The *Official Photography Thread*

I usually sit and talk with people in need of some companionship, especially the homeless population in Lincoln. There are some really cool people out there. This day I was taking my dad and brothers to lunch quick before he had to work and we were pushing it on time. He was almost late. So I sadly had to head out.

 

Thats awesome. I usually am not like that. I have a hard time starting a conversation with strangers.

 

It's only awkward at first ha I usually go grab a hot chocolate for myself and an extra, plop down next to a hobo (looking ahead not right at him haha), hand it to him, and ask him, "how's it goin, man?"

Sharing in doing the same thing (drink), sitting down level with them and not looking down at them, and not staring right in their face make it less awkward for them. Typically just chat for a bit, ask if they need anything and before I leave I ask if they'd like me to pray with them (I know not everyone is religious so don't turn that comment into a rant ha). It's so worth it, man. Really, really cool people out there and they really appreciate the love haha

 

sup guys, lotta cool photos in this thread! there are some seriously talented folks out there.

i just got a new-to-me Canon 40D for christmas (awesome gift!) from my parents. i did b&w photography and darkroom stuff in highschool and had a blast.

gotta remember all my aperture/shutter speed/focal length wizardry now.

Check out my site (davidtimothy.com) if you want. would love to hear comments, criticisms, tips, hints. looking to learn everything i can!

just took this shot last night -- a pier on lake washington in kirkland, wa:

 

If one was to want to start their own webpage/blog/thing where would they start? Just curious haha I suck at technology but really have an idea of what I'd like to do in my head and want to make it happen!

 

These were taken at Chinese Lantern Festival in Dallas. All shots were handheld.
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i'd recommend wordpress (either .com or .org, depending on if you want to deal with your own hosting, etc.). there are countless themes you can apply to change the look, or it is possible to build your own theme from scratch (or have one built haha!).

i've done a lot with wordpress and can't recommend it enough, especially for the ease of use and updating.

shoot me a PM if you have any questions!

 

I don't know. I'm a derp at technology ha

I just made one quick on Wix. Wordpress looks cool as well. I'll have to decide which one to do. And I may PM you if I need anything ha I really want to make my own page and sort of blog/share photos/whatever.

 

This is a random question...

How do you sharpen your photos?

Do you create a duplicate layer and use a high pass filter to sharpen them? You could gain back some detail that you may have lost in noise reduction

 

That's what I do to almost all of mine. Then flatten layers to make one.

 

I duplicate the background layer and use that as a base and smart sharpen that, I never work on the base image just in case I mess something up. I still haven't figured out the best settings for the smart sharpen filter but whatever it works haha.

 

Well no I don't overwrite the raws, I mean as a workflow thing, I duplicate the background, say you start working on the background layer and you mess up pretty bad but don't realize, you can't just re tweak it. You need to close it and start over if you can't undo it. That's why PS has the overlay and lighten layer option. This way when you make changes on two identical layers, if you change one, then make a change on the next and realize the first change isn't as good as you thought you don't have to undo an otherwise good change you would keep.


Idk if I worded that right lol.

Here's a small flow chart explaining:
Dodge > dodge > burn > oh crap that first dodge sucks gotta undo these two good changes now oh craaaap. > start over

Dodge > dupe layer > overlay > dodge> dupe layer > overlay > burn > first dodge needs to be changed > switch layer > fix

 

I've tried a bunch of different methods of sharpening images over the years and I still suck at it.
Edge sharpening (duplicate layer, use find edges and levels to create an edges mask, unsharp mask and apply the edges mask as a layer mask), LAB sharpening (convert to LAB, sharpen Luminosity channel, lightly blur A/B channel to reduce noise), high pass, smart sharpen, etc.
Now I'm lazy and just use Lightroom sharpening/additional export sharpening. I try to spend as little time as possible in Photoshop simply because I like to have a complete history of any/all edits I've made to an image. I've found that after downsizing for web during export from Lightroom, I can just have it apply some additional sharpening for the screen and the results are satisfactory.

 

That doesn't sound crazy at all. I feel the same way a lot, actually, where the more time I spend editing my photos the worse they begin to look and I start over. Usually I'll just walk away and get back to it later.

Layers are a very powerful tool. When I bring an image into Photoshop the first thing I do is duplicate the background layer and lock it so I always have a starting point to go back to. It's all about non-destructive edits. If I need to clone spots out, I create a new layer and create the clones in that layer (check the Sample All Layers box), and if I screw up I can just hit undo. Sharpening/noise reduction can be done on different layers, and then use layer masks to selectively "blend" the changes back onto the original image. It's very time consuming though, which is why now I just spend about 95% of my time in Lightroom, and only bring the image into Photoshop if I need to do a lot of noise reduction or other editing that Lightroom is not specialized enough to do.

 

Should I get Lightroom or Photoshop elements?

 

Lightroom is a great workflow tool for processing RAW images. It can do jpeg and tiff also, but the vast majority of its power is in processing RAW. What that means is it's a one stop shop for pulling images off of your camera's card, organizing them, processing them, and exporting them for web/print. It allows you to organize and browse your photos in catalogs, apply metadata such as tags and GPS coordinates, and keeps track of the entire editing history of each photo that you've worked on. All edits are non-destructive, so you can always scratch them and start over, or tweak them endlessly. You can set flags and ratings on photos to quickly determine which ones are worth working on and which ones should just be deleted. You can search your entire catalog for photos taken with a particular lens in your collection, or search by tags you've assigned, etc.

Where Lightroom falls short is when you need to combine multiple images into one, such as with HDR or a panorama. In these cases, you will need to use Photoshop or export to TIFF and use some other specialized software to combine the images. I also find that Lightroom's noise reduction kinda sucks compared to specialized plugins, but Lightroom also supports plugins and a lot of plugins that are available for Photoshop have also been released for Lightroom.

If you shoot RAW and don't already have something that organizes your photos, you can't go wrong with Lightroom. There's a 30-day trial version available for you to see if it's right for you.

One of my good friends from college has a website devoted to photography and he's written some good guides on Lightroom here:

http://photographylife.com/post-processing-tips-for-beginners

So try it out, read around, and see if it fits your needs.

 

Thanks a lot for your help. Imma look at his site.

 

IMO, Lightroom is more of a necessity than PS for the general Photographer. Unless you're like Hagen or some of these guys who like to do some heavier post processing, which is really cool but the majority usually are fine with LR.

LR5 has upgraded some of its tools too. I can remove a stray hair or whiten teeth or whatever so I'm happy without PS but it's nowhere near PS when it comes to layering and blending photos together and whatnot.

I'd get LR first for sure. Especially since it speeds things up and gets you organized.

 

here..HDR for LR for like 5 bucks or whatever you want to donate. It works great and is more natual looking then Photomatrix

http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lrenfuse.php?sec=main

 

That's pretty neat! I'll have to check it out..