lightroom tip – painting with light

This post is very much a “Hat Tip” to David Ziser’s blog, DigitialProTalk. He recently published a post where he described a technique he calls Painting with Light and there’s demonstration video to go with it. This is my interpretation and attempt at using this technique.

now you can pano-sweep

Sony have introduced a new camera which has a panoramic mode with a difference. A panoramic mode is available on most point-and-shoot cameras but they still involve taking separate images which are then later stitched together in software. With the new Sony HX-1, you can take panoramic photos that are stitched together within the camera – but there’s a difference. You take the panorama by sweeping the camera across the vista you want to capture! Really cool (if you have a steady hand or tripod handy)! Sony calls it Sweep Panorama Technology.

The This Week In Photography (TWIP) blog has posted a short movie on it (click ‘Download M4V file’), shot at PMA2009.

oh my…

..oh my, oh my… look what I learned to do with Photomatix Pro! 

(You can see the original at this post.)

P.S: just a disclaimer. It’s not that I like what I’ve done to my image, it just that I’ve always wondered how these effects are made – and now I know…..

enfuse/photomatix hdr comparison

  

So I said two posts ago that I would look at presenting a comparison between creating HDR images with LR2/Enfuse and Photomatix Pro. So here are a series of images, all taken on the same day when we visited Punalu’u Black Sand Beach back in January. All images come from 3 bracketted images taken 2 EV apart. 

Images on the left are HDR composites using Enfuse, and those on the right are using Photomatix Pro.

macario’s big island

There’s a new local blog that has just started up. Macario is a local professional photographer and if his post on the ceramics of artist Gordon Lee is anything to go by, I am really looking forward to seeing more of his work and learning from it.

As he says in his tag line, “he has photographed everything from a tomato to a Westin Hotel”. Macario also has a web page where you can see a lot more of his work.

Thanks to Rodrigo for pointing his work out to me.

new attempts at hdr

I’ve posted in the past about using the LR2 plugin for Enfuse-ing images together to give that hdr look. Since then, I’ve been playing and experimenting with the trial version of Photomatix Pro (which appears to be the ‘industry favourite’) and I finally paid for it this weekend when I discovered that I could get a 60% educational discount! The image above is one of my first serious plays with it.

success at sparky’s

This was a long (and very rainy) weekend. This weekend we took part in the 22nd annual Charles “Sparky” Kawamoto Swim Meet, held every year at the Hilo municipal pool. The event is run as an ABC event, which means that no swimmer is allowed to enter an event if they already have a time which is faster than a certain standard (the next level above being a AA time, and then State QUALifying time). So this event has two benefits – it gives the younger swimmers a chance to compete with others at their own level and to have a taste of success, and it gives swimmers a chance to try events that they wouldn’t normally attempt at a normal event (where you are restricted to 4 events per day – and one of those can usually include a relay). Swimmers from clubs across the whole State of Hawaii come to this event every year.

For Mira, her events this year (having aged up into a new age group before Xmas, she had more choice than most) were the 50yd Butterfly, 100yd Butterfly, 100yd Backstroke and 100yd Individual Medley. Apart from the 50yd Butterfly, none of these are events that she would normally compete in during the course of a season. She also competed in two relays. Overall, she had an excellent weekend, achieving AA times in all her events, winning 3 outright, coming second in another and setting a new record in the 100yd backstroke!!

ice crystals at nature diary

Just thought that I would say something about Thomas Whelan’s photography over at Nature Diary (see also my photography blogroll on right panel). His macro photography of flowers and insects is really beautiful and this winter he started a project photographing ice crystals formed either in snow, on leaves or by moving water. Check out his ice crystals photography – really beautiful.

video tutorial on b&w conversions

As if following on from my post earlier this week (yeah… right!), Martin Evening has posted a video tutorial over at Lightroom News on Improved Grayscale Conversions. Martin goes over his workflow for B&W conversion including use of the Camera Calibration panel for even more added control – something that I had not thought of or appreciated.

In my view, Martin is one of the best Lightroom educators out there, and his books on LR are excellent and highly recommended.