Last year (2012/09 Photo Tip), I wrote about using Lightroom Development tools to create Pop and Mystery in a photo. The gist: darken skies, selectively increase color saturation and increase contrast. Ansel Adams famously said the negative is the score, the print the performance. The RAW file you create in camera is a digital negative; […]
Photo Tip: Create Pop and Mystery in Lightroom 4 ____ 2012/09
A partly-cloudy western sky made me anxious as I approached the famed Mirror Lake at Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground, Mt. Rainier National Park. Could a mackerel-like sky develop? A lenticular cloud above the peak? Would there even be sunset light on the mountain? This was my 10th or 11th trip to Indian Henry’s over many […]
Photo Tip: Ligthroom 3 Black and White ____ 2011/11
If Ansel Adams had had the darkroom power of Lightroom 3 to manipulate black and white imaging, he’d do a leaping victory dance like Jack Black in The Big Year. Ansel artfully dodged and burned his negatives, and controlled light in the field with filters, one filter per shot. Today, digital age tools boost control […]
Photo Tip: Hot Spots and Spotlighting ___ 2010/12
Shortly after a late October rainstorm, I visited the Columbia Gorge for some weekday waterfall shooting. Our first stop was Elowah Falls, a .8-mile hike up a boot-worn trail. After a half-hour of scouting, we got down to shooting at this photogenic spot. To my knowledge, the first photographer to get the “shot” from this […]
Tip: Polarize that sky (without a polarizer) __ 06/2008
Edited 3/3/2013. In the March, ’08 tip I discussed “the only filter”—the polarizer—a filter that hasn’t gone away with digital, and whose hallmark is a deep, blue sky. Of course, if this was the only thing a polarizer was good for, it would go the dustbin route of other filters. But a dramatic blue sky […]