JonathanBourke.Com

Towards The Light - Tourists shoot the Pantheon Oculus

Slowly but surely I am sorting and sifting my way through my back catalog of images. This new gallery features some of my favorite shots from a two week trip to Rome in 2007. During that time, we really got a feel for this wonderful city, and especially it’s food!

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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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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…

Be Careful With The Delete Button

Would you believe that I had deleted this photo?

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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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Which Photo Software? What photo software you need, when, and why...

I recently discussed the must haves / don’t needs of buying a digital camera, depending on the stage of your photography obsession . I would imagine that most of the time photo’s come straight out of the camera and onto paper, if at all. If you want to take your photo’s that little bit further, here are some software tools which can smooth the way…

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