TrinityTrees

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MH Canopy Tour

MH Canopy Tour

Originally uploaded by tell-taleheart

Yesterday Marci and I had the opportunity to go on Mount Hermon’s new canopy tour. The canopy tour is a series of zip lines and sky bridges which extend over Bean Creek canyon. At the highest point you are 150 feet off the ground. I took this short clip during that length of the zip line. You can see me pass over the longest of the sky bridges. The tour was pretty much amazing, and I can’t wait until they extend it with a couple longer zips down the canyon. The longest zip line (my favorite) was 440ft. I will have more photos from the tour up on my flickr account.

Speaking of Simple Workflows

Back when I was working as a summer staff photographer for Mount Hermon near Santa Cruz, CA, I was asked to be part of a tutorial on using Adobe Bridge (also works for other file managers). Here is a short video that might help explain my importing and star rating workflow. Click here for the video. Sorry WP wouldn’t let me embed it.

Digital Photo Workflow

My photo workflow has been on my mind, and I’ve wondered if I have missed anything or made things too complicated for myself. I realize each person’s workflow depends on their camera and editing software, but most everyone can benefit from breaking down the steps they take and evaluating their process.

Both of my digital cameras can shoot in RAW, so I either shoot RAW +jpeg or RAW alone. I am moving more towards RAW by itself whenever I know I will be doing post-processing, and just shooting jpeg when I want to take a lot of photos without worrying about the post processing. My current software package is Photoshop Elements 6 which has an organizer similar to Adobe Bridge, and Elements has it’s own RAW Converter which opens up when you choose to edit the RAW files.

Time Lapse Santa Clarita

Time Lapse Santa Clarita

Originally uploaded by tell-taleheart

With flickr allowing 90 second “long photos” I decided to try to summarize the drive to Santa Clarita in one shot. It wasn’t easy condensing 5 hours and 332 miles into 90 seconds, but I even managed to get a dust devil in the footage… er I mean frame.

English Mountain Panorama

English Mountain Panorama

Originally uploaded by tell-taleheart

I have rediscovered the joy of panoramas with Photoshop Elements 6. Before I used to use the Canon stitch utility which processed photos alright, but it often left overlap areas that were fuzzy or smudged. Photoshop Elements 6 even blends the images to give you an even exposure. Plus with Photoshop you can apply adjustment layers before saving. So I’ve put up some older stitched panoramas with a new feel to them.

Fun With Photoshop Elements

AsiaticPinwheel

Originally uploaded by tell-taleheart

It seems I have become a Photoshop fan overnight. I took this macro shot with my Canon G9 and bracketed it to have a darker background image to work with. I gave the background layer a radial blur and the whole image a hue adjustment (obviously).

Photoshop Express and Flickr Support

Well I can’t say I predicted it, but there must have been enough demand for Photoshop Express to connect with Flickr. This last week I took several photos with an old Tower 20B 1960′s rangefinder camera. The camera produced decent results, but due to the low light or somewhat expired film many of the shots were extremely grainy and fuzzy. I had Longs scan the photos onto a CD so I could actually do something with them, and Photoshop Express came to the rescue of my fuzzy photos. Even with the limited feature set of the online version, I was able to do everything I needed to clean up and color correct my pictures. After I was done editing, it was a snap to send them over to my flickr. My only complaint is that they show up on flickr restricted to friends and family only. I haven’t found a place to change my default settings yet, but it’s only a minor issue.

Visiting the Farm

I wanted to post a few more pictures from my grandparent’s farm. I knew this might be one of the last times I visited before they sell their house and move into the city. They are getting more frail each year, so I wanted to capture and soak in as much detail as I could. My most cherished moments from the trip will probably be raking leaves with my dad and grandpa. There was just some great satisfaction of working hard alongside them. Check out my flickr page for more photos.

Daily Travel Photos

I know I have hardly updated my photo stream daily, but I have a good excuse. I was visiting my grandparents in Illinois this last week, and their farm didn’t have internet. Marci and I met up with my parents in St. Louis, MO and headed over to the Arch – or Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Check out my flickr for more photos from our visit there.