Dean's Light Box

Early Moonrise

The sun sets quite early now that we're approaching the shortest day of the year.  On my way home I noticed the moonrise over Olympus Cove and stopped for a quick shot:

 

Christmas Tree Time Lapse

Christmas Tree Setup Time Lapse from Curtis Judd on Vimeo.

Secret

I have a secret but cannot tell until Christmas. I hope I can keep it. I have taken an oath not to reveal it.

Putting that aside so that I don't accidentally break my oath, I should mention that we had our first substantial snow of the season last night.  I would estimate that we had about four inches fall because parts of the driveway had eight inch drifts.  I think I'll put the snow fence up this weekend.

By this evening, a significant amount of the snow had melted but it still seems to have left a nice, clean look in our neighborhood:

 

Yet Another Sunset Pano

What more can I say? Hopefully the image speaks for itself.  You know the routine, click for the bigger view.

 

1st Prize

Congrats bro, the photo we made at the Sandy Amphitheater show in June took first prize last night at the camera club photo contest.

 

Urban Landscapes

Sometimes on busy days at work, I take a quick 20 minute walk in the afternoon to refresh my mind.  And sometimes I take the camera.  In these cases, my surroundings are a little more urban than I typically photograph so here's one of my first attempts at an urban landscape shot:

  

Yes, I really do like that 50mm f1.8...

Sunrise Light

The sunrise on Sunday was both striking and a little difficult to understand. I'm not sure how the mountain can be lit with the warm light and yet the clouds remain blue.  But that doesn't stop me from appreciating the beauty:

 

New Lighting

Sorry to startle you with a self-portrait. I've been doing a little reading on lighting techniques and wanted to try a couple. Only problem was that EV was already in bed, DD had plenty of stress this week so I didn't want to ask her to play the part of the model.  That left me and here it is.

  

I'm not sure what to call this type of lighting but it consists of two lights to either side and behind the subject and one fill light strait on.  Hmm...I'll have to try this out next time I have a willing photograph-ee.

Warning: Graining Images Will Soon Be Commonplace

As a long-time user of Adobe Lightroom, I decided it was time to try the Lightroom 3 beta.  Wow.  I'm impressed.  But be warned, you will probably start to see a lot more images with simulated film grain like this because Lightroom 3 has this new feature:

  

I get a kick out of this feature because most people that get way into digital photography pay lots of extra money to get a camera that doesn't produce "noisy" or grainy images.  Now we have software that can add it back and make it look like you're using some of that old, ISO 1000 film.

But aside from all of that, the new version is refreshingly faster.  Quite a lot faster.  And, the vignette features are improved too--the old post-crop vignettes often made images look dirty or muddy around the edges.  Now it is more subtle and you have a few choices as to how you want it applied: Giving preference to highlights or to color.

Slideshows can now be exported as videos.  Nice!  Some of you are probably thinking, "It didn't do that already?!"  And that would be a good point on your part.  Nevertheless, now we've got video slideshows which I will gladly take.

It also looks like they've improved the integration with online photo sites like flickr and, with a plug-in, Smugmug.  I'm hoping all I have to do is select the photos and then click the Smugmug button.  That would be cool.

But still, the biggest feature is how quickly you can get things done now with the performance improvements.  The sliders slide so quickly that I nearly slid right off the screen.  Good problem to have.

Autumn in the City, at Last

On my afternoon walk, it occurred to me that the autumn colors are pretty much at their peak down in the city.  So on the way out of work, I stopped at the area where the girls and I enjoyed several lunches this past summer for a couple of shots: