Tuesday, September 22, 2020

A New Try At Sharpening

 Recently, I listened to a video on YouTube done by Blake Rudis of F64 Academy.  In the video he went through a process of making the layers into a group, making the blend mode to be Linear Light, making the Fill slider to be at 30%, the desaturating the layer. He then used the High Pass filter, made a black mask and then brushed the areas that he wanted to be sharpened.

In this photograph, I sharpened the wood, and the water, but left the bushes alone.  I did not use the Blend If like he did.  I think that the picture turned out well.


If you have an interest in Photography, Meditation or Mindfulness, you are welcome to contact me and I would be very happy to set up a day and time for us to meet and talk about it. 

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Tree Roots

 Scientist say that you can tell the age of a tree by the number of rings that are in the trunk of the tree after it is cut down.  I am not sure how many years of a tree's life each ring represents (I know that it is claimed that for each of our years, a dog's years is equal to seven).  

Through my meditation and mindfulness, I have discovered that tree roots have interesting patterns in them as well.  I am not sure how the appearance of rings happen.  Whether it is from people walking over them or the erosion of the ground, but sometimes I discover depressions in the roots and other times I discover rings.

That was the case with this picture, it appears that there are rings in this tree root.  I could it fascinating and decided to take a picture.


What do you discover on your walks?  If you would enjoy learning more about photography, meditation or mindfulness, you are welcome to write to me and I would be very happy to set up a date and time for us to meet.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Looking Forward To Black Friday

 I have seen several YouTubers that are saying that Sony will be releasing the Sony a7c shortly.  I am hoping that this is more than rumor because the price point is very close to what the a7III is selling for as well. What my hope is since the two cameras are nearly at the same price point, I am hoping that the a7III will come down in price.  If that is the case, I will get one.  I am currently shooting an a7 so going to the III, will be a nice increase in functionality.  Ohhhh, I know that I could get the II, but I don't feel that there is that much difference between the original and the II.  

Anyway, we will see what happens on Black Friday or close to there.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

All Lives Matter -- Education Is The Key

It is often said that the reason history repeats itself is because we never learn from it.  During the period of May 31st and June 1st of 1921, the Tulsa Race Massacre happened in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  According to Scott Ellsworth, who wrote on the Tulsa Race Riot in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History, "it was the single worst incident of racial violence in American History.  The incident destroyed the wealthiest black community in the United States called "Black Wall Street". 

So often when I listen to different programs and people talk, I often hear a form of the words, "I did not see people like me growing up".  When we look around, we can see people that are well educated African-American and Latino people who are well educated that look like us.  I think the problem is that we "discount" those people as being born with a "silver spoon" in their mouth. 

Personally, I think of people like James Brown from CBS Sports and moderator of the NFL Today, yes he went to Harvard, but he got there through basketball.  Loretta Lynch who became the Attorney General under former President Obama between 2015 to 2017, she graduated from Harvard Law School, but according to Wikipedia, her grandfather was a sharecropper who helped people move to the north to escape racial persecution.  Lonnie Bunch, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution on Racial Tensions, his family was the only African Americans in their community of Belleview, New Jersey, his grandfather was a sharecropper who moved to Belleview, New Jersey and became on of the first black dentist in the region (according to Wikipedia) and since this blog is about photography, we can't forget about Ibarionex Perello, a photographer who is from the Dominican Republic and has been a photographer for over 25 years and is host of The Candid Frame.  There are others like Joseph Rosendo, who does the PBS show Travelscope, who is a Cuban immigrant, but became a travel journalist.  R C Concepcion, an Adobe certified instructor in Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom. 

All of these people worked their way up to the point that they are through education, either through school or being shown "The ropes".  Joseph Rosendo ends every show he does on Travelscope with a quote from Mark Twain, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness".  Many will tell you that it takes money to travel and the way that we obtain money in our lives is through education.  A person who has been well educated is easy to pick up, they speak differently.  You can tell their manner of speaking when they speak.

Lonnie Bunch was on The CBS Evening News with Nora O'Donnell on June 1, 2020 and he made several statements that really caught my attention.  He quoted Ella Baker, who was an African American Civil Rights Activist who said, "Until the killing of a black mother's son is considered as important as a white mother's son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest". 

This blog post is not only a call for better education of black and brown people but better education of everyone.  Look at the difference between what happened in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and what happened in Flint, Michigan where Chris Swanson, the Sheriff of Genesee County in Michigan when he laid down is baton and riot gear and walked with the people.  In Minneapolis, entire blocks were burned down, even an African American family who had invested their entire life savings had their store looted, burned down and people came in to take the money that was in the safe.  Yet, in Flint, they had a parade and not a single thing was damaged.  This was not the only incident that I saw on the news, their were stories in New York, Houston, Texas and other cities of the United States where officers took a knee with the protestors and calmed things down considerably.  Perhaps our police departments in this country can take a lesson from these people.

We need to educate our lawyers, our judges and all the way up the system including our legislature and our President.

The President even berated the nation's governors saying that if they were soft, they would be taken as jerks and people would get away with what they were doing.  Really?  Look what happened in Flint Michigan.  Nothing happened there.  Putting people in jail, does nothing.  If anything, it hampers people from obtaining an education.

One of the things that I would think would be part of that education system is to give people something to get excited about.  Besides being a photographer, I have also taught people about photography taking them all the way from informing them about what camera to buy, leaving it up to them to make a decision about what camera that they should buy, all the way to how to process their photographs that they take. 

I will admit that not everyone gets excited about photography, but everyone has something that they can get excited about if you find out what excites them.  The key is that we need to find out what it is that gets them excited.  It might be a flower, helping them to get their hands dirty transplanting flowers from one place to another can help.  Teaching them what happens from a seed to the bloom of the flower might excite them.  You just never know what it might be that excites them.  It has been said, "An idol mind is the Devil's workshop".  If we can make people's minds less idol, they will be consumed, they will have something to do and they will be off of the streets because they are doing something productive.  Perhaps, it will even stimulate our economy.

I have seen this in my classes that I teach.  I can show someone how to take a photograph and they will often say, "I wonder what would happen if I . . . (and you can fill in the blank)".  For me, that makes me very proud because my teaching is starting to sink in.  What helped?  Education, in my mind anyway.

Lonnie Bunch made a statement at the end of the interview with Nora O'Donnell on the CBS Evening News that was very pungent to me hearing it.  He said but I want to expand it some , "As a black or latino man in America, you are still breathing, but as a black or latino man in America, I wonder how long?"  My response to Mr. Bunch is, when everyone receives a quality education.  We need to elevate our education in our poorer neighborhoods to the elevation of the education in our more influential neighborhoods and find people who are willing to mentor and coach those in the more disadvantaged neighborhoods just like the people who are in the more advantaged neighborhoods.

Saturday, May 2, 2020

Pushing On

While the Covid-19 pandemic pushes on, over one million cases have been reported in the United States, with over 1,600 cases in my county and over 2,000 in my immediate area.  Yet, the governor has partially opened the state, to commerce.  I am sorry, but this is scary to me.  Many businesses were boarded up during this time with lots of graffiti artist painted their graffiti on the boards.  Because of some of those businesses deciding to open up, many of the boards are coming down.  It seems like a waste of talent.  Why don't some of those businesses use the boards as part of their decor?  It could be that they don't want to be reminded of the times, but it is a piece of history.  Someone once said, "The reason that history repeats itself is because we don't learn from it".  Some have said that the world will not be the same after this and others have opined that perhaps we should not go back to the old ways.  Perhaps.

Focusing more on the positive, I have been listening to podcast and getting ideas for things that can help my process my photographs.  I created a preset for Lightroom, that I will use to process my photographs as I import them into Lightroom.  I also made a LUT (Look Up Table) for my colors and tones in Photoshop.  Both of those were inspired by listening to Blake Rudis' podcast on the Virtual Summit that Dave Cross put on.  Now all I can have all of my colors and tones can look the same throughout my photographs.  I am looking forward to using it on many if not all of my photographs.

I also listened to Dave Cross' podcast called "Talking Shop".  He made a suggestion about using two curves in Photoshop, one for darkening and one for lightening and then making an action to put the two curves on your layer stack.  I have been interested in trying to burn and dodge in Photoshop without using the burn and dodge tools.  It is my thought that with using a mask in Photoshop, making the mask black, then painting in white with my settings at 10% intervals for the brush and going over and over until I am satisfied with how the highlights and shadows look in my photograph.

If you think about it, every object that we see, has highlights and shadows.  Photographs are two dimensional objects having only a length and width.  It is putting highlights and shadows in your picture that helps it become three dimensional helping it to have depth.  Having the ability to dodge and burn will really help in my processing abilities.  I am looking forward to making the action and putting it in my library in Photoshop so that I can use it in my post processing.

I am itching to get outside and take pictures but I am doing my best not to dwell on the negative and focusing on the positive.  I hope that you are as well.


Wednesday, April 22, 2020

COVID-19 Continues

Grrrrrrrr COVID-19 still has me stuck at home.  I am still hoping that as some of the medical experts have said that heat of the summer will kill the virus.  Is it possible that many of these restrictions will be eased up?  In my state, some have, but then the city is still taking precautions since there are close to 1200 cases of the virus here.

I am a person that needs to get out.  This business of sitting at home is getting to me.  I still want to go places and see things that I haven't seen or really experienced yet.  Yet my camera is sitting in its bag gathering dust on my floor.

You might have noticed that I did not post last week.  That was because I was attending a Virtual Summit on Photoshop.  As per the typical summits or conferences, some of the instructors were very informative and others were just so so or down right not interesting.  One particular instructor that I enjoyed was Blake Rudis from https://f64academy.com/.  It was through him that I learned to do a LUT (look up table) to help with my post processing.  While, Blake uses Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw to process his pictures, I am going to split his process putting the Adobe Camera Raw part into Lightroom as a Preset and the Photoshop part into its own LUT.  Then, when I import my image into Photoshop, I can use the LUT at the first action to get the proper tone and colors to begin my processing with.  I am excited to set this up and start using it and see what it does to my processing.

Someone else that I really enjoyed was Jack "Wow" Davis http://jackdavishowtowow.com/.  Jack took a step by step approach to using Lightroom for my iPad.  He really made it seem interesting to me and I have the feeling that it is something that I can use if I am at lunch and want to see how some of my pictures may look once I put them on my desktop computer.  Presently, I use my iPad to take panoramas, so I am looking forward to using it and getting over some of the wonder that I might have after I take a picture that I feel really good about.  As I tell many of the people that I interact with, "Everything looks good small".  It is when you get it larger that you start noticing the flaws.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Plans For The Future

Like many in the world, I am staying inside.  I have several of the health conditions that those I respect, say are the most critical conditions for being susceptible to this Coronavirus that we are all dealing with.  I am getting to go out to the grocery store once a week.  This week much of the world celebrates Easter Sunday.  The grocery store will be closed so I will need to go earlier in the week to get my groceries.

Since I am staying at home, I am enjoying a state of "Wanderlust", figuring places that I would like to go once all of this is over with.  Top on the list is Las Vegas.  I want to shoot along the canals of the Venetian Hotel.   I would enjoy shooting the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel (can i get a spot in the middle so I can get the curve of the hotel and the fountains in the middle)?  I would enjoy going to Seven Magic Mountains about one half hour south of The Strip, and of course there is the Grand Canyon about one and one half hours away from Las Vegas.  If I can leave early enough, there is the Hoover Dam along the way.

One thing that I think about is getting a hat.  I have seen a couple styles that I like, but I haven't found one that comes in the color that I want.  I have been thinking of a white hat so that it reflects the light and will keep my head cool, especially in the summertime.

So what have you been thinking about doing after we get the signal that we can go outside and enjoy our activities?  I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on the subject.  Leave a comment below.  You might inspire me for more activities to take on after we get our release from these "Stay in Place" orders that we have.

Until next time, stay healthy, stay well and most of all keep hoping for as a wise man once said, "Hope is the anchor of the soul".


Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Where Have I Been?

In looking back at my blog, my last post was December 2016.  Today is March of 2020, quite a long time.  In short, I have been busy doing nothing.

I had a lot of back issues.  I went through a lot of misdiagnosis of my problem.  I finally went to a pain management doctor and he referred me to a spine specialist.  This spine specialist diagnosed me with a combination of scoliosis and stenosis.  Much of my back naturally fused itself over the years, but I was having trouble with the L series in my back. For those of you that are not familiar with what different parts of the back do, the L series of vertebrae in your back control your legs.  I ended up having surgery in January of 2019 and today, I am actually walking around without the use of a cane or any other device to help me walk. 

I am back to being able to carrying my camera in a backpack type camera bag and I have gotten into mirrorless cameras.  Specifically, I was able to get a Sony a7 camera and I have gotten two lenses to shoot with and am doing very well using that.  Of course, I ended selling my Nikon camera and gear so that I could acquire my Sony, but overall, it has helped me to get out and start shooting again.

I hope to start posting on my blog on a regular, consistent basis.  Of course this Coronavirus pandemic has happened and so like many others, I am staying in so that I don't come down with it.  I am and will always deal with chronic depression, that is part of why I am a photographer and do what I do. 

I have taken some pictures, but I want to work on some processing skills while being forced to stay at home.  One of the techniques I want to work on is sharpening my photographs.  I have gotten a lot of comments about how great my textures are in my photographs, but like the person that I am, I am my own worst critic and feel that they can be better.  I also have changed my post processing routing and use much more Photoshop than I was.  I still put frames around all of my work, but have seen some other people that use frames and want to incorporate some of their ideas into my frames as well.

Until next time.  Stay healthy, stay well, and most of all keep shooting.