Fleeting Glimpse Images

I have a quandary. I am preparing for a gallery show this fall. (More on that later.)  My show will be about waterfalls and rushing waters. As I prepare for this endeavor, I am selecting show images. My recent trip to the Palouse region yielded a couple of keeper waterfalls but I am having trouble deciding upon the stronger image. The images are the same but have different treatments. 

I went to my photographic society and showed the two images, asking for opinions.  The vote was 6-6. A lot of help they were! I then posted it to my Facebook page and got a similar tie or near-tie result.  I guess both images have appeal.

So, readers of the Fleeting Glimpse Images blog, which do you like better? Color or B&W?

Post your preference in the comments or email me. Thank you for your assistance.

Rikk Flohr

I never realized how much I depend upon CorelDraw to dovetail into and out of so many other software packages. When working with PowerPoint, for example, CorelDraw turned out to be a perfect tool to feed custom graphics into my presentations. As it happens, it also works well in the Digital Asset Management tool arena.

I recently did a photo workshop in the Palouse region with an unlikely crew of photographers called the Turn-ups, or Turnips if you prefer. The jury is still out on the spelling. During the week-long session, I was privileged to present, to the group, a basic Lightroom capabilities seminar.

Lightroom has all these little nifty customizations that make your interface, slideshows, websites, printed material, etc look like it is specifically branded for you.  Before leaving for the Palouse, I took the time to do a little customization for the trip to make any demos or presentations look a little more polished. As is my preference, I used CorelDraw X4 to make my graphics.

Custom Identity Plate made in Corel Draw X4 

The interface has what is called an Identity Plate that can be ported to output for print, web and slideshow. The identity plate can be simple text or a graphic. When I needed a graphic, where did I turn? CorelDraw X4 of course. I could take my logo, already done in Draw and make an identity plate out of it and export it for use in Lightroom.

Custom End Panel Mark created in Draw X4

End panel marks appear at the bottom of the left and right panels in every module. Again, the artwork was originally created in Corel so Corel did the heavy lifting on creating the size and format graphic I needed.

Slide Show Start and Finish Slide made in CorelDraw X4 

I like to do my slideshows with title and ending slides. It is hard to do that in a digital camera. Lightroom gives you an option of a blank slide with an Identity Plate. Neither suited me. With Draw, I was able to create custom, themed title slides for use as start and finish bookends on my slide shows. I also use transition slides that fit the natural breaks of my presentations. Draw can make as many of these as I need, output them to JPG where they can be imported into a Lightroom collection.

Lightroom Print Template with a CorelDraw X4 Graphic

Moving to the print module. I often like to finish off my printed images with a nice graphic with my name and website. Lightroom has rudimentary text features to do this but it is very limiting. Leveraging the ubiquitous Identity Plate, you can create custom pieces in CorelDraw to be used to augment your printed work.

Custom Lightroom Interface complemented by of Draw X4

You can see already a continuity forming around the FGI Stroke, Logo and trademarked slogan. All of a sudden, the software package looks like a custom piece of work that was made special for me. All of the output looks coherent. I have a brand. Whether I present to groups of photographers or just show images to a client, my work appears to be parts of a whole rather that patchwork.  It helps the professional appearance of everything I do.

When my fellow photographers consider a software package to augment their DAM tool, consider Corel Draw. It has the ability to create some stunning complements to your other software and comes with PhotoPaint – a first-class pixel-level image editing package that dovetails nicely into Lightroom’s edit flow.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

File this under the “I’m not quite sure how I feel about this” category.

I read an article on a new functionality that is cropping up on the world wide web.  It’s appearance was innocuous enough but, upon sufficient reflection, including furrowed brows and a look of stern consternation, I have decided it bothers me.

Scenario:

You see a wonderful picture on Flickr. You admire what the photographer has done with the image and wonder at the hidden secrets of image editing that have occurred to produce this image.  You look a little farther and see that the photographer has included his or her metadata in the exported file. You take that photo’s link and place it in the dialog at http://lrpreset.appspot.com/ and wait for the magic to happen.

If all goes as planned, a Lightroom preset will be created that will attempt to duplicate the steps that went into the processing of this photographer’s RAW file based upon the metadata.  You can download this preset to your local computer. Presumably, you could take this preset into Lightroom and use it to edit your own files and potentially mimic the look-and-feel of the original image.

To be fair, you do have the option of not exporting metadata on your Lightroom-created JPGs. You also have the option not to display metadata in Flickr.  So, there are two stops along the way to prevent someone from borrowing your editing techniques and applying them effortlessly to thousands of images.  Also, editing done outside of Lightroom is not necessarily available to the process.  I guess if you want to include the data and make it visible for all, it is like leaving your wireless router’s SSID broadcasting and unsecure. You are inviting people in by indifference.

First, I thought it was cool. Wow, how amazing is that that you can grab someone’s editing workflow and apply it?

Second, I thought it was lame. Every image is different. How useful can it be?

Third, I thought it was scary. Yes every image is different but there are certain techniques I have developed and use repeatedly. I don’t necessarily want to dilute my brand by advertising my process.

Fourth, I thought it might be illegal. Is the editing process - individual style - if you will, copyrightable?

I am still not certain how I feel about the automated borrowing of image editing workflow. One side says, what’s the harm? and the other side says, intellectual property. As image editing software becomes more sophisticated and puts in things like snapshots and other housekeeping items, how long will it be before our entire processes could be laid bare to probing eyes?

Perhaps I will set up a dummy Flickr account and test the usefulness and/or harmlessness of this process.

What do you think?

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Sometimes a more unique photo is waiting in the guise of a dreary downpour.

Bored yesterday with working on design-for-print projects, I took a break at lunchtime, put on a macro lens, a ring flash and sat on my front steps pondering the rose bush growing there.  It was a high-overcast with wonderful diffuse light - the kind photographers dream about. I didn’t like it. Overpowering the ambient light by ISO’ing down, stopping down and cranking up the shutter speed, I was able to find a look, using the ring light, that made me smile.

This shot was taken on a Canon 20D with the 100MM F2.8 Macro lens and the Canon MR-14EX ring light. The shot was taken at noon.

ISO 100

F16

1/250th of a Second

Ring light on Manual at 1/4 Power

I set the camera to manual for maximum control and hand-held the shot. Several shots in the series turned out quite nice but I still didn’t have the shot I was looking for. Rain was in the forecast and I decided to see if nature could deliver a little ‘wow’ to my photo.

Fast forward to 9:30 PM. The ambient is gone, save for the bleed coming from my office window (Daylight balanced compact fluorescents). The rig was the same and the settings were the same, only the flash had been changed to protect the delicate. Here the flash is on 1/32 power so that all those lovely raindrops wouldn’t blow out to white.  It seems counterintuitive that with less ambient light, I need much less flash but so be it! If you look closely, you can see the reflection of the ring light in the droplets. In the intervening 9 hours, the flower also opened a bit more, revealing a slightly different character.

Every state seems to have the adage: If you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes and it will change.  The same is true of photography. If you don’t like the scene, the light, the flower, wait and it

too will change.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Safeguarding your data while in transit can be harder than you think – especially if you have an emergency with which to deal. Don’t sing the blues if the unexpected occurs – find a way to take your data with you.

 “Who says you can’t
take it with you? The crew!”

It seems like weekly there is a televised news story of passengers being evacuated from an airplane. No matter what the problem, if an emergency evacuation of a plane is ordered, you must leave behind any of your carry-on luggage stowed under the seat or in the overhead compartments. Unless you are careful, this also includes leaving your data behind.

If you are traveling to or from a destination with valuable data, you are likely to ensure that you have it stored multiple places. You may have a backup optical disk, a portable hard drive, a USB drive, and an internet copy – all in addition to the copy on your laptop.  The problem most people have is that they store that extra copy in a brief case, checked luggage, (even  worse – your laptop case) or a jacket pocket.

In an emergency, no one is going to allow you the grace of retrieving a bag from beneath the seat, overhead bin or the jacket the flight attendant so kindly closeted for you. Regardless of the nature of the emergency you will leave your possessions behind.  After a successful evacuation it will be hours – maybe days before you recover your possessions.  If something happens to your bag or the the plane, you might not ever see your data again.

Photographers who shoot on location are especially susceptible. The data store is often large in tens  or even hundreds of gigabytes. The experiences and the images captured are often unique and unrepeatable. The good photographer is diligent about backing up the precious images but not as careful ensuring their safe arrival to the home destination. The airline crew and their very prudent evacuation procedures are unforgiving. They are designed to save everyone’s lives. All other concerns are secondary.

Thus: one copy of your data must be carried on your person. This means in a place which will not be severed from you in an emergency. A pants pocket is a good choice or a vest pocket if you wear one. The point is, it must be a garment that doesn’t leave your side. This way, in an evacuation, the data will tag along with no effort and no delay. You can leap onto that inflated slide with data confidence.

I go one step further and use a Ziploc™ double seal bag and a desiccant packet to encase my drive in a watertight container. Tucked into my vest or pants pocket, I am assured of carrying one set of data off the plane with me.  My laptop may stay behind, my luggage may be lost, my jacket may never be reunited with its owner but my WD Passport drive will tag along with me. If I make it off the plane, my data will as well.  Think back to flight 1549 that made an emergency landing in the Hudson river in January of 2009. The passengers made it off but the plane partially sank with their baggage and carry-ons. A small hard drive or USB drives in a sealed bag in a pocket might have saved the data day. 

Your disaster might not be as dramatic as a crash landing in a river. Perhaps you are diverted to a smaller plane and your baggage won’t fit the tiny overhead. Maybe your plane has a mechanical problem and the baggage doesn’t get forwarded for days. Perhaps someone has the same colored bag in the overhead bin and makes off with yours  by accident. Maybe the baggage claim is outside, in pouring rain.  Whatever your travel woes, keeping your data on your person, protected, can ensure that you can take it with you.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

I just returned from a week of shooting and sharing in the Palouse region of SE Washington state. The area is famous for its iconic shots of rolling farmlands and rustic barns. As I prepare the 3,000+ images for insertion into my master Lightroom catalog, I will be posting up a Flickr gallery. Till then, here is an initial shot to whet the anticipation.

Palouse – into the sunset haze

Watching 17 different photographers work was probably as interesting as any part of the trip. The group varied from the Point-n-shoot carrier to people with $ 40K in very long glass in their grasp. Mac and PC users broke bread together.  Adobe and Corel users sat side-by-side. Hand-holders and tripod users photographed the same subjects with unique and amazing results.

It really drives home the point that it is the photographer-not the gear that makes the picture.  If it weren’t, we could have sent one person and shared their images.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Along with a little commentary of the future of image editing software.

The evolution of RAW processing software begs the question: Are we seeing the downfall of the Image Editing Package, or its gradual absorption? If not, the lines of what a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool and a full-blown pixel-based editor can and cannot do are certainly blurring.

Iterations of Sunrise Peeking

Consider the above series of photos:

The left-most image is the middle or ‘correct’ exposure of a bracketed sequence taken at Split Rock Lighthouse.  The image management tool took care of initial modest adjustments before handing it off to an HDR processing tool producing a tone-mapped version you see in the second image.  Further reprocessing of the tone-mapped image yielded image three. Image three was sent out to a third-party plug-in for further enhancement producing a very passable image number four (right-most).

The finished photo at left was produced without ever technically finding its way into a pixel-based editor.  The image wrangling tool has become a Swiss Army Knife, either doing it all or facilitating it all. Import, Adjustment, Outputting to HDR, Processing, Output to Plug-ins, Processing, export to File and Printing were all handled by a single application.

Notice that no manufacturers were fingered and no applications named in this short exercise. It doesn’t matter who you are or what product you produce. If you are a DAM tool and you can’t facilitate editing you are likely doomed. If you are a pixel-based editor without robust file management functionality, likewise, you are likely doomed. The imaging public, particularly photographers, have too many options now.  We can have our sorting and edit too!

Enjoy the sun peeking around the cliff at Split Rock Lighthouse and its before and after journey.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Sometimes we become so ingrained in a technique we fail to see alternate applications of a process. Panoramas offer a fresh way to look at a landscape through our cameras but we often overlook the obvious.

 Badlands National Park 4-Shot Panorama

Perhaps you seen one of us, out there, rotating on our axis, clockwise or counter-clockwise, snapping pictures, trying to keep our camera’s level on the horizon and get just the right amount of overlap to create a panorama such as the Badlands sunrise shot shown above.  Capturing multiple images across the breadth of a scene is a way to create a unique aspect ratio, capture more of a scene than our current lens/camera selection might allow, or expand the mega-pixels of our cameras.

The strategy for capturing a panorama is to take a series of photos with your camera held level. Each exposure should overlap the previous so that it can be stitched together later in software. Some compact cameras have internal guides on the viewfinder to assist in capturing good panoramas and a few even have built in stitching. If you are using a DSLR, you are relying on stitching in software after the fact. Adobe Photoshop offers a Merge to Panorama automation. I tend to prefer using Panorama Studio that came with my Novaflex Panorama Rig. You can do this manually in other image editing programs but the task is more detailed.

   
Four Exposures panned vertically

The variation a lot of photographers overlook in shooting is the vertical panorama. Consider the four exposures above. They are all shot at a waterfall near Liberia, Costa Rica. The lens I had with me was way too long for the scene and the climb back to the car,  where my gear was stored, was pretty stiff. Rather than walk away empty handed, I decided to make a vertical panorama out of multiple exposures.

I set my camera on full manual so that I don’t get exposure variations, hold the unit as level as possible (tripod assisted here) and make certain I am overlapping at least a third of each frame. Taking a series of quick exposures, I ended up with the four individual shots shown above. They weren’t the perfect field-of-view choice but considering the conditions, they worked quite nicely.

Bringing the images into a panorama stitching program, I was able to create the vertical panorama you see at the left.  The original image was a 12 megapixels  x 4 exposures. After the overlap and the crop for the inevitable stitching artifacts is complete, I end up with a very good quality 28 MP image.  For a vertical subject like this waterfall, the concept worked well.  It prints really big too!

Next time you are in the field shooting and you are presented with a vertically challenged situation, consider turning the world 90° and shooting away. A strong vertical panoramic feel can be powerful with the right subject. 

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Step away from the light!

Watching proud parents shoot pictures of their new graduates can sometimes be quite painful.

One of my daughters recently graduated from college. I, as a photographer/father, chose to attend the event without my big bag of gear, taking only a Canon G10 compact camera.  Like most of the proud parents present, I would be point-n-shooting this rite of passage.

With 12,000 graduate candidates and spectators crowded in a tiny space, opportunities for shooting were severely curtailed.  There was little room to stand and few areas designated for photography. When you did stand, well-meaning wardens ushered out you out of the way and back into your seat.  The light was poor as the overcast melted about 9:00 AM and the sun created some harsh shadows. The opportunities for photos had to wait until after the ceremony and even worse noon-day light.

After paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education, you would like to have a picture of your child in their cap and gown to document the event. Upon commencement of commencement the clusters of now-graduates and respective entourages spilled into the campus at large,  looking for a quiet nook in which to take a grad-portrait. Many of them opted for the mottled light under the trees. I was looking for more substantial shade.

I snapped this picture of my daughter at 11:14 AM in atrocious photographic light.  It was bright sun, approaching the zenith and the shadows were heavy. I took advantage of the fact she was posing for a different photographer to get a very natural off camera pose. Some of your best portraits will come when your subject is posing for someone else.

Shelly Paulson and I cross paths occasionally as we speak at many of the same photographic societies. I have seen her presentation on Natural Light Photography three times now and her message of Open Shade reverberated in my head as I set up for the point and shoot. I moved my daughter into the open shade cast by a campus building to maximize the quality of the light available and improve the quality of the portrait. 

Open shade advantages:

• No Squinting
• More iris in the eye and less pupil
• No harsh shadows

High-contrast sunny conditions means look for shade

Contrast (no pun intended) this with a shot fired a 180° to the original portrait. Note how poorly the faces look and how heavy the shadows fall from the eyes, nose and chin. Also notice how bright the background is compared to the subjects. I have enlarged my daughter in the image on the left for harsh- shadow illustration.

What a difference 20 feet and a change of direction can make! This day, open shade was the photographer’s friend and the sun, our nemesis.  The background for the portrait was a little cluttered but with 2400 people having their picture taken individually and simultaneously, you had to take what you could get for backgrounds or wait your turn.

Later on, at the reception, the photographing of graduates by their parents continued all around us.  Here is a sampling of some of the things I overheard.

“Move out of the shade where we can see you.”

“Step into the bright sunlight. Don’t squint.”

“No, I like the way the dappled light falls on your face.”

“I don’t know why you keep coming out so dark in the picture”
(I did. Your background was sunlit grass!)

“Should I turn on the flash?” “Should I turn off the flash?” 
(Both uttered by the same man moments apart.  The answer from his wife was 'yes’ to both.)

From all the scattered comments I could tell that well-meaning parents struggled with the nature of the light. They also didn’t understand fully the operation of their cameras.  I knew from watching their subjects at the moment of shutter actuation that they were going to get harsh-looking pictures.  Maybe that’s ok and perhaps they will be happy with the snapshots. With full open shade so deliciously close at hand, it was sad to watch.

Moving my subjects back into the shade and providing a tiny bit of fill flash resulted in the best look overall. Without worrying about the light, there was more time to concentrate on the pose and get a playful shot my daughter will remember.

If the light is harsh-move away from the light.  Shade can be your friend.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

And a 2009 Costa Rica Retrospective Gallery

If you haven’t yet tried Flickr, I highly recommend you do so. It is a great place to share your images and link up with people who love creating what you create.   In addition to hosting your photos and other graphical creations for friends, colleagues and the like to view, it also gives you a modest social networking experience. If you aren’t ready for the full Facebook experience, perhaps Flickr is a good choice for you.

2009 Costa Rica Gallery on Flickr

 Slide Show     or       Rikk’s Flickr Page

There are many different groups of individuals haunting the virtual halls of Flickr.  If you are a Lightroom user, there is a bunch of groups for you. If you like shooting (or even just viewing) HDR Images, there is a group or three  for you. If your artwork is created in Corel PhotoPaint, there is a group for you too.

The possibilities are many. It can be a place to apprise clients of your latest work, an interactive discussion forum and a place to connect with potential associates, clients, and friends. Many of these groups issue periodic challenges getting you off your butt and into the field to create images. If nothing else, it inspires, stirs and motivates you to create. Flickr also dovetails in nicely with sites like Facebook and even this blog. (If you are viewing the Wordpress version, scroll down the right side of the page to see what I mean)

I’ve posted two links to the Costa Rica 2009 gallery above. If you just want a quick overview, click on the Slide Show link. If you want to study images, go to my Flickr page and wander through the galleries I’ve posted. We are planning Costa Rica trips for 2010 right now. See if that 2009 Costa Rica gallery doesn’t just make you need to come along with me.

Check out Flickr today and let’s get excited about Costa Rica 2010!

Rikk Flohr © 2009