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?

Adventure

A lawyer friend of mine, Michael Hodson, is taking a year off and traveling the world. All the way around it. "One lap, no jet lag," he says. Two conditions apply: no air travel and no advance reservations. I've been watching his blog a little bit, and there was a great article about him in yesterday's Morning News. Check him out here.

Wine Club Recap--Washington

Our little wine club gathered last night (Friday) to sample offerings from Washington state. It's hard to believe we haven't had Washington as a theme in the several years we've been doing this. We (Julie and I) were struggling for a theme. Julie suggested Washington, and it didn't disappoint!

Here's the recap (in order served):

1. Chateau St. Michelle 2006 Horse Heaven Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc from the Horse Heaven Hills appellation (courtesy of Will and Liz);

2. Chateau St. Michelle 2006 Canoe Ridge Estate Chardonnay also from the Horse Heaven Hills appellation (courtesy of Jeff and Cynthia);

3. Northstar Winery 2004 Stella Maris Columbia Valley Red Wine (courtesy of Nick and Tamara);

4. Columbia Crest 2005 Horse Heaven Hills Reserve Syrah (courtesy of Paul and Sherry);

5. Col Solare 1999 Columbia Valley Meritage (a magnum, courtesy of Chad and Sara);

6. Spring Valley Vineyard 2004 Walla Walla Syrah "Nina Lee" (courtesy of Brian and Julie); and

7. Chateau St. Michelle Ethos 2006 Columbia Valley Late Harvest White Riesling (courtesy of Chad and Sara).

The brisk autumn evening was no match for the warmth of good food, good friends and good wine.

People to Watch

Like most of you, I have a handful of websites I look at regularly. Here's a few that I've been watching recently, in addition to the usual litany.

Zack Arias (who I propped here);

Joe McNally (enough said); and

a new local acquaintance, Bob Shull.

Rocks at Tanyard

This is the front of the rocks in the foreground of the picture in the More Tanyard post.

EXIF:

Sigma 10-20 at 18mm
f/5.6
1/25th sec
-.7 EV


I'm about over the cloudy white balance + negative EV setting that I've been using to compensate for the way the D80 meters. I'm always adding it back in when I do the RAW conversion. What's the point? I've gotten to where I just use center-weighted metering, particularly in manual mode.

Chicago Skyline

The obligatory skyline shot from our recent trip to Chicago. Click on the image for larger view.




I really wanted to get down here with a tripod and do a bona fide 5 or 6 frame panoramic. I didn't even put the head on my tripod the entire time we were there. I guess I lucked out on the clouds--the rain was just moving in from the west so I had some good clouds to mess with. We had a few minutes before our bus was set to leave, so I just capped off my 18-135mm walk-around lens with a circular polarizer and headed down to the water.