Tag Archives: Lightroom

Super Moon Over Manly

Super Moon Over Manly

Super Moon Over Manly

Nearly for­got about this; so fired up the trusty Canon 7D @ ISO160 F11 with my 70-300mm IS onboard. It was pretty cloudy, but man­aged to grab a cou­ple of shots.

 

The Clouds Begin To Roll In...

The Clouds Begin To Roll In…

 

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Cunard Royal Rendezvous — What Worked, What Didn’t?

Sydney Skyline From North Head

Syd­ney Sky­line From North Head

As I men­tioned I might, last Tues­day morn­ing, with my tri­pod strapped to my bike, and my cam­era, lenses, and Mac­Book Air stuffed into a back­pack, I headed up to North Head, Manly to shoot the pass­ing of Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 and Queen Eliz­a­beth as the passed into Syd­ney Har­bour. Some things worked well, but I must admit that over­all I came away dis­ap­pointed with the fruits of my labours.

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Back To The Mac

A photo of my 17

My Mac!

This post has lit­tle to do with pho­tog­ra­phy, but it per­haps does answer some of the most com­mon ques­tions I have heard at trade shows, in forums, and the like… What’s your setup? What do you use? Many will lament the com­plete lack of pho­to­graphic merit in those ques­tions, but as a tech head, I will indulge my inner geek.

I recently started read­ing a great set of inter­views where IT per­son­al­i­ties give an overview of the hard­ware and soft­ware they use per­son­ally called “The Setup”. I really love the for­mat of these inter­views, being very breezy, not get­ting bogged down in the details, while still pro­vid­ing some great insight, tips, and hints for help­ful tools and soft­ware. I doubt I would ever be invited to fea­ture in “The Setup” but I will try to write this post in the same style.

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Before & After — Moody Adam

Moody Adam Three
I recently sub­scribed to an excel­lent blog enti­tled “Seri­ous Ama­teur Pho­tog­ra­phy” by Jeff Lynch. In par­tic­u­lar I liked his how-to posts, i.e. how to achieve a cer­tain pho­to­graphic result. So in that spirit, I want to share how I cre­ated the image above…

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Some More Quick Links

Snow Leopard

Can A (Snow) Leop­ard Change It’s Spots?

Those few hardy souls fol­low­ing my Twit­ter stream must be won­der­ing what’s going on with some bizarre posts. I have been work­ing away with giv­ing my web­site a fresh lick of paint, and test­ing the changes at www.jonathanbourke.ie. It’s com­ing along nicely, but it will be a few weeks yet. The new site, while look­ing sim­i­lar to the exist­ing site, will have a more con­sis­tent struc­ture to it and will greatly ease gallery posting.

In the mean­time, here are some inter­est­ing links I came across:

  • How To Get The Best Colour Out Of Your Pho­tos — Life­hacker again comes up with a great guide for pho­tog­ra­phers. This one is heav­ily color focused, and the Pho­to­shop wiz­ardry required.
  • How to get (more) space in a news­pa­per — I fol­low the @adrianweckler on Twit­ter, edi­tor of the con­sumer tech sec­tion in the Sun­day Busi­ness Post news­pa­per in Ire­land. He shares some great tips for PR peo­ple (and pho­tog­ra­phers) in this post bemoan­ing the qual­ity of photo’s sent to journalists.
  • Light­room Cam­era Cal­i­bra­tion — I spend way too much time on my pho­tog­ra­phy tools, rather than using my pho­tog­ra­phy tools. This post on Cam­era Cal­i­bra­tion in Light­room def­i­nitely falls into the first cat­e­gory, but what the hell, I’ll share this link from Matt Kloskowski anyway.
  • What I’d Love to See in Light­room 4 — Damn; and I am only get­ting started on Light­room 3 (and the 3.2 release is nearly upon us, bring­ing with it direct post­ing to Face­book!). Scott Kelby gets the ball rolling with his wish list for Light­room 4, then has to defend it, before oth­ers chime in with their sug­ges­tions.
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Do You Use Lightroom? WordPress?

Lightroom & WordPress user? Then check this out!

Light­room & Word­Press user? Then check this out!

Get­ting my images from Light­room to my web­site has always been a bit of an ordeal:

  1. Select images and export from Light­room to disk
  2. Log into word­press, and man­age media
  3. Upload new images, and dig around on your hard disk to find them
  4. Cre­ate a new blog post, or page, or what­ever, and then attach the images to them
  5. Profit?

If this sounds like you, then you absolutely need this Adobe Light­room Export plu­gin from Luc Renam­bot called “Dossier De Presse”. Read on for more details and a sam­ple gallery.

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The State Of The DAM 2 — Adobe Lightroom

Screenshot of Adobe Lightroom 2

Adobe Light­room 2

In my pre­vi­ous post on Dig­i­tal Asset Man­age­ment, I briefly out­lined some of the entry level con­tenders for DAM soft­ware such as Google Picasa and Adobe Pho­to­shop Ele­ments. In the rest of this series, I will look at some of the heavy weights, the pro­fes­sional asset man­age­ment sys­tems. I will start with the one I use most —  Adobe Light­room. Not sure if this is a good idea as I it is the prod­uct that I am most inti­mate with, know­ing its strengths and weak­nesses. Let’s get started…

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Great Overview of 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop

Image of the Photoshop CS4 splash screen on launch.

20 Years of Adobe Pho­to­shop — But is it Still Rel­e­vant for Photographers?

Web­de­signer Depot web­site has a great overview of 20 Years of Adobe Pho­to­shop. While I have Adobe Pho­to­shop CS4; I find myself using it less and less, and I won­der whether it will remain as rel­e­vant to Pho­tog­ra­phers in par­tic­u­lar in the future. The touch up tools now avail­able in  Adobe Light­room / Apple Aper­ture and the like could very well ren­der Pho­to­shop to the realm of super spe­cial­ized tool for Graphic Artists and Web Designers.

That said, it really has been a phe­nom­e­non; so much so that it is often used as a verb:

That image looks photoshopped!

A result of that is that in pop­u­lar cul­ture it now stands for all that is wrong with mag­a­zine images of skinny mod­els. It is accused of being com­pli­cated, dif­fi­cult to learn and use, and extremely expen­sive. So much so that it must be one of the most pirated pieces of soft­ware on the internet.

Still amaz­ing soft­ware though…

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Be Careful With The Delete Button

Be Careful With The Delete Button - Adam Bourke

Be Care­ful With The Delete Button

Would you believe that I had deleted this photo?

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The Most Difficult Photographic Skill — Rating Your Photos!

Is this my best photo?

Is this my best photo?

Is this my best photo?

It is if you are to believe the hive mind of Flickr, but I am not sure. Rat­ing your own photo’s, fil­ter­ing out the good from the bad, is pos­si­bly the most dif­fi­cult pho­to­graphic skill in my opin­ion. Nowa­days, with Dig­i­tal Camera’s we can eas­ily take more and more photo’s, we can store them, organ­ise them, and manip­u­late them eas­ier than ever. In order not to be over­whelmed (or to over­whelm oth­ers :-) ) with this vol­ume, we need to choose the best and dis­card the rest. Whit­tling them down to the best of the best is fraught with emo­tional bag­gage, what if’s, “I can fix that…”, and “safe it for later” moments. I really strug­gle with this, and I am guess­ing I am not alone… […]

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