Isolation

Tomorrow will mark four weeks that my wife and I began isolation, what strange times. According to the latest news from the government, this may be a very long time before the isolation is over. Up to now we have been able to go out for a walk for some exercise (keeping a distance from others) but the walking trails are slowly being closed down because of people not keeping their distance. Shopping is a bit of a scary proposition as well. The stores are doing as much as they can to help us to stay safe and healthy and for now at least, this is our life. Social media has become too toxic for me, so I am currently trying to steer clear. In these difficult times, it would be nice if people could put politics aside and just work together to do what we need to do to be able to move on to whatever our new normal is going to be.

I have started working on a course from Phlearn on Photoshop to help me to pass some time while being productive at the same time. All these years of photographing and I have never learned Photoshop. No time like the present, right? This course is a very basic beginner course but that is what I need. Just a little of the basics, enough to get me started and then I can build from that.

I hope people can continue to pull together and do our part to help the greater good. It is hard, no argument there, but we need to hang in for all of us. Stay safe.

The Power of Lightroom

Recently, I was thinking of a certain photo that I have of myself and a musician after a concert. I had imported the image into Lightroom at the time but since it was a one-off image and not taken as a part of a set of images so it didn’t have a dedicated folder to put it in. This was awhile ago and the image wasn’t keyworded or renamed to anything to make it easier to find. I kind of panicked a bit although I knew the file was still there……somewhere.

I started thinking that maybe I had uploaded the image to FLickr at the time so I went looking there to see if I could narrow my search somehow as Flickr might give some clues as to when it was made in the first place. I found out that the photo had been made in 2008. You know when people say “time flies”? Well, when you are trying to find a file from the past, you often find that way more time has gone by than you think. The file that I thought was from 3 or 4 years ago turned out to actually be from 12 years ago! This was the piece of information that I needed to find my file.

In Lightroom, you have some extremely powerful tools designed for this reason. You can search your whole photo library by using various criteria. One of the searchable attributes happens to be the year of the file according to metadata. I simply went into the Library module of Lightroom and called up 2008. That narrowed my search from 66,000 images to 2,000. In only a couple of minutes, I had found my photo and took note of where it resided on my hard drive. If I had keyworded the image in the first place it wouldn’t have taken even that long to find, when will I learn?

I have been a Lightroom user since version 2 which as it turns out was released in mid 2008 so 12 years, and I am still learning little tips and tricks that exist within it. The cataloging part of Lightroom alone is very powerful before you even consider the editing side of the app.

Photo of the Week #140

This morning there was a press release that personally, I found rather important. It was announced that Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman were coming to headline a show at Kemptville Live Music Festival in July. This pair is responsible for writing some of the most memorable songs in my life. Bachman and Cummings were a writing machine, producing hit after hit but it didn’t last long. For various reasons, Randy left The Guess Who to pursue other things. Both continued with their successes but I always wonder what would have become of The Guess Who if Bachman and Cumming could have held it together. I get that they can’t legally use the name “The Guess Who”, but in my mind, they were the nucleus of that band and principle songwriters as well. They are, to me, The Guess Who.

Photo of the Week #139

The spot pictured is Half Island Cove, Nova Scotia. For some reason, it has become one of my favourite places to spend some time when in Nova Scotia, after all, it’s about ten minutes down the road from our house. I have spent a lot of time there, drinking coffee and just watching waves if there are any. I’ve also spotted whales, porpoises and seals from this exact spot!

I urge you to revisit the same spots near you whenever you can. There are always differences……..there might be different light or other conditions that would make for a better photograph. Another thing that might be different is your own knowledge. You may have improved your own technique too, allowing for a much better photograph than you might have made before. Often, just walking around and looking at your scene from different angles will reveal different compositions that you may otherwise have overlooked.

Photo of the Week #138

Winter has finally tightened it’s grip on Canada. We’ve gotten off pretty easy this year up to this so I figure we have little to complain about. Well, maybe if you live in Newfoundland, but even then, have you seen the photos coming out of there? No matter what happens, the Newfoundlanders find a way to laugh about it. To me, the coming of snow means new opportunities to shoot. The mud and flat colours are covered in a blanket of snow. Things look clean now!

Came across this photo from Little Cat Creek Concervation Area in Kingston. Nice “wintery” feel.