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A pretty standard shot from the Columbia Hills in Washington - but it was such nice light, I couldn't resist!
Sorry for the extreme delay between posts, people. Life's been getting in the way of photography - but no longer! I'm back in the PNW, and I've got a few images queued up from various NW biomes.
ALSO: an in-field workshop announcement to come soon!
As usual, I teach my processing workflow over Skype! If you like the way my images look and would like to learn my techniques, please visit my website for more information: www.alexnoriegaphotography.com
Probably the question that I get asked more than any other is about my photography workflow. I actually feel like my photography workflow is pretty simple so I thought I'd write up a brief post documenting my process all the way from photo capture to photo publishing. Feel free to ask any questions if you need me to elaborate on things.
1. Step one, capture the image: I carry my Canon 5D and 5 lenses (24mm, 14mm, 50mm, 135mm, 100mm macro) with me in a backpack every where I go. I take advantage of the routine time wasted in a day to turn that time into photography. Walking to and from the BART train. Going out for lunch. Waiting in line somewhere. All kinds of everyday moments become photographic opportunities.
Of course I also go out on specific photowalks all the time. Sometimes these are weekend trips away from home, other times they are just evenings out shooting with friends or with my wife. I use 2 8GB SanDisk cards.
To learn more about what is in my camera bag you can read this post here.
2. Step two, transfer the image to the computer: Here I use a high speed USB card reader. All card readers are not created equal. Spend the extra few bucks and get a high speed reader. Every day or other day I use my card reader to offload images on my camera card to my computer. In my case when I plug in my card reader Canon's "Camera Window" software automatically loads. This software then pulls all of my images off of my CF card and puts them into folders on my computer titled by date taken. After my images are transferred to my MacBook Pro I then put the card back in the camera and delete the images off of it. If I'm on an all day shoot I'll take breaks during my day (coffee, lunnch, etc.) to take a moment and clear out my cards.
Bonus Link: 13 Tips for Using and Caring for Memory Cards.
3. Step three, sort photos: Here I open the folder that has all of the RAW files from a given day's images using Adobe's Bridge software. I create a subfolder in the dated folder called "maybe." I go through the day's photographs and I drag anything that I think might have potential into the "maybe" folder.
4. Step four, first pass processing using Adobe Camera RAW: My next step is to open all images in a day's maybe folder using Adobe Camera RAW (comes with both Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom). You simply select all of the images in your maybe folder, right click, and select "Open in Camera RAW." This is where 95% of my photo processing is done.
With camera RAW you can adjust the contrast of a photo, the exposure of a photo, the saturation of a photo. You can adjust the temperature of a photo (the reason why some white lights are sulfur yellow and other white lights are soft blue), you can adjust the vignette (black or white edges around a photo), fill lighting, etc. Adobe Camera RAW uses sliders to make these adjustments and it is easy as pie.
After I get an individual image to where I want it I will use the "Save" button in camera RAW to save that finished photo as a JPG in a new folder "Finished Images."
After I process my first pass imagery I move that date's archive folder off my Mac and onto my drobo to back it up and store it more safely. Note, none of my RAW files are ever saved as processed. I consider my RAW files my negatives and always want to be able to go back to them and process from scratch if need be.
5. Step five, 2nd pass processing: Once I've finished my first pass processing I will point Bridge to the "finished images" folder. Here I will look at each finished JPG image in as large a format as possible looking for photos that need additional work. Typically less than 10% of my photos need additional work beyond camera RAW.
The type of work here is all done in Photoshop. As I go through the images I look for a few things consistently. Images that need slight sharpening. Images that have dust spots on them that need to be fixed with the cloning tool in Photoshop. Images that could benefit from dodging or burning, etc. As I see an image in Bridge that needs additional fine tuning I will double click on the image in Photoshop, make my edits, save the file and close it.
6. Step six, keywording: My next step is to keyword all of my photos using Adobe Bridge. Adobe Bridge has pretty powerful keywording capabilities. I can batch and bulk keyword photos. I might start out, for instance, keywording every single photo I just processed as "Las Vegas" "DMU Las Vegas Meetup 2008" "Vegas". From there I then might go through sub batches and keyword them (say Caeser's or Wynn or Venetian). From there I might then bulk keyword certain frequently used attributes (neon, mannequin, graffiti, night, etc.). And then I go through each image individually adding any final keywords image by image.
Keywording is important because these keywords will be automatically read as tags by sites like Flickr and Zooomr. It also allows you better to search your finished imagery in the future on your computer. The Importance of Keywording Your Photos.
7. Step seven, geotagging: Here I use a free program called Geotagger. Geotagger works with Google Earth and allows you to pinpoint a spot on the planet using Google Earth and then drag and drop any images from that location onto the program and geotags them with that coordinate. Geotagger only works for the Mac but there are lots of other free geotagging programs like Geotagger out there that work with Windows. When you geotag your photos at the file level both Flickr and Zooomr automatically add them to the meta data on your photo and place them on their site maps.
8. Step eight, sort finished photos into A or B to be uploaded folders: My next step is to go through my imagery and basically sort 80/20. What I feel are my strongest 20% go into a folder "B." The rest go into a folder "C."
9. Step nine, publish: I publish twice a day usually but this is by no means a hard and fast rule. Once in the morning and once in the evening. I typically publish 10-15 photos at a time selected mostly at random from my growing pool of "to be uploadeds."
I make sure that when I upload these 10 or 15 shots in a batch that the "B" shots are uploaded last as Flickr and Zooomr only highlight the last 5 shots that you upload in an upload batch. I want these to be what I feel are my better images.
And that's it. I'm sure that there are more efficient ways that I could be processing my imagery but this has worked for me for a while now. Feel free to ask any questions as the above might sound a bit complicated to some.
Additional reading: Thomas Hawk's Principles and Guidelines for the Modern Photowalker . Brian Auer's Your Guide to Adobe Bridge: Useful Tips and Tricks.
More comments and a conversation about this post over at FriendFeed.
Le Suquet is the old quarter of Cannes, probably best known to tourists as the climbing, winding cobbled lane lined with local restaurants, Rue St Antoine. Le Suquet contains a clock tower and church that sit high facing east overlooking the Bay of Cannes and Cannes itself. At the bottom of Le Suquet on Rue Dr. P. Gazagnaire is the Marché Forville, where the market is held in the mornings and early afternoon.
This area is the original fishermans' residential area of Cannes. The houses are all very old. The streets were laid out at least 400 years ago. It is a 5-minute walk from the beach and is full of restaurants around the Rue Saint Antoine and the Rue du Suquet. A lot of the area is pedestrianised and is a major tourist attraction for visitors to Cannes.
The rue du Suquet is the original main road into Cannes. It came in below the walls of the castle (for defence reasons). It is a pedestrian street again and has plenty of restaurants [Wikipedia.org]
Check out my VIDEO TUTORIALS of the workflows I use to create my HDR images.
For limited edition fine-art prints please email me at prints@jimboud.com
Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated! Please do not post large images/banners or invitations to "award" groups.
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This is a 3 exposure HDR of a construction area right off of Victoria Harbor on Hong Kong Island. Not exactly sure what they're building, but I assume it's more skyscrapers :)
Canon EOS 550D REBEL T2i
Quantaray 18-200mm OS DI f/3.5-6.3
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 18 mm
ISO Speed 100
Here is a little behind-the-scenes of my creative process. With every one of my designs I try to flush things out early on with quick sketches and color studies before diving into generating the assets.
This is an example of my Signalera piece, where I started with a very quick sketch of composition, then a study in Illustrator, and the final piece.
You can see a larger version right here.
©2008 James White. All rights reserved.
Here's my workflow for this image, using Apple Aperture:
-- I pulled the Vibrancy down to -1,
-- the Yellow to -1,
-- the Red's Vibrancy to +1 to whiten the clouds
-- the RAW Sharpen to +.84
-- the RAW Detail to +.81
-- in Levels I increased the Blacks to +.06
-- in Levels I increased the Whites to +.94
-- in Sharpen I increased the Radius to +2.0
-- in Sharpen I used the Brush to increase the gull's visibility
-- in Quick Brushes I used the Dodge tool to increase the
whites of the wave crests...
It is desaturated quite a lot, giving somewhat of a black and white look...
Enjoy!
Checkout my HDR Workflow below
When I was in Kawaguchiko, all my compositions tried to include the glorious Mt. Fuji. When the iconic mountain became shy, I completely ignored it's presence and just composed the photo as a normal sunset.
This is one of those photos that I think came our right after the HDR merging. I didn't have to mix the original photo just to bring down the HDRness of the image.
Canada Malting Silos (1928) on Toronto's Harbourfront.
iPhone 3GS + Photoforge app + PS Mobile app + Mill Colour app + PerfectlyClr app + CrossProcess app
I noticed a blogger saying this regarding a photo I posted last week:
"I really appreciate that this photographer takes the time to document how he arrived at the final photo. I wish more iPhonographers would do that."
I agree, and I'll expand on this today by summarizing my workflow from start to finish. I hope this will be helpful to other iPhoneographers and also serve as an example that post-processing, for many of us, involves a lot more work and consideration than snapping a photo, passing it through an app and uploading it to flickr.
My 'RAW 101' Workflow Video Tutorial is now available for Pre-Order!
Early adopters save 20%.
www.fototripper.com/product/raw-processing-workflow-for-l...
Do you get intimidated or overwhelmed by complicated image editing software? Relax. I’m here to walk you through the process step-by-step. By the time you’ve watched this series of video tutorials you’ll be processing your images with confidence.
Located in the heart of the glamorous city of Cannes —close to the Palais du Festival and famous Croisette walk— the Vieux Port de Cannes has been a long time favourite port of call for boats of all sizes. A wooden quay in front of the Capitainerie can accommodate yachts up to 40m there (50m upon request)
[yachtinsidersguide.com]
Unglaublich wie schnell die Kreuzspinne ihr Netz baute, ich bin sehr froh das mir diese Aufnahme gelungen ist.
Unbelievable how quickly the cross spider built her net. I am very glad that this picture has succeeded me.
Model: Charlotte Goyvaerts | MUA: Kathleen Van Walle | Hair & styling: Katleen Lison
I got to make photos with a Mamiya TLR this weekend! After all this time of obsessing about it... ;) It's a completely different workflow than my usual digital photography, but gosh. How nice it is to just slow down, take your time, think, feel,... I believe I really like it. But there are still pictures left on the film, so I'll have to be patient a bit longer before I get to see the results. I'm just hoping they won't all be complete rubbish. :p I'd be so sad. Like this puppy.
Edited this one in CS6 with nothing more than a pass of noise cancelation, slight curves adjustment, and sharpening on only the red and green channel.
First, Happy Thanksgiving To Everyone. Second DO NO TRY THIS AT HOME.
The following is how I edit my photos from my camera to Flickr.
1. Take an insane amount of photos of everything that you see in burst mode. I shoot everything in raw and large jpeg. I usually take a burst of 3 photos for every subject. For something like a marathon, my trip to San Francisco, or my day at the Lone Star Rally that would translate to 5000 photos. I took close to 30,000 photos in Japan. If we hadn't had 2 typhoons move through while I was there it would have been closer to 50,000. If you have quit laughing now please read on.
2. I transfer the 64 gb sd cards to my Windows 7 desktop. I usually do this one card at a time since I never have more than a 100 gb of storage left.
3. After uploading a sd card I go though and delete each out of focus shot or anything that just looks really off. Hopefully I cleared up enough room to upload another card. If not I try to see what I can part with and delete that. Eventually I will get everything into my Windows photo editor. The editor only sees jpegs and I have to move the cards over to my Mabook Pro in order to see the raw files.
4. The next step is to pick the best photo out of each burst. Sometimes the tired X-T1 misses every shot in a burst but really that is mostly my fault.
5. Go through the best shots and decide what to actually keep and edit in Lightroom. I try to remember that Lightroom can work wonders on some photos. Hopefully, I culled heavily but that is another problem that I am working on.
6. Rename all of the keeper photos so that I can find them in Lightroom. I am sure that there is an easy way to do this. This actually takes a really long time for me.
7. Transfer all of the photos to be edited onto another sd card.
8. Finally, turn on the Macbook Pro and import all of the photos into Lightroom.
9. Apply some sort of edit to the first photo and hopefully that can be applied to most of the photos in the upload.
10. Go back over every photo and make any minor adjustments that are necessary.
11. Go back over the photos one last time and cull any if necessary.
12. Finally, they can be uploaded to Flickr.
And that is how not to do it. (I actually really, really do it this way. It is possible that I even left a step or two out.)
Vincenzo Castella
"Une ville, une collection : Turin et le Musée National de l'Automobile"
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, PARIS.
Large format LightJet prints (180x300cm) from large format color negatives (20x25 cm) and ultra large format color negatives (11x14" and 12x20").
Files from high-res drum scans by CastorScan
www.lecourrierdelarchitecte.co ... 39d4caffe86169105f5f9c447
www.officiel-galeries-musees.c ... -une-ville-une-collection
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CastorScan's philosophy is completely oriented to provide the highest scan and postproduction
quality on the globe.
We work with artists, photographers, agencies, laboratories etc. who demand a state-of-the-art quality at reasonable prices.
Our workflow is fully manual and extremely meticulous in any stage.
We developed exclusive workflows and profilation systems to obtain unparallel results from our scanners not achievable through semi-automatic and usual workflows.
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CastorScan uses the best scanners in circulation, Dainippon Screen SG-8060P Mark II, the best and most advanced scanner ever made, Kodak-Creo IQSmart 3, a high-end flatbed scanner, and Imacon 848.
The image quality offered by our Dainippon Screen 8060 scanner is much higher than that achievable with the best flatbed scanners or filmscanners dedicated and superior to that of scanners so-called "virtual drum" (Imacon – Hasselblad,) and, of course, vastly superior to that amateur or prosumer obtained with scanners such as Epson V750 etc .
Dainippon Screen SG-8060P Mark II exceeds in quality any other scanner, including Aztek Premier and ICG 380 (in the results, not just in the technical specifications).
8060's main features: 12000 dpi, Hi-Q Xenon lamp, 25 apertures, 2 micron
Aztek Premier's main features: 8000 dpi, halogen lamp, 18 apertures, 3 micron
ICG 380's main features: 12000 dpi, halogen lamp, 9 apertures, 4 micron
Some of the features that make the quality of our drum scanners better than any other existing scan system include:
The scans performed on a drum scanner are famous for their detail, depth and realism.
Scans are much cleaner and show fewer imperfections than scans obtained from CCD scanners, and thus save many hours of cleaning and spotting in postproduction.
Image acquisition by the drum scanner is optically similar to using a microscopic lens that scans the image point by point with extreme precision and without deformation or distortion of any kind, while other scanners use enlarger lenses (such as the Rodenstock-Linos Magnagon 75mm f8 used in the Hasselblad-Imacon scanners) and have transmission systems with rubber bands: this involves mild but effective micro-strain and micro-geometric image distortions and quality is not uniform between the center and edges.
Drum scanners are exempt from problems of flatness of the originals, since the same are mounted on a perfectly balanced transparent acrylic drum; on the contrary, the dedicated film scanners that scan slides or negatives in their plastic frames are subject to quite significant inaccuracies, as well as the Imacon-Hasselblad scanners, which have their own rubber and plastic holders: they do not guarantee the perfect flatness of the original and therefore a uniform definition between center and edge, especially with medium and large size originals, which instead are guaranteed by drum scanners.
Again, drum scanners allow scanning at high resolution over the entire surface of the cylinder, while for example the Hasselblad Imacon scans are limited to 3200 dpi in 120 format and 2000 dpi in 4x5" format (the resolution of nearly every CCD scanner in the market drops as the size of the original scanned is increased).
Drum scanners allow complete scanning of the whole negative, including the black-orange mask, perforations etc, while using many other scanners a certain percentage of the image is lost because it is covered by frames or holders.
Drum scanners use photomultiplier tubes to record the light signal, which are much more sensitive than CCDs and can record many more nuances and variations in contrast with a lower digital noise.
If you look at a monitor at 100% the detail in shadows and darker areas of a scan made with a CCD scanner, you will notice that the details are not recorded in a clear and clean way, and the colors are more opaque and less differentiated. Additionally the overall tones are much less rich and differentiated.
We would like to say a few words about an unscrupulous and deceitful use of technical specifications reported by many manufacturers of consumer and prosumer scanners; very often we read of scanners that promise cheap or relatively cheap “drum scanner” resolutions, 16 bits of color depth, extremely high DMAX: we would like to say that these “nominal” resolutions do not correspond to an actual optical resolution, so that even in low-resolution scanning you can see an enormous gap between drum scanners and these scanners in terms of detail, as well as in terms of DMAX, color range, realism, “quality” of grain. So very often when using these consumer-prosumer scanners at high resolutions, it is normal to get a disproportionate increase of file size in MB but not an increase of detail and quality.
To give a concrete example: a drum scan of a 24x36mm color negative film at 3500 dpi is much more defined than a scan made with mostly CCD scanner at 8000 dpi and a drum scan at 2500 dpi is dramatically clearer than a scan at 2500 dpi provided by a CCD scanner. So be aware and careful with incorrect advertisement.
Scans can be performed either dry or liquid-mounted. The wet mounting further improves cleanliness (helps to hide dirt, scratches and blemishes) and plasticity of the image without compromising the original, and in addition by mounting with liquid the film grain is greatly reduced and it looks much softer and more pleasant than the usual "harsh" grain resulting from dry scans.
We use Kami SMF 2001 liquid to mount the transparencies and Kami RC 2001 for cleaning the same. Kami SMF 2001 evaporates without leaving traces, unlike the traditional oil scans, ensuring maximum protection for your film. Out of ignorance some people prefer to avoid liquid scanning because they fear that their films will be dirty or damaged: this argument may be plausible only in reference to scans made using mineral oils, which have nothing to do with the specific professional products we use.
We strongly reiterate that your original is in no way compromised by our scanning liquid and will return as you have shipped it, if not cleaner.
With respect to scanning from slides:
Our scanners are carefully calibrated with the finest IT8 calibration targets in circulation and with special customized targets in order to ensure that each scan faithfully reproduces the original color richness even in the most subtle nuances, opening and maintaining detail in shadows and highlights. These color profiles allow our scanners to realize their full potential, so we guarantee our customers that even from a chromatic point of view our scans are noticeably better than similar scans made by mostly other scan services in the market.
In addition, we remind you that our 8060 drum scanner is able to read the deepest shadows of slides without digital noise and with much more detail than CCD scanners; also, the color range and color realism are far better.
With respect to scanning from color and bw negatives: we want to emphasize the superiority of our drum scans not only in scanning slides, but also in color and bw negative scanning (because of the orange mask and of very low contrast is extremely difficult for any ccd scanner to read the very slight tonal and contrast nuances in the color negative, while a perfectly profiled 8060 drum scanner – also through the analog gain/white calibration - can give back much more realistic images and true colors, sharper and more three-dimensional).
In spite of what many claim, a meticulous color profiling is essential not only for scanning slides, but also, and even more, for color negatives. Without it the scan of a color negative will produce chromatic errors rather significant, thus affecting the tonal balance and then the naturalness-pleasantness of the images.
More unique than rare, we do not use standardized profiles provided by the software to invert each specific negative film, because they do not take into account parameters and variables such as the type of development, the level of exposure, the type of light etc.,; at the same time we also avoid systems of "artificial intelligence" or other functions provided by semi-automatic scanning softwares, but instead we carry out the inversion in a full manual workflow for each individual picture.
In addition, scanning with Imacon-Hasselblad scanners we do not use their proprietary software - Flexcolor – to make color management and color inversion because we strongly believe that our alternative workflow provides much better results, and we are able to prove it with absolute clarity.
At each stage of the process we take care of meticulously adjusting the scanning parameters to the characteristics of the originals, to extrapolate the whole range of information possible from any image without "burning" or reductions in the tonal range, and strictly according to our customer's need and taste.
By default, we do not apply unsharp mask (USM) in our scans, except on request.
To scan reflective originals we follow the same guidelines and guarantee the same quality standard.
We guarantee the utmost thoroughness and expertise in the work of scanning and handling of the originals and we provide scans up to 12,000 dpi of resolution, at 16-bit, in RGB, GRAYSCALE, LAB or CMYK color mode; unless otherwise indicated, files are saved with Adobe RGB 1998 or ProPhoto RGB color profile.
The full, free digital blending workflow video is now available for download!
To find out more: www.throughstrangelenses.com/2013/08/04/full-free-seascap...
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PLEASE NO SELF-PROMOTION or CRAPPY AWARDS. Thanks.
Digital blending or DRI or Exposure blending.
NO HDR.
First day of work after nice and sweet holidays.
I'm back in urban flux, trafic, polution and stress.
Work= End of contemplation. End of liberty.
This photo shows how we miss the beauty of the world and nature when we work as robots.
Drivers in foreground drive so fast they can't see beautiful landscapes in background.
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This is a re-edit of an image from earlier this year. The other image (you might find it here: www.flickr.com/photos/michellewhy/6130896698/in/photostream ) got explored..for my surprise. But I always was unhappy with the processing result, simply a fact of nearly no knowledge to photoshop and silver efex pro. Meanwhile I learned a lot and have something which I would call a workflow, very basic still, but much much better than before. Hopefully this will give me more constant images which are not based on a matter of luck! I am very pleased with the result now. Way less contrasts in the sky, therefor bigger range of dark tones even in the foreground to have the tower in a better and suitable space. For me it looks more feasibel now. Wonder what you guys think - I really ask for your critical feedback rather than for the general words!
The dividers that follow are "inbox", "actions", "agendas", "projects", and "reference". I use the inbox for note taking, and when I process the notes remove them from the section. So if it's working the inbox is close to empty