It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it. ~ Albert Einstein As I was preparing for my trip to London and my goal of blogging once a day while traveling, I decided my iPad would be the perfect way to do…
Category Archives: Photo Geek
Meet Dean. Art director for a commercial advertising client. We were scouting a location for an upcoming photo shoot. As we were talking, I turned around and saw this image. Behind Dean was the paint bay for a city transit bus (if that gives you any idea of it’s size). A visual scene taken straight…
10 comments
Love the portrait, the location and your post processing. I think I’d also eliminate the hoses and smudges on the side walls.
Thanks Colleen!
It’s funny you mention that! I was actually going to eliminate the hoses and smudges and decided that it would make it too clinical. May have to revisit that.
Hmmm…
Nice! Can you talk more about your RAW conversion process? How do you do it exactly? I’ve been importing with LR and just going from there. Do you import with CPP?
Thanks man
Please keep the smudges and the hoses… they keep this fabulous face grounded in what might otherwise become clinical verging into Star Trekkkish… I like this very, very much Mr. Kepple!
Jamie… thank you! I really went back and forth with the hoses and smudges. I may do it and post just to see what you guys think. But I like the organic untidiness of it all. I was beginning to feel I’d gone too far already. Definitely thinking of the sterile world of Star Wars…
Jon… Not exactly sure what you’re asking, but if you’d clarify, I’d be happy to share with you any information.
Yes, I do import my RAW files into DPP (Canon Digital Photo Professional). There is obviously some proprietary conversion algorithm happening. As wonderful as Lightroom and ACR are with RAW conversions, when it comes to skin tones, the Canon software seems to nail it perfectly with Canon files.
I was thinking of writing a post on a typical post process workflow. From ingesting the card to final delivery to the client. Is that what you’re interested in hearing?
I use Photo Mechanic to ingest my cards after a shoot and import them into DPP. For most jobs however, I’ve been using LR3 as it’s the best production workflow solution. There are so many tools in LR3 that just don’t exist with the manufacturers software. If they’d actually listen to the photographers who purchase and support their business, they’d take the time to retool their software. I’d even be willing to pay for it. 
My whole workflow is in LR right now. Would love to see your end to end workflow. Always looking for ways to improve.
Something like?
1. Import from card to computer using DPP
2. Add to LR catalog
3. Export to JPEG?
Killer, great example of taking a good image and making it that much better. I’m particularly amazed at how you were able to pull all those top-of-head-hairs out of the highlight/blur spectrum and burn and sharpen them into the visible one. You might not be giving him a Cover Girl complexion, but at least he got some Hair Club love.
About the workflow, I’m so curious. As a Nikon shooter, I’ve been reluctant to add their proprietary Capture NX2 to the flow, since batching appears to be a pain and it’s a whole other big step, but I see the problems with skin tones in LR2 (I know, there’s a 3). I end up using downloaded profiles for my camera and also boosting orange luminance while dropping saturation on orange, red and magenta. It’s like everybody defaults to “spray tan sunburn” or something. Steve Z out in Colorado wrote a good blog post about the same thing, so I took a similar approach that’s been good enough to get me to PS with a workable image. Is it really impossible for The Camera Companies to play nice with Adobe? I mean seriously, I have a hard time imagining that their software realm could even pay for itself given the R&D it must take vs. the market share.
Thanks for sharing your techniques and thought process. Keep the smudges and hoses, hoseur!
Jon… After the holidays have passed and I’m sitting here with nothing to do… I am planning to share my entire workflow. I hosted a “Production Summit” a couple of years ago for a group of local professional photographers. I discovered that nearly everyone is struggling with the technology and managing their post production time more efficiently. My workflow is a bit more involved than yours!
Brian… I agree. I wish I could talk to someone deep inside Canon and find out what the real issues are. I keep hoping that change will happen, but it always ends up being about corporate issues and making money. I guess the professional photography market is a small part of the overall machine at Canon and Nikon. From our perspective, it seems huge, but it’s not. More on that later. Thanks for the comments! Back at ya hoseur!
Love it!
Actually, I’ve discovered your secret ingredient Randy – it was the Cabernet all along!
On any given day, the biggest challenge I face in getting things done is managing my time on the phone. A few phone calls in the morning, a flood of emails and the next thing you know, my entire day is thrown off balance. We all struggle with squeezing every bit of efficiency out of…
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Great advice and insight. Thanks for sharing Randy!
Unfortunately, I can remember those phones pretty well. Also probably the reason I try to take a nap under the desk everyday.
Here’s my favorite chinese proverb (paraphrased): “You can understand the way the world works and the world will be as it is. Or, you can not understand the way the world works, and the world will be as it is.” So true, on so many levels.
Including how we work.
You know what that phone sounds like just by looking at it! I kind of wish my cell phone had a ring that distinct!
Love the Chinese proverb… so very true!
Regarding the first step in exercise: start with building the habit of exercise through conscious effort, but make the effort minimal. I wanted to do daily push-ups but I didn’t feel motivated enough. So what I did is started with 10 push-ups, since that was such a low number that I’d do it just for the sake of doing it. Even when feeling tired it was easy enough to go through with it. Keep this up for 30+ days and the habit starts kicking in, and what do you know? You even did build up some more strength and doing 20 push-ups is now easier. My rule for this is I can skip Sunday and I can always skip one day, but a skipped day is always, without exception, followed by a day where you do do the push-ups.
To be fair, after 3 months I stopped twice for 2-3 weeks, but then getting the habit started again was very easy. My back feels way better when I keep doing them(I had some back problems.).
Thanks for sharing.
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Traveling light and fast, in computer and lenses, respectively. Hope it works well. Where’s the external HDD or jump drive for backup?
I don’t have a laptop, thus the iPad. A friend offered me the use of an Epson backup device, but I’m running out of time to go pick it up. I do have a 16GB Sandisk USB stick. I was thinking of throwing that into the kit, along with a card reader. Surely I could transfer images at the hotel, right?
Randy,
I’m so excited for you and this trip. Looks like a great choice of gear to take along, just enough without it being a burden. Can’t wait to see what you come away with. I’ll be following you daily.
Gary… I’m actually reconsidering bringing my 50mm f1.4. I wanted the 70-200 because it’s a great portrait lens. If you look at the schedule of events, there is a lot of studio time. For walking around London, the 35 and the 50 would be nice options, don’t you think?
Can’t wait for today’s blog. At least then I’ll know you’re there safely
Miss you!!!