Colin on Photography » Photoshop

“And The Creative Part Happens When?” – from John Mitchell

Colin Carmichael — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:59:50 +0000

Local photographer John Mitchell (whom I have known since he did our wedding photos a decade ago) blogged yesterday about a portrait he did and the processing required to “finish” it.

In the post, John draws parallels between digital processing and film developing. This is an argument I’ve made many times when accused of “cheating” by adjusting the colour or saturation in Photoshop. The great film developers employed similar “tricks” in the darkroom – remixing chemicals, over- and under- developing the negatives, etc. In fact, most of the standard Photoshop techniques actually attempt to mimic techniques originally developed in the darkroom.

Here’s a quote from John’s blog (wherein he shares a gem of a quote from Ansel Adams.)

The truth that you cannot make a great print from a lousy negative is even more valid with digital. The capture must be more than just acceptable. …

But, Ansel Adams also knew the importance of print making. One of his more famous sayings is, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.”

via Photography.

Solo Photowalking

Colin Carmichael — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:36:37 +0000

I don’t do New Year Resolutions. It’s just a thing I don’t do. However, I do want to do a few things differently in 2012 than I did in 2011. One of those things is NOT sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day (in addition to the 3 hours a day I sit in my car). My bum has had enough.

I decided to go for a fifteen minute walk every day at lunch time. Problem is that I find walks boring. I find myself just trying to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible – staring at my Blackberry to pass the time while trying not to bump into anything. I could tell that this daily walk thing would go nowhere quickly.

Enter my rekindled interest in photography – thanks to access to a proper camera. I realized that if I took my camera with me, I could keep the boredom at bay while honing my skills. Basically, I’d be going on a photowalk by myself. Neato.

In order to keep myself from just filling SD cards everyday (and doing nothing with the photos) and to ensure I was actually practicing and not just “spraying and praying” I came up with a few rules:

No more than five exposures per walk
Manual exposure and manual focus only
No photo review on the walk
Post at least one photo per week

Because my shooting rules are so strict, I’ve allowed myself free-reign in post-processing. This way I get to practice my Photoshop skillz as well. :)

So, without further ado, here are today’s images:

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BlackBerry News This Week

Colin Carmichael — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:57:54 +0000

There were two announcements this week regarding the founders of RIM, makers fo the BlackBerry. First, it was announced on October 3rd that Jim Laziridus would become an Officer of the Order of Canada. Second, it was announced last night that Jim Balsillie has purchased the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As both a political junkie and hockey fan, I’m not sure which is cooler. Um, wait. Yep, the hockey team is definately cooler. :)

EDIT: The Penguins site appears to be crumbling under the weight of the attention imposed by all us CrackBerry addicts – it’s currently ‘unavailable’.

Photoshop curves explained!!

Colin Carmichael — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:29:20 +0000

This is one of those areas in Photoshop that has always baffled me… how do you get nice flowing lines without a tablet-like device?

I stumbled across this article does a wonderful job of explaining, simply and directly, how to use a path to create a curvy line. Finally!

Social Bookmarking Explained (CommonCraft)