Little People

Last week, I was approached by a friend about taking some photos of his kids. He works with my significant other for the local fire department, and recently all crew members were issued new bunker gear. I guess a few of the fellows have had their children photographed in various ways with their fresh, shiny (literally! the lettering and stripes are all reflective... a flash nightmare!!) turnout attire, and Mr. T was hoping to follow suit. Since I am NOT a portrait photographer... I was nervous - but super excited - to give it a try!

Now, it's a challenge to get a picture right at the best of times. But add to the mix a little person... who is unsure of what the heck this strange, big person (with a large black blocky thing stuck in front of her face!) is doing in his space... climbing up and down a step ladder... calling his name over and over... making silly sounds... having his mommy and daddy run all over the place... etc., etc... And it makes for an interesting hour of picture taking! Poor guy!

In the end however, it turned out quite alright. We staged everything in the garage, and at mid-day with the overhead door wide open, the lighting was natural and relatively soft. Prince P and his sister Princess M are soooooo darn cute, and I found unexpected enjoyment in working to capture some of their priceless expressions. I don't mean that to sound... harsh...? It's just that I felt fairly anxious about letting the T family down, if I could not deliver what they had in mind. In actual fact, it didn't take long at all for that to wear off, because the parents are both such happy and easygoing folks, and their toddlers are adorable. Plus I figured if I snapped the shutter enough times, I was bound to catch something of value!!

Speaking of which, I took nearly 350 pics of the up-and-coming firefighters. **WHEW** The result is about three dozen images that I feel are print worthy, and I'm crossing my fingers that the T's will like them also... If it goes well, who knows... maybe I'll try it again some time!

Cheers!

Pick a lens, any lens...

...and use just this one lens, for an entire day. Now, I'm not talking an 18-250mm... because I'm sure we could all survive (if we really had to!) with a standard walk-around lens alone... I mean choose a macro, or a fisheye, or a super long telephoto... the type of lens that is usually reserved for quite specific subjects and/or events. I've read of this before, in a 'tips and tricks' section of one of the magazines I subscribe to, and this week I finally tried it. My project, so to speak, was to spend the day with my Lensbaby 2.0 (http://lensbaby.ca/), and what a project it was. The focal length is about 50mm, and the aperture is fixed according to which disc is used - making the shutter speed completely my responsibility. Add into the mix the fact that I particularly enjoy photographing my friends while they are engaged in some sort of sporting activity... and you have a very interesting day of picture taking! It took a few tries to gage the distances I needed to frame things properly, and moving back and forth from shade to sun resulted in two or three practice images each time to achieve the right exposure. Overall, it was quite a bit of fun, and in the end I came up with a few really neat pics. You should try it sometime!

Cheers.

Photo Browsing...

I've talked before about the RAW formats that can be used on my camera. And I decided that I prefer to leave my camera setting on Pentax's 'PEF' as opposed to the generic 'DNG'. The only thing I've always been a bit disappointed about, when it comes to the Pentax Photo Browser/Laboratory, is that when going through an initial viewing/editing of my RAW files, there is no delete function in the browser. This means that I either have to mark the files I do not wish to keep and batch delete them later, or close down the viewing window and delete the pictures one at a time. Very time consuming. So. Imagine my excitement when I recently downloaded Picasa 3... and found that it will browse my RAW files AND allow me to delete as I go!! It is fantastic!! Not to mention, it is free!! I still use the camera software to do my final editing, but Picasa 3 has cut my pre-edit time in half at least. How convenient! This great Google-based tool will view pretty much any RAW files, and it also has some basic editing capabilities which work well in a pinch. Considering that it doesn't cost anything, it's an impressive little program and I highly recommend it!
Cheers!

http://picasa.google.com/

No news is... good news??

Wow. I can't believe how little photography propaganda I have to share lately! I'm talking NOTHING... I can't even make anything up!! I do recall reading somewhere that great photographers know when NOT to take pictures... and while I'd hardly place myself in the 'great' category, I certainly haven't been taking many pictures! Actually, it's not that I haven't been out with my camera - because I have. It's just that the subjects that I've been photographing aren't perhaps the best for discussion on this blog. Truth be known, I've been having a crazy-good time, at the climbing crags and out at the lake! Rock climbing and kiting are a couple of my favorite activities to photograph. However, neither of these somewhat obscure sports make for a good, general discussion... Anyway, when I do have some sort of revelation, I'll be sure to post! For now, here's a couple of my fave photos from recent outings.

Cheers!

The RAW Dilemna

PEF or DNG? That was the question... and I think I've come up with an answer - that suits me, anyway. My camera (Pentax K20D) will take RAW photos in either DNG (Adobe compatible format) or PEF (the Pentax format), and of course in various JPEG formats. Since I have recently been attempting to use Photoshop CS3, I was wondering if it would be to my advantage to shoot in the DNG mode. CS3 can easily read and be used to edit DNG files, whereas I am limited to my Pentax Photo Browser/Laboratory software to even view the PEF files.
So, to see for myself, I spent a day with one camera set to take DNG's, and the other to take PEF's. Every other in-camera setting was identical. In all honesty, I have to say that I was a bit surprised at the outcome! Even though the post-processing of the Pentax RAW files is more cumbersome, I was completely more pleased with them. The colors and contrast in the RAW data are much more vibrant, and far less tweaking is required to achieve the same JPEG result. Who'd-a-thunk?? I must say I was under the impression that Photoshop was the be-all/end-all in editing software... and while it is quite an amazing tool, my opinion has changed somewhat. Pentax is pretty darn good itself, and I won't feel bad about leaving my camera in the PEF mode!
Cheers.

The JPEG Experiment

I recently travelled to Arizona, and I spent pretty much the whole time in the beautiful western desert around Parker. For this trip, I decided to try something different in terms of picture taking - I only shot in JPEG, no RAW. Part of it was due to me being lazy and not feeling like dragging my laptop along (it has my RAW conversion software program on it), and part of it was simple curiosity - I was curious if I'd actually be able to notice poorer quality in the end-result images. I do realize that the RAW capture in a camera writes the information directly to the card, bypassing the camera's processor... so in essence you have an unprocessed 'negative'... and of course you should see better results if you have more data to play with right from the start. But post-processing of RAW files takes substantially more effort than tweaking JPEG files - I'd say it consumes at least twice as much time per picture - and I have been wondering lately if all my efforts have been a bit in vain.
I guess since I didn't take anything in RAW, I don't have actual hard evidence to make a side-by-side comparison... But in my infinite yet limited photography wisdom, I would have to say that straight JPEGs do look somewhat less... crisp? for lack of a better term... and I am unable to enlarge them to the extent that I can with RAW format files, without noticing massive pixelation and loss of integrity. As well, any editing that is required degrades the file exponentially with every overwrite.
So, to make a long story no shorter than it was... I'll be leaving my camera set to RAW... I'll continue to spend more time than I wish was necessary on photo processing... and I will not complain about it!

Next question: PEF or DNG? Aaaack!! So many queries, so little time!

Blue is definitely a color!

Blue... as in brilliant, crystal, azure... I just returned from Barbados, and the waters of the Caribbean around that particular island are shades of blue I can barely describe! Everything from deep royal to rich turquoise... for hundreds of yards out to sea, off of all the coasts... it was amazing! The scenery was spectacular and the weather was wonderful, and the colors of nature were beautiful. The photos in this post are a mere glimpse of the West Indies paradise.

Cheers.