Tych Panel

I learned about a neat tool for Photoshop and blogging from @Photoshop_ GU on Twitter.  This tool is a Photoshop Extension that automates diptychs and triptychs creation, perfect for photoblogs.  To me, this a nice alternative way to present photos – rather than just one single photo in the column.   To read more about and download, go to http://lumens.se/tychpanel/

Here are a couple of example layouts.  There are several to choose from:

A diptych featuring our cat, Pixel.

A triptych from photos underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

I thought this was a nice, quick little tool that others might want to be aware of.  Have fun with it!

OTA Sessions, the Orpheum Theater in Sioux Falls and a new Nikon

Where to start!?

I had the extreme pleasure of doing event photography for the OTA Sessions in Sioux Falls on Friday.  The OTA sessions are described as:

Creativity and originality of thought are critical to our success as a region, but without action and implementation it's all just idle chitchat. OTA challenges us to bring originality and action together. o + a

The OTA Sessions are a chance for all of us Midwesterners to shatter the perception that creativity and thought leadership in business, marketing, communications and education live solely on the east and west coasts.

I was blown away by the speakers:  Sally Hogshead, Ellen McGirt, CC Chapman, Ann Handley, John Winsor, Ricardo Crespo, Rod Arnold, Jeff Slobotsky and Dusty Davidson.

All were very motivating and a pleasure to listen to.   Sally Hogshead had me cracking up (while trying to be steady and focus), John motivated the heck out of me and Ellen and Rod moved me immensely.  I was torn in some ways as I couldn’t be both focused on the presentations and focused with my camera.  I was there to take photographs!

Working with Hugh Weber, the founder of OTA was fantastic.  He’s put together a fantastic event and I really identified with his motivations for creating this event.

The venue for the OTA Sessions was the Orpheum Theater in Sioux Falls.  What a fantastic place!  I was so excited as soon as I got a look at it. 

My plans for PJ Anderson Photography this year called for a new camera so that I had a solid backup for the spring/summer weddings.  I also wanted to get up to the next level of pro cameras.  As great as my workhorse Nikon D300 has been for years, I was more than ready to get up onto the Nikon D700.   With the OTA event being held at the Orpheum, I knew I wanted to get the D700 in my hands immediately - to make sure that I could take advantage of the great high ISO results.  I wanted to be able to walk away with photos that weren’t overly grainy in the dark light of a theater.

The D700 did NOT let me down.  I am very pleased with the quality of the images!  This is going to open up even more opportunities at weddings in darker churches.  Should allow for some wonderful moody lighting situations!

I’m in the middle of editing/finishing four assignments, but while taking a break – I tossed together 7 or 8 photos in Photoshop that I shot “hand held” in the Orpheum to create an interesting panorama. This photograph is in no way to be considered a “finished” product.  If I was going to shoot this in a serious fashion, I would have definitely set this up on a tripod and would have spent some serious time getting the shot down perfectly.  I might have even took some time to try an HDR study. BUT, I do think this shows the power of the camera (and the beauty of the theater.)  So, just for fun, here you go!

Nikon D700, ISO 2000, f/2.8, 1/60 second – multiple exposures stitched in Photoshop

Converted and added my old blog

Last summer we were informed by Microsoft that LiveSpaces was going to be closing. I’d had my blog there for some time – so it was a bit of a concern for me.

I started looking around to see what would be a good alternative. A few friends used Blogger and so this is where I ended up. However, then I found out Microsoft was automatically moving our blogs to WordPress!

Well, I’ve maintained a link here to my old blog – but I figured most wouldn’t see the link or even if they did – they wouldn’t go look. It is sort of sad that I’ve lost connections with many that used to stop by the old blog.

However, today I found out about a service that can convert WordPress blogs to Blogger for import. I figured it would probably bring the text, but not the photos. BUT, I was surprised and the photos and comments and all came with! How terrific. Of course, there is some quality issues with the old photos, but I am not going to complain too much.

If you find yourself in a similar spot, here is the tool I used: http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

Posts prior to July 2010 are from the old blog if anyone wants to dig that deep! I hope you do as there are some photos I really would like people to see!

Until next time!

Shooting tethered in Lightroom

I’ve seen videos online of people shooting with their camera tethered to their computer.  It has often been one of those things I thought I’d try someday, but I really had no pressing desire to do so.  I rarely shoot in a studio environment and when I do, I hate to be tied down with cables attached to my camera.

However, the other day I was stuck in my office waiting on an important call that I couldn’t miss and my camera and computer were just sitting here.  The thought popped into my head to give it a shot.

I connected my camera to the laptop with the USB cable and fired up Lightroom.  Once there, it was really a no-brainer to set this up.  I work on a PC, so I opened the File menu and selected “Tethered Capture”.  This opens the following window where I can name the session, set the location where the files to be saved and set my Metadata presets.

After clicking the OK button, a new toolbar opens in lightroom:

I could quickly see the camera attached and the settings currently set on it – ISO, shutter speed, aperture and white balance.

What really interested me was the ability to set the develop settings in Lightroom.  These settings are applied as the file gets transferred to the computer and is then displayed in Lightroom.  Being I was taking self portraits of myself (yikes!), I opted immediately for a black and white preset that I like.

Then, all I did was click the big grey button on the far right of the toolbar to trigger the shutter release.  I had my camera set to autofocus and it did that first and then triggered the shutter.

In just a moment, the photo appeared on my screen.  I’ll spare you the agony of looking at most of these captures – not easy taking a self portrait that I liked!  However, here is one of the end results that my family and friends say best looks like me.

I really may think more on this – in particular when I am doing some product photography or working with models in a studio environment.  It was worth playing with.

Hope to talk again soon!

Winter Landscapes

Earlier this week, I was in Madison, South Dakota doing some commercial photography for J-Gable.  The client was driving, so I was a passenger for this trip.  On the way home that afternoon (about 60 miles) I was blown away by the light and the blowing snow creating a very moody look.

As soon as I made it back to Watertown, I turned my truck back south chasing that great light.  The blowing snow had disappeared, but I still found several good shots as the sun was starting to go down.

Taking photos with snow is always a challenge.  Getting the exposure right can be tricky.  I’ve been shooting a lot of auto bracketed photos lately so that I can combine certain images into HDR shots.  Being it was REALLY cold and windy, I thought I’d just continue to shoot that way to make sure I got the shot.  So, I composed my shot, made my best choice on exposure and bracketed by 2 stops.  This gave me one at the exposure I selected and two underexposed and two overexposed.

With the sun setting I had very bright highlights (sun and snow) and some dark shadows (tree line and farm).  Turned out this was one of those great opportunities to use HDR pro in Photoshop CS5 to merge these different exposures.

I tweaked the final product using onOne’s Phototools and I think this image really reflects what it felt like on that day on a lakeshore beside the old Meridian Highway (US 81)!

 

ISO 200, 1/50 sec, f/13 – Nikon D300

Happy New Year (and stay warm!)

Remembering summer days with HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5

I spent some time today putting up Christmas lights on the house today.  The temperature wasn’t bad, but there was a pretty good wind out there.  We are also looking at a winter storm tomorrow!

When I decided to review an HDR (high dynamic range) training on the National Association of Photoshop Professionals website this afternoon, all the photos that I pulled up to play with were from our summer vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  The holidays are a nice time of the year, but spring and summer is when I thrive!

Very pleasant memories as I practiced this methodology.  I’ve done several posts on HDR, so if you are unfamiliar with it, you might want to look back (primarily at the old blog – link on the right!)

The process began with my original photos five photos auto-bracketed in my Nikon.  The original photo and then an underexposed by 2 stops and 1 stop.  Overexposed by 1 stop and 2 stops.

After importing all photos into Adobe Lightroom, I selected all five frames, right clicked to select Edit > Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop.  In the Merge to HDR settings, I increased the detail and then the strength and the radius to dial in the look I wanted.

I saved the result from Photoshop (returning the photo to Lightoom) and then fine tuned the image in Lightroom.  Note: For those not using Lightroom, you can accomplish this in Adobe Camera Raw as well.

Here’s the final result and my warm memories of Sylvan Lake:

Below is the original correctly exposed base photo:

ISO 250, 1/13 second, f/16 – Nikon D300

Lightroom Publishing the Sequel

I just discovered one additional tidbit on the Publish to Flickr tool in Adobe Lightroom 3.2.

Because this publishing is an on-going relationship between Lightroom and Flickr, when someone makes a comment on a photograph on Flickr, that information comes back into Lightroom.

Here’s a screen shot.  Thank you to Lisa for making comments and thus making this discovery possible!

Closer:

I’ll have to see how this plays out over time to determine how valuable this is.  For now, it is just “cool!”