January 9, 2012

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Gavin Seim, lightroom, Nikon

Lightroom4 Beta now Available for Download.

LR4 Beta is officially available and you can download it free on Adobe labs. I attended a press conference a few weeks ago to see it in action, and while the changes didn’t strike me as mind boggling, there are some nice new. Here’s the highlights…

  • New Highlight and shadow recovery.
  • An actual book design module. This could be great for albums. And yes you can save projects.
  • Location-based organization and location info. Though I’ve been using the JF Geoencode plugin anyways 😉
  • Extended video support. Organizing, viewing and basic adjustments and edits to video clips. Pretty cool.
  • Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
  • Localized White Balance brush, as well as a few other brush tools, but not full feature brushes.

Still no full localized control with brushes, sadly no word on network implementation, or improved support for really high res scans / stitched images. Honestly there’s a lot of wish list features I’ve heard mentioned by people that not on the list, but we can’t have it all and there’s some interesting stuff. It’s also still a beta yet. We’ll see what happens in the final… Gavin

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January 6, 2012

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beauty, color, f164, Fine Art, journal, National Park, Nature, signature, technique

Evening Passage – Mount Rainier National Park

Evening Passage. Upper Tipsoo Lake, Mount Rainier National Park, Fall 2011, by Gavin Seim.

We made a trip this fall into the forests above Yakima, below the rear entrance of Mount Rainier national park. It’s a breathtaking view up here if the weather favors you. And while it was pretty grey on this evening around sunset, the sky had it’s moments and beauty. There was indeed a gentle subtlety singing in those peaks, hidden away within the folds of light and shadow,

The result is Evening passage, a silent reflection in the upper lake, made calmer my the gentle passing of clouds and ripples in this long sunset exposure.

Release Details: Prints Currently available. Contact the Studio for availability and ordering.

For Photographers. How it was made…

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January 4, 2012

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beauty, f164, Fine Art, journal, Nature, technique, travel, water, workshop

The Swirling City – Twin Cities MN.

Swirling City, 2011 by Gavin Seim. From the bridge, Twin Cities MN. Time Exposure.

This was about a year ago now, during our Fall 2010 road trip and my visit to the Twin Cities to teach an HDR workshop. I was walking with my group downtown, crossing over a bridge, the name of which escapes me. It’s big city here. industry and concrete. But flowing water always mesmerizes me. I took my time setting up, feeling that if I hurried I would get little more than a snapshot. In the end my effort paid off in this long exposure just between St. Paul and Minneapolis. The structures of the city meeting with the awesome power of the water and doing a dance right in front of my lens.

Release Details: Prints Coming Soon… Contact Gavin for details.

For photographers. How it was made…

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January 2, 2012

2

4x5, beauty, f164, Fine Art, journal, science, silver, technique, travel

Isabella Breeze – My First Ever 4×5 Scene.

Isabella Breeze. Lake Isabella CA. Spring 2011. Linhof 4x5.

This has been sitting for the summer, but as we start traveling once again for 3 months of road touring, I decided it was worth posting.  It’s my very first 4×5 exposure. Well, not including the accidental frame I ruined because I forgot to shut the lens. 4×5 film is something I’ve spent 2011 falling in love with. This frame is imperfect, but I wanted to share because I never want to forget the feeling it gave me. A sense of wonder at the sheer simple function, yet inspiring complexity and quality of the large format medium. It’s an operation that by it’s very nature forces one to slow down, to think and to visualize.

I stood right on the shore of Lake Isabella, almost at the water line at sunset on this early Spring day in 2011. It’s actually the very one I talked about on the drive back, during this Episode of the Photo Couch podcast. It’s was a calm relaxing sunset on the edge is this beautiful lake and it felt good. Once the sun had faded I packed up and drove to the other end of the lake where we had camped the trailer on the shore. Where kids and my beautiful wife were waiting with a hot spaghetti dinner.

For Photographers… 

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December 14, 2011

0

f164, science, silver, technique

Dynamic & Tonal Range in the RAW File.

Right cut. Original RAW file desaturated in LR. Left cut, same file with the Dynamic Silver III preset from Silver Shadows 2 applied in LR.

Just a few quick observations today. One reason I stay in a RAW as long as possible is that quality and dynamic tonal control is at it’s highest on an original RAW file. Once we leave that environment, we can certainly still work with tonal values, but we throw away some of that precious information.

On the right is a sharpened and desaturated original file from Sunset’s Hidden Falls. On the left, the same file with nothing more than applying Dynamic Silver III from my new Silver Shadows 2 toolkit. This effect pulls out dynamic range without flattening the shadow and contrast too much. It could also be done manually of course.

Once I have the dynamic range under control, then I’ll move on to external edits as needed. I don’t hesitate to go into Photoshop (though I try to stay in 16bit mode) for detail work. I did plenty of that on the final version of this). But getting my basic tonal range managed before I leave the RAW file behind gives me better results and helps me maintain that quality as high as possible for my wall prints. It’s a better wokflow and a better image.

Gav

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