Synopshots

Kobe being Kobe: Flickr's "most interesting" photo of Kobe Bryant

Kobe-being-Kobe, originally uploaded by TimDD.

This photo has now become "the most interesting" photo on Flickr when you seach for "Kobe Bryant."  Amazing.  Volume up especially as Kobe recently reached the 20,000 point milestone (before age 30). I heard on SportsCenter this morning that Wilt reached this point in five fewer seasons...

VitalStatistics.info politely asked to use this photo on their site for an article on Kobe. A first for me. Very cool.

Rachel Robinson

This is Julie's colleague Rachel -- I'm continuing to work on the various blending options and blurring effects to get a grip on the "Orton" technique.

Banquet-Hall

Banquet-Hall, originally uploaded by TimDD.

Banff, Canada -- early morning at the Banff Springs Hotel. Surrounded by the beautiful Rockies.

Kobe-being-Kobe

Kobe-being-Kobe, originally uploaded by TimDD.

Jules and I brought Ian and Eric to the Celtics game last night. I cranked up the 70-200mm at ISO 800, and got a couple of decent shots. Here's one of the dreaded Kobe -- who, it has to be said, can create a shot.

What is the right size for the images in these posts?

Testing image widths for PhoBlo posts...

Great-Blue

Great-Blue, originally uploaded by TimDD.

Ah Flickr. I started out with a far smaller Great Blue Heron when I originally posted this photo... but the beauty of the Flickr Gallery is that there are critiques galore to help you refine your technique. Here I was able to tighten up considerably by layering the bird, using LucisArt Exposure to bring out the under-wing detail without too terribly generating digital artifacts, add the vignette... and here you have it.

Neighbor-Mod

Neighbor-Mod, originally uploaded by TimDD.

The near-final result.

Process step 3: building "Neighbor-Mod"

By creating a layer for the house alone, I could call up another great processing tool: LucisArt (www.lucisart.com).  This plug-in for Photoshop has a couple of effects -- I use Exposure, Sculpture, Whyetha and Winslow -- and each has setting buttons and sliders that I just had to experiment with to understand.  It allowed me to bring much more light and life to the house, while I dealt with issues in the surrounding areas separately.

The house is starting to emerge from the shadows.

Process step 2: building "Neighbor-Mod"

This is already looking better, but there is still much work to be done.  I have traded an overall shadowed image for one which fails to highlight the house itself, much less that fabulous roof line.  So I get to work in Photoshop... first cropping the image down, then establishing layers: one for the house itself, one for the remainder of the shot -- both the lawn / foreground and the trees and sky.

Process step 1: building "Neighbor-Mod"

We have always loved this house... right down the street from where we live.  Here's the original exposure (taken with a Nikon D70).

You can see a leaf falling (unnoticed at the time of capture), a nice cloud, some annoying branches, deep deep shaodws.  This is not a very interesting picture.

But I love the line of that roof, and the clean design of the building.  So I took three exposures, bracketing -2 stops and +2 stops.  I took all three images and processed them with Photomatix (www.hdrsoft.com).