Basic Black

Good Morning!
We'll get to the topic of the day in a few minutes, but first, these other messages!

Im starting to enjoy the spring up here. There's a period of time where I don't: when it's brown and grey out, chilly and damp... but we're coming to the end of that and the world is starting to look green. Also colourful: the flowers are coming out too. I was scouting yesterday and saw a huge patch of trilliums already opened. There are some people coming up to shoot some pictures up here in about 10 days (the weekend of May 12th) so if anyone is interested in coming up for the day or tagging along, drop me a note.

Software Updates
There's all kinds of stuff going on in the photo software world right now. When Adobe released Lightroom 4, and then Photoshop CS6 (still pre-order as I write this, but supposed to deliver next week), all of the plug-in manufacturers had to scramble to catch up, to make sure their products were compatible.

Coincidentally (ya think?), HDRsoft released their updated version of Photomatix Pro 4.2. It's a free update for registered users of Pro (I think from version 3-up) and you can download it here. If you don't have Photomatix, you can go to their site and download a free trial before buying it. The bad news is, their free trial puts a watermark on the image so you can't really use it for anything until you buy it.

There are 3 commonly used programs for HDR generation/tone mapping: Photomatix, Nik HDR Efex Pro and Photoshop CSx (where "x" is "5" or "6"). I haven't seen CS6 in action yet, but I heard that Adobe has updated the already excellent HDR generating engine in CS5. Topaz Adjust 5 doesn't generate HDR's but it's right up there as a tone mapping utility!

Speaking of Adobe, they've released Adobe Camera Raw 6.7 which supports Process Version 2012 (Lightroom 4 users are tired of seeing the incompatibility warning when they try to open an image in Photoshop) and it also supports new cameras like the D4, the D800, the V1, the 5DMkIII. If you use Photoshop, all you have to do is open it, click Help→Updates and follow the bouncing ball.

The ongoing problems with Lightroom 4 haven't been resolved yet. Some users have no difficulty but some (and there's no clear correlation who: Mac or PC, high end or not...) still have issues with the software being slow. Sometimes it uses up TONS of resources. When generating previews, for instance, it uses up 100% of all four CPUs that I have in the system, plus up to 80% of my 8Gb of memory. And sometimes it doesn't. I hope they solve it soon.

Beginner's workshops and course material
Just an update on the workshops and books I'm working on. If I said I was halfway through it now, I'd probably be exaggerating. But the hard part is done: all the concepts are in place, it's just about getting words on digital paper.

The reason I'm mentioning it is: who's interested in having a preview of it when the time comes? The first thing that will be ready is the Instructor's Workbook, so if you're interested in teaching beginners to use DSLR's, you will be interested in this. Email me and I'll put your name on the list for a free copy of the workbook.

Business Cards
Do you have any idea how cheap business cards are these days? You can get 1000 full-colour business cards, printed on both sides and UV coated for about $20. I'm about to reorder some and at that price, I'll make more than one design.

I have a dealer account with BossLogo, so if anyone is interested in making up some cards, drop me a note and I'll fill you in on what's needed to make it happen.

Let's get on to some pictures, shall we?

I was at my favourite spot a couple of days ago: the Minden Wild Water Preserve. It wasn't a beautiful day, and the dam was blocked up (they insert 12" wooden ties to limit the water flow) so the white water was particularly low. Nevertheless, there were a couple of kayakers on the water.

Got him looking right at me! Notice the cold weather gear: especially the glove/grips on the paddle.

These guys were just working on their techniques. As I said, the water level was really low which made it difficult to navigate in spots.

White water Quacker. Then there was this guy. He fought the current to swim across just above where I shot the other Kayakers (see the play on words? Huh? I posted this picure on the NAPP site and someone said it "quacked him up"!). Too bad I couldn't get more white water in the shot. I looked away to adjust the camera settings for a second, and he was gone!

Multiple Exposure. Remember I mentioned Photomatix 4.2? After I installed it, I wanted to test it in Lightroom 4 so I clicked on 5 images and ran it with ghosting turned OFF. I don't know if anyone's thought about using Photomatix this way: these were all equally exposed images, not bracketed. Had he been moving across the scene it also would have been interesting. Also if I had used a tripod. I'll try this again another day, but I kind of like this image!

Basic Black

Dogwood Leaves. I brought my black cloth with me and set up this shot in the woods at the Preserve. There was too much sunlight on both the leaves and the background, so I shaded them by standing between the sun and the leaves.

Baby Trillium. This is the pièce de résistance. Again it was shot with the black background and shaded. I enhanced the textures but the colours were just as you see them, including the highly saturated green leaves!

Both of these black pictures were shot with my Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. I don't have a macro lens (really should get one!). I had to do some work to get rid of stuff in the background, including making it really really black. Photoshop and Lightroom were really helpful, especially the black slider in the new Lightroom 4. And I added a black vignette.

By the way, as a technique trick: when trying to get an even, solid black background, sometimes you have to clone out stuff or use the content-aware spot healing brush. They aren't perfect. So what I do is to add a levels adjustment layer, and crank the right slider way over to the left to see anything that isn't black, then I can paint or clone it out. I delete the adjustment layer before saving the image.

More to come...

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Visualization

What's Going On?
As I usually do, first I write about what's happening for a bit, then I get into the topic of the day. Or of the week, actually. Let's see...

Computer and software-related stuff
Sort of slow times here right now and I've been trying to understand why. Then I realized how much time I've been spending on the computer (those who know me will say, "yeah, what else is new?") but it's even more than usual these days.

There are days like yesterday when a sticky printer problem took up most of my day. It's fixed, but don't ask me how...I've spent lots of time trying to get Lightroom 4 working. Adobe even thanked me publicly for a detailed report I posted on their forums. I don't think they've had their "AHA!" moment yet, with the solution.

I also installed a third external hard drive (WD 2Tb "MyBook" at Costco for $129). Copying my archive over took about 18 hours but I didn't have to sit and watch it, it ran overnight. I finally have an off-site backup.

My workshop/book project is still under way. I try to spend a minimum of 3 hours per day working on it, with some measurable results but I'm not there yet. All of this stuff has taken a lot of my time and attention.

CS6 is out
If you're a NAPP member, you know that. Also if you read industry blogs. Seems like that's all everyone is talking about, but I'm not jumping on the bandwagon yet. Wait and see whether it's another Lightroom 4 fiasco.

The Nikon D800
I've seen some reviews and pictures from people I know who now have one and I'm more than envious. I'm saving my nickels, maybe for my birthday in September. But a consideration has arisen: Imagine working with 40Mp files instead of 10Mp. You may even need a new computer to handle the load, certainly bigger storage drives. Plus FX lenses...  still the performance is spectacular, particularly high ISO images.

Upcoming Events
I've got several photography shooting events coming up.

• Mid-May, there are a couple of friends coming up to shoot trilliums and whatever else here in the Highlands. Touch bases if you want to join them
• June 10th is my friend Styles' motorcycle charity ride to benefit the Vaughan Hospital, for which I'm principal photographer. If you want to shoot interesting bikes and bikers, drop me a note and I'll arrange for you to participate as well.
• June 13/14, the Algonquin Park Moose workshop with Mike Bertelsen. I'm really looking forward to that one but I need more practice with my 400mm lens!
• July. I've set aside the first 2 or 3 weeks and would really like to go somewhere. I've been thinking Newfoundland again but the gas alone would cost about $600! New Orleans? I've ALWAYS wanted to go there. Maybe I'll just do that 'around Lake Superior' trip I planned a couple of years ago. I know where to stay in Wawa!

Blogs
I read a bunch of other peoples' blogs on a regular basis. I use an RSS feed on the iPad. Lately, everyone's writing about CS6 but here and there, there are some gems and great stuff to look at. Look up +Anne McKinnell — she and her husband are RV'ing around North America and has some great stories and images. There's +Dan Bailey in Alaska with some great stuff and there's a fellow by the name of +David duChemin who travels to a lot of exotic places and whose images and tales are compelling. These people are all on Google+ — I hope I've got the hang of tagging them correctly.

OK, the topic of the week...
When I come across a scene or a subject that I want to photograph, I'm trying to discipline myself to visualize what I'm trying to make out of the image. Sure, a duck or other bird goes flying by and you just want to grab the shot and/or practice with your 400mm lens,

Majestic, or really ugly? This is a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) and I think it's incredibly beautiful in flight, if you can ignore its ugly head! This was shot at 300mm, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800 and cropped. I wish I had been at 400mm because the head's not as detailed as I would have liked.

I was out for a walk down Pleasant Point Road (a dirt road around the corner from me) and spotted this old lantern that someone (my neighbour Vic, I think) had hung up as decoration on his signpost. I immediately visualized it as an HDR and took the appropriate 5 bracketed exposures.

Old Lantern. Edited with Photomatix Pro and toned with Topaz Adjust 5. I threw in some other effects with Nik plugins too. Over the top? Sure, but I think that's just what this shot needed.

A few meters further down the road, I veered off on a trail through the woods, where I saw an open area, dominated by the trees instead of the brush. The thing about forest scenes is that they don't seem to have a single subject that stands out, so that's what I was trying for with this shot:

Open Forest. It's in black and white because I found the colours distracting and they took away from the strength of the three trees. In hindsight, I should have moved a few inches to the right to separate the middle tree from the left one. Although I did shoot several bracketed exposures, HDR did nothing for this scene because it had a low contrast tonal range to begin with.

When I set up to take this shot, I thought about some of the rules I had learned. What I wanted to do was to balance the image, by taking the 3 big trees off centre and using the grove of smaller trees for counterbalance. There is a diagonal line there, but it doesn't draw the eye. I look in the gap in the big tree triangle. Right or wrong, I do like this image.

Next, I moved forward and to my left. Now I was trying to use the diagonal, to carry the eye into the scene.

Forest Glade. Again where does the eye go? In the grouping of trees at the right, not the left! Why? It's because of the light and because the diagonal draws you there. I made it black and white again, but I found the red tones of the leaves on the ground really added to the scene, so I put them back in. There's quite a bit of post-processing in this shot.

I find this image compelling. Next time I shoot it, I'll do it from lower down, to include more foreground, I think. To me, what makes this image is the light and the contrast between foreground and background, which was actually not there in the scene, which I created on the desktop! I enhanced the brightness on the forest floor behind the trees and I added the fog and the light streaming through the trees. Notice how the appearance of the light coming from upper right is created by the angle of the green branches on the trees at right!

What's my point? When I stood there contemplating how to shoot this scene, I thought, "I wish it was foggy" so the trees in the foreground would be separated visually from the background. What you see here was not what I actually saw, but rather what I VISUALIZED. Here's what I actually saw:

The original scene

The resulting toned image is what my MIND saw, when my EYES saw the original. I was fortunate in being able to enhance the picture to match what I wanted it to be.

When I wake up to a foggy morning, you can bet I'll be out there again. I'll post the picture here when I get it! But I'll be back...

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