More Than Animals

Wow. Here it is, November 1st. The card that is in my camera has pictures on it from April that I haven't imported. Summer is full of a lot of things. Heat. Rain. Vacations. Sports. My summer was full of work, and not at all full of photography.

We went to Tulsa for a quick day trip over Labor Day weekend. Hadley has a pretty short attention span for the zoo. Also, to get really decent shots of wildlife, you kinda need a 300mm or 400mm 4.0 lens with a teleconverter. A monopod is also helpful (I decided to leave mine in the truck). Fortunately, many zoos are more than animals. This was taken in a little lillypad somewhere along the way.

EXIF:

Nikon D80
18-135m lens at 135mm
ISO 400
1/800 sec. at f5.6

Black and white conversion, exposure tweaking, split toning and gratuitous vignetting in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.1.

Wine is Fine . . . .

Since Memorial Day, it seems as if the world has moved at full throttle (5 points to you if you picked up on the two Ozzy references in the first 17 words, including the title). How many pictures have I taken? Not many. How many real photographs have I made? Even fewer. The plan to take a side trip to Yosemite fell through (but the consolation prize was dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Napa Valley). Case after case after hearing after hearing after client after client. The practice of law business of a law practice is a hell of a grind. I am now staring down the barrel of the next 3 months, and there doesn’t appear to be much of a break in sight. I’m not complaining; many people would beg to have a job to go to every day. I’m just drained of motivation.

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a line in the movie where Andy says, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Somewhere near the time that line was uttered on a network television broadcast of that movie two weeks ago, Joelle Glaysher of Bentonville took her life. How she did it—although shocking—is not important. Why she did—none of it was worth dying over—is not critically relevant either. The first thing many people would say about Joelle after meeting her is that she was beautiful, and indeed she was a pretty woman. She was happy (not so much, it turns out), and she had the biggest smile in the room. I could go on. Seriously, she was just the All-American girl next door, and everybody loved her. To say I was shocked upon learning of her death would be the understatement of the year. This is the second unexpected death of a dear friend from high school in about 14 months. I guess that’s where we are now—no more weddings and babies and reunions. Is it really going to be the case that our own funerals are next on the list of life events? I hope not.

Suicide is an everyday occurrence. According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control, for 2006 it was the eleventh leading cause of death in the United States, with one death occurring every 16 minutes. With more than 33,000 deaths annually in this country attributed to suicide, most of us surely know at least one person who has committed it. And for all who have succeeded, more have attempted it. Death is a part of life. We’ve all lost friends and family members, expectedly or not. We all are aware of the pain and grief that comes from losing a loved one. For me, I can right off think of four people I knew that took their own life. One was a friend of mine from church camp, who killed himself while we were freshmen in college. Two others were family friends of my wife’s family (one of whom I didn’t know well and the other a dear friend). And then Joelle.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Joelle’s death is the aftermath. Two of her close friends practically radiated their pain and confusion. They were angry. They were frustrated that they couldn’t make sense of things. The mix of emotions I saw in their eyes was something I had never seen before. It’s hard to think of Joelle as a statistic, and because she was my friend she will never be one of the 33,000 who take their lives each year. But the truth probably is that she got busy dying long before two weeks ago. I’m sure that’s true of a lot of suicide victims (and if Blogger allowed footnotes I’d put one here to the effect of “Who, exactly, is a suicide 'victim'?"). I’ve pieced a few things together about what her burdens were, and then learned of a few other things that piled on in the days prior to her death. None of it was worthy of dying. I think I understand where she was—life as she perceived it was dragging her down. I don’t comprehend the despair, but I understand what motivates it.

Why is it so hard for us to get busy living, but so easy to get busy dying? I’m not sure I know the answer to that question. It’s very easy to get busy doing nothing. Being complacent—at work, in school, as a parent, as a spouse—is an American art form. Not really dying, but not really living, either. “Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes.” (Another footnote here to say that I didn’t even think of the next line of that song until after I typed this one.) Some of you know I’m a fan of Atlanta-based photographer Zack Arias. I posted this previously, but his video “Transform” is a challenge to the lethargic. Watch it. If you’re not busy living, you’re just rotting away.

So get busy living.

Spiderwort

This was taken beneath Haley Falls, just prior to reaching Hawksbill Crag. I'm not quite sure why the anthers on these flowers are so blurry, but I'm guessing it's a combination of being within the minimum focusing distance of my 70-300VR and a little bit of a breeze. This is why I need a macro lens--another step backward would have resulted in an 80-foot tumble over the edge of a bluff.

Some guy scampered down to where I was and promptly proceeded to copy my composition. C'mon. Figure out yer own stinkin' composition.

EXIF: 70-300VR at 280mm, ISO 100, 1/30" at f/5.6.

Hiking to Hawksbill

I took a day off from work last Friday and went to Hawksbill Crag and The Glory Hole. The girls were in California on a trip they had planned for a couple of months. I had been planning this trip for the same couple of months. The original plan was that I’d hike around for the day, go to White Rock and get a cabin, and then do some more hiking on Saturday. Then, I saw that the Wakarusa Music Festival was going on, and decided that even if there was a cabin available I didn’t want to get near the traffic associated with a music festival. As it turns out, Saturday would have been out of the question; Friday was exhausting (in a good sort of way).

I have a tendency to be a night owl. I’d rather stay up late than get up early. For someone who also loves nature photography, that’s a bit of a problem. The night owl bug strikes especially when the girls are gone, and Thursday night was no exception. When the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m., I was hurting. I piddled around for 30 minutes, trying to wake up and packing some gear. I left the house around 5:00 a.m., and figured I’d better get some breakfast. Hello, Waffle House (my favorite). It took forever. I left Waffle House about 5:30 or so, and got to the parking area at the Hawksbill Crag trail head about 7:45, stopping only in east Springdale for gas and water. Interestingly, Willie Nelson has a line of bottled water. What could be more American than a hike in the woods with Willie Nelson? Besides, what do you think Willie puts in his water? Two bottles, please.

I could have made it out there more quickly, but the fog was pretty brutal heading out Hiway 412. By 7:45, the light was pretty harsh. By packing all my gear the night before, and by grabbing breakfast on the go, I could have been there at 6:45, which would have been better. Frankly, if I had to do it over again, I’d get there well before sunrise and hike in with a flashlight. Sunrise happened to be around 5:55 a.m. or so Friday morning. It took 45 minutes to hike to the Crag (in daylight), so I would have had to leave about 4:00 a.m. Yikes. Maybe I’ll rent the Cave Mountain Guest House next time. (Don’t laugh—it had a front porch and rocking chairs.) The scene at 8:30 when I got to the top of the Crag was breathtaking. The light sucked.

The hike in was easy enough. The only challenge was the occasional tree across the trail, but pretty simple otherwise. There are two trails—an upper trail and a lower trail. I understand the higher trail is shorter, but the lower trail is more scenic because it skirts the bluff. The trails are marked by little orange markers nailed to the trees. Just about when you think maybe you’ve gone too far and missed it, you see the Crag from a little landing about 35 yards away. The top of the rock itself doesn’t feel all that big. What’s hard to describe is how incredible the view is from the top. You are standing on outcropping of rock about 100 feet off the ground, surrounded by a vast expanse of forested mountains. The weather was perfect—sunny and still a little cool. So I just sat there for a while. I was the only soul out there. It was so peaceful. Earlier, I had updated my Facebook status to indicate that I was headed to the Crag, and it occurred to me to update it again upon my arrival. So, I grabbed my BlackBerry out of my backpack. The message it gave me was a not-so-subtle reminder about the point of this daytrip: “There is no data signal available.” In fact, I had no signal until about 3:30 that afternoon. Freedom from the digital leash! So, Willie Nelson and I sat up on Hawksbill Crag and shared some water.

As for the photograph, well the light was pretty well horrible, but I knew I had to take the obligatory shot of the Crag just to prove I’d been there. I went back to the little landing, put my camera on the tripod, and wrapped my camera strap around a nearby tree. (I can’t imagine telling my insurance agent that my camera broke because I set it up on the edge of a 100-foot drop-off unsecured—and then a bird landed on it and tipped it over.) Fired off a few shots, fiddled with the exposure, cursed myself for not getting there earlier, fiddled again, deleted most everything I shot, cursed some more. Then I remembered that big-ass heavy camera bag I brought with me, and grabbed a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter out of the bag, fitted it to my lens and set the bottom of the split at the bottom of sky. I was shooting pretty much right into the sun, so the circular polarizer would have done nothing as far as eliminating glare. Best I could manage under the circumstances. I shot this with a black and white conversion in mind, which was done in Lightroom 2.3. I haven’t worked on doing localized adjustments in LR, so I went to Photoshop Elements and dodged the Crag quite a bit and then burned back in a few edges. (After I typed this, I did make some localized adjustments in LR just for yucks.)

After that, I decided it would be cool to try and get a picture of myself on top of the Crag. Unfortunately, the longest shutter delay setting on my camera is 20 seconds, and the run to the Crag from where I was set up was about 23 seconds. In shooting some stuff at The Glory Hole, I figured out how to buy a few seconds (but you’ll have to wait for that post for the tip). After giving up, I headed back to Haley Falls and shot what little water there was and some little purple wildflowers—stay tuned for the next post.

First "Strobist" style outing

Many of you know that I'm a fan of Strobist, David Hobby's website dedicated to off-camera lighting techniques. In the past year, I have pulled together a modest collection of off-camera lighting equipment. I added two more flashes to the SB-600 I already had, I got two Cybersync receivers and a trigger. I got an umbrella and stand. I got some Justin clamps (love love love them) A couple of weeks ago, I ordered some gels, and they showed up Friday, just in time for Hadley's dance recital last Saturday at Arend Arts Center.

AAC is probably just like other fine arts venues of its caliber in terms of available light. It's dark. Even when the lights are up, it's dark. From last year's experience, I knew that I would be shooting at ISO 800 or above (yuck). I also knew that I'd be very limited with lens choices (I actually used every lens in the bag at some point, but the only fast lens I have is my 50mm 1.8). I knew that I was going to be catching action shots at about f5.6, and so I'd need either a high ISO or some light. A few days before the event, I got permission to hang some flashes in the little alcoves off the staircases leading up to the catwalk. I forget what these alcoves are called, but they are basically little closets where lights are hung. I was able to Justin clamp a flash to the rail in each alcove. I just wanted to color the light a little bit and use it as fill. I gelled each flash with a half-cut of CTO, and set the zoom for 50mm. Each flash was set on 1/2 power. (I later changed that and used full power, and next time I'll probably do that in conjunction with full cut CTO and a further zoom. Hell, might as well use all the light, huh?)

I learned a few lessons, some of which are worth thinking about even if you're not doing off-camera flash:

1. Use Exposure Compensation. The use of exposure compensation should not be overlooked. It's quick, it doesn't change your aperture or shutter speed, and you probably don't have to take you eye away from the viewfinder to do it. I knew this. Lots of stuff in McNally's new book about it. I forgot about it anyway until I was processing the images in Lightroom later that day. Idiot.

2. Bring a Flashlight. The lights in the stairwell up to the catwalk that were on when I was hanging my lights? Those went off during the rehearsal. I didn't think about that. If you're going to have to access stuff in dark places, bring a little flashlight or pen light or something, JICYFU (golfers who are familiar with the George Lucas (not the Star Wars George Lucas) tour yardage books will recognize the acronym for Just In Case You [Mess] Up). Or just in case you change your mind and want to change your flash settings. Sure makes the whole wireless i-TTL stuff seem very attractive.

3. Batteries Will Go Dead. When I couldn't figure out why my lights wouldn't trigger, I got worried. Turns out I had a dead transmitter battery. The receivers take AA. The transmitter takes a battery about the size of a quarter, so it's not like I could run to the corner C-Store. Nope. Had to go to Radio Shack.

Back to #2. A flashlight is also helpful JICYRFU (where the R stands for "Really"). Seriously, how hard can it be to check batteries in radio triggers? I mean, hell, you charge or change your flash batteries, right? One thing I hate about the first generation of Cybersync triggers is the test button sticks out too far and has a tendency to get pressed and then the thing stays on for an hour at a time, and if the triggers are in a case or bag or whatever, they have a tendency to get pushed more than you think, which drains the batteries. I had to replace batteries in one of the receivers in mid-rehearsal. And the stairwell was pitch black and I had a hard time finding the stairs, scraped my leg coming down, etc. So, take the batteries out of things you're not using all the time, check them before any extended use, and make sure you have spares of everything in your bag. Simple, right? Idiot.

4. Find a Different Place to Shoot. In The Moment it Clicks, McNally says to put your camera in a unique place, or words to that effect.  The point is to get your camera in a place that will enable you to take a unique shot. Unique from what? I suppose one answer is unique from other shots of the same subject. In McNally's case, that was up on the radio towers at the Empire State Building. In The Hot Shoe Diaries, it's dangling down in front of a fire truck. I think it also means putting your camera where everybody else's isn't. At the dress rehearsal, folks were just wondering around the auditorium taking pictures. When their kids were on stage, folks were crowding the stage. With my 70-300 I had a little more reach than most people (except for the guy with the Nikkor 400mm 2.8 in the back). I wanted to get closer. I wanted to get right in the middle of it. So, I hit the side curtains at stage right and got some closer pics. It's a shame that I didn't figure this out until the finale when everyone was on stage, because then I figured out that you could get behind the dancers and get cool shots pointing out into the audience with the flood lights shining down (but then I also caught my flashes triggering in the image--which was easy to fix by turning off the transmitter, and highlights from the stage floor reflections). Sometimes you can get away with this, sometimes you can't. Ultimately, the studio director came up to me to make sure that I was a dance dad and not some stalker. So, you can clear this sort of stuff before hand, or you can take a chance by not asking, just don't be really obvious about it.

5. Noise Reduction Software is Your Friend. Fast glass is very important to shooting in this type of venue, unless you have a new D300, D700 or D3 that has phenomenal high ISO performance. Older cameras will give you some noise. I start getting some noise at ISO 800, particularly against a dark background like I had for many of my shots. I downloaded a trial of Neat Image and I really like it. Other good choices are Noise Ninja and Noiseware. I'll check the others, but I was impressed by what I saw from Neat Image. I think NR software can really make a difference. Here's an example of a shot that would really benefit from some noise reduction. The demo of Neat Image will only treat an image 1024 pixels x 1024 pixels or smaller, so I resized this picture and ran it through the Neat Image processor with good results. This shot has a little noise reduction applied in Lightroom, but it really had little effect.

So there. It's been a month since my last confession post. I'm done for a while. But here's what's coming. In a few weeks, the girls are going to California and I'm going hiking. I'm going to hit up some of the waterfalls near the Buffalo River, and then probably some hiking near White Rock. Also, if things go according to plan, I may get to spend a few hours at Yosemite in July. So I'm hoping that the next few posts will have tons of photographs. Stay tuned.

Art Experience: Epilogue

Last Saturday night was the Art Experience gig. The whole day was a blur, and between that and a crazy day Sunday, I’ve managed to pelt myself with a bunch of random thoughts about my “coming out party” (as Judi Harrison called it). Time to clear my head and make some sense of it.

Picking the pieces for the show was easy. I knew that there would be at least one other photog at the show, and that she did mostly portraiture. I am more in to what I call “situational portraiture”–capturing the world around us and the people in it. I guess you could call it street photography or photojournalism or whatever, but that doesn’t really capture the nature photography part of what I like to do. Picking the sizes and framing options was excruciating. I wanted to be sure to have a lot of options. I settled on 4 nature pieces that were 10x15, linen textured, mounted on 2mm styrene, but not matted or framed; 2 pieces at 11x14 that were linen textured and mounted on 3/4" foam standout (similar to gatorfoam) ready for hanging; a 16x14 on 3/4" standout; the Zoom Zoom picture on a 20x30 gallery wrap canvas; the Warhol’s Chevy prints mounted on double-weight matboard, matted with white acid-free mats, and framed in flat black frames (I forget the dimensions); the three Faces of Hollywood prints 8x8 in large, brushed nickel frames with ivory matboards (again, I forget the dimensions); and 2 5x7's matted and framed. I ordered about half the photographs from Mpix and half from White House Custom Color (which I love for their standouts and textures). I ordered the two 5x7's from Mpix and tried their custom framing. I was pleased. Their frame selection is not too shabby and their turn around time is pretty quick, too. I had the rest of the framing done at Hobby Lobby. I picked the pre-fab frames (not the open-back ones) and the mats (they have surprisingly few acid-free boards on hand), they did the assembly. They messed up one of the Warhols, but they fixed it and they turned out quite nice. This being my first show, and with the economy being iffy, I didn’t want to invest a lot of money in framing.

Set up was Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. I got there about 10:00, thinking I’d be finished in about an hour. Ha. I walked out about 1:15 after two trips to Wal-Mart to get more table top easels. (A hint–those cheap little plate easels? They suck. Get the easels that have the flat horizontal cross-bar to put a picture on. Trust me.) One thing I was worried about was lighting. Once I got set up I knew I needed more light than what was going to be in the room. Fortunately, I was lined up on a wall with a 4-way outlet, so I brought a couple of lamps from the house and put them on either end of the front table. There was also a pillar out in front of the table with a 4-way outlet at the end of a conduit from the ceiling. I took a work light with a clamp and aluminum reflector and plugged it in and clamped it up about 7 feet up, pointed down onto the display. Rock and roll.

Showtime was 6:00 p.m. I had a ton of traffic, and met lots of fun people. It was really gratifying to share the stories behind the photographs with people who seemed genuinely interested to hear them. Being situated about 25 feet from the main bar didn’t hurt, either. At the end of the evening, I sold 4 pieces, gave out a lot of cards, answered a bunch of questions, gave out blog and flickr page addresses, was asked questions about what I had in my collection dealing with sustainability (I have obviously ignored my prior interest in stock photography–gotta fix that). I had no expectations, and came away with a wealth of information on the process of showing art. It was a great party.

I have a lot of people to thank. I’ll just go in order. First, I have to thank Judi Harrison for believing in me and my work. Were it not for her, I never would have known about this event. More than that, Judi is the person who pitched me to Jennifer Koon, the artist coordinator for Art Experience. Judi is a dear, dear friend and a wonderful artist in her own right, and she gently nudged (ok, shoved) me out of my comfort zone and into the semi-public eye. Next, I owe a big thanks to Jennifer Koon and the Art Experience committee people for taking a chance on me. I was up front in telling Jennifer that I had never done a show before and that I had no clue what to do. Undaunted, Jennifer invited me to be a presenting “artist with collection.” Jennifer and the Art Experience volunteers were at the artists’ disposal during setup. Really, a first-rate group of people to work with. Rex and Dalas Warr loaned me the easels I needed, without which I would have really been in a panic. Beth Cook at B La Rue loaned me some glass blocks and shelves to elevate things on the table and added a little personality to my tables. Many of you have offered your congratulations, encouragement and suggestions about what to show, and I greatly appreciate the input, support and encouragement you have given me; I have the greatest friends! Finally, and most importantly, my wife Julie has really been amazing about this whole project. In the early weeks, I had a lot of late nights trying to figure things out, and that meant many mornings of not getting up and hanging out with her (or just plain not getting up). She’s been very supportive and encouraging, which for me is very fulfilling. Despite having every right in the world, she has not complained at all about all the time and wheel-spinning I’ve spent on this endeavor. What else can I say? Thanks, babe.

After I hang up some of the remaining pieces on the walls around the house, I need to find a couple of galleries to hang some stuff in. Beth Cook has offered to let me hang some things in B La Rue, which I should have up in time for Art Walk. One of the artists suggested I look into Poor Richard's in Rogers, so the next time I’m down that way I’ll go look. Of course, now I need new material. Time to get out and shoot.

Two Chairs on Dock

We went to my cousin's cabin to celebrate my aunt's 70th birthday. In front of the cabin is a large pond with a dock. When the kids finished fishing, these chairs were left.

Warhol's Chevy

Here's a triptych I'm doing for Art Experience.

My First Show!

I am pleased to announce that I have been asked to be one of 15 artists presenting work for sale at the Walnut Farm Montessori's "Art Experience" fund raiser at Bentonville Plaza on April 18th. I'm so stoked it's not even funny. Many thanks to Judi Harrison for getting me in the door (Judi will also be a presenting artist and whose work I adore). I get to keep 75% of anything I sell. I haven't ever thought about really selling anything. I don't really even know what to do.

A big thanks to all of you who have encouraged me, complimented me, and taught me (whether or not you knew it), because you have played a part in this as well.

Since this show is supposed to be for artists with collection, I guess I need to put together a collection. Suggestions would be deeply appreciated.

Great Guest Blog over at Kelby Training

As I have mentioned previously, I am a fan of Zack Arias, an Atlanta-based photographer. Scott Kelby invited him to be a guest blogger over at his website. Instead of a boring routine ol' blog post (ahem!), he made a video. Those of you who know me will recognize the common thread of fathers with bad medical conditions (you know it had to be something other than the photography, because I'm not even in Zack's universe when it comes to photography). The timing of my seeing this is somewhat ironic, given that Dad's birthday would have been tomorrow.

Things You Can Do in Your Living Room

Who needs a studio?















For this shot, I hung a fluffy, deep-red blanket from the top of our TV armoir in the living room (anchored it with Julie's dumbbells, actually), stuck a small stool a few feet in front of it, and my daughter, ham that she is, took center stage while I set up the lights. At camera right is a speedlight about 7-feet high into a reflective umbrella (probably about 1/2 power), and at camera left is another speedlight through a Stofen Omnibounce at about 1/8th or 1/4. I don't remember the exact settings and didn't write them down. Flashes were triggered by Cybersync triggers.

Paying Attention

I've been bitching about not getting to go photograph Ann Falls last week during the ice storm. Today is really the first chance I had to go out there and check it out. I should have taken my waders because the money shots are really down in the falls. I took a few pics, and posted the best ones on my Flickr page.

I drug Paul Schaefer out with me. And as we were finishing up around the falls, he mentioned that he wanted to run down and shoot this old Chevy pick-up parked under a canopy at the old recycling center. In my single-minded desire to shoot the falls, I lost sight (figuratively, if you will) of what I've been trying to tell myself since this post: shoot what's out there. Here's my favorite shot of the day (including the waterfall).

EXIF: ISO 100, f/4.8 for 1/80" at 122mm (Nikkor 70-300VR)

Silver Linings

It has been a slow-motion week this week. We had a week of school being out due to snow and ice. I had a two-day trial (and the prep that goes with it), so I was not able to get out and shoot in the snow at places like Tanyard Creek and Ann Falls. But, thanks to a friend of ours who is a flower vendor, we have a bunch of flowers around the house, and so I decided to try my hand at off-camera lighting and black backgrounds. The setup is simple. I stuck the stem in Hadley's candy bowl (which is actually a champagne bucket) and set it on the corner of our kitchen table nearest the window (about 3 feet away). Then, I taped a piece of black posterboard on the window behind the flower. To camera right about 90 degrees is a Nikon SB-28 at 1/2 power fired into a reflective umbrella. To camera left at about 50-60 degrees is a Nikon SB-80DX at 1/16th power through a Stofen Omnibounce. The flashes are triggered by Cybersync radio triggers. I started at 1/200" and chimped until I got the light the way I wanted it. Exposure ended up being ISO 100, f/8 for 1/200" (lens was 70-300VR at 185mm). I shot a lot of trial shots before getting out the tripod. This is not the sharpest of the bunch, but I dig the lighting.

Train Tracks

As I typed the title of this post, it occurred to me that moving from the comfort of Photoshop Elements 5 to Lightroom 2.2 has been a bit like being hit by a train. You know, I was driving along, pretty happy with my post-processing skills and black/white conversions, and then BAM, I got hit by the Lightroom Express. Not in a bad way, though. LR has been a bit overwhelming for me, partly because I have endeavored to work on cataloging and organizing a few thousand photographs as part of the migration. For someone who is not particularly well organized, well, that's a bit of a chore. LR is at once complicated (because it does SO much) and easy (because it does SO much). That said, I had my PSE workflow pretty much down, knew a bunch of tricks and shortcuts, and now I'm learning something totally different. So, yeah--train wreck.

I've been reading the books I ordered to learn as much as I can. I've shot a little bit in the past couple of weeks (not much, but a little), and I've been itching to get out of LR's Library module and dig into the Develop module. Here's a picture that I've taken basically from start to finish through the Develop module. I set the white balance using the White Balance Selection tool, adjusted the Exposure and Recovery sliders, adjusted the midtone contrast with the Clarity slider and then adjusted the total contrast with the Tone Curve. The Targeted Adjustment Tool is an amazing tool for making localized adjustments, particularly with the Tone Curve (much like a Curves adjustment layer in Photoshop).

The black and white conversion is most cool. I first used the greyscale conversion (which I never used in PSE), made more adjustments to the Exposure, Blacks and Clarity sliders, and then used the Targeted Adjustment Tool tool to adjust the greyscale mix (which consists of red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple and magenta). Then I applied a duotone. Straightened, cropped, post-crop vignette, and that's it. Then, I downloaded a plug-in that exports photos directly to Flickr, so it gets exported to my Flickr page.

This was taken on the train tracks in Julie's home town of Roe, Arkansas (population 124--salute!) on December 27, 2008. I got lots of stares. That's ok. I've been wanting to take this photograph for a long time. Personally, I'm very close to liking the b/w conversion. And I'm very close to absolutely loving Lightroom.

EXIF:

Nikon D80 with 18-135mm lens at 75 mm
ISO 400
f/11
1/160 sec.


UPDATE:


Here's a couple of other shots from the same session. This one is from the left side of the tracks (I like the right side better).






This one was kinda down low with a contemporary tilt of the camera.

Migration

I have made the decision to migrate all of my digital images to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (which I also intend to use as my primary editor). At first, the image library may only consists of things I'm actually working on (as opposed to every single shot of Christmas and birthdays and school events, etc.), but ultimately I want to get every picture I take or have taken into Lightroom to catalog and apply metadata/tags so that it's very searchable.

When I ordered LR, I also ordered Scott Kelby's book, Lightroom 2.0 Book for Digital Photographers and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers by Martin Evening. I cracked Kelby's book last night, and the first chapter is about importing your images into LR and how to name them and apply metadata. He urges you to do this before you ever edit an image in LR. I can't really wait to learn the imaging tools, so I may not wait that long, but I'm now in the position to organize everything I have, including those film pictures that Wal-Mart would put on CD for me back when I was shooting film.

The problem is selecting a naming convention. I think I'm going to organize by year shot, then by month shot, and then by file number. So, a picture shot on January 3, 2009, would be filed in the January folder under the 2009 folder, and the file name would look something like 2009-01-03_DCIMxxxx (where xxxx represents the actual number of the picture). I'll then add metadata or tags so that they are searchable. I'm really struggling with this. I tend to organize by event (e.g., All That Dance->2008>Recital) or in the case of the few portrait shoots I do, by family (e.g., Parks Family->Fall 2008), and then the file numbers just retain their original names. Some of you (like Mendy) are far more organized than I am and have probably already either tackled this problem, or don't have to worry about it because you devised a file-naming convention right out of the gate.

So help me out. How do you organize your piles of digital images?