Dean's Light Box

Happy New Year

Happy new year to everyone--family, friends, and devoted visitors!

 

After the Snow Storm

After the snow storm, the Salt Lake valley air clear up a bit.  Here is a view to the east from work at dusk today:

  

Get the full rock 'n roll effect by clicking the image.  Get the technical info at time and light.

Yet Another Sunset Pano

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

 

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:

 

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:

 

Traffic Jam to Tranquility

I left the office at 5 PM. Construction. Gridlock at the intersection leaving the office park. I sat at the front of the line through two green lights and couldn't move. Then I realized that if I went straight through the light rather than turn left to get on the interstate, I could move. More importantly, I could go a couple of miles up Big Cottonwood Canyon and not only escape the traffic madness, but also photograph. This is the result. I feel much better now.

 

Light Painting: Larger Scale

This time we put the same light painting technique to work on a larger scale, both in terms of the subject and the light.  Our primary subject was the tree (probably 12 - 15 feet tall) and I used a largish 6v powered flash light to provide the illumination.  A 30 second exposure ensured that we got the stars and the light on the clouds on the horizon was happily provided by the moon which was preparing to rise above the Uinta Mountains.

 

On the Road with Cary Judd: Monday

First Morning of the tour.  Yesterday we made our way to Boulder, Colorado and stayed at Matt's house.  Matt is a very generous friend of Cary's that met Cary on his first tour and is a young, tech start-up genius.  And he had a very nice view from his balcony this morning.

 

Evening Crescent

DD said that this is blog material.