Change, change, change

I can never make my mind up as to whether change is a good or bad thing. This is not helped any by there seeming to be so many (albeit small) changes I've needed to address lately.

Chief among them is that I have recently overhauled my image editing processes. This has been a somewhat, drawn out process but I'm glad to move on from doing everything in Lightroom. I'd have to say a big contributor to this has been my acquisition of the Nik Collection; and my getting around to fully exploring it. Now instead of making a lot of edits directly in Lightroom, I am using Dfine for noise reduction and Sharpening Pro (output) for final sharpening. These two tools are miles ahead of the adjustments within Lightroom and the resulting images are much improved. And on the subject of Lightroom; it has a weird habit of skewing the colors when importing NEF RAW files from my cameras. Testing out the different Camera Calibration settings certainly pays off and using the Camera Standard setting gives my more vibrant (and red) reds. No more orange tinted reds!

Oh, and while on the subject of the Nik Collection, I have to mention Silver Efex Pro! I am loving the B/W conversions I can do with the software. I've even created my own custom preset so I can quickly replicate the look across any image. In my opinion it is the best B/W convertor available.

The other big change is concerning my online presence, as GoDaddy has completely changed their website building software and "obsoleted" my website. Now I know that I need to redesign and update my website but I do not like their new software, which is clunky and not the most intuitive. Of course, I already have a sore spot where they're concerned and their poor Mac support; hence why this blog is no longer hosted on their domain. So, I'm now looking into alternate hosts and platforms to start fresh and bring my website and blog back together. I'm also no longer considering a free solution as, unsurprisingly, you do get what you pay for.

I can't really talk about image editing and workflow changes without providing some samples, so here are a couple of images from my recent trip to Pikes Peak in Colorado. Regular visitors to my blog will recognize them, as I did post the color image previously; albeit with my "old" image editing workflow settings. Hopefully you can see the changes in the finished image.

And here 's the same image after running it through Silver Efex Pro and my custom preset.

Minimalism - or lightening the load

Partially on the behest of my aching shoulder, I have recently started looking more closely at ways to carry less gear while out and about, while still being able to effectively take/make photographs. Now, before I go much further I do want to clarify that I am not about to get rid of my Nikon dSLR; although on my next "refresh" I may downsize the body.

What I have been doing meshes with the saying, the best camera is the one you have with you. And with that being my Sony  WX350, or my HTC One, I just needed to look at options for editing on the go. Now luckily for me, Adobe recently released a mobile version of Lightroom that runs on Android. Now I know some of you are wondering "why is he not using iOS?"; especially as he has a Macbook Pro. Well, long story short, I have a large investment into the Android platform and prefer the products. Which I just expanded on by purchasing a Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet (the one with the funky camera). With the Sony camera, the Dell tablet and Light room I have a pocket sized digital photo setup with higher quality than a cell phone. And it's pretty liberating to not be weighed down with gear, unless I choose to be.

While on the subject of the Dell tablet, I have to comment on the camera. Now, while I'm not likely to use the tablet for taking photographs (outside of ID photos for model releases), it's lightfield (think Lytro) depth enabled features do provide a very interesting set of options for creative experimenting. The tablet is equipped with 3 lenses, which work together to create three images that are combined in software to create a photo that you can change the focus point of after the fact; it also allows selective de-focus (blur). While this sounds good, in practice the software is a little heavy handed on the image processing. It is best to not dial the de-focus up too high or you will get patchy results. This is early days and I am hoping that future releases of the software will improve the processing and that the technology continues to improve.

To give you an example of what is possible with the tablet's camera, here is an example of one of my first experiments with it - please excuse the photo frame, I was also experimenting with the built-in photo editing software.

I have to say that I am enjoying trying new things and experimenting with my photography again. There is a time and place to be all serious and business-like, and other than that just enjoy what you are doing regardless of how it turns out. It's only by experimenting (success or failure) that we can grow artistically.