I posted this photo on my IG account on the 1st. It’s a real simple click taken jumping out of the truck shooting the Z6 / 180-400VR hand-held and then hopping back in the truck out of the -16 temps. The photo is right out of the Z6 which was set to Monochrome (here are my in camera B&W settings). The only “Post” was done in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) using the Split Grad to make the clouds look angier. Below are those settings. And that’s it, easy...
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B&W is such a romantic, complicated and magical way to tell our visual story no matter the subject. The colors of black, white and all the shades of gray in between intice our imagination to explore and ponder. The drama light can bring to our photography is heightened, intensified and brought to life by all of this. That’s if-if we have all of those colors in our B&W photo. So along with everything else we have to do as photographers, B&W complicates it all by requiring that clean black, that clean white and everything in between. Going back through the blog here, you’ll find a minimum of nine methods of turning our color images to B&W in post. I’ve constantly been in search of the fastest, cleanest and best method to bring B&W to my digital world. At the same time, have fun doing it! With every new camera body, one of the first things I do is shot the Monochrome or B&W Picture Control. I then take the...
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The story of the Grand Tetons to me is often best told in B&W. Their size, majesty, and sheer beauty fly off the page in those tones. And when you add fresh snow, well I just gotta express that all in B&W. And if there is one thing the Z7 does extremely well, it’s B&W! It’s then no surprise that I’ve spent my week in the Grand Tetons with the Z7 shooting B&W, and I’m loving my results! Playing dodge with the snow front, the Tetons pop in and out. And when they do that at the same time with the sun, I’ve got the 180-400VR trained on those spots. Since I want to use the Z7, I’m connecting the two with the FTZ and the combo as you can see works out beautifully! The best part as far as I’m concerned is the post-processing, that because there is none! If you’ve followed my blog for years, it seems about every six months I find a better way to...
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The sandstone formations the make Roosevelt Nat’l Park have me in their grasp! They are so unique, every shape and size amongst the most unique settings. You have no idea if this is a mountain or a mole hill which is why I shot it with the D850 / 8-15Fish. Just a facinating...
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Up until this last weekend, my B&W was done in post, not in the camera. That has all changed! Shootin the Z7 / Z24-70 at the Vintage Flying Museum, there was moody light leaking into the hangar highlighting this and that. The light and subject matter screamed B&W and I took it as the perfect opportunity to try the Monochrome, better thought of as B&W feature of the Z7. What you are seeing here are the B&W straight out of the Z7 (Nef – Capture NX-D – Tiff). There is no digital darkroom work on these files! In the Monochrome Picture Control setting, I have taken Contrast to +5, Clarity to +5 and Filter to R (Red) and then I underexposed the whole scene -1 stops. Other than that, I didn’t do a thing other than play the light on the subject to bring out the drama and mood that is B&W. If you follow my blog, you know I have adopted many different methods to get to B&W...
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You’ve probably received the email and said something like, “Oh, something new for the digital darkroom” and then deleted the email. I’m here to tell you, that might was a BIG mistake because Luminar available today has at least ONE thing you need to own! My challenge is to explain all that Luminar from MacPhun is all about in a blog post, and I can’t. You’re going to want to head to here after reading this post to at the very least learn more but let me tell you why you’re going to do that. What is Luminar? You might rightfully so think Luminar is a stand alone Raw file processor because it is. What you won’t understand until you start to work with it is that it’s a Raw file processor with layers, effects and so much more. And it not only works its magic on Raw files but you can use it on layered PSD files, that’s right, PSDs. To understand how all of that works, you...
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