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Photo of me jumping on Mesquite Dunes by +Mark Esguerra.

Wow!

What a GREAT weekend I just got back from!

About 50 of us descended on the small town of Beatty, NV this weekend and spent an entire weekend doing very little sleeping and lots and lots and lots of shooting in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Our weekend Mayor of Beatty +Luc Asbury — who was on his 7th trip to Death Valley — gave us a great itinerary of some of the most iconic Death Valley locations and right now some of the most amazing Death Valley photographs are popping up under the #DV2011 hashtag on G+.

There are so many highlights to this weekend that I don’t even know where to begin — so many talented photographers and good friends were on this trip. Many of us stayed at the Atomic Inn Motel (which was hard to find because the HUGE neon sign outside said Phoenix Inn, but the staff was super nice). Food was somewhat limited in Beatty, although a few of us did brave the smoke filled casino to get to the 24 hour Denny’s and get our fix of steak and eggs.

Some people got in as early as Thursday, but I came in on Friday. Our first stop was the Ghost Town of Rhyolite, NV where we got a great sunset and also did some fantastic night shooting and light painting into the evening. We took a brief break to take over the back room of the Sourdough Saloon for drinks and adult beverages, went out and did some more light painting, and then came back yet again to the Sourdough Saloon where I think we frightened some of the locals.

In Ghost Colors – Rhyolite, NV, by +Matt Roe.

If you’ve never shot Rhyolite at night, you definitely want to put this one on your list.

It was fun for me to finally get to try out the Jarvie Window (this flash ring thing that +Scott Jarvie uses for making really awesome wide angle portraits of people). After some good drinks and fun bar portraits most of us headed off to bed to get ready for our big sunrise shoot out at the dunes the next morning.

+Bo Lorentzen had also made up the *coolest* +1 Death Valley 2011 Google pins and he handed those out as well. Thanks again Bo for having those made up!

The Mesquite Dunes in Death Valley are really something. Saturday morning some of us got up at the brisk hour of 4am to meet up for our 4-5am departure time to make it out to the dunes by sunrise. Still others (+Amy Heiden, +Scott Jarvie and +Sly Vegas) got up at 3am to make it out there even earlier.

Shooting the dunes is tricky, but they are beautiful. I still think I’ve got about 5 hours of work left on one of my photos from that morning’s shoot cloning the thousands of little footprints out of the sand. We also had a good time just playing around on the dunes too. +Lotus Carroll took the challenge to roll down the Dunes and not to be outdone +Matt Roe decided to jump off of them gonzo style. +Mark Esguerra got that great photo of me doing my own jumping up above.

We thought we lost Sly in the dunes later that morning and had a good time at breakfast coming up with scenarios on how Sly had disappeared to have his Carlos Castaneda/Jim Morrison sort of dune experience. In actuality Sly had really just snuck off back to the motel with +Cliff Blaise.

Google I Love You So Much I’d +1 That, Death Valley Edition.

Breakfast was a great but greasy all you can eat thing. At breakfast we thanked everybody for making the trip and introduced the folks who had made the trip from Google — +Dave Cohen, +Brian Rose, +Vincent Mo, +Tony Paine, +Ricardo Lagos, Tim St. Clair, Vega Paithankar, Gerard Sanz, Agata Krzysztofik, and +Priscila Queiroz. (I’m sure I probably left somebody from Google out, if so let me know so I can add them).

Also at breakfast I got to finally get my +Ricardo Liberato Liber Angry Guy portrait.

After the Dunes and breakfast in Stovepipe Wells, we made our way to the grandaddy of them all in Death Valley, The racetrack. We stopped off for a brief nap at Scotty’s Castle on the way where +Luc Asbury told me the story about his first ever trip to Death Valley which was preceded by a dream that he’d had about lighting up the grandstand at the Racetrack. We also made a stop at Ubehebe Crater.

The Racetrack is a mysterious almost spiritual place. You have to drive in on a somewhat treacherous dirt/rock road for about an hour and half. I had rented a 4×4 and still couldn’t go much more than about 70 mph (joking, really the pace is about 20 miles per hour or slower on this road). We saw a Ford Expedition that had a flat tire on the road on the way in — bummer. +Matt Roe told me that it’s about $ 6,000 to get a tow out of there if you get stuck.

All i can say about Death Valley is “WOW” ! ! ! by +sly Vegas.

Out at the racetrack (a giant hard mud playa) are some amazing moving rocks that are referred to as “Sailing Stones.” These large stones in some cases have travelled 100 feet or more and have long tracks cut into the hardened mud. They really are amazing to see. Apparently there is some sort of a scientific explanation for them, but I liked fantasizing in my own head about supernatural or spiritual explanations — because that’s how the place feels. We were able to do some great night shooting out on the Racetrack and +Michael Bonocore and +John Getchel brought some steel wool to do some awesome night fire photographs.

#DV2011 by +Brian Rose.

Unfortunately +Ricardo Lagos, +Matt Roe, +Lotus Carroll and myself stopped at THE WRONG PARKING LOT!!! and missed some of the fire fun — instead we wandered aimlessly around the middle of the Playa but got some great shots out of it.

Death Valley Google+ Photowalk Weekend 2011 (6 photos), on Google+, by +Dave Cohen.

Many people stayed out and slept on the Playa that night. We did end up making it out alive though, only to have to get up for a 4am departure time for Zabriskie Point the next morning.

After driving about halfway to Zabriskie Point behind +Elizabeth Hahn (who thankfully drives fast!) I unfortunately realized that I’d made the boneheaded mistake of leaving my camera back in my motel room. Fortunately +Karen Hutton was right behind us and I was able to drop +Ricardo Lagos into her car and go back and get my camera.

Although I didn’t make it to Zabriskie point by sunrise, I did get to almost hit four donkeys in the road (hey, we were warned with a Donkey Crossing sign) and still got a wonderful sunrise shot of the salt flats. Stefan Bäurle (and a lot of others) got a pretty kick ass shot though!

After breakfast on Sunday people sort of broke up to do different things. We were able to get some amazing abandoned buildings and cars at the old Cashier Mill and Aguereberry Mining Camp along with some great rock shots on the Canyon into that mine. We also made a sunset/night excursion into Badwater, but we were robbed of our sunset by a heavy layer of overcast fog and a bit of rain. And I finally got the giant “Cowboy Steak” that I wanted back at Furnace Creek and got to watch +Karen Hutton talk for about 5 minutes with our waiter about show tunes.

Aguereberry Mining Camp, Death Valley. 2011, by +Ricardo Lagos.

Some people stuck around for still another Monday Morning sunrise (you’ve got endurance +Cynthia Pyun!) and I heard +Luc Asbury took people the long way home on the drive back to the Bay Area on Monday.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to name each and every person on the trip in this long blog post. I met so many more great photographers on this trip and was really impressed with everyone who made it out for the weekend. It was truly one of my best weekends ever and my only regret is that I didn’t get to spend more one on one time shooting with even more people.

I don’t know about those of you who went on the trip but I’m thinking we ought to make this an annual event and head back there again next year at this time. Death Valley is so rich and there is still so much that we didn’t get to shoot — I feel like we barely scratched the surface and know that as great as the shots that we got this trip are that we should all think about having just as good a time again next year.

Thanks again to Google for the great turnout and for supporting our event and to every photographer who made the great weekend out there. I had a total blast and I hope you did too.

If you’d like to add some of the great photographers on this trip to your Google+ account, you can find a lot of them doing a search on Google+ for the hashtag #DV2011.

Update: Also don’t miss +Amy Heiden’s excellent list of what she loved about Death Valley and +Scott Jarvie’s equally amusing 45 Fond Memories. +Elizabeth Hahn’s take here as well.

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

paddling with a camera

paddling with a camera

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This is the written article for our Weekly Lightroom Edit – Episode 1 that was released on November 18, 2011 on SLR Lounge. To view this tutorial in video form, click here.

The nice thing about doing written tutorials is that I get to include a bit more explanation as to why we are going to do certain things. Without further adieu, let’s get started.

RAW Processing Software

RAW processing doesn’t mean that you are using any specific program. In fact, you can pretty much use any of the following software titles and get the exact same results.

Lightroom, ACR (Adobe Camera RAW), Bridge, Aperture, Capture One, ACDSee Pro, etc.

Each RAW processor will have virtually the same set of controls, with slight variations when it comes to the details. There are arguments as to which RAW processor creates the best conversion. Some of the elite professionals prefer Capture One because they feel it gives them better tone conversion. However, believe me when I say that each software is not without its strengths and weaknesses. The standard is probably Lightroom, and that is what we use in our studio as well. So, we are going to do this tutorial in Lightroom, however the same methods can be used to get the same results in any RAW conversion software.

Download the Exercise File

First thing, let’s download and take a look out our zeroed out RAW file. Download the exercise file by clicking here. (Note: This image is provided by Lin and Jirsa Photography for educational purposes for DPS and SLR Lounge users only)

Here is our zeroed out RAW file, meaning all default processing values have been reset.

Default Develop Settings

While the image was correctly exposed for the subjects skin, it appears very flat prior to any processing. Now, when you bring this file into Lightroom or any other RAW editing program, that program will apply default settings.

Lightrooms default settings are the following:

Blacks +5
Brightness +50
Contrast +25
Tone Curve – Point Curve: Medium Contrast
Sharpening Amount +25, Radius 1, Detail +25

These default settings get you to an image that should look like what you see below.

RAW Workflow Tips

While the image above looks much better, it is still just a starting point. So, let’s proceed in finishing the image.

Now, whenever I am teaching editing workshops or lecturing online, I always start by saying, “start with your largest adjustments first.” This means that if an image is heavily under exposed, don’t adjust the White Balance prior to adjusting the Exposure/Brightness. Why? Because making smaller changes prior to broader ones will waste your time. In the afformentioned situation, if you were to adjust White Balance prior to adjusting your Exposure, then you will have to readjust the White Balance once again once the proper exposure value is set as the tones will look different with a brighter Exposure setting.

So, this is the general workflow process I follow when editing RAW files.

1. Brightness/Exposure
2. Temperature/Tint
3. Recovery/Fill Light
4. Blacks/Contrast
5. Clarity
6. Vibrance/Saturation
7. Lens Corrections
8. Sharpening

While I may still make minor adjustments here and there, correcting in this order prevents me from having to constantly make major adjustments and redo work.

Starting with a Vision

Before starting our adjustments, I always have a vision of what type of style I think would look best for a particular image. Vintage, Black and White, Poppy High Contrast, Vibrant, etc. Editing an image without an idea of what you want it to look like is like getting on the road without knowing where you are going. So, as stated in this article, we are going to make this image pop, so we are going to produce it to be a nice vibrant high contrast image. Though it would work well as really anything you like.

Making the Adjustments

So, let’s start with Exposure/Brightness.

Brightness +80 – This image is already heavy in highlights. For that reason, I don’t want to adjust my Exposure up as it is highlight biased. So, instead I am going to bring Brightness up to +80 to brighten all of the image tones.

Temperature 4400/Tint -16 – The default Temperature as shot is 4650 with a Tint of -1. At this setting, I see too much red in my skin tones. While I like the warmth of the image, I don’t want to see so much red, particularly in the shadowy areas of the skin. So, what I am going to do is slide my Tint down towards the green side to -16. Afterwards, your image is going to be too green/yellow, so we need to then pull the Temperature down to adjust. This image was shot during sunset, and I love the warmth in the shot, so I don’t want to kill it by taking the Temperature too low. So I am going to leave the Temperature at 4400 to leave that nice moody warm tone in the image.

Recovery +25 – Recovery is great for balancing out and pulling back highlight tones. However, be extremely careful. One of the most common color correction mistakes is over using Recovery. When Recovery is over used it will not only flatten and kill image contrast, it can also cause posterization where you will see unnatural color graduations. Remember, in every poppy high contrast image you want to have some true blacks and some true whites. Use Recovery moderately to balance and reduce some of the strong highlights particularly on skin, but don’t over do it. For this image, +25 recovery is fine.

Fill Light – If Recovery is the brother of common color correction mistakes, then Fill Light is the sister. Fill Light is being used far too heavily these days to create faux-HDR style effects. Large amounts of Fill Light will not only make images look fake and surreal, it also kills image quality by pumping up noise in the shadows, as well as causing edge fringing. I typically use Fill Light in the range of 0 to +15. Rarely do I go higher.

Blacks +12/Contrast +35 – I always adjust Blacks and Contrast together starting with the Blacks. My goal with every high contrast image is to add blacks until I have some true shadows in the image, areas that are completely clipped. Not a lot mind you, but a little. I want to be careful to preserve hair detail, particularly with those that have dark brown or black hair as it will be the first to go. So, what I will typically do, is adjust my Blacks to this level, then if I still need additional contrast, I will add a small amount of Contrast as needed. Be careful with adding too much Contrast as it will only strengthen highlights and colors over skin tones which can really look unflattering. For this image, Blacks at +12 and Contrast at +35 gives me a nice pop without being overpowering.

Clarity + 20 – Clarity is great for increasing mid tone contrast which has a sort of “detail enhancing” type of effect. You want to be careful that you don’t take clarity up too high as it will cause edge fringing in high contrast areas, such as where the rocks meet the highlights of the horizon in this image.

Vibrance -10/Saturation 0 – Once again, these are two sliders I am always adjusting together starting with Vibrance and almost never touching Saturation. Vibrance is going to increase/decrease image saturation while attempting to preserve skin tones. Thus, it is much more subtle than its overpowering gorilla of a cousin Saturation. Saturation will adjust every color in the image equally. This makes it very easy to overuse. Generally, I use vibrance in the range of -20 to +20 while saturation I leave around – 5 to +5. For this image, I want to pull a little bit of the color out and just leave that nice warmth and tone. So I am going to take my Vibrance down to -10 and leave everything else.

We are done with our Basic corrections, the last thing I want to adjust is my Lens Vignetting prior to moving on to sharpening.

Lens Vignetting (NOT POST CROP) Amount +36/Midpoint 20 – I have two styles when it comes to vignetting. I either like to have a very subtle darkening vignette when edge and background details are distracting. By very subtle, I literally mean very subtle. I don’t like people to be able to see any vignetting, but rather just a slight darkening of colors. For this reason I use Lens Vignetting in the Lens Corrections panel as opposed to the Post Crop Vignetting in the Effects panel.

The second style of vignetting I use is a reverse vignette to brighten edges when I like the edge detail and I want the image to be bright from the center to the edge. For this image, either would work actually. But, I like the edge detail and the rocks, so I am going to choose to go with a reverse vignette and set my Amount to +36 and my Midpoint to 20 to pull in the edge brightening effect into the center of the image a bit more.

At this point, we are done with our basic corrections and you should have an image that looks like this.

Sharpening

Sharpening Amount 70, Radius 1.5, Detail 30 – From here, all we have left is to sharpen our image. I always get questions on what amount of sharpening is enough? Well, here is the rule of thumb. Take the image, and zoom into 100% by mouse clicking on the image in the workspace. Move over the faces so you can see the faces at 100% size. From here, adjust your sharpening until your edges are defined to your liking. I like my images slightly on the sharper side, so for this image I am going to take my sharpening Amount to 70 with a Radius of 1.5 and Detail of 30.

Now, you should see the final image below. We now have a nice sharp image that pops by simply making a few RAW corrections. Hope you all enjoyed! As always, let me know what you think below!

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Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

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

RAW Processing for a Poppy High Contrast Look – Weekly Lightroom Edit Episode 1

Digital Photography School

Perhaps you have heard of Lytro. I first got wind of the company a few months ago and thought it sounded amazing. But then the “That’s a press release. Where’s the follow through?” mechanism in my brain that stops me from buying useless products kicked in. Was it too good to be true?

The camera the company is creating  is said be able to allow a viewer to focus on any spot in the image AFTER the image has been shot. This means different viewers can pick what they like and focus there, even changing the apparent aperture to control depth of field. All after an image has been shot. After checking out the Time article and the company’s website (which includes sample images) I believe the camera will be a hit from the moment it is stocked on store shelves.

While this camera is not for the serious photographer just yet (the image quality, while good, is not up to my standards), but its ability to (mostly) cure most amateurs’ problems with focus, coupled with its small size, will help it sell. What might go against the camera is the need for another computer program to download, edit and view images. This is understandable because nothing behaves like this camera and the images it produces.

The camera works on the principle that light hits an object and then scatters in all directions. When we, as humans or cameras, focus on one object, we are essentially focus on the two dimensional plane where that light is reflecting from. Light on planes before or after (forward or backward, if you will) isn’t focused on the same plane as our camera’s sensor and becomes slightly out of focus. That out of focus area is known as the circle of confusion.

The Lytro works by not focusing the light. Instead, it captures all the light rays reflected by objects at different depths of field. With a f/2 aperture, the sensor can capture 11 million individual light rays, then the software inside the camera process the information from the sensor to create the image, which then can be viewed on a computer. The images have their limits, but take a look at the examples on Lytro’s site, such as this image. After the image loads, click on various areas to bring it into focus. It really is quite cool.

It’s fun and innovative. While it has its limits (e.g., the camera does not accept memory cards and not everything can be brought into focus if objects are very, very close and very far away) I think it’s a step in a very interesting direction.

Stats:

• Planned for release in early 2012
• Suggested price of $ 399(8GB) and $ 499(16GB) – Pre-orders available now
• No shutter lag as it doesn’t use a shutter
• f/2 aperture constant throughout 8x zoom
• Current software runs on Mac and is being developed for Windows
• Weight: 7.55oz / 214g
• Size: 1.61″x1.61″x4.41″ / 41mmx41mmx112mm

Check out Lytro’s website for more information. I’m very eager to get my hands on a demo until and will report here if/when it happens.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

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

Lytro Light Field Camera Makes Time Magazine’s Top 5 Cool Innovations List

Digital Photography School

As photographers, we are pretty intuitive about recognizing interesting ambient light when we see it. But stick a flash and umbrella in our hands and we tend to default to much more standard styles of lighting — especially at first.

In the real world, great light rarely comes from 45 degrees up and to the side. So if you want to be able to create more interesting light with your flashes, you should work to better recognize how ambient really works. This way, you can recreate those different looks when you are in control of the light. Read more »

Strobist

We’ve done this hypothetical exercise the last couple of years in the lead up to Christmas and it has been a lot of fun. So I t would do it again.

Here’s how it works:

• I’m hereby giving each of your a hypothetical $ 2000 USD to spend on photography gear at Amazon. Very generous of me I know!
• Head over to Amazon’s Camera and Photo section and surf around and see what you’d buy with it (cameras, ldpshypoth-20ng, accessories – anything photographic goes).
• Come back here and in comments tell us what you’d buy with it – share a link to it on Amazon if you like and tell us why you’d buy it.

What would you buy?

• Perhaps it would include the dpshypoth-20://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZYF3LO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=dpsgeneral-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=B003ZYF3LO”>Nikon D3100 – currently the most ‘wished for’ item in Amazons camera store
• Maybe a Canon EOS 7D – always popular on our
• Or would it be the popular retro looking X100 or X10 from Fujifilm (I think I’d pick up an X100 – pictured right – to see what all the fans are raving about)
• Or maybe you’d sink it all into the amazing Canon 85mm f1.2 II lens – one of the most lusted after lenses by Canon users

Or something else? Choose as many products as you like – just try to keep the total down under $ 2000!

PS: note: this is… strictly hypothetical (or your own) money!!!!!

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

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

If You Had $ 2000 to Spend on Camera Gear… What Would You Buy?