One of my favorite subjects to photograph is old or wood barns. First, it seems that no two buildings are the same. Next, you have the wood patterns and what digital processing can do. Another aspect I like are the surroundings, whether it is nature or multiple legged.
One of my first subjects is a barn in Pennsylvania. And by first, we're talking eight years ago. We're talking D80. I must have deleted the RAW files somewhere along the line, but I do have .HDR files that were created by Photomatix. And at that point in time, the single image process wasn't that good, so I'm guessing there were three merged (RAW) images. At that time, I was also using Elements. Not Photoshop.
I thought it might be interesting to see how processing, software and my tastes have changed over the years. These are two shots taken on the same day, minutes apart.
The first shot is one I last worked in 2009. It is one of my favorites. When I was part of the Art at the Market group, it was a seller. Again, at that time I was using Elements and Photomatix only. I also thought grunge was really cool. Here are a few flavors:
Trying to recall, but I must have been real happy to figure out how to watermark the image and get the copyright right. Pretty plain. This is the image I sold at the Market. This image came out best when printing to paper. I remember the color of the barn doors is what caught my eye.
On the next/following image I remember trying to boost the colors with Photomatix. I used this image for years as part of my personal screensaver slideshow. As I look at it now, it is a bit over-saturated. Or just colorful.
In the next image, I used the grunge setting in Photomatix. At one time, I thought this was just plain cool. And all I can say now is, sometimes you just have to step over the line to define where it is. (Don't judge me.)
Now let's fast forward to today. The images is from a RAW D80 file using current On One and Photoshop software. And my personal take.
Initially I see more sharpening used. Not as much fall colors in the trees. I tried to pop the tree colors, but it didn't look right to me. Made the image look too 'Photoshopped'. So this shot for me is a lot cleaner, still has some colors and not overly painted.
Fun to see the differences.
Earlier this year I purchased a 85mm (AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/3.5G ED VR) Nikon lens. The main goal was to get sharper images than I was getting with my 18-200.
My first excursion with the lens outside of Grandpa's Dungeon was to the Detroit Model Railroad Club. I had grand visions of what the day would bring.
I didn't do much to this image with respect to sharpness and bokeh. If I remember right, this was taken on a tripod with a remote release. To help maintain the sharpness, I didn't do any smoothing. In my past train photos, I've photo stacked to get the image entirely in focus. So this is different.
The vitals: 85mm, 1/15th, f/5.0, ISO 800. Put that in the DOF blender with my distance of 3 ft and that gives a DOF of about one inch. That is probably pretty close to correct.
When going through some shots to work on, I chose this one because of the sharpness of the front of the train. I also chose to process the shot entirely with On One. The exposure didn't need much work as the light is pretty even all around. i was going through all the filters in On One when I stumbled on this color shade. For what ever reason, this combination with the existing colors works for me.
In the past, I might have warmed or cooled an image a few points but that is as much as I've ever used for a total color shift. This is new to me and I'll have to remember it.
On many fronts, this is a different photo from me. Maybe I need to explore more?
Well, the summer photo vacation is over.
I didn't take a lot of new shots this year. I'll have to make up for it with software amazement.
I've updated my software packages. Photomatix, who I last gave money to over three years ago, still gives me no charge updates. Beside the fact it is world class software, that alone makes Photomatix a valid software consideration if you are looking to get into HDR. I updated my On One software package. Looks like they've made some very nice enhancements. The Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom 2018 versions just came out. We'll see how lost I can get with that stuff.
Adobe also has Photoshop and Lightroom Apps for your mobile device. I should add they are FREE apps. I've played with them for a bit - and they are a lot lighter than the desktop versions, but for free they are still very powerful. I just completed a technology upgrade (tablet and phone) where I can try these apps out.
The improvements in the On One Photo Raw 2018 software look very interesting. I've used the software primarily for the the masking functions as I've found them to be much better/easier than Photoshop. Related to this, I now understand their luminosity mask and how powerful that can be. I need to get more comfortable with On One.
I will also work more with my phone camera. For now it won't take the place of my DSLRs, but it would be nice to get 'better' results. Now that I know about the Adobe Apps, I need to work on transferring photos between my phone and tablet, without wi-fi. I'm not kidding myself, working on the phone screen is not going to happen with me. The kids in the training videos are awesome, but they don't have my peepers. I can live with working on the tablet.
I'd also like to get more comfortable with my device tablet (instead of mouse). I've played with it off and on, but now that my mobile tablet has a pen I should get more comfortable with this device as well.
That's the plan for this winter. Between now and June 2018 the paying job will get very busy. I will have some opportunities for photos so I'll just have to make the most of them.
