Images NW

The digital camera is a boon, and a curse!  My photography has so much improved since going digital. 

Before my first digital Point & Shoot, my camera was just not coming out of the bag. 

Let’s see buy rolls of film, shoot images, process film, review images.  The film cost was high, so I didn’t buy a lot.  Processing was expensive so I didn’t buy a lot of film.  Because I didn’t buy a lot of film, I was very selective of what I snapped so that’s what came out of the envelope when I picked up the prints: snapshots!

Remember what the settings where for that shot? Lord no.  That would mean recording all the information in a notebook and linking it somehow to the film can and frame.  Good luck with that when the kids are in the middle of the birthday party and the misses is demanding this shot and that.  It’s no wonder my photos were less than special.

Digital removes most of that.  Even shooting my 50d with bazillion megapixel files, I can get 200 shots on a $25 re-usable card.  Compare that to a roll of 36 exposure Kodachrome.  Instant feedback, look at the back of the camera, and you know if you got the image.  Mind you, now I come back from a short weekend trip with a thousand images.  From famine to feast!  Or is it over indulgence?

Ok.  How do we handle the bloat?  There are a lot of applications out there designed to address this issue: Picasa; ACDC; iMatch; Microsoft Expression Web; Photoshop Elements; Photoshop Lightroom.  I kicked the tires on Picasa, haven’t used ACDC, and have licenses for the rest.  In the end, I have settled into Lightroom.  My choice is one of pragmatism.  Adobe owns the photography space.  There are more books and blogs about their products than any other.  Lightroom isn’t the best organizer, but it is just good enough.  Expression Web, formerly iView Media Pro is way better as an organizer, but I also have to process my RAW images before sending them to the printer and for that, Lightroom is outstanding.

Now you know how I came to Lightroom.  After attending Scott Kelby’s Lightroom 2 training in Portland a couple of weeks ago, I feel confident enough to lead some workshops on the program.  So, last night at the TPS projection meeting, we reserved the meeting room at the Summit Library for next Wednesday…

• What:         Lightroom Workshop – Setting Up.
• Where:      Pierce County Library, Summit Branch, 5107 112th St. E., Tacoma, WA
  http://www.piercecountylibrary.org/map/default.aspx?id=612&marker=14
• When:       Wednesday,  6/10/2009  - 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

We have space for 15 people.  The first 15 people to provide comments to this posting are welcome.  Late comers are wait listed.

1. If you don’t have Lightroom, the principles apply to just about any organizer
2. If you do have a laptop, with your tools, bring it.

I will provide another post later this weekend with an outline and notes.

There is no charge for this workshop!

Registered Attendies:

( for details, see the comments…)

Greg Sylvester - Lenny Zimmerman - Nancy Brones - Dal Possinger
Doris Steeg - Joani Easterlund - Christine Stabile - Sharon Newcomer
Del Pieper
- 9 people - super

A small sailboat drifts past the Space Needle on a gorgeous afternoon.

It looks like spring has finally arrived here in the Pacific North Wet!

Monday, Memorial Day, was georgous.  This image was captured while sailing in Kelly’s T-Bird, Tessa.  He and I spent a plesant afternoon drifting from the north end of Lake Union to the south end, and back again.  The winds were light, the kyakers were all about, and generally it was just a great day.

This image was shot with my Canon 50d, using a 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS.  The sky in the original capture was hum… dull.  I’ve done the photoshop thing to this one because quite frankly, the sky was a boring hazy blue gray.  You can see some of the haze in the space needle.

So, you ask (maybe you don’t), how did I replace the sky?  It was easy.  Just load the image into Photoshop Elements, cut away the sky and the crane that I didn’t want, find another sky that you like, and presto chango, an image with more pop.

We were just up to Seattle again this evening, and I captured a bunch more images with similar bland skys.  I’ll work up a few pages to explain how its done if you don’t already know.

Female Black Headed Grosbeak in a Maple Tree

Its been a busy Memorial Day Weekend, and its not over yet.

Lightroom Seminar.

Friday, we went down to Portland. 
I had the opportunity to attend a Kelby seminar on Lightroom 2, instructed by none other than the legendary Scott Kelby himself. It was a full 6 hours, and well worth it.  If you have ever read any of Kelby’s books, then you already have an idea what his presentation style is like: fast paced, punctuated with humor, and informative. I don’t think I learned anything that was truely new to me, but I did learn a lot, and a lot of things I have been doing were reinforced.  Great for confidence building.
If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of his sessions, it will be well worth your time.  Visit the Kelby Training website to see what’s on the schedule

Kelly, showing off his brand new Toyota Tundra. He always wanted a little red wagon.

Gardening 

Every year, for the past nine years, we take our Geraniums, pot them up, and winter them over in the garage.  Saturday was the day to take them down and show them the light.
Our son Kelly, decided that it was a good day to come down from Seattle and show off his bright shiny new toy.  Gotta agree, it is bright!

After dinner last night, I got out the EOS 100-400, and my Better Beamer, and spent time playing.  Hard to know what the best settings on any rig are if you don’t practice and review.  The Black Headed Grosbeak, a female,  above is one of the images I captured.

It’s the third Thursday of the month again!  That makes it Print Day at the Tacoma Photographic Society, my local camera club.

Blooms from our Rohdodendron degronianum ssp. yakushimanum. A glorious specimen if I do say so myself.

On the left here, is a tight shot of the Yakushimanum in bloom.  A couple of blooms to be precise.  This fine specimen is 6 fee tall, and 6 feet across.  Right now, from the breakfast table, it is a mass of white as the blooms have lost the pink tint they start with.

Below, is one of our frequent visitors, a Black Capped Chickadee. While working in the garden yesterday, it was kind enough to pose for me. Now if I could only get the Grebes to cooperate like this little guy.

A Black Capped Chickadee perches in a Magnolia bush, checking out the scene.

It’s time for re-invention…

Leaving the same image up in the same place for months doesn’t encourage readers to visit. And, because of the economic circumstance, I find myself with the opportunity to retire early from Weyerhaeuser, where I have laboured for the last 29+ years.

So it is time to get serious with our artistic side and see if we can turn some of the things we enjoy into fun ways to earn some scratch.

This Blog

We have been looking for a theme that would provide a balance.  We want to show off our photo work, but we also want to be able to put the words on the page in a pleasing format.  I think this theme, Mandigo, by Tom over at OneHertz.Com comes as close as we are going to get without writing our own.  Don’t have time now, maybe later.  All the same, we aren’t fully familiar with all of the features, so expect a few tweaks as we dig in deeper.

Photo Hosting Site

One big change coming up, is that we are moving away from Zenfolio, and back to SmugMug as our photo hosting site.  SmugMug offers a lot more flexibility on page layout as well as products that we can offer you.  Nothing against Zenfolio, just felt a little limited there and as the lease is almost up, its a good time to switch.

Tutorials

We want to give back to the community, and we will be doing that through tutorials in the areas we are interested in.  This is a photography blog, so you can expect articles about the usual…

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
• Adobe Photoshop Elements
• Adobe Photoshop (haven’t been using this lately because Lightroom & Elements are such a powerful pair)
• Photodex Proshow Gold and Producer

And anything else that comes along which seems worthy of  a longer explanation than just a blog posting.

Let’s see where the wind takes us…