If you blog in the forrest.......

This is going to be my last Sunday post to this blog.  I don't want to run out of ideas before I get the first person reading!  And I don't want to make this a chore or a "job" so Im designating Sunday as a no blog day.  

Photo editing

The blog is about DIGITAL Photography.  Many of the techniques came from and apply to film photography but as far as Im concerned, film is dead to me.  I can here the howls from "real" photographers everywhere who still use film.  Whatever.  Go to a film blog.  I think one of the reason some "real" photographers hate digital and cling to film is that they lost their one HUGE advantage over the rest of us - volume and a dark room (oops that's two).

When I first started in serious photography with my Pentax K1000, I was a kid with no allowance and a paper route that earned me $2 day.  A 36 exposure roll of Kodak ASA 400 cost $5-8 and developing it with single prints cost $15-20.  I couldn't even think about 800 film.  Taking a picture went something like this - find that thing you REALLY wanted to remember, spend 5 minutes framing, focusing and metering.  Click.  Wind.  Think hard if you want a second shot at a different angle.  Move on.  I can only remember few days I shot a whole roll and one or two days that I shot more than one.  I just couldn't afford it.  Film might sit in the camera for a week or a month before you finished the roll and then you sent it off for processing - another week plus.  By the time you got it back, you had no idea what you did wrong or right to make a shot look good.  The Pros on the other hand shot pictures like their lives depended on it (I guess their livelihood did!).  They had power winders and long rolls of film and a budget a bit north of $2 a day.  More importantly, they had darkrooms to process, select and then manipulate their pictures.  Digital has leveled the field and they don't like it.

The darkroom is now a computer and Photoshop. Oops, a "digital photo editing program."  Yes, I know there are programs that are not Photoshop just like there are MP3 players that are not iPods.  I use Photoshop because it works, not because I am a fanboy.  Or more correctly, Photoshop Elements.  "Real" Photoshop cost a mortgage payment and requires a pretty hefty computer.  Some day I might "need" the extra features and flexibility it offers but for now, Elements does 99% of what I need for a whole lot less money and time.

The most current version of Photoshop Elements (7.0 for Win,6.0 for Mac)runs $100 plus or minus $25.  Considering the latest version is roughly equivalent to the full version of 3 years ago, its a deal.  But blog this is about getting the most for your photographic budget.  One of the advantages digital Pros have is how they interact with Photoshop.  A mouse is fine for surfing the net but to get the most out of photoshop you need a tablet and a pen.  That means Wacom.  Like photo editing programs, their are other tablets but Wacom makes the best.  Even better, you get a chance to kill two birds with one stone.  Every Wacom tablet comes with a copy of Photoshop Elements (exception is the basic Bamboo which is sold with nothing extra - even the pen is separate).  The version depends on how much you spend on the tablet.  At the bottom end is the Bamboo Fun (Small).For $86 you get a tablet and Photoshop Elements 6.0.  Jump up too the Intuos4 Smallfor $199 and you get Elements 7/6 (win/mac) and a significantly more capable tablet.  But for the ultimate savings, go with last years tech - $100 gets you an Intuos3 with Photoshop Elements 5.0 and capabilities in the middle of the Bamboo and the newest Intous4.  Plus you get a wireless mouse and if you are like me with both Mac and Windows computers, you get a version for both computers - something Adobe hasn't offered in a single package since Elements 3.0.  Two copies of Photoshop Elements 5, a Tablet that was $250 last year and a wireless mouse.  Thats a lot of value for $100.

Im a big believer in buying last years tech.  I would love to have the bleeding edge stuff every time but its just too expensive.  But come to think of it, the thing I appreciate most about last years tech is letting someone else try out and identify the turkeys for me.  I don't have the time to waste on something with a fatal flaw or doesn't provide a significant improvement.  I still use Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac because 5.0 didn't provide enough new and it had some UI issues I didn't want to deal with.  When 7.0 for Mac comes out I will probably upgrade.  Besides the expense, skipping two upgrades has let me get good with the version I have without having to relearn the UI every year.  Its the same reason I got a Dell laptop just before the switch to Vista.  I wanted XP because it had been pretty well fixed and what flaws there were were well known (the exact reason the "death date" for XP keeps getting pushed back).  Ill talk a lot more about old tech when I get into camera buying strategies.

Turing the park into a studio

I love flowers.  I love taking pictures of flowers.  I always loved the pictures of flowers on a black background but couldn't figure out how to take them.  I spent $3 at the craft store and got pictures like this.

I took this outdoors in low angle sunlight.  What I added for $3 was two yards of black cloth.  I got it on sale but you can usually find black cloth in the scrap section.  Or use a piece you already have.  The cloth I got is very thin.  That doesn't matter unless the light is behind (which can be a nice effect too).  You only have to darken the background a bit to get the contrast.

  

The advantage of the thin fabric is more clear in the park.  

Heavy fabric would crush the little flowers.  With light fabric I can drape it over anything I can find behind the subject.  If I know I am shooting flowers, I put it in my camera bag.  It weighs less than a 4 pack of AA batteries and will fit just about anywhere.  I use the same fabric for shooting objects in my "studio" (kitchen).  Same theory - I drape it over a box and I have a solid black background for a lot less than a light box.

Another example:

In this one you can see a hint of the background because the direct sun hit it.  This is easy to fix in Photoshop or almost any other photo editor (levels, brightness and contrast).

 

And of course you are not just limited to black.  White, green, blue all look nice too.  Try different things and see what you get.  I just bought a yard of military camouflage ($1.97 at Beverly's - 10% Group discount) that should blur quite nicely.

Enough Talk

Time for some action.  Many of the things I will talk about are not original thoughts.  Are there any original thoughts left?  Probably not but I digress.  If you buy nothing else I recommend, please buy Scott Kelby's Digital Photography 1 and 2.  I hate most "instruction" books.  They make you read 20 pages to get one useful thing.  Not these.  Each page is a lesson.  One idea, one page.  Most stand completely alone.  A few are tied to a previous lesson.  I learned more in a day from these two books than I had in every other book, website or video I have ever used.  So if you only have $30 in your budget, buy these books.

Essential facts

Some things you should know about me and some full disclosure by me.

I shoot with a Pentax K200D.  I don't hate Cannon or Nikon or Olympus or Sony.  I shoot Pentax because of familiarity and value (more on that later).  Our pictures are not stamped with our brand (yes, I know about EXIF data).  Its not the brand of camera but what you do with it.  So I will try to keep things brand neutral.  With one big exception.  If I am talking value for money, all things are not equal.  I know, value judgements are subjective.  Im not forcing anyone to do anything, just giving my opinion.

Im a Mac guy.  I don't hate Window/Intel machines or Linux machines.  I just prefer my Macintosh.  A lot.  So screen shots will be from my Mac unless it is a specific Windows program.  Yes, I own two Dell laptops.  But no Linux.  Sorry, just too old to learn one more OS.  That said, I will try as much as possible to be system agnostic but I may lapse into some Mac speak.  Its laziness not hate.

I wont recommend anything I don't use or try.  This might limit what I can write about but anything else would be dishonest.  I might recommend a site with a tip or project I didn't try but I will say so.  If I find something that is priced well but have no personal experience with it, I will say so.  Hmmm....let me qualify that too.  Updates to products I know well or are pretty close to something I have used may get recommended too.  If I have used lots of a certain brand of memory card, I have no problem recommending a size different from the one I actually own.

I own individual stock in Apple and I invest in two mutual funds - an S&P 500 index fund and a NASDAQ 100 index fund.  If I ever reach a position where my opinions can "move markets" I will divest.  

If I ever reach the point of companies sending me "loaner" equipment, I will say so.  

If I ever reach the point of companies paying me directly for ads, I will say so.

thats all I can think of for now.