Tim Grey’s Blog

I love photographing while scouting for great locations much more than going somewhere I already know will be good. There’s so much more adventure when you don’t know what to expect, and I love the joy of discovering great subjects and locations that are new to me.

I’m in the Palouse region of eastern Washington state along with professional photographer Wolfgang Kaehler, just getting started teaching a photography workshop. We arrived yesterday, and on the way here scouted out some of the locations we planned to take the students to during the workshop.

In this case Wolfgang was already quite familiar with the area, and knew some areas that were expected to be good. But nature has a way of being unpredictable, and crop rotation by the local farmers only contributes to the unpredictability.

Of particular interest was locating some canola fields for their vibrant yellow flowers. But of course most of the fields were wheat. But it was a great adventure driving along the many country roads (many of them only gravel or dirt) and looking for great fields, great barns, and great vantage points. We were lucky enough to have some great clouds to make things more interesting. We stopped many times to capture some images while scouting.

It’s very easy to get so caught up exploring and looking for great scenes that you neglect to keep track of where you are, what you’re seeing, and which places you want to visit again (and what time of day you think will be optimal for those locations). Fortunately, Wolfgang was well-prepared. We kept track of where we were and where we were headed on a map. Ideal locations were marked, including whether they were best in the morning or late afternoon. So now we have a great list of locations to share with the students, and should get some excellent photography this week. It’s all about proper planning…

I was sitting on my couch reading, trying to ignore the uncomfortable heat. It was about 9pm, the sun had just set, and the sky was turning an incredible pink, but somehow I wasn’t inspired to go outside. I think the head had stifled me and convinced me that staying in one place was the best way to cool down.

Suddenly, the trees started screaming out, announcing the arrival of a front through the intense motion of their branches. I went outside, and was overwhelmed by the sound of the wind, the pelting of debris from the trees, and the dramatic drop in temperature. I settled into the hammock to enjoy the quick onset of a break from the heat, when I realized what a fool I was to not have my camera with me. I rushed inside, grabbed my camera, and started wandering around the backyard looking for interesting subjects.

The light was fading quickly, so there really wasn’t much to photograph. But it didn’t matter. I was enjoying the experience both in terms of the sudden excitement in terms of weather and the sense of chasing a subject photographically. The trees and just about everything else around was suddenly blurry on account of the motion caused by the wind. The temperature plummeted quickly by nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the span of less than five minutes. The heat wave was over, not overnight, not over hours, but over minutes.

While this most certainly didn’t need to be a photographic experience, it became one. And while the photos I obtained certainly weren’t great or even all that useful, the act of taking pictures while nature was having a mood swing made the experience all that much more enjoyable.

As a photographer, I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You’re in an unfamiliar place, perhaps photographing or just attending an event, and you meet another photographer. There’s an immediate bond and connection. The conversation flows freely. There’s a sense of camaraderie.

I’ve had an experience like this on many occasions. In several cases the connection involved the readers of my (free) Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ) email newsletter.

At this point I probably shouldn’t be surprised at the great response I receive from DDQ readers, but I am. Surprised and impressed.

I recently mentioned in a DDQ email that I would be cycling 100 miles as part of the Tour de Cure 2009 fundraiser event for the American Diabetes Association. My goal was to raise $1,000 as part of my efforts. Less than one week later, I’ve already reached 96% of my goal, thanks in large part to DDQ readers, who are all fellow photographers.

So, thank you to all have contributed to this cause and supported me in my (long!) bike ride coming up very soon (on May 16th in the Seattle area). And thank you to photographers everywhere who have helped build a great family of photography around the world.

I got an email the other day letting me know about a change in the terms of service for the Kodak Gallery. The bottom line: no more free photo storage if you don’t spend money.

Of course, there’s no shortage of websites that allow you to store your photos at no charge. They have become popular for sharing photos with friends, family, clients, and others. And they’re generally free. The service makes up for this by encouraging you to purchase prints or other products featuring your photos, and in some cases through online advertising.

So, I had to wonder if this was the beginning of the end of free online photo storage. I seriously doubt it. It is a common opinion in the industry that Kodak’s best days seem to be behind them. I suspect the Kodak Gallery has been losing money, and this is a last-ditch effort to make it profitable. I suspect its days may be numbered.

In fairness to Kodak, the requirements to maintain storage for your photos is pretty low. If you have less than 2 gigabytes of photos stored with the service, you only have to spend $4.99 on prints each year. If you have more than 2 gigabytes of photos, you need to spend $19.99 per year. But when there are so many alternatives out there, I have to wonder if this might spur an exodus to other sites that offer similar storage and photo printing options without the requirement to spend a particular amount of money each year.

I can’t even fathom going on any trip — even a business trip — without a camera. In some extreme cases I’ll just take my point-and-shoot digital camera along with me, but whenever possible (which is most trips) I’ll bring my digital SLR along as well.

A tripod, however, can be a whole different matter. On some trips, especially when they are short and on smaller planes, it can be a challenge to travel with a tripod. It often puts me over the limit for carry-on items and I worry about getting caught by an especially strict flight attendant. On full flights (which are more common these days with airlines cutting capacity) I also worry about damage to my carbon fiber tripod caused by bags that are crammed tightly into the overhead bins.

Such was the case on my current trip to Arcata, California, to teach a weekend Photoshop workshop at Humboldt State University. On balance it didn’t seem to make sense for me to bring it along, especially since the itinerary for the trip wasn’t going to allow much time for photography.

In the little free time I did have, my friend (and professor at Humboldt) Mark Larson took me to check out the redwoods as well as the small fishing town of Trinidad. On the pier at Trinidad I noticed the late light had caused the water to go inky black, and the rocks were creating some great textures in the crashing waves. A long exposure seemed in order, but without a tripod it seemed futile.

Naturally there was a railing on the pier, and with a plate always attached to my camera I had a pretty good structure for stabilizing the camera. Still, with exposures ranging from 1/15th of a second up to 2 seconds, my odds weren’t very good.

Fortunately things worked out, and I managed to get a few shots I was happy with despite not using a tripod. It is always a compromise to be out capturing photographs without having a tripod available, but this time it worked out fine. Sometimes it is riskier than others, but I think I’m going to make an effort in the future to bring a tripod along on these trips more frequently. In many cases it is simply far too difficult to get great images without a tripod, and even if I end up using it, I do like having the peace of mind of knowing it is there if I do need it.

It is interesting to me how often I find myself taking a photograph of something interesting without having any idea what it really is. This makes it all the more exciting when I discover at a later date exactly what I had been photographing in the first place.

I had this experience a few years ago when I was in Italy for a couple weeks. While walking near the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, I stumbled upon an iron railing that had a large collection of padlocks attached to it. They were interlocked to form a cluster of quite a lot of padlocks. I wondered if perhaps they were left by people who didn’t want to carry a lock around all the time but needed it to lock up a bike or scooter, but that didn’t make any sense since there were no chains with these locks.

I later learned that these locks had been placed on the railing as a custom of love. The locks are intended to be a symbol of the commitment of two lovers, and it seems to have become quite a bit of a worldwide phenomenon. I had no idea this was the case when I took the photograph of the locks, but it certainly made the photo more meaningful once I knew the origins of the interesting “sculpture”.

More recently I have been using a photo of prayer sticks I captured in a cemetery in Tokyo, Japan, as part of my various workshops. Each time I’ve asked the students if anyone could read Japanese or knew someone who could, but to no avail.

Finally, I found someone (thanks, Gary!) who was able to get them translated. It turns out these sticks contained a Buddhist slogan and a wish for blessings upon the deceased. The experience I had during the time this photograph was taken was quite incredible, and now having a better understanding of the customs surrounding these objects makes what had already become one of my favorite photos all the more meaningful.

We often hear the advice (and good advice it is) to truly understand your subject when photographing. Sometimes, however, you discover subjects you didn’t anticipate. When you finally are able to learn more about the subject that inspired you to capture a photograph, the images become all the more meaningful.

I’ve been publishing my Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ) email newsletter for over seven years now, and from time to time I’ve explored ways to bring new value without fixing what isn’t broken. I have resisted the urge to include images in the email for a variety of reasons. I’ve contemplated utilizing an attached PDF to enable more flexible formatting with images, but that introduces a challenge for the many readers who check their email primarily on a portable device (yes, these are mostly iPhone users, and I hear from them whenever a formatting issue makes the DDQ emails less than readable on the iPhone).

So often I’ve thought about how much easier it would be to show someone what I’m talking about in an answer rather than have them read about it in the email. As attendees of my workshops can surely appreciate, seeing something done while it is being explained takes the learning experience to a whole new level.

Suddenly it made perfect sense to provide answers via video, especially since I’ve been utilizing video for teaching in a variety of ways for a number of years. And YouTube makes this all so simple.

Today’s edition of the DDQ email newsletter was the first to include an accompanying video. The question related to the best method for converting a color image into black & white, and I provided an answer both in text and in the form of a screen capture video posted to my channel on YouTube.

My hope is that this will make the DDQ email newsletter even more valuable to readers. Early responses indicate that readers already enthusiastically feel that goal has been achieved.

You can view the video inline below, or by visiting my channel on YouTube. And be sure to subscribe to my channel so you’ll receive automatic updates as new instructional videos are added.

This week I’m teaching a five-day workshop at the Art Wolfe Digital Photography Center, and it happened to coincide with Inauguration Day. In fact, class was scheduled to start right about the time Barack Obama was to be sworn in. And would you believe every single student was there on time?

Of course, Photoshop suddenly didn’t seem so important. So we used the projector as a super-big-screen TV and all watched the Inauguration live. We waited until the new president was done speaking to start class. It was worth waiting for in order to witness history.

There’s a weird time warp that happens when you write magazine articles. You get an assignment, and of course wait until the last minute to fulfil it, so there’s a bit of a lag there. Then you submit the article, and it is generally at least a couple months before it goes to press. And, typically, it takes at least another few weeks before you receive a copy of that issue and actually realize that your article is in the magazine.

Such was the case as I finally reviewed the November/December 2008 issue of Layers magazine. It features an article I wrote called “Taking Aim”, which talks about framing the shot properly in camera instead of relying on Photoshop to fix things after the fact (though I also talk briefly about cropping in Photoshop for situations where that becomes necessary).

Seeing the article in print (and enjoying the great job Layers magazine did with the layout) brought back part of the inspiration for writing the article in the first place. I’ve noticed a growing trend lately, where photographers are starting to focus more on the fundamentals of photography than the details of digital.

Now, as someone who makes a living primarily helping photographers make the most of what happens after the image is captured, it might seem odd that I’d be concerned about what happens during the capture. But the truth is my passion revolves around producing the very best images possible, and that requires starting with the best capture and then performing the best techniques in post-processing.

So I’m gratified to see more and more photographers focusing on creating better images in the first place, and I hope my article in Layers magazine helps some photographers improve upon that goal.

I love applying targeted adjustments to my images via layer masks and adjustment layers, and quite often those targeted adjustments start with a selection. That’s why I often spend about a full day out of a typical five-day workshop teaching a variety of ways to create selections.

Of course, quite often photographers find selections to be challenging. It isn’t a lack of tools at their disposal, or even a lack of skill on their part. Rather, it is the presence of something in the object they’re trying to select: fuzzy stuff. Specifically, hair, feathers, or fur. These things can create quite a challenge.

I’ve often taught the use of the Extract filter to create a selection in these difficult situations. So I was more than a little dismayed the first time I went to create a selection using Extract in Photoshop CS4. Extract had been extracted!

Fortunately, extract still exists. It simply isn’t installed with Photoshop CS4 by default. It seems Adobe feels you can get better results more quickly by using other tools, such as the Quick Selection tool.

If you frequently need to create selections that would otherwise call for the Extract filter, you’re probably better off using a more advanced tool such as Mask Pro from onOne Software, which does a much better job than Extract.

But if you don’t need a tool like this too often, or you’d rather not spend extra money for a more powerful tool, you can still put Extract to use in Photoshop CS4. If you purchased the DVD, you’ll find the Extract filter in the Goodies folder on that disc. If you purchased the download version, you can get Extract from the Adobe website. Copy the filter file to Photoshop’s Plug-ins/Filters folder and restart Photoshop. You’ll then find Extract on the Filter menu, safe and sound.