Photography

June for Grace

June 30, 2018 by • Christian Living, Life, Photography • Tags: , , , •

Blessed be the name of the Lord.
This June has been a great month. So many life-defining events and every day a present from the Lord.
His grace is majestic and his love without end.
This month started with the planning for the celebration of my wife’s landmark birthday. I knew I would not be around so I had to plan some surprises before my departure to so that on the day, the plan will come to life.
The plan came to life; my wife was excited, happy and very grateful for the thought and actions. A week later with family and friends, we celebrated her birthday some more, and it was a beautiful and simple event. We took a lot of pictures, and it was just fun especially for me as I had to the opportunity to host friends and family and that my wife was the center of attraction. It was wonderful. I will share the details of the photography adventure in another post.
I had some training, interacted with long lost friends, made new friends and discovered two new podcasts Daily Briefing and Just Thinking.
Of course, Apple introduced macOS Mojave and iOS12 to the world, and they are great OSs. I have set up a “memoji” for myself, and I am enjoying it.
I learned about the book the Blue Parakeet, and so far it has been interesting reading.
It is also the end of the 1st part of the year 2018. Looking forward to the 2nd part of the year and hopeful and praying for God’s grace and mercy.

Blurbing

June 21, 2014 by • Photography •

Blurbing

I will call the art of make your pictures into book Blurbing. Now I am talking about the photo book and self-publishing service Blurb. The service is the first I have used to print my pictures into a book format. There are a lot of other services that allow you make photo books as well. I came across the service when I installed Lightroom 4 and Adobe introduced the Book module.
Since I manage my photography with the app, it made sense to step out of my comfort zone and do something wonderful with some of my pictures and the new functionality built into the app and that is what I did.

The module is actually quite each to use, all it takes is for you to choose the pictures of interest and make sure they are selected when you get to the module and choose from the multiple page set-up to make the book of your dreams.

Now the Blurb service is not limited to Lightroom in any way rather the service offers you a number of ways to upload your pictures and arrange them your own way. Once your book has been arranged the way you want it, you just upload it to your account on their website and it awaits your next instruction. As soon as you have made your payment, they will let you know how long it will take to produce your book and from my experience, you may even get it earlier than the time they give but I guess it makes sense to plan according to their information.
The only limitation to using the service is your imagination (assuming that you are okay with their price structure).
It is really a good way of making your pictures into books and preserving the memory recorded therein.

Now as a disclaimer, I have not been paid or commissioned in anyway to write for Blurb. I am just expressing my opinion about a fair service that I have used and enjoy.

Photography Travel and Lightroom 5 Asset Management

August 29, 2013 by • Photography • Tags: •

Photography Op

I had some photography opportunity when I travelled recently and was opportuned to have a change of environment. It was good to see how people did things in their own way following their vision and make all the effort to achieve the ultimate goal one person at a time. Photography is one way of making sure that the nostalgia of the trip is continuous.

I had the opportunity to practice my photography by taking some pictures of people and places using my compact camera and I will post them later.

I did not have the best of luck most of the time because I kept getting a Memory Card Error which will not let me take a picture or look at the ones I have taken but I later found a way around it much later after the trip.

Management

After taking the pictures I really appreciated the power of the Abobe Lightroom 5. It does an excellent work managing the pictures whether it is in JPEG, RAW or when asked to convert it to DNG.

I really think that everyone needs to have a way of managing their photographs so that with the proper keywords and ordering which is faily easy to do in Lightroom, all you need is to type in the event and voila! the pictures are in front of you in all their glory.

Slideshows are the best way to arrange the photographs for viewing purposes. After I select and edit the pictures of interest, I arrange everything the way I want it with intro and outro slides then I export it as a video which is then streamed to the TV with nice tune accompanying the transition within the video.

All in all, I believe the most useful item that affects my photography other than the camera is this software.

I am still editing my shots but it is just to much fun working inside Lightroom 5.

Photographs – A piece of life at a time

July 28, 2012 by • Photography • Tags: •

I love photographs. I love being behind the lens and capturing a bit of other people’s activity while they are not ready for the shot. I believe it brings out the beauty in them as they are just being normal without the changes and the poses that we create when we are trying to take a picture – yes before you say it I will, I get a lot of blurry shots but I also get some good ones as well.

Now taking pictures is a wonderful thing and most of us love to be in pictures but some are more comfortable behind the lens than in front of it and now that we all have phones and games and all manner of devices that can take pictures, it is very easy to change roles and enjoy the pleasure of capturing a piece of one’s experience and that of other people.

Prior to the availability of cheap digital cameras, I used the film camera and I remember that after taking enough shots to fill a roll, I hurry to the developer and I drop off the film to pick it up a few days later.

Well, when the shot are eventually processed and printed and I pick them up, I am surprised at how the shot I remembered being so bright and sunny and perfect come out so dull. I persisted with my picture-taking and saw some improvements but then most of the time; it did not come very close to the shot I took. Then I had the opportunity to send my pictures out for development elsewhere and behold, the shots were way too cool for me to have been the one that took them. The sun was the way it should be, the brightness was just like daylight. There was no dullness and then I learnt something new about photography, it does not end with the shot, there is a craft in the development process. If it is done well, the picture is close to what the film captured. If it is not, then you may not like what comes out from the studio.

Now, this is something I was able to articulate better after digital cameras became quite common and I began to read magazines, blogs and books on taking pictures, improving them and printing them. I began to understand the process and I from then appreciated the opportunity software like Photoshop gave to people, the power to bring out your picture the way you envisioned it and shot it is now in your hands.

 

In future posts, I will look at some of the guys that inspire me and teach me more and more about the process as well as on some of the things I have learnt.