I am not sure what happened over at The Radiant Vista, but the good thing Craig Tanner, Mark Johnson and Matt Gibson had going over there went up in smoke. The Radiant Vista is no more. But the spirit of it continues on in at least two websites by two of the three. Craig Tanner, one of the founders of TRV has founded a new site called The Mindful Eye. Craig was the philosophical part of TRV, with articles like “The Myth of Talent“. To be quite frank, it was way to wordy for me and I never made it through more than a few paragraphs and some of his esoteric stands on imaging were a bit to zen for me. But you can’t deny Craig’s talent. He is a very good and well rounded photographer. Take a look at his gallery and you can see that.

So Craig has put together what amounts to another TRV. He has a Daily Critique where he takes your image and gives it a once over. I think it was from Craig I first heard “In a perfect world…”, now used by so many critics. He also has tons of videos and some podcast. Craig is definitely sharing the love.

Then, Mark Johnson who was another third of TRV has beefed up his site to some degree as well. Mark continues his Workbench that he started at RV. Like the Daily Critique, Mark uses your image, but rather than critiquing it he plays with it of sorts. He uses submitted images to teach color correction or retouching or he may explore compositing. Like the Photoshop Workbench, he has other video tutorials that are designed to help you learn Photoshop. Unlike the Workbench, these tutorials focus on very specific, high-demand subjects such as basic Photoshop 101, Color Management, and Sharpening. All video tutorials are free of charge.

Both Craig and Mark offer workshops. So check out these guy’s new sites and enjoy.

We all know Lightroom is powerful. Most of my editing is done and post processing these days, and no longer in Photoshop. In fact, I would say with the advent of Lightroom 2 and local adjustments (see my video HERE) 95% or more of my work is done in Lightroom now. But there are fun little secrets that make this application even more powerful useful for more than photo processing. How many of you use Flickr, Photoshelter, SmugMug? Did you know that Lightroom, with the added help of a few free (yes, free) plug-ins can make your life soooo much easier?

Here is how it works. I am going to show you with the Photoshelter plug-in, but it works the same with all the above and more. There are two ways to start. The easiest is to follow this link to Adobe’s Lightroom Exchange HERE. This is a warehouse of Lightroom plug-ins. Here you will find plug-ins for exporting to the sites I listed above. But, you will also find all kinds of cool plug-ins for web templates, develop presets and more. Most are free! So poke around and enjoy. I said there was two ways to start. The other way is to open Lightroom and go under the new to Lightroom 2 “Plug-in Manager.” This is a handy dialog box that will take you to the Adobe Exchange site by clicking the button on the bottom left of the window. But it is more useful than that, because it now is the simplest way to import your plug-ins. Once you download the plug-in you want to use, in this case the Photoshelter plug-in, then just hit the ad button and ad it to your list of plug-ins. Simple, no more searching for the folder where the plug-ins reside, it does it for you.

The new to lightroom 2 “Plug-in Manager.”

So now you have the Photoshelter plugin loaded or the Flickr plug-in or whatever one you want. Now, you need to select the images you want to load. I chose the Arches of Delhi gallery I made last week. Make sure you have captions and key words already embedded in the image. This is the beauty of this method. Now export like you would do normally export a photo and bring up the export dialog box. Here you will see at the top of dialog box a small pane, click on it and choose which plug-in you want to use.

You must choose which plug-in to use.

You will see the list appear. Once you choose the plug-in you will need to log in to your account. Don’t forget, you have to have an account with any of these services to use them. That may seem like a no-brainer, but… Anyway, then just work your way down the dialog box panes. Name the file, make your setting choice, your size choice, sharpening, etc… Finally choose an existing gallery or make a new one.

Just work your way down the dialog box panes.

Then upload.

Once uploaded, Lightroom will tale you to the site and you can make any changes to the photos in Photoshelter or whatever site you uploaded to.

Your captions and other IPTC data that was embedded from Lightroom 2 follows your image to Photoshelter.

These plug-ins will save you a ton of time and make uploading to your favorite site a breeze. I hope this helped. You can view this gallery in Photoshelter HERE.

The maker of the plugin wrote me and I realised I did not give a link to his site only to Exchange. Sorry about that oversite. The company is called pact software and you can find this plugin HERE.

This is full frame. Click to enlarge.

Here is a shot that all my readers will know. It is of a little Gujjar girl in Kashmir. One of the fun things about this image is it is so very, very sharp. Here is the EXIF data from the image:

Camera: Canon 5D
Exposure Time: 1/500 sec
F-Number: f/3.5
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
ISO Speed Rating: 400
Exposure Bias: -1 EV
Metering Mode: Pattern
Focal Length: 85.00 mm

I was, if I recall correctly, a good 6 to 10 feet from her. Below you will see that this image is so sharp, that you can see the scene behind me, when I photographed her, reflected in her eyes.

Click to enlarge.

So what is all this about? Why blog on how sharp digital images are? We all know they are sharp. Is it because this makes me better than Steve McCurry? Ha! If only that were true! No, it is because I bet you have started doing something that I have found myself doing. That is tossing away images that are not razor sharp. Any slight softness, slight movement and out it goes. I found I get so obsessed with sharpness that I loose sight of the beauty of an image. I don’t see the moment in the image for the slight blur. For an image to work it doesn’t have to be this sharp. Maybe even sometime it shouldn’t be. Let me show you some images that I almost tossed, but I have now changed my mine and feel they are worth keeping even though they are not all that sharp. I will compare a nice sharp image with a soft or even blurred image taken at the same time, but a different “moment”.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a shot of a man clutching his Qu’ran. It is a nice image. Sharp. Yes, there is glare in his glasses. But, even with out the glare there is emotion missing here. It is not a bad image and technically it is perfect.

Click to enlarge.

Here is the same man a few seconds earlier. His head is bowed and he is not looking at the camera. But the look give much more emotion, a since of thoughtfulness, or contemplation. You don’t get that in the previous image. The soft focus or movement as it is here, work to make this a stronger image. Let’s look at an even more stark example.

Click to enlarge.

Here is a similar shot. A Ladakhi woman sitting looking off to the left of the frame. A nice shot, right? But look at what the much softer shot below communicates.

Click to enlarge.

Here she is holding the beads to her head and there is real emotion here. Yet, this image is soft by all account. Not with movement, just soft focus. Now I admit, I should have been better at nailing the focus, and I think this might have been a better image had it been in focus. But does this make this image unusable? Not in the least! In fact this image is fast becoming one of my favorites.

I want to make sure you understand me. I am not talking about accepting sloppy camera work. But none of us get it right 100% of the time. I have known I am capable at getting razor sharp images like above, so I have not even looked at some of my more emotional images if they are soft. Of if I did, I cursed under my breath at my bad luck and tossed the image out.

All I am saying is we need to not forget what is good art. I cannot continue to throwout soft images just because I know I can get razor sharpness and didn’t get it. You cannot say that McCurry’s images are any less impressive or beautiful because of the softness of film or camera movement. So, if it is good enough for a Master like McCurry, I think I need to stop and realize technology has, dare I say, blurred my vision. I am missing the art for the mechanics and in danger of trashing some real jewels.

1. PixelatedImage Blog - David is one of the best writers I know and is always inpserational.
   
2. Joe McNally – Joe is one of the best photographers out there and is always willing to share. And by the way, Joe’s blog was a stitch today!
3. Chase Jarvis – Chase is awsome. Talk about some who shares knowledge. This guy rocks and he produces some pretty mean videos as well.
4. The Travel Photographer – Tewfic El-Sawy always has some great links to some very cool slideshows.
5. Photoshop Insider – Scott Kelby is, well Scott Kelby a must read.
6. TED Blog – This is always a way to stay up on what the “world” fines important.
7. Gavin Gough – Gavin has great insight and I just love looking at his images.
8. A Photogrpahy Blog- Rachel Hulin digs up some great images and is always good for a hoot.

OK – Now it is your turn. Who do you read? I know you are out there, I see the states. So please don’t embarrass me and not respond. Or I am going to have to have my mom email for 50 different computers to cover my Arse!

PS One more I almost forgot to list. What the Duck. A must read. Not only is it funny, but it speaks volumes!

Original #1

Original #2

Yesterday, my wife and daughter and I went with some Malay friends to the Kampon or village. We played in rice paddies and ate a lot of good food and drank a lot of fresh coconut juice. I took a few images of our host’s children. One was particularly nice, but… not quite. It looked as if I had started taking pictures of war amputees. Poor girl. Poor me, what a lot of potential! So, I decided to work a little extra on this image. I thought you might like to see how I did it. It wasn’t really that hard. I don’t normally work on an image like but, this there was something about this little girl and the setting that I wanted.

First I took the images that had the “good” face, and simply copied the face.

Then I pasted the good face onto the not-so-good face but good body of the next image. I then made a layers mask and softened the edges so it would blend well. I also transformed the size of the face to match the size of the host image. To do that select the layer of the image that needs to be sized. Then do a Command T (Control on a PC). This gives you a selection that you can now size. To size uniformly hold the shift key and then pull the corners till the image looks right. It is all subjective.

I also cloned out some of the “old” face to make the blending easier.

Here you can see all the layers and masks. Click to view larger for more detail.

Then I added some more room below the coconuts and did the same thing. Made a layer mask and softened the edges.

Trust me, this is pretty simple. Anyone can do it, but you have to start using layer masks. I am always amazed at how many people use Photoshop and do not use layer masks. It is very simple and non-destructive. I am sure there are other ways I could have blended these images but this was quick and easy.

Any questions, just email me or skype me. Here isone more shot from yesterday. These kids are just too cute.

Oh! and Salamat Hari Raya Aidilfitiri!

Now speaking of Mpix, these guys are currently offering a discount on NAPP membership. Join before July 30th and NAPP will reduce the annual membership from $99 to $89. As an added gift, NAPP will send you The Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Beginners DVD featuring Dave Cross ($69.99 US value). This best-selling DVD will walk you through a full range of Photoshop® functions, tools and techniques. Very cool! Too bad I am already a member.

For more details follow the link HERE to Mpixs.