain Man" image? It seems that some other people liked it as well. In fact it was awarded "BEST PORTRAIT" in the Digital images category at the 2010 GTCCC (Greater Toronto Council of Camera Clubs) Interclub competition. Yesssssssssss! Several people congratulated me, and a couple of them remarked, "OK, so isn't it time you got back to doing some painting? One of them was Hilarie who taught me in the first place. I need to make the time to focus on it and I will. In fact, I have an image in mind that I'd like to work on... news at 11. Which means later. I'm going to make a larger print and get it framed. When the same image won the Richmond Hill print competition last year, I won a free picture framing. If I can still find the award (hmmm. It's somewhere in my computer room!), I'll get it properly framed for display. It's getting hard to find space to display all my award-winning shots! LOL

I wasn't the only one to win an award at the GTCCC's. Irina Popova, Lance Gitter, Fern Gitter, Bud Newton, Robert Fowler and many other RHCC members won awards as well. Hilarie, who I mentioned above, won 4 (four) awards! Including First Place overall in Digital Pictorial. Click this link to look through some really fine examples of the art of photography.

Why I don't shoot pictures for a living
Last week a business colleague/friend asked me to shoot his picture for a business card. I was dumb not to ask how he wanted to use the picture. I came to his house, spent an hour or two shooting then a couple of hours editing before I posted the pictures on Smugmug for him to select. He told me which one, so I spent a couple more hours carefully editing and preparing the picture.Then he emailed me and said, "oh by the way, I want it floating on a transparent background. So much for my careful vignetting of the background. Out comes the old "Extract" tool in Photoshop (which isn't in CS4, you have to go find and download it), and about an hour later I had the close-cut image. Less than perfect, because had I known in advance, I would have chosen a background easier to select from. Then I get, "it appears a little dark...". So I've got to have 5 or 6 hours into this picture, which I'm doing as a favour for free. That's why.

I haven't been shooting pictures.
But that doesn't mean I haven't been doing photography stuff. Sometimes planning shoots and studying other photographers can be very productive too. I ran into photographer Lyn Winans in Minden one day last week. We chatted for a while and exchanged contact information. When I got home, I surfed over to her gallery site and was very impressed with her work. About 300 images up there, and each and every one of them is tack sharp and really well composed. Many of her shots had the "wow" factor that we all strive for. I won't post her pictures, of course but have a look at her gallery. My favourite of her images is this one.

I also invited Dr. Ron to shoot the annual group picture of the Humber College instructors. In previous years, I would set up the camera and run into the picture, which was good for a laugh. But I felt I was getting stale and didn't want to shoot the same shot year after year, so I asked Ron. I gave him a guideline or two, then left it to him. I have to say that I learned a few things — Ron has vision, different from mine (notice I didn't say "better". Ron would disagree with me if I said that but I would be right and he would be wrong. So there.) Anyway, I can't post those pictures here, because they're not ready. I'm sure he'll allow it but you're just going to have to wait and see! There's also an instructor at Humber by the name of John Kerns who is a superb photoeditor so he's going to do that part of the project!

Told you I haven't been shooting.
So this is the fourth topic in the post and still no pictures. Huh. See? Would I lie to you? I shot the FAC course ID photos last weekend and proceeded to drop my flash on the floor. Now it doesn't work (surprise, surprise!). So I need a new one. SB-600 or SB-800. We'll see what I can find at a reasonable price on eBay. So I had to shoot those photos and all I had was the popup flash on the camera. Yuck, to say the least. I duct-taped the Gary Fong diffuser on top of the camera. It helped, but I got some really ugly shadows. You do what you have to do. By turning down the clarity, I got some sort-of acceptable images. So I have to fix or replace that flash quickly.
 
Here's a typical shot with the pop-up flash and diffuser. Before and after clarity adjustment.
 

I think the clarity slider is a great invention.

All right, I lied.
OK, I did go out last week and shoot some photos. However not really with the intention of creating a world-beating image, at least not now. Again, I have an idea about what I want to create and I don't know quite how to do it so I went out to practice. Here's the deal.

I told Dr. Ron that I am contemplating returning to Newfoundland again this summer. We discussed a photo expedition that I was looking into and I told him I had decided not to go with them, for a couple of reasons — first, I looked at the work of the expedition guide and I don't think he has that much to teach me. Second, it's expensive and I could do pretty well everything he was going to do for much less. I told Ron that I had a photo in mind that I wanted to take. He said, "you're going all the way to Newfoundland to get one photo? That's nuts!" This after he told me he hiked 30 miles with a 4x5 camera for 2 pictures. We both realized that this is what it can be all about.

Do you think I'm rambling? Not really, I'm leading up to something. I'm trying to tell you, dear reader, that there's nothing wrong with getting an idea in your mind then going to extremes to achieve it. I want to take a night time exposure involving the sea, some rocks and if I'm lucky, an iceberg. The iceberg thing may not work because they move, so that would screw up the time exposure thing, but I might be able to capture it separately and post-process it together. Anyway, I've got a vision of what I want to capture and a vague idea how to do it, so I have to try it before I go.

I went down to the lake at night and captured this shot of some fast water coming out of a culvert:

Nope. Didn't even come close to working. How do you focus in the dark?

While I was there, I took these so-so interesting images:

Not a forest fire – house lights through the trees

The house across the lake. Tough exposure!

Star shot. The belt of Orion.

I went to the Minden Wildwater Preserve and did some exposures with heavy duty Neutral Density filters in place. I actually managed to do a 1 minute exposure in daylight. Now we're getting somewhere, but it's not ideal. The lens was stopped WAY down to f/32 which doesn't produce the best sharpness (see an earlier post about diffraction effect. Search for "aperture") and all that extra glass on the front of the lens... but the result is getting there. I just need to know how to do this in the dark! Here's the best shot that day:

1 minute exposure at f/32, 100 ISO. I used the 24-120mm lens with an 8xND filter and a polarizer mounted for additional light reduction. As an aside, I remembered to turn off the VR but I didn't remember to turn it back on until just this minute!.

So what am I trying to tell you? By setting a goal and figuring out how to get there, I think I'm taking a step forward. It remains to be seen if I can capture that image I have in mind. I'll be disappointed if I don't but at least I'll have tried.

PS: anyone want to come to Newfoundland at the end of June? Email me.

Life (NOT) in the Big City

As most of you know, if you've been paying attention, I've had some surgery a couple of weeks ago that has slowed me down a bit. I'm pretty well fully recovered, except that it's going to take some time for my voice to return fully. And for those who haven't heard, "they got it all".

Anyway, I've been spending time up North for the most part, and using this 'recuperation' time as an excuse to not do much. I guess this is in lieu of the vacation I was going to take, driving around Lake Superior looking for spots to shoot photos that look like Group of Seven paintings! Although I'm not really housebound, I'm being very lazy, and that means I haven't shot many photos either. We did have an incident last week that made me bring the camera out: a thunderstorm in which (1) lightning hit a tree about 100m from my house, bringing it down in flames over the hydro lines, knocking out the power for several hours, and (2) the wind was so strong that it ripped my SECOND gazebo of the year out of the ground and destroyed it. I have to think carefully about what I'm going to have to do for next year.

Here are some photos:

This is the tree that came down a couple of doors away. The hydro crew was there quickly.
More photos in my August gallery on SmugMug.

My poor gazebo. The canvas and screening wasn't torn, as far as I could tell, but the support poles were mangled. What I really need is a screen porch over the deck, but no money to buy one. Unless a bunch of people want to come up and have a porch-building-party...

I went out for an early morning walk the other day. When I saw how misty it was out, I went back for the camera, with the 200mm lens mounted, thinking I'd do some shots including the other side of the lake in the mist. However, I saw a funky aluminium boat so I went back for the wide angle and the tripod. I wanted to try some HDR shots, so I shot bracketed 5-shot bursts. I haven't got the HDR process down pat yet: but there were some interesting effects.

I did the HDR thing, then a selective hue/saturation thing on the red colours, then a black-and-white conversion for the background. I painted the layer mask to isolate the colour image.

This one started the same way but I used curves to bring out the range of the areas I wanted to feature, like the hull of the boat.

Although I wasn't taking pictures, I wasn't entirely idle. I did spend some time working on my next book (I've done about 20 pages out of the targetted 100-120) and at getting some inspiration from others.

A good place to look if you want to see some superb photography, is on the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) site, which you can access here. The "Image of the Week" is usually superb (although I don't like this week's image). I like to click on the "Browse" button, which gives you a random spread of images posted recently. Click on any image to get into that maker's portfolio. If you enter my name on the 'search users' tab, you'll get to my portfolio. Or just click here.

Talking about HDR images: I came across this picture which I absolutely love. I don't know if it's an HDR but it's a wonderful image, don't you think?

By the way, I'd love to have some dialogue going here, not just a monologue from me: click on "comments" below and leave one!

Images for Competitions
I was reflecting on the difference between creating images for competition and images for other purposes. I'm signed up to take the course at the GTCCC (Greater Toronto Council of Camera Clubs) this fall, to become an accredited judge. I suppose that after I'm accredited, I'll be limited in what I'm allowed to share, but until then...

It's my experience that competition judging is primarily based on technical merit. If you don't follow the rules, points are deducted: the rule of thirds, tack-sharp focus, 3:1 lighting ratios, histograms that don't extend off either end, etc. That's not to say that these are bad things: on the contrary, creating excellent images is often a result of following the rules. But the judging often loses sight of the artistic impact of an image. For instance, Richard Martin-like shots with deliberate camera motion and blurry shapes, or deliberate high noise shots, will rarely be recognized on their merits.

Also, judges are rather subjective: one will look at this image (click the link if you haven't looked at it yet) and deduct points because it's oversaturated and not natural: another judge will downgrade it because the eye is drawn to the bright sky at upper right: a third will look closely at the person in the picture and say that there was some inaccuracy doing the selection for the hue/saturation work (seems to be some too-bright green over his right shoulder). A fourth judge will say, "this image absolutely blows me away. I give it a 10".

My point is, if you're not shooting for competition, do whatever YOU like best. Follow your own eyes and heart, don't try to satisfy some disembodied technically picky judge. If you are shooting for competition, then by all means, learn what they're looking for and go for it.

My Mountain Man picture is a good example. After creating it, I carefully went around the edges cleaning up artifacts, burning in some bright spots, etc. That made it a better picture overall and it was accepted in both worlds. It took first prize in the club competition, and I like it and so do a lot of other people. The canoe on the beach image and even the background heading photo for this Blog had similar attention to detail which I learned when shooting for competition. They are better because in processing them (and in shooting them too), I followed some rules. That said, the canoe on the beach shot was criticized because the image was too central, it didn't follow the Rule of Thirds.

I personally like the concept the Richmond Hill Camera Club played with introducing last year: a dual scoring system, one component based on technical merits, one on artistic (brings to mind Olympic Figure Skating, doesn't it? Whay says the "Russian" judge?).

So preparing images for competition is a great idea, to help you learn what the rules are. How, and whether you apply these rules at all in images for your own enjoyment or for other purposes, is entirely up to you. A prize-winning photo and one that tugs at your heartstrings are not necessarily the same.

PS: Terrific new product!
I was watching TV one day last month and there was an ad for a product that you could use to clean out those grungy places in your car or elsewhere. It's like that kid's product, "SLIME". That's what it feels like. What you do is press it into places that have dirt and grunge in them, then pull it away and the dirt comes with it! You can reuse it until it gets too dirty.

The product is called "CYBER-CLEAN". I couldn't find it in Canadian Tire or Home Hardware, but I did find it at Zeller's, for something like $7. They have little foil pouches for a couple of dollars less, but I bought a 5-oz (140g) cup. There are a few listings on eBay for it, but be really cautious: one major vendor said "FREE SHIPPING" but only to the lower 48: they wanted, believe it or not, $35 for shipping to Toronto. By MAIL. I submitted a complaint to eBay about their shipping practices.

Great stuff. Not only did it work on the car, but also on the computer keyboard. I'm bad because I munch while working at the computer, so there's all kinds of stuff that shouldn't be all over things or in the keyboard. Press it down enough and it'll suck up all kinds of stuff from between the keys!