Archive for July, 2013
Photography – Enhancing Details
Make no mistake; I am not a Photoshop guru. Not even close! I can manage some basic retouching, and a few techniques that will spiff up your face, but for the most part I’m a kindergartner when it comes to massaging an image. This is one of the reasons I originally joined NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals); to figure out how to use Adobe’s massive software program. Associated with NAPP is Kelby Training, an online source of video tutorials that cover a wide range of subjects. It was from one of the latest Kelby Training videos that I found this technique for enhancing detail. The video was from Tim Wallace, a commercial photographer that specializes in automobiles. He was lighting a car in a garage with a single strobe. (I was interested in the single strobe concept, not cars.) The back half of the video was Tim’s work flow on layering individual shots into a finished image. And at the end of that process he discusses enhancing details in the final image. He mentioned a couple of outside plug-ins, specifically Topaz (which I have) and Nik Color Efex (which I would like to have), but goes on to say that there’s a PS technique that works fairly well. Although I could not really tell how good it worked in the video, I thought I’d give a test as I often wish I could bring out the texture and detail in an image. I had just shot some close-up flower images last week from our garden and grabbed a wild columbine flower as a test subject. It had lots of fuzz hanging on it and had only basic sharpening done on the jpeg.
Russian River – July 6, 2013
The early run of sockeyes has wound down, and the late run hasn’t started yet. It’s my favorite time to be on the Russian River. Water levels have dropped over 9″ in the last three weeks, and Lance & I were hoping that there would be some hungry trout in the river now that salmon scraps have gotten slim. We parked in Pink Salmon and, after gearing up, hiked a short time to get into the base of the canyon. Lance decided to continue testing his Hevi-Bead system; I decided to start with a Helmet-head sculpin tube fly. I also threaded a very small pink bead on the tippet hoping the extra attraction might trigger an instinct. (You know, egg-headed anything.) We fished through the first two runs and down into the bottom of the canyon where it flattens out. No luck for either of us. Since neither of us have had much luck in the broad flat area right out of the canyon, we decided to hike down to the Powerline Hole and drop in just below a couple of die-hard salmon anglers.