Out of the Box…

My people photography skills simply haven't been well honed.  So you'd expect I wouldn't look at wedding photography.
But, I became a devotee of David Ziser about the time we headed into recession/depression.  Every Thursday, David will write a business blog about some aspect of photography.  Occasionally, he’d tout one of his free videos.

One day, David showed up with a pool shot after sunset.  The sky was quite dark and the pool had green water – a marked color difference between sky and pool.
David’s Evening Blues video created a colorful transition ~ he brought out the sunset and colored the pool a deep blue – in concert with the sky colors.
Beyond that, it was a very interesting lesson in making subtle color changes to strengthen an image.  Naturally, it gave me a sense of how to use color in both Lightroom and Photoshop CS3.
Since then, whenever I get the chance, I imbibe my color senses in various David Ziser videos.  While I might be learning a little bit about wedding photography, I'm really learning about ever so subtle color enhancements and presentation styles.

Guess you could say I'm trying to think/learn out of the box...
Thanks, David!
Enjoy…

Lightroom 2.3RC User Forum Comments

Within a few days of release for new Adobe software, user forums have scoped out and commented on the various bug fixes.  Here, we report on two forums:
Adobe User-to-User
Lightroom Forums

With some ~75 comments as of 0800 MST US, the international Lightroom community seems to feel that the memory leak has been repaired.  As you might expect, individual reports do with other concerns.  I leave it to you to see if one of those aspects affect your workflow.

Cross Roads

Hidden Mountain

©Joe Bridwell

It was just a lark at first. We went sunset shootin’ west of Los Lunas. NM. A low cloud bank was pushing in from the west as the sun vanished behind Hidden Mountain. Then, the surprise began… vapor trails from an eastbound and northbound plane appeared. In a moment, their paths crossed, seeming to transfix yet emphasize the sky above the gorgeous pageantry of a remarkable sunset. And Hidden Mountain, as captured, indeed, is hidden…

This stunning image is a high dynamic range composite shot with a Nikon D300 on a steady tripod. Each image was shot at 14 bits, providing 4 times the color range of a 12 bit capture. This choice helped dramatize shadows, midtones, and highlights.
Three images were captured and brought into Lightroom 2.3. The new Photomatix Pro 3.1.3 Lightroom plugin then processed those images into a 32 bit hdr file (which we saved in case future software brush improvements provide other, more compelling benefits) before seamlessly returning a Tone Mapped 16 bit tif using Tone Compressor with no global color changes.

Back in Lightroom, we cropped the dark foreground, increased exposure 0.5EV, created a medium tone contrast, added a graduated filter in the sky, then modified a local sky-only grad filter contrast and saturation until our eye’s memory was satisfied.

Two unsuspecting pilots skillfully avoiding collision provide a sacred signature to the truly gorgeous aspects Nature provides as we extend what a camera can capture to what our incredible eye can make as a transcendent memory.

Enjoy…