Photo of the Week #141

It’s been too long since I’ve posted a photo here. I started out saying I was going to post at least one photo a week here. Now it is pretty hard to get out here in Ontario. I was out a couple of days ago doing a job for a client and although I was more than keeping my distance on almost deserted streets, I was gaining some unwanted attention in one place so I got out of there pretty quickly. Lots of divided people out there.

On a happier note, I’ve been working on a couple of projects that I have wanted to do for some time. One of these projects involves going through my back catalog and looking for photos. Sometimes I find a photo that maybe I had trouble with, or sometimes I just look at a photo differently and it becomes more interesting to me. Often it’s the fact that my processing skills have improved, allowing me to be more creative. Love it!

The photo below is Loch Broom in Ulapool, Scotland. I love big skies and the clouds here really interested me.

We Have Plenty Of Time On Our Hands

We have been social distancing for over four weeks here. Can’t lie, it seems to be getting harder these days as the virus comsumes our lives and our television sets. It seems that we spend a lot of time watching press conferences updating us on the virus spread among other things. There are also other things happening in the wake of this virus that seems to be getting worse. There are people turning on each other, conspiracy theories and other ugliness happening that contribute to the negativity that is already there. I personally have had to eliminate some “friends” of social media to preserve a positive experience there. I have a feeling that this practice will happen more before this is over.

As this progressed further, I began a course on Photoshop to help occupy some of my time in a positive way and that has helped but I also have some other things that help me to maintain something “normal” in my life during these times. Since I am a photographer, I enjoy watching YouTube videos and I thought I would share a few of my most watched people for you to check out if you are into it.

Adam Gibbs: Adam is a recipient of the International Landscape Photographer Of The Year and a very interesting guy to watch. Most of his videos are in the field and demonstrating his techniques for getting quality landscape images. https://www.youtube.com/user/AGibbsPhotography/videos

Thomas Heaton: Thomas is another favourite of mine. He lives in England but he does work all over the world in all sorts of locations. A really nice guy and great to watch. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfhW84xfA6gEc4hDK90rR1Q/videos

Nick Page: Nick is located in the US North West and is another that I watch a lot. He is also someone who spends a lot of time in the field teaching you what he is doing as he goes along. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxv1rK6prSp2aoNqNyxD_Vg/videos

Peter McKinnon: Peter is the biggest of the YouTubers that I follow. He has an interesting story and so many videos that you could be busy with Peter for a very long time. He is a film maker more than he is a photographer but he has a very interesting way of presenting it. I enjoy his work very much. https://www.youtube.com/user/petermckinnon24/videos

There are several other people to follow and infinite subjects so whatever your interests are, you can surely find people to check out. Who knows, maybe you will find someone that you will wish to follow.

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.