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 …
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 …
N68 W133 – THE JOURNEY NORTH
Twilight, Yukon. Birch Impressions, Yukon. Aurora Borealis, Starry Night. Yukon. Setting sun on cloud and muskeg, NWT. Five Mile Lake, Yukon Last month I took an 8,000Km trip (plus a 15-hour ferry up B.C.’s incredible Inside Passage) up to Inuvik (68°21′42″N 133°43′50″W), past the arctic circle. It was an amazing journey in a country that I’ve called home and yet …
N68 W133 – Heading Home
Snow and fall colours in the Northwest Territories I’m heading home now, after a long 12-hour day of driving that’s brought me a little closer to Vancouver, and a little further from the arctic where I’ve spent the last 3 weeks falling in love with the light and land. I’m now holed-up in a cheap little hotel in a town …
N68 W133 – AURORA!
Camped on the shore of Lake Ethel in the Yukon, I woke at 4am, poked my head out of the tent, and saw the sky aflame with the northern lights, it was like coming face to face with glory, or hearing the voice of God. There’s something ineffable about the experience, the lights just hanging there as if they’re just …