Everything in its time…

01. July 2015 · Comments Off on Everything in its time… · Categories: patience, processing photos, Travel · Tags: ,
Twin lakes, Desolation
Escalante - Lower Calf Creek Panorama

Escalante – Lower Calf Creek Panorama

It takes time to build a Panorama

Looking out the window

Decades ago, in grad school, I took a class on the economics of software development. In that class we had to read a book,  The Mythical Man Month by Brooks, which is the source of the quote ‘nine women and a month don’t make a baby’.   As much as I would like to hurry things along in photography, there are things that take time.

I think printers were put into this world to teach us patience !  For the last several months I have been having problems getting people’s faces to print correctly (landscapes to a lesser degree).  I have profiled everything several times.  I have checked and rechecked everything.  I ran out of ink and had to wait for the new ink to arrive, a little better, but not great.  Then I noticed that on one of the endless printer quality runs that I was missing the light gray swatch.  Now it was waiting for the new print head to arrive and time passes.  Finally, new print head, and voila (calibrate, and  profile)  – the faces are starting to look better.

Panoramas, although not as frustrating as my printer problems take time. I have 2 different programs that will stich a set of images together to build a panorama; Photoshop  & PT Gui. The one on the the left is a combination of 31 frames. The one above not as many. The programs are relatively quick, but there are an interesting series of issues that show up when building panoramas.

-Often there are gaps in the panorama where there is not a frame for a spot.  Then you have to fill it in with Photoshop work.

-There is too big a dynamic range in the photo, and so work needs to be done.
-There may be waves that span multiple frames that don’t line up that require careful editing in Photoshop.
– The is bigger than 2GB, and so is a .PSB file that is not recognized by Lightroom.
-It may be under the 2GB limit, and so can be a .PSD file, but the pixel count exceeds the current maximum pixel count in Lightroom.
-Once you have the file in a workable size, printing it becomes an issue on several fronts, the one on the left is 24″ wide and about 7.5 long; what do you do with that?

Having a big beautiful print is a great joy, but there are only a limited number of places you can put panorama.  Not to mention the mounting costs….

Putting in the time to build and print a small copy of a panorama is extremely rewarding, but it is an exercise in patience.

 

To see more panoramas visit and let me know if you want one.

Panorama

From Whidbey Island

Panorama

Off of Conway Summit

Color Calibration

13. June 2015 · Comments Off on Color Calibration · Categories: patience, Taking care, Workflow · Tags: ,
Blue Bird

Blue Bird

This is really about Calibrating monitors, but first some background.  I have built a new computer system, and on reflecting back, I have several observations that I would like to pass along.  This is also learning from someone else’s hard knocks (LoL).  So I was needing to upgrade my computer system at home; I built in 2007 and at the time it was a hot system, today it is an under powered system.  Not  enough memory (was 16GB, now 64GB), CPU speed of 750 MHz which is very slow by today’s standard, and the disks on the OS  were slow compared to an SSD.  I ported over the Raid 5 of 16TB that has the photos.  It was definitely an exercise in patience.

One of the last things I did was to color calibrate the 2 monitors that I have. One monitor is a Dell wide gamut, the other a run of the mill LCD monitor.  I have, over the years used different products to calibrate my monitors, this timeit was an i1 device.  If you have not color calibrated your monitor, I hope that you don’t do anything to change the color.  This time I was using an i1 display pro for the color calibration.  The way it works is you put the i1Display against the screen and run the software which runs the screen through a series of colors that the i1Display measures against what it is supposed to be, and computes a color profile to bring the monitor in line with the desired.  Very straight forward, except that I found that on the same monitor I could have a huge amount of variation depending on how square the i1Display was to the screen.  The directions call for not pressing it against the screen, and just letting it hang.  The issue is that letting it hang leaves a gap at the bottom, as it is not square against the screen and the ambient light makes a big difference in the final result.

When the color profile is off, it is nearly impossible to produce a reasonable looking print, and web usage of the photo isn’t much better as your monitor is unlikely to match anyone else’s.

Consider the photo below, the background is green, not yellow, and the fence is white.  Avoiding this is the goal of color calibration

Bad Color Calibration That is a white fence rail

Bad Color Calibration
That is a white fence rail

Good color calibration

Good color calibration

Consider the two images, which would you prefer?

Plan, Prepare, Practice, Patience

25. March 2015 · Comments Off on Plan, Prepare, Practice, Patience · Categories: patience, Philosophy, Plan, Practice, Preparation · Tags: , , ,
Males seeing who is more dominant
At times those skills were really hard to do because not only was I having to contend with the camera, but I was having to learn these new skills and the ball was always kind of doing what you didn’t want it to do. So it got a little bit frustrating at times but we got there.- Parminder Nagra
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.- Winston Churchill
Girls Volleyball,Stanford,Volleyball

Girls Volleyball, Stanford, Volleyball

I have ADHD.  For those that know, it is well like DUH! So, for me to write, let alone an article on Plan, Prepare, Practice, Patience is quite something !

Regardless of whether you are an Instagram shooter, shooting for a paper, portraits, landscapes, you name it; Plan, Prepare, Practice, Patience all  pay dividends.  Seldom do we get a chance as photographers to do over again. and even the ability to do over again, requires planning and preparation.

  •  A product shots requires planning to allow a redo.
  • I think of my son who posts on Instagram and Facebook multiple times a day of friends, food, activities; there is no redo for those occasions.
  • Landscape photography, will the lighting be the same, will you be in the same spot, will the landscape be the same?
  • Portraits, will the person(s) be able to have the same expression, will you have the same lighting?
  • As an event photographer (think sports) the moment is fleeting and gone forever.

Not all photos, and types of photos require the same degree of Planning, Preparation, Practice, and Patience.  My Instagram son, who uses his phone for photos plans, as do every other photographer I know.  What do these four “P”s  really mean?

Plan

Planning is the process of mentally looking into the future and imagining what is going to happen, and how you will respond.  And then, taking notes (mental or otherwise) on what you will do.  Here are a few examples:

  • To take an early morning  sunrise photo, I will need a light to see the camera, I will need a tripod for long exposures, I will something to keep me warm.
  • To get pics of elephant seals fighting I am going to need a longish lens.
  • What are the settings  I need on the camera for what I am shooting.

Most of us do some amount of mental planning, but do we actually pay attention and think about what it is that we want to do? Often, planning is the result of learning from things not well enough planned.

Prepare

This is an action step: This is where I collect what is needed, or the process of getting what is needed available.

  • Buy gloves and a headlamp for my before sunrise photo
  • I find out if the elephant seals are visible to public and obtain needed permits
  • Charge batteries
  • Pack the camera bag
  • Get water and munchies for during the day
  • Clean the camera & lenses
  • Fresh memory for the camera

All of these types of activities are implicitly the result of planning and recognizing what actions need to happen.  I often make a work list so that I won’t forget something, and that I can add to as I remember other things.  I set up various categories that I need to deal with such as clothing, camera, lighting, props, batteries.

Practice

There are many times  and types of photography where there is not a lot of time to figure something out; kids, wild life, event photography, even landscape as the light is changing from predawn to dawn.  I remember, one pre  dawn at Mesa Arch, and three guys came in late, but they had a tripod, but they didn’t know how to connect the camera to the tripod.  Some types of photography, such as sports or wild life, require a knowledge about the subject if you want good photos.

Mesa Arch, being prepared

Canyon Lands National Park,Island in the Sky,Mesa Arch,Southwest,Utah,buttes,canyons,sunrise

Patience

I am in some ways surprised that I am a photographer with my ADHD.  Waiting for the moment and not getting frustrated in the waiting and not just clicking frames out of impatience that later have to be weeded out.  The elephant seals, and the volleyball practice are both examples of this.

 

In parting, if you think about it, what would you do more of, what would you do less of: Plan Prepare Practice Patience?

 

Details – Learnings from a workshop

11. March 2015 · Comments Off on Details – Learnings from a workshop · Categories: Mental Process, patience, Philosophy, processing photos, Uncategorized

The Courthouse from main streat

The details are not the details. They make the design. Charles Eames

 

Success is the sum of details.   Harvey S. Firestone

Now this is a laugh!  Me with ADHD, the big picture guy writing about details!  But maybe that is why this is an important note for me.  Four months ago, I took Charlie Cramer workshop on printing.  Now I love printing photos, and I already knew most of the techniques that Charlie taught. What I didn’t recognize until recently, was what it was that I did learn.  Paying attention to details.  In lots of different ways, the message was pay attention to details, not just the big picture; the big picture takes care of itself if the details are observed.

I was reviewing some photos of the southwest that I had previously posted on my site.  Wander through the galleries and see if you can detect the details that have not been attended to ! In reviewing the photos, I was appalled at the poor quality that I had posted before.  I haven’t updated all of the photos yet, it takes time…. Details I noticed that had escaped me the first time around.

  • Spots, particularly in the sky
  • Halos
  • Shadows too blocked up
  • Horizons not quite flat
  • Unsharpened photos
  • Not cropped well
  • Photos too dark

It is amazing the improvement in quality in the photos from paying attention to the series of details that are available.  It wasn’t as if any of these things was new at all, but was new was instilling the eye to be able recognize the series of details that needed attending too!

One of my photographer sons says over and over, when I talk with him (sons are like that, probably learned some place LoL) is that we have to become ‘engaged with the picture’ but I think I might answer back, pay attention to the details, the picture will take of itself..