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Update

It's been a while since I last posted but it's not because I've lost steam with the photography. I am shooting as much as ever and am busy enough with future plans that I just don't have much time to blog.

The first exciting piece of new is that I received a 3 month photography internship at a popular local alt-culture weekly called The Inlander (www.inlander.com). It's exciting and overwhelming. I've only been at it a week and I've already shot food, the installation of a new bishop, cyclists and more.

I've decided for the beginning of 2011 to pursue wedding photography as a business. Everything will be geared towards this end. I am shooting 4 or  5 weddings this fall but won't officially "open" for business until around January. My wife will be my business partner and second shooter. I am excited and super busy with all the planning. Hopefully it goes well.

Lightroom Develop Glossary

I am always going into the help section of Lightroom while I learn what everything is doing. It's a pain so I am going to copy some down here.

Saturation

Clarity

Adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast. When using this setting, it is best to zoom in to 100% or greater. To maximize the effect, increase the setting until you see halos near the edge details of the image, and then reduce the setting slightly.

Vibrance

Adjusts the saturation so that clipping is minimized as colors approach full saturation, changing the saturation of all lower-saturated colors with less effect on the higher-saturated colors. Vibrance also prevents skintones from becoming over saturated.

Saturation

Adjusts the saturation of all image colors equally from –100 (monochrome) to +100 (double the saturation).

Tone

Exposure

Sets the overall image brightness, with a greater effect in the high values. Adjust the slider until the photo looks good and the whites are at the right level. Use Recovery to bring highlight values down.Exposure values are in increments equivalent to f‑stops. An adjustment of +1.00 is similar to increasing the aperture 1 stop. Similarly, an adjustment of –1.00 is similar to reducing the aperture 1 stop.

Recovery

Reduces the tones of extreme highlights and attempts to recover highlight detail lost because of camera overexposure. Lightroom can recover detail in raw image files if one or two channels are clipped.

Fill Light

Lightens shadow to reveal more detail while maintaining blacks. Take care not to over apply the setting and reveal image noise.

Blacks

Specifies which image values map to black. Moving the slider to the right increases the areas that become black, sometimes creating the impression of increased image contrast. The greatest effect is in the shadows, with much less change in the midtones and highlights.

Brightness

Adjusts image brightness, mainly affecting midtones. Set the overall tonal scale by setting Exposure, Recovery, and Blacks. Then set the overall image brightness. Large brightness adjustments can affect shadow or highlight clipping, so you may want to readjust the Exposure, Recovery or Blacks slider after adjusting brightness.

Contrast

Increases or decreases image contrast, mainly affecting midtones. When you increase contrast, the middle-to-dark image areas become darker, and the middle-to-light image areas become lighter. The image tones are inversely affected as you decrease contrast.

Sharpening

Amount

Adjusts edge definition. Increase the Amount value to increase sharpening. A value of zero (0) turns off sharpening. In general, set Amount to a lower value for cleaner images. The adjustment locates pixels that differ from surrounding pixels based on the threshold you specify and increases the pixels’ contrast by the amount you specify.

Radius

Adjusts the size of the details that sharpening is applied to. Photos with very fine details may need a lower radius setting. Photos with larger details may be able to use a larger radius. Using too large a radius generally results in unnatural-looking results.

Detail

Adjusts how much high-frequency information is sharpened in the image and how much the sharpening process emphasizes edges. Lower settings primarily sharpen edges to remove blurring. Higher values are useful for making the textures in the image more pronounced.

Masking

Controls an edge mask. With a setting of zero (0), everything in the image receives the same amount of sharpening. With a setting of 100, sharpening is mostly restricted to those areas near the strongest edges.

Lighting Ratios

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-use-Lighting-Ratios-in-Photography-72416724

Upsampling Images

I lifted this from photo.net and have had success with it.

Step #1 Change printing resolution without changing actual pixels.

With your image open, go to Image|Image Size. Make sure that Constrain Proportions" is checked and that Resample Image utilizes Bicubic interpolation. Ignore the Pixel Dimensions panel entirely. For Document Size, enter a Width of 100, and change the measurement box from inches (or whatever) to Percent. On the next line, leave Height unchanged. Constrain Proportions will automatically calculate this--very important if you are going to save this as an action. Enter your desired printing resolution: e.g., 240, 300, 360, etc.--and click OK. What you have done is to change your print resolution settings without actually affecting the pixels within the image. (This can be recorded as an action if you are going to do it frequently.)

Step #2 Perform a Stair Interpolation.

Perform exactly the same steps as above, but instead of 100% under width, enter 110%. Press Okay. What you have done is to increase your image size by 10%. (This can be recorded as an action if you are going to do it frequently.)

Step #3 Check the new dimensions of your image.

If you need to resize, repeat Step #2. Do this as many times as you need to get ALMOST to your final desired output. (If you commonly resize images by a given number of stairs, you can copy the action you made under #2 the required number of times, producing one action that takes all the stairs in progression.)

Step #4

When almost at your final desired dimension, either perform one last resize or do your final reinterpolation through the crop tool, setting the final desired dimensions in the dialogue box. Be careful to leave your resolution where you set it in step #1. Either way, you can make this part of the master action you created in Step #3.

Craigslist Shoot #4

I just got done with my fourth Craigslist "I'll shoot your photo for free" shoot and wanted to jot down some notes while it's still fresh. The shoot was with a girl wanting headshots for extras work at a local movie studio type place. The shoot was supposed to be at her house but once I arrived we had to change plans and come back to my house where I setup the studio in the living room.

• Flexibility is so huge in photography. I am not sure a single shoot has ever gone like I really planned. Today's shoot was no exception. Being flexible is good.


• Not sure I should be shooting women. I don't have a clue about makeup, hair etc. Honestly my wife saved me on the posing tonight.


• Still lacking in the posing department when people ask for direction. It's better than when I started but still not there yet.


• I really want to get out of the studio environment. Not only for a more well-rounded portfolio but it's not quite as much fun as being out and about.


• Today made me think even more that children's photography might be where I need to head. I relate well to them and it seems more of a natural fit.


• I sent out a little 10 question interview email to the girl and it definitely helped me understand a bit of who she was and what she wanted.


• Time to prepare is nice although not necessary. She emailed the questions back this morning and I didn't have time to really "plan" the shoot around the vintage theme she liked so much. It would have helped to have been able to research things so I had more to bring to the table.


• The process of actually shooting photos in a shoot is a progression with iterations from beginning to end with the end being a great shot. I see this in my web design work too but, for example. tonight we had a great vintage chair as a prop and did some tradition sitting in a chair and one thing led to another and in the end she was holding the chair in front of her face peaking through it and I think this is one of the best shots. I never would have thought of it without working with the chair in a more basic way and then progressing on from that. I suppose this occurence happens many times during a shoot (hopefully) and that the best photographers have gotten to a point where they might skip some of the iterations and be able to see past them to the good stuff.


• I don' t have much desire to shoot traditional portraiture. My favorite situations to shoot are people being spontaneous and interacting with their environment or props in off the wall ways.

Photos forthcoming.

My New Portfolio Website

www.simplesweet.com. Flickr is great for a lot of things but not for creating a nice looking photo portfolio. I really tried hard to come up with a somewhat original way to display and browse the photos. It's simple and sweet!