Aylesbury Concert Band, Stone Fête

Proem

There is no gallery of images on this occasion, it is simply an illustrated explanation regarding one of the ways my images might be tweaked on occasion

On one of the very few occasions when I am not taking pictures of the Band in Concert, I found myself chatting to Ian who it turns out is married to one of the Band’s musicians; it is during this conversation that he mentions that he noticed that I seem to have somehow picked out an individual in some of the shots I have taken of the Band, but he somehow thought it was the way I had taken the shot. I had to own up that when taking the shot it was often because for me one person, or one group was what I envisaged capturing at that specific moment, and that when I am back at the computer and come to that shot, I realise why it was that I captured that moment and wanted to ensure others viewing were treated to what I had sensed at the time I pressed the shutter.

I use Lightroom for processing the images I take, and it is the reason I shoot in Raw, so have the ability to use the Develop module to subtly alter individual images that become those I then put into a Gallery and place on the server, to be viewed over the Internet from my Blog. I am often using a zoom lens, so frequently an image is used without further cropping and what I am then doing is ensuring that I capture detail in both shadows and highlights by altering the range to suit what I am hoping to project from the scene.

It is at this point I may wish to use the entire picture, but try to somehow highlight the area I want the viewer to notice. The Radial filter is what I then bring into play by making an ellipse around the chosen area and may also rotate it to finesse where I wish to draw attention, which on this occasion was to darken beyond the musician playing the clarinet, and rotate the ellipse slightly anticlockwise. The tool can made to operate either within or without the ellipse that has been drawn, also the subsequent mask that is being created can also be feathered to apply the changes I make with the required subtlety to hide how I have achieved the effect.

  Here is the image before I have made the alterations I have just described, and as you can see your eye is treated to several rows of musicians right through to the percussion section at the rear, and even though my focus is upon the Clarinet section, no person is noticeably more obvious than another, it is entirely egalitarian, however, when I took the shot I was focussed upon the lady in the blue jacket, so when I wanted to draw the observer’s eye to where I wanted them to look, I despotically lessened the contrast of those around and beyond her so that the observer did my bidding and concentrated on this individual player. I also lessened the highlights.

To get across my point, I have over-egged it a tad here, but it is still sufficiently subtle as to not look ham-fisted in my attempt at explaining the mechanics involved.

Note I did not tick the ‘Invert Mask’ box, so that the changes I made to the parameters I chose were applied beyond the selected area of the ellipse. I lessened the Contrast, because had that area been less brightly lit, it would lack contrast relative to the lit area, in addition I targetted the highlights and lowered these too for a similar reason, and lastly the feathering of the mask was just enough that there was no obvious sign of the ellipse that created the mask being obvious when the visitor viewed the end result.

Creating Galleries of images quickly, efficiently and effectively is the reason that I use Lightroom for the task, since to involve Photoshop to carry out retouching prior to creating a gallery adds way too much time to the process, and though the tools are less sophisticated, with practice ways can be found that mitigate the limitations and allow a large number of retouched images to be available to the Internet audience in fairly short order. Another beauty of working in this manner is that if I am approached for a high resolution image to be used in Print, the hard work is largely done, and the subsequent file can be despatched rapidly, and this leaves Photoshop for the more subtle or detailed work by exporting directly from the original in the Lightroom catalog.

One last point, despite my having exaggerated the effect to explain the technique, it does not show an ellipse to give away how I achieved the effect, and I might add that I am also able to deal with the extraneous highlights or shadows separately if needed.

Ian, I hope this explanation is helpful; I dedicate it to you and your wife. I hope it may help others who wish to use such tools in Lightroom when they are taking a large number of photos for display in galleries rather than individual images.

Retouching, Research and Guidance

Retouching has held a fascination for me from my earliest days practising photography – I was working for a studio just off Hatton Garden in London, and this was and still is the very heart of London’s Jewellery manufacturing, obviously famous for diamonds in particular.

We worked for various companies producing their catalogues and for my part I was creating compositions of rings and brooches and these were propped up by various means to give depth. At that time our methods were often crude as we were using  plasticine and pins and mainly tungsten lighting creating considerable heat so they could sag or even fall over during the invariably quite long exposures! If we were lucky then it was simply that either the  pin or the plasticine would show, if we were less lucky then it was a reshoot! We invariably worked with 10 x 8in colour transparencies which did give us the opportunity to have them retouched by a local company, Gilchrist; it was a balancing act as we judged whether the additional film and processing was less expensive than retouching. There was also another aspect: There were occasions when it was not possible to avoid nasty reflections of adjacent items, due to how tightly we had to pack them into the composition and I would often have liked to have these treated, but our clients were disinclined to spend the extra.

This desire for higher quality would ultimately bring me to a rival of Gilchrist, Longacre Colour Labs, where within a year of joining them I became their Sales Manager. This in turn would lead me to set up ‘SOLUTIONS photographic’ and by the time the digital era had arrived, I was doing my own retouching using knowledge I had gained from watching the retouchers working with dyes and bleaches and duplicate transparencies. Clients that I had acquired from my earlier photographic work now became clients using digital technology.

Two very interesting things happened this last week, one involving technical guidance which I provided remotely for a client I first met by travelling to his villa in Provence for five days’ training in connection with Photoshop; this time it involved Lightroom and also help with ascertaining why his website was no longer providing pinsharp images from his work. I produced a web gallery of his pictures that both viewed fast and were razor sharp, the other was providing another client who was now producing 1/32 Scale figures for World War One and Two aircraft, the retouching of an aerial and insulators on a Spitfire for his catalogue cover. This was not simply to draw a line between a post behind the cockpit and tailplane – this required research by both of us so that what I added was as authentic as possible for the marque of the modelled Spitfire.

Both clients were pleased with my work, and importantly I enjoyed the challenges involved and will soon be visiting Chichester to provide further help with Lightroom and his backup strategy for the former, possibly next week.

Sunless Snow – Whipsnade Woods

The snow had stopped falling, but still not even milky sunlight, but with no excuse to stay indoors I ventured out, knowing the challenges of trying capture snow scenes, without some sunshine. The exposures have to be just right to hold the detail in both the darkest and lightest areas, such that afterwards I have the chance to somehow achieve the snow’s whiteness without losing detail of footfalls in the snow, yet at the same time bring out some texture in the blackness of the branches of trees.

Fortunately Lightroom is able to do this for me, but not without considerable effort balancing one control against another, I hope that I have succeeded in the shots I have captured in this gallery. Thinking back on the trip out I realised it took me as long to clear the car of frozen snow as the actual drive out and back, and tonight more snow is forecast, so I will have the same task tomorrow when I need to do some re-provisioning, and the journey involves hills!

1st July Visit to Jarvis Development at Harpenden

I had a deadline to meet – I had to find four different images in Lightroom to create two birthday cards and get them in the post before I could set off for the Foresters site being developed by local builders, Jarvis in nearby Harpenden.

The sun was fairly shy today, often disappearing behind clouds, but the temperature was ideal. Arriving on the site, it was very apparent that woodwork was the name of the game now, roof trusses were topping several of the areas where steelwork had been prominent earlier.

The basement is now becoming a maze of pipework for drainage, water and electrical services and this work is also now moving to the floor above, it is quite a challenge taking shots down in the basement, and I find myself regularly using 4,000 ISO and shutter speeds down to 1/60th and still barely managing an aperture of f/4, whereas outside in the bright sun I am using 100 to 200 ISO and shutter speeds as high as 1/250 at apertures of f/14, but if I need to capture movement I drop the shutter speed as low as 1/30th. It seems ancient history to recall using a 5x4 or larger camera on a tripod and having to set up sometimes as many as six separate flash bulbs and still only manage to capture in black and white! That was the 1960s!

Digital photography is definitely very liberating, and what is impressive is being able to produce quality results with post-processing in programs like Lightroom, I can create images where the verticals remain vertical without resorting to lenses with Tilt and Shift movements, by taking into account some spare area in the images to allow for cropping. When you also factor in the ability to maintain good colour between sunshine and cloudy shots, it is a real bonus. All this post processing can be carried out within just the one program – Adobe Lightroom.

Another Essex Consultancy Visit

My task for this visit was to format and partition a new drive to allow scheduled backups to take place every night on the newly added drive. Knowing that there would be spells of forced computer inactivity whilst this took place, I set about my other task – that of passing on as much knowledge of both Photoshop and Lightroom as I could, but inevitably there were times either when a phone call came in or there was too small a gap to meaningfully use, so I would take the opportunity to grab some photos in my client’s garden – the twelve shots in this gallery are the result.

Paris and Training

Aboard the Eurostar train, it took a while to get seated, since the aisle was so narrow, but once that was behind me, I took the camera out - only to find we were entering a tunnel! It was at this time an American made a comment on my lens and then the camera.

Hugo, for that was his name, and I got chatting about photography and iStockphoto. I gather he works for them on the technical side. He requested my business card, but apolgised that he hadn't brought his own, promising he'd take a look at my blog, and would also mention my book on his site, despite his being a PC person! I'll keep a look out for his email giving me his details.

The weather outside whilst journeying across northern France was dull and overcast until the outskirts of Paris, when there was a glimmer of wintry sunshine from breaks in the clouds.

It was easy to spot Marco, mine host for the next six days, as he stood as promised with his helmet immediately ahead of me at the end of the Gare du Nord platform. We greeted each other as if we had known each other all our lives, and it has been as easy as that between us the entire time. He then helped me to a taxi, and he then sped off on his scooter, and we arrived at his apartment just after he had parked up.

I am here to help him learn how Lightroom can benefit his overall workflow with Photoshop, and to help him to extend his retouching skills. It is both fun and challenging with both of us exchanging our life experiences and joshing each other over our choices of computer platforms!

In the few moments when he has had other commitments, I have managed to capture a few of the local scenes, but the light has never been brilliant. Pictures taken the day before I left for France at Tringford Reservoir and those taken since may have to wait for my return before appearing, but I will try to get something up sooner.

Although our temperature has hovered around the -5˚C mark, we only had a short flurry of snow this morning (Wednesday); that did not settle, yet I hear the UK has had quite a fall, which makes me wonder whether Eurostar will have the wrong type of Snow!

AA, ECU, LR, PS and QC at Xmas!

Free time has been scarce over this Christmas period, so a gallery of images taken around the village probably a week ago, have yet to be sorted and displayed. Having time together with both my daughters was great, and afforded the opportunity to take some shots of my elder daughter’s neighbourly birds, as I waited for the arrival of the AA man!
Why was I waiting for this visit?
– On the journey over to Grantchester, my car’s display was trying to get a message to me via an orange engine symbol warning light on the dashboard. I also detected a misfire. The AA man arrived in a skid, that gave me cause for concern over his abilities as a driver, but his lack of acumen in this department was not reflected in his diagnostic ability, fortunately!
He checked that his initial diagnosis was backed up, by thoroughly checking that the ECU (Electronic Control Unit) was sending the right signals, and that the fault lay with the Coil Pack. It was not taking the signal that produced the spark for Cylinder Two, and guess what? It was a chunky, sealed unit, that from bitter experience I knew was going to be costing me a three-figure sum; but not on Christmas Day. Nor on the day after, nor the day after that! I have now purchased four new spark plugs and this coil pack, and so my car has certainly had its fair share of Christmas presents – far more than I have spent on others or myself over the same period! It is also due a service, so it is in for a Happy New Year too!

I am currently awaiting confirmation of a trip to Paris to help an Italian, Paris-based fashion photographer with Lightroom and Photoshop workflow, and retouching for close on a week. Eurostar’s mishaps caused a postponement of this venture from the inter-regnum twixt Christmas and the New Year.

My using both iChat and Skype over the last few days has helped several photographers remotely, from as far as the South of France and as near as north and south London, and somehow allowed me the time to send in an initial submission to Quality Control (QC) at Picture Library, Alamy – I learnt this had been accepted just yesterday, so when I can spare the time I shall be getting some of my work up there, for sale.

Stop Press – News – The Paris Training Trip is booked, but my mobile number will still reach me.

Lightroom – Badges on the Grid Images

Recently I have found that some users of Lightroom are not fully aware of what all the badges on their pictures within Lightroom's Library module Grid display actually mean or do.

I have created a single A5 PDF document that explains their functions, so that it becomes more obvious just how informative as well as powerful this is. Adobe helpfully provides numerous hotspots with lists of the options that can be displayed as badges on each image. Technically the three small icons in the bottom right are the badges, but I have lumped all the items overlaid on the pictures under the name 'badges' for simplicity.

The items without a contextual list of choices of what to display have Tooltips to explain their function.

Overall, I hope that what I have explained proves useful. The PDF is in the Galleries section the right, titled 'Lightroom Badges'.

Sunny October in Essex

Friday finds me travelling around the M25 to Essex to help Pedro Silmon with optimising his images for storage and sorting within Lightroom.

During the course of the day which was exceptionally fine weatherwise, and with large catalogues to rearrange in Lightroom, I was afforded a few free minutes! This allowed me to grab some shots within his excellently tended garden. And what a garden! (Sad to report that overnight the rains did their best to consign the subjects of my photos to History.)

Not only did I get some great light on the autumn colours of the leaves and flowers, but I was spoilt by being able to capture a few more cloudscapes for my collection.

Pedro, until recently a creative director in magazines, is now a full-time,
professional garden and plant photographer. Unlike me can give a name in Latin and English for every plant I photographed, and his website goes live in mid-November. http://www.pedrosilmon.com

The Lightroom Message

Twice in the last three weeks, I have had the enjoyable but nevertheless daunting and somewhat humbling experience of talking to two groups of expert photographers about Lightroom. The first was to a group of Wildlife photographers, the second, just yesterday a group of photographers possibly best described as photojournalists.

In both instances these were not hosted by me; I was invited to offer my services – in the first mine host was Chris Gomersall, and the latter, Adam Woolfitt.

I enjoy these encounters, because faced with a group of mixed and varied experience and prior knowledge of the program, I am challenged, and I learn from the sessions, which helps me to feed back what I find to the program developers at Adobe. Also, since I operate a one-man-band, it gives me welcome social interaction.

I strongly feel that with digital SLRs pervading a large proportion of professional photographers' working lives, and the cameras yielding ever larger initial raw files, this program is supplanting Photoshop for many people. Effectively, it has usurped the place Photoshop held in my heart for so many years, so I now feel very evangelistic on its behalf. Quite early on in my acquaintance with Lightroom I put across my view that the biggest competitor was not as the Press would have you believe, Aperture, but Adobe Bridge – I still hold this view.

Recently, Adobe have laid off many staff across the globe, and put this down to a disappointing take up of Creative Suite 4 due to the financial situation worldwide. I think it goes deeper than this, and would cite the withdrawal from major shows, and the high price set outside the US. To consider the UK version as 'localised' and suggest this is 'International English', yet pay no heed to actual 'English' spelling has been considered insulting to many, especially when software can now be distributed electronically worldwide this does not endear Adobe to its target audience. Another factor is the system of Activation is so draconian it hits the legal users of its software as hard as the cheats.

When you can therefore use a less than up to date version of Photoshop to do all you need beyond what Lightroom offers, there is a less pressing need to upgrade when you set the cost of Lightroom against that of the upgrade to Photoshop. I think Photoshop has now undoubtedly become more of a tool for Retouchers and Designers, and in these two Groups it is only the Retouchers who see the real need for the new features, and they are the smaller of the two. And I count myself a member of that group.

Very little explanation of Lightroom is offered by Adobe, partly because it sells itself, so it is often left to those selling the product, and I think in many instances some of its virtues are overstated, in particular its role as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool. Various web-based resources provide sound information, but the audience here is already fairly well-informed but small in number, so less-informed comment in magazines tends to prevail, and increasingly the writers are very aware of the effect negative comments will have upon their advertising revenue, so are less objective, apart from not really using the software on a daily basis.

I hope in my small way that I am helping to take up the slack and getting Lightroom's virtues and architecture better understood by today's digital photographers.