Currently watching Kelby Training’s Word Press for Photographers part 2 with RC Concepcion. I didn’t realize that you can take your Flickr Collections and publish them to WP. Seems to work ok with my Atahualpa theme, but wasn’t working right with Auto Focus. UPDATE: Realized that you always have to include a photo for the Auto Focus theme to work. So I added one after the Flickr link.
(Click on the lower right to make this full screen.)
While putting together my last post (lessons from the zoo) I decided that it would be good to do a “best of” zoo photos for 2009. To see the PDF of this just click on the below image.
Lesson 1: Be sure and save you WP draft on your Iphone before leaving WP (Maybe I went to music in the middle to change albums, who know… but I lost the entire blog I wrote.)
Lesson 2: Rainy days are the best times to go to Zoo’s. That’s where I went on Saturday. On a rare San Diego rainy day. The crowds were gone, the animals were active, and the photos were plentiful.
Lesson 3: Better use a higher ISO if the light is lower than normal and you want to use a long lens. The increase in speed (and steady shots) is worth the small amount of noise.
Lesson 4: DxO Pro as a Raw processor, is the way to go if you have some noise. It took 3 hours for DxO to run… way slow. But the results were worth it. There was a real reduction in noise, with no loss in sharpness.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about making this photo Black & White before. I looked at the result and said wow. What do you think?
Linked to this photo is a PDF of the photos I’m thinking about putting in my Balboa Park Calendar. I’d appreciate your feed back on these. I have lots of shots, but I do like these.
So in the comments for this post, there was some feeling that the picture needed to be straightened out. I hadn’t done this because I didn’t want to lose the 2 fish at the bottom. So as a test I used Photoshop, cloned the fish, moved them further up, and then straighted out the photo. Which version do you prefer?
As I mentioned earlier, I’m thinking about putting out a Balboa Park Calendar. After reviewing my photo’s I’m definitely leaning towards using IR photos for the calendar. These would include original IR’s and IR’s converted to Black & White. (I really believe nothing makes better source material for a black & white then a IR photo. Here is the photo I’m thinking about putting on the cover:
I’m thinking about putting out a 2010 calendar. (Yes I know it’s a little late for this.) I’m thinking about making the theme for this years calendar Balboa Pak. Seems like a good idea. Last year I did Southern Utah. Beautiful images but I know very few people in Utah. Was able to have calendar carried in a couple of places in Springdale3 (Zion). But not a roaring success.
Since San Diego is my home town, more opportunities to find places to carry a local calendar? Who knows. Too late to do much for this year, but it’ll be good practice.
One of my favorite series in Balboa Park is with my IR camera. Some of the pictures work great for this. SO the calendar may be all IR. At least this will be a unique slant on the place. But lately I’ve really been enjoying converting my IR shots to Black & White. The IR shots really work well in BW. I use Nik Silver Effects Pro, and love the results. Of course one concern is that a B&W calendar will be harder to sell.
Which version of this shot do you prefer?:
This gallery was ready a few days ago but I thought that it had a color management problem. The reds in photos were WAY too red. (And in Sedona there is a lot of red.) It turns out that in Adobe Acrobat I was defaulting to ProPhoto. Since this is for the web it needed to be sRGB. Problem fixed (at least on my monitor.) Please enjoy my photos from Sedona. Click on the photo to see the PDF.
Here are my color images from Grand Teton. Like always it’s hard to pck out the best. But I really enjoy this batch and hope you do too.
I’ve had a lot of projects in the “almost complete” status for weeks now. A lot of them are getting close to completion at the same time. My most recent is a collection of Black & White shots taken in Grand Teton. It’s surprising how few people have experienced the awesome beauty of Grand Teton. It’s definitely seen as Yellowstone’s little sister.
