I see on ca.urlm.com that apparently, I am most popular in Japan:
I will take that with a grain or two of salt, but I am nevertheless delighted that this blog is read in Japan, the country the hardware we all use comes from.
So, welcome to my visitors from Japan, and keep coming back!
And it’s time I saw Japan again, it’s been too many years.
A while ago, I bought a new Mac. Now trying to print to that Mac, my print colours were terrible. Awful. I was using the same presets that worked so well before, and I had the same ICC profiles.
Took me all day but I figured it out!
I see that although when printing (“Printer…” button on Lightroom’s print screen) I manually selected the ICC profile for the paper type used (Pro Luster, Museum Etching, etc), and then printed from that dialog, it appears that LR nevertheless overruled this and went back to the profile saved in the printed preset. Which did not exist, so it went back to “Default”. A feature, or a bug? 🙂
Solution: I recreated the printer profiles on the new Mac, and once more selected them for each preset and “updated with current settings”. Phew, finally, I have good prints again.
This is something you may want to note: if a particular printer profile that was saved as part of a printer preset does not exist, like when you buy a new Mac, LR will default to “Default”, even when you have selected the correct paper manually in the final “Printer…” dialog, and you print straight from that dialog. LR will overrule that and select whatever paper your “Default” profile thinks it contains.
Good to know. Took me half a day, because I never thought my manual choice would be overwritten!
…I disagree with Scott Kelby on flash outdoors. He says this in this months “shutterbug”:
I agree that you get s “hyper-real” look by opposing the sun. But that’s the entire point! For an artistic people cure, this feeling that a subject is almost superimposed on a shot is often exactly what the photographer desires
According to Mr Kelby, these here are no good, then:
All wrong, says Mr Kelby.
All right, say I. Even though I am doing the opposite to what mr Kelby says you should do. For good reasons, say I.
You can make up your own mind, but whatever you do: never take mr Kelby’s words, or for that matter mine, for gospel. Make up your own mind.
Happened to me too, once -v in spite of decades of travelling.
http://petapixel.com/2016/08/05/olympic-photographer-robbed-rio-40k-gear-stolen-10-seconds/
Cropping your photos is important. Of course you are doing that while shooting, but you often do it while post-editing, as well. Remember a few things.
Look at this:
It is clear that a horizontal layout suits this best. It’s all about those four equal sized horizontal layers. Yes, I was lucky. And see how simple I kept it. The one bird. That’s the only item other than those layers. Every item you crop out makes your photo simpler.
And this:
Also good and simple. But it occurs to me that this would also make a good magazine cover if cropped vertically, thus:
Often, the only way to know is: try. So in Lightroom, experiment with closer crops and with altering orientation.
Have fun!
Michael
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Get Michael’s e-books on http://learning.photography and become the pro you always wanted to be,
Often, we are inspired by shapes. Sometimes, shapes are odd. Like here: I am struck by the thought that these ducks could be some kind of lobster seen from above.
Can you also see how I use negative space, and how I use the rule of thirds?
Those are just some of the things you think about when composing a photo. I am writing an eighth book which will talk about compositional aspects of photography. Stay tuned! And meanwhile check my seven other books at http://learning.photography
One piece of advice to you photographers out there: shoot everything. As do I: from news to portraits to industry to birds. So sometimes I go out with a friend for a few hours, as I did last night. Here’s a few of the results, from Hamilton, Ontario. An industrial city (“Steeltown”), and more; I go out opt my way to shoot that industry. Why on earth? Surely there’s no beauty there?
Well, I think there can be. Especially if you choose the moment right; in this case, around sunset. Here are a few samples:
For these, I needed to be quick. Back focus (no time even to change to AI Servo) and quick reactions meant most were good:
For these, I had to wait until ambient light was almost gone:
This is out of focus deliberately:
MV Floretgracht (and you are Dutch if you can pronounce that):
And a few more samples:
Layer cake?
I do not often shoot these things–which makes it important to every now and then do just that. Do the same: go shoot something you rarely shoot!
I did a few more booths yesterday. Fun as before.
But not simple! This one took 45 minutes to set up, in a restaurant. Setup includes things like computer, printers, USB hubs, connected camera, backdrop, props, pro flashes, and much more:
Here’s the picture I produced and printed on the spot for everyone, except of course this sample is with my pictures, not my clients’:
Additional to that, my clients get the electronic files, as well. And a web site to look at them on. And I brought an assistant, who is a talented photographer himself.
Why this note? Because I realize how this is now an entirely new photography market. It’s got critical mass now. And it’s fun.
But before you take it on yourself, remember that it’s a) a lot of work, and I mean a lot, and b) complicated technically, and that c) it needs real photography- and especially people-skills. Maybe easier just to hire me: I am available for booths!
I am musing about contracts, since I am sending out quotes and event photography agreements all day today. That gets me thinking about the work I do.
Some of the work behind the shot…
One though is about my hourly fee. It is $125 plus tax per hour.
Perhaps that sounds like a lot of money, but it is not.
It is not, because it includes, free of extra charge, things like, say for a typical wedding:
For other things I do (like training) there are similar inclusions that the hourly fee pays for: equipment, enormous time writing the courses, feedback,preparation of materials, and many other things included.
Of course I should not need to explain: a plumber also charges an hourly fee, as does a dental hygienist, and no-one wonders why. But now at least you know!
I have talked about EXIFTOOL before. A free command-line utililty that aloows you to read all the EXIF data in an image. And there’s a lot. A LOT!
But for those of you who use it, a little gem here: extracting the built-in preview images from a RAW file. You do it like this:
exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all /Users/Michael/1DX_9187.CR2
This causes it to generate a file for each built-in preview (in this case, it creates thumbnail and “large” images:
So now you know how to extract the preview images from a RAW file. Just in case you ever want to do that!