New Year Picture

Happy New Year to those two or three of you who drop by from time to time.

My wife and I went for a walk in Sproat Lake Provincial Park which is very near to our home in Port Alberni, B.C.

It was good to get out and I took my camera and tripod along to see if I could capture anything that interested me. This was one of the first shots I took as we got near the water. I had been wanting to get a shot that had some reflections in it and this is a start for me. I did do some post processing work with a couple of actions, notably a gaussian glow effect that seems to work good for landscapes since I have yet to bite the bullet for the NIK filters. I also cleaned up all my sensor dust and finally duplicated the layer and used the overlay blend at 44% opacity to boost it a bit. I also cropped it a bit to tighten up the image and cloned out some distracting remnants in the left corners.

This is all great fun for me.

Resolutions for the New Year? Just to take more photos and increase my skill and understanding of all things photographic.

All the best in 2008.

Gift Books

I now have months worth of reading and experimenting in Photoshop thanks to the following three books from my daughter and my wife:

Skin - by Lee Varis;
7-Point System - by Scott Kelby;
Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers - by Martin Evening.

All look great, all slightly different, all designed to keep me at my computer in Photoshop.

But, I definitely need to practice my lighting portrait skills after looking at some of the pictures I attempted yesterday. I used off camera flash, bounced, but too far away thus creating some hard shadows behind the victims subjects.

Plus, I need to get out and just shoot some more non-portrait shots.

But, I'm still having lots of fun learning Photoshop.

Merry Christmas!

Courtenay Christmas Parade

On November 24 I drove my wife, Rena, to Courtenay so she and a few others from Port Alberni could participate in the parade as a little band that was thrown together. I'm not much for Salvation Army banding any more but my wife enjoys it greatly and I took some pictures.

They are basically just snapshots, nothing overwhelming (except, of course, the ones of my lovely wife - she's the one playing the Euphonium and wearing no hat) but I've put them up in a Phanfare album for anyone who is interested. It is also linked in the sidebar.

Let's Go Hollywood

One way to learn a new program or technique is to actually do tutorials that you read about. These pictures were made by following a technique in December's Photoshop User Magazine presented by "the Lad", Corey Barker. It is titled "Let's Go Hollywood" and is based on a movie poster effect that he saw for the movie Aeon Flux. So, I gave it a shot on a couple of pictures I had of my grandsons, Nathan and Ben.

Who knew Photoshop could be so much fun. Well worth the investment.

Making the Most of Mistakes

I like lone trees. I see them and I want to photograph them. Too often I don't stop to shoot them, but I will make it a project someday.

I took this picture outside of Drumheller in October on our way to Saskatchewan. When I looked at the pictures most of them were blurry. I think it was due to the wind and an unstable tripod. Partly because of this I purchased a new tripod, but I still basically like the shot. So tonight, I started playing with it a bit. I purposely over-sharpened it, extremely so, then applied a few Nik filters including this Polaroid Transfer and finally giving it an overlay layer blend dialed back a bit.

I kind of like how it turned out even though it really is a discard and should have been thrown out. It doesn't matter, I had fun doing it.

NIK Color Efex Pro 3.0

While relatively new to the whole full-blown Photoshop scene, I have been enjoying learning how to better use it and how to spice up my pictures with proper developing techniques and also the use of different actions and plugins. I have been trialing Nik Software's Color Efex Pro filters, first version 2.0 and the last few days, version 3.0. There are some very useful filters that give pictures some pop and different effects.

Version 3 is mostly an interface improvement that is very nice. Plus, the U point technology is a great feature for turning on or off the filter effect on different parts of the picture. It is quicker and easier to use than brushing or erasing the effect and, to my still untrained eye, seems to work quite effectively.

It is good enough that I have been seriously thinking about buying it. However, I have been experiencing some crashes while in the interface that needs a ctrl-alt-delete to bring up the task manager and shut down Photoshop. It has happened frequently enough that I'm a little hesitant to buy it. It could be that I am taxing my computer too much and I'll have to experiment a bit more.

Also of interest is onOne Software's PhotoTools 1 Professional Edition. I have downloaded the trial version and will install it shortly to provide a comparison. However, I am beginning to wonder if there is any end to spending money in the hobby/profession.