Archive for January, 2009

I got a few scattered reports from friends via texts and facebook status updates that apparently most of the country is under a deep freeze right now. 

It was 70, sunny and glorious here in San Francisco today.  I packed the laptop in my bag after lunch and headed out to sit in a park and do some work.

I continue to mess around with the Nik Software plugins.  I’ve been trying out some of the color photo emulations.  The photo on the right is straight out of the camera, but then I applied Fuji Superia 1600 emulation on it.  However, there seems to be a problem with the grain rendering.  Theres a distinct radial banding going on in the picture that I’m pretty sure doesn’t show up in the actual film if I were to use it.  

But thats all about the creative process of experimentation and all that yadda.  

I’ve been starting to square away stuff, and figure out what I’m going to do next.  My biggest problem all through my life is that I’ve always had a lot of ideas, but never really quite executing.  I just figured it was cuz I’m not the type to execute.  But really, its just about putting the effort in.  And like most things, practice makes perfect.  So I just need to practice on executing, if that makes sense.

Sooo… what’s up next?  I’ll be starting off a project I’ve been working on the last month.  It’s a photography blog.  There are quite a few out there, but I have a couple ideas that should make it stand out from the others.  I’ll be announcing that real soon.  

Another picture to close out this post…

This is one of my best-selling photos.  Ive sold so many copies of this I’ve lost count already.  I find it rather ironic that even after upgrading bodies (twice) and getting a bunch of better lens and all that, this picture which originated from my piddly 6.3 megapixel Canon 10D and anything-but-sharp 16-35L turns out to be one of my best selling photos.  I find it a good reminder that even with better equipment, a good photo is still a good photo.

But now that I’ve added Silver Efex Pro to my stable of post-processing tools, I thought I’d come back and revisit the original RAW and see what I could make of it.

Its a different feel, isn’t it?  The sky’s far more dramatic.  The ground has a more scorched feel, and the posts stand out much more starkly.   I also experimented with adding a bit of edge burn to give it a natural border feel.  Its not as obvious as some other photos I’ve tried it out on, but its pretty subtle.

What do you guys think?