Sittin' on the dock of the bay...

...musings

I went for a swim in the lake a couple of evenings ago and it occurred to me that swimming in the lake is substantively different from swimming in a pool. My dock is in a shallow bay, so your experience, where you swim, might be a little different than mine. So here are some (a)musing points

• In a swimming pool, your eyes get red because people pee in the pool. Fish and other animals pee in the lake, but that doesn't give you red eyes. And it doesn't smell like chlorine.
• Why is it that that spot on your lower back just above your waist is so much more sensitive to cold water than, say, your private bits? I've stood there, waist deep, saying, "ok, on the count of three... one, two, two-and-a-half...". In a pool, the water's all the same temperature. In the lake, it's 10° colder when you get down two feet!
• When was the last time you were swimming in a pool and a raft of 15 ducks swam by? 9 kiddies and 6 adults. And since I was immersed in the water with only my head sticking up, they weren't intimidated and ignored me as they swam around me. Wish I could have seen them better, but I wasn't wearing my glasses.
• Loons are BIG. At least twice the size of the ducks. One swam by about 8 or 10 feet from me then dove under, looking for fish (and not my nether bits, I hope!)
• I love "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, wasting time..." (Tell me this isn't better than the Otis Redding original...)

I made a metallic print of this image a couple of years ago and enjoy looking at it almost every day.

Another shot of my dock, also quite old. This was one side of my business card for a few generations! That's my friend Sean who was up here when we attended a photo course at Fleming College with Rob Stimpson some years ago. 

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Speaking of Business Cards

I just ordered a new set, ran right out of my last ones. I get them made locally and I have a wholesale account where I can deliver a set of 500 full-coloured, double sided, Aqueous finished cards for about $25 (shipping and taxes extra but if we combine orders...). Think about it. Your own pictures...

Front and back (or back and front, you choose!) of my new cards. If you're reasonably adept with Photoshop, I can tell you how to prepare the final art for printing. If not, I can do it for you but understand that I need to be compensated for the time I spend on it. Contact me.

OK, truth time. I got my cards today. Hate them. The milky way image looks great on a lighted screen but hopelessly dark in print. The other side looks "OK" but it's not great either. It's not a quality problem with the supplier: they did their job. It was me. I had decided that I wanted a matte finish to the cards, not glossy. Nope. Also I didn't pay enough attention to the mid-tones, they're too dark. Also tiny detail doesn't work on a 2" x 3½" card. I should know better. Back to the drawing board. I'll report back when I get some new cards I like. But that shouldn't stop you! Just use a nice, bright, simple image.

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The star shot I used on the card was taken at my friend Janie's place. I had planned to head up to Algonquin Park to shoot stars that night but dinner ended late and I was tired. It was July 1 and there were fireworks going on, so I just got the camera (and the bug jacket!!) out and did some shots down by the lake. I went back in and asked the ladies to turn the lights off for a bit because they were painting quite a bit of light on the dock and boat and I didn't want it in the shot. 

I had to do a bit of work on the original to finish it for the card. I did a bit more work to make it a printable large size image. Here's the original, SOOC (straight out of the camera):

Aside from the obvious toning in the sky, and removing a couple of the hot lights, especially at right, I wanted to enhance the reflections in the lake and the distortion on the left side, caused by the wide angle lens bothered me, so I did some selective warping and rotation to straighten it up. I wanted a warmer saturation on the house lights too. Actually I masked in a flipped version of the sky into the water, then applied a ripple filter to soften it. A considerable amount of attention to detail. By the way, the finished photoshop file is over 1.5Gb in size! Here's the result:

Oh yeah. And I turned that meteor trail into a better shooting star and got rid of the second one which I found distracting. Metallic or acrylic print? I don't think it would work on conventional media. 

The same night, on the way home, I stopped at the beach opposite 12-Mile Lake Church and did these shots:

I used a humongous flashlight to point to the Milky Way. If an alien being on Deneb looks up in about 2600 years, they should see the light from this flashlight. Thanks, Fred! 

Setting the flashlight to its widest setting and lowest power, and brushing the trees for a quick half-second pass during my 15-second exposure, I light painted the trees. You need a smaller flashlight for this! 

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...more musings

{rant}

Photographers constantly bemoan the fact that people don't want to pay for their work. "We'll give you recognition..."; "our thousands of viewers will see your work..."; "you'll get photo credit...". And the photographers are right: when was the last time you told a plumber that you would tell everyone how great a job they did (instead of paying them) or tried to use your photo credit to buy a coffee at Tim Horton's?

I'm constantly inundated with invitations to submit images for competitions. What better praise could one get than to say you were recognized in an International Salon or exhibited in a museum. I had four images selected for a juried show last year at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in the Minden Cultural Centre and yes, I'm very pleased at the recognition and the positive reviews, but it cost me over $100 per image to print and frame them. I still have three of them here, one did in fact sell through the museum.

Newspapers and other media (including Network Television) encourage their readers/viewers to submit pictures and they never get paid. Facebook and YouTube are inundated with pictures and videos that people post for free. And photographers regularly complain when someone copies their work, which is inevitable. If you don't want people to steal your work, don't post it.

But the juried Salons abound. Just today I had another invitation to submit. But in order to do so, you have to pay them! In this case, $25 US per image submitted. I get that they have expenses to defray but why is it that the artist is the one who doesn't get paid? The company who runs the Salon makes money. Their employees are paid. Physical prints are displayed in a gallery and the gallery owner makes money. The director and staff make a salary. So does the mailboy and the secretary and even the kid who gets them coffee (which they pay for...). Not the artist.

That's not to say that there aren't legitimate competitions. The International Salon run by the Toronto Camera Club is in its 123rd year! Yes, you have to pay a fee to submit images but this prestigious event is different from the seemingly hundreds of imitators out there because (a) it's a legitimate and well-credentialed show, (b) a quality printed book of winning images is published and (c) it's run by a group not out to profit by the show. But when commercial outfits, including some well-known magazines, run such events for money, I have to question it.

For the record, I submitted a dozen entries to the 122nd International Salon and received seven acceptances (but no ribbons!). Dr. Ron had 12 acceptances and 4 awards! Impressive. This year I have accepted an invitation to judge the Photojournalism category for the Salon (I did two years ago as well) but new FIAP rules state that as a judge, I cannot submit images (even in other categories). :(

Anyway, I don't castigate amateur photographers for offering images for free or for photo credit – technically I fall in the same category, with my blog and social media postings and since I don't make a living from my art technically I'm not a working professional – but I draw the line when someone makes a profit from that work.

{/rant}

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Lightroom
I finally split my catalog.

I have over 80,000 images in my Lightroom catalog. Since the catalog is just a database, that shouldn't matter, and probably doesn't. But my dilemma is that the size of the photo archive itself is so big that I had to buy a new 4Tb external drive to contain it. Last year, I bought two 3Tb drives. They're full to overflowing.

So I decided to take a step back and split the catalog. One of the beauties of Lightroom is that if you keyword your images, you can search for and easily find virtually any image in an instant. For instance, there are 676 pictures of me in that 80,000 image database, but I've marked only 87 of them as not-so-objectionable (everyone knows there are NO good pictures of yourself!). I'm never going to want to see the other 589 pictures. 

Here's what I decided: I want to be able to access all the images that I've marked as "keepers" over the years (there are about 11,000 of them) and I want to see all of this year's pictures (2016) as well (about 8000 so far). The combined count is a little over 16,000 images which takes up a little over 1Tb of disk space. They're sitting on a 3Tb drive now and I'll probably go out and buy an extra 2Tb drive to use as a duplicate. That should leave me enough room for a while. My 4Tb drive and another (very full) 3Tb drive will serve as an archive for the full 80,000 images.

It was no trivial task. I probably could have taken a small shortcut but what I did was

• select the marked "keepers" in the existng catalog, spending some time deciding what to keep
• exported them as a catalog to the external drive
• same process, 2016 images
• combine the two catalogs
• set backup and other preferences for the new catalog and move it to the internal drive in the computer, leaving the images in their permanent home on the external
• make sure the links are intact between the catalog in its new location and the images on the external drive
• create a backup of the catalog on the external drive (so it's in two places)
• started the process of building smart previews and 1:1 previews (not done yet).

The final step will be to echo the external drive to a fresh one and copy a "keepers only" archive to go on another external drive that I store off-site. For now, I have all the images in 3 places. Now I need to update to the latest Lightroom CC version (I haven't yet) and I'm good to go. 

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Some pictures

But you didn't come here to read my rants and raves. You came to look at some pictures! Here are some new ones for your enjoyment.

Serious off-road wheels. Parked outside Kawartha Dairy last week, there were six or eight of these vehicles there. Still shaking the bugs out of Topaz Impressions 2... 

Speaking of Kawartha Dairy, here's a little time-lapse video I shot that day, set to appropriate music! Enjoy: 

http://photography.to/video/kawartha2.mp4

I've been enjoying my painting classes with Harvey Walker. I seem to be learning but progress is slow. I've been trying some different things to develop my skills and I have to admit I enjoy charcoal sketching:

I sketched this in graphite and charcoal while sitting at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. By the way, a sketchpad is a great chick magnet. Almost as good as a puppy.Girls kept coming over to see what I was drawing! 

Sitting just outside my front door. The beauty of sketching or painting as opposed to photography is that you can change or leave out things as you wish. On the other side of that fence is the road and the Red Umbrella Inn, which I chose not to include. Also the near tree would be much bigger if it were in the correct perspective.  The colour you see is just a reflection.

Here's my latest oil painting:

Fishing 12-Mile Lake. I shot a photo just North of Harvey's studio on the way home one day. The composition's not quite right: we decided that the boat needed to be bigger in relation to the people, so I extended the bow which put it too central in the picture. The boat, and the people, of course, were the hardest for me to render: the reflections the easiest.  

Here's Harvey's studio. I had just completed the underpainting and putting colour on the boat and people.  

Also just beyond Harvey's studio was this patch of wildflowers. I couldn't resist using Topaz Impression to give it a painted effect. 

This is half-a-dozen images focus stacked. Focus stacking gives you beautiful, soft backgrounds and tack sharp subjects. 

As long as I'm shooting focus-stacked flowers, here's an image of an orange lily right at my house:

Fourteen or Sixteen stacked images (I forget which). I actually processed three or four different shots and chose this one as my favourite. I toned back the colours and the exposure to give this a more subtle feel.  

12-Mile Lake Sunset. I was with Ann Alimi, along with her husband Fabrice and her daughter Elaine Ho (plus Tango, the wonder-dog!) at the Red Umbrella Inn following the dog workshop Ann taught. The sunset didn't look like much, but I convinced her to stay for about half an hour after sunset because I knew that's when the colours would appear. Sometimes I'm right! This really lends itself to the painted look and my favourite starting preset is "Impasto" in Impression2. I think I'll print this on canvas.

We did do a dog workshop but I haven't processed the images yet! Next time, stay tuned.

— 30 —

Fall Colours Weekend

So my house is a disaster zone... I haven't even finished unpacking from my Lake Superior trip (thinking I might be going back), but when I get the urge to sit down and write, that's what I do. The house can wait!

Big mistake. BIG mistake.

The good news is, it could have been worse. Bad enough, though.

I think I have a good workflow. But in this case, I slipped up. Here's what happened. When I went to Lake Superior, I didn't bring my primary external drive (actually, I did: but not to use it, just to take it off-site in case my house burned down while I was gone). Also it's full. So I prepared another drive for use, and created a temporary Lightroom Catalog to use on the road.

I have a rule. Only name a file or a folder "temporary" when you're going to use it immediately. So if you see something with that word in the title, you can safely delete it without giving it a thought. You guessed it.

To avoid turning this into a long boring story (too late!), I intended to import all the images into the main catalog when I got home, which I did, but I missed a step: I copied the images over to the primary drive, all right, but not into my regular hierarchical file, instead they resided in a folder called, "Temporary Wawa trip catalog". Get the idea what I did? Yes, I deleted it to make space on the hard drive.

Costco-bound this weekend. I hope the 4 Tb external drives are on sale, I plan to buy two of them. It's a never-ending cycle. Maybe I will have to break down and split up my archives into multiple pieces instead of all-in-one.

Since I automatically make a second copy of the RAW files (on a different drive: the internal one in the computer) on import to Lightroom, I didn't lose the original images. I also didn't lose the Lightroom edits because they're kept in the Lightroom catalog and I had a backup of that too. What I DID lose were all of the external files, the PSD and TIF files that were created when I went out to Photoshop or a plug-in. In other words, the importantest, bestest pictures from the whole trip. I can recreate them, if I can remember what I did and of course by investing the many hours I spent working on them. Grrr.

Why did I tell you this? Just to make you think so you don't make the same misteak. And because I needed a shoulder to cry on!

Speaking of Lightroom...

Adobe just announced "Major Updates to their entire Lightroom and Photoshop product lines". If you subscribe to the CC versions, they're free. If you own the standalones (LR6 or PS CS6), sorry, you're S.O.L.

I just read the features of the updates here. At first glance, Adobe is expanding the utility of the new De-haze algorithm (in LR, PS and ACR) so that you can use them within local tools like the graduated and radial filters and the adjustment brush (yay! What a great tool dehaze is!).

In PS, they've put a lot of work into 3D and mobile app versions. Neither of which I use right now. But you can bet they streamlined other things and addressed a few bugs.

I'm even more convinced that $10/month is the best deal on the planet.

...AND speaking of Lake Superior

The proposed trip to Wawa, "The Gales of November Come Early", is still up in the air. I need three or four more participants to make this work.

If you can make it, you need to tell me NOW. October 22-25, $375 includes everything except getting there. I sent an invitation out to my mailing list, if you missed it or want the details, email me: I haven't put up a web page on this one. Don't delay.

Herding Cats, or
Fall Colours Weekend

A couple of months ago, I used the expression "herding cats" to describe the virtually hopeless task of keeping a diverse bunch of photographers together. At the time there were 7 of us in Kensington Market. This weekend I had almost 20 of them at half a dozen venues up here! Hopeless!

That said, a few people started responding to me, "Captain, my Captain"... that was cool (I miss Robin Williams!).

I was privileged this weekend, to spend time with both the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club and a group from the Toronto Digital Photography Club. The latter had a weekend retreat at Camp Wanakita and asked me to "guide" them during their visit up here. I chose some venues that I thought they'd enjoy visiting and photographing, did a talk for them on Friday night, and invited them to join the HHCC group on our annual trek to Algonquin Park for the fall colours. About 8 of them did in fact join us!

So doing this chronologically, the Friday night talk was so-so. The weather forecast seemed to indicate that we would get some clear nights so I built a "star shoot" into our agenda. Unfortunately the guy upstairs didn't cooperate – he wanted clouds – but I did do the presentation portion of the stars workshop for them on Friday night.

I tried to compress my all-day workshop into an hour (those who know me know that I didn't make it in an hour! As usual, I talk too much...). In fact, it was good practice for the session I'm supposed to do in Oshawa this winter, and I'll make some necessary changes. I'll have to incorporate more pictures in the presentation, and in different places.

It's a technical topic: "here are all the things you have to think about if you want to shoot stars successfully..." and also due to the late hour, people were somewhat 'itchy' as time went on. I'll fix it for next time.

Saturday, we went to the White Water Preserve, the Hawk Lake Log Chute and Buttermilk Falls. It was a fast water day! A couple of Kayakers graced us with their presence at the whitewater, the forest trails were delightful at the Log Chute, and a couple of animals made it interesting at Buttermilk! We never did get in a group picture (see "Herding Cats", above!) and I wasn't particularly taking pictures, just mentoring and helping as a guide, so I only got a few:

"A roof over my head"! This was at the Log Chute, where they grow their fungi big! And I've always been considered a fun-guy... Just kidding, composite, of course. Genny told me where this mushroom was, coincidentally where Liz Gallo shot some a few years ago when she was blonde! (LOL). The little red leaf was there, I swear I didn't set it up! Genny, you did, right?

At Buttermilk Falls. This Great Blue Heron posed for us endlessly! 

A mink, doing whatever it is that minks do, right at the top of the falls above the dam. Fall Colours in the reflections... 

On Sunday, we went to the Lambs and Ivy antique barn for a change of pace, then over to Wintergreen for lunch, which everyone enjoyed.

At Lambs and Ivy. A four-shot focus stack with the 105 macro lens, then Topaz Impression 

This was actually enroute in the morning. It shows the state of the colours in the region this weekend. Still not at their peak! 

At a display in back of Wintergreen. I love window lighting! 

Monday was Algonquin Park Day. First came dawn at Raven Lake

Not much "dawn"! It even took some processing to see the clouds. Grey day, but that's not bad when you're shooting the colours!

We then went to Marsh Falls on the Oxtongue River. But I'm going to show you that picture at the bottom of this post... After that we went for breakfast, then entered the Park and some of us went up Arowhon Pines Road, one of my favourite spots! OK, it was my idea...

Last year, the colours were yellow and gold. This year, still green. Obviously gorgeous! 

The tour busses have found this road. Don't get me started on how inconsiderate they (or their passengers – every one with an iphone or ipad) are. I had to stand out in the road to prevent them from whipping past us at warp speed, spewing clouds of dust and dirt and threating to mow us down and shave off our car doors. 

We got the grey jays (whiskeyjacks) to come out and play again. Suet is apparently like catnip for them! All of the ones we saw were banded 

After lunch, some of us rounded up the trip with a walk around the Spruce Bog Boardwalk...

As Van Gogh might have painted it 

...and a stop at Killarney Lodge just to shoot their red canoes on the beach.

I was tired. So I sat down and shot this (there was another canoe there, but through the magic of Photoshop... 

Shot of the day

I saved this one for last. It's Marsh Falls, on the Oxtongue River where it meets Highway 35. Jack March, my neighbour and fellow club member, set this up for us, including making little direction signs and putting them up so our people could find the place. When we got there, he was just coming up from the falls, soaking wet. Seems "Marsh Falls" is also "March's Fall"! The rocks were very slippery. He didn't get hurt and he saved his camera, just bruised his ego!

I didn't venture down to the very bottom where he fell. But I did manage to capture this image:

The right shutter speed is essential to capture the essence of a waterfall. For a big expanse like a lake, you need several seconds. For a small trickle, a second or two. For wild water like the kayak spot on the Gull, 1/8 to 1/15 second. Here, I chose 1/4 second, although I shot a variety of speeds just to make sure. I want some texture in my shots, not just a featureless milky white.

In this case I was lucky that I could achieve this speed without stopping the lens all the way down (and introducing diffraction effects, blurring the sharp rocks). It was at the limit, though: 1/4 second at f/16, ISO 50. I could have put the polarizing filter on to bring it down one or more additional stops, or of course my ND3.0 filter which would take it down 10 full stops. I think this is one of my favourite waterfall shots ever. Hope you like it too!

Onward and upward! I suppose I should clean my house now... or I could just pour myself a scotch, put my feet up, and chill. What to do, what to do...

— 30 —

The "Twirl" and Macro and other fun mid-summer stuff!

What's the deal with all these presets?

Lately I'm reading about all kinds of "Presets for Lightroom" and "Actions for Photoshop". "Get 300 new presets here" or "One-click editing"...

Have I ever used presets? Sure, on occasion, but usually they're ones I developed myself. In fact I use them all the time: every time I import RAW files into Lightroom I save them the same way, I sharpen them, I set the saturation and clarity... all with an import preset that I created. Ditto export presets: I format pictures for the purpose they're being used for (forgive the bad grammar!). I even obtained some presets for processing star images because it does it better than I can, and that's my point: I'll NEVER learn how to do it myself if all I do is click a button.

And what's the difference between these presets and plug-in programs like the ones from Topaz or Nik? Let's see if I can explain it better.

So what's a preset? In Lightroom, you invoke a preset and it moves some of the sliders to pre-determined positions. For example, the preset would choose a certain exposure value, white balance, clarity setting, black and white conversion, etc. Or where to save exported images and what sizes they are.

Seems to me that using presets bears a close relationship to shooting your camera on the dreaded "AUTO" setting. Now maybe I'm just a dinosaur, but it's always been my approach to understand why you do things and basically how it works. If you're a wedding photographer and you need to present a consistent look for hundreds or thousands of images under time pressure, I get it. But I like to work on my images one at a time and put some of my own magic and love into each one. Of course there's a time and a place for them: let's say you made a mistake and overexposed a whole series of pictures: wouldn't it be appropriate to fix one and then sync your adjustment to all the others?

How is that different from using, say, Nik HDR Efex Pro or Topaz Impression? It's a matter of degree. Those programs can accomplish in seconds what it might take you hours or maybe days to do, if you could ever figure out how! Although the presets do the same thing, they're more about applying a consistent look (as decided by the designer) to an image or a bunch of them.

I don't know if I'm making sense here. My argument against presets is the same as the one against using "AUTO" on your camera: the software engineer who developed the camera or the preset is making all the decisions for you.

Don't get me wrong: it's good to have a consistent look and feel in your body of work (if that's what you want!).  People who have decided what they want to be when they grow up have done that. Good for them: but they should do it themselves instead of having someone else do it for them.

Bottom line? "Give a man a fish...". Design your own presets. Understand WHY. It's easy to do and then you put your own fingerprint on your pictures.

That said, "The Twirl"!

Now trending on Facebook: "The Twirl"! It's a relatively simple Photoshop trick that turns this:

into this:

In fairness, the original image isn't a simple one. But when you "Twirl" you can use just about ANY picture! This one was a composite – two images focus-stacked, and I used Topaz Glow on the puffball, but I didn't need to! I chose it because it was 'there'! 

So this was exactly what I said NOT to do in the top article. Except that I'm studying HOW it works so that I can add my own personal touch to it.

Now the argument is that this takes no skill. It's a routine where you more-or-less just push buttons, just like shooting on Auto! And because it was a fad, it took over the Photoshop and Lightroom group for a day or two, some people got disgusted by the overwhelming number of images. Let me say a couple of things (with which you may or may not agree)

• It's kinda cool
• It's easy to do if you can follow instructions. Therefore it gets people, who are afraid of Photoshop, to actually try it and experiment
• You can add your own 'flavour' to it by adjusting some of the parameters and then you can do artistic things like blending in some of the original picture!

Here's a couple of examples.

I simply added the original image as a layer on top, then masked everything except the two seeds. 

I made this from the picture below using exactly the same technique, I painted a mask on the original image after placing it on top of the stack. 

By the way, the Highland Yard was last weekend and I was really NOT happy with my pictures. For one thing, the lighting was horrible with the start/finish in the shade and the rest of the world in bright sunlight.  

So for those of you who would like to know how to do this and give it a try, here are the instructions. Note: you need to have Photoshop. Not Elements, Photoshop. I think the tools were there in earlier versions but I'm not sure since they've been deleted from my computer and I couldn't look and see. I'm using Photoshop CC 2015. Here are the steps:

1. Open any photo.
2. Duplicate the background layer (so you have the original for later if you want it). Ctrl-J (Cmd-J on a Mac).
3. Work on the duplicate layer. Filter → Pixelate → Mezzotint → Medium Lines
4. Filter → Blur → Radial Blur (set the slider to 100, blur method to 'zoom', quality to 'best')
5. You can repeat this step a few times if you want. I find it smooths things out. A quick way to repeat it is to hit Ctrl-F (Cmd-F) which runs the same filter you just ran, again.
6. Duplicate this layer (Ctrl/Cmd-J)
7. Turn off the duplicate layer and work on the one you duplicated from. Filter → Distort → Twirl (set the angle to 80 as a starting point. You can play with this).
8. Now turn on the duplicate layer and work on that one. Do exactly the same thing except this time set the angle to the negative of the one you used: "-80°" for example.
9. Set the blending mode of this layer to "lighten".
10. Sit back and admire your handiwork.

Like I said, you can now take the original layer and put it on top, then add a layer mask and paint it in (black brush on the mask) or play to your heart's content.

One more example, from an ugly raspberry picture:

PS: I read a GREAT suggestion (I would attribute it if I knew who came up with it). Take a picture of your living room or bedroom. This picture will have a colour palette that exactly matches the room. Now create a 'twirl' image from this picture. Print it HUGE on canvas and hang it over the couch as a colour coordinated piece of art! Brilliant idea that I'm going to try. This might even be a salable concept!

PanAm Games

As many of you know, I shot the PanAm Games Canoe and Kayak Slalom event at the Minden Whitewater Preserve. Lots and lots of pictures! I put them up on my SmugMug site rather than posting them here, so go to http://faczen.smugmug.com/White-Water/PanAm-Games-2015/ to see them. 

Now I was not able to get permission to sell prints for commercial purposes (long story). But several people have asked for pictures including (a) the Canadian Team, (b) the US team, (c) locals whose kids were 'forerunners' – testing the course before the PanAm races (no list exists cross-referencing bib numbers and names. If you are in this group, email me with the bib number and I'll check and see what pictures I got), (d) the parents of Canadian/US team members and (e) people who just liked one or more of my pictures.

If you want a digital download, you're welcome to it at no charge. Just send me an email with the filename off the SmugMug site above. If you want a print, I'll set it up so you can order through my artist website hosted by Fine Art America, but again you have to contact me. The prices just cover costs so it's non-commercial. And FAA will ship worldwide. By the way, you can buy my other fine art images there too: even throw pillows and iPhone cases if you want!

The Macro World

Wow. A whole other set of possibilities. Here's the deal: I ordered, and finally received, a set of extension tubes which convert my lenses into macro lenses. They move the lens away from the camera body so you can focus closer. I bought the ones that have electrical connections so that you can use autofocus and through the lens metering. They cost me all of $40 (US) and came from the Far East, via eBay. Good news and bad news... but first, here's a sample image:

This is my favourite one so far. It's a "hoverfly" or "flower fly" and it's about the same size as an ant, less in length than your fingernail. This IS cropped and yes, I did do some Photoshop enhancement (primarily with Topaz Clarity). I shot this with a 36mm extension tube on my 70-200 lens. Lighting was provided by Mr. Sun, up there in the sky, but I gave it a little help with my ringlight, another inexpensive eBay Chinese purchase.

So now the bad news. You do 'get what you pay for'... there are 3 tubes in the set: 12mm, 20mm and 36mm. They're made of plastic, not metal. The 12mm works fine. The electrical connections on the 20mm don't work so when you look through the lens it's dark if you've stopped down, and autofocus doesn't work (autofocus sucks for macro anyway. You have to focus manually). When I mounted the 36mm/70-200 combo on my tripod, the connection to the camera isn't rock steady so the electrics go in and out. Handheld it's OK and on a lighter lens it's also OK. I wrote to the supplier, I could get a refund but would have to ship it back to get it and the postage cost would be horrendous, so they credited me half my cost (and had the nerve to ask me to give them positive feedback...). So in the end I have usable tubes for $20 or so.

Also: with the extension tube mounted, you can ONLY shoot macro. You can't focus to infinity. But it's so much fun that I decided to bite the bullet and I've arranged to get a REAL macro lens, the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR which I should pick up next week. Stay tuned!

In the meantime here are some more macro shots for your enjoyment!

I LOVE wild raspberries. I have a million of them on my property and a couple of quarts frozen in my freezer for mid-winter! 

Here's another fly I shot the first day I got the tubes 

...and a flower I treated with Topaz Impression. Unfortunately I didn't record which preset I used, probably Degas if I remember. 

A black-and-white conversion of a daisy, following the technique that I wrote about a few months ago. 

And finally, a shy grasshopper behind my house. I say 'shy' because he moved away every time I got in range! Got him finally, though. 

Stay tuned for more macro's: they are really a lot of fun. I haven't taken out my light tent yet!

— 30 —

Finding your Niche

My photos are all over the place. I think the word "Eclectic" was invented for me. I haven't found my niche yet. Or have I?

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) rolled out their new website a couple of weeks ago and although the old 'portfolios' will be available for a few more weeks, members have to recreate their portfolio from scratch if they want a continuing presence. For now, they've removed the limit of 24 images and some people have gone nuts and uploaded dozens and dozens. But I think (a) nobody's ever going to look at that many pictures and (b) that's a place where you want to post only the best of the best.

I still haven`t found the correct link syntax so that non-NAPP members can see your portfolio. I`ll post it when I find out. In the meantime, you have to take it on faith. If you ARE a NAPP member, you can see my portfolio here.

Update: it seems it does work. Try it if you`re not a member and let me know if it doesn`t link to my portfolio. 

So in the process of creating a new portfolio, I looked through my keepers and chose the pictures I thought best represent me. So far I`ve uploaded 16 images. It`s interesting that of the 16, 11 of them are landscapes, 2 are architectural, there are 2 of sled dogs and one shot of the band `FOG`. All but two of them are either HDR`s or have been toned in programs like Topaz Adjust 5.

I`ve shot some portraits. Some journalism. I`ve done tabletop studio work. I`ve shot wildlife and I`ve created some abstracts. I`ve done action — whitewater kayaking, hockey, motorcycling — none of these have made it into my top 16.

What that says is, I have found my niche. It is `Post-Processed Landscape Photographs`. These are my favourites. That`s not to say that I won`t put some different work up: in fact I want to add a couple of action shots and some abstract art but clearly my main thing is landscapes and I enjoy making textures and detail stand out. For that reason, I`m seriously considering upgrading to the Nikon D800 in the upcoming months because that camera is dedicated to what I do best.

Speaking of Wildlife photography

John Reed is a friend of mine, whom I met through the motorcycle instructor program at Humber College. He`s also a dedicated photographer but is so low key about it that I haven`t truly appreciated the images that he creates. Recently, John was on a workshop in Yellowstone Park and the images that he brought back are truly outstanding. He gave me permission to publish a link to his online album here. I especially love the wolf pictures towards the bottom of the portfolio. Click on this link for one of my favourite shots, then be sure to click the word `Yellowstone`at the top of the page to view the whole gallery. His other galleries are worth a look too!

John hooked me up with Mike Bertelsen and I`ll be doing a two-day workshop with Mike in June, shooting moose in Algonquin Park. Maybe I`ll have my D800 by then...

More news

A week or so ago, I posted about a Blurb book that I had created in response to a call for entries in a competition at the Richmond Hill Camera Club. It seems that I WON! The committee judged my book the most worthy (and there were some very fine entries so I feel very honoured!). I`m still not ready to put up a link to the book because it`s not yet in printable form, there`s some polishing to do, but I`ll post it soon.

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP)  Forums

I`ve mentioned NAPP several times in my Blog over the years, and I HIGHLY recommend joining the organization to anyone who is into digital photography in any way. The learning resources are phenomenal and the subscription to Photoshop User Magazine is more valuable than the $99 annual membership fee (I`ve gone digital: I don`t get paper magazines mailed to me any more). Click here or on the link at right to peruse the site or to join.

As I said at the beginning of this post, NAPP has revised their website. There are many interesting and valuable areas but none more compelling than the Member Discussion Forums. Non-members can browse the forums, but you need to be a member to post messages or replies there. The link is the same (here): members should then create a login (it`s separate from the main site). It`s amazing how many questions about Photoshop, Lightroom, even the plug-ins, printing and general digital photography are answered by the gurus who hang out there. If you`re a NAPP member and you`ve not visited the forums before, please do!

Architectural Images

In my sometimes-not-so-humble-opinion, architectural pictures need to be straight. That doesn`t just mean level, it also means perspective. A vertical wall has to look vertical, not slanted away from you which is what you get especially when you shoot with a wide angle.

On Friday, I shot some pictures for a friend of mine who, among other things, facilitates signage and storefront renovations (Corporate Imaging is their mainstay: everything from signage to t-shirts, from web design to printed literature and logo design. Check out `StylesQ` here). Their website is being totally revamped which is one reason I was out shooting pictures for them but their contact email is working fine). Now I love Styles dearly, he's a great friend (friends will help you move; great friends will help you move a body! LOL) but I think he takes a very unsophisticated view of all things technical, including computer and photography stuff.

He wanted a straight up image of a storefront he did. Here it is.

Everything's pretty straight. I shot it from about 20' in front of the store, straight on, making sure that my reflection was not visible (hidden by the doorframe). I did have to use a wide angle because there's a tree right beside me and I couldn't go back any more. It is what it is, I hate to use the word "boring" but, well, if the shoe fits...

But Styles told me he wanted this picture for his website, to show an example of his work. So I shot it a little differently and then used my post-processing skills to come up with this one:

When you shoot on a angle, things are no longer square. That was the case here, so I used the Lens Correction tool in Lightroom to square it up. I used it in the other picture too, but just a little bit.

I also did some other stuff to the picture: it's an HDR so you can see a broad range of detail. I mixed in a line-art conversion to give some definition and focus to the textures and give it more of a graphic feel; and the vignette keeps the focus on their store, not on the surroundings. Here's another store he did, across the road:

I'd like the opportunity to do more of this kind of work. It's quite a challenge and frankly, I like the results! So if you want to hire me...

Lightroom 4 is out.

Just announced today and it's already available at B&H. The full program is $149 and an upgrade from Lightroom 3 is only $79. How can you not???

So that's it for today!  See you next time.

— 30 —

Gallery prints

Printing from Lightroom
Last week I started experimenting with the 'Print' module in Lightroom. Right away I ran into some trouble and some limitations, but I worked through it with the help of Jim Camelford and the NAPP users forums (fori?).

My intention was to create templates that I could use to produce large format prints. Among other challenges was the difficulty of specifying page sizes for printers I don't own, for example if I want to send prints out to a bureau or to Costco. Jim set me straight on that one: you have to specify "print to a jpg" and then you can set any size you want.

A limitation is in trying to print text with the image. I created a graphic identity plate in Photoshop. Although it's only text, I wanted greater control over fonts, weight, spacing, kerning, etc. I quickly discovered that you can't make a 50% grey version because that only works on a light background if you start with black type, and on a dark background if you start with white! So I made two of them.

Next I searched and searched and searched some more for a way to put the name of the image below it, but in a font and position that I wanted. No such luck. I'm going to post that as a 'feature request' on the Adobe site (it won't let me do it from the iPad and the computer's in the shop).

Anyway, here's what I came up with:


 

Perpetual Motion

Snow Fence

NAPP helped me with another problem: the tab "apply during import" disappeared. I still don't know why but they helped me get it back (sometimes LR is less than intuitive: right-click on one of the remaining tabs and select it from the contextual drop down menu. Right. Like I was going to find that on my own!). Another reason to join NAPP. Click the link at right. I'll wait right here.

So anyway, if someone wants to order a 12x18 or smaller print, I'm ready (just have to create a gallery on Smugmug). If someone wants a bigger print, I have to do a little more research!

A great tip from Jim
If you shoot a higher end DSLR from Nikon, check this out. If you specify a number of bracketed exposures (say 5 or 7), and you're in CH or CL mode and you hold down the shutter release, that's how many exposures it will take! Now ain't that a smart camera! Thanks, Jim Camelford. You're a smart man. Smarter still, since you're in sunny Florida, and we're up here in the snow and freezing temps. Of course that means you're not going to get a lot of dogsled race pictures!

So why's my computer in the shop?
It's like this. I got bitten by some MalWare (gotta stop looking at those nekkid women sites or checking up on my Nigerian inheritance! Seriously, I have no clue where I got it). Very creative, too. I was convinced that I was looking at a Lenovo (IBM) system failure warning. I was momentarily actually tempted to give them my $69 to buy the repair software.

Anyway, I tasted the sharp copper bite of my impending doom. My pictures are backed up, but what would I be in for if I had to recover from a disk crash? Can you imagine reinstalling all those programs you use every day? So I brought my laptop to Bob, the "Greek Geek". He's going to ghost the hard drive to a fresh 500Gb external drive I bought ($65 at Costco) upgrade the O/S to Win7, and make sure it's running smoothly.

The backup issue is rearing it's ugly head again. I'm going to leave you, dear reader, with a question to ponder: What would you do if someone broke into your house and stole ALL your computer gear? Or what would you do if your house burned down.. Think about it.

Well let's see about getting this posted on the Blog, if I remember how to do it from the iPad. Catch y'all later!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad