Fleeting Glimpse Images

For the past year or two, I have maintained the Fleeting Glimpse Images blog on four separate services, Wordpress, Blogspot, Spaces and Live Journal.

Effective with this post, I am closing down the Live Journal portion due to a lack of visitor ship and a general poor handling of images posted in the blog.

If you wish to continue reading the Fleeting Glimpse Images Blog, please follow it at Wordpress at http://fleetingglimpseimage.wordpress.com or at Blogspot at http://fleetingglimpseimages.blogspot.com.

Thank you.

Rikk Flohr – Fleeting Glimpse Images Blog

A Video Investigation-right up the middle:

A lapse of photographic judgment recently produced three very appropriate test files for examining the usefulness of the “expose right” ideology in digital photography.  I was shooting bracketed exposures of a church in rural North Dakota with  HDR compositing in the back of my mind.  The scene turned out to be lower dynamic range than I had anticipated. I ended up with three pictures in the bracketed sequence whose histograms were all within the range of the camera’s sensor. With these three bracketed shots, I could now test the merits of the “expose right” strategy.

A higher definition version is available at my website here.

I am keenly aware that this topic has been debated on photographic and image editing forums ad nauseum. I decided to, well, decide for myself.  Even though the difference in the standard and the over-exposure were barely discernable in print (on this example) the under exposure (as some digital pundits promote) is visually inferior at arm’s length.

Test it for yourself and let me know what happens.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Sometimes passing the camera around creates a sticky copyright situation.

Submitted for your approval, the following photography containing the author of this blog and his photographic idol/mentor, Jim Brandenburg.

Jim Brandenburg and Rikk Flohr
Photo Credit: Heidi Mae Niska </a> </a></a>

The shot above was taken at the TCACCC 2008 Spring Break event where Jim Brandenburg presented to over 300 photographers.  The shot was taken with my camera by Jim’s assistant Heidi Mae.  She was kind enough to snap the photo of me with my photo-mentor after the presentation.

My Canons are all programmed to fill in my copyright notice upon capture. Dutifully, my 20D filled in a © Rikk Flohr. Upon extraction from the camera, a more complete copyright was filled in by Lightroom.

Here’s the rub. I didn’t take the picture! Heidi Mae did-with my camera-which automatically applied a notice. So, whose picture is it anyway?

I am not a copyright attorney but I am guessing that it is not quite clear. Was Heidi my agent in shooting the image? Was she a de facto work-for-hire photographer? Is the image mine because I have claimed the ownership or is it Heidi’s by virtue of having snapped the shutter? Sticky wicket, to say the least.

How many of us pass our cameras around and allow others to take photographs-never realizing that we may not own those images? Heidi’s or mine? She gets the photo-credit for sure. I get the pleasure of having the image. The copyright? Who knows?

Opinions?

Rikk Flohr © 2009

I produced a short video demonstration of why I choose to shoot RAW over shooting JPG in most instances. The big reason for me: Bit Depth. I just love those extra bits and what they mean to my style of editing. Check out the video on YouTube.

If you would like to view a larger higher-def version you can click here.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

At the going rate, it is difficult to become wealthy shooting these one-off images. A little automation and program understanding can go a long way into making these turn from chore to snore.

I have created a little video tutorial to help Lightroom users crop, size and output a qualifying-constructed passport photo.

Download in Higher Res:
Passport Photo in Lightroom Video Tutorial

The preset mentioned in the video tutorial is available here.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

You have two chances to tour Costa Rica in 2010 with me as your guide, instructor, and hopefully friend. But that’s not the exciting part. Read a little further and see what is new for 2010!

Sunset over Lake Arenal

We announced the initial Photography Tour a couple of weeks back in a post here. Laurie Hernandez of Worldesigns Photo has just announced the date of the second tour for 2010.

April 14-21, 2010

The tour is not yet a full-blown photo tour with full classroom instruction but may evolve into one depending upon the number of serious photographers who sign up and request it. Rest assured, with me along as an assistant guide, there will be photography!

 Playa Grande

Here’s the exciting news!

In addition to the 8 day – 7 Night tour, we are offering a Beach Extension that covers 3 days and 2 nights at Hotel Las Tortugas in Playa Grande, Costa Rica.  Instead of going home on the 21st, hang around the beach with Laurie and Rikk for two more nights and take in the majesty of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. All in all, it is 10 days and 9 nights you won’t forget.

Rikk and Mincho play Point-n-Shoot

Pop on over to the Worldesigns Tours website and check it out. It truly is one of the best values in Costa Rica Travel.

See you in Costa Rica!

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Sometimes hotspots in photographs just need a helping hand.

You’ve all been there. You are out shooting some scene in the shadows that proves to be quite dramatic and makes for a stunning final image. The only problem is there is that darned hot-spot of direct sunlight worming its way through the shadow-casting obstructions. It makes a white-hot distraction that draws your eye away from your purposed center of interest. It can ruin an otherwise good composition.

Take this butterfly photo where the insect is poised at water’s-edge on a partially damp rock. The water behind is in shadows and the butterfly is nicely lit by the sun. The dry section of white stone is way too hot, however and creates a disturbing distraction.  This is fixable in software but ideally a get-it-right in-camera approach yields a much better result.

Enter the helping hand. It could be a stranger walking by or it could be a shooting buddy.  In this case, a simple hand was held above the white-hot rock casting a shadow onto the spot where the sun’s shafted light was falling.  Note how much softer the tone and how much more subdued the general lighting is.  In this case the shade cast by the helping hand cut the exposure by 1 1/3 stops causing me to drop my shutter speed from 1/320th to 1/125th of a second. I now have a much more workable photo for my software package to edit.

After editing a modest amount, the distraction is gone and I can concentrate on my image’s subject the butterfly.

I know photographers who draft passer’s by to stand and cast shadows it foregrounds, backgrounds and across the subject. You never know who can or will lend a helping hand-until you ask.

Ask!

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Consider keywording your images today-if you aren’t already.

Building a database of images with attached keywords has become easy and necessary in the world of digital capture. If you want to find a specific photo or photos in that sea of thousands of RAW and JPG files on your computer, you stand your best chance if you’ve diligently keyworded your images. Whether it is all pictures of your daughter Mary taken in 2007 or any pictures you have of hound dogs, keywords will ferret them out.

Keywording has become a hot business tool too. With all the budding photographers out there expanding their portfolios into the micro-stock photography world, having a good keyword schema is becoming critical. The more accurately and completely a person can keyword their images, the better the chance they will be seen, and possibly sell, an image or two.

Building comprehensive keyword lists is tedious and very time consuming. It requires a lot of thought, organization and, in many cases compromise.  Our language is so intertwined with cross-category words and multiple usages that keywording becomes problematic.  Homonyms are particularly difficult to deal with in a keywording strategy.

Take the example word Spring.

Is it the season? Is it the natural upwelling of water? Is it the mechanical component? Is it a mathematical description? Is it the action of leaping?

If you keyword it as the lone keyword ‘spring’ you might not get what you are searching for. Fortunately modern DAM Software gives you a solution in the form of hierarchical keyword structuring.

Natural Forms-Seasons-Spring *
Natural Forms-Water-Flowing-Spring *
Man-made-Device-Spring
Mathematics-Curved Surface - Spring
Action-Spring

*The top two are excerpted from my new Keyword Set: Natural Forms, which has just been released for sale.  When imported into a serious DAM tool like Lightroom, it can give you the ability to quickly and accurately tag your images with keywords that can provide you ease of search. Additionally, you can provide a robust keyword list for a potential stock photo file. If your software can’t manage keywords, you are missing out on a valuable tool in the use and marketing of your images.

Quick Keys to keywording: 

• Develop or download a workable keyword list(s)
• Keyword your images religiously on import
• Don’t limit yourself to a keyword or two per image
• Periodically review your list and consolidate where possible

Do this and you will be able to find and hopefully sell your images.

Order Natural Forms Keyword List for Lightroom

Rikk Flohr © 2009

On the heels of the successful launch of my Birds of Costa Rica keyword list, Fleeting Glimpse Images, LLC is pleased to announce the availability of a new keywording list detailing the Mammals of North America.  Whether you are cataloging your images for Stock Photography or for your own satisfaction, this list will aid your efforts greatly. If you are illustrating in a package like CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator, you can find this list valuable for cataloging your artwork as well.

Included in the set are 440 Species and 1008 total keywords set in hierarchical structure by Family name. In the case of animals, say “Bats” for example, more generic top-level keywords are supplied. The Latin Family name is included as a synonym as are Genus and species for your searching ease. The Marine Mammals, including the cetaceans are all included as well.  Where known, I have added synonyms for common regional names. (i.e. Mountain Lion: Puma, Cougar, Panther, etc)

The list does not represent sub-species, for the most part. as they cannot always be identified by a photograph Often it requires genetic testing to determine true subspecies status.  Grizzly bear is an exception that is noted under the Brown Bear.

The file comes as a zipped text file with full installation instructions for Lightroom and is available for purchase at the Fleeting Glimpse Images website.

 
Click to order

If you shoot pictures of Mammals in North America and want to keyword your images, this list is a must have.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Black-crested Coquette

Keywording your photos is critical to future image management and potentially to additional revenue. To make things easier for you photographers who are traveling to Costa Rica, possibly via Worldesigns Tours, photo tour with yours truly as your guide, I am happy to announce a new offering.

Fleeting Glimpse</a> Images, LLC is offering, for purchase, a Keyword List for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom</a> containing the keywords for the birds of Costa Rica. The list contains 874 species, grouped by taxonomical family.  The keyword list sorts alphabetically when imported into Lightroom.

Birds are organized by Common Family Name and Common Name. Each bird also has a searchable synonym of Genus species in the Latin. A very few have additional notes as synonyms as well.  Each list is provided via email delivery with instructions for installation into Lightroom.

Whether you are on your way to Costa Rica, or already have a catalog of bird images to keyword, you will find this list aids your process greatly. Even if you haven’t been to Costa Rica, you will find that many of the birds are found throughout Central and North America.

To order the very reasonably-priced Birds of Costa Rica Keyword List, click on the button below.

Rikk Flohr © 2009