You know what makes a great social distancing activity? Editing photos. I’ll often play with old images from time to time but now it feels like its one of the few options I have to entertain myself while I try to spend more time in the house and away from other people.
I’ve tried applying my new “Dark Matter” preset to a several non-Winston photos and the results speak for themselves. With the right image, this preset is just awesome for creating a moody, artistic feel that’s a little bit old film but still contemporary, and I’m totally digging it!
John hiking along the top of Cascade Mountain in the Adirondacks last summer. Ricoh GR III, 1/1000s, f/5.6, ISO 200, handheld.John riding in a local “Bike for Bovines” xc mountain bike race fundraiser two summers ago.
I have been doing so little photography lately. Winter in southern New Hampshire has been pretty pathetic so far, and we’ve been busy putting time and energy into other things. I really wish I could work a full time job that is only four days a week.
I did manage to create a new Lightroom preset I’ve been enjoying. Dark Matter is a high contrast matte black and white preset with heavy vignetting. It works really well for darker colored subjects on a light background (ie: Winston). I built in some exposure compensation, so its also ideal for scenes that are overall dark where you want your subject (more or less towards the center of the frame) to stand out.
RAW photo SOOC.With “Dark Matter” preset applied and some selective radial filters.SOOC, hence the flying mosquito that hasn’t been cloned out.With Dark Matter preset and no other edits. Note the added detail around Winston’s legs.
I’ve really become a fan of presets as a way to expedite my editing and post processing. I tend not to use them very much on nature images, but for portraits they can be super helpful in helping me decide which direction to go with processing. If I’m shooting assignments or otherwise in a situation where I need to bulk edit a lot of images at once and want them to have a consistent feel, presets are huge time savers.
Photography is no longer my livelihood, but I always consider it a fallback skill if I ever become miserable with my work or we need to relocate and I can’t secure a job in my professional field right away. After focusing much of my photography career on nature and sports photography I’ve learned that those are really difficult genres of photography to make money in, and I could see myself gravitating towards a career as a pet photographer or maybe even photographing couples and weddings (gasp) in the future. Should I ever go that route, I think presets will become a valuable part of my work.
Lately I’ve been playing around with Lightroom presets. Presets are a series of saved edits, so that you can apply the same adjustments to multiple images with a single click (similar to using a filter in Instagram). I’ve found I really enjoy them for speeding up my workflow and helping me preview different ideas on an image before investing a lot of time in editing. I generally don’t treat presets as a one click edit – most images still require individual tweaking to really look their best – but they definitely save me time.
I started off buying a few preset packs before starting to create my own presets in Lightroom. Now I find myself using the presets I designed way more often than the purchased ones. Here are two images I shot today, alongside edited versions that started as presets.
Original image imported into Lightroom.
Quick Lightroom edit that started as the “Mud” preset. I did a few additional selective adjustments, but I was able to complete all of my edits in Lightroom – no Photoshop needed!
Original.
Edit that started with a preset called “Vintage Gold.”
These presets are ones I designed myself. The edits of these images took maybe 7 minutes! Presets are a huge timesaver, and I’ve really enjoyed incorporating them into my pet portrait work. Note that WordPress doesn’t seem to do a great job with compression of these images, so the edited images lack a bit of pop, which is much more apparent when viewed through a different application.
Do you use presets? If so which are your favorite?
Lately I’ve been doing a lot more experimental photography and editing techniques. Yesterday morning, I woke up to softly falling snow and decided to go shoot some photos at a park near our home. When I went to leave the house, Winston was clearly ready to join me on my photoshoot, so I decided to take him along for the adventure. It ended up being a good thing because the best photographs I captured were of him.
I’ve been following the work of several pet photographers for a while, and I really love the artistic outdoor dog portraits some of them have perfected. Usually it is a gorgeous dog, posed beautifully surrounded by a bokeh-licious, creamy, dreamy out-of-focus background with gorgeous flare or selective vignetting accentuating the subject. While I definitely am far, far away from perfecting my own take on the technique, I’m pretty happy with the first edit of this winter portrait of Winston taken during today’s walk.
Here’s the straight out of camera original:
And here’s my edited version:
Here I started with leveling and cropping the image, then doing some exposure and white balance corrections. From there I added a radial filter in Lightroom to mimic some solar flare and did some selective contrast enhancements to the dog, then exported to Photoshop, removed the leash, and added then another radial gradient. I ended up bringing the image back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop a few times to tweak the color and make selective adjustments; there are just certain functions I feel that Lightroom does better than Photoshop and vise versa, and also I feel more comfortable making certain edits in one program vs the other. I have never attempted to add flare (or a highlighted background area) to am image before; I feel like my technique still needs some work, but I also don’t think snow covered trees is the easiest background to add this effect to. While I don’t think this shot is going to win any contests anytime soon (and it’s not even close the the level of work of some of the pet photographers I have been following), I’m pretty happy with the end result!
If you aren’t custom naming your photos when you import or copy them to your archive, you are setting yourself up for trouble. The default file naming structure of most photo capture systems allows for around 1000 unique image file names before they start to repeat; eventually the 1001st photo you take on your device will have the exact same name as the first photo you took. Some cameras allow you to custom name the file in camera, but I generally find it easiest to rename all of the files upon import into Lightroom.
Having a consistent naming strategy for your photos can drastically improve your workflow and organization. It is important to choose a name is unique and will continue to be unique as you continue to shoot photos. Be sure not to set yourself up with a system that becomes obsolete as soon as your archive contains over a set number of images, or one in which the identifiers used to distinguish your photos become easily repeatable, therefore eliminating the point of having files with unique names.
I rename all my photos using a unique timestamp based system. Every file name starts with KP (my initials) and then contains a six digit date stamp followed by a hyphen and a six digit timestamp and single digit sequence number. It makes for a really long photo name (16 characters in all), but ensures that all of my photos end up with unique names and allows me to easily combine images from the same shoot that were shot with different cameras. In the event that shots were taken simultaneously (such as if I was shooting a time lapse with one camera while shooting handheld with another and both shutters went off at the exact same time) I could end up with two files with the same name but I have yet to have that happen.
Fallen deciduous leaves and duckweed floating on the surface of a pond in the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh.
So, for example, the filename for the photo above is KP070927-0825050. This means the photo was taken on September 27, 2007 at approximately 8:25am, and since it is the only photo I took then, it will have a unique filename. I use the YYMMDD date sequence for naming because it keeps all of my files in chronological order; I also use the 24 hour day for my timestamp for the same reason. The seventh digit after the hyphen is the sequence number, which comes in handy when I am shooting at a high frame rate.
Most photographers prefer shorter file names; sixteen characters really is a bit excessive. I use this method because I have photos that span over a wide range of time and subjects, and this one method can be applied to all of my photos regardless of when, where, or why I shot them. The disadvantage of this system is that the name doesn’t really tell me anything about the photo; if you asked me what I took a photo of on September 15, 2007 I’d have no idea what that was, but I could easily find it in my catalog.
For photographers who are a bit more specialized, choosing names that have some connection to the subject can be helpful. For example, a wedding photographer may choose to use the last names of the couple as part of the file name, someone who shoots primarily landscapes might include location, and someone who shoots project or assignment work may use the name of the client as part of the name. You can really be as creative as you want; the key is that all of the names are unique and won’t be repeated.
Lightroom makes it easy to custom rename files easily and quickly. I rename all of my files upon import, but you can easily rename files after the fact as well. I’d give you instructions, but with Lightroom changing all the time you are probably best off finding a YouTube video or looking in the Adobe forums for the recommended current method of using Lightroom to rename photos. Once you set up your naming structure, you can save it as a default setting and almost never think about it again. For example, whenever I import new photos they are automatically placed in a folder according to the date they were taken and renamed according to my date and timestamp based system. This makes the process of copying, importing, and organizing all of my photos quite easy, and then when I need to find them later I can locate the original file within just a few seconds.
Coming up with a timeless naming and file organization strategy that can grow with you is the first step to a well organized photo database. Even if you aren’t using Lightroom or another photo management software program and don’t have the ability to add metadata or keywords, making sure each photo of yours has a unique name and follows a consistent naming structure will set you up for success as you grow and develop as a photographer.
