Anyone can download a 30-day trial of Lightroom 2 Beta but if you want to get your hands on an extended trial that won't expire until August then you either have to already own Lightroom V.1 or have a friend who can send you an invitation.

I've got five invitations to send out to the first five people to leave a comment on this post AND, if you're not already a subscriber, to sign-up to my newsletter.

Tags: lightroom

I'm really chuffed about this. I've swapped blogs with David duChemin and we've each written an article entitled "Standing on the shoulders of giants" where we discuss other photographers who have inspired us.

You can read my article on David's excellent pixelatedimage blog and if you're not already a regular reader then I recommend that you subscribe to his RSS feed or bookmark the blog home page whilst you're there.

David's a Humanitarian Photographer and boasts a rare talent. Take a look at his portfolio and especially his work for World Vision to see what I mean. He also runs photo tours to Kashmir with Matt Brandon and I see from the Lumen Dei web site that there's only one place remaining on this year's expedition so if you fancy it, and why on earth wouldn't you, I'd book your place pretty smartish. You'll regret it if you don't.

As if all that weren't enough to make him a very welcome guest writer, David's also a thoroughly decent bloke. Yes, I know, makes you sick doesn't it.

I'm delighted to introduce you to David and know that you'll get along famously.

---

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Sir Isaac Newton once wrote. "if I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants." For photographers this means the influence of other photographers - artists who've created images that so strongly resonate with us that they've determined not only our career paths but also what we shoot and how.

For me these giants have been Steve McCurry, Yousuf Karsh and Freeman Patterson - three men who couldn't be more  divergent in their styles if they tried. But as a teenager I poured over their books, their photographs. I soaked up their images, and where I could find them, their words.

Steve McCurry needs no introduction to most of us. I'd wager a great many of the photographers reading this were also influenced in some way by him. His stark portrait of the afghan refugee girl was pinned to my wall for years, staring holes in me. It was her unguardedness, the revelation of her soul through her eyes that drew me, made me want to photograph in a way that was compelling, revealing. His focus on texture and soft light were also influences on me, and I think it shows. The passion it stirred in me for the homeless and the excluded remains undiluted to this day.

Yousef Karsh was a master portraitist, in residence at the Chateaux Laurier in Ottawa where I was a teenager, for years. His work was formal, black and white, but it shared with McCurry a focus on photographs that revealed the character of the subject and exquisite texture. Monochrome images have a way of focussing us on fewer elements, they allow texture, light, gesture to play more powerfully for the absence of colour. I often wonder why I stopped shooting black and white, but I've never tired of photographing people.

Freeman Patterson drew me too. I'm not sure you'd ever know it to look at my portfolio. I rarely shoot the natural world anymore. Probably too many hours sitting in swamps with big lenses photographing mallards. What Patterson gave me was an eye for detail, a love for bringing the chaos into order through the discipline of the frame. He gave me my love for colour, natural light, and the play of lines.
 
Other influences, probably equally important, continue to make me the photographer I am. Tom Stoddart, Ami Vitale, Olivier Follmi, among them. I'm standing on the shoulders of a great many giants. But at a certain point, if one is to be a giant oneself we need to get off these shoulders and forge a direction of our own. This isn't at all to imply we become "better than" just "other than." We develop our own voice about the things that we are passionate about. Giants can take us a long way there, and I'm not sure there is ever a point in our growth as artists that there are no longer giants on whose shoulders we stand. But if we're really lucky, all this standing and learning to see from such heights makes us tall enough that others coming after us will gain their footing on our shoulders, and give us a chance to give back to the craft that's given us so much.

Find some giants and don't be afraid to enjoy the view, soak it up as long as you can balance there, but eventually you need to climb down and take your place among them.

David duChemin
May 2008

Tags: guest post, david duchemin

One of the first things I became aware of when I started working for myself is that losing the daily contact with work colleagues brought with it a risk of becoming isolated. There's obviously a big difference between going to an office each day where you are surrounded by work colleagues, many of whom become friends, and working for yourself, by yourself.

Going to work at my last "proper" job was something that I usually looked forward to because it was like going to a social club with good mates. We got the job done but we also enjoyed the friendly banter, the lunch-time drinks and the after-work parties. When my world changed I was suddenly very much on my own. I tried to encourage friendly banter with myself but it wasn't quite the same, I could often predict with uncanny accuracy what I would say next! I even scheduled meetings in my diary with a view to setting time aside to consider certain aspects of my new business but meetings with one person tend to be a bit one-sided - although I did get all the best biscuits.

It's obvious that maintaining some kind of human interaction, other than just with clients and suppliers, was going to be vital and I took a number of steps to ensure that happened. One of which was that I looked around for a local camera club to join. A camera club might not sound like the most dynamic organisation in the world but I'd say don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

A quick bit of Googling revealed that Winchester has a camera club, although being Winchester it's not called a camera club it's called a "Photographic Society". Clearly these were serious people.

Jumping forward three years and I've just finished my third full year at the club, sorry, society and I have to tell you that it's been a great success. I'm moving away next week (more of which later, watch this space!) so went for a farewell curry last night with some members of the club who have become good friends. Reflecting on those three years, I have a pile of certificates awarded for photographs which have done well at club competitions and exhibition judging, I have a newspaper cutting showing me meeting the mayor of Winchester, I have photos and fond memories of expeditions to Dungeness and London, I have a series of images that I would never have taken without the prompt of themed contests and I've had the pleasure of occasionally coming home with a trophy or two, which is a great ego boost.

Best of all though, I know that my photography has improved as a result of being exposed to so many different photographic styles on a regular basis. I try to feed my need for inspiration by visiting exhibitions, reading books and looking at web sites but there's often an abundant source of inspiration right on your doorstep and I'd urge you to take advantage of it.

I love my job but some days can be tiring. I've found no quicker way of recharging my enthusiasm than by sitting down in a lecture theatre for an inspiring talk by a visiting photographer followed by a chat with other photographers so full of enthusiasm that it's infectious. Many are the nights I've driven home from a club meeting filled with ideas that I would never have had sitting in front of the TV.

This photo was taken last weekend when a few club members went to a local fund-raising event and had the opportunity to take a ride in a Cherry Picker. Looking at Winchester from that perspective is probably not something I'd have had the opportunity to do without the club and is another example of how doors open when you make the effort to expand your horizons. Literally in this case.



If you're wondering how we managed to get a photograph from above the cherry picker then I'd like to point you in the direction of high-level aerial mast photographer extraordinaire, Barry Mann. Barry sets new standards when it comes to the old photographer's trick of looking at things from a different perspective.

So, here's my top tip for aspiring photographers, check out the clubs and organisations where you live. You might even find a "society" or two. I guarantee that you'll see work that will inspire and motivate you and I also guarantee that you'll be prompted to take photographs that you would never have taken otherwise. Who knows, you might even find people you can regularly go to for advice and feedback and that's so much more socially acceptable than speaking to yourself. I know!

Tags: wps

It's proving to be an exciting week with all sorts of projects and opportunities presenting themselves - more of which later. Watch this space!

In the mean time, one of the things I'm really looking forward to is taking up a guest slot on David duChemin's pixelatedimage blog later in the week. David and I will be swapping blog articles and he's already written a terrific piece on "inspiration" but you'll have to wait until Friday to read it. Consider yourself teased.

In the mean time, you can see David being interviewed by Scott Kelby on the Photoshop User TV web site this week. David has three excellent tips which don't only apply to travel photography and I heartily recommend that you take a few minutes to watch the current episode.

I hope that this blog will serve as a conduit for things that will occasionally inspire and educate you and I'm pleased to report that the number of regular readers has shot up in recent weeks (something to do with a rumour about a 5D MKII that I posted last month - oops!) so perhaps I'm starting to move towards meeting that ambition. It's with that aim in mind that I'm going to point out that this post mentions several resources which, together, offer a wealth of inspirational and educational tools. Here they are in what I like to call "Bullet Point Format".

• pixelatedimage (David duChemin's portfolio)
• pixelatedimage blog (David's blog)
• Photoshop User TV (Weekly tutorials and Photoshop news)
• Photoshop Insider (Scott Kelby's Blog)
• Photoshop Killer Tips (Matt Kloskowski)
• Lightroom Killer Tips (Also from Matt Kloskowski)

Don't forget, look back on Friday for David's article.

Tags: david duchemin, photoshop

Digital Photographer Magazine is about to launch a series of articles designed to help improve their readers' photographic skills. The articles will see one fortunate reader get a chance to spend the day with a professional and both will be interviewed for the magazine. There's also a rumour that the day will be filmed with the footage being made available on the dphotographer.co.uk web site and also on the magazine's cover disk.

I'm delighted to say that they've asked me to host a Reader's Workshop so if you're interested in spending a day with me, photographing parts of the beautiful Dorset coastline, then you just need to send an e-mail Josie Reavely together with a JPEG of your best landscape image and a few thoughts about what you'd hope to get out of the day.

I look forward to meeting the winning reader in Dorset and can promise you an entertaining, challenging and educational day.

Tags: workshops

Regular readers will know that for me to recommend something that's PC only, it would have to be pretty special.

And it is.

Jason Friend is offering a free screensaver to celebrate the upcoming launch of his book, 'Portrait of the Borders' and I think you only have to look at the cover image to know that you're in for a treat with some very special landscape photography.

From the rolling hills and rugged coastline of the east to the wild moorlands of the west, the Scottish Borders region is home to an incredible diversity of landscapes. Found alongside these natural landforms are the remnants of numerous abbeys, castles and hill forts, symbolic of a turbulent history. These natural and historical features have all helped to shape this melting pot of a county. Although perhaps somewhat unfairly overlooked by visitors heading to the highlands, the inhabitants of the region have continued to be fiercely proud of their Scottish heritage and their beloved land. 'Portrait of the Borders' (ISBN: 9781841147215, Publisher: Halsgrove Publishing) is the latest book from award winning UK photographer, Jason Friend.

Mac users don't miss out altogether though as Jason's posted a sneak preview of some of the images from the book. Enjoy!

Tags: jason friend, screensavers

Concluding my trio of bluebell-related posts, I returned to the bluebell wood at dawn this morning just in time to see the early-morning sun breaking through the beech trees to illuminate the bluebells. Without the temptation of that lovely, golden light at dawn, my battle to get out of bed before sunrise would be a lost one. It's quite a struggle anyway. However, my bleary eyes opened up pretty quickly when I saw the bluebell wood this morning. With only a few pronking deer for company, it was a magical way to start the day.

I've put together small selection of HDR images in a slideshow and hope you'll enjoy them.

Tags: hampshire, bluebells, hdr, slideshows

My search for the definitive Bluebell Wood image continued this afternoon in the company of some of Winchester's finest photographic talent. It was a wonderful way to end an excellent day and the woods seemed to look even better than they did just 24 hours before.



We chatted as we wandered along the woodland path but once inside the wood we went our separate ways and an almost meditative calm descended (apart from the ever-present drone from cars on the nearby M3 motorway!).



This particular wood is relatively free of the debris of fallen branches that occasionally disrupts a composition and, as you can see, the bluebells stretch over a large enough area to enable a sweeping view of blue to be captured.



I still don't have a definitive bluebell wood image but if there was a definitive image of our outing this afternoon then I guess it would have to be this one.



If you're interested in a guided photo tour of the bluebell woods in the next few days then get in touch. I should have been moving house this week but the move is delayed so I'm kicking my heels and available for hire. My last-minute, half-day rates are very reasonable and as well as a beautiful walk you'll get photo tuition and I'll even include a flask of tea. Subscribers to my Newsletter get discounted rates.

Tags: wps, hampshire, bluebells

One of the many great things about my job is that I'm not constrained by location too much. Indeed, it's better for me to be able to work in whatever place I happen to be.


The commute

Today is one of those days when you know for sure that there's absolutely nowhere on earth that you'd rather be. England on a sunny spring day is unbeatable and this is one of the times when living here pays off big time. A spring-time England is so green that saying it's "very green" really doesn't do it justice. I've never seen a green as intense and vibrant as the green of an English spring. It's a green that's so green that it almost glows. It's not just green, it's greeeeeeeeeen.

You get the idea.


Arriving at the office

So, unfettered by the need to be in a particular office, I chucked my laptop into a shoulder bag and drove out to The Vyne, a National Trust house and garden where they've thoughtfully placed seats beside the river for those of us eager to extend the definition of hot-desking.

I'll consciously change perspective when I'm taking photographs. I'll crouch down, stand on a wall, step outside a room or even put the camera on the floor. It all helps prompt creative thinking and, by definition, enables you to see things from a different angle.


My desk

Changing physical surroundings achieves the same result. I'm sitting on a bench beside the river and suddenly my thought processes are opening up as wide and far-reaching as the view before me. So, if you're able to change your own surroundings for a few hours I suggest you do so. If there's a particular issue that you'd like to apply a more creative approach to, step outside of your familiar environment and let the change in surroundings inspire you. If you have to work in a particular location then at least move to another desk, take a walk to a part of the office that you don't usually visit, go and chat to somebody that you haven't spoken with for a while.


The Cafeteria

I recorded a few seconds of audio too.

I don't think there can be anything much more relaxing than the sound of birdsong.

A special prize to the first person to identify the bird that was singing in the tree above my "desk" this afternoon.

080507 Vyne

Me? I had some great ideas this afternoon. The best of which is that it should always be spring-time in England.

Tags: national trust

My search for the definitive bluebell wood image continues and scouting around Micheldever Woods this afternoon I came across a section of woodland that has escaped the recent Forestry Commission work.


(click for larger version)
The light was pretty harsh in the middle of the day but by using an ND graduated filter over the top section of the frame I managed to control the exposure enough to keep it all within what the digital sensor could record.

It's certainly not the definitive bluebell wood image yet but I'm half-way there, finding the right location is probably the hard part. I plan to return with some friends from WPS tomorrow evening when the light is more sympathetic and we'll see what we can turn up then.

In the mean time, I hope you might enjoy this HDR image taken on today's scouting trip.

Talking of bluebell woods, my mate Nic can knock up a decent photo of a bluebell wood. I haven't mentioned Nic's photo blog for a while but, as the name suggests, his London Daily Nature Photo blog is a daily source of inspiration, providing you have no objections to his occasional unapologetic inclusion of pornography.

Tags: hampshire, hdr, bluebells

Prompted by Mitchell's comments about Capture One and an article in Professional Photographer magazine recently, I decided to continue my rather unscientific test of various RAW processors by including a look at SilkyPix Developer and also reinstalling Capture One for a second look.

I'd dismissed Capture One as a serious contender in an earlier post as it had seemed especially slow to respond and I couldn't see myself working with it on a regular basis without there being a serious challenge on my already shaky sanity. Closing down all other applications does allow Capture One to run a bit more smoothly on my machine and the various development sliders do give a real-time view of alterations as I make them. The Levels and Curves tools, however, do not show instant feedback and it's necessary to set a new point and release the mouse to see the effect of the change you've made. Anyway, it's not a deal-breaker, just a niggle.

I'm also searching for that X factor.

What I'm really concerned with in this test is discovering which RAW processor will produce the best images from my RAW files so I'm looking at tonal range, contrast, noise levels, chromatic aberration, lens distortion correction, exposure control, hue and saturation management, etc. I'm also searching for that X factor, which processing method is going to help me make my images zing?

I've started with a single test image and I've run it through Lightroom 1.4, SilkyPix Developer and Capture One 4. The image is of two boys at a charity project at New Delhi Train Station. Just to go off-topic for a moment, the charity takes homeless kids who sleep in and around the train station and feeds them, offers shelter and the opportunity to get some schooling. The kids also organise their own guided tours of the station, taking tourists to see areas that they might otherwise miss. It's a great charity and although one sees poverty in India at every turn, seeing it through these boys' eyes really leant it a very different perspective.

...

It seems more than a little inconsequential to return to a discussion of RAW processing after thinking about those kids in Delhi train station but that was where we came in to this post so I guess we should continue. I'll post about my experiences in Delhi Train Station in the next few days.

...

For the purposes of the test, I imported a single DNG file to each application, left the White Balance setting as it was set in the camera, removed all sharpening and noise reduction, left the exposure and other settings unchanged and exported a full-size TIF file. A further test should really see me using all of the options available in each package to see which gives the best results then. I know, for example, that Lightroom's "Clarify" slider can boost the mid-range contrast in an image in a subtle way that the others may not. Anyway, for this test, you're looking at Vanilla conversions with no tasty toppings.

If you're like me, when you read those comparison reviews in magazines you skip straight to the "Conclusion" summary at the end of the article to discover which of the contenders the reviewer thought was best. Well, to save you scrolling down the page, here it is.

Conclusion:

For this image at least, Capture One produced the best output. Indeed, the results were unexpected to me as the C1 file retained a lot more detail in the shadow areas than the Lightroom or SilkyPix files and the detail retained in the boys' faces was far greater. I hadn't expected to see quite so great a difference. It's difficult to demonstrate on a blog post, there isn't room to display the images at full-size and your monitor and browser combination may skew the results too but I've posted three high-quality JPEGs made from the TIF files below. The JPEG conversion may alter some things too so you'll have to trust my observations.

There's quite a lot of contrast in the boy's hair where the light's hitting it and the Lightroom version didn't give the same range of tones as the C1 file did. Consequently, there seems to be a lot more detail in the C1 file and if you look at the boy's face at 100% you'll see much greater detail retained. The SilkyPix image fell somewhere between the two, producing lots more detail that the Lightroom image but not as much as the C1 file.

The C1 image looks far more accurate to me.

The colours in the C1 file are more subdued (compare the boy's orange and yellow jumper) but I think the C1 result is more accurate. Indeed, compare the front boy's face in the Lightroom and C1 images and I think you'll see quite a difference, even in these JPEGs. The C1 image looks far more accurate to me, whereas the Lightroom image seems to have had a saturation bump. The SilkyPix image falls again between the two others in terms of colour accuracy.

Now, this is all down to personal preference and a matter of interpretation. There's also the question of whether a more saturated image is better for certain uses. If I'm shooting images for a travel company, they might want what I'm going to call the "Sunny" look so the Lightroom image might be the one I'd go for. However, the C1 image is the one that I'd choose for accuracy and I think it shows a far more realistic interpretation of the scene.


Capture One


Lightroom


SilkyPix

Both the C1 and SilkyPix files showed greater detail.

Finally, I zoomed in to 500% in each image and compared the area of the boy's brown eye. These screen shots won't reveal what I saw as they're too small but you might discern some differences between the three. Lightroom appeared to smooth out areas of similar luminosity, which resulted in some small skin blemishes appearing reduced. I sound like a beauty advert, "Lightroom smoothes out the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles". If I were a studio portrait photographer I'd go with Lightroom in a flash (pun intended) as those tiny blemishes are certainly less noticeable than they are in the C1 and Silkypix files and studio portraits tend to be all about flattering the subject, I guess.

Both the C1 and SilkyPix files showed greater detail and seemed to retain more tonal range. Lightroom seemed to tend to smooth and flatten the area across tones a little.



Capture One - Adobe Lightroom - SilkyPix Developer

From a usability point of view, I still can't beat Lightroom.

So, what does all this boil down to? Does it even matter? Nobody's going to look at files at 500% and who's really going to notice the small differences that I claim to have seen? Furthermore, isn't it all down to usability at the end of the day? Isn't the best application going to be the one that gets the job done most efficiently?

Well, yes.

And no.

From a usability point of view, I still can't beat Lightroom, even with it's rather inelegant GUI. I can run through a day's shoot quickly and easily in Lightroom, get the results out and be ready to shoot the next day without coming home to a backlog. Capture One's not a DAM application so it would be unfair to compare on that basis but I'd struggle to get as many RAW files processed in C1 in the same time as I could with Lightroom. With SilkyPix, even more so. I haven't mentioned the interface in SilkyPix but it's pretty confusing.

So Lightroom's still going to be my work horse. It's the tool that gets 98% of the job done and in terms of being a tool to work with, it's easily the winner. However, for those 2% of images that I'm really excited about, the ones that I'd want to pay more attention to and that I'd want to give the very best treatment to, I'd be tempted to run them through Capture One and suffer the speed issues in the knowledge that the resulting file is more likely to give the detail and range of tones that I'd be looking for.

I still have a couple of days trial left with Capture One and I'm going to see if it will integrate easily into my Workflow. I see that it will output DNG files so it's possible that I can include C1 processing as an optional step in my workflow without too much hassle. SilkyPix, which I've pretty much dismissed, won't output DNG files so it's probably a non-starter for me but the processing looks superior to Lightroom's to me, although that's on the basis of this one image so take that conclusion with a pinch of salt.

Overall, I'm very pleased that I was prompted to take a second look at Capture One so thanks Mitchell and Nic for your comments. I'd like to see if I can get it working more smoothly before I buy a copy but it was certainly worth testing it again.

All of the three applications I've mentioned here are available as trial downloads and Lightroom is also offering version 2 as a public beta.

Links
Adobe Lightroom
Phase One Capture One 4
SilkyPix Developer Studio

Luminous Landscape's review of Capture One

Tags: capture one, lightroom, silky

Each month I publish a free desktop wallpaper, as do Matt Brandon and David duChemin. I wanted to draw your attention to the others' now as I think they're both particularly fine images this month.

I love Matt's picture taken in Old Delhi, it's got such character. The composition is lovely and the fact that the men on each end of the line are looking out of the frame makes a great symmetry and means that your eye is drawn back and forth along the line repeatedly. The wall behind them gives a backdrop full of interesting textures and sympathetic colours but the detail that I enjoy most is the fact that two of the men seem to have taken off their left sandal to serve as an impromptu seat. Talk about making best use of whatever's available...

David's shot of houseboats in Kashmir is another image full of wonderful textures and there are so many intriguing little details in the composition that despite the fact it's a close-up, or maybe because of it, I could look at it for ages. I love the holes and splintered wood in the yellow boat and the heart-shaped oar in the blue boat.

So, pick your favourite or load them all up and change them every day. Either way, enjoy.

Tags: wallpaper

The free desktop wallpaper for May comes from a photo taken in Dharamsala, northern India.

Dharamsala has become a refuge for Tibetan exiles and there's arguably more traditional teaching and Tibetan custom in evidence there than in some parts of Tibet itself. Dharmsala is also the home of the Dalai Lama.

This shot was taken at sunrise from my hotel room balcony, looking down the valley towards McLeod Ganj and the Dalai Lama's residence.

The relatively long focal-length has the effect of foreshortening the perspective, making the distant hills seem closer together. The mist across the valley floor was picking up the first, yellowy-orange light of the day whilst the tops of the hills, rising above the mist, retained a blue colour before the light rose high enough to illuminate them.

It was a wonderfully ethereal scene to wake up to and seemed to promise much for the day ahead.

Tags: wallpaper