We went out exploring the area Yesterday. The area we chose was still in colour but a bit more spotty than expected. This is a more intimate shot in a wooded area off of the road to Wesport.. We spotted the scene and a few minutes later, the sun came and lit it for us, couldn’t have planned it any better. Sometimes it works according to plan.
Photo of the Week #177
Since I switched to Nikon a few years ago, I have missed having a second body to set up another lens. I fixed that recently, I got a really good deal on another body for this purpose.Thia particular body was reported to be extremely well known for high ISO/Low Noise and by looking at my tests thus far, I think it’s better for noise than my D810! What did I get? a D750. The photo below was made at 12,800 ISO and is plenty usable. I applied a little noise reduction but it’s fairly clean considering.
50mm, ISO: 12,800 f2.2 (Unedited)
-Photo of the Week #176
This image was made in Nova Scotia on the “Eastern Shore”. I love shooting moving water because you can play with the shutter and put your own mark on it. I don’t like when the exposure on the moving water goes too smooth, it just looks wrong in my mind. I like it just slow enough to show some movement. This was at .6 of a second and I really think this worked just right. The affect of movement is good while still showing detail.
Up The River
Photo of the Week #159
This is yet another long forgotten photo from my archives. In these complicated times, a lot of people have been looking through some older folders and re-working some older stuff that didn’t get used for one reason or another. I look at it as a chance to learn new techniques.
Sky Replacement and AI Software
Lately, we have seen the release of several pieces of software which automates procedures that would have otherwise taken much longer to achieve. Replacing a sky has been possible for some time in several apps but Luminar and Adobe have made it faster than ever with recent releases. You can now replace a sky in a click or two, the software does all the masking and heavy lifting for you. This has been received with mixed feelings, the landscape photographers don’t like it, they like to chase their subjects using only what the scene offered to them at the time of capture. For them swapping a sky would be unacceptable. More artistically minded photographers seem to like it. I guess it depends on what philosophy you subscribe to.
Topaz has also released new versions of Sharpen, Gigapixel and Denoise that all use Artificial Intelligence to achieve their goal. Again, some people shied away in favour of established plugins found in Photoshop but after more reviews, many have endorsed the Topaz software as being superior to Photoshop. I have used the Sharpen app myself and found it to be an extremely good product.
I think that often we forget there are other apps out there other than the ones we use. We need to keep an open mind, we love our favourite editing software but you never know, there might be a better one around the corner, we shouldn’t be afraid to take a look. If something isn’t our thing then at least we know.