..photography with style

I know, I know..I said I have started using Aperture but hey, that does not mean I completely abandoned Lightroom. As a matter of fact I am still working on Lightroom most of the time and to prove this I am going to share with you few of the presets I created for my work. Today I am going to share what I call Judgment Day preset. I know it sounds a bit…ahhh…but I am not good with naming presets. In my list I have them as Preset 1, 2, 3..so on and so forth. Bottom line you download it, use it, name it and let me know how you used it and what you called it. Deal?! Good!

This particular preset works for both color and black and white effects. You can switch between these two by going into the Develop module and, under Treatment, select Color or Black & White.

Before

After

You can download the preset here :

“Judgment Day Lightroom Preset”

Using your mouse right button click on the above link and select “Save Linked File As” or “Save File As” ( depending on what operating system and browser you are using).

Thats all for today.

I hope you will like it and do not forget to say thank you

Sebastien

Hello people

Today’s photo is a photo of a male model I took few months ago. Well, he isn’t exactly a model but it turned out that, at the end of the day,there is a model in all of us. Now don’t you all start posing thinking that you are the next Sean O’Pry because I am telling you: You are not .

The photo was taken using:

-2 Elinchrom D-Lite2 on the left and right of the model facing eachother. The light is only washing the face instead of a direct contact.

-an SB900 gelled with a full CTO placed behind the model and pointing at the background for a bit of glow.

Camera:Nikon D700
Exposure:0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture:f/13.0
Focal Length:60 mm
ISO Speed:100

An extreme slow-motion video of things being smashed, shot, chopped…you name it!

The video has been produced by Philip Heron of Heron Productions using a Photron High Speed camera.

The Photron High Speed Camera is able to record images at up to 7,500 frames per second. And there I was thinking that I am king of the world with 9fps on my camera! I am joking of course.

If you ever you’re looking for a DOP with experience in Photron High Speed photography, documentaries, music videos, live events and short films, Philip Heron seems to be your man!

Enjoy the video folks.

Cobh Golf Club had its official opening today.

Despite the fact that I live only a couple of minutes away from it,  I have to admit that I have never visited this golf course (maybe the fact that I do not play golf might have something to do with this). I do not know where does this golf course stands among others golf courses but from a photographic point of view I was amazed with the panoramic views you get from there. WOW. I might book a round of golf just to be able to snap few nice shots from there.

As mentioned at the beginning, the Club had its official opening today and had the honor of having the famous Shane Lowry playing 8 holes as part of the opening ceremony. I do not like  golf, I do not know much about it, but as one of the official photographers assigned to document the ceremony I have to say that I have enjoyed watching and shooting Mr. Lowry.

If you are around Cobh and you are looking for a golf game do visit this club. I am sure you will not be disappointed.

I am ashamed!!

I just cannot believe that  nearly 5 months passed since my last blog.

Loads of things have happened since and one of the most important event was my transition from Windows to Apple. Yeah! I have decided to bite the bullet and make the move. My new computer is now an iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz and 4 GB of Ram.

Despite my worries, the transition was painless and I have to say that a couple of months of working with the OSX operating system made me forget, quite fast, the 12 years of using Windows. One of the major elements on this switch from Windows to Apple is the fact that my computer doesn’t crash that often. Actually it doesn’t crash at all…..ahem! …actually it did crash a couple of time but I will get into that later. You will see why!

How does Mac OSX runs? It runs fast, smooth and it is a pleasure working with it. If you are a Windows user and you think of making the move but you are afraid that it will take you time to accommodate I will say Do it!. If you were able to navigate through Windows then you will have no problems with Apple.

The only small problem I have is that there were a couple of applications I was using under Windows that, unfortunately, are not working under OSX. The easy solution for this, which I applied immediately, is Boot Camp. It is funny to see how fast Windows boots on a Apple machine.

The switch left me with one big problem! As a photographer, and one that is shooting mainly in RAW, I always tried to find the best RAW converter. I have been using Adobe Lightroom, Nikon’s Capture NX, Capture One and many other converters but, since I was working under Windows, I have never tried Aperture. You are going to ask me “Ok, where is the problem?!”. The problem is that I found myself at the moment, after experimenting with Aperture 3, being torn between Lightroom 3 and Aperture 3. The main surprise, for me who never used Aperture before, is the quality of the files produced by Aperture. The results are of an outstanding quality and by far much much better then Lightroom. I know that LOADS of photographers using Lightroom 3 are going to jump saying that this is not true but hey, this is my personal opinion.  The one big problem I have with Aperture, and if it wouldn’t have been for the quality of its results I would have stopped using it, is that Aperture is crashing quite often. Actually is the only application that, in the last 5 moths of using Apple, managed to bring my iMac to a screeching halt. As mentioned before, if it wouldnt have been for the quality of the files produced by Aperture 3, I would have stopped using it. I am still using Aperture 3 and for the next couple of days I will try to document and share my struggle with Aperture 3 and maybe, who knows, meanwhile Apple will release an update that will solve all these problems with Aperture. I really like it. Please Steve, pretty please?!

Happy shooting all..

This winter we decided to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Norway. We had a lovely time, with loads of snow and extreme temperatures reaching at some stage –30 and even –42 degrees Celsius. I have to admit that I was quite reluctant and afraid to get the camera out thinking that it will get damaged, but I can report that Nikon behaved absolutely normal in these extreme temperatures and  the big surprised was the fact that the battery lasted for 4-5 hours. The zoom in the 24-70mm/f2.8 got a little bit stiff, but this was nothing I could not live with. So..my report on how Nikon D700 behaves at extreme temperatures is very short. Nothing to report, everything works fine

Somewhere near Stranda

View towards Liabygda.

Road to Liabygda.

Geiranger.

Nordal

Hope you like them.

Cheers

Ovidiu

As mentioned in a previous post, I have recently upgraded to Windows 7. Everything worked fine with the exception of my Wacom Tablet who, without any reason, decided to suddenly die on me. The blue light on the top was active but the mouse cursor would not move. Dead…!!

Restarting windows, rebooting..re-kicking did not help at all. Uninstalling the Wacom drivers did not help also. But I think I found a way to solve the problem. If you experience the same issue, go to Start/ All Programs/Wacom Tablet and select the Wacom Tablet Preference File Utility. Once you have opened this Utility select Remove.

This should sort the problem. It did for me and I hope it will do for you too. I also noticed that by starting Photoshop with the Pen and not the Mouse would help Photoshop recognise the Tablet.

That’s all for today.

Cheers!

Saint Finbarre’s Cathedral, (Irish: Ardeaglais Naomh Fionnbarra) is a Church of Ireland cathedral located in Cork, Ireland. The site of the cathedral has been a place of worship since the 7th century. The three spires of the cathedral are one of Cork’s main landmarks. It is the seat of the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, currently Bishop Paul Colton. It is named after Cork’s patron saint.

See it on the map

Well people I have decided to bite the bullet and upgraded my computer from Windows Xp to Windows 7. I have to admit that I was not so pushed to upgrade to Windows 7 and was also a bit nervous thinking that all the installation process will turn into a disaster, but…that did not happen.

The upgrade process was very swift and in less then an hour I was up and running.

How does it compare with Windows XP? First of all, the graphic interface is quite nice. I am saying nice because I still believe that Apple is the leader when it comes to interface design. Is Windows 7 running faster, on exactly the same spec, then Windows XP? Oh yeaahh babeeeeee.. It is flying compared with its granddad XP. Everything is faster. It takes only 1min to boot the system, the navigation through files and folders is very swift and most important, all my applications work perfect. Despite rumours that Capture NX will not run under Windows 7 I can confirm that Capture NX DOES WORK on Windows 7. Not only that is working but as a matter of fact it is running twice as fast as it was on Windows XP. Photoshop CS4, Bridge and Lightroom are also running without any problems.

For me, one of the best features of Windows 7 is the Tablet PC mode. I can now use the pen on my Wacom Intuos 3 and write instead of typing. The handwriting recognition is quite good and it took me only a couple of minutes to set it up .

Bottom line, I am extremely pleased with Windows 7. I just hope that this will not change…

EDIT: A couple of people complained about the fact that NEF thumbnails are not supported by Windows 7. To solve this problem you will have to download and install a NEF Codec from Nikon. The codec can be found HERE.

Have a nice weekend all!

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