In a recent post, I talked about my favourite books. Well I have been adding to them. My collection of PhotoShop How-to’s has suddenly mushroomed, courtesy of a nasty and virulent Amazon habit. There is a reason for this. An expensive reason.

I have just upgraded my 1Ds Mk II to the MK III. Apart from the 21-23Mb Raw files, which have necessitated switching to fast 8Gb cards (gulp), I have come to realise that my PhotoShop skills just aren’t good enough to realise the quality level that I now perceive I want to accomplish with my images and which  I have learned the Ds, in the short few weeks I have had it, can deliver. It has little to do with the resolution. It has everything to do with the 14 bit files, which give me more information to murder/manipulate, and the ability to render smoother tonalities. Suddenly I feel out of my depth, as if someone has handed me the keys to a Skyline GT-R, or Topgear’s Richard Hammond trying to drive a Formula 1 car. There is too much that I do not know, so I am doing something about it.

Enter the great god Amazon.

It is quite exciting really. The prospect of all this cool knowledge waiting for me to master excites me. A new journey, new discoveries, and hopefully a new level of quality somewhere down the road.

But first a little learning.

It is a curious thing, but my comprehension skills need text. Printed text. I can stare at a monitor for hours and not get it. Give me a book and I can start to get it. Maybe it’s an age thing, but I don’t think I am alone.

So herewith, without further ado, five how-to books I really recommend.

1. The Adobe PhotoShop Lightroom book -Scott Kelby. A must for LR users. I am still learning new stuff.

2. The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers-Scott Kelby. Really useful, with techniques applied to real-world situations.

3. Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3. He puts the whole workflow thing together, and shows how to make ordinary images look stand-out.  Hmmm, maybe it’s time to go through the back-catalogue of my image library again….

4. Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter) by Katrin Eismann. Gasp! My eyes are watering!

5. Photoshop Masking & Compositing (VOICES) by Katrin Eismann. See comment #4

Be warned: The last two books are heavy-duty, with the sort of tranquillising effect that would knock out an enraged bull elephant. Great bed-time reading for the insomniac; guaranteed to send you off in 13 nanoseconds. The information is however invaluable and hugely worth it.

If the posts have been a little few and far between, it is because I have been doing a 360 review of what I put up, along with trying to keep up with commercial pressures. I always appreciate feedback, so I am asking for it here.

Please help me out.

I could write all sorts of stuff, but I want to keep to photography, or matters associated with it. So I have been sifting through it, looking at what draws responses and what does not. Anything to do with camera clubs seems to have drawn a response, particularly the post on this year’s submissions. They will have to go on hold; I am no longer a member of the Board-for the short-term, I am informed. No, don’t ask.

I tried a review of different raw converters, and I confess, it was not my finest work. Doing it was like eating Weetbix without the milk and sugar! Anyway, Phil Askey does it way better. So I am going to keep my thoughts to myself-unless asked.

I put in the geek stuff because I think we need to remember that our computers are critical to what we do. Ok, and I am a technophile…I admit it. So there. (Stop chortling, Andrew Spencer!)

So what should I write about? Maybe you can tell me the posts you like and the ones that don’t.

If there are things missing that you would like to see, then say so. I will take it on board.

Things I won’t do include:

1.       The great Canon vs Nikon debate. They are both fantastic cameras.

2.       Do DPreview-type reviews. I am a photog and they are way too boring to do…making photographs-now THAT I am interested in!

I am about to try a new category, describing the making of an image from concept to finish and including the CS3 techniques I used. I hope this will be of some use. There in the next day or so.

Lastly, I am due to take delivery of a Canon ipf 6100 ( 24″ wide) large format printer on Tuesday, all going well. I have got so frustrated with the work done for me so far, that I have decided to do it myself.  If any of you want some BIG prints, then let me know.

Again, give me feedback.

Please.

Kia ora tatou:

The story goes like this..

A close friend has wireless broadband at home and runs Mac and PC on an Apple Airport. Over the last 3 months his capped 6Gb plan kept tipping over into dialup mode. He couldn’t understand why. He put it down to his 10-year old daughter’s Limewire habit and gave her a hard time over her usage. because she loves Madonna and Britney (shudder!), he figured it was file sharing, and changed the Limewire settings so the traffic would all be inbound.

It made no difference.

Then the other night, he had a look at the Mac and discovered he had a stray shared folder with X’s Shared Folder ( X being the 18-year old boy across the fence). It contained music with explicit content including bestiality and other vile stuff. Understandably he was irate that his daughter had been exposed to this rubbish.

To cut a long story short, he and X have had a discussion on the matter…

Which leads to the whole point of this story.

If you have wireless broadband at home (or anywhere for that matter) and it is unsecured, you may be helping others with their Internet adventures. It is not difficult to secure it against most threats…

In Auckland recently, I stayed with some folks whose WB was secured. Their 3 neighbours were not and I could have a good time at their expense.

Something to think about….

Kia ora tatou:

A friend gave me this poem the other day. Prophetic, somehow.

It seemed appropriate to accompany it with this image…

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you (more…)

Sometimes, when we least expect it, life can come full circle.

I am in the trees again, back amongst the beloved exotics of my boyhood.

We have come down to the forest to make work, to explore our image-making. We leave the cars behind us and as we step under the dripline rim of the forest, its blue-green reality swallows us up and assimilates us. We are in another time and place where clocks are irrelevant, where the moment holds past, present and future in one hand.

The forest has been here for many years holding earth and sky apart. (more…)