If you’re in the UK, and if unlike me you occasionally watch ITV even when there’s no football, you may have experienced  last night’s season-opening episode of Midsomer Murders. This police drama was stretched out over 2 hours of prime time with ad breaks for ice cream, just when winter’s at its coldest this year, and for a bowel cancer charity. I don’t belittle that charity’s value, but times must be tough in commercial TV land if they’re scheduling ads telling you to go looking for “blood in your poo” at peak viewing times.

If you did see it, you may noticed the central starring role played by the historical re-enactors. This was the filming at Knebworth House that I mentioned in this post back in November. It was a fun day, and you don’t really see in this panorama how much smoke they generated – just imagine the tubes running all the way across the front of the building and all the way behind me. It was wonderful for photography – and perhaps a shame they didn’t use them throughout the filming…. Just not my kind of telly.

Stefano Orazzini is an Italian photographer who mainly seems to do the kind of long exposure black and white stuff that’s been in vogue for a few years. There are lots of really excellent images on his site and for a bit more information see this interview:

I can’t tell the exact reason why I chose black and white as a means of expression. Every day we are bombarded with colors: television, advertising, traffic, supermarkets … The black and white photography for me is like a trip back in time and a way to escape from this world. Perhaps because 90% of contemporary photographers use color and I don’t like to follow the trendy styles of the moment. Or because it allows you to direct the viewer’s gaze on the subject, the message of black and white is stronger and more direct. Also it allows me to follow the entire imaging process: from capture, to the development of the negative and the printing. Finally, I think that a black and white photograph is timeless and never gets boring.

I couldn’t agree more. Ha ragione!

Great series of images of the annual Shetland Islands festival Up Helly Aa. I know it’s only a modern recreation – dating from 1881 – but like la Tomatina or some of these southern Italian Easter parades, it’s one event I’d just love to see.

Rather like expectant parents holding in their hands the ultrascan of their new baby and showing off the little snap to anyone prepared to humour them, I thought I’d show the cover of the 2^nd edition of my Advanced Digital B&W Photography. While I completed the rewrite before Christmas and have already seen the proposed cover, it was only this morning that I wanted to see when it would be delivered. It looks like it’s May in the UK and US and afterwards in a number of translations.

When the original book was released five years ago, I’m proud to say that it notched up a few firsts. I was lucky to be writing at such an opportune time and to have distinguished some new developments which I felt would change the best way to work. So it was the first book on digital B&W:

• To cover Lightroom
• Ditto for Aperture
• Photoshop’s B&W adjustment filter
• Photoshop smart objects for a B&W workflow

This time round, it’s not as much of a turning point for us B&W workers. Instead we’re in a period where those changes have become established, Silver Efex Pro has fleshed out, and where some of the old problems of colour casts have been countered by printers with more inks or just been accepted as par for the course. I can’t see mobile apps like Nik’s Snapseed or Adobe’s Revel (ex Carousel) as much more than a way for people to gain some appreciation of B&W – healthy though that must be. So in the second edition:

• Most of the new content is Lightroom.
• A lot of new content is on Silver Efex Pro

Of course, if you do ever want to experiment with your pictures you can always hit V in Lightroom and it will show them in colour. Thankfully hitting V (or Undo) will make them look right again. Why bother with colour?

Probably more than a year ago I decided I must have a Lee Big Stopper, a 10 stop neutral density filter. It wasn’t an impulse buy though because none of their UK  stockists had any available, and lead times were estimated at 3 months. But as often as not waiting times nowadays seem just a sly way to deliver sooner than promised and so “delight” the customer. So I placed an order and waited. Then more than 3 months had passed – and so in a self righteous fit I cancelled that order. If this vendor couldn’t get their act together, I’d order it from someone else. Of course, the same happened again. Months went by and there was no sign of the filter, and I impatiently cancelled that order too. By now Lee’s web site acknowledged production delays and said they simply didn’t know when the situation would improve. I’d also contacted them directly, and while their reply wasn’t encouraging at least it seemed open and honest. So for a third (or was it a fourth?) time I decided to order one, this time from Speedgraphic, and this time I was going to wait – no matter how long it took. As the whole summer passed by, and then my big autumn trip to the Lake District, still there was no sign of the Big Stopper, and by early December I was growing impatient again. As before, Lee replied promptly but with the same discouraging “not able to offer any accurate availability dates” message and spoke of problems with suppliers (which wasn’t a good thing to say to someone who had spent time working in corporate recovery). Speedgraphic seemed equally powerless, and once more I seriously thought of cancelling, ordering a similar filter from B&W, and moving on. And then, one week later, just before Christmas, my Big Stopper arrived.

Since then I’ve either been too busy to get out and use it, or the weather didn’t want to cooperate – clear blue skies are not Big Stopper weather – but finally Monday’s forecast promised a decent mix of sun and cloud. Going right back to when I first tried to get my hands on the filter, one location I’d mentally shortlisted was the isolated church at Fairfield on Romney Marsh. Since then I’d got the Photographer’s Ephemeris app on the iPad and bookmarked the location, and over the weekend I’d checked the sunrise and sunset times. So you might say that the picture was a year in the planning – or even longer if you include seeing Fay Godwin’s well-known picture. [From what I've read, the church was the only building left standing when the rest of the village faded away]

And where is all this leading? Well, for all that patience and planning and an hour and a half’s drive – I’d forgotten to charge up my camera’s batteries and I only had 45% left in the one in the body. Minute-long exposures really drain the D700′s power, so after about 30 pictures here and then at Dungeness, that was it.

My conclusion? By all means make those grand plans, pursue them for a year or more if you have to – but just don’t forget the little details. When you get them wrong, they will really spoil your day!

If you use my Search and Replace Lightroom plug-in, I’m currently updating it. So if there’s something you want, now’s a good time to ask.

Common sense has prevailed and Adobe have phased in the change in their Creative Suite upgrade policy. As John Nack writes in New upgrade options for CS3 and CS4 customers “The whole story is clumsy” but:

I’m pleased to say that Adobe has announced a new introductory upgrade offerfor customers using CS3/CS4:

• The old deal: If you were on CS4 or earlier at the time CS6 shipped, getting a subscription would be the only way to upgrade to CS6.
• The new deal: If you’re on CS3 or CS4 when CS6 ships, you’ll have until the end of 2012 to upgrade to CS6.  You can of course choose a subscription option, and we think you’ll want to.
• Bottom line: During 2012, you don’t have to buy CS5 just to buy CS6.

Tomorrow is generally regarded as Lightroom’s 6th birthday – the anniversary of when the 1.0 beta for Mac was released. So I had been planning to announce Lightroom Solutions, but somehow it sneaked out early….

I’ve always preferred to have a single site, as there’s only one of me, but for a year or two I’ve wanted to post more Lightroom content. At least, I’d like to think some people may be interested in reading more, and there was a range of material I have been writing that never made it onto this blog. I get a decent number of emails asking for advice, for instance, or there are 4-5 web forums where I’ll answer questions on Lightroom-related topics ranging from beginner tips to more obscure but interesting topics. Apart from my posts being scattered around various forums, I’m also still wary of how forum owners can treat others’ freely-contributed writing as theirs to sell (I refer to the old Rob Galbraith forum going to a subscription-based service). Consolidating the various emails and posts here would swamp this site, however, and an entirely separate site would allow me to structure it in a way that’s more helpful for those only interested in Lightroom.

A lot of the good Lightroom names are already taken – quite a few merely redirecting to existing sites – but I registered  Lightroom Solutions in the middle of last year. “Solutions” is, I know, a bit of a cliché and I could trot out all sorts of guff about wanting to offer solutions, not questions. But there is a grain of truth there, because I do think that too much Lightroom advice is along the line of “anything goes”. People don’t need to be told there are three ways to do black and white with Lightroom, and that they’re all equal. Some ways are simply more equal than others, and what’s needed is clarity.

• Want to write for Lightroom Solutions? Let me know.
• The WordPress theme is one I wrote from the ground up. Tell me if you find problems.

Blea Tarn by Colin S Bell

You’d be forgiven for thinking this site has recently become fixated with the Lake District in general and Blea Tarn in particular. You would be right, as I have felt rather that way since the two weeks I spent up there in November and especially since the morning when I had the place entirely to myself.

That day it all came together – after an hour’s drive I was there for dawn, rolling mists and autumn colours reflected in the tarn’s still surface – and apart from a single dog walker it was all mine, mine, and not another photographer in sight. Funnily enough, once the fog eventually lifted and the breeze picked up, I moved on to nearby Slater’s Bridge and did immediately walk into a pack of 10 photographers with LPS’s John Gravett. John had first introduced me to the tarn’s photographic potential and often takes his guests there, so that morning I’d been a lot luckier than I’d thought. Much as I can be sociable, and know I can  remove other photographers afterwards by pretending they’re dust spots, I am more of a lone hunter and it was a rare privilege to have the place all to myself.

Since then I’ve been itching to get back. Each time I go to the tarn I explore two or perhaps three angles, move on after two or three hours, feeling the shot’s in the bag – and then kick myself for not having spent the whole day there. Next time I’ll take sandwiches and try not to heed the Drunken Duck’s siren call calling me for a lunchtime pint.

For a small area, it’s got so many alternative viewpoints and I was struck by Colin S Bell‘s one here – not least that before sunrise he managed to resist the temptation to set up his tripod down by the tarn’s edges. Lots more on his site and Flickr page.

These are all photographs I’ve taken in my beloved Lake District over the last few years and reworked with a new effect which I found pretty addictive but can’t disclose, not yet anyway. You may of course say it should remain that way, but I rather liked the results and it is my party….

As usual they are being served from my SlideShowPro Director content management system, but I recently heard that they have discontinued the Slidepress plug-in (why is explained here). So instead I am using their Publish mechanism, copying code from Director and pasting it in WordPress. I’m not sure it’s totally reliable and WordPress has a habit of correcting – or rather deleting – the code.

Adam Burton‘s Lake District pictures contained some lovely angles on Blea Tarn. And while here he’s talking about the Langdales in general, I rather feel his comment could apply to this one little spot.

This iconic location is probably my favourite part of the Lake District.  As long as the weather plays along, a photographer could easily spend a week and more photographing the Langdales and never get bored.

Mark Laita’s Created Equal is a series of portraits of American stereotypes. Each image would be interesting-enough in its own right but becomes more fascinating by its being paired with a contrasting type. So a Mormon polygamist family is juxtaposed with a pimp and his harem.

In America, the chasm between rich and poor is growing, the clash between conservatives and liberals is strengthening, and even good and evil seem more polarized than ever before. At the heart of this collection of portraits is my desire to remind us that we were all equal, until our environment, circumstances or fate molded and weathered us into whom we have become.

Via

Having recently spent a couple of weeks up in the Lake District, I obviously can’t get enough of the region and was thinking about places to go next time. So I found myself browsing one or two sites until I came across John Parminter’s viewlakeland.com which has some lovely scenic work both of the Lakes and Scotland.

This is one of my favourite lakes, Wastwater, but taken from an angle I’d never seen before and which really expresses the power of those impressive scree slopes along the other side.

I was asked “Can I avoid using Lightroom’s backup routine and have my backup software do it”?

The answer is yes, you can, but….

• If you rely on backup software and target your actual Lightroom catalogue you are taking some risk that the catalogue may be open when the scheduled backup kicks in. There’s a faint chance and a long but obscure history of such backups being unusable.
• You also have to fiddle around with your backup software so it doesn’t include the potentially-huge but non-critical previews lrdata folders. You really don’t need (shouldn’t) back these up.
• Lightroom’s backup routine also includes a catalogue integrity check.

So it’s generally best to let Lightroom make its backups to another drive, and then point your backup software at this location.

To quote, as I am wont to do, George Orwell – “The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.”

When first announced at Adobe’s MAX conference, the inclusion of “community” made Adobe Creative Cloud sound like just another of those efforts to add to the Creative Suite some kind of communication or networking – a sort of re-marketed Acrobat.com with the word “creative” transplanted:

Adobe® Creative Cloud is a major new initiative that radically redefines the content creation process. Adobe Creative Cloud will become the focal point for creativity, where millions can access desktop and tablet applications, use essential creative services, and share their best work.

But this Creative Cloud is actually quite a bit more important than its fluffy announcement might make you think. This is Adobe now making its long-anticipated switch to a subscription model, and it was made even clearer in last week’s Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Creative Suite: New Choices for Customers

Our move to this membership model allows us to keep our customers up to date with the latest Adobe innovations in our tools and related services. Creative Cloud will provide maximum flexibility, offer lower cost of entry, and add cutting-edge innovation on an on-going basis to keep our customers ahead of the changing technology and device landscape.

For customers who prefer to remain on the current licensing model, we will continue to offer our individual point products and Adobe Creative Suite editions as perpetual licenses. With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.

This is clearly the way Adobe want to go, and you have to wonder for how long customers will remain able to “prefer to remain on the current licensing model”? On the bright side, will Adobe now let us run the software on whatever computer we want – or your Apple laptop or on your Windows desktop? And look too at the change to the upgrade policy. For the photographer who only uses Photoshop, it now looks like it’s time to upgrade from CS3 to CS5, rather than waiting for the third upgrade.

Currently these details are emerging from the clouds of water vapour (or is it smoke or dust) that these announcements are throwing into the air. Come to think of it, it’s rather typical of Cloud Computing. Who knows what it is made of, if it’s really good for us, or if it is what we actually want. For those who are “just photographers”, the abolition of the three versions upgrade rule may be the real news here.

There’s a funny bug in Lightroom on Windows when you try and select a folder or drive:

When I try to export a selection of images from LR using Specific Folder (or choose folder later) the only available location that shows up in the hierarchy is my Desktop. No other folders/drives are visible. I had this problem once before and managed to resolve it but don’t recall now what I did. I’ve tried shutting down LR and restarting. Rebooting the computer and restoring the default export presets. If I select Export as Catalogue, then my entire folder/drive hierarchy is visible. Using LR 3.5 on Win7 Pro 64.

It is usually triggered when a lot of files are on the Desktop, and you can try this. In the folder dialog, at the bottom you can type “D:” or whatever, and doing so once usually resolves the bug.

See this Adobe knowledge base article.

Some great examples of graphic design from Sainsburys.

I particularly like this “all fish” cat food. Lucky kitties – it must be Bass.

Via Nik’s monthly newsletter I just came across Martin Bailey’s Podcast 297 : Silver Efex Pro 2 Walkthrough & New Features. Martin’s a Brit who has become Japanese and is based in Tokyo, and in the video I think he hits most of the right points about the software and delivered in a sensible tone (I think I detect a bit of a Scouse accent). I’d heard of him before but never really dug around his site or appreciated quite how much is there.

The Silver Efex video is well worth listening to, and he’s got a 15% off link if your credit card starts tingling.

Yesterday I needed to look up some tutorials on extracting people from backgrounds in Photoshop. You usually need a variety of techniques but if you don’t know CS5′s Refine Mask/Edges take a look at these:

• Jan Kibili’s tutorial is a particularly good starting point
• Martin Evening
• Russell Brown – less idiosyncratic than usual, but remember “don’t select areas of transition” and paint close to the transitions
• Deke McClelland

People seemed to like the previous set of Silver Efex Pro re-enactment images, so with a bit more experience of the software, I thought I’d post another set of pictures with similar treatments.

This time they’re from a couple of events in October. The first ones come from a weekend when “my” regiment garrisoned the Tower of London. Even if for me the Tower is a building I used to pass every day on my walk to the office, it’s still quite a privilege to spend a couple of days photographing there, and for the re-enactors it’s about as sexy a gig as you can get. What made it especially poignant for these guys was that the regiment, the Tower Hamlets Trayned Bandes, is closely modelled on its 17th century predecessor which was raised in that part of London and guarded the Tower during the war. And it’s not every day you get to take weapons and gunpowder into a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the Queen keeps her bling, is it?

The pictures were corrected in Lightroom 3 but finished in Silver Efex Pro 2. They were not sent directly to SFX though. While that would be the most obvious route, it would mean that SFX would return to Lightroom a flattened TIF file with all the toning, borders and local adjustments baked in. Instead I prefer to initially send pictures to Photoshop CS5 as smart objects, and then invoke SFX. This means SFX’s adjustments are applied as smart filters, so they remain editable and I can always go back to these files and fine tune the treatment. And this fine tuning is something I often do. The other difference from before is that I no longer seem to be using the Selective Colour slider in SFX to restore the colour but instead do it in Photoshop with a copy of the image layer with its Blending Mode set to Color. It’s a close choice, but I prefer the accuracy I can get by creating a mask with tools like Select > Selective Color, Quick Selection Magic Wand, or even just the Brush, Quick Mask and blur to hide my handiwork. You can see with this example how detailed some of the masks can become.

The other event was one Sunday at Knebworth House, an hour or so’s drive away, and was during the recording of an episode of a major ITV police drama series. We’ve been asked not to mention the programme name or the storyline, but a few hundred re-enactors had been hired as eye-candy and I was able to hang around and take pictures. Fascinating though it was to watch the filming (how many people does it take?), what I enjoyed most was the smoke they used to keep a consistent look throughout a long day and to provide atmosphere. In an ideal world, shouldn’t every photographer have 150 metres of smoke-pumping tubing?

*You’re talking roughly £160 for the Nik Silver Efex Pro software, and it does “only” do b&w. But it is a very well-designed program, powerful and easy to use. While I was also using Photoshop CS5 here, you can use it purely with Lightroom or just Photoshop Elements.