Laverty Falls

Fans of Laverty Falls are probably feeling a bit shortchanged that their beloved falls are not getting the star treatment of an all in one post. So sue me.

Look here and here for the back story if you missed it. The moral of the story is to take Mrs Google's directions with a big grain of salt sometimes.

Even with the diminished flow because of the drought, the trail and falls are lovely, totally worth the walk. Again, I was fortunate to have the falls pretty well to myself as I worked the scene. 

As a total digression, I started to look at November IotM possibilities. Oops. I didn't get out much with the camera, and when I did, I didn't like the photos. I have 4 days. Hmmm, I wonder if it's legit to consider as November photos, images from a previous date that have been extensively reworked in Lightroom, to the point they are essentially different images?

1. Another leafy path to the falls, similar to Third Vault. Short, and a more gradual slope. Details here. 

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7. There were enough rocks in the stream bed to get a composition from all sides without getting my feet wet.

8. From the top of the falls looking down. There were some nice rapids a little further upstream, but there was a rowdy party I didn't want to disturb.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

I suppose, technically, this should be called PEI. It's a cross section of the Confederation Bridge, in case you were wondering what that looks like. Of course, this section sits on a high base that goes down to the sea floor. It's a long way down. 40 m down for most of it, 60 for the ship channel.

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related

A bit of a conundrum

Some of you knew that I was signed up for a Lightroom course this weekend. (For the non-photographers, Lightroom is a complex program used to edit photos, similar to Photoshop in some ways.) I took a basic Lightroom course from Neil Zeller about 2017, and later watched a few tutorials that were not as helpful as one would like. I will exit out of such a thing if the instructor has promised to show the steps to get from A to N, and at step E just they're getting into the meat of the matter, they start talking about alternate ways of getting to F and G, or that since you're here it's just as easy to go to Q, which I have no intention or desire to do. 

It's infuriating. I want them to show all the promised steps in order, no less and no more, and only then talk about some of the alternate ways of doing it, because most bloatware has altogether too many ways of doing the same thing. There is almost certainly a nonintuitive "don't do that!" during the sequence of steps, and it's all too rare they talk about that. Often there's an assumption they've made that they haven't told you about, that they assume you've made because isn't it obvious.

That could be a whole separate rant but we won't go there today.

As it turned out for complicated reasons, it worked better for Neil to spend a day with me and my mothership for one on one coaching. It was enormously productive. We reviewed my Lightroom settings and preferences, and how my workflow treated files and folders. All good because I'd heeded his advice from 2017. Then I got signed up for BackBlaze for off site backup, and started that. The internal drive was fast since there really isn't all that much on it. A day later and it's not even half done the external drive. (You are backing up your computer, right? RIGHT??)

From there we sort of covered two paths. One is making individual images better by learning to use the existing tools that I either didn't know how to use or was unaware of, and the new tools in a recent upgrade. Let's just say there are a lot possibilities and it's easy to go wrong.

The other path was tools and techniques for dealing with hundreds, and sometimes thousands of event photos in a batch, which most photographers never do. One of the new tools is totally the cat's meow for that sort of work, and I'm not talking about the AI culling thingie.

We picked out a variety of images and explored the tools. Landscapes, portraits, events, nights, reflections, some with complicated problems like odd lighting or dust spots on the lens or sensor. Some of it was the steps needed to do a thing, sometimes the philosophy of better images, and some of it was the hands-on practice for me to build some muscle memory. I've been playing with some other images to try different things on images that will never be seen. There were lots of virtual copies and undo keystrokes along the way. Very little swearing, in case you were wondering.

The conundrum is we tweaked some images that have already been blogged, and yet they're so much better now. I'm likely to do more of them, just because they're good images and can be better. Some of the comments have suggested improvements, some of which I was incapable of, and might be now.

Maybe they'll show up in the 'why didn't I blog this and maybe I did' section. Or maybe I'll blog them and see if anyone notices they're a repeat. For sure images that I want to put in another book are going to get another pass. Maybe I'll add a new section to of the day, called reimagined. Hmmm.

I still struggle with the transition from photograph to digital image. How much tweaking to an image is fair game? Sean and I have discussed this extensively during our road trips. I have no firm set of rules to follow. One of the strong suggestions is that if someone can tell you've made the adjustment, it's probably too much. 

I for sure won't put in something that wasn't there. Unless I want to make it look like an alien landscape for some reason, I want it to be pretty much what I saw, and what another person would see if they go to that spot and made allowances for weather. Images tweaked, tuned, and gently massaged, but not over baked. I look at some of my former edits and wince. I don't want to smooth skin to the point the person looks plastic.

Removing distractions is a slippery slope. There needs to be something around the thing to give context, but there's a spectrum of backgrounds from pure white or black, to a bland wallpaper, so an interesting pattern, to the perfect background complementing the thing, to distracting, to so wild and crazy it becomes the thing. 

Here's some before and after photos, some of which you've seen. Keep in mind the before image is actually after I had edited it the first time. You don't want to see the raw image.

In the pairs of photos, A is after, B is before.

1A.

1B. The major difference is removing the distraction of the airplane in the upper right, and opening up the shadows in the lower quarter, and tweaking some of the other settings.

2A.

2B. I was was pretty pleased with this image, but knew it could be better. With some coaching on using the tools, I did a much better job masking and tweaking the two bits of land. Denoise was awesome. Plus removing some distractions, changing the aspect ratio, and a few other tweaks.

3A. I'm not sure if this image was ever blogged. The differences should be obvious.

3B.

4A.

4B. Cleaned up some, but not all of the gunge in the water. I still want the scene to look real, and we all know that water is never perfect. Tweaked colour balance a bit and worked on the sky and it's reflection in the water. Plus making it level. Can't imagine how I overlooked that. This is a big image, about 5' x 1.5' at 300 dpi. There are still tweaks that could be made, and I would if someone wanted to buy this image, but the danger is that it's a rabbit hole with no bottom.

5A.

5B. Mountain landscapes can be surprisingly tricky. They can be hazy and turn blue, with the sky blending into the mountains. Lots of masking and tweaks to treat the sky, mountains, foothills, and fields separately. Plus removing a distraction.

6A. I have a certain amount of skepticism about AI. A lot actually. Lots of people are trying to use AI for things because they don't want to pay a person to do them. Except people are better, albeit not as fast. People writing computer code with AI are building time bombs, unless the right person reviews it very carefully. AI generated stuff often looks plausible at first glance.

I worry that an AI will wake up and be smarter than Skynet. And we thought that viruses and rats were tough competitors. I'd never do this to a race image, but this is purely the AI engine finding and removing distractions. It removed the person on the path, the person holding the bike, then another pass removed the bike. I suppose if I were trying to make this a perfect image, I'd try to remove the trash bag and see how that looked. Then again, these are working people during an actual race, not models posing for a magazine cover. Plus running the removal process is typically 30 seconds per image for my M4 Macbook Pro. Neil's souped up mothership does it in 5 to 10 seconds. That adds up for 500 images to the point it's completely uneconomic.

6B. 

I had been thinking that Laverty Falls would be next blog, so they're the first images I looked at after Neil went home. Let's just say I looked at the images with new eyes, and made some changes. Stay tuned.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB) and Linda does not appear to feel menaced by the T Rex.

Film

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Miscou Island Lighthouse, one of many.

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

One of the downsides of streets that run east west, is that a few times a year sunrise and sunset are brutal for seeing what's around you.

90 days, or so ago

A tweaked image to remove something that was distracting from the queen of denial.

Flower

Lilies in mid-September.

Landscape, or maybe you might say more of a cloudscape.

Late March 2017. Re-edited with new eyes today. This actually didn't take much tweaking.

Dino related

The complete Third Vault Falls photos

Well, except for the two that were published already, one as image of the month here, and another as an almost podium here. Plus a couple other not waterfall photos published in various posts since the 27th. 

I like the mist flowing over the rocks effect, rather than the milky water look, but there's a lot of variables to get it right. Even with the back of the camera, it's hard to know what you've got till you get home and look at it on the big screen. Several of the waterfall photos are only subtly different. In fact they might be so subtly different you can't tell in these images, but I can tell in Lightroom.

Here's a link to Parks Canada page for Third Vault Falls trail. It says difficult, and it is, and 7.4 Km, but it seems much further. They aren't kidding about steep in places.

1. Linda is better going up (as you'll see later) than down. This time of year the path isn't always obvious, being covered with leaves. It's quite pretty, but in a couple places I was looking for the way. There are few markers and none that are obvious.

2. Part of the path goes down a stream bed. In a year of less drought I'm pretty sure you'd get wet feet along the way. Which reminds me there's a couple more photos blogged here of the trail and one set of stairs.

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6. What the falls look like as you finally get to the bottom of the trail and look left.

7. Working different angles and settings, trying to deal with that bright patch on the right, and the dark shadows on the left.

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16. This was an almost podium as well.

17. Downstream of the falls. I was fortunate to have the falls essentially to myself for a half hour, which was amazing. A couple people showed up towards the end, but they were respectful of my space.

18. A tiny little waterfall in the stream bed path on the way back.

19. Linda marching on ahead, as I stumble along trying to be careful where I was putting my feet. I was really tired. I actually wondered how long it would take to find me if I wandered off the path, covered myself up with leaves, and went to sleep. We were amazed how many people were on their way in in the late afternoon, and we wondered how many would be trying to find their way out in the dark.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did. Such a great place to pose a model. 

90 days, or so ago with a Sept 1 rose.

Landscape

The Calgary Racetrack Ring under construction. After the UCP promise to take away photo radar because "it's a cash cow", of course the highway turned into a racetrack. After the carnage there was a recent bout of enforcement, and they clocked someone at 160 Km per hour. I've no doubt people go much faster than that. When you hear a motorbike going up through the gears they're probably topping out above 200 Km per hour, which is mildly terrifying in a car (don't ask how I know that) and seems like complete lunacy on a motorbike. In other acts of lunacy, the UCP have been governing like petulant children, invoking the notwithstanding clause, and complaining that people fallowing the rules the UCP created for recalling politicians are not doing so in the way intended. At least one of the politicians on the recall list has panicked, so maybe it will actually go through. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

Dino related