How I Shoot

Never guess from today's image what we did over the weekend would you?  Okay, so maybe you would.  We (I) heard about this small track in Milford Connecticut where a group of guys get together (apparently mostly informally) to play in the dirt.  I took a look at their website and saw there was no entry fee for spectators unless a formal event was going on.  Hey, free action shots?  Why not.  When we got there we found five guys sitting around taking a break.  I asked if they were going to be riding any more or if the day was done.  They said to give them five minutes and they'd do a few laps specifically for Doris and I.  Not bad!  I asked for spots where they thought the best angles were and they pointed out here, here and here.  No problem.  For my decision making process on that day, hit the "Read More".
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More On Easy Ways To Get Better Images

The subject of today's image was at the same Renaissance Faire as the person in my last post.  If you check them both out there's something you may notice that makes them similar.  There's not a whole lot to look at other than the subject.  That's today's key to getting better "starting points" to having a successful image.  There's a fairly prolific photographer/writer out in the wild by the name of Rick Sammon.  I've seen him speak a couple times and have come to the conclusion that Rick's biggest fan is --- Rick.  There is, however, one phrase he uses that goes along with the way I've shot most of my career.  His saying is "the name of the game is fill the frame".  He's not the first guy (or the last) to espouse that philosophy.  There's a guy out on YouTube who goes by the handle Fro Knows Foto.  According to him, he doesn't crop.  Says he shoots the frame he wants in the camera.  Cropping is apparently against some bizarre cult rule he's set up for himself.  My guess would be that he must not frame and hang a whole lot of prints.  It almost impossible to find frames that fit the standard format of a camera's sensor.  Today's image is 100% of what the camera saw when I clicked the shutter.  To find out way that's both a good thing and a bad thing, hit the "Read More".

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Don't Be Afraid Of The Blinkies

Click on image to enlarge.

Today's image is another shot from the little tour we did of the New York Botanical Gardens the last week.  Every photographer should pay attention to their highlights when shooting.  I say "pay attention" because, just like instructions from a GPS, it's only a suggestion.  A lot of people ask me, when we're on a photo walk I'm leading, about shooting modes.  Should I shoot in Aperture Preferred, Shutter Preferred, Program, Auto or one of the "scene" modes a camera might have.  My thought or counsel is that it really doesn't matter as long as the person is making the decisions.  A friend told me, on one of the walks, that she's only shot in Manual for the past couple of years.  It's not like her camera consists of a shoebox with a digital back attached.  She uses top of the line Canon equipment.  I asked her why she'd pay for an expense "computer" (modern cameras are single purpose computers to which you can attach lenses) and use it as though it was an abacus.  To get my take on using a camera and my thoughts on exposure, hit the "Read More".
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How To Bite The Hand That Feeds You

This is a blog about photography, Adobe Photoshop (PS) and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  And a place to rant every once in a while.  Occasionally I mention that I'm retired from (what I like to tell people when/if they ask) "a little west coast startup called Intel".  (Well, it was at one point.  1969 to be specific.)  One of my general interests has always been the history of the microprocessor and the computer.  I was flipping around the smart TV the other day and found a content supplier I'd never heard of before.  (I say "content provider" because it was closer to Hulu or Netflix than ABC or NBC.)  It had a documentary about Apple Computer from the beginning to the iPad.  The date of the show was about 2009.  They interviewed a cadre of folks who were "there" through the good times and the bad.  One of the people used extensively was Guy Kawasaki.  An Apple evangelist back in the day and cofounder of Alltop.com.  You may be reading this blog through Alltop.  Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, all their computers and devices, but their fanboys (and Kawasaki was the chief fanboy) do get history a little skewed from time to time.  At one point Kawasaki was talking about Apple "firsts".  He had a pretty good list going and I agreed with most.  The one that pulled me up short was saying Apple popularized the USB port.  Ya wanna know the "real story"?  Hit the "Read More"
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What To Do When Disaster Strikes

We've been on vacation for the past few weeks.  Did a road trip with Doris and her brother and his wife.  About a week before leaving I was shooting an assignment when my "go to" vacation lens (an 18 - 200mm) broke.  And I mean broke.  I had the camera locked down on the tripod (or so I thought).  Typically I'll wrap the strap around the legs of the tripod "just in case".  That means "if it falls" it'll end up dangling by the strap between the legs of the tripod.  Being in a rush I didn't follow my own (unwritten) rule and the camera didn't have that small bit of security on that day.  Wouldn't ya know it, I grabbed the tripod to make a move and off popped the camera.  First time ever.  All those years of being cautious and the one time I rushed, bang.  Well, the camera's a Nikon, so I wasn't too worried about it.  One of the reasons to use a Nikon is because you can dropkick the sucker and nothing will happen.  Same with Nikon lenses, ... usually.  The lens hit the floor first and on such an angle as to pop the zoom housing ring out.  It snapped back in okay, except for the fact that the 18 - 200 was more like a 35 - 135 now.  Not good.  I had about a week before starting on the road trip, so I ran the lens up to Precision Camera in Enfield Connecticut.  Great bunch of people and very reputable, authorized repair facility, hoping they could turn it around before we left.  No luck.  To find out what the solution to going on vacation without my "travel" lens was, hit the "Read More".
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Does Anyone Know What They're Talking About Anymore?

I was going to start the heading with a more sever version of an acronym for "What The Heck".  Seems like no one has any idea what they're talking about concerning photography today.  A friend of mine was judging a camera club photo competition the other day, so I went over to say hello and see what people had to offer.  There was an "assigned subject" of macro photography.  Of about fifty images, maybe three or four qualified as macro.  The rest were close up at best and some were just plain snapshots of nearby things.  My friend kept pointing out (correctly) that this or that image really didn't qualify as macro.  At one point one of the competitors (I'm guessing he had something entered) began loudly complaining about the judge not fairly judging the quality of the image.  The judge tried to explain that the first consideration was if the image was a macro shot.  It wound up with one of the club's officers reading a definition of macro photography.  My "rant" will continue after the "Read More".

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Wednesday Q &A: Privacy? Are You Kidding?

Frequent readers of the blog know I’m retired from a little west coast startup named Intel.  (Yea, that Intel.)  All this flap over privacy cracks me up.  Let’s go back to “the old days” of 1999.  Intel had just come up with a great technology for the “new” Pentium III processor.  Each chip would have (basically) a serial number.  This would be a great boon to large companies for the management of computer assets.  The IT Department could do all sorts of things to keep the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) down, manage the software on each computer, target updates to specific machines and streamline troubleshooting problems.  Only problem was that every chip, not just the ones in large companies, would have the serial number (identifier).  Conspiracy theorists went nuts and claimed “Big Brother” had arrived and everything you did would be subject to being tracked.  Intel backed away from including the ID'r code.  Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems, was asked by a reporter (Stephen Manes) to weigh in about the noise.  His quote was (and remember this was 1999) “You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it.”  Things haven’t changed.  You have zero privacy.  Every time you make a phone call, send an email, tweet what you had for lunch, post an instagram, or use a credit card, someone is gathering information.  To see an example of what can be done and why you have no privacy, hit the “Read More”.
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The Passing Of A Really Great Photographer

Does he look familiar?  Do you know any of his work?  Probably not.  His name is Bob Devine and he died over the weekend.  Today’s image is from somewhere near 1974-1975.  The young boy with him is our oldest son, who would have been 43 this year.  The shot is typical Bob.  He was a teacher to anyone he’d go shooting with.  It didn’t matter if he was with peers, kids, interested “newbies” or just friends. 

The last time I saw Bob was last year at a local camera club.  He just happened to stop down and gave the club’s president some medals the club had won back in the 60’s and 70’s.  I didn’t recognize him and asked him for his name.  He said “I’m Bob Devine”.  I replied “I’ve got your lights”.  The message didn’t connect and he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about.  He said “what?”.  I again told him I had his lights.  His retort was “who the hell are you?”  I told him I was Tom Peterson.  He cracked a smile and said if I didn’t get the lights back to him pretty soon, he wouldn’t loan them to me again.  I borrowed them back in the 70’s, so I’d guess him hadn’t missed them that much.  They were pretty much the thing back in the 70’s.  Hot lights with daylight balanced tungsten bulbs and 10” reflectors.  That’s what passed for “studio lights” at the time.  As an aside, I called my wife over.  Bob took one look at her and said "Doris, why haven't you aged at all?"  The guy was smooth.

We used to travel together to shoot and judge camera club competitions.  The two of us and our “third amigo” (Ernie Stonebraker [real name]) would go off for the weekend and blow a boat load of film.  One trip to Maine, between the three of us, we had something like 120 36 exposure rolls of film.  Typically it was either slide film or Tri X B&W film.  We used to scare the hell out of camera clubs when we’d walk in to judge a competition.  We’d ask what the scoring range they used was and then tell them we would be using the entire range.  Back in the 70’s the range was usually three through nine. 

Bob mentioned, when pushed, that he had driven stock cars “back in the day”.  I read his obit. today and found out he was the USAR champion a couple times.  The stuff you never knew. 

Well, he was a buddy.  As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to see someone on a weekly basis to be a friend.  People I call friends come dear to me.  I have all sorts of acquaintances, but the number I call friends are very few.  Bob was one of the best.  Peace to you my friend.

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Wednesday Q&A: Is It Time To Put The Kelby Group On The Shelf?

Based on the title you may think this post will be a rant about Kelby Media, Photoshop TV, Kelby Training, and The Grid and their support of Adobe Photoshop CC (PSCC).  It’s not.  They make a lot of good points about who will benefit from PSCC, who might want to think twice about it and who should probably stay away.  No, it’s about the fact that even the esteemed folks working with Kelby are beginning to show their age as far as Photoshop goes.  One thing that bugs me is how they’re missing the point on Smart Objects.  They say ‘oh, I open all my images in PS as Smart Objects’.  They’ll do a couple things and then say that their next step is to use the antiquated CTRL/ALT(OPT)/SHIFT/E salute to put a composite on the top of the stack before going on to other steps.  Doing the C/A/S/E thing breaks the link between the Smart Object and the original RAW image.  I don’t understand why they think that’s the way they should go.  Drives me nuts.  To find out how it makes me crazy, hit the “Read More”.
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When Can't You Snap The Shutter?

I was giving my sister-in-law a ride down to one of the New York airports this morning and she was telling me this story about how she had gotten in trouble taking some pictures over at the local mall.  Now, mind you, she was taking pictures of the swans swimming around in the retention ponds outside the mall, beyond the parking lots.  A security guard (???) went over to her and said she couldn’t take pictures, it was against the law.  Yeah, right.  Today’s image presents sort of the two sides to that story.  It is a photograph, taken with a digital camera and “photoshopped” to look like a sketch.  The house is the Mark Twain House at Nook Farm in Hartford Connecticut.  It’s on private property as is the mall in this discussion.  If today’s image were a “real” sketch, the artist could have sat at the same spot, put up an easel and sketched away.  (Would have been a really nice pencil sketch, but you can probably find a hundred artists who could do it justice.)  At times, the (whatever it is) Nook Farm Association or Mark Twain Society or something invites/sponsors/encourages artists to do “en plein air” work in the yards.  I don’t know that the mall does the same type of thing, but it’s certainly something they “could” do.  So, the question is:  Canvas? Yes. Camera? No.  Hit the “Read More” to find out what’s up. 

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A Rant On Using Manual Exposure Mode On Your Camera

Raw images are notoriously dull.  Straight out of the camera there’s no sharpening, no contrast or color adjustment, no here’s Nikon’s (or Canon or Sony or whoever) best guess as to what the finished image should look like.  Take a look at this past Monday’s post.  It has a before (right out of the camera) and after (the lead image) and demonstrates where an image can be taken to by developing a RAW image.  Typically photographers fall into a few categories.  Those who shoot exclusively RAW and will develop an image.  Those who shoot exclusively JPG and let the camera make the decisions.  Those who consider what they’re shooting and why and decide either to shoot RAW or JPG.  If they’re shooting personal stuff that might become a portfolio piece, they shoot RAW.  If they’re shooting a local high school baseball game, they shoot JPGs to get the shots to the newspaper or school without needing to do additional work.  Then there’s another, rather odd duck, sort of shooter.  He/she will shoot everything in RAW.  If the images will be developed or printed as is, they still shoot RAW.  It’s rather bizarre.  Another case would be something that I came across the other night.  I was out doing some test shooting with some friends.  We have a night shoot coming up and were trying to get the parameters down.  Somehow the subject came up and one of the women said she only shoots in Manual mode.  She was very proud of that fact.  Now, she has one of the more expensive cameras out there.  I don’t understand why someone would buy an expensive computer (the camera) and then use it as if it was a shoebox.  Knowing her, she’s just not that capable enough to determine exposure just by looking at a scene.  It appears she’ll take a shot, say “oops, it’s too dark (or light)”, fiddle with the settings, try another shot and keep going.  Again, another bizarre thing to do to get an image.  I understand why she doesn’t shoot sports.  As we were shooting she would make comments like “I was at F10, but it was too dark.  I’ll switch to F 9 and try again”.  Really, was she so close to a great exposure that she was changing by 1/3 stops to get the absolute perfect exposure?  No, she was closed to 3 stops off than 1/3 of a stop.  I suggested she change it by a full stop.  She said she had, from F 10 to F9.  Where’s a rim shot when you need it?  (Music term, not photography.)  To find out my thoughts on using manual settings on a camera, hit the “Read More”.

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My Thoughts On Windows 8

Today’s image is just a different take on a vintage baseball shot I did a few weeks ago. Rather than color I went for a sepia tone and put a texture on the image.  But, today’s post is my thoughts and opinions about my experience with Microsoft Windows 8.  Daily I have people visiting the Gallery from Microsoft.  It started as a trickle (visits from Microsoft in Hialeah, Florida) and has grown so there are now visits from Microsofties  from coast to coast and as far away as Japan.  I’m happy for the support, love to see you “guys” taking an interest in The Kayview Gallery and hope you’re enjoying what you’ve been reading.  Something tells me you won’t be quite as enamored with my experience with MS Windows 8.  Hit the “Read More” to checkout my opinions of Win 8 "on my machine".

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Photoshop's CTRL/ALT/SHIFT/E Debunked

It happened again on Thursday.  I watched an online tutorial and the person was pushing the fact that whenever you got to a place using Adobe Photoshop CS6 to retouch a photograph that you wanted to have a place you could go back to you should use the keyboard shortcut CTRL/ALT/SHIFT/E (CASE) to create a composite of all the work you'd already done.  What CASE does is Merge all the Layers and put the result on its own Layer.  The tutorialist (is that a word?  It is now.  Somebody's got to make up new words.) said this would save all your Layers so you could go back and make any changes at a later time.  Bullsh**.  What CASE does is put a line in the sand that says "you can't go back further than this point without scrapping all the work you did above".   If you've done five Layers of work and made the CASE move, then another nine and CASE, then seventeen and another CASE and found out you had to make a change on Layer three, you're screwed.  You'd have to dump twenty six Layers worth of work to make that change.  Depending on what you were doing, that could be hours of work down the drain.  I can think of one way to go back to Layer three and fix the mistake/error/oversight/whatever.  Eliminate each of the composite Layers.  If that's the case, why would you bother creating them in the first place?  Dumb!  There is a way to have your cake (make a composite) and eat it (make changes to any Layer at any time) too.  To find out what this magic trick is, hit the "Read More".

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Post Sandy Thoughts

The lights came on last night.  We were without power from Monday through the day on Thursday.  Something like 30% of our little town is still without electricity.  Our next door neighbor had his first experience with a generator and thought it was necessary to run it twenty four hours a day to keep his frozen food frozen.  He's young, he didn't know any better.  The fact that the generator was just outside our bedroom window was not the best idea he had.   We just went to the guest bedroom at the opposite end of the house.  Far enough that we weren't bothered greatly by the sound.  His generator was still running when we got home last night.  I went over and tapped on his door to let him know he could probably turn the darn thing off now that power had been restored.  I asked him why he thought he needed to run the gen.  at 3:00 AM in the morning.  As expected, he said he thought he needed it to keep his food frozen.  I said "come with me young man" and brought him to our kitchen.  I opened the freezer and tossed him a piece of chicken, still frozen solid.  I asked "was this your objective?".  Shocked, he asked how I had kept it frozen.  Dry ice.  One of the things about dry ice is that it doesn't make noise.  He went home better educated and vowed to use dry ice a lot and the gen as little as possible if there was another outage. 

Another instance was while buying the dry ice.  The guy in line in front of me wanted to make small talk, so he started bitchin' about the utility company.  Boy, did he pick the wrong guy.  My Dad spent his adult life working for the local utility company and I know how hard those guys work.  We don't get a whole lot of thousand mile wide hurricanes coming through meeting up with storm out of Canada.  In our area the electric company has had a campaign to cut back the trees on the side of the road with overhead wires, based on pressure due to last year's storms.  That sounded like a plan to the governor.  Like so many people, he didn't think it through.  One of the benefits (to the hurricane) was it removed any protection those trees gave from preventing the trees on the opposite side from having a clear shot at taking down wires on the side of the street  with the wires.  The best, half laid, plans of mice and men ...

We didn't have power for four days.  Big whoop, it was four days out of a lifetime.  Don't get me wrong, people on the coast (we're about twenty miles inland) got ravaged.  Some won't have power for a year.  Before they can get power they have to build a house to put power to.  "They" said the storm "affected"  sixty million people.  Six million people lost power or more.  Because of the population density in the northeast 20% of the country's people got wacked by Sandy.  Nobody more so than the people on the coast of New Jersey.  My hope is that people will remain reasonable and no one who survived the hurricane will get killed in the aftermath.  That's a hope, but unfortunately, not an expectation. Read more!

Wednesday Q&A: How Much Can You Crop Using Photoshop

Well, the simple answer to "how much can you crop an image" is as much as you're comfortable.  A couple of the big questions would be "what is the use of the shot" and "how was it shot"?  If you're using a DSLR, have a 2 GB memory card and can shoot a million images, the answer would probably be not much.  The camera would have to be set to the absolute maximum compression and lowest resolution.  Those images are meant to be used on your Facebook page or somewhere else on line.  You can probably get a reasonable 4 x 6 print out of it, but not much more.  If your camera is a new Nikon D800 and you shoot in Raw, you can probably print a billboard sized image that would look pretty good.  Today's question came from a friend (okay, a relative) new to photography.  He/she wasn't sure if she/he could print images the size I do with her camera, a Nikon D3200.  Again, well... that's a 24.2 Mega Pixel camera.  It's not quite a D800, but that's still a lot of pixels.  I print (have printed) images up to 24" x 36".  That's not often, but enough that I can offer it.  The "friend" said he/she had an 11" x 14" made from one image and it looked like crap.  I asked about the number of shots would typically be taken on a day of heavy shooting (undoubtedly the grandkids).  The answer was "oh, a lot.  Maybe as many as 60 or 70".  If you're a shooter, that a really light shooting day (hour).  The camera had been set to get the maximum number of images.  We reset it to get the best possible JPEG images.  There's no image improvement being done on any of this person's shots, so there's no point to shooting RAW.  (Maybe next year.)  Today's image is an example of about the maximum cropping I do.  Hit the "Read More" to find my thoughts on cropping.

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Working With RAW Files In Photoshop CS6

I was over at a friend's studio the other day and as I got there she was working on one of her amazing images.  Great photographer, great post processor, she just comes up with images that blow me away.  Some are amazing in their simplicity, some in their attention to the fine details, some in content, others in concept, but always something that makes you say "WOW".  We were sitting around, flipping through some of her recent shoots when I stopped her and said a particular shot had some great potential.  She decided we should kick it around, tossing each of our ideas around to see what we could come up with.  That's when the fight started.  Here's this lovely woman and we almost came to a fist fight... over RAW file handling.  ???

We co-developed the image in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 until we wanted to take it into Adobe Photoshop CS6.  The first thing she did to the modified, but still a RAW file was save it under another name.  The second thing was to make a copy of the Background Layer.  Then the verbal  fists began flying.  I asked what the heck was she doing.  Her reply was that she wanted to save the original file and she "always" worked on a copy.  Then she "always" made a copy of her Background Layer so she could get back to "ground zero" if she really made a hash of things.

We probably spent a half hour debating RAW files 101.  Whenever I do any one on one teaching I try to use a "guided discovery" style.  One of the first things you hear when you start using RAW files is that a RAW file (and I can't stress this enough) cannot be altered.  Short of tossing a grenade into your computer, a RAW file is a RAW file is a RAW file.  It's always going to be a RAW file.  In LR4 you can make nondestructive adjustments, but you have the ability to hit the Reset button and get back to the As Shot condition.  The RAW file is always there.

When you take a RAW file into CS6 (or any PS version that supports Raw files) the original RAW file stays put, if it's coming from LR4 (or any version of Lightroom) or from Adobe Bridge.  You can add Layers, Filters, Adjustment Layers, clip things to specific Layers, Liquefy parts of the image, turn it upside down, flip it horizontally and whatever other torture you'd like to apply to the image.  But (and this is the key) when you do a simple Save (not Save As) you wind up with another file sitting right next to the original RAW file. 

It goes back to the fact that a RAW file cannot be changed.  In my own workflow I bounce back and forth from LR4 to PSCS6 multiple times.  Every time I bring the latest iteration of what can best be done in LR4 into PSCS6 and Save it back to LR4 I get a new file.  I end up with 123.ABC.tif_Edit, Edit Edit, Edit Edit Edit, etc.  I saw a limit of three (Edit Edit Edit) in PSCS5, but haven't found a limit in PSCS6.  It just keeps going.

BTW:  Today's image IS NOT the photographer talked about in today's post.  It was just used to get your attention.  She was at a Renaissance Faire, hence the costume.

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Add Emphasis Using One Of Photoshop's Oldest Tools

If you see a branch with its arm stretched out wide, with beautiful fall colored leaves on it, do I have to tell you it's from a tree?  We don't have to see the tree to know it's there.  All that's needed is the suggestion to help tell the story.  The same holds true for today's image.  You see the violin, the hand fingering the strings and a piece of the bow.  In your mind you know that the bow isn't magically floating there, gliding across the strings by some celestial force.  There's a hand somewhere below the edge of the image.

One of the most powerful, and least discussed tools in the Adobe Photoshop CS6 (and any number below it) is the Crop Tool (C).  It's a tool for cropping parts of an image, not just "trimming" the excess.  In today's image there was plenty of room in the original frame to include the top of the guy's head, the bottom of the bowl, and the belt he was using to hold his pants up.  The "big deal" is that none of that added to the story telling of the image.

One of the first "cool" images I made was for a holiday card to send to the relatives.  It was of our first born, a son.  It wasn't him standing tall (all 2' 6" of him at the time), showing him from head to foot.  It was his eyes.  Just a swath from the bridge of his nose to the brim of the hat he wore.  It told the complete story.

That was long before Photoshop was ever thought of.  But the "theory" is the same today as it was then.  Crop out whatever doesn't move the "story" of the image along.  Today's image never even got to Photoshop.  It was all done in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (or it could have been done, just as easily, in the ACR [Adobe Camera Raw] package that comes with Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements.

I'm a big believer in ruthless cropping.  What more does today's image need to convey the story?  I don't think it needs any more.  Let me know if you think the image would be enhanced by having additional elements.  I'd like to know.

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Wednesday Q&A - Trust A Retail Salesperson?

Today's image does relate to the Q&A topic.  The topic comes from a direct email from the guy who was my last boss at Intel before retiring.  Back in the summer he had borrowed a lens from his brother (or brother-in-law ???) and used it to get closer to some landscape type subjects.  At that time he wanted a recommendation on which lens he should buy.  I gave him a couple options,  The serious route of going for a Canon 70 - 200 F2.8 IS and the less budget busting 70 - 300 F4 - 5.6 IS.  He thought he might be able to get the $150.00 75 - 300 "kit" lens.  I talked him out of it and he decided that he could wait until the holidays to get his lens as a "gift" from his wife.  That's where the problem came in.  She had lost the email I'd sent and went to a store knowing only that the upper end of the zoom was 300mm.  His wife explained that the use of the lens would be to get closer to the subjects of the photographs.  The salesperson at the store talked her into the cheap 75 - 300mm "kit" lens and --- wait for it ---a 25mm extension tube.  The explanation being that it was needed for his Canon camera to get closer to subjects.  The title of today's post in "Trust a Retail Salesperson?"  The simple answer is absolutely not.  To find out where this opinion comes from, hit the "Read More".

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