paul bousquet photography

Making The Print: Printing Techniques for the Digital Photographer by Martin Bailey

Martin Bailey, THANK YOU! This is the book I have been waiting for a long time. Many of the the previous discussions or technical posts I have seen on printing in my opinion have been overly complicated and simply have left me with the feeling of never wanting to go down that path. The result was that I avoided buying a printer and sent my prints to one of the popular processing labs. But I have always felt I was missing part of the creative process of producing a piece of art that could be held, hung up or passed around. Part of this feeling of artistic emptiness traces back to my admiration of watching a video of Ansel Adams in his dark room manipulating his prints with the chemical process and dodging and burning technique that goes along with it. I never really experienced the film and print development process first hand, my limited film related skills were confined to loading and unloading loading film and then sending it off to a lab.

But something finally pushed me to buy my first printer and this makes the timing of the eBook release of Making The Print downright spooky. As I begin the review of Making The Print, my first printer, an Epson Stylus Photo R2000 is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. So I guess I ignored Martin’s first piece of advice of not buying a printer until after reading the book. That’s okay, I feel like I have overcome an obstacle of avoiding printing at all cost by finally pulling the rigger on a printer purchase. I will just have to utilize the rest of the book’s advice to get be going in the right direction as I move forward.

The first part of the book is devoted to getting on the road to printing very quickly with some basic foundations that will hopefully improve the look of your images right out of the box, or at least if you are just starting, to get you comfortable with a basic process. Martin shares some tips on selecting your first printer or upgrading from what you currently have and also provides some basics on paper selection.

Martin has plenty of quick tips for folks who are just getting started in the process of printing including basics such as setting your monitor’s brightness appropriately and how to take advantage of the software you currently have to make sure the settings will provide you with the greatest chance of getting a good print out of your printer. Examples are provided with Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop to help you better get a handle on such things as shadow and highlight adjustment, sharpening and printing profiles to name a few.

Part two of Making The Print is about going deeper into the details of gaining success with your printing. Here Martin talks about getting into the nitty gritty details of color management including performing your own color calibration throughout the entire process (monitor and printer/paper combinations). This is not for the feint of heart and I think Martin has cleared this process up a bit with a clear description of steps to be performed with a couple of alternative devices he recommends for the process. He also touches upon the camera calibration as well for the ultimate complete color managed loop for your workflow. Color proofing is also demonstrated with a walk through and in fact Martin mentions in a note the fact that the latest Lightroom beta 4.0 includes this capability.

Next Martin provides a clear discussion on paper type and what to look for in choosing fine art paper and also why you may want to start smaller before going for that large format printer.

This next section is probably my favorite of the book: Gallery Wraps. Martin goes into depth on how to take advantage of your printer to create beautiful gallery wraps yourself. This includes getting the print made just right with respect to dealing with borders, resizing and sharpening. Martin also provides details with illustrations on how to handle the canvas and mount it properly using the stretcher bars. This section I find is one I will definitely attempt since I have spent a great deal of money on procuring canvas wraps in the past.

There is also a nice section to help you prepare for an exhibit and what techniques you could use to perhaps make the process of producing a set of prints more efficiently and economically.

I mentioned Ansel Adams earlier as an inspiration which has always driven me to print my own work and Martin has a nice quote that wraps this review up for me, “Ansel Adams would have loved what is available to us now and it’s just going to get better and better!”

You can save $1 off the price of Making The Print by using the PRINT4 code at checkout or use PRINT20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 + PDF eBooks from the Craft and Vision Collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm(PST) on January 21, 2012.

Click here to visit the Craft and Vision bookstore to get $1 off while picking up a copy of Making The Print.

I have been doing more hiking lately and lucky for us we have Borderland Park close by which allows for getting a little peace and quite once in awhile.

These hikes really make me appreciate the great outdoors and living close to areas that have been preserved for just that purpose.

Although the last several days have been cold, there is a nice warming house with a roaring fire to take the chill out.

NOTE: Come back tomorrow for a review of the latest Craft and Vision ebook, it is one that I have been hoping for.

Spent the day yesterday touring the Falmouth/Woods Hole, MA area celebrating my wife’s birthday. Finally felt like Winter has kicked in even though snow still has not covered the area. The Nobska Point Light has an interesting history and continues as the former keeper’s facility serves as the home for the commander of Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England. A radio tower somewhat takes away from the picturesque quality of the shot, but I managed to situate the tower behind the trees to the left by positioning myself down the road a bit.

One more from the Roger Williams Zoo series.

From the Tin Toy exhibit formerly in the Japan pavilion at EPCOT.

Last week I had the opportunity to take a little excursion from the daily grind and head to New York City. I just felt like it was time to do something a little bit different from the normal routine, so I took to the road and headed down to the Big Apple for some inspiration. My destination was B&H Photo, a place us photographers all know and love, maybe a bit too much! My visit last week was not about gear however, it was about getting out and seeing and hearing other photographers talk about their work. I attended two sessions by Wildlife and Landscape (and now add Aviation) photographer Moose Peterson at the B&H event space.

I have admired Moose’s work at his blog and felt like this would be a great opportunity to hear first hand from a photographer I admire regarding his experiences and passion. What I took away most from the sessions with Moose is the need to get out, shoot images and show them. I have started to do this to some degree, but I have a lot of work to do. Moose also stressed the importance of pleasing yourself with respect to how an image speaks. If the image makes you happy or speaks to you in some manner, then that is all that matters. Unless your are being paid and need to make your client happy, the images you feel most proud of are ones you should feel confident about. This isn’t only about showing off your work, but going through this process helps you gain confidence in your skills and allows others to learn from you. We all learn from one another’s experiences and perspectives no matter what the topic.

So to practice what I preach, I have posted a few images from a visit to the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island. While a zoo may not be “real” wildlife photography such as Moose is used to, it is a great place to learn more about your craft and about your subjects at the same time. I took these images in the January of 2010 and figured it was about time to post some and share. It was fun to go back and look at some images that I have not seen in sometime and apply a slightly different post processing approach to them.

Would not mind at all if I could ride one of these slick Christmas bikes

Essentially this is a very well done packaging of blog posts (plus some new content) from throughout the year at The Pixelated Image, David duChemin’s well visited and nicely informative site. It is also a great place to get involved with discussions centering around improving your photographic vision and thus making better photos. This ebook is a great opportunity for those of you not familiar with David’s work to get caught up on his writings for the year and learn more about his efforts to help us focus on photographic vision rather than gear.

You can save $1 off the price of Vision Is Better II by using the VIB4 at checkout or buy the Vision Is Better Bundle which includes the original Vision Is Better book and Vision Is Better II by using VIB7 saving $3. These codes expire on December 21 at 11:59pm (PST).

Click here to visit the Craft and Vision bookstore to pick up a copy of Vision Is Better II

NOTE: The download link is now working according to Craft and Vision. Thanks for your patience.

11 Ways To Improve your Photography

Here is a great opportunity to get some solid advice on improving your photography. The authors at Craft and Vision have gotten together to provide some of their favorite tips and put together a free ebook for you to download and enjoy. My favorite is the advice on histograms that can really provide you with a better image to work with.

So don’t hesitate, grab a copy and enjoy! FREE!

Click here to visit the Craft and Vision bookstore to pick up a copy of 11 Ways To Improve your Photography

Getting that perfect image has never been easier as far as technology is concerned and the iPhone 4s keeps that momentum going. The capabilities of Apple’s new iPhone are numerous but the HDR feature is one I wanted to highlight here by showing you a clear result of an image with and without the HDR effect.

Here is the image without HDR processing:

Here is the HDR version as developed by the iPhone 4S:

Clearly the blown highlights in the clouds have been corrected and the color of the buildings on the right are truer to reality. Is the image perfect? Certainly not, but it is one that is very pleasing to the eye and can meet just about everyones needs. It also did not take any post processing whatsoever which in my book is a great advantage.

To activate the HDR effect, in the Camera app go under options and turn it on. In the iPhone Settings under Photos there is also an option to keep the “Normal” photo. Now taking an photo will result in the two images being captured, one normally processed and one with HDR processing. ( In fact, Derrick Story has an Maximum HDR technique that you may want to review to further potentially improve your images.)

For me, I use the HDR images as is since I’m looking to quicken my turn around time. For now I am saving both images just in case I want to use the “normal” image, but so far that has not happened!

Making Light Advanced Use of Off-Camera Flash by Piet Van den Eynde

Where Making Light left off, Making Light II picks up nicely and continues the journey to mastering the concepts of off camera flash. Piet quickly takes you beyond sync speed and introduces the concept of high-speed sync, Hypersync and working with multiple flashes. What I found extremely interesting were the many example images with various configurations and setups and the resultant image.

Whenever I hear the use of Elinchrom units, I have immediately skipped the conversation thinking these units and their use are strictly for the pros. But with the availability of rentals and the clear explanation in this book, advanced amateurs are clearly able to conquer this fear.

Along with the topic of gear that produces the light, Piet also covers in depth the modification of light by the description of modifiers such as grids, snoots and softboxes to name a few.

There are some really good tricks in this book too. But the best part of the book in my opinion are the ten case studies that take all of the tips and gear described in the first part of the book and Making Light I and put them to use in ten situations where flash will make the image stand out.

And if all of this is not enough, Peit also provides interviews with four Belgian Photographers who share their thoughts and some of their images to highlight what flash management can do for your images.

Enough said, this is a very good follow up to the frist off camera flash book and is highly recommended.

Special Offer on PDFs
For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code MAKINGLIGHT4  when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Making Light II for only $4 OR use the code MAKINGLIGHT20  to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST October 24, 2011.

Click here to visit the Craft and Vision bookstore to pick up a copy of Making Light II.

A little Northeast Corridor action

Pompeii headgear: Boston Museum of Science (Taken with instagram)

For those of us who can’t make it down this year, A Mickey’s No So Scary Treat

Behind the scenes of Nikon 360