I’m now able to post my WordPress blog directly from Lightroom. I think that any tool that can make it easier to publish my posts is a great idea. There are several good export plugins for Lightroom available. I already have the one for Smugmug. But I hadn’t heard about a blogging export tool until now. You can find at:
http://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/lr2blog.php?sec=main
I was up until 2:30AM last night re-installing all my software after upgrading to Windows 7. I think I’m getting a performance improvement with Windows 7, but I’ve lost another day in processing the images from my trip to Yellowstone & Grand Teton. Thought that I’d upload a photo from a beautiful snowy day right before I left. I love weather drama.
UPDATE: I enjoyed converting to Black & White so much that I decided to create a small gallery of B&W photos from Yellowstone. These were taken in IR & converted using Nik Silver Effects Pro. Here is the link to the gallery.
http://stetz.smugmug.com/gallery/9892357_zNapt#673982685_Ad4td
Today’s post is more of a survey. I love the other worldly look or IR photo’s. I also think that they often do a great job of being converted to Black & While. The follwoing is an IR photo & the same photo converted to BW (using Silver Effects Pro.). Let me know which one you prefer. (You can click on the thumbnail to see a bigger version.)
I decided that I’d bring my notebood along on my trip to Yellowstone / Grand Teton and use that to download my files. Two mistakes with that. Because I was shooting thousands of photos in Raw with AEB (for HDR) I actually filled up the hard drive. I also didn’t bring a small external hard drive to make another copy of the files to add a level of security. On our way from Grand Teton to Jackson Hole, we decided to to a hike. The computer was in the car. The whole way I had visions of someone breaking into the car. Luckily this never happened, but I’ve learned my lesson. Next time I’ll have my small external hard drive on me while I’m hiking.
I have over a thousand images from Yellowstone, and several hundred from Grand Teton. I need to
– copy to 2 different external hard drives
– give each photo a preliminary rating in Lightroom
– edit the photo’s with a rating of 3 or higher, perhaps apply a plug in
– re-rate the photos
– create a gallery of the top 30 or so from each place
– publish to Smugmug, get comments on the photos
– review and decide on the very best 10 or 15, and create a Flash gallery for my web site.
Well at least I’ve got the “To Do” list done.
I went to Oxbox Bend 3 times hoping for the perfect light. Never really found it. But I did find an artist whose hard work makes a good foreground element.
One of the themes that I keep coming back to is what I call the “Chaos Theory”. I believe that there is beauty in chaos, and I especially enjoy finding chaos in the midst of beauty.
I have 2 Canon bodies that share the same batteries and another Canon body (converted to IR) that uses a different battery. Should have had plenty of battery power to handle the day. But I didn’t count on 32 – 37 degree F temperatures. From the first shoot of the day I started to get the battery dead message. Luckily I knew that I needed to take the “dead” batteries and put them in a warm place (inside pocket). So that by the time the next battery appeared to be dead, I could re-use the last one. I was able to make it through the day but it involved a game of musical batteries, swapping them out every 30 minutes or so.
The weather has been beautiful with one exception. Up until yesterday there have been crisp blue skies. Me, I like some clouds to give texture to my photos. Also it’s hard to get a good sunrise / sunset photo without a cloud. It made me lazy and I wasn’t getting up in time to work the sunrise. Well yesterday I woke up just as the sun was coming up. I peeped out the window and realized that there were some clouds and a beautiful sunrise. I rushed outside and took a few shots. It really was a nice sunrise, and I found the “Whoa” sigh interesting (below).
The problem was that when I came back to my room, I brought the tripod into the room. (I usually leave it in the car.) Of course I ended up forgetting it when we went to Jenny Lake / Cascade Canyon. I had to hand hold for the entire day. There were times I did 3 shot AEB (automatic Exposure bracketing) leaning on a rock / tree / shoulder/ etc. I’ll see how these turn out. I also assume I can do some pseudo bracketing with the raw files in Lightroom. (Develop normally, create a virtual copy and under expose, create another virtual copy and over expose.) This some times works with about +/- 1 EV latitude in the raw files. My AEB files are +/- 2 EV apart.
I thought that Mormon Row would be fun in IR. The old barn done a zillion times by every photographer to ever visit Grand Teton. I liked the results, but surprisingly there are a lot of cool buildings at Mormon Row then just the famous barn.
