Flaming Circles

I was treated to an impromptu fire dance with Poi Balls.  It was near dark and with no tripod at hand I hand held with a long shutter speed to catch the movement of the flame.  In Lightroom I desaturated everything but the flame.  Then I reduced the clarity for a softer look.  To add a little more interest to the photo I also split toned the image.

 

 

A Challenge

Outdoor photography can be challenging more so when subjects aren’t static.  You’ll find plenty of advice for landscape photography.  It assumes you’re deciding where and when you point your lens at a subject.  You also have the luxury of manually setting your aperture and shutter.  Even some outdoor activities operate in a “controlled” environment.  Activities like baseball and soccer take place within a defined area where the light doesn’t change to a significant degree over the course of a game. Then there are activities like hang gliding and paragliding where the conditions can change as the wings move across a sky that is rarely static.  Ideally a blue sky with some puffy white clouds is the best condition.  That’s when the automatic focus works to perfection and noise is nonexistent. The less than ideal is when you really have to work at it.  This image is an example of that.  The paraglider has landed with me looking into the sun. That is a problem under these conditions because the ridge is in deep shadow Since I’m  on shutter priority my aperture sets itself in kind. But the aperture on my zoom lens opens only so wide.  Fortunately, the sun over the wing gives a nice sunburst effect along with the lens flare which leads the eye down to the paraglider pilot.  I could have cropped out hang glider wing at the bottom but I like the added dimension and context it gives the scene.  The image out of the camera had a much darker foreground because my aperture could only open so much.  However with the help of Lightroom and the Graduated Filter Tool I could lighten the foreground as you see it without noise becoming an issue.   

Lightroom Fun or How to do More with Less

Just outside the Assagio’s at the Ala Moana Shopping in Honolulu is a 12 foot tall water sculpture. I took pics of it a few months back but didn’t think too highly of what I got.  The picture bottom left was the best of the lot.  Images like this are candidates for Lightroom presets.  Presets range from a simple Black and White to a very funky looking infrared treatment.  I’ve posted numerous images on the blog utilizing presets.  Creating a preset is just a matter of changing the different settings in the Develop Module and then saving a group of settings you like.  Then click on that preset and your image will instantly change to reflect those settings.  If you like it, print it or export it to your photo sharing site, and whatever changes you make have no effect on the original image.

Here I am with an “EH” photo looking for inspiration in a preset and I stop at the Point Curve Presets.  These are presets which manipulate the Tone Curve.

This one makes the curve look like an “M” as you can see here.  Presets are not set in stone.  You can play with it if the initial look isn’t what you wanted.  Which is what I did here. Moving the Dark slider back and forth,  I liked the different results but didn’t think the individual images were as interesting as the kaleidoscopic result I created from moving the slider back and forth!  How to recreate that effect?  An animated GIF file!!! The first step is to create a series of virtual images with incremental changes to the image. In this case, I moved the dark slider over ten points at a time starting from –100 ending at +100 resulting in 22 different virtual images. To create the GIF, I had Lightroom export the images into separate layers in Photoshop with the “Edit in” command.

In Photoshop I select all the layers then open the animation palette by choosing “Window” from the menu bar and selecting “Animation“.  With the animation palette open, ( it’s a long strip at the bottom of the window)  I needed to convert each layer to it’s own frame in the animation palette. With all the layers selected, I clicked the flyout menu in the upper right hand corner of the animation palette and choose “Make frames from layers”. The animation palette will be populated by frames of each image. Then I needed to choose how long each image will display in the GIF with the frame delay option.  For this, I picked .05 sec.  Finally, I saved it with “ Save for Web and Devices (.gif under this option)” in the File menu.

There is one caveat to this. Make sure you reduce the images to a manageable size!!!  Assuming you’re working with images from a DSLR as I was, you can’t work with the original size in Photoshop.  Especially since I had 22 versions of the image.  Photoshop will choke and die when you save for the web. I could have used a smaller number of images but I liked the effect with 22.  I exported the different versions as JPEG’s  resizing on the long edge at 1024 and a quality setting of 25.  Then I Imported those images back into Lightroom and used them to create the GIF in Photoshop.

From a plain Jane to a Kaleidoscope of Color!  (click on the image to see it change)

                                                                    

Having Fun

A friend of mine took a picture of herself recently and I saw some possibilities for having fun with lightroom presets. This emulates a Kodak film Porta VC 160 along with edits to the tone curve to create a negative image.   You can create your own presets or download ones for free or purchase them from other enterprising photographers such as Gavin Seim .  You can quickly go thru dozens of presets looking for just the right one.  I chose this one because it shows her eyes and eyebrows nicely.  Catwoman eyes! Enjoy!

 

Go Thata Way

Panorama Sunset

Splash

Avatar in Christmas Lights

Wading Out

Morning Sun