We’ve had a gorgeous run of beautiful weather during the day – and an unbelievable full moon at night. There’s a string of houses along Point White that all have gorgeous waterfront views of Mt. Rainier, and only one spot along the road where a photographer can peep in between the hedges. This is it.
I played around with a few Lightroom adjustments, with varying degrees of satisfaction. Most importantly, the entire sky was washed out, particularly at the exposure settings I was using (1/2000 sec at f/7/1, ISO 1000 on a 300m F4 lens and D700 body). So I used the Graduated Filter to burn the sky slightly and also to add some color back in. The saturation level of the color filter was 56% but would probably look more natural around 35%.
I also did a color dodge of light green on the trees on the left side, to bring up the color. I darkened one of the houses in the forest on the right side – mainly because when I was looking at the view, my eye was drawn to the ferry, the mountain, and the trees on that point in the foreground – not on the houses along that point. I also pushed highlights to +86, to pull out the detail of the glaciers on the mountain. Again, this was because of the flat light which my camera saw but my eye did not.
Ok what the heck, here’s the original:
And here’s what I would call a “purist’s compromise”:
Mustagh Ata, the “Father of Ice Mountains,” towers nearly 25,000 ft above sea level. Further north, there is no higher mountain on earth (with the exception of its twin summit, Kongur). The Kirghiz muslims called it “Hazrat-i-Musa” and believed that white camels bore Mohammed’s body to heaven by ascending its staircase slopes. It is situated on the Karakorum Highway, half-way between Kashgar and Hunza, in Chinese Xinjiang, about ten miles from the border with Tajikistan and 40 miles from the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan.
Our office here is just behind “Wedding Dress Street.” This particular shop caught my eye and I spent part of an evening waiting for the red-eye to Seoul, shooting people in the area…
This is one of my favorite photos of all time. It was taken by a close friend of mine, Anthony Willoughby, on our expedition to Mustagh Ata, in a small town called Tashkurgan, high up on the Pamir Plateau in western China just near the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan. “Pamir” means “Roof of the World” and there they play a Central Asian version of Polo called “Buzkashi,” with a sheep carcass.
I spent the weekend in Las Vegas. On business. I promise. Armed with only my iPhone, I was determined not to take any photos of people gambling or acting stupid. Here’s what I came up with. One person acting stupid, and eight other snap shots.
This is mainly a comparison of the 28-300 and the 24-120. I head read that the 28-300 is actually a sharper lens, so that would seem to obviate the need for even considering the 24-120. But let’s take a look. The first pair is a full photo comparison; the second pair is a full-res crop. I think it’s pretty clear which is more sharp. These were taken hand-held, but the shutter speed on the 24-120 was faster because of the slightly lower f stop.
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The flight from Saigon back to Seattle is brutal. It’s an overnight flight to Tokyo, then an 8-hour layover before another overnight flight on to Seattle. Rather than sitting in the comfy executive lounge at Narita, I decided to jump a train and spend a few hours walking around the city. In a daze.
But here’s my favorite. The pensive woman who, just as the doors were about to close, realized that I was taking a picture of her and was’t quite sure what to do…
Annual Labor Day celebration up here in the Pac Northwest…
It’s not just about music, but that’s how it started…
…for example, the water fountain…
I’ve just put up a new page of scans from “Old China” – that is, slides taken over 30 years ago. Here’s the link: http://www.qamera.com/places/old-china/ and here are a few photos from the “old day”…
A few short notes about scanning with the V700.
First of all, it’s a great scanner. I did the research and it’s the best flatbed scanner out there, and – according to the salesman at the Pro Photo Supply in Portland, it’s the reason why the Nikon film scanners were discontinued.
I bought it for the purpose of archiving my collection of slides that range from 1970 to 2000. So yes, some are over 40 years old.
My purpose is not so much to ‘archive for posterity’ as it is to scan and archive for potential digital use such as printing or blogging.
I use two different scanning software: EPSON Scan, which came with the scanner, and SilverFast 8. SilverFast has many different versions and it is very confusing to tell the difference between them, but I think SF 8 is the best for most purposes; the added features of the ‘higher’ versions are a bit esoteric. Also, for the most part, you want to do a basic “non-destructive” scan, then do any post-scan editing in Photoshop or Lightroom.
So let’s cut to the chase.
EPSON Scan is the best for overall quick-archiving. The interface is clean, simple and allows for a repetitive batch workflow. It also has “most” of the basic settings that you will need to get the most out of your scanner.
Okay, I’ve got my the Promise Pegasus 4-drive array plugged into my tiny, paper-thin MacBook Air. I ‘ve got 2TB of photos on the PP drive, a combination of NEF files and some gigantic TIFF’s from the 48-bit scanning I’ve been doing to archive my Kodachromes of early China. Those familiar with Adobe Lightroom know that it takes time to load, and it can take time to browse through your workflow even on a fast computer with a fast hard drive. Say good-bye to all that. Lightroom has become light fast. It loads instantaneously (thanks to the solid state drives on my MacBook Air) and workflow is instantaneous as well. It’s such a pleasure to edit real-time. Sure it takes about 0.5 seconds to load the previews from a 40 GB shoot. Gosh, what am I going to do with all that time!
Photo editing will never be the same.
A: You usually don’t.
See why it’s called the “Fastest Sport on Two Feet“…
Photo: Reynolds Yarbrough is the youngest goalie to ever start in a Washington State Lacrosse Championship game.
We spent the weekend at the family compound for the the annual “summer clean-up”. Here are a few photos from the weekend.
“Smoke gets in your trees”
I’m just setting up this Promise Pegasus 4-drive array to my MacBook Air. It connected up immediately. The nice thing is, I can connect my non-Thunderbolt external display to the back of the Promise drive using a standard mini-display port adaptor (which fits in the Thunderbolt connector). That’s nice to know, since the TB cables are $50 each. The drive is quiet, and immediately started the process of synchronizing the four drives in the array. It’s supposed to take about 10 hours. After that, I’ll transfer my Lightroom files over via ‘snail transfer’ (usb 2.0) and we’ll see just how fast this thing runs.
Continuing in my series of “old China” pictures, this one was taken in 1979 on a Sunday morning outing to the Great Wall. Suddenly our taxi coughed and sputtered. The driver simply stopped it smack dab in the middle of the highway. People came from all over not so much to help, but to gawk at the engine. It was – or perhaps we were – their weekend entertainment…
This isn’t my best picture, but it is an early one – circa 1979 or 1980. It was the first commercial billboard in Beijing – I know, because I set it up with the first-ever advertising company in China, McCann-Jardine. There were billboards before – the one before this exclaimed “We Have Friends All Over World!” Of course, there weren’t any cars in those days, so the best location we could find was in front of a huge parking lot for bicycles, outside one of the government ministries…
The Barn House Boys – Joe and Jermonne – host one of the premiere “vintage” markets in the country once each summer, in the “back yard” of their enchanting farm house in rural Battle Ground, Washington. People come from all over to see, buy, eat, drink, listen, play – and to be seen. It’s quite simply THE place to be…
More photos are also shown on the Battle Ground page…
Market
The market, spread out across several acres of property, included over 30 incredible “vintage” vendors plus food, drinks and a live band. It was like a county fair but more intimate and special. Just about everything here was one of a kind. People lined up to get in so the first hour was a bit of a crush … All day long you could see people happily hauling their treasures – big and small – back to their cars.
I love the internet. Got a $250 room for $55. This mansion, in the middle of the French concession of Shanghai, belonged to I.M. Pei’s father in the 1930′s and was recently converted into a boutique hotel. The only thing that was not completely 1930′s art deco was a modern toilet that did everything except talk to me. It even somehow knew whether I did #1 or #2 and adjusted its flush size accordingly.
Here’s the rather M.C. Escher-esque the staircase. Luckily there was also an elevator.
I don’t get out during the days much, except on weekends. So most of my photos tend to be around “night street” life – which, in this city, is pretty much always in motion…
My favorite thing to do is just park myself on a street corner, listen to the cacophony, and watch the motorcycles stream by like schools of fish – hoping that the overhead power lines will not collapse onto my head…
This is how you advertise in Saigon – go around with a big stencil and stamp your short message and big number on any vacant wall. This person got his number on both photos above and below. No idea what s/he’s advertising…
Sunday morning was cloudless – a rarety for Saigon – so I went out early and ended up coming across three markets: the local one by my villa, then the giant Phu Nuanh market, then the Tan Dinh one further down the road towards downtown. Here are a few of my favorite people from the markets…
Exactly my sentiments…
A few more here…
