Summer is moving right along. Come September I’m hitting the road for a month in our new trailer taking a photo tour with my Family. My destination is Twin Cities and when I get there I’ll be doing a 3 day HDR workshop followed by my 1 day LR Power Workshop.
I won’t make this long. You can click below for info on either workshop. Whether you’re local or traveling in, I look forward to seeing some of you there. There’s also talk of some kind of a PPS meetup, so stay tuned… Gav
Grooms Wake. Even this has a story. I almost dunked my gear during this TTD session. But the results were worth it. Gavin used a preset from Power Workflow for tone. The couple loved the result.
Today’s Panel... Gavin Seim – Denns Zerwas – Kerry Garrison – Barry Howell.
We talk about Lightroom, Photoshop and other random bits. Then move on to our main topic where we discuss tales photographic of woe and suffering and war and trauma and horror and even happiness.
by Gavin Seim: Attempting to setup light outside with an with an umbrella, softbox, or even a lone strobe can quickly turn into a fiasco of tipping. I have a family session with over forty people this weekend, and the last thing I want to worry about was whether my lights are secure. One common method is to use sandbags, but I wanted something small, light and adaptable to keep stands from falling over. Behold the DIY quick release cords for.
PS. The wind was not intense on the day I made this, but I left them up all afternoon without reservation. These make a VERY stable light and they should handle heavy winds if needed. Do some tests of your own and if in doubt just add a few extra tether cords to make it as sturdy as you need. Also here is a good video on how to tie the Tautline Hitch.
by Gavin Seim: Dynamic range is a big deal in photography and I’ve been making a point to study it over the past few years. Last week I joined Kerry Garrison on the CameraDojo podcast, for a new episode on HDR. In fact however, it’s not just a discussion of traditional HDR, but on all things dynamic range. It’s always fun guesting on other shows (not to mention a lot less work) and I think we pulled together something good here.
Thanks to Kerry for having me. Head over to CameraDojo to give it a listen. Then stay tuned because there’s also a brand new PPS Roundtable coming real soon.
by Gavin Seim: So I wrote a few articles recently over on my Seim Effects site about editing faster and managing better, and I felt they were worthy of a mention here on PPS. If you want to edit your images faster or have ever questioned the way you manage LR catalogs take a peek and you might just get something new. Enjoy… Gav
Super Workflow: The 7 Steps to Photo Editing Awesomeness: This is an outline of pretty much everything I’ve learned about the flow of fast editing with a step by step look at how to work more efficiently. It’s geared towards LR users, but applies to most any editing workflow.
by Gavin Seim: I’ll be talking more about Lightroom soon, but I wanted to make a quick post about what I found most significant in LR3. It’s the processing. It may go unnoticed at a glance, but is so much better, that by itself makes LR3 worth the upgrade. This first example shows an ISO 50,000 image from a 1D MKIV, showing just how impressive the new noise reduction and processing in LR3 is (not to mention the camera). I did this in LR3 by simply switching it back and forth from new to old process version (in the camera calibration settings).
Next is a lower 640 ISO example. For this one I actually processed the first in LR2 itself and the other in LR3. While not so obvious (click for the large version) it shows the subtle quality of not just the noise reduction, the the quality of how the file is being processed. Notice in the large version how the LR3 version feels more organic, almost film like in quality. I love it and you can be sure I’m getting under the hood in LR3 to see what’s possible for workshops and my Seim Effects presets.