Ojito Passion

Cabezon Peak from the Ojito
©2008, Chopawamsic LC
The Ojito wilderness is about an hour northwest of Albuquerque.  Rocky mesas and clay bottoms stretch before the eye.  One might not realize dinosaurs once roamed this very ancient Jurassic land.  The longest dinosaur on the planet, Sam the Seismosaurus, was found in the Ojito.  Cabezon Peak is a volcanic neck northwest of the Ojito – a regional landmark for the southeastern San Juan Basin.  A thousand years ago, the Anasazi also roamed the Ojito.  We present a rainy day passion play of Cabezon from Ojito…

Time's passion play strikes different chords in each of us...
Once upon a time, Sam, the Seismosaurus, the longest dinosaur ever found on our planet, wandered around the Ojito during the Jurassic 140 million years ago when dinosaur's reigned supreme and our continent was in another position.  The dinosaur quarry, out on a lonely point with some marvelous petroglyphs, is all that's left of Sam's ancient remnants; he is on display at New Mexico’s Museum of Natural History on the second floor.  From head to tip of tail, Sam's bones literally fill the exhibition room at the Museum.
Day before yesterday, several mere mortals in four-wheel-drive vehicles went to the Ojito in a seemingly chilling, yet slight rain.  Two of those brave souls crept out, sliding around on gumbo clay, like their vehicles just before, taking Ojito shots in the mist.
While the clay was just beginning to moisten and stick to my shoes, I shielded the camera in a rain jacket - except for an occasional handheld snapshot.  Wandering around, I kept cloud shrouded Cabezon Peak in the background.  In the foreground, partially obscured by a misty rain, a ridge of rock dipped toward me.  Capped by juniper shrubs, clay on top captured rock shards between two beckoning red ridges. 
As blah as our day was, there was still potential for passion.  Dave Cross, on July 16, 2008, wrote a guest blog for Scott Kelby; basically, Dave said, "When you're out shooting, bear in mind what you can do with Photoshop..."! I thought, "What happens if I apply the same philosophy - shooting for Lightroom?"
After a little work in Lightroom 2, Ojito Passion began to cast its light in digital land.  Beginning with each raw file, metadata and copyright information were encapsulated during the import phase. 
Two fascinating new tools, graduated filter and adjustment brush, literally changed the face of my Ojito experience.  I tilted a graduated filter to both add passion and help emphasize the ridge and red clay lines.  Switching to the adjustment brush, I applied both clarity and sharpening as separate, localized brush steps.  Then, I cropped the image at the base for balance.
Oops, almost forgot; I felt like Cabezon could speak for itself – walk softly, yet carry a big stick!  Was this how an ancient land looked back in Anasazi time?
The image above provides you a final interpretation. 
Lightroom 2 functions very much like Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge.  It's simply got those delicious new tools, adjustment brush and graduated filter.  Just choose the right tool, apply it, and 'twiddle' the sliders until you have the image you want.  After learning the initial workflow, LR 2 is a fast, very intuitive image processor.  Local sharpening enhancement with new brushes in Lightroom doesn't seem to require as much time or effort as former work in Pixel Genius Photokit Sharpener. These changes are nondestructive. 
LR2 also has a Before and After button which quickly shows you progress as you compare steps to see development.  The width of this blog would make a before and after shot rather small, so click here to pull up an independent B&A JPEG.
And, LR2's faster than the old Bridge - ACR combo... part of Adobe’s intuitive GUI.

Odds and Ends

What, you didn't put up a picture - why is that?
Several reasons; First, I want to call attention to an error in the blog a few days ago. I got one of the Internet hooks wrong about videos on Lightroom 2. Here's the correction

Click on Julieanne Kost's What's New in Lightroom?
Pt 1 - Library Module
Pt 2 - Develop Module
Pt 3 - Exporting, Photoshop, and Output
Each video is 20-30 minutes long - she is a terrific LR2 teacher.

Second, each of us was fascinated with the historical moments created by Michael Phelps at the Beijing Olympics. I, for one, immensely enjoyed Vincent Laforet’s New York Times blog reporting as a professional photographer. In my blogroll about photographers, Vincent posted a change of blog address; when I read through the new blog, I discovered an article about how many gigabytes and images his Beijing photography consumed.
Would you believe 6 cameras, over 28,000 images, and  480 Gigabytes of space?
He used Aperture to process images, I use Lightroom 2. Both reduce the workload significantly.
You can read all about it here.

Third, and today is a day to go shoot near where the longest dinosaur was ever found on our planet ~ Sam the Seismosaurus. Really, we're actually planning to go shoot Ojito hoodoos. Now, how do you pronounce Ojito?

Is Lightroom 2 an iPhone on Steroids?

Sound like an Apple/Adobe commercial?
... not really. It's the simple, truth about amazing versatility of Lightroom 2...

It's a series of comments as part of training videos from National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. Between Kelby's new Lightroom 2 book and Kloskowski's new Lightroom 2 In-Depth DVD, these guys are teaching Lightroom to photographers. That particular video is their last item titled Lightroom versus Photoshop discussion on NAPP’s new Lightroom 2 Learning Center.
But they make another huge point... a comparison between Bridge and Lightroom 2. At time spent on a personal workflow level, you might use Bridge, because it came with Photoshop CS3, after you come back from an on location shoot. On the other hand, you use Lightroom to manage years of portfolio images for quick access.
While professional photographers may shoot several hundred images a day, some photographers have thousands of images without metadata, copyright, or keyword search parameters which need proper organization. These K guys are constantly shooting and constantly teaching. Takes a lot of time to put forth a tutorial about any element of Adobe’s Digital photography package. They've a startling consensus; with Lightroom 2 as the principal all-around image processing vehicle, 75% of their shooting/teaching workflow time is now spent in Lightroom.
Once a week, NAPP produces videos for Photoshop User Magazine; several recent videos have tutored about Lightroom. You can download each video between Tuesday and Monday weekly here.
With only a month since Lightroom 2's release, NAPP and Adobe are producing both in-depth and free videos. I enjoyed Julieanne Kost, Adobe Digital Imaging Evangelist, explaining details of workflow processing in her tutorials and Adobe videos. Every once in a while, I'd stop her video just to see if I could do that particularly intricate workflow sequence in Lightroom. As you might expect, free videos (Adobe, NAPP) are teasers whereas in-depth videos sometimes require copious funds.

Update: My apologies - I got the Adobe Videos hook wrong. Here's the correction:

Click on Julieanne Kost's What's New in Lightroom? And Choose...
Pt 1 - Library Module
Pt 2 - Develop Module
Pt 3 - Exporting, Photoshop, and Output
Each video is 20-30 minutes long - she is a terrific LR2 teacher.
Do You have Comcast?


If you can save significant time, process all your new shoots, and make sure your entire portfolio is easily searchable, then perhaps you might want to upgrade to Lightroom 2... it's spectacular new gradient and adjustment tools will have a fantastic effect on your most dramatic images.