travel — Travel Guides
June 13, 2006
My favorite travel guides are easily Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. They leave out the luxury foof and cut straight to the heart of the place.
comments: (0) · permalinkphotography — Shooting Tip: Digital ND Filter
June 13, 2006
In the old days, photographers had to use a flat piece of glass called a graduated neutral density filter in order to get both the dark foreground and bright sky to record on a piece of film. Always a pain, and never as natural as what you could see with your eyes. In the digital age, however, who needs it? Just shoot the image on a tripod with one exposure for the highlights, and a second exposure for the shadows. Then combine the two digitally for a much more natural looking image!
comments: (0) · permalinkphotoshop — digital dodge and burn technique
May 28, 2006
October 30, 2005. 10:35p,m.
Don't use Photoshop's dodge and burn tools to, well, dodge and burn. That is so Photoshop 2.0. Instead, try this:
Click option (alt on pc) plus new layer icon in layers dialogue box
Choose Soft Light or Overlay blending mode in the popup dialogue and then check midtone gray box to fill with 128 gray.
Paint white or black to lighten or darken the image
Switch back and forth with D and X and change brushsize w/ bracket key
Set brush opacity to 5-15% and use a large, soft-edged brush.
Fine tune with the opacity to get effect you want
Works great, and it is nondestructive! If you burn it too dark, paint back over it with white. You can duplicate that layer for more effect , and you candial down the opacity.
comments: (0) · permalinkequipment — canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens
May 28, 2006
Wow. I wore out my old 70-200 to the point where the front elements have a bunch of slack. Time to buy a new one, this time with image stabilization. $1749 at Competitive Camera, but worth it. Man that thing is sharp.
comments: (0) · permalink