Alternative Presentations

Here is another composition from my short trip to Ricketts Glen State Park. (The other composition.) And I want to take the opportunity to say a little about the possibility of showing more than one interpretation of a digital shot (capture).

A while back I did a post titled Digital Has Changed the Way We Shoot. In it are links to a few of Brooks Jensen’s audio podcasts. These particular podcasts were about the differences in how he used to shoot with film and how he now shoots with digital capture. In part, he talks about when he shot with film needing to capture the tonal values the way he wanted them to show in the final output (print). But with digital he wants to capture, not necessarily the best looking image, but rather a file that contains the most data for future post processing. Read more »

Ricketts Glen State Park’s claim to fame among photographers is it is home to some 22 named waterfalls. And to be perfectly honest I don’t care for most of the images I see from here. And I think part of the reason is that in most of them there is too much water coming over the falls.  Until last week I had not been to Ricketts Glen.

Here in southeastern Pennsylvania we have had a hot dry summer.And this has resulted in many creeks to be running a little low. Last week I had the opportunity to spend a morning at the park. And there was not a lot of water–and that is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Ended up only visiting the 3 falls below Waters Meet.

Arrived at the lower parking lot while it was still dark and started the mile or so walk to the first waterfall in the dark. Using a head lamp, of course. Along the way saw a porcupine hanging on to the side of a tree. It was way too dark to get a picture but it was cool to see it. Seeing my first porcupine in the wild was an added bonus.

I was pleased with a number of compositions that I made. This is one of Harrison Wright Falls. Read more »

Up next will be some smallish stuff from Grand Cayman. This Harlequin Bass is about 2 1/2 inches long.

Read more »

Making lists seems to be a popular way of blogging. (Maybe we are getting too much David Letterman.) Anyway, at least for this post, I’ve decided to follow the heard. Photoshop CS 5 (and Lightroom 3) have been out for a while and I’ve had a chance to revamp how I work on images because of the new features in them. In order to make the list the feature must have a significant impact on how I work on images. Here are my top five new features in Photoshop CS5.

1. Updated Refine Edge
2. ACR’s Process 2010
3. ACR’s updated Lens Correction
4. Enhanced Noise Reduction in ACR
5. Content Aware Read more »

I was out at twilight on Tuesday evening and I thought I would share some images.

1. Asplundh Concert Hall, West Chester University
2. Papa John’s, West Chester University
3. DK Dinner

Entrance of the Asplundh Concert Hall at West Chester University. I wanted to shoot this at twilight so I would get mixed lighting conditions–very cool evening light and very warm interior from the incandescent lights.

Read more »

One last Turtle image from Grand Cayman.

We ran across this guy on an afternoon dive from the dock at Cobalt Coast.

Read more »

There are two types of contrast that can be used to make images more interesting: color contrast and tonal contrast. But for now I only want to talk about is tonal contrast. And specifically the two types of tonal contrast: overall contrast and midtone contrast, and how they can be modified during post processing. Read more »

For those readers that are “local” to the West Chester PA area,  I’ve published the classes and workshops I’m offering this Fall and Winter. I have them listed on two interlinked web sites:

• The Workshops and Classes Page on this blog
• The It’s All About the Light Tours web site.

There are a couple of new entries: Advanced Raw Workflow with Lightroom and/or Adobe Camera Raw Workshop and a Digital Black and White class for the Chester County Night School. Both of these are relatively short, at three sessions.

And if you are not local. can’t fit a class or workshop in your schedule, or prefer learning on your own you can visit this blog’s Resource Page for book recommendations. If you buy a book , or anything for that matter, after clicking through to Amazon I get a few pennies and you get a warm felling all over because you helped keep this site going. Thanks!