Topeka Zoo Contest Enteries

Our local zoo, The World Famous Topeka Zoo, is having a photography contest.  The deadline was today and I can say that the following four photographs are at the zoo awaiting their judging.  

Attention Class of 2012

We are proud to present our Senior Rep for the class of 2012, Derek!




Be sure to schedule your photo shoot soon so you too can have amazing photos just like these.

Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 Review

I told you last night that I would show you today how I got the photo for the pillow.  Well here we go.

I started with this picture.

I ended up with this picture.

So how did I do it?  With NikSoftware Silver Efex Pro2 plug-in for Photoshop CS4.  I first processed my RAW file.  For more on how I do that you can click here.  I opened the jpg up in Photoshop.

Then I clicked on the Silver Efex plug-in.  It's next to my history window.

This is what the Silver Efex work window looks like.  It is very user friendly and I have to admit that I didn't use the program to it's full existent for this project.

On the left hand side is numerous presets.  I scrolled down and picked the over exposed one for this.

This is the right hand panel.  It's where you can fine tune how your picture looks.  I only adjusted the toning for this picture.

There are 23 tones to choose from.  I picked number 23 that's hiding behind my tool bar.  Then I clicked OK and was taken back to Photoshop.

Then I cropped it to an 8x10.  I did this because I only wanted a small photo to work up into a pillow.

For more information about all this plug-in can do please visit niksoftware.com.

My thoughts on the software:
I love it!  It is a little over whelming at first.  Between all the presets and all the ways you can tweak each preset you can start to get lost in it.  The more I use it though the less overwhelming it is.  I'm a big fan of black and white photography and this brings a more realistic black and white feel to your digital photos.

*Please note all opinions in this post are mine and mine along.  I was in no way compensated for it.  I have no affiliation with NikSoftware.

We Are On The Web

I know we are really already on the web because we have our little blog here.  But we have our own website now.   From there you can purchase any of our art photographs directly from us.  We only accept payment via Pay Pal.  You can also learn all about our portrait services.  If you are in our area we'd love to hear from!

Top 20 Photos

I thought I'd share our top 20 photos from our flickr streams.  The top ten from this stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/meekshields/ and the top ten from this stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightweaver1/  You are more than welcome to go check out our streams at anytime.  There is always new photographs being added that doesn't always make it over here.


                 

The Blizzard of Oz

Today is day 3 of being in the middle of winter hell.  Monday we had icey rain that kept me from going to work. Tuesday brought about a lot of snow and today is supposed to be so far beyond cold it's not even funny and winds blowing a gale.  The last two days both of us have been home.  Here are some photos of me out measuring the snow.

This was at 3 in the afternoon Tuesday. 7 inches of snow.  This is from my iPhone so not a great quality but it gets the point across.

When I headed out three hours later the hubs decided to go out and document that one. 

This is me with my tools, a yard stick, cell phone, and my mini LED light.  He had the larger one on the camera.  I must have be crazy.




Here is the total at 6:00 PM 9 inches.  I didn't head back out again after this.

On that last outing I was doing my 3 measurements, that is what the weather guys tell you to do, and at one point the hubs asked if we could go in and just measure the line on his jeans.  :)  Well on my short legs it was up to my knees.  It snowed until almost midnight here.  Let's just say I'm tired of the snow.  I want to get out of the house.

You can see the rest of the photos he took here http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightweaver1/sets/72157625957628440/

Photo Workflow

I get asked a lot about my workflow.  My workflow is completely different from the other half's workflow, neither is right and neither is wrong.  It's just what works best for each of us.

First off I take my card and battery out of my camera.  The card goes into my computer and the battery goes into the charger.  Key thing to remember here is put both back into your camera when you finish.  I learned the hard way. lol

I use Adobe Lightroom to import my photos.  This does three things at once for me, it copies the photos from the card and puts them in my RAW folder, it organizes the files by date, and it puts them into Lightroom for me. I use Lightroom for my basic developing.  It works better for me than Photoshop.  I would have had a cool screen shot for you but I forgot to make one. :(

Now when I started with Lightroom, I was totally lost.  I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  So what did I do?  I took an online class with Nathan Holritz from Photographer's Edit.  It's called "HOW TO PROCESS A PORTRAIT SESSION IN AN HOUR OR LESS! "  It's worth the hour in front of the computer.  Then go find the podcasts for Killer Lightroom Tips from Scott Kelby.  Now it's time to get to work!


Today we are going to be working on a photo of a hot air balloon.  So what does it look like?

Not great is it?  Kind of flat, nothing special at all.  But this is what a RAW file looks like.  Now it's time to develop it.  That's even what this section of Lightroom is called.  So we are going to adjust the settings and get it looking fairly well.

So now the balloon is looking pretty good, the grass is nice and green, but the sky is totally without color.  Now I have a choice to make, do I dodge and burn in Lightroom or in Photoshop.  For this photo I'm going to move over to Photoshop.  I don't always do this but for this one I've got some other things I want to do.  Follow Scott Kelby's tips on how to do this, he, in my opinion, is the expert.

So here we are, one thing to double check before getting started is that you are in 8 bits not 16 bits mode.  Now I'm going to burn the sky.  

The sky looks better but this might be as good as it gets due to where the sun was when I took the photo.  At least there is some color in it now. I think I'll add a little blur to the sky.  I'm going to use the quick select tool, select the sky, do a layer mask, then add just a little gaussian blur.  Then I'll click save and it will send it back to Lightroom.  From there I'll export it to the folder that I want it to be in, and then I'll upload it here for you to see. 

Not a bad ending if I do say so myself.

We Got Published

I'm so excited to share this news with you all.  Friends of The Topeka Zoo, FOTZ, recently published their yearly calendar.  We are thrilled to announce that we had 18 photographs in the calendar.

Front Cover:


January



March




April:


May


July


August




November






Back Cover