Elizabeth Carmel's Landscape Photography Blog

New Maui Images / Apple Aperture

I have completed a series of 6 images from our recent trip to Maui and have posted those as the first six images in my Hawaii Portfolio.

I used both the H3D and the Nikon D3 on this trip - The Nikon allowed me to capture the very wide angle shots of the Banyan Trees along with some fast shutter speed wave action, so I was pleased I had it along. The Hasselblad worked great for the sunsets and the Rainbow Eucalyptus shots where I could use a tripod and capture alot of detail and color range. I also experimented with some high key imagery in the Eucalyptus forest, and liked the blown out background on one of my images (Rainbow Forest) that gives it a more minimalist / zen feel.

Thanks to the suggestion of my friend Tom Deyerle I decided to try out Apple's Aperture 2.1 - the main reason being that it can read Hasselblad H3D raw files (Lightroom and ACR cannot unless they are converted to DNG files). I really enjoy the Aperture workflow and the file processing tools. I think it does a great job processing H3D raw files, I was able to pull alot of color range out of the H3D files using aperture's tools. There is a bit of a learning curve with such a robust program, but it has a wonderful elegance to it that will appeal to any artist. It also supports plug ins, including one that I am using now to upload a batch of images to Photoshelter.

Thanks for all the great feedback - off to Baja with a new gizmo

Thanks to everyone who emailed me and commented on the blog post for the great feedback about my new website. I have not had time to return all the emails but will try to get to that as time permits. We are leaving today for our trip to the Sea of Cortes with  American Safari Cruises . I wanted to map our route on google earth, and record GPS locations for favorite photo spots and map them on google earth, so I got a Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS watch. There is the ability with this little gizmo to mark waypoints for future reference and map them onto google earth with a freeware program called GPSBabel. I can also map gps routes by using a free web program called Motion Based. The great thing about this approach is that I can use this all with my Mac and do not have to hassle with PC software. This watch will also tell me speed and distance covered on my various jogging / biking / xc skiing routes.

I will be going from Loreto Baja straight to my presentations at Calumet in LA and San Diego, so please stop by either of those events if you are in the area.

Livebooks Web Site Home Page

I have spent most of the last few days populating my new livebooks web site with jpgs that are the correct size for the livebooks window (920 x 562 pixels). These will be larger than the jpgs on my current site and provide a better online viewing experience. I have also set up the detailed pricing for each of my prints using the livebooks editing software that is provided with the website, which has gone smoothly since you can price entire portfolios with the same price groups. The new site features a "shopping cart" which can collect a print order and email it to me for follow up payment processing. They do allow Pay Pal to be used but I do not like Pay Pal - I get too much spam from companies claiming to be paypal and would rather do the credit card transactions through our gallery credit card machine. At this point livebooks does not support online credit card processing outside of paypal, but I have found that people purchasing fine art prints usually want to call and talk the the artist or their rep before making a purchase anyway. Here is a screen shot of the home page. The livebooks staff designed it to be very interactive, if you mouse over any of the images you get the title of the portfolio and a link that portfolio. The other pages are still under construction - I hope to have the site up before Thanksgiving. I first have to survive our 8 year old daughter's first sleepover party this friday - time to batten down the hatches!

Web Site Evolution

My www.elizabethcarmel.com website was initially designed by a friend who did a great job, but it became problematic for me to update the site myself since I didn't know html and didn't want to spend the time to learn it. I decided to use Apple's iweb 08 and put together a nice website that I could update when I wanted, however I have been getting feedback from some people that the portfolio would not open on their browsers and in some cases the links bar would not appear, making it impossible to navigate around the site. I called apple tech support and searched online for any fixes, and the only response I got was that it was an inherent problem with the way the sites were generated by the software, and there would be unavoidable problems with some browsers. The final blow came when I upgraded to Leopard and my own site would not load properly in Apple's own Safari browser. I decided to pull the plug on iweb 08 because I need a website that everyone can access - even my licensing rep was having problems. I have been researching other options and have decided on the Livebooks approach. I liked their contemporary designs and the fact that I will be able to have an online shopping cart for my prints. I am hoping the new site will be up and running in the next few weeks so I can put the iweb issues behind me.

Framed Images with Digital Matts

Below is a quick image I took with my iphone of some prints that were framed incorporating the digital matts. There is no glass in front of these, I just sprayed them with Premier Art Print Shield to protect them from fading. They would not be protected from impact to the image, but if left alone they should last a lifetime indoors. I think that glare-free plexi could be used to further protect them, but this creates further framing complexity that may not be necessary if the images are hung in a safe location.

Experimenting with Digital Matts

I have recently created a few large prints that incorporate digital matts that are printed with the image. This allows me to create and frame large prints (bigger than 40x30") that are very difficult to matt and frame traditionally. George Lepp gave a presentation on this at Photoshop World Vegas, so I thought I would give it a try. I have set up an action for creating the matts in photoshop, but each image requires customizing based on the colors in the image and the size of the image. I am currently having all these mounted onto a rigid backing known as "gator board". I will then treat the image with Premier Art Print Shield and frame them, no glass or matt needed. I will have these on display at our gallery the weekend of October 6, during the opening for the Seasons of Martis show from 12-4 PM on the 6th. The images will range in size from 40x30" to 40x60". I have also been trying out the new Ultrasmooth canvas by Premier Imaging and find that this technique also works well on stretched canvasses with a floater frame. It gives it a more "finished" look than just a gallery wrapped canvas, although I imagine there are some purists who will not like the concept. I am looking forward to getting customer feedback about this new display option, which makes the display of large prints much more affordable. Here is a shot of the digital matt I designed for "Autumnn Passage":

Experiments with Smart Objects in PS CS 3

In the quest for the ultimate in fine art print quality, I have been testing the use of Camera Raw smart objects in Photoshop CS3. At a PS World 07 Seminar Jeff Schewe demonstrated how you can open a raw image file as a smart object, which allows you to click on that layer at any time and bring up the Camera Raw Dialog box again, so refinements can be applied to the image while it is a layer in a photoshop file. In the past I have always converted my files to DNG Raw files, "developed" them in Adobe camera raw, then opened them up as regular layers in Photoshop to do final adjustments or blending. I think the Camera Raw converter is superior to Photoshop in many image adjustment functions such as color correction, tonal correction, saturation, sharpening, noise removal, etc.

I took one of my raw images from a recent Big Sur trip and developed it twice in Camera Raw, opening each conversion as a smart object on its own layer. I then combined both layers into one document. I could then combine a camera raw conversion for the sky with one for the foreground, incorporating individual settings for exposure, noise reduction, color temp, sharpening, etc. Because each layer is a smart object, I can reopen the Camera Raw settings at any time to tweak numerous image adjustments such as color correction, tonal correction, saturation, sharpening, noise removal, etc. Since masks can be applied to smart objects I can mask each layer to reveal the part of the image that the settings are optimized for. The best part is that these are completely non-destructive edits, all can be completely reversed at any time. This style of working eliminates the need for alot of adjustment layers. Below is a screen shot of the 2 layers it took to create the adjusted Big Sur Image using only the unadjusted raw file. This is a great tool for landscape photographers who are always trying to maximize image quality from a broad range of image tones.

To open a Camera Raw conversion as a smart object, hold down the shift key and press "open object" in the ACR conversion window. To combine 2 smart objects into one file, just drag one image's layer to the other image while holding down the shift key to register the pixels.

This is the unedited RAW file, below that is the image I created from this one file with 2 layers.

Panoramas in PS CS3

I have been experimenting with the photomerge feature in the new Photoshop CS3 and find that it does a wonderful job merging multiple foreground and background images for a panorama. On my recent trip to the Emigrant Wilderness I took only an 80mm lens to save weight, so in order to get a wide angle shot I needed to stitch multiple images together. Somehow PS CS 3 does this seamlessly and corrects the color so the final image does not have a variety of different color temps and exposures. The image below was a combination of 7 different exposures that were merged together. These are huge 100 megabyte 39 megapixel files, and the program was able to handle all of them and merge them into this panorama, which I can print at a 90 inch x 35 inch size with no upsampling needed. The scale of this view is hard to describe, it is a large granitic basin that is as spectacular as any I have seen in Yosemite. I plan on trying to capture more panoramas in the future and have added a category on my website to feature more of these as I complete them.

Camera Raw 4.1 versus Flexcolor

Hasselblad camera users are familiar with the image processing software "Flexcolor" that comes with the Hasselblad Digital backs. This is a very powerful software with many important features for pro photographers who shoot untethered or tethered to a computer. It also has a good feature that allows the native Hasselblad raw files to  be saved as DNG files. For my style of work, which involves processing batches of images from landscape photography shoots, I find that Adobe Camera Raw 4.1 (ACR) works best. I convert my raw image files to DNG files (I archive the original 3F file). Once the images are in DNG format I open them in the Adobe Bridge program to view and sort. The new Adobe Bridge has a very useful feature that allows you to magnify a portion of a series of images in order to quickly compare sharpness, etc. Opening an image or series of images from Bridge brings up the Camera Raw dialog. I will not go in to the many features of ACR 4.1 here, but there are plenty of online resources about this that are easy to find with a google search. The tools I find really important in the latest version of ACR are fill light, recovery, clarity, sharpening, noise reduction, grayscale conversions, and the ability to re-open a tiff or jpg in Camera raw. I use this re-opening feature to sharpen images in ACR for final printing, since I think the ACR sharpening is better than the PS CS3 sharpening. I prefer to sharpen images as the last step of image processing in preparation for printing. I do not find anything wrong with the Flexcolor software from Hasselblad - I have just found that for my particular needs, which are different from a studio photographer, ACR / PS3 offer the easiest way for me to achieve optimum image quality from my H3D files. The Flexcolor software is constantly being upgraded by Hasselblad and tailored to the hardware of the H3D and their other digital cameras. It is conceivable that in the future there will be major benefits to processing all raw files in Flexcolor, such as improved focus and distortion correction. Anyone with an H3D or other Hasselblad digital camera should continue to monitor updates of Flexcolor and do comparisons by developing the same raw file in both ACR and Flexcolor to see what produces the best results.

Keeping Up

As  a self-employed photographer, I find it very important to stay up to date on a broad range of information related not only to photography, but also to health, the arts, parenting, productivity, business management, and current events. Digital photography is constantly changing and evolving, and if I do not keep up with the latest info and techniques in the field I can guarantee that my current or future competitors are. One of the best tools I have found for combing through the vast amount of online information is Google Reader. This is a web aggregator that allows you to subscribe to news feeds from web sites and blogs, and scan or read them from one main index page. It also allows sharing of web sites and articles via RSS feed. A screenshot of my Google Reader page is below. I have also posted a very eclectic assortment of shared items in this blog on the bottom right, which are updated daily. You can also add this blog to Google Reader (or any other reader of your choice) by clicking on the subscribe button on the upper right.

I will be offline for about 10 days, but check back on June 3 when I hope to do a post about our journey in Alaska. Thanks for the bon voyage wishes some of you have posted and emailed. I will be taking 2 - 16 GB CF cards and my Macbook Pro with an extra firewire hard drive for backup. My image files from the H3D are too big to burn to a DVD so I have to rely on firewire hard drives for backup. It will not be too difficult to manage data since the boat we are on has electricity.