Friday, September 14, 2007

Friday Highlights

A Great Friday Morning to Everyone,

LaDawn and I are packing our bags and heading for home. After a nearly a week at Photoshop World, and now another week in New York, I think we are both ready to head back home. We spent our last full day yesterday checking out the sights over at Brooklyn Heights - what a nice area to visit. Bert Monroy gave us the tip a few weeks ago when he came through Cincy on his Photoshop Creativity Tour - he is from New York originally. Brooklyn Heights turns out to be America's first suburb. It's quiet, full of shops and restaurants, and the view from the Promenade is best of NYC and the Brooklyn bridge. You can check out a short slide show of the images over at our sister Blog "Dave and LaDawn on the Road". In fact we have been blogging the whole week over there as well. (Two Blogs a day, not for the "faint of heart.") Take a look.

Before we headed out yesterday, we took a "time-share" tour. If any of our readers have had that experience you know what I'm talking about here. The sales person tries to sell you part of a piece of property that you get to use for a week, once a year. I don't want to spend a lot of time here describing the concept, but, just as a heads up, I'm going to spend some time on "Sales" next week and I will share some of my insights about yesterday's experience. Check back next week for the rest of the story.

Anyway, even though we had a terrific time here in the Big Apple, we are looking forward to heading back. I have the weekend off, but on Sunday we are heading for Columbus to prepare for an "all-day" program for the Professional Photographers of Central Ohio we will present on Monday - hope to see some of you there. Next week I will also be putting finishing touches on my week-long Digital Master Class that kicks off September 24. (Still 1 or 2 seats left - call Susan at 800.292.2994 if interested.) So I will see everyone back in Cincinnati.

How about a little news.

True Digital Infrared:
I have had this saved in my "Favorites" folder. I first saw the story month's ago, and now it's popped up again. Here is the scoop. Back in the film days I remember reading and seeing many articles and images on "Infrared Photography". Photographers were producing B&W infrared images by placing an infrared filter over the camera lens, and after a very long exposure and focus shift, produced very striking images where the sky was black and the greens were almost white. In fact Konica eventually developed a special high speed IR film that would help photographers get the same effect with much faster exposure times. It was kind of a niche product which some wedding guys used occasionally - with great results. So how can we do it digitally? There have been many tutorials on how to do it in Photoshop with "Channel Mixer" and the like, but the results has never been as good as the real thing. Enter Life Pixel, a service that will turn your digital camera into a REAL infrared digital camera for only about $300. I have seen the results of the conversion and they are amazing. I have been planning on making the conversion to one of my older Canon 20D's - I'll keep you posted. The Pop Photo blog just did a story about Life Pixel. You can check it out here. Life Pixel's web site and a short video can be viewed right here.

The Largest Photograph in the World - and it's not Digital:
I thought this was a great story - it's about six photographers who literally created the largest photograph in the world via the "camera obscura" technique. They call it the "Legacy Project" They coated a giant size piece of visquene specially ordered from Germany, with photographic emulsion, exposed it for 35 minutes, and then processed it in 1800 gallons of B&W chemistry. You can get the quick recap right here, but also check out the "Legacy Project" web site right here for all the details about the world's largest photograph - very cool.

Ansel Adams (or maybe his twin bother) Returns:
Wow! check out Clyde Butcher's work over at his web site. It is truly amazing. As I was cruising his site and there are quite a number of similarities between Mr. Butcher and Mr. Adams - large format camera, beards, beautiful B&W images, involved with environmental causes, and making an impact on the world. Mr. Butcher's work is simply outstanding. Please check it out right here. You can even sign up for his newsletter.

Nighttime Digital Photography
We all know 'Nighttime " photography is not the easiest to pull off particularly with the contrast range we are often faced with. The old film guys would over expose then undevelope to try to protect all the details in the shadows. Heck, Ansel Adams wrote a whole book on it. So how do we pull it off digitally? Here is an entire book on the subject. It is written by John Carucci. Read the entire review here. It looked good to me so I headed over to Amazom and just ordred it. I'll do a follow up down the road.

That's it for now, gang. I've got bags to pack and planes to catch. Have a great weekend. See you Monday. --David

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