This week at Photofocus brought us a few gear-centric articles, a Lightroom Classic tutorial and some huge news from Photofocus!
Serge Ramelli started off the week by showing us best practices for editing in Lightroom Classic, while Chris Anson discussed backups and protected storage with a Drobo 5C. Erin Holmstead documented her switch to the Godox lighting platform and Bob Coates talked about forcing perspectives with a wide-angle zoom lens. And our Photofocus team announced our huge, year-long 21st birthday celebration, where you get to take home the gifts!
How to edit photos in Lightroom Classic like a boss - (Editor’s Note: Photofocus is proud to welcome Serge Ramelli to Photofocus. Be sure to check out his free master class and bonus toolkit). Download the Camera RAW files to follow along this tutorial here. In this tutorial, I will show you how to edit photos in Lightroom, with four different photoshoots: First, how to edit a daylight photo Then how to edit a golden hour photo A sunset photo and Finally how to edit a night photo, all in Lightroom Classic These are some of my favorite photo shoots and they are a great way to learn how to edit in Lightroom! Check out Serge’s free class and toolkit
Photofocus celebrates 21st birthday with year-long contest - Well, it’s our birthday. Yup. We’re turning 21 this year! That’s big news. The even bigger news is what we are giving away as birthday presents. Photofocus is celebrating the entire year with monthly contests and fabulous prizes. Best of all, everyone who enters the contest wins — we have a swag-bag of goodies that all of our readers receive after they register for the contest. Registering is simple. Just go to our 21st birthday celebration page to enter and get all the details. Once you register, you’ll be e-mailed a bunch of free goodies, including Lookup Tables (LUTs), Creative Profiles for Lightroom and Photoshop, eBooks and more! Lots of chances to win When you register, you’ll be automatically entered to win all of our prizes. And there’s a lot of them. After all, turning 21 is a pretty big deal. One lucky Grand Prize winner will win a free camera (valued at $3,000 USD), a Drobo 8D, Skylum software, a gift certificate to Santa Fe Workshops and more. There are also first and second place prizes! But that’s not all — we’re also giving away prizes to one lucky winner every month! Stay tuned for what we’re giving away in October and throughout the next 12 months. Altogether, there are a whopping 15 prize packages you can be eligible to win, and there’s many more prizes to be announced in the coming weeks and months. Just head over to our 21st birthday celebration page and find out all the ways to enter today! Why are we doing this? Simply put, we want to celebrate! Photofocus has been around for 21 years, and that’s quite the milestone! As valued readers we want to share this celebration with you, and thanks to our partners, we can make that happen! Special thanks to our presenting partners X-Rite Photo & Video, Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, Drobo and Skylum Software. Get started and enter for your chance to win today! Have questions? Drop them in the comments below or reach out to us via our Contact page. Good luck!
Backups and protected storage with the Drobo 5C - Backups or backing up means to make a copy of your data (documents, photos, videos, etc.) and store that copy someplace. Traditionally that would be copied to a single or series of hard drives. The potential problem with storing it on one or more hard drives is that one of the drives could fail. Then what? That’s where protected storage can help. I’m using the Drobo 5C for my backups. What is protected storage? Protected storage on the Drobo 5C means that if one of the hard drives fails (it can be configured to handle up to two hard drive failures), it has the ability to rebuild the system with the remaining drives so the data isn’t lost and I can continue to work during the rebuild process. It also allows me to remove the bad hard drive, replace it and it will rebuild it. This is a very useful capability that I know first hand. I’ve had a drive fail on me in the 5C and seen it work. The cost for having this protected storage is that a portion of the hard drive space, usually about half of the total storage space, is used to store that information so it can recreate what was lost on a failed drive. Protected storage on Drobo 5C I’m currently using the Drobo 5c direct-attached storage (DAS) unit as my backup solution. Here’s a screenshot of the four hard drives that I installed and that totaled 17TB of available space. Here’s the capacity screenshot with the protected storage system in place. It has set aside a little more than 1/2 of the total storage capacity for the protected storage portion which leaves 8TB of storage space. So with the Drobo 5C, I’m not only backing up my data but adding the protected storage layer of data protection to my backed up data as well. This approach gives me additional protection against failure and gives me peace of mind knowing that I have this kind of system in place for my backed up data. You’ll find the Drobo 5C here. Save 10% off with the coupon code PHOTOFOCUS!
Switching to mirrorless is in — here’s why I switched to Godox - I feel like everyone is talking about how they switched to mirrorless lately, which is awesome considering I, too, shoot mirrorless. Lumix in the house! But that is beside the point. Let’s talk about why I decided to switch to Godox for my lighting setup about a year ago. What is Godox? Godox is a professional photo equipment manufacturer. They offer a full line of studio photography equipment, including studio flash and a portable power inverter, outdoor flashes, continuous lighting, studio flash accessories, camera flashes, macro lighting, Speedlite power pack, camera flash accessories, flash triggering and control system, along with many more accessories. Why did I choose them? There were three main reasons I went with Godox. First, I needed a system that was completely wireless/cordless. Cords are my nemesis and I despise them! Second, everything I needed — like the accessories, softboxes, triggers, etc. — all fit within my budget. Trust me when I tell you it wasn’t a big number. I put aside $1,000 to get a new light setup, but the kicker comes in when I tell you the third requirement. I needed my lights to feel like a Profoto setup. I had been renting my gear — which consisted of two Profoto B1X lights — for three years before this purchase. The B1X lights and myself were so in sync and they did such a great job at creating magic on set that I had anxiety for weeks leading up to this purchase,. But spending more than $4,000 to buy my own set outright almost put me in the looney bin! I couldn’t do that — I didn’t have the money to do so. So that’s where Godox came in! What did I buy? I chose to buy the AD600Pro Witstro All-In-One Outdoor Flash, which retails for $899. It has the same 9-stop range and similar power capacity as the B1X. The Godox is a little lighter in weight, which is perfect for a little-weight like myself. The Godox uses a Bowens mount system, which that alone deserves a standing ovation, as there are many modifiers and accessories made for it. Lastly, the Godox system gives you the ability to expand your lighting line up in the future, giving a mixed light shooter like myself all the happy feels. I also purchased the XT1T-0TTL Wireless Flash Trigger Transmitter for $46, and the P90L Parabolic Softbox for $69, bringing my total to a very affordable $1,044 folks! Conclusion Looking at my work from the last year you would never know that I switched lighting systems. The only place you’d see the difference is in my wallet! #winning :) But you get my point, right? Godox is killing it with their lineup and I have since purchased their snoot, a 7′ silver umbrella and their white beauty dish with grid, and did so for $121.67. Guys, Godox is the way, it’s the future! Right up there with mirrorless. :)
Forced perspective in photography wide-angle and zoom lens - Here’s another reminder that meeting and hanging out with fellow photographers is not only fun, but it’s also educational! Get together In Sedona, there are a number of fine photographers. One photographer, Ted Grussing, opens his home once a month for a gathering to have a potluck. We get to know one another better, swap stories, and share ideas, food, laughs and images. After eating, a computer is hooked up to the wide-screen television and each photographer shares 5-10 images. It is a wonderful way to learn about new techniques, places to photograph and see some gorgeous photography. Forced perspective in photography with a wide-angle zoom lens The Sedona Photography Symposium was held last week while I was out of town teaching in Tennessee. A fellow photographer mentioned Erin Babnick spoke about a technique when photographing a scene with a wide-angle lens. When using a wide-angle lens you can get the whole scene into the frame. That’s all good. But there are many times when it does not look as the eye sees it. The technique mentioned was forced perspective created by blending two images made with different zoom ranges and blending them together in post-production. My first try The other night I came upon a scene or red rocks under monsoon clouds. When I made the first exposure I realized that the second set of rocks was rendered quite small but did not feel that way to my naked eye. I thought, let’s see how this forced perspective technique might work to give the scene a better feel. Here is the initial image of the scene. I knew I wouldn’t care for it because the second set of red rocks faded quickly into the background but I wanted the entire view shown in a wide angle. All images were made with the Lumix G9 and the Leica 12-60 f/2.8-4.0 lens. I made a second photo with the lens zoomed in quite a bit filling the frame with the distant range. Then in Photoshop, I combined the images to meet my ultimate vision with both sets of rocks having the same prominence. Here are the images blended together which felt a much stronger composition to me. Pushing the image further You might know by now that I promote myself as a “Lens-Based Artist” so I couldn’t just stop with a fairly ‘straight’ rendition of the scene. I enhanced color and tones. Next I dodged and burned areas using a Soft Light Layer to add more depth and dimension. Painting textures were added using Photoshop Blend Modes. If I were recording the scene for any reason besides art, I would not make these types of adjustments. But when it’s time to create visually pleasing scenes all bets are off. Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
