This is not an attempt at a tutorial, really. My goal is to record what I did to get from point A to point B in a photo processing journey using tools that I just got and am just barely learning to use. With any luck, a year from now, I’ll look back on this post and laugh (or cry).

This photograph was taken on Tuesday, October 25^th, 2011, out the window of the marvelous Springhill Suites at Bakery Square in Pittsburgh, PA. And when I say marvelous, I really mean it. That hotel was without question the nicest one I’ve stayed at as far as I can remember. I’m even looking for excuses to go back to Pittsburgh just so I can stay there again. Really.

What I’ve posted here is the finished product, after processing. I looked out the window and saw a sunset shining through some wavy clouds backlighting a skyline that included a spire that I’d been shooting earlier in the day. So I went and got my camera and turned off the room lights to minimize interior reflections.

Here is what I started with (more or less):

Quite a difference, eh?

The starting point shot was what I would’ve had had I taken just a single shot out my window. But, because I shoot a lot of HDR, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to expose for both the sky and the buildings in one shot, I took a 5 exposure bracket (meaning in addition to the above shot, I took two shots at ½ and ¼ the exposure, and two shots at 2x and 4x the exposure):

Looking at these four extra shots, you might think that I really didn’t need a 5-exposure bracket. I could have done well with just the ¼ and 4x exposures (the second and fourth). They would have given me the bright sky and the buildings lit up enough to see.

You could well be right, except I use a Nikon D700, which only stops in one exposure steps, not two, so I could only do +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, instead of +2, 0, -2. Oh well. With the high-capacity EL-EN4 battery in the D700 grip, the shutter speed goes to a machine-gun fast 8 fps, which means hand-holding 5-shot AE brackets really isn’t that big a deal (it wasn’t that big a deal with the slower 5 fps, but at 8, it’s even less so).

So far, the only processing done on these 5 shots is lens correction in Lightroom.

With my 5-exposure HDR bracket, the first thing I needed to do was to merge the 5 shots into a single HDR shot. For this, I used Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro, which I picked up at PhotoPlus Expo last week.

I’d been using Photomatix for a while and was getting comfortable with it, and even had a couple of my own presets that I was using for different styles of processing. But I wanted to work with my new toy and see what I could do with it, which brought me to:

This was processed using the “Vibrant Textures” preset because I liked how it brought out the texture in the spire bricks. I modified the preset by bringing up the warmth to 20%, because I wanted to highlight both the fall foliage and the sunset on the clouds.

Now, this HDR isn’t bad, really. But I thought it was still a bit dull. Besides, I had this really cool tool called Color Efex Pro that I’d just gotten, and I really wanted to see what I could do with it.

So, after saving my HDR out of HDR Efex Pro back into Lightroom, my next step was to load it into Color Efex Pro 4.

The first filter I used was Polarization set to 110 degrees rotation and 100% strength to draw out the orange in the clouds a bit.

Next I applied the Bright Contrast setting of the Sunlight filter to brighten everything up. I lowered the Contrast to 80% and the Saturation to -20%.

Next came an ND Grad to darken the top and lighten the bottom a little (Upper Tonality = -50%, Lower Tonality = 30%, Blend = 50%, Vertical Shift = 40%, Rotation = 180 degrees).

Finally, I added Brilliance/Warmth at the Warm Colors preset, and then lowered Saturation to -15% and increased Warmth to 75% to really pump up the orange sky and fall foliage.

This brought me to:

And lastly, back in Lightroom, I go to the develop module to crop, fix spots (for instance, the glob of dust on my sensor), and remove some noise.

Another post from G+ that I’m saving here, in response to someone asking for advice on getting a camera:

If you really want to explore photography, you’ll want a camera that supports PASM (Program/Apeture-priority/Shutter-priority/Manual) modes. That’s the Nikon name. I think Canon calls shutter T-v and aperture is T-something. But it’s the same concept:

• Program let’s you spin the dial and the camera figures out a good combination of shutter and aperture to get the right exposure. I have never figured out (not that I tried hard) how this is different from A or S.
• Aperture lets you control how wide the hole in the back of the lens is, which translates to a combination of how much light gets to the sensor and the “depth of field”. Google the latter if you don’t know what it is. This post isn’t big enough to do it justice. The camera adjusts the shutter speed to get the exposure you need.
• Shutter lets you control how fast the shutter is. Faster freezes action at the cost of light. Slower lets more light onto the sensor, but allows more motion-blur — which sometimes is a good thing. The camera adjusts the aperture to get the correct exposure.
• Manual lets you control both aperture and shutter. You only get the correct exposure if you manage it yourself.

Personally, I almost always shoot A-mode. I only shoot S for trick-shots (if I want to control the shutter speed, I usually just adjust ISO and aperture). I shoot M for odd-ball situations where the in-camera metering doesn’t cut it (moving bird against a cloudy, glare-filled sky, or an altar against a backlit, stained-glass window). I’ve never shot P and don’t know why it exists (but I never looked it up, either).

Point and Shoot cameras are more pocketable, but have shutter-lag, which is really annoying if you ever shoot kids. They also have long start-up times (2 seconds is an eternity). And small sensors.

Don’t let a big megapixel count fool you. 15MP on a tiny sensor is lower quality than 12MP on a big sensor.

If you’re investing in a future, look at a interchangeable lens camera.

They basically come in two flavors, APS-C and 35mm sensor. APS-C is a smaller sensor, so less expensive. The “full-frame” sensor generally produces better results, but is sold as a premium resulting in more expensive cameras.

SLR lenses also come in two flavors. Those that will only work on APS-C sensors, and those that will work on full-frame, film, and APS-C sensors (a “digital-only” lens usually means it’s an APS-C only lens — it will work on a full-frame sensor or film, but will produce a black circle around a large part of the image because it is built to expose a smaller area…some cameras will automatically crop this out).

If you don’t have an existing investment in lenses, the choice of what brand to go with is more a factor of which evangelist group you listen to and what features you want. If I didn’t already have a big investment in Nikon glass (lenses), I’d be looking at the new Sony A77, which looks to have a really nifty feature set.

Nikon calls their full-frame line FX and their APS-C line DX. I can’t tell you what Canon calls their two lines. Unless money is truly no object, think also about what you’ll want to shoot and what sorts of lenses you’ll need. You pay once for the camera body (until you upgrade) and then pay more and more for lenses. Many, many lenses. I don’t know if Sony has the same depth and breadth for lenses as Nikon and Canon. So, that may be a factor in your decision.

And don’t worry about the Nikon vs. Canon wars. They’re like the Mac vs. PC wars.

It’s a tool. Pick the one that suits your needs.

Colby Brown asked on G+ if a Wacom tablet was worth it.  I’m re-posting here my response to him because the composite wouldn’t have been possible without one (well, it would’ve been possible, but I would’ve given up in frustration long before finishing it).

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The tablet is what it is, and isn’t what it isn’t.
At first glance, that may appear a remarkably stupid statement. But it (probably) isn’t.

After so many years of using a mouse for all the things a mouse is good for, I still use a mouse. I don’t try to select menu items with the pen/tablet (though I suspect if I invested a few months in doing so, I could retrain myself). But I’ve been using a mouse for WIMP interfaces for 26 (?) years. It’s an extension of my mind.

But even before WIMP, back in grade school, and even back beyond that in crayons, I was using my hand and a pen to draw and trace and fill and shade and a myriad of other things pen and papery. For such tasks, a pen and a pad are the extension of my mind. And a mouse is not.

I had always found brushwork in PS with a mouse to be frustrating. Edge work on masks (i.e., selective color or a blur on skin) was a chore with a mouse. I couldn’t get the precision I wanted from the wrong tool.

But with a tablet (wacom intuos 4 wireless in wired mode in my case), it’s perfectly natural. I have a wheel that lets me zoom in and out and lets me change brush sizes. I have a button configured to X for swapping (when flipping the pen over to use the “eraser” isn’t enough). I have a button configured to / for making the mask overlay visible. For masking and brushwork, the pen/tablet is vastly superior to the mouse simply because it applies a skill I’ve been learning since before I could wipe my own butt.

I had several shots in sequence that started with the one I posted in the “Teamwork” poster.

I decided to see about making a still image composite of them.  This is what I ended up with:

My first attempt at doing this sort of composite image.

I don’t normally do “inspirational” posters.  I’m more of a “demotivator” type, myself, and find motivational propaganda to be tiresome.

But occasionally, very rarely, sometime really does strike me as inspirational.

Nidaime Akira Nakamura performing a demonstration at the World Seido Organization benefit tournament on 10/15/2011 (www.seido.com)

I was in Madison Square Park watching a man with a dog eating a dog-poop colored ice cream cone.  As I circled around to find a good angle, the man disappeared behind a tree, leaving this:

A tree walking its dog.

I’m still asking myself that.

• Because I have things to say, if only to myself.
• Because sometimes I’ll want to get thoughts down in a more permanent way than my old, addled brain permits.
• Because it’s another mechanism to organize myself.