Robert Donovan Photography: June 2008

Monday, June 30, 2008

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Shameless plug

Please go to the following links and vote for two pics I have in a National Nikon contest.

http://www.ashtonsd60.com/gallery.aspx#/?image=12

http://www.ashtonsd60.com/gallery.aspx#/?image=20

You can vote once per day (per computer) until July 15th. Try and vote for just those two please :)

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Late Day Cruise

Feed Me

Under 26

Ceramic Color

Water Melon Radish

Isle Storm

Marsh Sun

Firey Palms

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Sullivan's Fire

Halfway Creek Church

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Confederates in my neighborhood.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Misty hue

© Robert Donovan

Got up at 4:30 to go out and get some more sunrise shots but the cloud cover made the light pretty drab, but allowed the fog to hang around in the distance. Grabbed a few shots before the bugs carried me off. Sent this one through Color Efex pro for black and white and Bi-Color filter processing. Really like the final product.

Ghostly Walk

Friday, June 13, 2008

Weathered Fire

© Robert Donovan

Another photo I turned up after going back through my files. This was taken with a circa 1980's Nikor 70-210mm f/4 fitted with both Nikon 6T and 5T close-up lenses. I'm actually pretty impressed with how sharp that came out considering the lens. I used to beat that damn thing up carrying it all over the Tetons on climbs and back country ski trips.

Watch over me

© Robert Donovan

Found this shot while going back through my files and reorganizing in Lightroom. 3 shot HDR converted to B&W and processed in Photoshop CS3. I dig the almost 3D effect you get from the interaction of the low angle light, the tree, the fence and the graves.

Magenta Sail

© Robert Donovan

Long exposure at 30 seconds. The sun had been below the horizon for pretty close to an hour but was still lighting those clouds up with a nice magenta glow. The foreground light comes from a regular old street lamp. After seeing it on the monitor I was going to crop it out, but I think I like the effect.

Pylons and Grass

Wando Sail

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

My Digital Workflow

This is a work in progress. I've been trying to get a good work-flow taking a photo from Lens to Print (or at least to final file). I've gone through a number of iterations of this but at this point in my sophomoric place as a photographer, I'm here. Granted, I know this is not the most efficient flow by a long stretch, but I think I'm utilizing the best of each of the steps.... or at least as far as I know.

I take the photo in my D300 as a 14 bit RAW. I figure might as well get the most information I can at the time of the shot. I have a few custom picture controls set up in the D300 but I tend to take most of my Landscape shots in Vivid mode at +3. I'll drop that to +2 sometimes. I've just uploaded the D2x controls to the D300 so I haven't used them yet, but will be messing around with them. I also have a custom set up for shooting people (something I really have room for improvement) that is Standard with saturation at +2.
I download all of the RAW files into Adobe Lightroom 1.4 so that I can organize them. Once I get them in I go through and start flagging the ones I want to work on.
I open each of the files in Capture NX 1.3 because I think that it does a better job at the raw conversion that Lightroom or ACR, at least for my Nikon NEF files. Plus It will use the picture controls from the camera which the adobe products strips out.
I'll do some color, Black and white points and contrast plus a few other adjustments in CaNX and then save the file as a 16 bit Tiff back into the same folder that I saved the original NEF file appending a _NX.tiff to the file.
Next I synch the folder in Lightroom and then tell it to open for edit in Photoshop CS3.
In photoshop it really varies with the file but typically there are some or all of these adjustments, all in layers of course

Crop
Multiple exposure blending
curves plus and minus with masking layers if needed and brush tool to bring out highlights or darken areas
dust specks removal
color saturation
color adjustment with Color Effect plug in
Sharpen using unsharp mask
Noise Reduction with Noise ninja (though i sometimes find this causes some issues)
any other number of adjustments

Save the file as a PSD back in the folder with other files.

Ok so I know that is not efficient but it's where I am. I'm frightened at trying batch processing but I need to give it a shot.

If I'm working on an HDR I'll take the raw files directly into Photomatrix Pro and adjust then save off as a .tiff. Then open it in Photoshop CS3. I haven't tried taking each raw into Capture NX first then bringing the .tiffs into Photomatrix but I'll probably give it a shot.

As far as printing goes, I currently do not have a decent printer so I upload photos to my ImageKind account and have been pleased with their result over all so far.