Vacation for the Heart and Mind

Inland

Abstraction of Light

This is my 700th blog post. That is a lot of posting. I started my vacation inland taking in the natural beauty the Earth provides with a little help from the Light of Sun.

My goal with this vacation trip was to shoot everything with natural light and my new Vivitar 70-200mm lens. I accomplished those objectives for the most part, using my Tamron 17-50mm lens for only a few landscapes.

The image to the left is an abstraction of light illuminating the leaves of a tree through the forest canopy. This was done intentionally, using the natural light bouncing off the tree leaves and a naturally darker area that fell in the shadow and I moved my camera to create the movement.

Contrast of Light and Dark

Again, using the natural light falling through the forest canopy to allow the light to fall on the subject and leave the background in shadow I was able to capture and isolate the subject.

This is a technique I have been working to master for a couple of years now. Like all things in photography, this technique requires some compromise of others choices, such as composition as the shadowed area might not always be in line with how you may want to compose the image and depth of field with adjustments to the aperture. Another compromise is exposure, in which the subject might not be as brightly lit as you would like due to the low light; see the middle image below as an example.

Delicate Fern

Lightly Lit Leaves

Bloom in Contrast

Ocean Side

Patterns

Heading to the beach, I found natural patterns as well as man-made structures.

The patterns that can be found in the sand are as varied as the fingerprints on the people in the world. All you have to do is look around with an open mind.

 Observing the patterns is as simple as looking at the bigger picture and ignoring the smaller details from the onset. Once I have captured the patterns I then move in and look at the details.

Sand Patterns

The above photograph and the photograph to the right we both shot within ten feet of each other.

Again, just by looking, I was able to find both of these photos. It takes a shift, an intentional shift, in the way I see to be able to see the patterns. It can be difficult. It is a lot like trying to the forest for the trees or trying to see the sailboat in the middle of a poster of patterns of static (popular in the early 90s).

Once the shift happens I start seeing the patterns everywhere. I see the patterns in wood, sand, gravel, asphalt and even in crowds of people. After practicing for years, I can now switch from one mode to another and back again.

It just takes time to develop the ability to switch it over if it doesn't come to you naturally.

Fossil Love

Sandcastles in Triplicate

Metamorphosis

Aquatic Adventures

The sand of time lead to the sea

I have a huge fascination for waves. I will let those images speak for themselves.

Patterns in the Waves

Green Crush

Afternoon Light

Back to Back

 The best way to photograph waves for me is to shoot in the light of the afternoon sun, but that is because I am on the left coast. If I were to be standing at the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, I would shoot early morning, an hour after sunup. This is what helps makes the waves glow.

Aloft

Subjects in the sky are always of interest for me. But I typically don't shoot things that are directly overhead because the underside of a bird isn't as interesting to me as it flying at me.

Goodnight Moon

Burning Sky

Sun Sets on Another Day

And Finally, I love it when subjects in the sky make their way to the ground.

That's all for now. Do yourself a favor, take a few days and find your artist. It is an amazing journey.

Free Texture Friday

Sand Texture

Today is Free-Texture-Friday and today's free texture is a great natural texture of sand patterns.

Nature provides some of the best patterns to use in images.

Click here to see the full resolution file, then right click and save.

Lightroom Tutorials - Importing Images and Watermarking

A member of my photography club emailed me a couple of questions about Lightroom and rather than answer via an email response I thought that I would address these questions via a blog post. The first question was in regards to image/catalog management specific to importing images and the second question was about how to create a watermark for your images.

Let's address the first question first. Can we set it up somewhere in LR that the 'already' imported images will be automatically 'unchecked' when we are ready to import new files?

Lightroom 3.6 Import Interface

The easy answer is yes are a couple of ways to not have images in your catalog automatically unchecked or ignored altogether.

Select New Photos option

The first possible method is used the file options, All Photos is selected by default. Change this to New Photos and this should show only new photos, or photos that do not exist in your catalog already.

This may have odd effects, such as if you store all your photos in one location and just import them into your catalog. If you are doing this, when you remove an image from your catalog, without deleting it from the disk, the image will reappear in your import dialog each and every time you do a new import. This is because the image doesn't exist in your catalog but still exists in the folder. 

Don't Import Suspected Duplicates

The second option, which will have similar results as the above but remains checked for each import until you uncheck it. Under the file handling on the top-left panel of the import dialog, you can click the Don't Import Suspected Duplicates checkbox. Again, this only works if the image exists in the catalog already, but could prove problematic.

Image management can be tricky, but successful image management starts with how we import our images. As a part of my workflow I always move the images to a new destination from a separate Import folder on my desktop. This ensures that the only images shown in my import dialog are the new images from my shoot. This is one of the fundamental workflow things that I teach in my Lightroom Workshops.

Lightroom Watermarking

The second question that was asked is; How do I add watermark / copyright on the images?

The easiest way to add a copyright to an image is to put a copyright notice in the metadata. Then when exporting or printing select the Simple Copyright Watermark which used the copyright metadata entry for the source of the text for the watermark.

There is a lot to understanding watermarking. Watermarking is a very powerful way to brand your images. In addition to Metadata, watermarking gives a visual clue to who made the image. But offers little as a deterrent to theft. 

If you are watermarking your images to prevent image theft you might as well be using a Chihuahua for an attack dog; just not that effective. Watermarks can be cropped or cloned out of image easily. They have little impact as measure of theft prevention.

Lightroom allows you to add two types of watermarks; text and an image. The text watermark allows you to put any text you want to. An image watermark allows you use whatever you want as a watermark. The image above uses an image so I can brand my photos with not only my domain name, but also my logo. The image also gives me access to thousands of fonts rather than the select few Adobe allows Lightroom to have access to.

The first step is to create a new watermark in Lightroom is to click on the Edit menu and select Edit Watermarks... menu item.

This will open the Watermarks dialog box, below.

To create a text watermark, select Text as the Watermark Style: option.

Enter the text you want to have as your watermark. This may simply be your name, or ©, year and your name, for example; © 2012 Jane Doe Photography or simply your business name. 

As a bonus for this article, to type the copyright symbol, simply press and hold the Alt key while you type 0169 on the 10 key keypad then release the Alt key. This trick doesn't work without a 10 key keypad, so if you are using a laptop without a 10 key keypad, simply copy and paste the © from this or any other website.

Now under the Text Options in the dialog box you can change the font, style alignment and color of the text. You can also add a shadow to the text and adjust the shadow's opacity, offset, radius and angle. 

Scrolling down through the watermark options you can also change the Watermark Effects. This allows you to change the opacity of the watermark. Making a watermark a little transparent helps it to not over power the image. 

You can change the Size of the watermark, to fit the image, make it proportional or fill the image. I typically use Fit in this option because regardless of the size or orientation (landscape/portrait) of my export, it fits in the area I set it up to do. The other size options have strange results from time to time. 

The Inset adjustments allow you slightly shift the watermark left, right, up and down to get it aligned the way you want. The inset adjustments are in relation to where the watermark is anchored, described below.

The Anchor tools allow you anchor the watermark to a specific area of the image; top left, top center, top right,  middle left, middle center, middle right,  bottom left, bottom center, bottom right.

Watermarking using an image works just the same as a text watermark, except you are using an image. Under the Image Options you will click on the Choose... button.

This will open a dialog box where you can select images you have already made for use as a watermark. 

The adjustment sliders all work the same for the image watermark as they do for the text.

Once you have your watermark made, click the Save button. Give the watermark preset a name and click the Create button.

Now comes the time to use the watermark.

If you are printing from Lightroom, there is an option to include the watermark in the printout. This is a great option for printing client proofs. In the Print module, simply check the Watermarking option and select the watermark you wish to use.

For exporting your image for use on the web, you scroll through the export options and near the bottom check the Watermark checkbox and select the watermark you want to use. 

As you can see you can have many watermarks. This can be beneficial if you are doing work under multiple businesses as well as having top and bottom, as well as left and right aligned watermarks, as well as dark, light and even numerous color versions so you can theme the watermarks to match your images.

That's it for now. I hope this answers some of your questions about file management and watermarking. Feel free to email if you have any specific questions about Lightroom.