Photo of the Day: Easter

Nothing like an old fashioned Easter Egg hunt in your back yard! For some reason the children just didn't seem to be into it much this year, they were continuing their exploration of the short film Larry Boy seeing how many times they could watch it in a day. There finally was some excitement to go outside and gather up eggs when it was discovered the the squirrels in our neighborhood have a sweet tooth for candy. The chomped on or hid for next winter at least two eggs worth.

In the picture above Punkin gathered up her eggs filled with candy and Petz toys. I kept looking for the elusive egg that contained a D3X, but it looks as if the Bunny left me wanting.

Picture captured with the Nikon D700 and finished off in Aperture

Photo of the Day: Lake Zurich, IL

Getting together with Facebook friends can be a strange experience. When you are talking you want to quick type a message saying something witty or engaging. When talking in person it is totally different.

What you see above is my sister's cat toys. She loves her cats as can be readily seen by all of her cat toys. I give her credit though, ours are spread out through the whole house, hers are always nicely put back in this nice wicker basket.

Picture taken with the Nikon D700 with the Lensbaby and converted in Aperture.

Photo of the Day: Painesville, OH

I read so many articles on how to take a good picture. This includes what equipment you need what support you need and so forth. Much effort is taken to show what type of lens to use. My chosen camera is typically a Nikon, I know many people who won't even look at a third-party lens for fear that it won't be "sharp" enough, have enough contrast or just not take good pictures.

This picture was taken from my car while driving down the road through the windshield that was bug stained. It was taken with my Panasonic LX3, not my Nikon D3 or D700, not even my Fuji S5. Most important thing was, I was there and I stopped to capture the moment. The other stuff though important is not nearly so when compared with being there.

Captured with my Panasonic LX3, converted in Aperture with a touch of Nik Color Efex 3

Photo of the Day: Rochester, NY

My son loves slinky's. I will admit to still thinking they are pretty cool some number of years past their targeted market. The way the metal or plastic coil moves down a step at exactly the precise distance is still pretty amazing to watch. Oh sure I know the physics behind it now, but the visual pleasure as it "slinks" down is still delightful.

Buddy was playing with this slinky at the Strong Museum of Play in downtown Rochester. It had a bent coil, which any slinky regular knows means disaster while going down the stairs. A little bend job and this one was back to good as new.

This picture was captured with the Fuji S5 with the Nikon 50mm AFS Converted in Aperture Photo was taken by Kate, I was too busy playing Pitfall just off-screen.

Photo of the Day: Fox Run Winery

Interesting to me how the Photo of the Day takes shape. I always try to plan where I will take the photo as I look over my days activities. Today we all made a trip to Watkins Glen State Park I really thought that I would get a picture from inside the gorge that would be today's picture. Well the best plans as they say. The Gorge trail was closed due to ice and snow still melting from the winter. So I was skunked.

This picture was captured on the way back home as we stopped for a few wine tastings. Note to fellow travelers and winos, choose your winery well. The first place we stopped was dreadful. The second was Fox Run Winery and that was far more pleasant on my pallet. We sat sipping wine while the sun set through the side window and I captured this shot.

What I will remember though can't be seen in this picture. My daughter has cramped herself along the lower right of the picture. She wanted to see what I saw as I was taking the picture and so she folded herself into the corner. Her hip kept appearing in the picture and I kept asking her to move it a little more. I got this one as she was breathing in from the giggling.

Captured with the Panasonic LX3 and converted in Aperture using the Nik Color Efex 3 filters

Photo of the Day: Macedon, NY

I have changed my rules somewhat. This was taken yesterday evening, but I have adjusted my photo of the day "rules" to include the 24 hour period after the last picture. It makes it a little simpler on me and since I am contest judge as well as the only contestant a rules change is pretty simple.

I converted this RAW file from the D700 in Aperture and added just a little color increase to the sky with Nik Color Efex 3.0.

Nik Software

As most probably know I love Nik Software. I use the couple of plug-ins that I own quite alot. I haven't found a bad plug-in. Recently Nik just updated all of them to run under Aperture and released them as a collection. These were good under both Photoshop and Aperture. Just today they are allowing a download for Aperture only for only$299. Yes that's alot of money, but considering the same package under Photoshop is $599 you can see what an incredible savings this is for Aperture users. You can read more about the deal and purchase Nik the Complete Collection here.

How a Picture Evolves

I've had many people ask about the picture of Buddy I posted in the last blog. So, I thought I'd take a minute to let you know how that shot came to be.

I have spent much time reading two important blogs. One is Strobist and the other is David Tejada's blog. I highly recommend both blogs. Anyone can learn much from either site. I will admit that I am guilty of not reading Strobist much anymore. David Hobby was the first though to give me the creative spark that I could actually take a picture with these small pocket-sized light sources. David Tejada gives many more practical tools and applications to use them in. I will be taking a class this upcoming weekend from David T. so I can't wait to learn many new techniques. I will blog about it when I get back.

Now back to the picture of Buddy. I wanted to keep practicing single strobe lighting. I had dragged along a shoot-through umbrella and also had a very beautiful Voice Activated Lightstand and wanted to try and get a nice shot of either Buddy or Punkin in front of the setting sun. After taking more macros of flowers we moved as fast as we could to the Japanese Garden at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, there is always a lot of good spots to shoot there. We quickly moved along the trail and came to a spot next to the river that runs through the Park. In this case Punkin, who is my normal model, was sulking and hiding in the dark. I asked Buddy and he seemed very excited to have his picture taken. I was using the D3 as well as the SU-800. My VAL, was holding an SB-800 and and umbrella (isn't she talented) off of camera left. I also had the Stofen diffuser on top of the SB-800. I found a spot for Buddy to stand to try and frame him and also capture the last of the glow of the setting sun. I got a series of pictures of which this was the best of that bunch. As for one reason (already discussed in a previous blog) and for various other reasons, Buddy is 8 & he doesn't like to sit still, so this is a rare and short-lived opportunity. This is the shot right out of the camera converted to .jpg from Aperture.



From Aperture I round-tripped into Capture NX. The reason I do this is because I love Nik Control Points. Yes I could purchase Viveza from Nik for Aperture for $245, but why when I could get a much more full-featured program and even better control points with using Capture NX. That would normally cost only $189 (a nice savings over Viveza), but I had an upgrade price of ~$119. I am all about saving money. In this case the control points allow you to selectively control anything in the program. Noise Reduction, sharpening and even Nik Color Efex 3.0. I mean anything you might want to do. Truly a remarkable piece of software and I highly recommend it.

When I sized up where I would like to use this program feature, I started with the background. First, I boosted up the setting sun with a Control Point (CP) on that part of the sky. I added some warmth and also some redness. I did a matching CP in the reflection in the water. This allowed them to look similar. Then I did some spot NR on Buddy's face as well as in the sky - I was at ISO 12,800 after all! I only had NR in those areas...that is the advantage of using Capture NX. The next step was to put another CP on Buddy's face to take out some of the redness and boost contrast. After removing the redness, I added back some warmth to give him a nice glow.

After looking at the picture I realized I wanted to get rid of some of the light surrounding him, I wished I had snooted the light while on location, but with CP's I can easily adjust the amount of Brightness. I put 3 or 4 CP's around Tyler in the areas where I felt I needed to bring the Brightness down. After adjusting those CP's down, I got the final effect that you see at the top. This may sound like quite a bit of work, but with Control Points, well it was about 5 minutes (less time than it took to write it out). Everything was targeted and easy.