RRD Photo

Slides from Layers Talk

2008-12-14T11:59:00.003-05:00

Thanks to all who attended the Photoshop session this evening and for your great questions and participation! As promised, below you'll find the slides to review. Alternatively, you can visit this link to review the deck in full-screen: Photoshop Layers and Blending Modes.

For ease of reference, here's the list of Recommended Reading. I've got all of these (and others) right next to my workstation! Remember, it's not about learning every possible technique - you just need to know which book or website you learned it from.

Skin by Lee Varis
Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers by Martin Evening
Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Photoshop
Steve Caplin's How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3

... http://blog.rrdphoto.com (!)

Upcoming Speaking Engagement: Photoshop Layers! Sunday, Dec 14

2008-12-08T20:39:00.000-05:00

I thought several readers in the Cincinnati area would be interested to know that I will be speaking on the topic of Photoshop Layers and Blending Modes this coming Sunday, December 14th at 5PM for the Cincinnati Photoshop Meetup user group.

Here's a little blurb on the topic:

Photoshop Layers and Blending Modes: Tips and Tricks
What separates Photoshop from MS Paint? Well, quite a bit actually, but certainly one of the most powerful advantages for Photoshop is the ability to edit your images using Layers. During this tutorial you'll learn the ins-and-outs of layers, adjustment layers, masks and blending modes found in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Examples will include exposure correction, efficient clone-stamp strategies, soft focus portraiture, quick retouch techniques, and a great example of why you should always name your layers! The material will touch on the basics but we'll quickly get into some more advanced techniques that anyone can use once learned.

More information and registration can be found here at the Cincinnati Photoshop Meetup Group website.

Balluminaria 2008 in Eden Park

2008-11-23T21:01:00.005-05:00

Balluminaria 2008 in Eden Park, originally uploaded by rrdphoto.

A little colder this time of year and Mirror Lake was frozen over. The balloonists lit up Eden Park with their signature glow which reflected off of the ice.

I had to do quite a bit of tidying up in Photoshop - turns out they don't have a Zamboni on hand to smooth things over! The surface had a ton of small blocks of ice on it from the kids playing earlier in the day & all those small points of extreme contrast distracted from the balloons. An easy fix that really improves the image.

I was fortunate that they held the event a week early this year - typically it is held on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, and I'm usually not able to make it.

Fun Link: Run every filter in Photoshop!

2008-09-21T08:50:00.000-04:00

Here's a fun link for a Sunday morning: What happens when you run an innocent photo of you and your cat through every available Photoshop filter?

Not particularly useful, yet for some reason very intriguing. Unfortunately, it seems as if you get somewhere around halfway through and you get to pure black or gray frames... I'd guess that the results would be the same regardless of the source - but I'm certainly not patient enough to find out!

Picasa Face Detection: Can't we get this on the Desktop?

2008-09-02T21:20:00.004-04:00

Update: Upon further investigation it seems that the face detection is only a part of the Web interface and is *not* synchronized back to your files on your computer! That's a bummer - hopefully something that can be improved upon in a later version. For the time being, I'll leave this post as-is... it's something we can hope to see down the road! -RD, 9/2

While the news has been mostly buzzing about Google's new Chrome browser, they've also released a new feature to their Picasa product: Face Detection.

The general idea is that the software learns your friends and family after you've tagged a few of them. As you import more and more photographs (or scan your existing library), Google Picasa will tag each with the appropriate handle

...that is, as long as it guesses correctly.

I want this feature in my Lightroom workflow!
What I'd like to try is to let Picasa take a pass at some of my images and attempt to tag out my various faces with names. However, the last thing I want to do is compromise the integrity of my existing keywords and metadata that Lightroom, et. al. have so tirelessly built up.

If I get some spare time, I'd like to test out some different workflow integration options: Do we only run Picasa on newly-imported photos (as we must with the GeoSetter software)? Can it be run at any time in the workflow? Will all of the tags marry up together or will we see some ugly conflicts? Any way to make it more-or-less automatic?

If I could turn Picasa loose on my files & be confident that it's not going to hose me then I'd be more apt to use it. Even better is if I don't need to handhold it - simply script it as a plugin or something to that effect. Clearly you'll have to interact with the Picasa software a bit to correct the recognition, but as it learns your subjects it should become less and less needy.

Just some thoughts on how to make use of a really neat feature until an equivalent finds its way into Lightroom in some way, shape, or form. If you beat me to it, please post about your experience in the comments section! ...Perhaps Jeffrey Friedl will find a way.

BTW - I've recommended Picasa to several people as the best software to use to manage their digital photographs. It isn't quite Lightroom of course, but it has some suprisingly powerful features and is great at what it does. Check it out.

PhotoWalk Contest Winners Announced

2008-08-30T13:59:00.000-04:00

Related to my previous post How To Geotag Your PhotoWalk, Scott Kelby has posted the winners and runner-ups to his blog. There are some great photographs in the mix from all over the world - pretty cool to think that over 8,000 people were out shooting that morning & yet all of the shots are so unique.

To see the winners, please visit Scott's Blog.

Rusted Iron

1/60 @ f/5.6, ISO 400

24-70mm f/2.8L, Canon 5d

Lightroom FUD: Let's Clear the Air

2008-08-27T18:35:00.001-04:00

Recently, Brian Auer posted an article to his blog giving three reasons why he refuses to use Lightroom. While he's certainly entitled to his opinion, I thought I'd spend a moment to clear the air and address some of his concerns.

First, WTF is FUD?
FUD (rhymes with 'thud') is a techno babble acronym for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" - generally it refers to misconceptions or inaccurate statements about how something works and why you should stay away. See Wikipedia (what else?) for more.

In Brian's article, his first point is his main concern - but his fear is based on FUD! Let's have a look.

1. DEPENDENT ON A DATABASE. ...I've been hit with database issues in the past ...I like to keep things organized on a hard drive. ...What happens if you upgrade hard drives? ...use different software?

Yes, it is true that Lightroom uses a database. However, it's also true that Lightroom (1) Stores *all* of your images in folders on the hard drive and (2) Can keep *all* of the adjustments you make to your photos in the sidecar/XMP files (or within the metadata of DNG images).

Lightroom uses its database to quickly and efficiently manage the data associated with your image library - the location & ratings of photos, thumbnails, metadata, keywords, collections, adjustment history, etc. That's a lot of stuff to be sure but note that it's entirely independent of your image files and adjustments! Your files live on the file system; the adjustments live in the metadata (so long as you set the "write changes to XMP" option).

Disaster Strikes!
So what happens if you were to lose your Lightroom Database? Well, it wouldn't be the best day ever, but not the end of the world either. Do you have a backup? You should - Lightroom automatically backs up your database once per week. Just roll back to that (it should go without saying that your Backup Workflow should extend to separate drives, online storage, etc.).

Didn't have a backup? Well, first, go to the store and buy a removable drive. Seriously, they're cheap - especially compared to camera gear. THEN, once you're back up and running with your computer you can just re-import everything into a fresh Lightroom... you haven't lost much, since all of your files contain their own metadata & the photos themselves are already sorted on your hard drive.

On Importing, Sorting, and DNG
The Lightroom import module is *great*. You can have it do a wide variety of steps for you including:

Pull files off of your memory card (duh)
Store in folders based on your spec (I prefer: YYYY/YYYYMMDD_SHOOT_NAME)
Rename files in a variety of ways (I prefer: rrd_YYYYMMDD_TXT_####.dng)
Apply shoot-level keywords to each image
Simultaneously copy to a backup drive
Apply default RAW adjustments
Convert the RAW files to DNG

Plus, once you have it the way you like Lightroom remembers your settings so all you do is change keywords & shoot-specific text. Importing is now one step - you're from card-to-hard [drive] almost automatically with everything in your preferred structure.

Conversion to DNG is, of course, optional but I recommend it highly. I could go on for days about the benefit of storing data in a published spec, but that's too far off topic. Instead, I'll suggest it purely for the next-best feature: no more XMP Sidecar files!! The DNG spec can store both the RAW data and all of the associated adjustments & metadata in a single file - that in itself is a huge plus.

Other hard drives, upgrades, etc.
So long as your storage system is somewhat sane, Lightroom handles storage on multiple drives with ease. In fact, you can perform many operations on files currently offline! Say you're remote on your laptop and you want to find an image in your library - you can do pretty much everything you need short of exporting a full-res image without even connecting the USB drive that the image happens to be stored on.

There are a variety of ways to work with multiple libraries, offline drives, etc. within Lightroom - I'd hazard a guess that it's a lot more capable in this area than you might think.

So you see, the fact that Lightroom uses a database is wholly positive and is only used for features that require a database. With a huge library it'd be difficult (or at least painful) to search, sort, etc. across a traditional file system. Lightroom handles all of this efficiently through its database and is smart enough to know what should be left to the file system.

2. REDUNDANT WITH BRIDGE/ACR ...I've already paid for Photoshop ...Lightroom is just Bridge+ACR ...is it worth the additional cost?

Brian is correct here: Lightroom uses the exact same RAW converter that Photoshop does via its Camera RAW module (ACR). However, it is quite a bit more than just a combination of Bridge and ACR.

Browsing through your photographs and making adjustments in Lightroom is a very fluid process. This is not my experience with Bridge + ACR! What is missing is the database back-end that Lightroom leverages to make browsing quick and efficient. While Bridge can only provide views of the file system, LR is able to combine images, folders, etc in almost any way you can think of - creating organic collections of files is a non-issue and even automatic...

Want a view that shows you all of the files you've taken with the 24-70mm lens in 2008 on the 5d with the keyword 'Tree' (but not those with the keyword 'apple') and are rated 5 stars? Not a problem; it'll even update itself as you import new photos. Want to build a collection of images that you've displayed at a particular gallery show? Just make a collection out of them and this view is always available to you - without requiring extra storage since the collection is just info in the database.

You can't do that in Bridge!

Also nice is that Lightroom treats all image files - not just RAWs - with the exact same interface. When you do hop into Photoshop for some comping, etc., your PSD file can live right alongside (or even stacked with) your RAW file. Cropping, printing, adjusting, etc is all the same from there...

Better Have a Fast PC...
One caveat to all of this is that to use Lightroom effectively you really must have a fast, modern system. I'm running on a quad-core system with 6GB of RAM... you don't need to go to that extreme, but if your computer is more than a couple of years old you'll want to consider an upgrade.

The Investment Decision

NOTE: The comments here only apply if this is a business for you, obviously. If you're doing this purely for fun then none of this rationale applies!!

First off, the fact that you've spent money on your current solution isn't relevant to the Lightroom decision. While your significant other ~~may~~ will disagree, the decision should be based on whether you'll realize net value through the purchase of LR - you can't change the fact that you've already spent money on Photoshop.

Plus, you still need CS3 for more in-depth edits. Lightroom has greatly reduced the time I spend in Photoshop but you still need CS3 when it comes to hardcore edits. Plus, now that LR 2.0 ships with localized edits I find that I can deliver a large percentage of images without ever entering into CS3... That's a huge time & space saver: non-destructive dodging & burning (light painting) is an amazing thing.

Having the organization and advanced editing capabilities right at your fingertips in a single app can save enormous amounts of time.

3. MOB MENTALITY ...LR has a cult following ...I base decisions on my own needs

I hear ya' brother! Lightroom is definitely mainstream, but it's for good reason (see above).

You need to make your own decisions about the tools you use in your workflow and remember that it's about making great images - not the tools you're using to get there. That said, there's something to be said for choosing the right tool for the job and I must say that I feel far more productive using Lightroom than I did with my previous Bridge+ACR workflow.

Good luck and be sure to let us know when you've switched to Lightroom. ;)

Geotagging the Cincinnati PhotoWalk with GPS

2008-08-26T07:24:00.003-04:00

This past Saturday I participated in the first (annual?) Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk via the downtown Cincinnati route led by David Ziser. It was a great event that went off without a hitch and there are a ton of interesting photographs showing up in the Cincinnati Group Pool.

In this post I'll show a few of my images and discuss how I went about geotagging them by carrying a GPS unit along with me. First, a look at our route with markers to indicate the location from which each of my photos were taken:

Our Route for the Cincinnati Photowalk
23 August 2008

Tracking your Photowalk with GPS
The first piece of the geotagging puzzle is (obviously) the GPS unit itself. There are a few ways of going about this, ranging from specialized field/hiking units to small devices that continuously log your location. I just used the one that was in my vehicle - a Mio c320 Digiwalker. While not specifically designed for photography, this unit (like many others) can save what is called a Track Log of your coordinates every few seconds or so.

Syncronize Your Watches...
To make your life considerably easier, remember to sync the time on your camera with the time on your GPS device! As you'll see shortly, the magic of this depends on the clocks clicking together.

Start the tracking and bag the GPS
You'll need to test this with your device, but most units should be able to get a fix on the GPS satelites through the fabric of your camera bag, provided it is thin. Most bags have an outer pocket that isn't too padded, so this will probably be your best bet. Just turn on the GPS and be sure to dim the backlight on your screen in order to get the most out of your battery.

During our walk, I went for about 4 hours before the unit started to have battery trouble. If this were a longer walk I would need to figure out some way to power the device (it can run on +5V from the USB connection) or disable the screen entirely to max out the life.

Now that you've got the GPS tracking, head out and take the nice photographs like you always would. Try hard to forget that The Man is in your bag tracking you!!

Tagging the photos with GeoSetter
Once you've loaded the photos onto your computer, copy the GPX Tracklog from your GPS device into the same directory. You'll need to check the manual or ask online about how to do this on your particular model.

Next, download and fire up the (free!) GeoSetter program and navigate to your folder of images. Geosetter will detect the track log and automatically draw a line on the map illustrating your journey. Next, select all of your images and click the Synchronize Geo Data button. After a short while your images will begin to appear plotted out on the map - cool!!

The last step in geotagging is to save your image files with their newly geotagged metadata. While setting up GeoSetter, be sure you look through all of the options and select things like "Save Flickr Geotags" if you plan to upload them to Flickr.

What if I didn't sync my clocks?
If you forgot to sync your camera's clock with the GPS unit, you'll want to take advantage of GeoSetter's ability to compensate. It will automatically adjust for some small jitter, but just before you sync it provides a nice interface that you can tweak until the clock shown matches the one on your camera. Note that this (of course) depends on your PC being in sync with the GPS... most computers these days can sync their time with the internet clocks - I found mine to be within 10 seconds or so of the GPS device. Good enough for me.

Use GeoSetter BEFORE Lightroom adjustments.
This is an important one, as GeoSetter tends to replace the metadata in your files instead of simply merging the information. If you've already loaded them into Lightroom, you'll need to select all & choose Metadata | Read Metadata after you've finished the geotagging process. This is annoying since you will lose your Lightroom adjustments, but not a big deal so long as you remember to tag first. I use Lightroom to import & convert to DNG; my process was to import via lightroom, run GeoSetter, then have LR re-read the metadata to pick up the changes.

Speaking of Lightroom, check out the little arrow next to the GPS field in the metadata section. Click this and it'll take you over to Google Maps with your photo's location pinpointed! :)

Upload to Flickr
Now that you're tagged, do your usual edits and then upload your photos to Flickr. Prior to uploading, you'll want to ensure that your Flickr Privacy Settings are set to allow automatic placement on the map - otherwise you'll sit there scratching your head wondering why it doesn't work (I may know this from experience...)! If you have trouble, there's a good Geotagging Group to help and also a good intro from Flickr's Blog.

If all went according to plan, you'll see your photos on the Flickr Map!

Back to the Photowalk
Like I said, this was a great event and I was happy to meet a lot of great people and have some great discussions along the way. It was particularly nice talking with Eric & Joe, photogs from the Cleveland area who spent the night before out until 4AM taking night shots of the city! Eric has a great Day/Night shot of the Roebling Bridge on his blog.

I also spent a lot of time speaking with Jim Talkington, who blogs over at ProPhotoLife. Jim is a great resource for anyone interested in the photo biz and is happy to help people get started. His blog contains a lot of helpful videos, so do check it out.

Finally, a big thanks to David Ziser for putting this toghether in Cincinnati. David is both an excellent photog and also a fine educator - not to mention a helluva nice guy! Check David's blog out at DigitalProTalk and also see his training videos over at KelbyTraining.com.

Images and GPS Data
My Photowalk Flickr Set is available, but if you're interested in higher quality versions and prints of my photos please check out the Smugmug gallery of the Cincinati Photowalk. You may also be interested in checking out the GPS Track Log of the walk; it won't sync directly with your photographs, but may be interesting to play around with. Enjoy!

DNG Profiles in Lightroom 2 - an Old v. New Comparison

2008-08-02T08:50:00.003-04:00

Every photo blog out there is currently writing about the new Lightroom 2.0 which, by the way, is an incredible product. The new Adjustment Brush tool takes Lightroom to a whole new level - no more blowing out a whole TIFF simply to do a little dodge and burn in Photoshop... (My hard drive budget thanks you, Adobe!)

I could pile on, but today I'm going to give a quick example of what I've seen this morning with the new DNG Camera Profiles (beta) from Adobe. This is really great stuff!

While many people prefer the Lightroom and Camera Raw workflow compared to the tools provided by their camera's manufacturer, often you'll hear complaints about the Adobe color rendering to be a little off - or at least - a little different.

This has all changed with the introduction of DNG Profiles. Along with a major update to their own "standard" profile (which is not a generic standard, but rather their per-camera standard profile) they've also included Camera Matching profiles which provide results very similar to that of what you get from your manufacturer's software (including Picture Styles). Here's a side-by-side comparison of the ACR 4.4 standard profile and the new DNG standard profile:

Studio Portrait Example Brittanny Canon 5d, 70-200mm f/2.8L @ f/7.1, ISO100

ACR 4.4 Profile		DNG Profile - Adobe Standard

Landscape Example Hoover Dam Canon 30D, Sigma 10-20mm @ f/5.6 1/160sec, ISO100

ACR 4.4 Profile		DNG Profile - Adobe Standard

The first thing that caught my attention was the improvement in skin tones - while the image on its own holds up, when you compare it to the new profile and you quickly see that Brittanny really looks a bit... yellow on the left! The shot of the dam is a little less dramatic, though the slightly reddish tone of the rocks comes through quite nicely on the right.

Note that this new profile is not built into Lightroom 2 as shipped! You need to go to the DNG Profiles page and download the installer. It's very simple to do following the directions and FAQ on their site.

Profile Editor
The camera profile provides you with a good starting point for your RAW images. The standard profiles that ship with all RAW converters work pretty well, but for critical accuracy you'll need to create your own camera profile. The basic process is shooting a color test chart under two specific lighting conditions & then handing that image over to software which reads the values & builds a custom profile for your rig.

Adobe has also released a tool that allows you to tweak existing profiles and to create your own: the DNG Profile Editor. I haven't gotten into this one yet, but it has a lot of promise. For a great writeup on this tool, check out the article on Luminous Landscape.

On DNG
Now that there are over 200+ unique RAW formats it is more important than ever to consider converting over to the DNG Standard. Storing your images in a published standard format like DNG will help to ensure that 30 years from now - when Canon, Nikon, or even Adobe may no longer exist - you'll be able to view your digital images. Even better is that with DNG you can always make updates to your favorite photos when a new piece of software comes around, like the updated profiles we've seen here.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Happy shooting!

Traveling? Here's a scam to watch out for.

2008-07-10T18:39:00.000-04:00

Scott Kelby posted a great recount of his brother nearly getting nailed by a scam artist/thief while traveling in Italy. The gist of it is that his brother was taking a picture of some interesting food in a store when a "security guard" approached & asked that he not take photos.

That's common enough - but the scam comes in when the security guard asks that he hand over the memory card in his camera! He refused and the "guard" walked away; apparently the scam is to get unsuspecting tourists to hand over their card no questions asked & then resell the cards out on the street. Kind of surprised he didn't go after the whole camera!

Just something to keep in mind if you're planning on being a tourist in the near future: tourist areas have a high concentration of two things - gullible tourists and thieves who are looking to mark gullible tourists!

Scenic View...

2008-06-09T22:47:00.006-04:00

Scenic View
Larger Photograph & Prints

Taken at a Scenic View Stop in Tennessee along highway 75 southbound. My wife and I were on our way down to Atlanta to visit our new nephew - I saw the "view" sign and the sky & figured I should stop!

The photograph is an HDR using tone compression to bring the highlights and shadows a bit closer together & have it all work in a single image. Shot with a 200mm tele in order to compress the foreground & background elements of the scene. Whole lot of compression going on all over the place...

While there, I met Martin B. Cherry; another photographer who had a similar idea. He was taking a different approach to the scene - shooting it a bit wider and from a slightly different vantage point. It'll be interesting to see how his turn out.

Blog Note:
Yep, it's been a while since I've posted due to some other projects I've been working on. I won't be back up to my previous frequency for a while. :)

Renowned Bird Photographer Bill Leaman: April 24, 2008

2008-04-12T11:47:00.005-04:00

The Camera Club of Cincinnati is hosting a seminar with Bird Photographer Bill Leaman on Thursday, April 24 at 8PM. The session is free and open to the public.

Bill Leaman is a nationally published photographer whose images appear regularly in magazines such as Birds & Blooms and Wildbird. His bird images often can be seen on the covers of calendars across the United States.

Bill is represented by several stock photo agencies worldwide. Although birds are his primary focus, he has an image library of over 20,000 images which include landscapes, mammals, plants and outdoor recreation. Bill is also a Park Ranger Sergeant with the Hamilton County Park District near Cincinnati, Ohio.

April 24, 2008 8:00 PM
The Camera Club of Cincinnati
7045 Vine Street
Carthage, Ohio 45216

A PDF Flier is available if you would like to help spread the word!

Handicapped Parking

2008-04-05T14:19:00.003-04:00

Handicapped Parking, originally uploaded by rrdphoto.

A "Golden Champion" motorized scooter sits in a parking garage, secured by a heavy steel chain and brass padlock. A handicapped parking sign is on the wall above the scooter.

Too bad it wasn't a Rascal!

I snapped this in a downtown Cincinnati garage while packing up my car after a shoot. I really like the way the chain adds to the story of the shot... it speaks to the limitations of being handicapped or at least the perception of limitation.

Overview of Lightroom 2.0 Beta

2008-04-03T11:20:00.003-04:00

Adobe has released a public beta version of Lightroom 2.0, which sports several new features including:

Localized corrections such as Dodging & Burning (sweet!!)
Ability to open in Photoshop CS3 as a Smart Object (double sweet!!)
Post-crop vignetting (uber!)
Improved print sharpening (based on Photokit Sharpener - finally!)

Very cool stuff indeed, but note that it's a beta and comes with some very important caveats.

For a nice walkthrough of some of the new features, check out the Computer-Darkroom site run by Ian Lyons. I'm not jumping on this one just yet as I've got some work to get done first, but sooner or later I'll take it for a spin and let you know what I think.

The localized D&B sounds totally awesome though - I *hate* having to blow out a full TIFF just to do a little dodge & burn or a vignette (on a cropped photo)... this will save me a ton of time & a lot of hard drive space.

Photo deals for April 2008

2008-04-02T20:46:00.003-04:00

Calumet Photo discount: $15 off $100 plus Free Shipping

$15 off $100 at Calumet Photographic Plus Free Shipping over $75! - extended through April
Important Notes on this deal:

The $15 discount will not show up in the shopping cart when the product is purchased, but it will show up in the confirmation email with all of the order details.
No code is necessary to receive this discount, but you must enter the site via the link above

Calumet is quickly becoming one of my favorite online photo retailers. They ship same day if you order before 5PM CST and if you're any where near Chicago (including Cincinnati) the package typically arrives the next day! (And that's with just the basic shipping.)

Great place to stock up on lenses, studio backdrops, lighting, etc... I just picked up some Super Clamps!

Mozy Online Backup: April Coupon Codes

Mozy Unlimited Backup - $4.95/Month!
10% off Annual Subscriptions: APRIL
10% off Biannual Subscriptions: APRIL2

Just follow the link above and enter the code into the promo code box when you sign up.

If you're only backing up to a second drive you aren't protecting your docs & photos from theft, fire, Godzilla... Set up something off site before it's too late. You can read more about my backup workflow if you're interested in how I do it.

Exposing For Snow

2008-03-28T17:33:00.001-04:00

Baseball in Snow, March 2008
1/320sec @f/8, ISO200 | 24-70mm f/2.8L on Canon 30D

I was going to hold off a bit on the "snow exposure" commentary since things in Cincinnati had warmed up into the 60's within about a week of the 2008 Winter Storm. However, since Chicago got slammed with snow this week and because the winter temperatures have returned to the 'nati I may as well talk snow!

Bump Exposure Compensation Up
The typical advice when it comes to shooting snowscapes is to operate your camera as usual, but to set the Exposure Compensation to a value of +1EV or so. This works and you'll get nice white snow, but why is it necessary?

Middle Gray Metering
The meter inside your camera is a reflective meter, meaning that it is reading the light bouncing off of the surface you are focused on and determines how to expose the scene. The camera is setup to give an exposure which will render the metered subject as middle gray (18% gray).

Of course, there are a lot of complex algorithms involved but fundamentally this is what happens.

So, if your scene is primarily made up of bright white snow, the camera's meter will attempt to expose all of that nice snow as a dingy middle gray - hence an underexposure of the scene. By setting the Exposure Compensation to +1EV, you are telling the camera to "Expose the scene based on the meter reading plus one full stop".

By making the gray snow twice as bright (i.e., plus one stop) you now have white snow & a properly exposed image!

Especially Important for Digital Photography
While getting a proper exposure in-camera is always important, it is especially so with digital cameras. Because of the way a digital sensor works, the most information is stored in the brightest two stops of the exposure. More info is in my digital basics talk and on The Luminous Landscape, but the key is to understand that a digital sensor counts the number of photons that hit its surface.

Because it takes twice as many photons to double the luminance and because those photons are counted one by one, the digital sensor uses twice as many bits to describe the levels in the brightest stop as it does the next-brightest stop and so on. It is a linear system.

The reason this matters is because while you can lighten an underexposed scene in post processing you'll soon reach a point where the computer is trying to reveal detail where there is little information available. This results in posterization (blotchy) artifacts in the shadows that can ruin an otherwise great photo.

The key is to expose the scene properly so that you're capturing the detail without blowing out the highlights - often easier said than done, but that's why we use meters, histograms, technique, and practice to help us out!

Incident Metering as Another Option
When I was out shooting the 2008 storm I didn't employ the +1EV technique discussed above. Because the sky was heavily overcast and the light was very consistent I pulled out my light meter and took an incident reading. The difference between incident and reflective readings is that while the reflective system must assume that the light is bouncing off of a surface of a given brightness (well, reflectivity), the incident meter is evaluating the amount of light emitted from the light source.

This allows you to obtain a correct exposure for any subject illuminated by that light source. Since I wasn't concerned that the light would change (the clouds were thick and even), this was my best option. The meter read 1/400sec @ f/8.0 (ISO 200) so by locking that in I was able to photograph any scene lit by that light confident that the exposure would be correct.

The key benefit to this approach vs. the in-camera reflective meter is that the reflective meter is influenced by the contents of the scene. A scene with a lot of snow would register differently than one that has a little snow and many darker buildings - combine the latter scene with a +1EV and you can end up overexposing the snow!

When I encountered a situation where the light changed a bit, such as under the bridges or when the snow slowed, I would adjust the exposure time slightly in order to compensate. This technique certainly requires a bit more attention, but it delivers highly consistent results.

If you don't have access to an incident meter you could achieve similar results by using your camera's meter to derive the correct exposure (use your histogram) and then lock those settings in via manual mode.

Post Processing Snow Images
Although most all of the images had the proper exposure there was still some improvements to be had through the magic of post processing. Working in Lightroom, I typically had to increase the Blacks slider several notches in order to achieve a true black point in the photographs.

Why? Well, in these images there was a whole lot of blowing snow which meant that there were more gray tones than true shadows. As the snow blows across the shadow areas it is recorded on the sensor and shows up gray.

While this may be what was actually recorded, it looks very flat in print and doesn't resemble what the scene looked like in real life. We fix it with the Blacks slider (or curves) and pull back the shadow areas so that we get close to a true black point. The images now have a nice contrasty pop & will look great on print.

Remember: By properly exposing for the snow we've captured the scene with the most possible information - we now have a lot of headroom to pull back shadows & tweak highlights without worrying about artifacts.

Works for (gasp!) Film Too...
I was with my buddy Andy last night watching the XU Musketeers beat WVU and he brought along his prints from the storm shoot. Andy shoots 35mm film but other than that there was no difference in our approach to exposure - I took the reading and helped him to dial in the settings on his Pentax body (after compensating for his 400ASA film; meaning that his exposure was 1/800sec @ f/8).

The prints looked great - though there was "no" post-processing, in reality the lab did the same things I did with the black point before printing. ...Just because you're not changing things in Photoshop doesn't mean that this isn't occurring on your behalf at the lab! Hence the term "digital darkroom" being used to describe the post process of the digital workflow.

Andy commented on how clear & crisp everything looked and - referring to other dark, gray snow scenes that he's seen before - how much of an improvement proper exposure makes. He certainly had some nice shots in there - too bad I can't share them with you since they're currently stuck in that little print envelope! :)

Learning More about Proper Exposure
One of the best books I've read about photography is Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. Whether you're shooting film or digital, if you're interested in getting serious about your photography and taking it to the next level then this is the first book you should read. A little knowledge in the fundamentals goes a long way.

How to Use Curves... when you suck at Photoshop

2008-03-25T09:47:00.003-04:00

Donnie Hoyle has been treating us to hilarious Photoshop how-to's for a while now and he just put out Volume #9 of You Suck At Photoshop: Curves.

The whole series is great & if you are new to this you may want to start back at episode #1...

Mysterious Symbols...

2008-03-23T11:42:00.003-04:00

Electric Guitar, originally uploaded by rrdphoto.

A Flickr user left a comment on the photo above that explains what the various symbols on the guitar mean. Very cool, since I had wondered ever since I took the photo. I'm glad she happened past and answered the call - the Internet is pretty cool (sometimes).

User joychristine says:

from the top down- very loose translation:

a. matter (existence)... (also taken as perfection or an elemental grounding)...

b. passive intellect, similarity- in my opinion, basic human relation.

c. isolation. protection.

d. (very strictly) crossbreeding. variety. combination... as the beatles put it, "come together."

Anyway, these guys (Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers) will be back in town this Tuesday night at the Southgate House! Highly recommended if you're into great live music... I probably won't shoot the show; I've shot these guys several times & think I'm just going for the tunes this time around.

You can see other RCPM photos here.

PicLens: My new favorite tool for browsing web galleries

2008-03-22T07:42:00.009-04:00

I'm of the opinion that most web-based photo galleries suck when it comes to usability & actually viewing photos.

After all, isn't seeing the photographs the most important part?

Seriously - the photo is about (well, supposed to be about) the image; not the EXIF, tags, groups, etc! When I'm trying to look at a gallery of photographs I want to see the images and have the interface get out of the way.

Enter PicLens. This is a piece of software that you install onto your computer that integrates with your favorite web browser (Firefox, Safari, and even MSIE). Now, any time you visit a photo gallery-style web site you can click the Play button that appears when you hover over an image and be launched into the PicLens full screen image browser!

It works with any site that provides a standard Media RSS feed, including: Flickr, SmugMug, Facebook, Lightroom Galleries and more. In full screen mode, you can drag the "image wall" in 3D space to view *all* thumbnails (no more pages of just 10-15 thumbnails!) and just double click to view larger & full-sized images. Very easy to get the hang of & far better than what you'll find on most sites.

Finally - you don't need to put up with the crappy interface & browse photos one by one!

Not quite PicLens, but SmugMug's galleries also rule...
I would be remiss if I did not mention that while most sites have a terrible interface for viewing (cough, Flickr, cough), SmugMug has recently implemented their Stretchy interface. This is a really great interface for pure browser-based web galleries, especially for folks with high-resolution wide screen monitors...

The interface automatically adjusts to be as efficient as possible; using different size/number of thumbnails and large images that go as big as they can. On top of that, clicking an image puts it in a lightbox view that goes as big as your browser window & all images are preloaded in the background for fastest viewing.

Right now, SmugMug really has the absolute best gallery style out there when it comes to browsing photographs. It's a great use of modern Web 2.0 features that provide enhanced usability without getting in your way.

Back to our regularly scheduled program...
Got a bit off track there with the SmugMug love fest; back to PicLens! Actually there's not much more to say about it... Have I mentioned that it rules & makes galleries on Flickr, Facebook and others actually usable? Go check it out!