Photoshop CS6

As well as putting the hours in learning Adobe Lightroom V4 I am now starting to learn whats new in CS6.  The above shot of Dani was done on a simple white background with some gel filters over the flash heads lighting the background.

All I have done in CS6 is clean up the background somewhat.  With the improvements in LR4 Photoshop is becoming less and less of a requirement but there are still aspects of retouching and cleaning up of an image that is faster and easier with Photoshop.

Rain, Rain and more Rain – Trying to take photographs

I set myself a number of goals this year on the photographic front.  One of those was to shoot more film.  By that I meant more medium and large format.  Well with all the rain during April and with the way its continued during May so far I am behind schedule.  I was hoping to shoot a number of test sheets of 5 x 4 large format as well and get it processed scanned.

I have a large format photography trip planned soon and wanted to analyse my test shots to see what mistakes I had made and work round them.

Lets home this next week will enable me to get out and get some more shots.

May The 4th be with You

It’s very silly and a bit geeky but people are trying to get today know as Star Wars day, i.e. May the 4th Be With You (may the force be with you).

It’s a very bad pun, but fun.

To celebrate we’re having a night watching Star Wars Movies.

Enjoy your May The 4th, how ever you spend it.

Running PB

Well in our continuing efforts to get fit, we went for a run tonight in the rain and we managed our best run for this year, and for Caroline a new Personal Best in both time and distance; well done Caroline.  I think its time we looked around for a race to enter.  Anyone know if there are any local 5k’s or 3 mile races in Lincolnshire this year?

Practice

A few people seem surprised at the amount of work I put into learning about photography and post production, I mean with modern cameras all you need to do is press the button and the camera does the rest.

Well technique and knowledge can make a hugh difference between a technically ok image and a technically perfect image.

As well as developing your knowledge there is also developing your artistic side.  I would rather have a great artistic shot that is technically poor then a poor artistic shot that is technically great.

The last couple of months has seen me studying and practice hard.  My main focus has been Lightroom V4, learning its differences.  The new development engine has seen some major changes and needs a different approach.

Many would question the amount of effort I had put in but when I come back from a studio shoot or a wedding, I have hundreds of images to quickly evaluate, catalogue, keyword, and edit.  Knowing the program inside out may only save a few more seconds here and there on every image but after editing several images its time well worth spent.

If you want to efficiently edit your photographs and give the customer the quality of images they deserve in a fast and responsive manor, lean and fully understand your tools, the time will be well spent.

Testing Post Processing in Lightroom 4

I am a big fan of getting things right in camera, but I used to love experimenting in the darkroom.

Today we all have a darkroom at our finger tips with products like Gimp (Free), Adobe Elements, Apple’s iPhoto, Adobe Lightroom and lets not forget the big one, Photoshop.

Since the Beta was released I have been going over some of my old photographs and reprocessing them, trying to get my head round the new tools that Lightroom V4 brings to us.

I have used Lightroom since the early beta of V1, and have used it longer then I have Photoshop.  Every image I process goes through Lightroom but only a few go into Photoshop.

The above shots I reprocessed in LR4 and I took them in a different direction to how they were originally processed in LR3.

They may not be killer images but with each one I have learnt a lot.

Some of the film shots were very difficult images, with several of them I used a too contrasty film on a day that already had a lot of contrast.

For the portrait of Ashleigh; this was a simple shot with a small softbox to my left. I deliberately underexposed the natural light to make the full sun shining through the window look like late evening sunlight. Normally after minor exposure tweaks, adjusting the colour balance, and some sharpening, I would take this straight into Photoshop for the major editing. This image I did everything in Lightroom V4, and its produced a very pleasing and natural portrait.

Backup, Backup and Backup

Some people think I have a rather ridiculous Photography backup routine.

When out on site if away for more then a day I back up to the iPad, then backup to the computer when back to the office/home.  Files then get backed up to time machine (very useful if you have a Mac), then eventually moved off to an external hard disk, and also backed up to a Drobo and to a disk that is kept off site.

No matter what there should always be three copies of my files.

Well I don’t know how but last night I managed to delete my 2012 photograph directory off my main external hard drive while doing some extensive testing of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom V4.

Tonight to my horror, I discovered the fact.  I had also been efficient and deleted the early 2012 photographs of my Laptop to make some room and emptied the trash.

I had a copy off site and on the Drobo, but I still had that moment of panic!  I decided to not revert to the Drobo but try and recover the photographs from my Time Machine Backup.

Time Machine is an automatic backup program included with all Macs. Using this I was quickly able to recover all photographs except two shoots,  these had to be recovered from the Drobo.

So I can say my backup routine works, but I must remember to keep to my strict routine.  One of my backups did not have all the photographs on it, but luckily my routine ensures I always have more then one backup.

Remember; Backup, Backup and Backup.

Recall for Nikon EN-EL15 Batteries

Nikon have issued a service recall for the EN-EL15 Batteries, this is the battery found in the new D800, D800e, D7000 and the Nikon 1 V1.

More details here on how to identify if your battery is affected.