Otherwise – enjoy this photo, I caught it while walking around Savannah with the Summer Seminars.  For the post processing I was attempting to mimic the credit intro for “Damages” on FX.  Not sure if I was successful, but hey – it was fun to experiment.

Little lamb.......

More soon

I’ve been messing around with a little HDR tonight, just fooling around with a new software program (not really new, but new to me). I am interested in the results, but I haven’t played around long enough to be 100% satisfied with the results. It will take some more finesse for the images to be a little more realistic. I am not a big fan of the “crunchy”, fake looking, fantasy HDRs popular on Flickr.

So here are my practice runs, same 2 scenes, processed a couple different ways.
Also included a color and B&W – which do you like better?

 

  

  

  

 

Just so I can motivate a few people to actually COMMENT on this blog — 50 million arbitrarily worth nothing points to the person that can name the movie playing on my iPhone……..

 

So I figured I would through some up, just for my peeps back home.
Can you tell we’re Irish?

Full Post after the link

Notice:

These are all, very very rough scans. Still have dust and scratches that need to be taken care of, as well as other miscellaneous color balance, digital magic stuff. Thus, these are quite “raw”.

While in a great discussion in Professor Rebecca Nolan’s “photojournalism, media & culture” class – I happened upon the website of a phenomenal photographer, one that I must absolutely recommend you check out.

READ THE FULL POST FOR MORE!

He name is Benjamin Lowy – his website can be seen at this LINK

Inspirational stuff. By now everyone knows I am a fan of, aspire to, and live and breath conflict photojournalism.

Here is what I was struck by: (and ALAN I swear to god if you don’t look this up, I am going to knock you off your little bicycle when I see you next)

His use of the Holga toy camera, combined with using it to make panoramas, or “storylines” in the midst of places like Darfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan, is utterly genius. How I had wished Alan and I had struck apon this during the infamous “Distractions” project.

Benjamin explains on his website:

“Frustrated and bored working with digital cameras day in and out, I began using a “toy” camera that let me overlap images and create an abstract narrative. I decided that with using one roll of film I could create a storyline, which is what I took to calling them: A panoramic image representing an idea or space that I could not illustrate with my digital cameras”

Genius I tell you. Check out his website, all the photos are great, but the “Storyline” section is amazing. The images from the tsunami disaster are breathtaking, without relying on the blood&guts of the reality, but placing the viewer in an environment that truly captures the scope of the damage done.

To think people though Alan and I were crazy. Apparently, not crazy enough. Kudos to Mr. Lowy for taking a simple idea and making it gold.

So I started looking though my catalogs for my own panoramic images, of coarse! I found 1 I made from a Holga (I’ll be repeating this, for sure) and 2 from my 6×12 wooden Zero Image Pinhole. All were taken in and around Rockport ME, during the 2007 season of the Maine Media Workshops. 

Here they are for your viewing pleasure! (Click for larger view)

Holga:

Pinhole:

 

That’s it for now!

John

Lots and lots of photos!

The process of editing is a complicated one – not necessarily in terms of how to sequence images for their maximum impact, but in choosing the right images to sequence.
I am not even close to that point! Why you might ask?
I am still sorting, keywording, and compiling everything.

There is a process to all of this – and much like everything, the process is the important part. Is it fun? No. Is it quick? Not at all.

The question comes down to the ability to quickly and easily sort and catalog my images so that I can find everything in the future.

Why is that important? Eventually after time passes and I move on to other projects, what do I do when someone asks – “Hey can I see that photo of the town, with the store, that sells the lamb; You know, the one in Morocco”

Read on for my solution, and maybe a tip or two. (so this post isn’t a complete waste of your time)

First step: Getting a workflow!

This was made much easier by a wonderful source of information on DAM (digital asset management) : blogger John Beardsworth.

 

John posted a wonderful blog, and download on the process of using smart collections to help you manage a workflow in Lightroom.

It looks a little like this:

 The process involves setting a group of photos as the “current work” collection.  The rest of the collections are “smart” collections (think iTunes playlist sytle)
that use that collection as a reference. 
For more info – visit John’s blog entry @ this link.

So, I start with the metadata section and proceed to make sure that all of the catalog photos contain my copyright and contact info, titles, and relevant captions. 

There is a second school of thought on this, which is to only do this for your selected photos and not for the majority of the group.  Why take the time (this step can be time consuming) – if you are never going to use the photo, right?

Well, since this is a boring and monotonaous process, I prefer to only do it once.  On the off chance that a previously unwanted photo sees the light, so to speak, I dont want to have to repeat the process. 

As you can see, the collection continues on with subsections that allow you to track your progress in editing, and adjustments.  A cool feature is the inclusion of sections based on your ISO, allowing you to quickly find images that may need extra noise reduction.

The next step is the process of keywording.  (put anyone to sleep yet?, see I told you it wasn’t a fun process)

This is the point in which you can tag images (in lightroom) with adjectives that allow you to quickly find and sort all of your images.  Eventually, when this is all done, and I merge my Morocco catalog with my Main lightroom catalog, this will be an important aspect of finding my images.  Also, it may be helpful to view all of my images tagged with “coffee” in the future- from morocco and elsewhere. 

Although Lightroom makes is very easy and pretty intuitive to achieve this process, the fact remains that it takes time to do all this, and that has been what I have been up to recently.  After this is all done (finished keywording and metadata this afternoon) I am moving onto the  next stage : picking out my keepers!

I hope that this is informative, and helpful at the very least to any fellow photographers that read this.  Check out Beardsworth’s blog for other helpful and insightful tips on managing your dital assets, weather they are music files or photographs. 

If your a photographer – and your not using Lightroom (to at least organize your images) – your crazy!  You need to check this software out.  It will rock your world. 

More soon!
Leave comments!

John