Egads – Color Printing

I think that most may not believe me, but I have had my Epson 4800 for about two years and yesterday after my last post, I made my first color print on this printer.

Even if my Black and White prints are in RGB color mode with a added Hue adjustment layer to provide my warm tone, I don’t think of them as color prints, but warm toned Black and White prints. I do use a monitor color calibration program and I think that when my Black and White prints dry down, they are about dead nuts on as to a match with my monitor. Since my Hue is a pretty low threshold, about a 6 or 7, the ‘color’ is not that intense. Which is different that a full color image.

Bias against Color images

Recently I had to face a not so nice fact, I had a bias against color images. Now I knew that I was not a people photographer, preferring the landscape, usually sans people. That was all that I needed to create a nice metaphor. I also know that I usually photographed in color but happily did my Black and White mojo to create some very nice Black and White images.

I was happy to be labeled a Black and White xxxx landscape photographer (for xxx you can add your label; urban, social, lifestyle, etc.) So why the non-interest in color when most folks today do color images?

Well, thats what I had to dig into. Recently I have been very interested in my color images that I create my Black and White images from. I know that yesterday Martin added in the comments some good reasons to help decide between the two options. By why my reluctance to REALLY consider a color image?

Getting Organized

As my title states, I am trying to get organized. My bad tendency is to get over committed and at some point, I need to figure out who is on first and what is on second.

I am trying to get organized after being out of the country for three weeks, back a week and then our regularly planned vacation to Colorado. So not much time at the desk and a ton of images to review and process. I have the recent week in Colorado for a SoFoBoMo trial run, but I have decided that those images can wait until after the SoFoBoMo event, which for me will probably be the month of May. Meanwhile, I have found another POD publisher that is of interest, BookSurge, part of Amazon, which I need to investigate a little further.

Back from Vail

Just a quick note that we are back in SoCal after completing our marathon drive back from Vail yesterday. A long time in the saddle and then my knee brace starting pinching about three hours from home, bummer. I made a slight adjustment and comfortably made the last stretch. There is a lot of beautiful landscape between the two locations while driving I-15 and then 1-70. At least for now, we sprint between the two locations due to many other commitments, but one day, we will have the time to slowly take in all that is between the two.

Thursday in Vail, we had a ton of snow and then the late afternoon light sun came out as the storm trailed off, so I was able to limp to our upper deck patio and take some wonderful images. I don’t know that these images are a fit for my Ski Town project, but I will download them later this morning and decide.

Since my Ski Town series was a warm up for SoFoBoMo in order to check out the Blurb BookSmart software, I do not feel compelled to finish this series right now. Although I have enough images to pull together to make a 35 image book, I am not sure that I have the 35 images that I would want.  With over 15 years of vacationing in Vail, I did not get to many of my haunts to photograph before I did my wipe-out. So I am going to finish my rough cut from this trip, perhaps get a web page up about this project with a couple of image, but then may consider letting it sit until I get back there again next year. I do have the option that it does not have to be done NOW.  I mean, if I was on assignment for a newspaper or magazine, I have enough images to come up with something, but that is not a deadline that I am living with.

Self assignments are nice, eh? Okay, more later;- )

Best regards, Doug

Ski Town

Okay, while nursing a bum knee, which is slowly getting better (ice 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off), I decided to push ahead with my SoFoBoMo test project, now named: (drum roll, please) Ski Town. So this is making lemonade out of lemons, which probably is a good title to a future post;- )

So instead of a five or six days of photography, I have had three. Not for the full day, but some meaningful occasions worked in with the rest of the vacation. But when I did start taking photographs, it was with a purpose. Rolling into town, I have been thinking about what makes Vail, but I have since backed off to look at what makes a ski town. And so I have been looking at and photographing the skiers and the town itself.

So where am I at right now? I have 9 pages in my Blurb BookSmart template plus the cover page, while working the hardcover option right now. That has used 7 images, plus a title page, a copyright page and an introduction page. Over the last three days, I have 350 keeper images (e.g. the ones that were not a complete flop and were not deleted) of which I have about 100 potential images. Since the PS3 processing time is so long with this portable, I am completing an initial tweak with ACR and then save the results. It gives me some working knowledge of the image and see some potential.

The Introduction has forced my to work more on getting my concepts, feelings and thoughts about this series on ‘paper’. But for me, it sometimes helps to think about where I want to go, start going there and then write my thoughts. I need a little testing of the idea with my camera first. That’s what seems to work for me.

So far, I have found that setting up the Blurb book in a Portfolio format, keeping it simple (I am using the horizontal 10 x 8 format), that it helps me with driving the process. I can drop images and see how they look paired.  I have been using some low res (72 dpi) images that I created for this blog to create a trial book. The PhotoSmart software did tell me that the resolution was too low (looks good on the screen, but when you see it in print, your gonna hate it), which is pretty cool.

Loading some images in the book format has also given me the chance to work on another issue: black & white, or color or both.  For Ski Town, it will be both black & white (images of people) and color (the town) and I can pair them and see how they work.

Bottom line, from the three days of photographing with a purpose, I think that I have the neccessary images to create a 35 image book. Nice.  You might say, basic mission accomplished. Now I have not completed the entire book with the 35 images, but it gives me a good feel of what it will take.

Prepared for chance

Yesterday when we stopped for a lunch break during our skiing, I noticed these snow covered tables and chairs off in one corner of the courtyard up in the Mid-Vail ski ‘hut’. Usually they have the BBQ running and there are a ton of folks milling about getting some fuel for the rest of the day’s running the mountain. Not today. So these were sitting idle, collecting some snow. 

I had figured out how to get my DSLR tucked into my ski jacket, even with the 17-40 mm lens, no mean trick, as this jacket was going on 15 years old, and I am a size or two larger than when I bought it.   My goal was to photograph ’skiing’, using a 2 stop neutral density filter, keeping the ASA at 100 and stopping down to f/9 to get a longer exposure time while using Av mode. I could get a longer exposure by stopping the lens down further, but then I would be getting well past my optimal f/7.1 and reducing my effective resolution. I was looking to pan the camera and introduce some blurr with a spot of focus, a take-off on my drive-by’s.  And NO I was not doing this when I took my tumble, thank you very much. I am very selective when I do this photography manover, as it’s kinda of tricky since I am a clutz to begin with.

So I am thinking one kind of photograph (actually taking some of the photographs that I want) when I see this other potential image, about 180 degrees from what I am doing. After taking a couple of photographs, I find that it is not working for me. But I still see the potential, when I notice the stair case running up behind the tables. Bingo! It was just the advantage that I needed.  After lunch, I stopped here again to bracket a couple more images and slight variations on this theme. I think that this was the second image I made from my new advantage point. But this was a chance encounter.  I figured out a way to pack along the camera (and I really must have looked like a dork with that camera under my jacket), but then I was prepared for something that I had no idea would be there waiting for me.  It was a real monochromatic picture, but in color, with the shadows, a tad too much blue, so for me the black and white mojo was the proper creative fix.

Might even make the cover of a book, eh?

Best regards, Doug

A Ski day

I have to admit, the reason we are here in Vail is to ski and party with family and friends. Today was a ski day, two inches of powder over a deep base, constant snow flurries and a very light breeze. Very nice conditions! Then in the afternoon, we had hazy sun and occassional sunlight, very, very nice! So today, I skiied my legs off.  And now I sit here with an ice pack to prove it. That darn last run;- (

But when I took that last tumble, the first thing I did while lying in the snow is to pull out my camera and make sure that it was still working. It was!

I have been using my camera today to photograph skiers, skiing and ski conditions, but hopefully in my own way. I am trying to apture those transitional moments of those who are at a wonderful get away from their normal lives, leaving some of troubles back home while enjoying the snow. In other word, much of this is a bit of fantsy, except for those who live here who make this all happen. And to capture a little of the reality.

Today was another good day, as I feel that I have at least six good images to work with to keep pace with my SoFoBoMo trial.  Issues to day, this five year old portable computer is slooooow. So it takes me way too long to process each RAW image. So being able to take the photograph, convert and tweak and place it in a book template is not going to happen. But it does give me a better idea of the limitations of what I thought was possible, which is a very important concept to learn. I can quickly (e.g. 2 – 3 hours) photograph enough images in a day (75 – 150), but it takes a lot longer to get the image to a point that it feels complete. So as I look to my fuzzy SoFoBoMo month, I need to make sure that I budget more time that I thought than I thought I would need.

And now that I am laid up for at least a couple of day, there will be much less photography, but perhaps a lot more image tweaking and maybe some time to look at the Blurb SmarBook options and templates. So hopefully something good will come out of this;- )

Best regards, Doug

Vail – dog days

Yesterday was a wonderful dog day, as you might guess from this laid back pooch who was hanging out in Vail
Village. Yep, he was a show stopper, so can you blame me? Something seen in Vail;- )

And I am pretty sure that I made my quota yesterday, six images. Today was a different day, but another kind of normal day in the mountains during the winter. I will know a little later, but I’m pretty sure that I have six images today as well. I found myself with a little more concentration on the skiers, because about every one here is either on the way to the slopes, taking a break from the slopes or just called it a day.

But I also find myself interested in the transitional state of the ‘old’ Vail to the new emerging Vail. For better or worse, it is.

Best regards, Doug

Vail – I’m Just Looking

For Vail, Colorado, skiing came first, then the town, versus many of the other Colorado ski destinations. So Vail during the winter is all about skiing. So you can easily say that skiing is a central aspect of Vail. But there also a very large organizational infrastructure that makes this work well. Currently, Vail is going through a bit of an upgrade, is as they have been coasting for the last twenty years.  That is part of what I will be looking at.

As to the SoFoBoMo trial, if I have six workable days to take photographs, that means that I need to average six good images per day. Yesterday was a beautful sunny and warm day, thus the contrasts were a harder to control. Today is overcast, windy with slight snow flurries. A much colder day, but the constrast range is not as severe. So did I get six images yesterday? I think so, but since this series is kinda unstructured right now, it is a series of me doing some looking. And what I see.

I also download the Blurb free Booksmart software to this portable this morning, so I hope to try loading my first image later today. I am guessing that the templates are interchangable, as well as the location of the images within the book. Title page should be easy, leaving a spot for the final title. The Introduction is one that I can fill in on the fly and make it a bit of free association, much like this. The index is a little tricky, as I am not sure on which page each image will end up on. Since I am trying to condense this book, I will have images on facing pages, so I need to be mind ful of the pairings. More about this later. And so far, I have one color image and one black & white, so this may be a potporrie of color and black and white images as well.

Best regards, Doug

SoFoBoMo – Trial run

 

So here I’m thinking that I’ll start SoFoBoMo after our vacation, and it dawns on me as we do the 16 hour drive from SoCal to Vail, Colorado for out annual ski trip, why not do a trial run on SoFoBoMo while we are here??

Up to now, our annual Vail adventure is skiing, fun with friends and family, more skiing and eating at some nice restaurants that in the local area, and maybe some more skiing.  A couple of years ago, I bought some snow shoes, so now I’m trucking along doing some frozen creek photography along Gore Creek or up Sandstone Creek. Makes for some nice Christmas cards, you know, that kinda photo stuff, which incidently is what eventually pulled my back into photography again during the 1999 – 2000 time frame. 

I had not thought about making Vail a place that I wanted to spend time becoming part of a series. But now I am.  All of sudden, wanting to visual explore much of what I have taken for granted for the last 15 plus years is a quick mental jolt. I have no idea where this will go, so I will Look, photograph, See, photograph, Think and photograph some more. But fear not, I’ve already come up with a couple of ideas that I want to explore over the next couple of days to test this out;- )

Best regards, Doug