My Top 12 Pictures from 2012


According to my Lightroom 4 “2012 catalog” I captured close to 40,000 images in 2012. That’s a whole lot of pictures! I had a great year and I captured some of my all time favorite shots in 2012. WIth 2013 right around the corner I wanted to look back and pick 12 shots from 2012 that represented my work for the year. I’ve always tried to tell stories with my photography and this year was no exception. Sometimes the story was there in the picture and sometimes the adventure of capturing the shot became the story. For this blog entry I’ll share my twelve favorite shots from 2012 and the stories behind each of them. Continue reading

Merry Christmas!


 

This morning I was greeted by a northern Virginia sunrise and snow in my yard. It sure looked like Christmas to me.

I wanted to take a minute to say “thank you” to everyone who has stopped by my blog this year and I hope to see you all back in 2013. It’s been fun to share some stories, tips and techniques and I’ve got plenty of ideas for some new blog entries. Thanks again and Merry Christmas from Northern Virginia!

Test Driving Perfect Effects


 

I’m a big believer in finishing an image. Back when I used to shoot Film my pictures were finished by a lab that developed my film and created the prints. Choices like film type and what kind of paper you printed on made a huge difference in how a final print turned out. Now, with digital photography, we can use software to develop our pictures to represent our unique vision of a shot. While some people resist the idea of modifying an image after it was shot, I’m at the other end of the spectrum. Not only do I embrace the idea, I like to push the boundaries. My tools of choice are Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop but there’s plenty of other choices when it comes to picture editing software.

But editing images can be time consuming and may require extensive training and experience. One popular solution to these problems is using plug-ins. Two companies (onOne and Nik) have dominated the plug-in market. I like to try new things so recently I installed a plug-in from onOne Software to give it a try. For this blog entry I’ll talk about my first experiences using Perfect Effects and I’ll share a before and after of an image.

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