Mary Ann's Photo Gallery and Tips

Gene teased me about never getting past page 38 in my Canon Manual.  Well, I decided when I got my new Nikon D5000 that I wasn't going to let that be the case.  In the 1st few days the complete manual was covered and highlighted in yellow.  Proof that I had made it all the way through.  Did I understand it all....of course not but I must admit Nikon has a better way of designing their manual. Each area starts at the beginning so you can easily see the steps in walking through to set your aperture, shutter speed and ISO.  Each division of a task begins at the beginning and walks the walk! Now my only job is to remember it all!

I am also taking a Composition class at Western Technical College.  The class ought to be called Falling in Love with Your Camera as we started by knowing what our camera does and then get assignments to do it.  Sounds so simple 5 little 4 by 6 photos is all we needed to bring in last week.  Start shooting the same object early in the day, through the day and into dusk and dark.   You needed a tripod because since your sensors on the camera are taking a long time to record the insignificant light.   When reviewing your photos if your LCD is black something is wrong go back to notes and reset something.

In an book I have called Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson he tells that there is more than one way to set your camera to get a correct exposure.

Let’s say you take a person’s shoulder to head shot and in the background 10 feet or so away is something like rows of crab apple trees in pink bloom.

               ISO                          F stop or Aperture         Correct exposure indicated in viewfinder

1.       100                                        f/4                                        1/500 sec

2.       100                                        f/5.6                                     1/250 sec

3.       100                                        f/8                                         1/125

4.       100                                        f/11                                       1/60

5.       100                                        f/16                                       1/30

6.       100                                        f/22                                       1/15

7.       If your lens goes higher than f/22 you could conversely have more “correct”exposures.

Then you have to chose your creative mode that you like to decide which photo you like the best.  The one with sharper depth of field (Aperture setting( f/4) which is the smallest amount of light and the greatest depth of field), or one with more bokeh or blurred background (which is the largest amount of light, smallest aperture number or f/stop (f/4) and a blurred background ((bokeh)) . 1/4  of a pie is bigger than 1/22 of a slice!

A few weeks ago we went to visit friends in Door County, Wisconsin.  Coming home we passed a beautifully restored red round barn.  I just had to stop and take a photograph of it and would like to share it with you.  At one time there were over 215 of these gems in Wisconsin but with the modernization of the farm equipment the layout didn't work well.  The straight line 2 aisles barn was better designed to use the new milking and cleaning equipment.

Enjoy,

Mary Ann

On September 1, I ordered a new Camera from B & H Photos in New York.  It is my favorite camera store.  The over the phone service is outstanding.  Thier representatives are extremely knowledgeable and the prices are very competitive if not better than most. 

I ordered a Nikon D5000.  After being a Canon user since the early 70's I thought as if I was being a traitor.  Canon was one of the few that did not come out with a flip out LCD on their new models this year.  Since I had my shoulder replaced last August, lifting my Canon D20 was just getting to heavy.  I found my left hand was not only supporting my camera but my right hand also.  Even with satabilization on the lens I was still getting a slight blur.

The Nikon D5000 is so much lighter, has live view and a flip out  LCD.  I actually have read the manual to page 147 and can't begin to image all it does.  It almost doesn't need me....except to click it!  For those of you that complain the print in the menue is to small and not bright enough you won't have an issue with this camera.

The modes it offers are so many more than most:  Here are the selections. 

• Mode Dial:  Portrait, Landscape, Child, Sports, Close up, Night portrait
• Scene Mode:  Might landscape, Party/Indoor, Beach/Snow, Sunset, Dusk/Dawn, Pet portrait, Candlelight, Blossom, Autumn colors, Food, Silhauette, High Key, Low Key.

Other than filter items like Infra red this must cover the galmut. 

I haven't had a chance to try these yet but will report on them later.  The photo I took here was hand held at dusk and I was extremely pleased with it.  I cleaned the photo in PS but other than my normal tweaking workflow it is out of the camera.

My biggest complaint with my Canon was that it shot "hot".  I always had blown out pixels on Auto when the sun was out.  I actually learned how to fix them even though everyone states they cannot be repaired.  In PS chose your color picker and use a very low capacity painting over your blown out areas.  You may need to zoom in to do some areas but it works quite amazingly well.

Hope you enjoy one of my 1st Nikon photos. 

Golden Rose

Enjoy!

Mary Ann

Thanks Edna for the Blog Award...my 1st!

I'm not sure how to post this so will set it here for now.

I suppose I better come up with a great tip for all you Photoshop users.  Today I went out and shot my 1st HDR so maybe it should be about the new hot way to process your photos.

This has certainly been a fun week.  In Redbubble I was notified that my photo of Man and His Guitar was grabbed a Feature Award.  This is the photo that is in a previous blog entry which I also won a ribbon at the Interstate Fair.  It is a real honor as there are so many entries to chose from, most times way over 50. 

Gene and I went out in the 1985 Corvette he purchased a few weeks ago and put on about 200 miles on the most beautiful September day.  I was able to photograph five round barns.  It is a surprise how few of these barns are still in existance in Wisconsin and how little care they are getting to preserve them for prosperity.  I will try to also publish the final workup of these photos here soon.  Since I only could shoot them from the road setting up a tripod and doing HDR didn't seem like the best use of me and my equipment.  I certainly didn't want to become a target or worst yet "road kill"!

WHITE METAL ROUND BARN IN WISCONSIN

In our Labor Day ride around Wisconsin Gene and I found several still standing round barns.  This is a smaller more machine shed type, however the silos nearby suggest that it could have been used for cows.  It is a metal barn with doors on both sides.  I used a Lucis-like effect in Lightroom to achieve the coloration.  The sky was plain, and with so much white there was not a lot of vivid color.  To acheive this look try this.

In Lightroom:

    Under Basic adjustments, slide Recovery to 100%

    Fill Light up to 100%

    Blacks to about 20-50, will adjust more later

    Contrast to 100%

    Clarity to 100%

    Vibrance to 100%

    Drop Saturation to -20 and bump it down as needed to get rid of gaudy color

    Go back and adjust Blacks and Exposure as needed.

    If one particular color is overpowering go to the HSL palette and adjust it's saturation

This is a simple way to enhance bright and dark areas of an image like a Photoshop plugin called LucisArt.  This is a look somewhat fimiliar to the HDR technique.

http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm#frames_mattes  Check out the free puzzle action at this site.  Chose #45. under Frames and Mates, Panos's Puzzle, Panos Efstathiadis.  It is an amazing action.  Now Edna, you won't have to buy your puzzles you can make them!  Enjoy!  Mary Ann

Somewhere along the line I lost hundreds of photos.  After I installed the new version of Lightroom 2, I decided to use it for the photos that I wanted to keep only. These were mostly for my entries in the La Crosse Camera Club or because they were good family, nature, and about 20 other keyword categories which I may use in the future. 

After I did my fair photos I went back to start working on something else and discovered there was a ? in the corner of the thumbnail in the library in Lightroom.  When I clicked on it the message told me that the photo could not be found any where in my computer.  WHERE AND WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?  I started looking and hundreds of photos of our trip to Kansas City this summer, a nature trip to Trempeleau, and some awesome Scarlet Tanager photos from Black River Falls.........all gone.

I didn"t know how this could happen so I called Tom Donovan who was my instructor at WTC in Lightroom and he explained another student had this same problem.  When I imported the photos into Lightroom 2 apparently there is a selection to copy or to move.  I must have chosen the wrong one and then when I went back, even though I could see each and every photo...it was only a thumbnail and no copy actually exists. 

Now in my right mind I can"t even imagine why Lightroom would have this option in Import.  In the meantime, I am still without my photos...until I remembered a little disk that accompanied a new Scan Disk I purchased.  It is called RecuePro by Scan Disk.  Oh, I didn"t tell you the worst part yet...I had formatted all my memory cards when I put them back into my camera.

This software is able to retrieve all the photos that you did not shoot over even though it was formatted.  The good news is that I now have recaptured most of my lost photos...anyway the ones I mentioned above and have copied them to a DVD to have an additional backup copy. 

So if you want to learn a lesson from me:

Always:  back up you photos onto a CD or DVD immediately before you look at them.  Patience is a virtue!

Always:  if you use  Lightroom make sure you are importing them correctly and not just getting a thumbnail. 

I will post another Orton effect that I recently did so that you can view a photo with this blog.  The other photo is of an early morning fog in the Coulees around La Crosse.  Yes, you have to get up early to capture this type of beautiful landscape but it is so worth it.

Enjoy!  Mary Ann

I like everyone else loves a shortcut but thought it would be difficult to create an action.  Actually with clear cut language and descriptions I hope you will see creating an action is in fact very easy and you will find yourself making them for many of the photo manipulations that you do often.  Some of these may be like different sepia tones with blends applied, more than one filter in use, or creating a frame effect.

I started with my basic work flow in Lightroom to make this garden scene to my taste with white balance, adjusting tone, clarity, vibrance and a slight curve adjustment to highlights and shadows.  Then I exported to Photoshop.  If you do not use Lightroom you may start here:

1. Open your photo.
2. If you did no adjustments in Lightroom you may want to adjust your levels.  I always adjust my R, G, B sliders separately and then go to RGB and adjust the tonal quality before clicking OK.
3. Now lets make our action as we want this photo to look like a painting.
4. Click on the Actions palette (it's grouped with the History palette or go to Windows and check Actions).  Click on New Action button at the bottom of the palette.  (If you have your action palette in button mode you can't see this button so click off the button mode.)
5. Name your action: Painting action, Set: Default, Color: None and Click Record.
6. Your will want to increase your Saturation to pop it a little so go to Adjustments, Hue/Saturation and move the Saturation slider to between +25 and +50 depending on your photo.  I used +50 on this photo.
7. Note:  do not click on OK or Stop recording until I tell you too!  Apply 1st of 4 filters.  Open under Filter>Glass>Distortion 3,Smoothness 3, in Texture choose Canvas, Scaling 79%
8. Go to the bottom and click on New Effect Layer.  (Sometimes it will give you an extra layer but you just need to go to the next setting and then come back and apply).  In the actions you should see Glass is now in the New Effect Layers.
9. Next Filter.  Open Artistic>Paint Daubs Brush Size 4, Sharpness 1, Brush Type choose Simple.  Now it should be showing Paint Daubs in the New Effect Layer above the Glass Layer.
10. Next Layer:  Click on New Effect Layer icon to add another new layer (If it shows Paint Daubs again, don't worry because when you save this next layer it will change).
11. Next Filter:  Go to Brush Stroke> Choose Angled Strokes.  set Direction Balance to 46, Stroke Length 3, Sharpness 1.  You should now have 3 layers. If you have 4 and the last layer is called Angled Strokes do not choose another New Effect Layer Icon at the bottom as you will use this extra Angled Stroke, however if you only have 3 layers then choose the New Effect Icon.  It may come up with the name Angled Stroke but don't worry about that.)
12. Next Filter:  Go to Texture>Texturizer> Choose Canvas, Scaling 65%, Relief 7, Light chose Top Left, and leave Invert Unchecked.
13. Use Ctrl+J or on a Mac Com+J to get a copy of your background layer in the palette window.
14. Desaturate this level by going to Adjustments>Desaturate>Saturation -100.
15. Change the Blend Mode in the Layers Palette from Normal to Overlay.
16. Now go to Filters>Stylize>Emboss and Set Angle to 135 degrees, Height 1 pixel, Amount 500%. NOW YOU CAN CLICK OK! (You will see your top layer in the Layers Palette looks all gray)
    
17. Go to the opacity slider on the Layers Palette and lower it from 100% to 40%. NOW YOU CAN CLICK STOP ON THE ACTIONS PALETTE.
18. You can crop before or after using this action.
    

Below you can see the photo after the action has been applied.

I hope you will try this on your florals and maybe even a portraits to see how you like it.  Of course the larger you can view the results the better it will look. It really has a painterly look verses looking like a blurred photo!

Enjoy!

Mary Ann

Last Sunday was the closure of the La Crosse Interstate Fair.  It is our local county fair which has an open class of photography for anyone to enter.  There were about 70 different categories divided between color and black and white.  Most of the prints had to be in the small 4 by 6 inches with a few categories could only be 5 by 7 inch sizing.  This is done to keep the cost of printing to a minimum and with over 900 entries they only had room to display the ribbon winners.  Jon Lee was the judge and the best I have ever heard at this competition.  He knew the subject extremely well, added helpful critiquing and seemed extremely fair in his overall presentation of the winners.  We were only able to stay for one hour but I was amazed at his ability to communicate with the audience.  He started judging the open class at 4pm and finished at midnight!

I had 2 other winners a 1st and 2nd place in infrared photography, one in color and one black and white.  I totally missed the boat because I didn't realize why they looked foggy.  I forgot to reset my ISO which was at 1600 from shooting the fireworks on the 4th.  Since there were no other entries but one in that category I was awarded those ribbons by default.  I couldn't figure out why and blamed it on a very windy day when I took the photos but when I looked at the pictures I took around the fairgrounds I still had the same problem and the light bulb finally went off.

So if I can give you the tip of the day:  check your setting on your camera BEFORE you start taking your photos so you won't be embarrassed and leave without the photos you thought you took.

I hope you enjoy looking at these 12 of the 14 ribbons I won.  I would show you the infrared photos but I can't find where I saved them...likely story, huh  .

Enjoy!

Category:  Transportation, Color       1st Place Winner - Blue Ribbon

Category:  Special Occasion, Black & White  1st Place winner  Blue Ribbon

Category:  Architectural Close-up, Black & White  2nd Place winner  Red Ribbon

Category:  Architecture, Color   2nd Place winner  Red Ribbon

Category:  Other Travels, Black & White  2nd Place winner  Red Ribbon

Category:  Architecture, Black & White  2nd Place winner  Red Ribbon

Category:  Other travels, Color  Third Place winner  White Ribbon

Category: Close-up Man-made Object, Color   3rd Place winner  White Ribbon

Category:  Enlargement, any other, Color  3rd Place winner  White Ribbon

Category:  Wild or zoo animals, Color  3rd Place winner  White Ribbon

Category:  People over 19, Color  4th place winner  Pink Ribbon

Category:  Nature Close-Up   Color  4th Place winner  Pink Ribbon

For years I have tried to take some photos of the Fireworks.  I never was successful.  This year between some guidence from a friend and photographer, Roger Plesha and my new 50 mm f1.4 lens I had plenty of wonderful shots to choose from.

What a beautiful evening to be out on the river.  Ryan archored the boat right at the mouth of the Black River where it joins the La Crosse and mighty Mississippi River.  Riverfest was going on throughout Riverside Park so the lighting was bright and music entertaining.  Near us was a houseboat with several middle school aged kids and another boat with a very entertaining grow-up.  Well soon the frisbee's were flying and it was amazing how well they could throw and catch between the boats.  With the few that were missed the kids were more than willing to jump in and retrieve.  What fun to help cheer them on. 

I looked up the metadata of the original photo I chose and my Canon D20 was at 1/250 sec, f/3.2 and ISO 1600.  In the manipulated photo I just did a tighter crop, slight saturation, and adjusted exposure a tweak.  I find I dislike setting the sharpening more and more as it takes away from the ambiance that I find I like.  With this fast lens all was hand held.  I would have never been able to use a tripod and find the spot in the sky!

Just imagine the Star Spangle Banner planing in the background or my favorite the 1812 Overture.  Oh, what fun it must be to be in Boston to listen to the "Boston Pops" playing that selection on the 4th.

Original

Cropped and slight editing

Last week we had the privilege of visiting with Maureen in Kansas City as she was there as a adviser teacher of SKILLS, USA for her students from Foothills High School in Henderson, NV.  What an experience.  We had seen this wonderful competition before but this time we were able to meet the students and what a wonderful group of young people they were.  All were in the top 2 percent of the talents they competed in and one group placed 8th in the nation, and another young lady won a gold medal and with it came a $40,000.00 college scholarship!

I used this trip to photograph some of my entries for our La Crosse County Fair which begins on July 15th.  I was missing photos in some of the categories I planned to enter.  The one of the lovely little girl has a history to go with it.  We were visiting the Pony Express Museum in St. Joseph's, MO and there was a play area for children.  She captivated my eye while she was playing house with her brother, aunt, and grandmother.  Of course, I asked permission of the grandmother before taking the photo and told her what I intended to use it for when she told me that her family was direct descendants of William Russell who was one of the three investors in the Pony Express.  If I remember correctly this little girl is the 6th direct generation.  What fun to have a story with the darling photo.

It was hot, as in very, very hot in Kansas City last week with temperatures in the heat index of over 105 degrees in the afternoon.  We were at the center where Skills USA was competing and there was a small outside balcony.  I went out with my camera and I couldn't have ask the city to plan a better "Kodak moment" when it came to lining up this beautifully colored architecture...and I needed a architectural entry, desperately.

This is my favorite photo that I took on this trip.  It is a ceiling overlooking a glass floor over the poppy fields in the WWI museum which was right near the Westin Crown Plaza Hotel where we stayed.  The history of this era is very well told though artifacts, stories, and history.  It's a must see if ever visiting KC especially on a hot day.  The second floor has two wings with more interesting displays and the view of the downtown area is spectacular.

TIP for the day:

 Sometimes you get a photo under exposed and it just is too dark for your likeing.  With PS and blend modes it can be easily saved.

Press Ctl J (or Duplicate) so that you now have two copies.

Change the Blend mode on the top layer to screen.  If your into shortcuts it is Alt-Shift-S.

Now use the opacity slider to make it the right depth of exposure you are satisfied with.

If there are areas that you don't want this blend to effect just use your eraser tool to eliminate that area controlling the hardness of your brush and  opacity as you chose.

I hope this tiny tip may just save that one photo that is precious to you but just to dark.

Well back to finishing the collecting of my photos for the fair submission.

Enjoy!

Mary Ann

I never thought of using Camera Raw to straighten a photo but it is very easy.  This tip came from NAPP the National Association of Photoshop Professionals:

Quickly Straighten Images in Camera Raw

While Camera Raw can do amazing things with the WhiteBalance menu, Exposure sliders, and other adjustments to get the best out ofyour images, there's one tool I use all the time: the Straighten tool. Justclick on the Straighten tool at the top of the window (or press A, the keyboardshortcut), select a starting point, and then click-and-drag across an elementin the image that's straight. Camera Raw will rotate the image as needed. PressReturn (PC: Enter) to see what the image will look like without opening it.

When you open the photo in PS it will open cropped and straighten.  Whalla!

If you don't know how to open Camera Raw (CRS3, or 4)  Go to Bridge and select your photo from your files then chose File>open in Camera Raw (or Ctr R shortcut on a PC, cmd R on a Mac).

Another note is that once you straighten and open in Camera Raw your original photo in bridge with no longer exist and the straigthen photo will replace it.  If this is not what you want to happen then strainghten in Photoshop. 

This photos was not straight so I used the method above to straighten it.  Works perfectly and very easy to use.

Enjoy!

Mary Ann