I’m Back

Been away travelling and, yes taking tons of photos, plus I’ve been sick as dog for almost seven weeks now with…wait for it…a cold! Been checked three times for pneumonia and each time my lungs were clear as a bell.

So what’s new?

First off there’s a new version of Lightroom (Lightroom 5) for $149 (upgrades are $79) and I highly recommend Lightroom.

Why?

Lightroom is a state-of-the-art professional quality photo editor. You can edit your JPGs (pre-processed photos done in camera) and raw images. Lightroom also allows the use of free presets and external editors like NIK’s fabulous editors. I own NIK’s entire collection.

Lightroom 5 is, in addition to being a fabulous photo editor, also a data-base. Lightroom 5 never directly imports your images but creates a JPG view which it uses to create a text file which it saves to the raw files (This isn’t quite true but close enough for our purposes here.) and thus is called a non-destructive photo editor. Where Photoshop and some other photo editors including IPhoto from Mac actually changes the pixels in your image as you work on them, Lightroom never touches your original fie and only outputs a copy with the changes and saves those changes to a text file that it attaches to the original image.

This is very cool.

If you are only shooting JPGs lesser (and cheaper) photo editors will work for you but if you’re shooting lots of raw images you will want Lightroom.

For example I shot a couple of thousand raw images in Italy. Using Lightroom my first job was to mark those images I wanted to edit.

Out of 2,000 images I ended up with 462 which my wife is going to grade for use in book she wants to publish and use for Christmas presents next year.

It took me several hours over a couple of days using a calibrated monitor in a somewhat darkened room to pick my images. Knowing my wife, she might go through all my rejects and dupes to make her own picks. Then she’s likely to want changes to my edits which include black and white and grungy effects.

If we weren’t making a book I’d be tempted to shoot the vacation in JPGs which would have come out of the camera pre-edited needing only a little brightening or darkening and cropping. I’ve learned to shoot more in JPG for special events where I’m shooting thousands of images (like the Toronto Zombie Walk) and don’t want to spend the next week in front of the computer.

But if I was shooting in light that was complex or varying in type I’d be shooting raw and I’d be using a Sekonic light meter and a ColorChecker Passport.

BTW all the Italy shots were done with either Olympus E-PL2 and E-PL-5. I brought an Olympus flash that works remotely off camera and a small Gorilla tripod. Italy is the only place I’ve ever seen where street vendors sell pocket-size tripods. Tells you how important a mini-tripod can be to getting great vacation images. (More on this later.)

Lightroom 101 FREE

If you scurry on over to www.creativelive.com you can watch Jared Platt do his three-day Lightroom 101 workshop for FREE!

The course downloads are available for $99 during the three-day course and I highly recommend you do so.

I bought Jared’s last Lightroom course from creativelive.com and it was fabulous.

My Brain Is Fried!

Vanessa Joy and Rob Adams are teaching Final Cut Pro X on Creativelive.com and we’re entering day two of a three-day workshop and already my brain is exploding.

Final Cut Pro X is Apple’s new professional level video editing software and it’s the future of video editing. Having said that, FCP-X is so different from other more traditional video editors that it’s impossible to just jump into the program and expect it to work.

Creativelive.com offers workshops like this one for free if you watch it live online. But there’s also a deal for buying the video downloads of the workshop for a cut price during the three-day workshop itself.

If you’re interested in FCP-X, I can’t recommend this workshop enough.

Why We Watch Webinars

I’ve spent the last two days watching family portrait photographer Michele Celentano photographing a family of nine!

Why would a professional like myself take two days to watch someone else teach family photography?

Because even a pro can learn something new.

Celentano is a classical photographer in the mode of Monty Zucker and she’s terrific.

If you want to learn how to shoot portraits and especially family portraits you can buy the three-day workshop downloads from Creativelive.com for a special $99 until tomorrow when the regular price of $149 goes back into effect.

BTW if you’ve got Lightroom or Photoshop or Aperture NIK is offering its entire gallery of external editors including Colour Efex Pro, HDR Pro, Silver Efex Pro and Viveza plus its sharpening and noise reduction software for a special $149 price. The whole editing package sells for well over $500 so this is a deal from Google which recently bought NIK.

Why We Shoot Photos

If you’re interested in being the best photographer you can possibly be then you must read this piece by Finnish photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen that appears on the blog PetaPixel. (That’s one of Minkkinen’s amazing images.)

The article is a from a lecture he gave to the graduating class of 2006 at the New England School of Photography in Boston, MA.

 

Minkkinen lives in the United States and is the Nancy Donahue Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Here’s a link to his website. This man is a master of the art.

Valentine’s Day

It’s estimated that as many as 10 per cent of all couples pick Valentine’s Day to get engaged.

So if you’re one of those lucky couples perhaps you’re thinking of engagement photos?

There’s a couple of ways of going about this.

You can hire a professional photographer (and maybe make it part of the wedding photography package). You can ask a friend. You can do it yourself!

So if you were looking for a professional, where should you start? Always look at portfolios and seek out personal recommendations.

Remember you get what you pay for. If your “pro” says he or she will shoot the wedding for $1000 (and only provides a DVD of the best images) and will throw in the engagement shots for free I’d be worried. If you’re not expecting the marriage to last then go for the shoot-and-burn DVD sales guy.

If the pro says they’ll shoot the wedding for a total investment of let’s say $1,800 and for that you get a wedding album, a slide show at the reception and perhaps on 11″X17″ framed image and they offer extras such as the mom’s photo books and perhaps small framed images for the wedding party at a reasonable extra cost (You’re going to end up paying somewhere around $2500 for all this but these images and the album are going to be family heirlooms and treasurers that last 100 years or more and worth the investment.) and then say the engagement photos will be an additional $500 I’d be feeling like I was dealing with an honest business person who understands the value of their services and will care for you at this important time of your life. Yes it’s not cheap but you’re worth it.

Remember next to the cost of the hall, the photographer is likely to be your next most expensive decision. Make it wisely.

Okay but you’re friend is pretty good with a camera and owns a real DSLR with a couple of lenses and flash.

Here’s what I’d do.

I create a shooting list of perhaps 10-12 photos. I’d pick a place or two where you don’t need permits or have to deal with crowds.

If your friend doesn’t know how to use flash (I’m an available light photographer. They all say that and it means they don’t know how to use flash.) you might want to hire a pro. Your images will thank you. So will your children and grandchildren and their children.

And you can do it yourself.

That is if you can get over being self-conscious in front of the camera. This is tough to do. Plus you need a decent DSLR and a tripod and a remote shutter release. Yes you can use your self-timer but it’s hard to get into the mood for a photo after doing the 15 yard dash before the self-timer fires the camera. Then if you understand white balance and exposure you and upload your images to Lightroom ($299) or Photoshop ($800) and take a day creating your perfect pictures.

Next you’re going to need to know how to pose. It’s way harder than it looks and some really great pros actually take courses on posing people.

I have and so has my partner in photography Mike Cauterman.

Congratulations on this special occasion in your life.

 

 

 

Street Photography

Funny thing after being a news photographer for years and having no compunction about sticking my camera in somebody’s face without permission or notice, I find actual street photography very intimidating. But street photography has a great history and has been served by some amazing photographers.

If we go back to Weegee we can see street photography as it was in New York City decades ago. Weegee, whose real name was Arthur Fellig worked for New York dailies between 1935 and 1945 using a 4″X5″ Speed Graphic.

But he wasn’t the first. Henri Cartier-Bresson is considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He started shooting with the newly introduced 35mm camera in the late 1920s using the iconic Leica rangefinder camera (You can buy a digital Leica M9 today.) 

A modern street photographer Jay Maisel is one of my photo heroes. I attended a talk he gave when he was in Toronto last year and I loved it. Jay has shot New York City for decades. He owns a brownstone building from where he shoots often from his rooftop. Here’s a great video about Jay taken by Scott Kelby.

Now here’s a video that I just found. It’s from 1981 and it’s about Joel Meyerowitz who also shot in New York City. The video is an educational tour of street photography and despite its rather amateurish presentation is pretty neat to watch.

I do this in mind of Podcamp Toronto which is coming up next weekend. Think I’ll take the Olympus Pen E-PL5 with a fast lens and see what happens.

BTW I’ve got a copy of Robert Frank’s The Americans. Printed in Germany it has a forward by Jack Kerouac. Shot in 1955-56 it’s a classic.