DLWS San Juan 1st Day PM

It has been one heck of a day! I’m so late getting blogged because I still had so many cool images I like from this morning AM’s shoot, I just got through this evening photos. We’re very fortunate to have Joe Sliger, our own Mr Wacom with us because he use to live on San Juan Island.

Tonight he took to a forest where elves surely live. This grove had its own very unique character. Perhaps it was the graveyard, perhaps it was the view of all the surrounding islands from the top of its knoll, perhaps it was just all the energy from photographers thoroughly enjoying photography. Whatever it was, I thank it for all the images it gave up to us.

These images were finished by lighting the forest floor in NX2 and polishing the colors with Color Efex’s Tonal Contrast. More great stuff to come, I can’t wait!

Photos captured by D3, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Photoshop CS4

Hot stuff, Photoshop CS4 is now for public knowledge! I’ve been very fortunate to be a beta tester for what seems like a very long time now and I’m very excited to be right now teaching the folks at our San Juan DLWS the new features of CS4

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Since you’re reading this blog, I know you’re not with us because our folks are much too tired to be reading my blog. That means I’m not teaching CS4 to you personally. Well all is not lost! The marvelous folks at NAPP have got you covered with a complete CS4 online lab ready to go to get you up and running. head here to see just what has us all excited!

And just to shortcut the questions, yes, I think you need to upgrade to CS4. Yes, I use Photoshop CS4 Extended and yes, I like it.

DLWS San Juan 1st AM #2

photo captured by D3, 200VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

DLWS San Juan 1st AM #1

Oh man, what a morning! The weather opened up and the light just kissed us this morning! We started at 06:00 making sure all cameras were set, questions answered so when the sun would hopefully arrive in 30min, we’d be good to go.

We only venture three minutes from our lodge to the docks this morning. Getting up early, being in the right place and the right time and a little luck is all that was required to make the images. Life doesn’t come any sweeter!

Both of these images were taken with the same lens and finished the same way in NX2 & CS4. Combined, it took a minute to finish these images. Life is good.

Photos captured by D3, 24PC on Lexar UDMA digital film

The ducks know what they're doing

Well, it was still raining when we walked out the door to get dinner. The light just didn’t want to play today and the fire felt oh, so good. But food was calling so off to Friday Harbor we went. As always the camera went as well, walking down the street and even into the restaurant. Even with goofin around, there wasn’t much to shoot.

Then, we decided to do like the ducks on a rainy day and headed for the water. We walked the docks of Friday Harbor. It was then this simple photo popped into my viewfinder. What you see is what I shot, the way I like it best. DLWS starts tomorrow which means no shooting as it’s set up day and presentations. But I’ll have image for ya on Monday, so have a good day off!

The ducks know what they’re doing

Well, it was still raining when we walked out the door to get dinner. The light just didn’t want to play today and the fire felt oh, so good. But food was calling so off to Friday Harbor we went. As always the camera went as well, walking down the street and even into the restaurant. Even with goofin around, there wasn’t much to shoot.

Then, we decided to do like the ducks on a rainy day and headed for the water. We walked the docks of Friday Harbor. It was then this simple photo popped into my viewfinder. What you see is what I shot, the way I like it best. DLWS starts tomorrow which means no shooting as it’s set up day and presentations. But I’ll have image for ya on Monday, so have a good day off!

Sunset over Canada

So, we were inside on the computer doing Photoshop stuff. The overcast persisted. It lightened up a tad so we decide to take a walk through the amazing Roche Harbor facility where we are based this week. The marina is full of gorgeous yachts so we went to window shop. Looking back towards our condo I noticed the 1890 chapel all lit up. Click!

This was a simple Silver Efex Pro conversion with a Scott Kelby Photoshop gradient darkening the sky.

But I guess my moaning about the gray skies was heard by someone because the sun came out for sunset (tomorrows forecast is rain). So we spent the sunset watching the sun go down over Canada (thinking of you Dave). Canada is just one small island to the west of us. This photo is a simple shot using Vivid in the camera.

Photo captured by D3, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

Pull out the Color, pull out the Toys

At the same time I’m thinking B&W on heavy overcast days, I’m looking for bigtime color. Well, color that I can pull out and that’s what I did here.

First, the photo was taken using my current miniature technique with the 24PC. Then using NX2, I yanked the red out of the roof on the Lime Kiln Lighthouse. Last thing I did was in CS4, use Color Efex 3.0 > Tonal Contrast with all sliders pulled to the right for the first global pass. I then ran the same filter with the same settings for a second pass using a layer mask to paint in the effect just to the lighthouse.

The problem, its still gray skies!

Photo captured by D3, 24PC on Lexar UDMA digital film

And when the skies are yuck, I mean YUCK!

We’re (the DLWS staff) out on San Juan Island scouting for our upcoming DLWS event. The skies are just yuck, I mean YUCK! We’ve got that horrible gray sky, thick overcast with no character, light or mood blah. It just makes you want to pull the covers back over your head and not shoot.

But that wasn’t an option so out we went (though we didn’t get up for sunrise). When the skies are so lifeless to me at least, it’s time for B&W. So I shot with my red filter over my eye thinking B&W (it’s not a literal filter).

The top photo is no more than a simple single shot finished using Silver Efex pro. The bottom photo though, the sky was yanked way down in NX2 so it went as dark as I could make it knowing I was going to B&W. Then the photo was finished using Silver Efex Pro.

Photos captured by D3, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital film

YOU can share you images – EASILY!

So there I am at Photoshop World when my good bud Dave Moser says, “I need to introduce you to someone.” It wasn’t just any ol’ someone but Joe at Mpix and I’m damn glad he did!

I mean seriously, having gorgeous prints in your hands 24hrs after sending off the files just boggles my mind! I know first hand, I sent in 3 files, two right our off the camera and one finished heavily in post. and the prints were stunning! Yes, yes, I still have my Epson printers and still love making my own prints. But there are way too many times when I’m on the road and need to have prints NOW and not wait until I get back in the office. I upload the files and bam, the next day I’ve got prints anywhere in the US!

There are many of your out there (you know who you are) who love prints but just don’t have the real estate to have a printer. Some of you are just plain old scared of hitting the Ctrl/Cmd P key. That’s OK because you can take advantage of Mpix and see your images printed so you can share them with others. Head to their site, tell them Moose sent you and I bet they will take real darn good care of you!

Love that Range of Light!

The Sierra is an amazing place where light takes on a life of its own. It’s for this reason I always, always have a camera with me even if I’m just going to the post office. This is very typical, taking the dogs to their country club while we’re in WA for our San Juans DLWS event, the light danced.

That’s Mt Tom on the right, one big ass piece of granite. To take the photo, I got on top of the truck to incorporate the rabbit brush in the foreground, dialed in -2.5 stops to deal with the bright God beams and then went click. Looking at the D700′s LCD showed a black photo with one little blinkie. Perfect!

Post processing took 138seconds, I timed it. I opened the image in NX2, dropped a black point, dropped one color point on the rabbit brush and yanked out the foreground detail. Image was then opened in Photoshop and Define used to deal with the noise I created in the foreground. I then used Silver Efex Pro to convert the image to B&W. Finished using Color Efex 3.1 > Darken/Lighten Center. A real easy image to create. Here’s the before.

Congrats to our dear friend Joe McNally for the cover of the current issue of National Geographic! He always gets the girl.

Photo captured by D700, 24-70AFS on Lexar UDMA digital flim

Good start to a day

Started off the day in the hunt of a bird to photograph. It’s slim pickins here right now with the flux in seasons. The best we could do was a group of American Coots. You might be saying, just as I did at the time, Coots? They are pretty darn common, not really exciting since all they do is eat slimy grass, but we stuck it out.

One thing coots do do is protect their idea of their home turf. The group was a mix of adults and juveniles and I knew it would not take long before one of the kids would go where they weren’t welcomed. With that typical low neck profile, I knew the adult was all spooled up. All I did was track it in the viewfinder and then hit the button when the action started.

My second body hanging from my shoulder today carried the 24PC. Still working on that miniature technique.

Photo captured by D3, 600VR w/TC-14e on Lexar UDMA digital film

The D90: 1st impression, sort of…

I’ve received a number of emails asking about shooting with the D90. Since I mentioned it last week and haven’t posted anything from it, some were inferring from that there is something wrong with the camera. I really hate to make this public announcement because it looks real bad. But the problem is not the camera, it is that I haven’t a clue how to “easily” take the video I shot and put it up on the blog! (the key word here is easy)

I shot with the D90 in “normal” mode, and image from it you see above. It does an excellent job there. It’s the video that’s so new and revolutionary that I want to share with you. Since I can’t get that posted right now, here’s just a couple thoughts on the video shooting process.

You depress the LV (Live View) button to activate the video mode. When you do that you can no longer see through the viewfinder. This is an obstacle for two reasons, you loose AF operation in video mode and you have to focus using the rear LCD monitor. Can you imagine doing that, and, and in full sunshine? At the same time you’re supposed to use proper handholding to get a “sharp” image and not have that video titling horizon problem.

You can shoot a total of 5min of video at a time and the file size is incredibly small considering the images quality is so big. The video that is produced is quite remarkable! Mark from Nikon created a show from his shooting at the races that was stunning. Once I get this video thing under my belt, I’ll post a couple of the 30 videos I shot.

Pilot of the future?

One of the race planes being pulled out to the line gave the pilot’s young daughter one heck of a ride on the way out.

Sharon and I had one heck of a good time and want to thank Scott, Bill, Mark & Nikon for taking such good care of use and making the opportunity available to us. Also all the shooters at the race, especially, Rich, Dave,  Josef, Erve and the rest. What a great bunch of folks. Sept 17-20 2009, hope to cya at the next race!

photo captured by D3, 200-400VR on Lexar UDMA digital film

Where do you point the lens?

As I write this, I’m rubbing my left arm and my neck is cracking, leftover from shooting for four days to bring back 6737 photographs from the races. Here is myself, our son Brent and Nikon’s Mark Kettenhofen shooting the F22 flight on Saturday. The 200-400VR, 70-300VR and 500VR are the lenses of choice at the races. This cool shot was taken by the keen eye of Sharon, looking for graphics amongst the shooters.

The Reno Air Races are more than just planes flying really fast in a circle. Quite often in between races there are your more typical air show performances. These are fun with the media pass because you’re right under the action. The stunt planes are fun to watch but after seeing the F22 fly, they just don’t seem so agile.

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