Just Gulls

I have been remiss in writing this blog because other things have taken priority. Even the camera had to take a back seat recently. Last weekend was the first opportunity to try out a couple of lenses that a friend from church passed on to me. These had been unused for years after his broken Pentax film camera was pronounced uneconomic to repair. But, a feature of Pentax DSLR cameras is that they will operate with most old Pentax lens and so I gratefully attached them to the K10D and tried my hand at photographing the gulls on Galveston beach. It was a learning experience and as I deleted over 60 percent of the shots I was glad that I was not paying for film.

Looking at some of the initial “keepers” I noticed marks and smudges at the same position on each image. There was dirt on the camera sensor. Being able to make “repairs” with Lightroom software reinforced the joys of shooting digital. Hopefully, this weekend will offer another chance to practice with that zoom lens and capture the Laughing Gulls - this time with a clean sensor.

The camera doesn't lie . . . . Right!

Image manipulation is not new. Anyone who has watched a TV series about Henry VIII knows the problems caused by a flattering portrait. Holbein painted one of Anne of Cleves and showed it to Henry. Henry agreed to the marriage but when he finally met his betrothed he called her a “fat Flanders mare”. History suggests that Holbein exercised too much artistic license. Today, we take photo manipulation almost for granted. Of course, photographs have always been manipulated. There are the classic examples from the early Soviet era. Former party faithful who fell from favor were not only physically removed. Their images were skillfully airbrushed from any group photographs and history was rewritten. Less dramatically, photographs of movie stars and politicians and all those beautiful people in magazine ads are also retouched. In every photographic studio creative lighting enhanced features, clever poses hid signs of too many calories and double chins were banished with a raised head and flattering camera angle.

Lighting choices, lens type and camera viewpoint are still powerful tools. They still require skill to use. At another level, digital cameras and simple software have given everyone with a computer the power to change photographs. Most of us use these tools with little thought. “Red-eye” correction and removing skin blemishes are every-day examples. Blurring the skin to reduce wrinkles, brightening teeth and removing stray hair could be considered simple courtesy for a lady. But where does courtesy end? When do we become a twenty-first century edition of Holbein? Today, I can buy a program that will restore skin texture, remodel the nose, contour chin and cheeks, adjust the brow and hairline and enhance the eyes – all with a few clicks of a mouse. The final image is an artistic masterpiece – but is it still a photograph? Equally important, does it matter if the subject is happy with the result?

It is a fool-hardy blogger who would post portraits and confirm that the camera was lying. Those concerns do not apply to flowers. The image above was taken early in the morning with a macro lens and a small aperture for good depth of focus. Those choices started the manipulation before the shutter was pressed. The geranium below was taken in the afternoon using a very fast telephoto lens to achieve a shallow depth of focus and a fuzzy background. The photograph was also de-saturated to give a pastel appearance. Those choices yield very different images. As for the saxophonist at the beginning, he was left in peace to play cool jazz – only the backgrounds were slightly modified to return the buildings to vertical.

Lightroom - managing photos the easy way

I take a lot of photos of events and programs at my church. Often flash is not appropriate. The low light in church brings problems of wide apertures and narrow depth of focus and slow shutter speeds can lead to blurred subjects. In addition, high ISO settings bring the risk of increased noise. The mixed lighting at church events also causes difficulties with white balance – which has not been helped by the new paint color schemes recently adopted by our decorating committee. My strategy for all these concerns is to shoot RAW and use Adobe Lightroom as my primary post-processing tool.

Lightroom imposes a logical work flow on my post processing. Equally important, modifications to the images are maintained as separate files. This keeps the original files from the camera intact. Lightroom imports my RAW files, quickly allows me to crop and straighten, provides a one-click white balance adjustment and has powerful exposure enhancement tools. It even permits red-eye removal and simple retouching. Even better, it works well with JPG files from Point & Shoot digital cameras and can often bring enhancements when those JPG settings were not the best. Lightroom is not a replacement for Photoshop but I am finding it quickly handles almost all the adjustments I need to make to the many 4 x 6 prints regularly displayed on our church notice board. Lightroom also has a legion of very clever supporters who have produced and distributed

excellent add-ons. Among these are user-friendly interfaces for web–based slide shows. Simpleviewer is one Flash viewer that is very user friendly and I’ve tried on our church web to document recent Christmas events. Others (check here) are HTML based and are equally easy to use. Best of all many of these add-ins are free.