Common Sense – The Common Sense Photographer

Five Excuses

Posted on April 10, 2023April 10, 2023 by Jim Roberts

Everyone is talking about AI taking over photograph (along with illustration, coding, and just about every other creative endeavor). So I asked Google’s Bard to give me 5 excuses for not taking pictures today. The Bard not only gave me the excuses but also ways to get around the excuses.

Here are 5 excuses for not doing photography today:

I don’t have the time.

Photography can be a time-consuming hobby or profession, and it’s easy to let other things take priority. But if you’re passionate about photography, it’s important to make time for it. Even if you can only spare a few minutes each day, you can still make progress and improve your skills.

I don’t have the right gear.

It’s true that having good gear can make photography easier, but it’s not essential. You can take great photos with even the most basic equipment. If you’re serious about photography, investing in some good gear can be worthwhile, but don’t let the lack of gear stop you from getting started.

I’m not good enough.

Everyone starts out as a beginner, and it takes time and practice to improve your photography skills. Don’t compare yourself to other photographers, and don’t be afraid to experiment. The more you shoot, the better you’ll become.

I’m afraid of failure.

Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s okay. Failure is a part of the learning process. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from taking risks and trying new things.

I’m not inspired.

Sometimes it can be hard to find inspiration, but there are plenty of things you can do to get motivated. Look at other photographers’ work, read photography books and magazines, or take a class. The most important thing is to keep shooting, even when you’re not feeling inspired.

If you’re making excuses not to do photography, it’s time to face your fears and get out there and start shooting. You might be surprised at what you can create.

Same thing applies to writing blog posts. Something I’ve gotten away from for way too long.

You Don’t Take Enough Pictures

Posted on September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 by Jim Roberts

Recently watch this video from Capture One Pro where David Grover talks with Joe McNally about shooting at the Olympics. During the course of the discussion Joe mentions that he shot about 53,000 images during the 16 days of the Olympics. If you want to get the shot you have to take the shot. Interesting discussion on the trials of shooting a pandemic Olympics. Or you can just watch it so you can be amazed by the great images Joe always produces.

In the digital age we are so lucky to not have the costs of film and processing. You try dividing 53,000 images by 36 shots per role and you get a feel for the national debt. (Hint: 1473 rolls of film). Plus with digital you can always dial in the correct color balance.

Moral of the story is that if you are not taking a lot of pictures you should be.

Fujifilm Profiles

Posted on May 24, 2021June 9, 2021 by Jim Roberts

Recently while watching a webinar on Capture One Pro one of the attendees wished that he could adjust the order that the Fujifilm Simulations were listed when selecting the profile to use on an image.

The reasoning was that he wasn’t sure which simulation was the one he wanted to use on an image. I didn’t see a real need as I only use a couple of them and it easy just mouse over each simulation to see what it does to the image.

Given that the Auto simulation is the simulation that you have set in you Fujifilm camera, I rarely find that I need to look at more than two other simulations. In camera I tend to use STD which is PROVIA (STANDARD). The more I thought about it the more I realized that my default simulation works a lot of the time. What I did realize is that I change most when there is a lot of sky or no sky. When the sky make a big part of the image i tend to use CLASSIC CHROME while if there is little or no sky, I tend to stay with PROVIA or if the image calls for it I will crank it up with Velvia see previous post about that. Now on big sky images it is mostly personal preference but I tend to use CLASSIC CHROME for its more muted blues (with a hint of green) but if the sky isn’t necessarly the subject I’ll probably use PROVIA.

What I have found is that I’ve come to know the simulations by how they treat the blue parts of the image:

Classic Chrome is a more muted blue with a slightly green tint.
Standard has a nice rich blue without going overboard.
Velvia has a saturated blue with a slightly purple tint.

So as I look at the image I can decide on which simulation based on what I want the blue to do in the image. Then go right to simulation I want.

It takes some time to get used to what each simulation does to colors and contrast but once you do you can quickly dial in what you want. The same thing works for the black and white simulations (although those are all right together). If you want a dark sky go with the Red filter.

The Friends You Make

Posted on May 21, 2021May 21, 2021 by Jim Roberts

I really enjoyed going to PhotoshopWorld for quite a number of years. I think the grand total was 14 although it might have been 13. Does not matter. What matters as a photographer is that you connect with other photographers so that you can learn with them, learn from them, and become better at what you love to do.

Each time they had the event I would make sure that I helped any new attendees feel at home and to remind them to make sure they introduced themselves to the people that would be sitting next to them at any of the sessions. After all we were all attending the session because we had the same interests in learning and especially in learning specific processes to enhance our photography or graphic design or videography skills.

I made a lot of good friends over the years at each PSW conference. Always someone new to meet as well as to catch up with friends from previous PSW’s. I actually met John when I invited him to join me for a buffet breakfast at Mandalay Bay a number of years ago. The only thing we had in common at that point was we were both wearing our attendee badges. There after we would see each other before the opening ceremony. John was from Boston and soon I had met the intrepid photography group from Boston.

Thru John I met Deb, and John B, and Darren Clark (who wasn’t from Boston but somehow was adopted by the other three.) Each year and sometimes twice a year we would see each other. The last PhotoshopWorld was fall of 2019. I have not seen John since. Now I won’t anymore as he suddenly passes away a few days ago, way to early. So I am extremely sad to see that he is gone but glad that he and I made the effort to see our mutual interests and become friends.

Find people that are like you, they are out there. Make friends. You will be better off for it.

Did You Know (A tail of images lost and gone forever.)

Posted on March 8, 2021March 8, 2021 by Jim Roberts

I went remote the other day and took my laptop along for the ride. As I did a lot of image making I took along a drive and created a new Capture One catalog for the trip. I didn’t do a lot of editing while on the move so when I got back I just copied the images to my at home storage location and then imported them into my main Capture One catalog.

When the images are already in the correct place you do not need to copy them anywhere so there is an option on the import to just add the images in their current location to the open catalog. This is real handy if you have already downloaded you images and do not need the import process to copy them from an external drive.

The thing you must remember is that after you are done ingesting the images and are ready to go back to importing the images from the camera SD card you need to change back to the method you use for copying the images off your SD to their in computer location.

If you don’t remember that then the next time you import your images they will stay on you SD card and the catalog will think they will always be in that location. I forgot that step the other day after taking images of a soon to be dead flower in my front yard. I did the import, left the SD card in the slot and happily processes the good images.

Later i took the SD card out of the slot put it back in my camera and formatted it. The images that I thought had been downloaded had not been and the next time I opened my main catalog the images were marked as offline which is 100% true now that I think about it but perplexed me at the time. I ended up losing the images.

When attached to your computer the SD card looks just like another disk drive and Capture One will happily use it as such. One thing I’m rather surprised about is that Capture One does not seem to have overall presets for the import process. Not that would have saved me. For the next 30 days please find me in the corner wearing my dunce cap.

The Disadvantaged

Posted on November 2, 2020November 2, 2020 by Jim Roberts

I have never been that big a fan of Adobe’s subscription model for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the way the programs break if you stop your subscription. I’ve kept the Adobe Photographers monthly plan with Photoshop and Lightroom since they introduced it a number of years ago. I’ve paid in my $119.88 a year for the last almost 8 years which means I’ve paid just under a thousand dollars.

So they came out with their upgraded software during Adobe Max last month and I went to update the programs only to find that I no longer can update because I’m on an older (but still working) iMac that is not being updated by Apple.

So technically I need to continue to provide Adobe with $10 a month to use their software without ever being able to upgrade because of my machine. If I drop the payment I lose functionality that I’ve paid for for 8 years.

My iMac will be 9 years old at the end of the month. Bought it in November 2011on black Friday. It’s a 27″ and I’ve upgraded the memory to 32 gigs and the drive to a terabyte drive. It still runs well, boots every time, and is not slow. I’m not ready to fork out another $2000 for a newer model just so I can continue to get updates from Adobe.

In all honesty I haven’t used Lightroom for at least a year as Capture One has better processing for my Fujifilm Cameras. And I really only use Photoshop for my workflow to attach Nik 3.0 software to a smart object layer of my image. Not really sure what the best move is.

I do have a small 13 Mac Book Air (which is probably about 2 years away from the same issues) so if I want to do a sky replacement I could do it on that machine but it is small in ways other than the 13″ screen.

Not so sure how much longer I will keep the subscription in that there are other software packages that will do what I need to do without the money hole at the far end.

New and Improved?

Posted on October 6, 2020October 6, 2020 by Jim Roberts

Recently Adobe published some previews of new functionality coming to Photoshop and Lightroom. I expect these new features to be released at the end of the month at the Adobe Max Virtual Conference. Photoshop will soon have an AI enhanced sky replacement feature while Lightroom will have a new Advanced Color Grading tool.

It seems to me that while these are interesting updates the seem to be more towards add functionality to the Adobe apps that are already in other applications. Case in point take a look at the color balance tool in Capture One Pro:

Seems fairly similar don’t you think? As of this date I believe that Luminar and ON1 both have “AI” driven sky replacement tools but since I don’t use those applications I will not comment on how similar they are to Adobes new features.

I’m getting the feeling that Adobe is now becoming a reactionary company. Instead of innovating they are just covering the features that are in other application. It would seem that Adobe with it’s resources and (a whole boatload of subscription payers) would be creating new stuff rather that duplicating what others have done with a lot less resources and a lot less money.

Over the years I’ve met quite a number of Adobe’s forward facing Evangelists and I quite like each and every one of them. Just not sure how excited they will be to now be able to say, “yes we can do that too”.

Pictures of Art

Posted on September 27, 2020September 27, 2020 by Jim Roberts

I’m fascinated by making images of the art and craft of others. Every man made structure has a visual element to it. Something that should or could be pleasing to the eye. I don’t think of making these images as copying someone’s art. I think of it as celebrating their very real creativity. The Tree of Life at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom is that kind of object. The Tree of Life is the work of many artisans based on the imagination of those that make it special.

Color Balances

Posted on September 4, 2020September 4, 2020 by Jim Roberts

They painted the castle in The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. I’m not a big fan of the paint colors. The colors they ended up with just seem to be out of balance for me. They have a saturated purple for the turrets, and saturated grey for the base, and then an almost pink but not quite color on the body of the castle. It’s mostly the pink that I find unbalanced. The purple and pink almost fit into a Triadic color scheme but doesn’t quite work as there should be a green with those two colors to make it Triadic.

Castle with Very Small Dragon Fujifilm X-T2 F9 1/280s ISO 200 18mm

When you are creating an image in studio and especially with model you have lots of leeway with you color grading. When you are documenting an place that is designed to be seen with a standard color you need to be more accurate with you color representation. You can go wrong if you push the white balance the wrong way or if you over saturate the colors. This building just seems to me to be out of balance from a color standpoint.

Spires Fujifilm X-T2 F8 1/750s ISO 200 18mm

I could make the pinkish color more pink and at a good saturation but with Capture One Color Editor but it wouldn’t be true to the actual colors and that is where I feel the actual building colors are out of balance. And you can’t go around overriding the Disney experts.

As I was doing some research into the colors I decided to look to see what the colors of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland are. They basically just duplicated what they had before in Anaheim, CA It seems that the colors were painted with about the same pallet they used to upgrade the castle in 2019. The difference is the pinks are much more pink. Maybe something got lost in translation.

The new color scheme to me is to dark. It diminishes the scale of the castle. Something you always need to keep mind as you process your color images. just as a image with a tilted horizon is out of balance, a color scheme can be out of balance too. For good instruction on color and color grading watch this video by Joanna Kustra

Passageways

Posted on August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 by Jim Roberts

Discovering features of WordPress to display galleries. This is a work in progress called Passageways which is a series of 5 images taken about the same time. I’ve been working on these images for a few days. I may even have overworked one or two of them. Using Capture One Pro 20 you can crank in adjustments to a high level and use the opacity slider to reduce the adjustments to a level that meets your needs.

I’m still not 100% happy with this image. It looks good, then it doesn’t. I was trying to get a subtle gradation and a subdued pallet. So I would add and remove layers, try different things like adding hints of more clarity to edges to define the image. In the end it seems ok. Oh the same note I saw a YouTube video with Ansel Adams yesterday. Even years after printing an image he says he see areas that he could improve. So I guess the best is to just put it out and let it be. After all as Adams said, the image is just an equivalence of what was in the sky.