Happy Christmas
December 24th, 2011
A quick post to wish you all the best at this holiday season. Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I hope you enjoy yourself and think of others who are not as fortunate as you.
This has been a season for celebration for as long as humans have been celebrating. The sun has stopped retreating and has begun to stay longer and longer each day. Winter is here, but spring is coming. We have much to celebrate. In honor of this ancient tradition that reaches into our time in many ways, this seems like a good time to enjoy beautiful nude women dancing around Carhenge.
And here’s a clip from youtube of my favorite Christmas song. Sad to look at the video and realize how tragically timeless it is. Let’s all hope and work to make this video a relic of the past.
Playing (In) The Slots
December 21st, 2011
After we escaped from the simply awful San Juan Inn and stopped for a great breakfast at Gouldings we drove on through Monument Valley and headed toward Page, Arizona. But we drove on through Page and continued on to St. George which was the closest place I had been able to find to rent a 4WD for our upcoming desert adventures.
The rental place was at the St. George airport. You’d think that would be easy to find. St. George isn’t that big a place. Well, I had google maps directions and the GPS seemed to know about the St. George airport, so I didn’t expect any problems. Wrong. We arrived at the place both google and GPS thought would be the airport. It was obvious that there had been an airport there, but clearly it was no longer in operation, at least for passenger service. After some driving around aimlessly I called the rental place and got directions to the new airport. It’s out in the middle of the desert way south of town on an entirely new road that isn’t even on google maps, let alone the GPS map.
But eventually we picked up a RAV4 and drove back to Page. We stayed where I’ve always stayed in Page, at the Motel 6. It’s a nice, new Motel 6. Even has an elevator. Big step up from the San Juan Inn.
The next morning we headed out to the ranger station where we got our permits for the following day to visit South Coyote Buttes. Then we drove on down to the Wirepass trailhead and headed into Wirepass Canyon. The permits for this area can be picked up at the trailhead. This is also the trailhead for the famous Wave. I’ve been there, almost 10 years ago. It has now gotten to be so popular that it’s almost impossible to get a permit to go there. On the morning when we picked up our South Coyote Buttes permits there were more than 50 people at the ranger station for the morning drawing for 10 permits to go to the Wave. I’m glad I went when I did. I doubt that I’ll ever go back there.
The ranger station had some photos and warning signs about rock falls in Wirepass. They didn’t look like too much of a problem, but I wondered how different it would be from the last time I was there, about 6 years ago. Turned out there was really nothing new in the way of obstacles. There have long been a couple places where you have climb up and down some drops in the canyon floor of about 10 feet or so. No big deal.
Wirepass Canyon is a short canyon that connects to Buckskin Gulch. We hiked down to Buckskin and first went left, then right in Buckskin Gulch. Even though I felt like all three of us were a little off our best game on this day after so much difficulty on the trip, still when I sat down today to edit what we shot that day I ended up with 75 keepers. That’s an incredibly high number of photos for one day of shooting. I’ll be posting photos from that day for the next few posts here. Brooke and Kat did outstanding work. I used my 12-24 and my fisheye, both of which are well suited to the slot canyon environment. I couldn’t be more happy with this day of shooting.
Getting back to technical issues, I think I’ve found the solution to my editing software problems. It was sitting here right under my nose all the time. My good friend, Tim, read my blog and called to offer his advice. Tim really knows his stuff, so I always pay attention to him. He asked why I didn’t just use Nikons ViewNX2 software to do my conversions.
Well, I already had that program loaded on my computer, but I never use it. I pretty much hate all software from Nikon for the simple reason that it all really sucks. ViewNX is buggy. It crashes with disturbing regularity. The user interface seems like it must have been designed to deliberately confuse the user. I really hate it. I’ve paid for Capture in the past and will never do that again because it’s equally awful. At least View is free.
But Tim assured me that View could do a pretty good job with my RAW files if I could stand to use it. He agreed with me about the user interface, but said it is possible to get used to it. And, I immediately realized just what my problem was and knew that it was likely View would solve it.
The thing is, I really, really like the way Nikon renders jpegs. That’s one major reason that I resisted shooting RAW for a while…that plus the fact that the D100 which was my first DSLR was essentially useless when it was set to shoot RAW files. I could have worked faster with an 8×10 view camera. But, of course, that problem is ancient history. And the thing about View is that it will do the RAW conversion in essentially the same way that the camera produces jpegs.
So I fired up ViewNX and used it to edit the photos with this post and all the rest of this day’s shooting. I think I’m getting the results I was after. Comments are welcome, since I’m always interested to hear how things look on other peoples’ monitors. But, despite not liking the way I have to interface with the software, and not liking that I have to output the converted files as tiffs, I think I’ll be using View for my conversions from now on. That solves the problem and requires no purchases, which is always a good thing.
Snapshots
December 18th, 2011
The season has gotten to me. Sorry, but life and Christmas have been keeping me from doing new posts here. I’ll be back at it soon, but since I haven’t had time for editing and playing around with software to try to get the files to look the way I want them, I thought I’d just share some snapshots and tell you a bit about our trip.
After we finally got the truck repaired and escaped from Alliance, Nebraska, we made a wonderful drive through Denver and on over the Rockies at sunset, arriving late at night in Green River, Utah. Now, Green River isn’t much of a town. In fact, it made Alliance seem like a teaming metropolis by comparison. But, Green River is only a few miles from Goblin Valley and Little Wild Horse Canyon. There’s lots of other stuff in the general area. I had planned to spend three days here exploring many of those spots and doing photos. But, because of the deer in Nebraska, we only had two nights with one full day of shooting. And that still left us behind schedule.
Based on a great-looking web site, I had chosen the Robber’s Roost Motel for our stay in Green River. That’s their sign up above. Even the sign looks interesting. And I have to say that the folks running the place were very nice. The rooms were, unfortunately, barely adequate. Just an average ’50s motel room with not much to make it interesting. Served the purpose, but a little of a let down from my expectations.
Above is Kat doing some shooting in “downtown” Green River. The place seemed pretty close to a ghost town. That is a real shame, given its location so close to so many great locations and right on I-70. It looks like the downturn in the economy has really hit Green River pretty hard. Below is my shot of one of the local former establishments. The town really needs a good simple little diner…just finding a place to eat was a challenge.
Another of the great points of interest near Green River is Arches National Park. It’s just up the road. When we finished our shooting at Goblin Valley and Little Wild Horse we spent the night and headed out the next morning, stopping first at Arches. Arches is way too popular to be a place where shooting figure work is possible, so we just spent much of the day shooting the scenes there.
When the models are also photographers it’s good to take an occasional day off on a trip like this to let them have time to shoot whatever they want.
Both Kat and Brooke shot quite a bit at Arches.
The matching hats came from the gift shop at Arches…both ladies really needed a good desert hat.
Of course, just outside the entrance to Arches is the town of Moab. It’s pretty much the opposite of Green River. No sign of a depressed economy there. If you like yuppified food and overpriced shops full of kitsch, this is the town for you. Lot’s of places to stay, lots of places to eat. All kinds of food. Everything grossly overpriced. Kind of a ruination of everything I love about this part of our country. But, hey, it seems to be what people like. Not for me, though. We had lunch there and walked around a bit.
After lunch in Moab we headed toward Monument Valley. Our destination was a motel in Mexican Hat. It was dark by the time we reached it. If the Robber’s Roost was a bit of a let-down, our motel in Mexican Hat, The San Juan Inn, was a total disaster. Seriously, if you are traveling out to the Monument Valley area and look at this place’s web site you will think it is a very nice place. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Well, it could be a nice place. It’s built right below a beautiful red rock cliff and faces a scenic river. If someone who had a clue how to run a hotel owned it, it could be a gold mine. But the owners have created a nasty disaster of a place. The rooms have been horribly “re-muddled” in what appears to be an effort to make them as inconvenient and uncomfortable as possible. The view of the river is obstructed and access do get down to it, or even see it, has been blocked deliberately. And then there was the question of internet access. I’ve never encountered such an idiotic situation before.
When we checked in I, of course, asked how to get on line. The surly woman who checked us in (I assume she was an owner) snarled, “Bring your things down here and I’ll tell you the access code. But I don’t want you writing it down!” Well, we did surreptitiously write the code down, and it’s a good thing because we kept getting bumped off and having to re-enter the code to get back on. But we soon gave up because the speed of the connection made dial-up seem fast.
Eventually I went to the office and asked what the problem was.
“There’s something wrong with the dish,” was the woman’s snarled reply. “They are supposed to send someone out to fix it, but they have to come from Tennessee, so I have no idea when they will get here.”
Oh, and that same dish apparently provided the TV for the rooms. Only one fuzzy channel with no sound was available.
So we gave up on the internet and went to dinner at the restaurant beside the motel which displayed signs saying it was not affiliated with the motel and there were no discounts for motel guests and no free breakfast. Well, ok…that might be good. And they did have a sign saying there was free wi-fi for customers.
So, we go in, sit down and when the waitress comes we place our orders and ask how to get on the wi-fi.
“You have to go next door to the motel and ask the woman at the desk to give you the access code.”
The next morning we got out of that place as fast as we could. We had no interest in trying to get breakfast at the restaurant there, we just wanted to put the place behind us. The first place we came to for breakfast was Gouldings in the heart of Monument Valley. A great place. I had looked at it as a possible place to spend the night, but passed because their room rate is outside my budget. But, if you can afford it, it’s a great place in a perfect location. Great restaurant, great views. I’m sure the rooms are fine, too. There might even be internet and TV, who knows. Seems like, if I remember right, we were able to get on line and catch up on e-mail while we were having breakfast.
But if you can’t afford Gouldings, don’t make the mistake I did and plan to spend the night in Mexican Hat. Instead go to the other side of Monument Valley and stay in Kayenta, Arizona where there are several reasonably-priced motels, any of which will be much, much better than the San Jose Inn.
That’s Brooke enjoying the view of Monument Valley from Gouldings in the final photo.
Kat in Little Wild Horse Canyon
December 12th, 2011
“Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.”
– Edward Abbey
Here’s Kat being beautiful in a couple narrow twisty bits of Little Wild Horse Canyon. These were shot with my 8mm fisheye lens. In fact, this canyon and another that you will be seeing soon were the reason I decided to buy this fisheye lens. I thought the combination of the fisheye effect with the curves of the slot canyons and the lovely curves of my models would be an unbeatable combination. I’m pretty pleased with the results.
I’m also still trying to figure out the best workflow with the new software I’m testing. I made some more changes and I think it’s working better now. These were processed in DxO Optics Pro with no color adjustment (leaving white balance set to “as shot”), just keeping DxO’s automatic adjustment for highlights and shadows, noise reduction and sharpening. Then I exported the file as a DNG file and opened it with Camera Raw where I adjusted the white balance to “cloudy” which gives a more accurate view of what the red rock looks like.
I think this has eliminated the problem of Camera Raw not recognizing that I had adjusted the white balance before I opened the file in Camera Raw. Camera Raw was treating the adjusted white balance as “as shot” and really screwing up the colors as a result. I usually keep my camera set for auto white balance which tends to try to remove the red from the rock and make it a more neutral gray. Auto white balance usually gives me just what I’m looking for, but the red rock desert is a major exception.
So, I’d be interested to hear what you think of the colors in the last few posts. There are so many variables involved in showing photos on the web that it’s very helpful to hear what others are seeing. In the next few days I hope to find time to play around with some more “normal” files and see what I get with this new version of a workflow. A slot canyon in the red rock desert is such a major departure from anything that might be called “normal” lighting that it’s hard to tell if I’m on track or not.
Brooke in Little Wild Horse Canyon
December 10th, 2011
“The artist’s job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live.”
–Edward Abbey
Here are a couple photos of Brooke down in Little Wild Horse Canyon. This canyon is fairly shallow and open, compared to some others, and we were there at mid-day, so we had a lot of sun down in the canyon. Direct sun is, of course, problematic, especially in a situation like this that presents dark, deep shadows. DxO Optics Pro seems to be doing a great job of holding the shadows and highlights from my raw files, though. But I’m finding that it is creating some other issues.
This shoot may not have been the best one to use to learn this new program. Figuring out what to do with color in a slot canyon is a serious challenge. The rocks are red. The light is red. So what’s a correct color? Anything that works automatically tends to remove the red…including DxO. On the last post I tried to adjust the color simply by adjusting the preset color balance…setting it for cloudy, which gave pretty close to a feel of what it really looks like.
But I seem to have caused a problem when I exported the files from DxO as DNG files. I then opened them in PhotoShop, through Camera RAW. And Camera RAW did not like what it saw in the files that had already been processed in DxO. I think Camera RAW took the adjusted color balance and treated it as “As Shot” which made everything too red. I tried to adjust that in PhotoShop, but was less than totally successful. I think Camera RAW was also applying some sharpening that I didn’t want as well.
So, I’m working on a different approach. These two files were exported from DxO as Tiffs, which avoided sending them through Camera RAW on the way to PhotoShop. The color seems to be more in line with the real look of these canyons. And you have two different situations to study, one in full sun with deep shadows and the other in a fully shaded area of the canyon wall.
Figuring this stuff out might have been a little simpler if I’d been working with a more “normal” lighting situation and subject matter. Back in the film days these would have just been shot with daylight film and they would have come out red, red, red. But digital allows for more subtle treatment of the light. Now I just have to figure out how these software programs are interacting with each other so I can get what I want out of them.
Of course the one constant in all of this is the lovely Brooke doing her usual great job of posing and relating her pose to her environment. And, slot canyons are a place for wide angle lenses. These were both shot with my 12-24 at pretty close to the wide end of the zoom range. I’ll have some fisheye shots to post soon.
Little Wild Horse Canyon
December 7th, 2011
“All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.”
–Edward Abbey
After our pause at the twin trees we headed on down into Little Wild Horse Canyon. This was my first time in this canyon, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but found it to be well worth the hike. Beautiful red rock walls, scoured by flash floods that create wonderful curves in the surface of the rock. And, as in all the slot canyons out in this desert, the light becomes intensely red as it filters down into the bottom of the canyon, bouncing off the red rock walls on the way down, getting redder and redder. By the time it reaches the bottom everything simply glows red.
These photos were took at one of our first stops after entering the canyon. Kat is lovely posing on a tiny ledge in the rock wall.
These files were processed in DxO Optics Pro and then received just a little touch-up in PhotoShop CS4. I’d be interested to hear what you think of the file quality. Of course, they have been greatly reduced to fit through the tiny tubes that are the internet, but you can get a general idea. I’ll be printing some of these from the full-resolution files soon. I’m very interested to see how they look printed large.
Blog Note:
Well, that was an unpleasant surprise. Ever since I moved my blog to wordpress a major annoyance has been that photos uploaded at a size wider than the column of the blog would be distorted and crammed into the space available. So I always resized photos after they were uploaded to make them fit. Recently I noticed that photos were being properly resized so they fit without distorting the proportions. All good, right? But shortly after I made this post, not resizing the photos, I was watching Jeopardy and checking e-mail on my i-pod when I clicked over to see how the blog looked…and found the photos in this post all scrunched up. So I just now fixed it. I wonder if other browsers were also showing the photos in a disproportionate manner. If any of you faithful readers out there have noticed this problem could you please let me know? And let me know what browser you were using when you noticed the problem? Thanks.
Edward Abbey
December 5th, 2011
“Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance accross the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.” – Edward Abbey
Moving On
December 5th, 2011
Getting back to the account of our trip out west…After spending some time at Goblin Valley, we moved on to Little Wild Horse Canyon, a nearby slot canyon. We had planned to dedicate a day to each of these locations, but thanks to the deer in Nebraska we were reduced to just one day for shooting in this general area. So we headed over that way when the sun got high in the sky and more people started wandering around in Goblin Valley.
But, before we even got to the slot canyon I spotted these two trees that just looked wonderful to me. And they looked even better with Brooke posing between them. I love the light and the contrast of textures.
Next post: Into the slot canyon.
For those who are paying attention to the technical stuff, this photo was first processed from the original NEF file in DxO Optics Pro. It was output from that program as a DNG file which I then opened in Corel PaintShop Pro for a bit of tweaking before I reduced the size and saved it as a jpeg for use here. In a week or so when I have more time I’ll download the ACDSee professional program trial and see what I think of it. But I’ve already learned that there are plenty of high quality alternatives to Adobe’s product at much more reasonable cost. Now it’s just a matter of chosing the one(s) I like best and that give me the best results with the least pain.
Corel…hmmmm…
December 3rd, 2011
I downloaded a trial of Corel PaintShop Pro today and gave it a try. I’m impressed. Not exactly the same as PhotoShop, of course, but a very useful, versatile program that looks like it could do everything I need at a very reasonable cost and no issues with upgrades or RAW processing for new cameras. Looks very good. I used it to edit the photo above, another shot from Goblin Valley with Brooke and Kat.
This could be the program I’ve been looking for. I’m still playing with DxO Optics Pro, though, and I just might end up buying it and PaintShop Pro…and still pay less than the cost of an upgrade for PhotoShop.
I think Adobe may have permanently lost this customer.
Goblin Valley
December 2nd, 2011
We return now to the days of Yestermonth. Our heros are finally freed from their Bambi-imposed stranding in less-than-scintilating town of Alliance, Nebraska. The truck is repaired and they set out again on their search of the southwest for beauty and art. After a breathtaking drive through Denver and over the Rockies at sunset they arrived in another town with not much to offer, Green River, Utah.
But, though Green River isn’t much to talk about, it is very close to some of them most amazing landscapes on this planet. We had planned to spend three days here exploring all that local beauty, but Bambi’s attack on the truck meant we only had one day to take it all in. First stop: Goblin Valley.
What an amazing place. Miles of small hoodoos, side by side, filling the valley. Not many people around. We had no problem doing our work without an audience.
Of course, the lovely models are Brooke Lynne and Kat. They had a pretty good time here. It was wonderful to get back to what we came out there to do after the three days of boredom waiting for the truck to be ready for the road again.
These photos were processed in DxO Optics Pro, but then exported as DNG files and worked on some more in Camera Raw and PhotoShop CS4. DxO didn’t seem to like that the rocks are red. It wanted to make them gray. A simple adjustment of the color balance did most of the correction needed. I hope I can learn how to fine tune what DxO does so that I can get it right in there. I love the way DxO sharpens and I’m pretty much ok with the optical corrections it does. I’m still thinking about those optical corrections, though. It knows what camera and lens I’m using and it “fixes” all the optical issues that the combination has. Problem is that I actually like the way my lens performs…I like some of those optical problems. So how I handle that will be an on-going exploration.
But for now I can say that I like what DxO is doing in general. And, it does it all automatically, so my time spent at the computer messing around with the files is reduced…and I like that.
