Rambling Postcard from Kathmandu
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I pull on my down vest and head downstairs. I’m amazed I slept until 6:30 but with the uptake of the day’s usual din, there seems no point in pushing my luck, and with the sun coming out, part of the day I love most here is just before me, and fleeting. Reluctantly I …
On “Missing The Shot.”
Last week I wrote about the crippling power of fear in the life and process of the artist. I think there are some fears that are universally felt among artists of every discipline, others unique to us as photographers. Chief among those fears, it seems, is the fear that we’ll “miss the shot.” And so we amass every piece of …
Another Look at the B&W Mix in Lightroom
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 …
The Voice of Fear
I tell my students at the Vancouver Gatherings that fear is the greatest barrier to creativity. I tell them to bring their fears into the light, to give their fears a chance to say their piece, then to call bullshit and move on. I tell them this because the alternative is to leave our fears muttering to us from the …
Building SEVEN: Initial Proofs!
Last week I sent a collection of 15 images to Hemlock, the printers in charge of making my 2013 fine-art book called SEVEN. I wrote a post about my fears surrounding the CMYK conversions. I was equally nervous about how my black and white images would turn out after Hemlock’s pre-press ninjas converted them to duo-tones. I shouldn’t have worried. …
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 …
Building SEVEN, A Fine Art Book.
SEVEN, the proposed cover. Embossed on linen. SEVEN, the proposed front plate. On October 02, I walked into Hemlock Printers, the folks who print Lenswork so beautifully, and after several months of wrestling with ideas, started the ball rolling on what, for now, I am calling SEVEN. SEVEN is a fine art book, self published as the first hard copy …
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 …