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Showing posts from March, 2011

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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The Sunset

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This week's post is from one of my favorite sets of shots from my favorite area of Humboldt, Trinidad. From what I remember the day started off very sunny, but as the sun was setting the clouds and fog just rolled in. To get the different features in the shot (the setting sun, clouds, fog, and water) I thought an HDR photo would work best. I was initially disappointed with the shot as it came out looking pretty flat, certainly not how I remembered it. After spending a little time in Topaz Adjust I was able to get the color back and am pretty pleased with how this turned out.  
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Last of the Waterfalls

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One of the things I struggle with as a photographer is trying new things. I find something that works and stick to it. Or, I have a tendency to only shoot 1 way. Such as when I was first trying out HDR. Everything I was shooting was for HDR. Problem is that not all shots lent themselves to good HDR shots. Plus, especially at the beginning, I wasn't sure what made a good HDR shot. Seriously, you should see my Aperture library, it's filled with crappy HDR shots that I keep around solely to remind me what works and what doesn't.
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HDR Waterfalls

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It should be no surprise that I took some bracket shots of the waterfalls from the other day. I'm not so happy with the HDR shots as I was with the normal shots, which for me is a little strange, but I think the blame goes on me, I rushed the shots. Note to self, and other photographers, don't go to a shoot with someone who's not a photographer, you'll end up feeling rushed even if they're in the car chatting happily on the phone oblivious to your shooting.
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Waterfalls!

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Shooting a decent sized waterfall has been on my List of Things I Want to Photograph for a while now. I suppose I had originally envisioned some nice Hawaiian waterfall complete with rainbow and tropical vegetation around it. Sadly, I'm not in Hawaii, but that particular shot is still on the list. I did find a waterfall not 2 miles from me though, that was fairly impressive, when you consider it was 2 miles away. It's not so tropical, and at 43ºF it certainly didn't feel tropical, but it was good enough to cross waterfall off the list.
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Back to Blogger

So I've found my way back to Blogger. Not quite coming around full circle, since I think I started back on Xanga way back when (does anyone still use that, by the way?), but it's pretty close to the first "real" blogging platform I've used. So why did I change, and do you really care? You probably don't, but I changed for the same reason I changed last time; price vs. use.
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To Augment a Shot, or Not. That is the Question

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I've been able to catch some webinars given by Topaz Labs on how to use their many products. I've been playing around with some of the products for a while now, but I've had problems using them. Not so much in how to use their products, but if I even should. When I got into photography I knew what I didn't want to do. I knew I didn't want to spend all day in Photoshop editing a photo. I wanted my style of photography to be more documentary like; to do the bare minimum of processing and let the photo stand on it's own. Over the years though I've noticed that the captured photo doesn't match what my eye sees. Sure enough, the eye can capture more photographic information than the censor of my camera. So I allowed myself to spend more time in processing a photo to get a photo to be more like what I remember seeing before I snapped the shot. It started out as little tweaks first; white balance adjustments, curves, and shadown and highlight recovery. Then it
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Vampires and Abraham Lincoln?

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I don't usually do book reviews. Basically I think they're pointless. For every review that is positive for a book there's an equal review that is negative. Unless we're talking undisputed great works, like... OK, maybe there aren't undisputed great works out there, though I think there should be. But this book is certainly not an undisputed great book, but it was a fun book that caught me doing what I'm not supposed to be doing; judging a book by it's cover. 
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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca
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