Feb 13, 2008 | Field Reports
At every DLWS event, I demo the power of Capture NX numerous times. That’s because it’s an important tool in my finishing of images. The makers of Capture NX, Nik, have now brought that power, U Point Technology, to Photoshop in a pluggin called Viveza (a name that rolls off the tongue). Your digital darkroom time has just been cut to nothing!
Here’s a photo of Chatham Lighthouse in MA in the Viveza UI inside of Photoshop. You can see in the lower right corner the before and after of the roof. The vibrant color on the right comes from the Control Point I’ve dropped on the tile roof and than yanked over the slider on Saturation, Brightness and Contrast. This is the exact same thing you can do in NX working on a Raw file (NX can also so this to a Jpeg & Tiff) but now in Photoshop.
I actually dropped a total of three points on this photograph. One on the roof to make it pop, one of the green window casings to make them darker and a third on the sky to make it darker, stormier. And in less than 30 seconds, without selecting, masking or brushing, I was able to take this image from bla to colorful to say the least.
as you can see in this comparison, it’s quite a difference (the roof color from the UI isn’t accurate, not sure what was going on with the screen captures).
As I see it, Viveza brings the power of U Point technology to a whole lot more now, especially Canon users (a common question at NX demos). Personally, I still prefer NX because I can make these changes (plus others) to a raw file, but I won’t hesitate to use Viveza if I miss something in NX. Viveza should be available pretty darn soon, like in April. You can pre-order it or get even more information from the Nik website and sign up to be notified when it is available. And yeah, it will be demoed at DLWS now that we can talk about it.
Oct 17, 2007 | Field Reports
And after the night’s shoot and dinner, it was back in the classroom for Movie & Crit. Our Cape Cod event is our 25th event so we had cake of course. We want to thank EVERY DLWS participant over the years who has come and made it possible for the DLWS staff partake in their #2 passion, sharing photography. Our #1 passion is of course, photography itself!
THANKS!
Oct 27, 2006 | Field Reports
We spent our last evening in Woodstock, my favorite town. The light was iffy until sunset when the God Beams came shinning through providing everyone with killer light and images. I spent most of my time this trip doing a study in brick which, as you can see, varies greatly.
Photo captured by D200, 105VR on Lexar digital film
Jul 1, 2006 | Field Reports
This photography thing, it’s quite a mental game. Ever notice that? Whether it was the brain power to earn the money to buy the tools, selecting the right tool out of all the ones purchased or then thinking about the best way to apply that selected lens for the given subject, the whole thing is a mental process. You can go even deeper realizing that selecting the right f/stop and position for the right composition takes even more brain power. Going all the way, you have to take your brain in combination with your eyes and analyze the light to determine not only exposure but if the light itself is worthy of your photographic efforts. Dang, this is one brainy hobby/avocation or occupation!
Ever upload your photos and ask yourself, “What was I thinking about?� Your images are missing something obvious. Perhaps you used the wrong AF sensor so your focus point is off, you used too much DOF or not enough. You simply blew it because, you weren’t thinking fluently enough for the situation at hand. It would be nice to be able to blame Nikon or Canon for the problem, something they goofed up in manufacture. Would be handy if we could blame the subject but as we all know the subject gives us enough excuses for failure that this one just doesn’t fit. It all comes down to us and thinking.
How can we get past this problem? Thinking, practice thinking. Now how do you do that? The best way I know of is simply shooting, shooting and then shooting some more. The more situations you expose your mind to, the more situations become second nature and learned mistakes get corrected. You can take classes that again expose the mind to situations so you have answers to fall back on. I’ve been very fortunate to take Joe McNally’s lighting class a half dozen times now and it’s radically improved my use of flash taking my flash photography to a whole new level. And finally, you can learn a lot by just reading and looking. There’s a great Blog out there, The Strobist who invites you into the creative world of flash with great lessons, assignments and humor.
“Engage the brain before the mouth� is something my dad told me a lot, a lot! These words of wisdom I turned around long ago into “Engage the brain before shooting� and I found it helped me a lot. While this might seem difficult in itself, you have to take one more giant step further by thinking and then connecting that thought with your heart to bring out in your photography the passion that wildlife photography so cries for. I was having a photographic conversation with a good friend lately and I accused him of thinking too much. Perhaps he doesn’t think too much, perhaps I think too little. Perhaps the middle point is where we want to reach but on a subconscious level for the best photographs. I don’t know, I’ll have to think on it. I need to consider for myself just what’s going on in there.
