Photography

I have finally upgraded to a new camera body. I have been shooting with a Canon EOS 7D for a long time now, well… a long time for me. I only hold onto a camera body until the new version of it comes out, then I sell the old one and buy the new one. I started with inexpensive point-and-shoots, I never owned a film based SLR, and worked my way very slowly up to where I am today. I had the Canon 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D, and 7D. Out of those only the 20D and 40D were really great cameras for me, those two cameras did everything I wanted at the time and produced images that made me very happy. The other cameras were lacking in some significant way, that is not to say they were bad or that I did not create some great pictures with them, but they did not make me want to get out there and take pictures every day that I owned them. ...

I read this book as a PDF bought from O’Reily Media’s Safari Books Online mostly using an iPad and iBooks but also using the Preview app on a MacBook Pro. I really dislike showing any photographs without the minimum of rotate, crop, exposure correct, color correct, and export at the needed sizes and Lightroom allows me to do that very quickly. ...

I read this book on Safari Books Online and followed along with Adobe Photoshop. The full name of the book is a riduclously long “Photoshop Compositing Secrets: Unlocking the Key to Perfect Selections and Amazing Photoshop Effects for Totally Realistic Composites by Matt Kloskowski” that would guess was chosen to increase its chance of being found in Google. This is a great book if you need to do compositing. The book consists of a collection of tutorials that give real world examples of how to do many different types of composites. All of the images used in the book are available for download so that you may follow along. I found the repetitive nature of the book annoying and yet helpful, repetition helps me remember how to do something but after many many times I just want to move on to something else. ...

Hey, one of my pictures has been published in Roy Lantz’s Ebenezer Scrooge’s Good Tyme Gazette newsletter. You can also see more photos of Roy on my website https://photo.davenelson.com/Events/Roy-Lantz.

My current workflow focuses on future-proofing my photos so that I can take advantage of any new software that comes along. I do not want to be dependent upon any piece of software to work with my photos, so I stick to formats like JPG and Canon’s raw. This post covers how I get the images onto my computer and begin the editing process. I currently use Apple Macintosh computers with Adobe Lightroom but it wasn’t to long ago that I used Windows XP, ACDSee, and Photoshop for the same results. ...

I believe that to be a great photographer I should study a lot of images created by other people, especially those considered great by a consensus. So I spend a lot of time looking at books about art history that contain photos of paintings by “The Masters” and photo books like the two I am writing about here. ...

It was a great game at Shiloh High this weekend. It was great to get out and take my first sports photos of the year. I have a lot of open days left on my schedule, if you have an event you would like photographed please let me know.

The rain did put a damper on things, but it was a great weekend with a lot of vintage motorcycles, racing, stunting, and talking.

The Gallery is at https://photo.davenelson.com/DragonCon/DragonCon-2009/. Here are some quick highlights Shatner & Nimoy on Friday Costume Contest on Friday Night Parade on Saturday Morning Adam Savage of Mythbusters Dawn Costume Contest on Saturday Nimoy & Shatner on Sunday Masquerade on Sunday Arc Attack on Sunday Here are some cool searches Battlestar Galactica Draco Malfoy, AKA Tom Felton of Harry Potter Felicia Day (includes other Buffy guests) Terry Gilliam

Please do not let this happen to you. If you have the time and stubbornness please push the issue of Photographer’s rights as far as you can. Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs was harassed recently in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park trying to take photos of the World of Coca-Cola museum and told that he was not allowed to take photos of the building. I will be getting in contact with management of the museum and see if I can find out what their policy actually is. ...