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5 August, 2013 – The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

05 Aug

Regular contributor Miles Hecker continues his series of Geotagged Travel articles with The Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu.

"Having been to Antarctica with Michael and Kevin, I would say after having traveled the world and shot nearly my entire life as an exhibiting photographer, it was one of my highlights in my life and I talk about it, all the time. The images and experience of seeing something visionary and nearly extinct from the world, to see and experience the wildlife and scenery that does not fear humans is amazing. The images I shot there won me two Smithsonian awards and nearly 18 other international awards". – Tim Wolcott

Find Out More Now
These Expeditions Will Sell Out Quickly. They Always Do

…
The Luminous Landscape – What’s New

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Morning Mist – Glacier National Park

05 Aug

Morning Mist fills the valley below Logan Pass in Glacier National Park

This weekend I went back to look through older footage of Glacier National Park as I worked on a long standing personal project. While much of what I was working on in the field at the time centered on the iconic views of Glacier National Park, I was happy to see that I also captured the subtle beauty of the park as well. Sometimes simple aerial or atmospheric perspective can transform a well known view into something offbeat or abstract.

In looking at this scene I instantly locked on to the shading of light over the forest as morning light entered the valley and bounced off its walls. This wasn’t the typical view of a landscape with atmospheric perspective as the light seemed to split into a narrow fan of varying intensities. In watching the lighting change it was as if Mother Nature was lifting a curtain on an incredible show.

Related Reading:

Originality – A Matter of Perspective

Morning Mist – Glacier National Park

The post Morning Mist – Glacier National Park appeared first on JMG-Galleries – Landscape, Nature & Travel Photography.

Soft Flattering Color Portraits in Lightroom 4 and Lightroom 5

05 Aug

Introduction

The Following is an excerpt from the SLR Lounge Lightroom Preset System v5, a preset system designed to take you from Ordinary to Extraordinary photos in just a few seconds and clicks.

We have just launched the new Lightroom Preset System v5, and in this first tutorial we want to create a soft and flattering look for color portraits. We want to maintain good overall contrast, while flattening out highlights and smoothing out the details a bit for a more flattering look. Each one of you will probably have different preferences in regards to overall contrast and color temperature, but this Base preset and modification are pretty much our foundation for all of our color portraits within the Lin and Jirsa Photography studio. Here is what the photo looked like before and after the effect is applied.

beforeafter

Lightroom Preset System v5 Mixology Recipe

For those that own the SLR Lounge Lightroom Preset System v5, you can follow this two click recipe. If you like, you can save it as a new custom Mixology, however, since it is only a 1-click modification on our existing Base Preset, we will not be adding this to a new custom Mixology Preset.

Develop Mixology
1) 01-10 Base-Soft 11a. Extra Soft-Skin Desat
2) 03-40 Adjust Shadows Blacks 42. Darken-Medium -15, -30

Adjust Exposure, Temperature and Tint to taste.

Local Adjustments
We used the Graduated Filter and used the “04 Dodge (Brighten) +.5 stop” to brighten up the bottom left of the photo. To see exactly how it was applied, watch the video tutorial below.

Watch the Video Tutorial

If you would like to follow along with the Video Tutorial, watch the video blow.

Complete Written Tutorial

This written tutorial is meant for those who don’t have the SLR Lounge Lightroom Preset System v5. If you follow along you’ll be able to edit your photos with the same settings we used to edit this one. For any photo we edit we like to check the EXIF data by pressing “i”. This will show us exactly what camera the photo was taken one, what lens, and the settings. You can customize what EXIF data you want to see by pressing “CMD + J” or “CTRL + J”. This photo was taken on a 5D Mark II at 1/800 sec at f/2.0 ISO 100 with a 50mm lens.

The first thing we did was go into our “01-10 Base – Soft” preset folder and applied the “11a. Extra Soft – Skin Desat preset”. This preset does most of our work for us, adjusting our exposure, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks the way we would want them for a portrait like this. The clarity, vibrance, and saturation have all been dropped, giving us a nice soft portrait look. Here’s what our settings look like on the right side panel.

developsettings

Our “1) 01-10 Base-Soft 11a. Extra Soft-Skin Desat” preset lowered our Red and Orange levels, desaturating the skin and taking out the red and orange highlighting that can appear in shadows and highlight areas of our subjects skin.

Red: -20
Orange: -10

In the Tone Curve we have a standard “S” curve, giving us a subtle contrast boost by raising the highlights and dropping the shadows.

tonecurve

We add a bit of Noise Reduction Luminance in our portraits because it does a great job smoothing out the pores and making skin look great. We had to raise the sharpening a bit on this photo because it was shot at such a wide aperture, making the depth of field very shallow. Here are what our “Sharpening” and “Noise Reduction” settings look like.

sharpening

The vignetting in this photo underexposed her skin slightly in the corners of the photo. This is a great opportunity to use a graduated filer. You can simply go to the Graduated Filter and raise your exposure to “0.50″. Then raise the graduated filter from the bottom left of the photo and come up to the strap of her dress. Watch the video tutorial to see exactly where we put it. After the graduated filter we’re left with our final image, here’s a before and after.

Before

before

After

after

Conclusion and Learn More

We hope you all enjoyed this tutorial. If you are interested in learning more or purchasing the SLR Lounge Lightroom Preset System v5

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Soft Flattering Color Portraits in Lightroom 4 and Lightroom 5

Digital Photography School

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Dekonstruktion und Verwandlung

05 Aug

Einen Künstler, der so frei wie Nádia Maria arbeitet, zu entziffern, heißt auch, sich selbst in Bildern zu verlieren, die einen brutal packen und gleichzeitig mit ihrer Schönheit sanft berühren. Über allem aber steht eine Sensibilität, die hinter den gesunden Menschenverstand geht, den Betrachter mit Nuancen des Alltags und Vorgestelltem provoziert.

Nádia Maria ist eine brasilianische Fotografin, die in Bauru, São Paulo lebt. Sie begann, zu fotografieren, als sie sieben oder acht Jahre alt war, als Kind machte sie Fotos von ihren Puppen und Spielzeugen. Kamera und Film waren die Lieblingsspielzeuge ihrer Kindheit. Über die Jahre erforschte sie die Fotografie, begann mit 18, sie zu studieren und seitdem dient die Fotografie ihr als persönliches Tagebuch der Gefühle und Veränderungen, die sie in ihrem Leben durchläuft.

Nádias Arbeiten haben einen großen emotionalen Anteil. Die meisten ihrer Bilder kreiert sie basierend auf inspirierten oder reflektierenden Momenten wie etwa denen kurz vor dem Einschlafen. Irgendwie findet sie einen Weg, diese diffusen Bilder nachzuzeichnen, sie denkt schon immer eher in Bildern als in Worten. Sie ist Zerbrechlichkeit, Stärke, Stille, ein Universum von Stimmen.

Ein einzigartiger Blick auf die Welt, der ihre eigenen Gefühle reflektiert und unsere in Frage stellt. Eine visuelle Chronik von Auseinandersetzungen mit Aspekten des Alltags, die sie aufwühlen und den Anspruch stellen, verarbeitet zu werden. Sie lädt dazu ein, die eigene Identität und die Erfahrung des Lebens selbst zu überdenken.

Die hier gezeigten Bilder stammen aus der Serie „Vacuum“, die von der Melancholie, der Leere und der ständigen Dekonstruktion und Rekonstruktion unserer selbst inspiriert ist. Den Momenten, in denen der Körper mit der Umgebung verschmilzt und nicht mehr weiß, wo er beginnt und endet.

Diese Erfahrung hatte Nádia, als sie nach der Geburt ihres ersten Sohnes, Zion, eine große Melancholie erlebte. Es war eine schmerzhafte Phase der Verwandlung, aber diese war es, die sie zur Mutter machte und die mütterlichen Gefühle zum Ausbruch brachte, die nun ein universelles Gefühl in ihr sind. Kein Gesicht zu haben, keinen Ausdruck und trotzdem ein Teil des anderen und des Ganzen zu sein.

Um sich auszudrücken, bedient sie sich aus der breiten Spanne fotografischer Techniken und mischt sie angenehm unverkrampft, wie es ihr gerade in die Konzepte ihrer sehr verschiedenen Serien passt. Von Langzeit- und Mehrfachbelichtungen bis zu stimmungsvoller Tonung und grafischen Elementen.

Ihre anderen Werke könnt Ihr auf ihrer Webseite und bei Facebook betrachten.

kwerfeldein – Fotografie Magazin

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Posted in Equipment

Is that a Workshop, Tour or Seminar [Part I]

05 Aug

There is a modern day aphorism: Those that can – do. Those that can’t – teach. I believe, however, the later part of the phrase should be amended to read “Those who can’t – shouldn’t.”

A majority of photographers working today as professionals ply their trade in the commercial, wedding and portrait disciplines. There are also countless photographers who have historically made images of landscape and nature pictures – the kind of stuff we all love to do. These image makers would typically place their material with a stock photo agency to license their work on their behalf. Unfortunately this business model has been collapsing over the past five, or so, years and will likely continue.

The by-product of this collapse in landscape and nature picture sales has translated to a deluge of photography workshops, tours and seminars. Many of these instructor-photographers bring impeccable skills and talents to the table; unfortunately an even greater number bring little more than platitudes and promises.

The novice photographer will have to do some research to learn what firm offers something worthy of your hard earned cash. You will have to sift through a lot of chafe to find the nice gems, fortunately they do exist.

Is the intensity of a workshop what you seek, or perhaps the enjoyment of a tour or the diversity of a seminar? Hopefully this little primer will help steer you in the right direction by explaining the differences and offering some suggestions to ensure you get the right fit for what you are seeking, and at the right skill level.

The workshop offers the opportunity to try out all the gear you might own with good critique from the instructor.

A workshop is first and foremost a teaching venue. It will in all likelihood be based from a single location where you will eat, live and breathe photography. A secondary consideration is the actual location, the physical presence to facilitate the theme of the workshop.

The better workshops usually come with a systematic structure: early morning shoot, late morning lecture, early afternoon lecture or critique session and late evening shoot. The shooting sessions will usually always concentrate on the topic presented at the day’s lecture session(s). By the end of the workshop you should have received sufficient lectures, personal evaluation of your efforts, and an overdose of encouragement to meet the objectives outlined. The course syllabus should be available for your study in advance of enrolment.

Before you do enrol, research to see who the lead instructor will be as well as the supporting teachers, and whether that lead is on site or just loaning their name. Does that leader come with a pedigree that includes accomplishment in their chosen field through innovative techniques, or writing of their findings in books or magazine articles? Are they continuously exploring their own vision, and what is their reputation from previous students? Contact those testimonial writers personally – they could be just friends of the workshop leader.

One of the very first clues you might have whether the workshop is for you is by asking the question: “Will the instructor be making photographs during the workshop?” If the answer is yes, you might want to consider moving to another workshop that interests you. The logic being, how is it possible for the instructor to teach and offer guidance if they are concentrating on looking through their own viewfinder? You, the student, should have their attention; the instructor can take pictures on their time – you have already bought and paid for that time.

Most importantly, is the lead instructor an instructor or a teacher? As ridiculous as this might sound, almost anyone can stand in front of a small audience and regurgitate from a prepared lesson plan. A teacher, on the other hand, has that inner quality of being able to instil a desire to learn, of generating an excitement enabling students to be part of a process, promoting confidence and self-esteem all while offering constructive criticism without the student ever knowing. A teacher has a true passion in their chosen art, the art of sharing. Their enthusiasm is contagious.

Next up: What is the photo tour?

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Is that a Workshop, Tour or Seminar [Part I]

Digital Photography School

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Dark City: Giant Mirrors Aim to Illuminate Town in Shadows

05 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

shadow city solar panels

A lovely little settlement in a lush valley of Norway sounds like a slice of paradise – except that the surrounding hills keep it out of sunlight for nearly half of the year. This incredible undertaking aims to change that, illuminating the town square even in the darkest parts of the year.

shadow town mirror project

A set of mirrors positioned high above Rjukan will rotate to reflect sunlight into the center of the settlement, which, thanks to being rather predictably bathed in light, will be available to residents and visitors who wish to walk through it. The system will be computer-controlled from the town hall.

shadow valley mirror array

If this sounds far-fetched or even futuristic, consider this: the idea was originally pitched exactly 100 years ago by a local developer in the area, but scrapped at the time due to cost. Its originator went ahead and constructed a cable car instead, to help people in the area climb high enough to get natural light in the winter.

shadow illuminate town square

Even today the installed array will run up a bill of nearly a million dollars and include over 500 square feet of mirrored surface (lighting up over 2000 square feet below). But for residents of this remote and shadowed settlement, who normally have to forsake the sun 5 months of the year, the effect is worth the price.

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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WebUrbanist

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4. August 2013

05 Aug

Ein Beitrag von: Ronny Engelmann

kwerfeldein – Fotografie Magazin

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Posted in Equipment

Play it again: NFL fans get 360-degree instant replay

04 Aug

The instant replay isn’t new. In fact, it can be argued that it’s the very reason why watching Football is America’s favorite Sunday night living room pastime. The implementation of 12 cameras in each end zone brings something new to your big screen TV this NFL season – a 360-degree instant replay. Starting with the September 8th Dallas Cowboys home game, fans watching the action on NBC’s Sunday Night Football will see an all-around view of controversial plays in each end zone.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Father’s imaginative portraits of daughter guaranteed to make you smile

04 Aug

There’s nothing traditional about photographer Nagano Toyokazu’s portraits of his daughter. His unorthodox shots put the girl at the center of a series of whimsical scenes, in turn commanding the attention of a line of yellow rubber ducks, conducting a chorus of frogs and tackling an impossible tower of ice cream scoops on a cone. They’re funny, sweet, and probably the most adorable thing you’ll see on the internet today. Click through and get ready for the cute.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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You’re Fired: 9 Smokin’ Hot Abandoned Match Factories

04 Aug

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned match factories
Churned out by the billions in enormous unsafe factories, matches were indispensable whether the aim was repelling Morlocks or merely lighting one’s pipe.

Finnmatch: Tampere, Finland

abandoned Finnmatch factory Tampere Finland (images via: Abandoned But Not Forgotten)

When the Finnmatch factory was built in the mid-1920s, nobody knew that someday cheap, disposable butane lighters would make their products obsolete. Finnmatch had a good run, however, cranking out multitudes of matches and matchbooks until production finally sputtered out in the 1970s.

Finnmatch abandoned match factory Tampere Finland (image via: PentaxForums)

The factory consisted of a number of different buildings of varying ages, most of which are poorly secured and open to the public… and not in a good way. An urban explorer from Abandoned But Not Forgotten describes the site as home to “a generation of bums and junkies and partying youth” who have left their marks in and on the buildings’ walls, floors and even ceilings. Kudos to Flickr user Aki Saari who captured the strikingly disturbing vista above during a visit to the factory in September of 2012.

abandoned Finnmatch match factory Tampere Finland (images via: Aki Saari and Mikko J. Putkonen)

The abandoned Finnmatch factory is located in Tampere, long a hub of Finnish industry and ideally placed to receive the wood and paper necessary for match and matchbook making. Tampere’s old nickname was “Manchester of the North,” which was a compliment in the British city’s glory days but not so much now.

Pennsylvania Match Company: Bellefonte, PA, USA

abandoned Pennsylvania Match Company Bellefonte PA (images via: Wikipedia, Photo.net/Gary Catchen and BHCA)

When the end came for the Pennsylvania Match Company, it came suddenly. Founded in 1899 and located in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, the factory employed 400 workers at the height of World War II but shut its doors for good in 1947, citing growing competition from book matches and cigarette lighters. Over 50 years passed before the American Philatelic Society purchased the complex in 2002. Since then, the APS has been gradually refurbishing the buildings to suit its needs.

abandoned match factory Bellefonte PA (image via: Thumpr455)

Accessed by a slightly rickety railway bridge straight out of the film Stand By Me, the red brick Pennsylvania Match Company buildings display timeless appeal thanks to a dusting of early December snow and the photographic chops of Flickr user Thumpr455.

Botou Match Factory: Hebei Province, China

China Botou Match Factory closed abandoned (images via: Caixin and Gangtie5.com)

When matches first became available in China and for a long time afterwards, they were known as “yanghuo”, a Chinese term that translates as “foreign fire.” Then in 1912, the Botou Match Factory opened its doors and they would stay open for just over one hundred years! The company grew to be the largest match manufacturer in all of Asia but after its closure, the equipment and facilities brought a mere 1.7 million yuan ($ 269,205) at auction.

abandoned China Botou Match Factory Hebei (image via: Caixin)

Truth be told, more than a few areas of the now-former Botou Match Factory look more than a little like a fire hazard so maybe this closure will preserve its final “matchless” run of accident-free days. As for the company’s production equipment, what wasn’t auctioned off will be acquired and preserved by the local cultural relics department.

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Youre Fired 9 Smokin Hot Abandoned Match Factories

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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360Photography

Archive for August, 2013

5 August, 2013 – The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

Morning Mist – Glacier National Park

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