Peak in the Water by Michael A Blanchette
Peak in the Water by Michael A Blanchette
Monday, 1st December 2014
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Smooshed Glasses as a Psychological Indicator
Smooshed Glasses as a Psychological Indicator
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 — image data
Found Them!
my lost glasses, back in my loving embrace... sort of
Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 — image data
Found Them!
my lost glasses, back in my loving embrace... sort of
After returning from errands last night, I realized that I couldn't find my glasses. I knew I'd put them in my coat pocket when leaving the gym, but in between had been all over the city on scooter, foot, and bicycle.
I figured that I'd probably lost them on the 2km walk to a bicycle shop (to pick up a new bicycle), or on the bumpy 2km ride home. It was warm enough that I'd slung my jacket over my shoulder for most of the way there.
I spent an hour in the dark drizzle last night with a flashlight retracing my steps. I didn't find them, but did learn that it's hard to see in the dark, and rain is wet. I was bummed.
This morning I tried again in the light, and found them flatter than a pancake on the Sanjo Ohashi bridge (this bridge), and the weird thing is that I immediately felt better about the whole thing.
I think the psychological aspect is interesting... I felt much worse about not knowing than about the loss of the glasses.
Random Excellence: Ahmed Deeb
Random Excellence: Ahmed Deeb
This beautiful shot of Istanbul in winter was posted on Instagram by Middle East-based photographer Ahmed Deeb .
Here's Ahmed at work in Aleppo—this photo's by shagaleh. (That city name always reminds me of Vladimir Nabokov's short story 'That in Aleppo Once...' .)
Mike
(Thanks to Speed, who found this)
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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30% Off Any Book, Today Only
30% Off Any Book, Today Only
Martin Evening's Adobe Photoshop CC for
Photographers, 2014 Release 
Reader Peter Berber writes to say that you can get 30% off any book at Amazon.com, up to $10, by entering the code "HOLIDAY30" at purchase. I have not tested this, so I'll have to leave you to figure it out for yourself. (I also don't know if this works at Amazon U.K.)
Peter just bought Martin Evening's The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book 
(As an aside, let me just say that I love web searches, I really do. Searching "Martin Evening" on Amazon just now also brought up books by Martin Short and Martin Luther. Just thinking about those two humans at the same time made me smile into my coffee. Okay, never mind me.)
Mike
(Thanks to Peter Barber)
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Prejudices
Prejudices
• So here's how you solve the rangefinder dilemma: invest in Fuji XF lenses and get an X-T1 and an X-Pro1 (or -2, which should be out in 2015). Then it's simple; just pick whichever viewfinder you happen to feel like using that day.
I know, this isn't cost-effective, but hey, we were just talking about the Leica M.
• I haven't bonded with it, but in my judgment the Olympus E-M1 is the best all-around, general purpose, do-everything camera on the planet right now. It compromises on many levels, but it also just hits so many sweet spots it's insane. Ergonomics, size and weight, that awesome IBIS, the endless lenses you can use with it. The only thing I don't like about it is the position of the on/off switch, and c'mon, if you have to complain about that....
• There are a lot of interesting tidbits of information in the Sony Devices Segment report just out—for instance, that sales of sensors for compact digicams have declined by a whopping 30% but that Sony now has virtually 100% of the market for them; or that imaging sensors account for 43% of the Segment's sales, meaning 320 billion yen (approx. US$2.7 billion); or that they foresee the interchangeable lens camera sensor market dropping by almost half (18 million units to 10 million units) by 2017. Or that Sony thinks the A6000 has the world's fastest autofocus.
But the most interesting thing in the report to me is conceptual:
...Sony thinks that sensors will "strengthen imaging" if they exceed the capacity of the human eye. Which sensors already do in some ways, but still, it's an interesting goal—and an interesting question as to whether that's something that art-oriented photographers want or need. It's something I brought up years ago in my discussion of the Sony A900 and Nikon D3, remember? I thought the A900 saw detail a lot better than I did and the D3 saw in the dark a lot better than I did.
• After a long allegiance to 4/3 and more than a dalliance with full-frame, I'm back to thinking that APS-C is the optimum sensor size. You know, sort of what Michael Reichmann was arguing in, I don't know, 2004? I mean, I really like the A7II, but the sensor's too big for my kind of photography...APS-C really does hit the best balance. (My last two cameras have been APS-C, the Sony NEX-6 that just got retired and the X-T1 I've been using recently.) And don't think this is sour grapes—I've owned two full-frame cameras and still have one of them.
• Speaking of old-fashioned APS-C, the Canon 7D Mark II looks like a nice conventional DSLR, doesn't it? Anybody have one yet? Or used one?
• This is Sunday, and I often do off-topic opinion pieces on Sunday, but today you can thank me for not going off on Christmas's War on Thanksgiving. That topic gets me sufficiently exercised that a column about it would be too harsh and not much fun. Michael Scrooge. (Don't mind me, I always get like this at the beginning of Christmas music season. Thank God for online shopping; I have to stay out of stores for a solid month at this time of year. Except I can't avoid the grocery store, where no doubt "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" will be chipping away painfully at my brain.)
• How you identify a terminal gear fanatic: nothing's good enough for them. These days, lots of stuff is good enough for me. There are so many great cameras out right now I can't even keep them all straight. It's an embarrassment of riches.
Mike
(Thanks to Kevin Purcell)
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Burnished Evening by Michael Flaherty
Burnished Evening by Michael Flaherty
Burnished Evening by Michael Flaherty
Sunday, 30th November 2014
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Create Perfect Portraits in Lightroom Using These 6 Classic Retouch Techniques
Create Perfect Portraits in Lightroom Using These 6 Classic Retouch Techniques
With portraiture, what you see is not always what you want to get. Even the very best portrait with the perfect model will often need some form of post-production to get it to pop. Today we are going to look at six classic post production techniques to get the most out of your portraits. These techniques are generally similar in Lightroom and Photoshop but in this article we shall concentrate on Lightroom. When using Photoshop it is best to use an adjustment layer or a duplicate layer to preserve the original.
1. Blemish Removal
No skin is flawless and so to clean up a model’s skin we can use the Spot Edit tool from Lightroom’s develop module. Select the Heal tab not the clone and set a brush size about 50% bigger than the larger blemishes. Add about 25% feather and then simply place the cursor over the blemish. Lightroom will estimate what area should be used to cover the blemish but if this is not good, you can relocate the selection area to improve the coverage. At the bottom of the Lightroom window there is a useful Visualise Spots box, this reveals a negative version of the image showing where potential blemishes are.
Use the heal selection of the Spot Removal tool
2. Enhancing the Eyes
Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush tool contains a number of useful presets to enhance portraits. To enhance the eyes we can use the Iris Enhance preset, from the presets drop-down. Zoom in tight on eye area, then apply the brush over the iris area. By default the flow rate, the rate at which the effect is applied is set to 48. This means that you might need to paint over the area several times for the effect to really kick in. Once the effect is applied, you can further enhance it by adjusting the sliders for the tool. Clarity and Saturation are particularly good tools to use.
The Iris Enhance preset on the Adjustment Brush
3. Removing Wrinkles
Another Adjustment Brush preset comes in useful here, the soften skin preset. Like the Iris Enhance you simply carefully apply the brush over the wrinkles. Again like Iris Enhance, the preset is fully adjustable after the fact. You will find that the default brush size is very small, so that you can work on individual wrinkles. Another way to remove wrinkles is to return to the Spot Edit tool and use the Heal tab again. Select a small brush size and rather than selecting just a spot, click and drag along the wrinkle line. Lightroom will attempt to smooth out that line.
4. Blurring the Background
Not all of us are lucky enough to own fast prime lenses for that shallow depth of field, so in order to simulate the classic out of focus portrait background we can use Lightroom’s clarity slider with the Adjustment Brush tool. Select the tool and set the brush to a fairly large size and a feather of 10-20%. Now reduce the Clarity slider to -100 and paint around the model being careful not to cut into the model herself.
Painting an Adjustment mask to blur the background
5. Cinematic Style Portrait
The desaturated movie look is a great way to add character to your portraits. To achieve this we need to boost the contrast slider to between +5 to +10. We now boost the overall dynamic range by reducing highlights and whites by -10 to -20 and increasing shadows and blacks by the same. Play around with the exact figures to get a slightly flatter looking image.
Now we are going to slide the clarity tool to around +40-50%. Next we slide the Saturation tool to -50 to -60 to remove a lot of the colour from the image, you can also experiment using the Vibrance tool instead.
Now using the Tone Curve we can boost the contrast slightly. At the left and right ends of the histogram drag the line down slightly. In the mid tone region you can, if needed, bring the line upwards. This adds a subtle boost in the overall contrast.
The cinematic film look
6. Sharpening Eyes
The most important part of any portrait is the eyes. As well as enhancing them, it is a good idea to selectively sharpen them. Rather than apply a blanket sharpen to the whole image, which may reintroduce some of issues we have already removed, we can sharpen only the eye area. To do this, we return to our old favorite, the Adjustment Brush. Reset any corrections in the tool by clicking twice on the Effect text at the top of the tool. From the bottom of the Lightroom window, check the Show Selected Mask Overlay box and gently paint over the eyes. You will see a red mask being overlaid, helping you to to keep the correction only on the eyes. Use a brush that is about 50% the size of the eyes and a feather of about 10%. Once happy, select the Show Overlay box and boost the Clarity by 20% and the Sharpness to 70-80%.
Use selective sharpening for the eyes
While these are quite basic techniques, using one, some or all of them can make dramatic improvements to the look of your portraits.
The post Create Perfect Portraits in Lightroom Using These 6 Classic Retouch Techniques appeared first on Light Stalking.
Saturday Quick TIP: Flipping Your Crop From Wide to Tall
Saturday Quick TIP: Flipping Your Crop From Wide to Tall
Happy Cyber Saturday everybody! Here’s a quick one, but it’s super handy: If you’re cropping your image, you can flip the orientation of your crop border from wide to tall by pressing the letter “x” on your keyboard. Each time you press “x” it toggles back and forth between tall and wide.
NOTE: This trick also works in Photoshop’s Camera Raw and with Photoshop’s Crop Tool
Have a great Saturday everybody!
-Scott
The post Saturday Quick TIP: Flipping Your Crop From Wide to Tall appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
Green Lantern by Erez Marom
Green Lantern by Erez Marom
Green Lantern by Erez Marom
Saturday, 29th November 2014
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Check Out This Apocolyptic Footage Of Chernobyl Taken From A Drone’s Eye View
Check Out This Apocolyptic Footage Of Chernobyl Taken From A Drone’s Eye View
Almost 30 years after the tragic explosion in Chernobyl, a film crew and correspondants for CBS visited the site to work on a story detailing the cataclysmic event. As part of the crew, filmmaker and photographer, Danny Cooke, was granted access to the site for a week long exploration. Cooke seized the opportunity to create [...]
The post Check Out This Apocolyptic Footage Of Chernobyl Taken From A Drone’s Eye View appeared first on DIY Photography.
TWIN Turnley Sales!!
TWIN Turnley Sales!!
...Note the two matching exclamation points in the post title.
As you probably know, our friend Peter Turnley is one of two identical twin brothers, both of whom are eminent photojournalists. I met Turnley twin David for the first time only recently, thanks to old buddy Steve Rosenblum.
One big difference is that David has never had a print sale...until right now. Perhaps inspired by brother Peter's sale (which has been extended to Dec. 5th), David Turnley is having his first-ever print sale. Here's the link.
Okay, now, big point coming up, so listen to Mikey: even if you have no interest whatsoever in buying a print of any type or size or style, I recommend going to David's link and spending some time looking at his pictures as a portfolio for delectation and enjoyment. Click on the first one to enlarge it and then scroll through. An exceptional 40-print group, and no less worthy than Peter's work. I really and truly enjoyed spending time with this group of photographs. I think you will too.
Mike
(Thanks to David and Peter Turnley)
P.S. And if you're looking for an eye- and mind-sharpening activity, try the Thomas Hoving exercise: pick your three favorites.
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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A Favor
A Favor
So could I ask a favor? If you're going to buy stuff this weekend from Amazon or B&H Photo anyway, could you go there through our links?
I know everyody on earth is asking something similar today, and I csn't hope to compete, but I thought I should at least try. For whatever reason, this past November was TOP's worst earnings month in three years. Probably because I actually need money right now, and to be needy is to take a stick and poke karma in the eye. She doesn't like it.
Only if you're going to be shopping there anyway.
Thanks for reading, in any case.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Don’t Worry — We Ship Internationally For Book Winners
Don’t Worry — We Ship Internationally For Book Winners
Don’t worry — if you’ve entered the Photoshop for Lightroom Users book giveaway contest (scroll down a few posts) and you’re not in the USA, we’re happy to ship the book internationally (we do it all the time), so feel free to enter from anywhere.
Good luck! 
-Scott
P.S. Don’t enter on this post — scroll down a few to the post where we’ll be picking the winners from. Cheers.
The post Don’t Worry — We Ship Internationally For Book Winners appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.
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