It seems like I get more and more people telling me they’re frustrated with their black & white conversions. It’s a topic all it’s own and this short post won’t do it justice, but the most important aspect of a black and white image is the control over tonal contrasts. You can do this in a number of ways, but …
Building SEVEN: CMYK, Etc.
One of the things I most dreaded about the building of SEVEN was the learning curve related to the CMYK conversions. Last week I set aside some time to prep a collection of images for the printer, putting 15 photographs into a Lightroom Collection and then taking a deep breath. The first thing I learned was that Lightroom 4 has …
LR4: Graduated Filter + Colour Temp
Near Tofino, BC. 4 Different Skies. The key to great black and white images (and by this I mean the B+W part, obviously light, lines, and moments still come first) is tonal contrasts. Those contrasts will occur within the scene, of course, but the way we chose to render them in Lightroom (or PS, ACR, etc) has a strong impact …
Snake Oil & Comb-overs: A Rant.
I initially posted this graphic in 2008. Seemed appropriate to bring it back… A friend of mine is a world-class chef. He got there after a lot of hard work. He studied under other chefs, all of them masters at what they do. He’s really good at what he does; he’s both a craftsman and an artist. He did not …
Five Minutes, Ten Stops
Lake Laberge, YT, 2012. Apart from a difference in timing, these two images might have been identical. What separates them, in terms of their aesthetic, is a difference in five minutes, and ten f/stops. The second image was made just five minutes after the first frame, but with the addition of the Lee Big Stopper, a 10-stop ND filter …
Lake of Circles, Post-processing.
Here’s one of my favourite images from the trip up to the arctic last month, and a quick walk-through on the post-processing. In Vision & Voice I explain what I call the vision-driven workflow, and there are 4 steps: Identify Intent, Minimize Distractions, Maximize Mood, and Direct the Eye. Identifying the intent here was simply a matter of asking myself …
Cape Kiwanda Post-Production
On Wednesday I was digging around the archives, looking for something new for this month’s desktop wallpaper when I found an image I forgot I had. This is Cape Kiwanda, near Pacific City, Oregon. I did about 10 minutes of post-production on it in Lightroom 3 as one last hurrah before moving to Lightroom 4. Here are some of the …
Mara Impressions I
Mara Impressions I, Kenya, 2012. Click it to see it larger as the smaller image really does it no justice. I made this in the Maasai Mara, still under the spell of my friend Wendy’s expressionist / abstract work. What struck me most about her work is the effect of motion and light to create new lines, almost brush strokes, …
Faking It.
Ice Abstract, Peggy’s Cove, NS. 2012. Every artist I know, particularly those who feel uncomfortable calling themselves artists, feels like they’re faking it. In those moments when I’m totally transparent and feeling brave, I’ll tell you it’s one of the two fears with which I wrestle daily – the first that one day I’ll wake to find my muse has …
My Next Book – The Print & The Process
My next book just went up on Amazon. It’s always a little surreal because no one tells me these things and suddenly I’m looking at a cover of a book that looks suspiciously like mine. The less coffee I’ve had, the longer it takes me to figure it out. Wait! That’s MY book! 🙂 The Print & The Process began …