Vision And Voice

There are many books on Lightroom 'out there' and though some are better than others they are, for the most part, pretty similar. This slider is for this, that slider is for that, be careful pushing slider x above 70 etc. Not that such books aren't useful....they surely are for people who are unfamiliar with the software or are beginners in how to develop an image from RAW format.

But recently there appeared on the scene a totally different type of Lightroom book entitled Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Voices That Matter) by David DuChemin. DuChemin's purpose in writing the book is not to show the reader how to use Lightroom but, rather, to demonstrate how Lightroom can be used to express one's photographic vision.

The book starts out with a discussion about artistic vision and it's expression, moves on to a discussion about how to use Lightroom as interpretive software to give voice to one's vision, and then uses 20 photographs to demonstrate 'real-life' examples of the prior discussion (the RAW files are also available for download to more carefully follow their development). To be clear, this is not a book of recipes or presets, it is a book that aims at nothing short of starting the reader off on a journey to think more carefully about what they are trying to express with their photography and to enable them to translate that expression into the final print.

This book is quite different from any other Photoshop or Lightroom books that I have read and I highly recommend it as a 'must have'. (Truth in advertising.....as an Amazon associate I get a few cents credited to my account if you click on the above link and end up purchasing the book).

Website Planning

It goes without saying that a photographer needs a website to share his or her work with the world. Many years ago, I had coded a website using a program called Namo Web Editor. It was, in my opinion, a reasonable site for that era but was a bit difficult to update and I found myself not adding to it as much as I would have liked.

Some years later, I purchased a template for an artist's website with plans to build my site based on that template. However, I found that the template contained so many options that I was going into the code to eliminate or change these options and that I was likewise changing code to allow more images to be posted to the galleries. The exercise became frustrating and I abandoned it.

I ended up moving my website over to Visual Server with one of their online artist's templates, forcing my vision into their options. This has served reasonably well, but I still find myself wanting more from a website and have been thinking about building my own, from scratch, by learning how to use Dreamweaver.

I know that, given time limitations, it might take awhile to complete the project and thought that I would, intermittently, write some posts about the process. My initial step is to think carefully about what I want out of a website and what is not being provided by my current host, while trying to incorporate 'best practices' for a new site.

Here are some of the thoughts that I had regarding the 'big picture' planning of the site:

1) First and foremost, I believe it is important to keep it simple and clean looking. Flashy with lots of bells and whistles might be useful for some type of sites, but I believe that for a photo site the images, and not the platter on which they are served up, should be what speak . Additionally, a lot of fancy add-ons don't necessarily function well on all platforms.

2) Easy navigation. I dislike when I get to some sites and I can't figure out what to do next.

3) Set it up so that it will look good on multiple platforms and screen resolutions, to the extent that this is possible.

4) Able to be easily updated.

5) Because of the frequency and consistency of my blog posting, my blog has more visits and has higher Alexa rankings than my website. I would like to be able to integrate my blog into my website. I am not certain if this is still easier to do with WordPress than Blogger, though I know this used to be the case.

6) Have the ability to make PDF files available for download.

7) Have the ability to add on audio and video files should I wish to make these available in the future.

8) I believe that telling 'the story' behind the photograph helps viewers to become involved with an image and would like to have an opportunity to present 'the stories', in brief, along with the images.

This is likely going to be a slow moving and long term undertaking. I would certainly appreciate any comments, tips, ideas etc from those that have already worked through this type of website building project!

Exposure Bracketing With Canon Cameras

This post is going to be a bit on the technical side and specific to Canon cameras, which I am sure will interest some readers but give others a big yawn. Nonetheless, here we go.

In a past post, I reviewed the Promote Control device which can be used for HDR exposure bracketing since Canon cameras are (seemingly purposefully) hindered by the limitation of only being able to do a three exposure auto-bracket. In addition, if one is bracketing by 1 EV then the most you can auto-bracket is up to +/- 3 EV. In order to bracket to +/- 4 EV you must bracket in 2 EV increments. All in all, it makes HDR bracketing inordinately and unnecessarily complex. In my review, I mentioned that the Promote Control simply did not fit very well into my workflow and for that reason I had returned my unit.

Another partial solution for Canon users has been to use 'Custom Settings', of which three are able to be pre-programmed into the camera. When using these, you could, for example, pre-program +/- 4EV bracketing into the camera and save the setting so that by simply turning a knob on top of the camera the +/- 4EV autobracket is set.

By setting one Custom setting like this and another at o,-1, -2 EV one could conceivably take an autobracket at +1, +2, +3 then switch the custom setting knob to do 0, -1, -2, then switch again to do -4, 0, +4 and then take one image at -3.....well, you get the point. If one wants a series of 1 EV bracketed images to +/- 4 it gets far too complicated.

It gets a bit easier if you want to go with 2EV units and shoot -2, 0 +2 and then 0, +4, -4 but even then you have to use at least one Custom Setting or go back into the menu. In experimenting with the Custom Settings, I have found that the white balance, ISO, aperture etc that the Custom Setting installs are the ones that were there when the Custom Setting was saved, as opposed to drawing these values from the otherwise current camera settings. For someone like me, who not infrequently screws up a setting by not being careful, this is a recipe for disaster. I am sure that I would inevitably end up with a useless autobracketed series with different apertures, ISO etc than my original bracket settings.

All in all, despite the fact that I really enjoy using my Canon gear, I feel that Canon has really left those of us that use many of their models with a mess when it comes to HDR imaging. And the mess, I would think, is easily fixable in firmware if Canon did not want to cripple their non-1 series dSLRs in this way. With Nikon making so many gains and competing with Canon so well, I really am surprised that they have not fixed this. Were I currently purchasing a digital system, I would have to seriously consider going with Nikon for this reason alone.

Quick Quotes: Ansel Adams

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs"

Ansel Adams

Though it is an 'old' and frequently used quote, this one seems quite timely given my last post about making fall abstract photographs. It can be both enjoyable and productive to break the rules. Of course, first you have to learn the rules so that you know what it is you are breaking. The more you know about what you are breaking the more likely you are to emerge with something interestingly different!

Fall Abstracts

One of the things I would like to try to do this fall season is to make some unusual and abstract fall images along with some of the more straightforward ones. This particular abstract was made by moving the camera back and forth at an angle during the exposure while it was still mounted on the tripod.

"Fall Abstract I"
Copyright Howard Grill

These types of abstracts are really quite easy and fun to make. And with digital you can make tons of images and pick out the one from the many that seems to have come out 'just right'.

Quick Quotes: Bob Dylan

Beauty walks a razor's edge.

Bob Dylan
Lyric From "Shelter From The Storm"

I was listening to Bob Dylan's "Shelter From The Storm" (that happens when you were a kid in the 60's and early 70's) and was drawn to this line from the song. I guess it is open to a bit of interpretation, but I find it very apropos to photography and the the arts in general. It speaks to me regarding one's appreciation of various forms of art. The more I think about, it the more I find different meanings in the words.

Get The Hell Outta' Bed III

I have previously written two posts about dragging one's self out of bed to make early morning sunrise photographs. Those prior two posts can be read here and here. I mentioned I would occasionally post some more images from that one morning.

"Gone Fishing"
Copyright Howard Grill

It is amazing how productive some trips out are (and, of course, how unproductive....but always enjoyable....they can sometimes be in terms of coming away with good images).

15 Composition Tips

A short post today with a link to some inspirational thoughts about composition.

Here are 15 great tips for photographic composition by photographer Alain Briot that are definitely worth reading.