Podcasts

There are heaps of ways to learn new things on the 'net.

One of them is to find podcasts - and once again, there are heaps of them!

Two that I would really recommend are:

http://www.radiantvista.com/

tutorials and reviews and a daily critique! brilliant stuff...

and the second:

http://www.photowalkthrough.com/

Excellent podcasts going from raw image/camera shot through the post-processing and on to the completed product.

The thing that makes this special for me is the relationship between John Arnold and 'us' as viewers - through Flickr it's possible to have some of your pix critiqued, on occasion see your work featured on a podcast - and it's a very friendly (although with robust discussion) group.

And the other place I like to visit for thoughtful commentary and inspiration/motivation is

http://howardgrill.blogspot.com/2007/01/motivation.html

Howard's commentary and links to other places are thought-provoking, and inspirational, and have a great spread of topics. He posts almost daily, so always something new to read.

Having said all this, and after reading/watching - there is nothing like actually grabbing the camera and taking some shots and putting them up for discussion and critique (critique that provides solutions, not just points out the problems!). To help the reviewers it does help to give some idea of what you are trying to achieve or communicate in your shot - sometimes I forget this!

But the photo attached to this post is quite simple: humour.

New Toy

I've just got a wacom graphic tablet! Wow, what fun. At last something that means I can paint and draw without mess on the photo's I do.

I've been a painter since I was a little girl, recently converting to acrylic and having a lot of fun with textures and embedding things and layering and so on. There is something magical about not quite knowing how the work will eventually turn out, starting from somewhere and not worrying about where it will go, ending up with something that has the essence of the original, but not necessarily the detail.

Well, Photoshop (no advertising!!) is that for me with photography. And the wacom is one of the tools that helps. Like using a pen or paintbrush, but less messy (and there is always 'undo'), the pen means I can delicately touch up areas that need a wee bit of definition, erase areas that don't work, tidy up bits that need it, and work much more intuitively than with either a touch pad (which is what I had been using) or a mouse (which I had dumped a couple of years ago).

Oh, and why wacom? Well, I shopped around, tried a few out - and for me, the wacom's size and flexibility and lack of additional and unnecessary bundled software worked for me the best. Perhaps not everyone would want these attributes, but they worked for me.

Looking up the valley

A less adulterated version of the one that is on my photoblog http://adiemus.aminus3.com/. Enlarge to get the detail that is very clear in this one.

Chopping

Shot one is exposed for the sky, but underexposes the poppies
Shot two overexposes the sky, but does the poppies OK

This is the chopped image.

I did quite a lot of fiddling with burn and dodge, on a 50% grey overlay.

I also played with shadows and highlights, and colour balance and saturation.

This is the final result of a blended image. First time I've tried it, not entirely happy with it, but that's more about not having the tripod and not having a particularly good image to start with.

It definitely looks better than the original!!