exposing life

The Masters in Black and White

Dave — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:43:24 +0000

Thought I’d try something a little different. I took a few of the pictures from the 2009 Masters and converted them to B&W. With a golf course as colorful as Augusta not a lot of shots would work this way. I had to be a bit selective but I think these look interesting enough.

The Masters 2009 pictures

Dave — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:14:18 +0000

I had the rare opportunity to attend the (windy and cold) Tuesday practice round of The Masters. I took my recently purchased 18-200 VR with me because of it’s versatility. A gallery with a ton of pictures is available to view. Just give it a few minutes to upload. I hope it’s worth it for you.

I’ll post some thoughts on the 18-200 in a few days.

New MacBook Pro and Lightroom 2

Dave — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:32:34 +0000

Have my new Mac…finally. The two biggest surprises were 1) how fast this thing runs not only with respect to applications but also to start up and 2) how easy it was to get use to and be productive. There were a few things I had to get straight in preferences and settings. Once I had that, everything else was gravy.

Lightroom 2 is very, very nice. The adjustment brush tool is very slick, easy to use and well worth the upgrade. Below, I just made a few adjustments by adding some exposure to his eyes and also using the “Soften Skin” effect on his face. Within a couple minutes I was thrilled with how easy it was. I’m still considering CS4, but Lightroom 2 has me thinking I can wait a bit longer.

Interesting flower thanks to some hue

Dave — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:42:46 +0000

I played around with the hue on this one and brought out the color around the edge. Not sure if I’ve overlooked this one from my trip to the UK back in the spring of ‘08 or not. Once I started giving it some extra in PP I think it made this shot even better. I dropped the green saturation as well to make the color pop even more.

Get your free Blackberry Wallpaper for the 8830 and Storm

Dave — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:27:52 +0000

Anyone wanting some free wallpaper sized for your Blackberry 8830 (or Curve) or your Storm, look no further. The horizontally cropped are for the 8830/Curve and the portrait are for the Storm - obviously. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Just navigate to this page on your Blackberry and you can dowload any pic and set it as your wallpaper. If you have any problems, please post a comment and I’ll be glad to help.

Cruz Allen Malbec

Dave — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:14:13 +0000

What a very good bottle of wine. I got this as a gift for Valentine’s day after I raved about a glass of Malbec my wife and I had at Ombu restaurant in Winston-Salem. Never having heard of Malbec before, I took the waiter’s recommendation and loved every drop.

I took these pictures using a borrowed SB-800, my SB-600, my homemade lightbox and the 28-70mm 2.8. If anyone from Cruz Allen is reading this, I’d be happy to take a case of the Malbec if you’d like you use any of these pictures. For that matter, if any winery is looking at this and would like me to do some of these for them, just drop me a line at dave (at) exposinglife.com.

Here are a couple of my favorites.

Winter in North Carolina

Dave — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 01:44:57 +0000

A week or so ago (it’s 75 now) we had a quick blast of snow. The most we’ve seen down here in years. A whopping six inches. For a Pennsylvania-born boy, it wasn’t much to me but it was fun to get out for a day. Here are a few shots from that day. Is it me, or is the sky just that much more blue on colder days? These shots were not heavily post processed.

Leibovitz pawns life’s work

Dave — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:46:14 +0000

This is just really sad. Sad that she hasn’t put her financial house in order. It seems that artists seem to be bad businesspeople and live in the “artistic” world too long to understand that there are other forces in the world that can affect them…too often in a negative way.

This is where you wish an honest “patron” would come along and say “Look, I know you’re having issues. Let me help.”

Rising lens prices

Dave — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:42:22 +0000

Thanks to the ever appreciating Yen, lens prices (of Nikons anyway) have started rising considerably. Just watching the prices at B&H and other places anyone that was looking at a lens about a month ago is probably going through sticker shock right now. With the economy the way it is, I predict Nikon’s sales will plummet even more. I’ll be curious to see what will come out at PMA and how the new lenses are priced. The new 35/1.8 AF-S is priced well at $199 but some of the other lenses may not share that same ‘bargain’ feel.

The increase may not affect everyone but to the high-end amateur, they might wait this one out. The problem is, it might be a long time.

Little guy studying

Dave — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 02:52:32 +0000

The biggest reason for this post was to do it from a borrowed MacBook Pro using Lightroom 2 and CS4 - demo versions. I also wanted to see how hard it was to do some basic skin softening. I tried a tutorial found here. I also lightened up his right eye a bit as well.

Oh yeah, I love the Mac…and it’s plenty fast enough.