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Lightroom 4.4 is now available. It has a few bug fixes, but most importantly, it now supports new cameras like the Nikon D7100 and Canon EOS 1D C. You can see all the changes and supported cameras here.
Update via download from Adobe.com or simply launch Lightroom. The Update dialog should open. |
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Google, which recently acquired NIK, is now selling the entire suite of Nik plug-ins for only $149.
And the really good news: if you're already an owner of any NIK plug-ins, chances are you'll be getting the rest of them for free. And if you spent more than $149 on NIK plug-ins since last Feb. 22, you can get a refund for the difference. Take a look here. And the really, really good news? Discount codes still work! I just tried it. If you use my discount code, RBARBEE, you'll get 15% off of the bundle price. This is an amazing deal. |
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That means that there are only four spaces remaining in each of these trips.
The Palouse workshop will garner you shots of old barns, rolling hills, amazing light, old houses, cemeteries, more old barns, old cars, and more. It's classic Americana. And if you need help with Lightroom, Victoria Dye and I are also offering an add-on, part 2 workshop focusing on digital workflow with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. You can attend either one or both of these workshops. If you just want the Lightroom part, don't fret, we'll still be getting out for more photography. The Colorado Mountains workshop features mountains, lakes, flowers, an old ghost town, more mountains, and more flowers. And probably a lot of Don Mammoser's travel stories. Plus, Ouray's a fun town to be in. Lots of places to eat and it's a good "wandering around" town.
There is also still space in my Olympic workshop (co-led by Kim Hoshal) this July, a perennial favorite, as well as space in the Newport, OR workshop I'm doing with Victoria Dye. This one will also feature Lightroom. And lighthouses. Go figure. |
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One problem with doing really long exposures with digital cameras is something called "amp glow." Basically, with long exposures you can get weirdness in the frame that you really don't want. Another problem, as you probably know, is long exposure noise. Both of these can make creating star trail photographs with digital cameras problematic.
Most cameras have a long-exposure noise reduction function. What this does is take a second, blank image and then performs some subtraction to remove noise. Not a really practical option with hours-long exposures.
The solution is to make a series of shorter exposures and combine them in the computer. There are Photoshop techniques for this that involve using the "Lighten" blending mode. You can find actions to do all the work for you by searching online for "star trail stacking." There are also programs that will do all the work for you. One of them is StarStaX.
I've downloaded the software but have yet to have a chance to use it. I'm hoping to remedy that during my upcoming workshops. I first heard about this software from Charlie Borland's Pro Nature Photographer blog. The video accompanying this post is pretty cool.
There is also an excellent article on star trail stacking in the March 2013 edition of Landscape Photography Magazine. |
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All books, magazine articles, anything that's professionally published, has been gone over by an editor. The editor is the person who can make your great writing even greater. She can take your good, but sometimes clumsy writing, and give it some poise and grace. She can use all those rules of grammar that none of us can really ever remember (except for editors, of course) and change awkward sentences into things of beauty.
And that's why anyone who plans on any serious writing, like for book, a magazine article, or even your own website content, needs an editor.
Turns out I know an editor. Dale Gelfand was the editor for my first solo book, The Photographer's Guide to Puget Sound and Northwest Washington. She's an outstanding editor and a joy to work with. She's also become a good friend over the last several years. (I like to call her the best friend I've never met.) |
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If you've been to my website lately you might have noticed some changes. I've upgraded my site using the new TTG CE3 web plug-ins for Lightroom. I still have some more work to do; not all of the old CE2 plug-ins I use have been updated to CE3 yet, but those are coming later in the year.
The biggest change you'll see is on my Workshops page. I've put a lot of information that used to be on separate pages right on the main Workshops page. I've also renamed some of the URLs for Search Engine Optimization purposes. So if you've bookmarked any particular workshop pages in the past, those links may no longer be valid. I've place redirect pages for all the workshop pages, but I may have missed something. |
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I've got absolutely nothing to report regarding exciting adventures with Bailey the Labradoodle. We've not encountered anything wild on our walks lately, unless you count the occasional coyote or (possibly) cougar scat.
It's now been a full year since our big cougar encounter. If you've not heard about that before, or you just want to relive my heroics (no, I didn't misspell hysterics), take a look right here. And nothing new is happening with the yard yet either, though Tracy's now got me interested in building a trellis over our garage door. Not only will this be a fun project (I define a fun project as one that has fewer than a dozen swear words associated with the completion of said project), it will also have lots of visual impact. I envision two possible results. I'll either be very proud of the results or very embarrassed. I'll keep you posted. |
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