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We may revisit Blogger at a future date but for now we'll be a one-blog sort of couple.

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I'm ready to step up, which imaging program should I buy?

I'm getting a very regular question these days. It's a question that excites me and frustrates me all at the same time. I'm excited because the question means friends and acquaintances are not only enjoying photography but they are also realizing they have a friend who might know a thing or two about the subject. So why does it frustrate me? Despite my experience, despite my recommendations, they are still going to go out and purchase Photoshop, get ridiculously frustrated, and then begin to enjoy their new newfound hobby less and less. And then they feel like I'm not doing my part in teaching them everything I know in two questions or less. I do try, I swear!

Please keep in mind that I've been a Photoshop user for 16 years, the skills I am able to utilize in MY images has come from a long, challenging learning curve. I'm always happy to help friends with advise and with an edit or two, but lately I feel like I'm just being taken advantage of with freebie image modifications: So take the advice I'm about to give or just learn to take better pictures that don't require editing, that part is up to you.

That said, the question I'm hearing on a regular basis these days is...

I'm ready to step up to the next level, what application should I buy? 

For anyone reading my above grumpy rant and the following question, "the next level" refers to any level above whatever free app came with your system. Could be iPhoto, could be MS Photo, doesn't matter. The person asking the question wants to do more with their images than red eye reduction and using the magical Enhance button. Good on ya!

Not surprisingly, the next level is NOT Adobe Photoshop. It's not even Photoshop Elements, the dumbed down version of Photoshop. In fact, stay away from Adobe. Adobe's level and THE NEXT LEVEL don't even exist on the same planet.

The software you want to buy is... On One Software Perfect Photo Suite.

On One Software is not only the next level, it's a wonderful collection of photo tools that not only make photo editing a lot of fun, the learning curve is practically nonexistent. Plus, the suite of tools can be very affordably purchased individually, most for $99 a package.

If you're going to buy individual packages, my recommendation is to start with Perfect Effects 3. It's a very fun application that allows you to apply global "enhancements" to your images that really can instantly spice them up in a click or two. Plus, you can layer effects on top of one another to utilize many enhancements over the same image.

Next on the list of individual packages is Photoframe 4.6 Pro. This package has hundreds of cutting edge photo "frames" to surround your latest works of art with hip frame effects. There's not much more to the package than that, but the scalable frames are incredibly well done and I've seen many beginners really enjoy what a bitchin frame can do for their image.

The last package I'm recommending tonight is Perfect Portrait 1. This photo tool is all about skin tones, beautiful eyes, and sparking teeth. Portrait work is seriously difficult stuff in Photoshop and takes a long time for newbies. Perfect Portrait 1 though does much of that heavy lifting for you in mere seconds. Believe me, in the skin tone and blemish arena, it's well worth it to use an application that does the nitty gritty work and leaves your sanity and free time in the evening intact.

OK, that's my recommendation for THE NEXT LEVEL. More flexibility and power than the free stuff you got with your PC but not the end all, all frustrating app that is Photoshop. Plus, the entire photo suite package above is still LESS THAN HALF of a version of Photoshop. 

Full disclosure: The links above go to Amazon and if, God willing, you make a purchase, I get a very, very, very small commission. If you prefer to skip the links and buy from the source then please go to ononesoftware.com where you can purchase and download the entire photo suite. 

Rhododendron in SE

This is one of my first HDR images at the Rhododendron Garden in Southeast Portland. While the flowers are finally blooming and coming to life now that Spring is make a half assed attempt to overtake Winter, I prefer this shot in black and white to demonstrate the cool structures. The bridge deserves to be called out as I'll bet even in it's super cool state it takes a back seat to the well planted and meticulously maintained property. I'm looking forward to return trips in the near future as Spring will be in full bloom in the next couple of weeks. If it stops raining, that is!  

Motion of the Ocean

Thought I'd upload an image I was playing with last night. In it's color state it's a rather cool image. The sand golden yellow, the water has a rather dark hue even on a brightly lit day. It had potential. I'm really not sure why I had to make it a darker, more contrasty, maybe a little more sinister image. Maybe I'm in a dark mood? Maybe I like the contrast between the water and the sand? I'm not sure at this point. What made me even take the time to play with this image though was the motion, the movement from, in my perspective, left to right. The dark water and the dark hill all flow together in a funnel towards the monolith and then pour right out the side of the image.

I cropped it from it's original ratio since there was a lot of sky in the image that wasn't doing much for it. Now I'm not so sure.

Finally, the heavy contrast and lack of detail in the shadows reminds me of film days of the past, where in broad daylight that detail was sacrificed for properly exposed images. Plus, the monolith certainly seems more intimidating in its darkened state. Cool. 

A Random HDR from the High Desert Plains

I picked a random HDR to work out tonight just for the fun of it. This was taken last winter on the high desert plains of Oregon near an on-the-verge of ghost town called Dufur. We actually really enjoy Dufur even though it has an odd vibe about it. The Balch Hotel is there and it's one of the coolest hotels we've ever visited. Three floors, no elevator, half the electrical outlets are original installs from somewhere around 1910. But still, what a wonderful place to stay for a night or two!

So this particular structure is an old schoolhouse that has been abandoned for nearly 100 years. It took us hours to locate it too. It is, as you can tell from the surroundings, in the absolute middle of nowhere. The winter wind was blowing, the air was so dry you could feel your uncovered skin crack, but as far as we could tell there wasn't another human being within 30 minutes drive in any direction.

While the structure had been maintained by one or two caring folks over the years, the inner walls and internal structures had collapsed. The outside looked surprisingly strong though, which wasn't a big surprise. Many of the abandoned structures Beverly and I have come across in the Oregon desert are surprisingly well preserved. We attribute this consistently preserved nature to the incredibly low average humidity of the Oregon desert. Without the mold normally seen in the low lying river valleys  west of Mt. Hood the wood stays healthy and strong for decades. Maintained or not, we abided by our policy to never enter these structures and happily explored the landscape in the bitter air.

One day we'll head on back to the plains, probably as soon as Autumn rushes by as it's threatening to do in Oregon this year. Once the colors leave the Gorge we'll head east to the nearly always colorless plains for even deeper exploration of Oregon's hidden past. 

Beach Weddings can be brutal!

We're hitting the tail end of another couple of weeks of post-wedding post-production. It feels good to be nearing the end of our last wedding of the 2011 season with deliverables on the verge of complete.

This was our first wedding on the Oregon coast and the environmental conditions were less than ideal. While we were thankful it wasn't pouring rain on us, the wedding was scheduled when the sun was still rather high with strong light and strong contrast. Depending on the direction we were shooting we'd have to change techniques by up to four stops. This lead to a lot of quick retakes since setting cameras on any sort of auto-exposure in starkly opposite lighting would have yielded unfavorable results as soon as you changed directions. For instance, setting a camera on shutter priority and shooting into a strongly backlit scene guarantees the subject will be underexposed when the meter shuts down prematurely. With the sun to my back though shutter priority would work fine, albeit with very small apertures like f16, which is not my ideal setting for portraiture. Like I said, a tough day to shoot a wedding.

Regardless, we made our adjustments throughout and still managed to walk away with many, many, many keepers. Like always, we wish we could have captured more, but that pesky thing called time doesn't relent for the most expedient of shooters.

I'm looking forward to posting some more work on this blog of non-wedding related material soon as well. The smell of Autumn is in the air and the gorge is calling our names, it's time to pursue bronze colors, photograph leaves in a downward angle rather than up to the branches, and capture nature headed towards its inevitable winter slumber. And then, the darkness of winter will be around us once again! Ugh. =)

HDR: Here for the long haul

In case you're not in tune to the photographic realm these days, HDR has taken center stage as the technique of the future. HDR, if you've got time to say it in the proper long winded fashion, High Dynamic Range photography is the process of smushing several differently exposed images together and using the combined tonalities to create one amazing image. Or an image so amazingly fake people wonder if you drew the picture in the dark with a felt pen on the back of a cat while it cleaned its ears.

At this time HDR requires specially designed software expressly made to combine those tonalities and present the user with a myriad of output possibilities, all generally more impressive than the three or more images you fed the software. Also at this time the effort to properly utilize the software and further refine the output image to even more amazing levels with a tool like Photoshop takes far more time than the average user is willing to spend. This, of course, will all change as photography businesses everywhere are sniffing the profit to be made by making HDR possible with nothing more than the press of a shutter button. Then HDR will be mainstream. At first its inclusion will command an extra $50 for that model camera; But within two months it'll be another standard feature like a lens or the Program setting. What will make it special at that point will thankfully be the same thing that made it special before it took the expressway to mainstream: the photographer.

Knowing what to point the camera at, how to compose an exceptional image, understanding the parameters at play and how to adjust them, still requires a talented individual behind the viewfinder. So while HDR is certain to go mainstream and be just a shutter press away, the likes of the image above will still be produced by a select few with the know how, and more importantly, the investment of time to output and refine the results of the technique of the future. Even when it's the mainstream of now.