Nadnerb

I have been editing, deleting, and generally going through all of the photos that I have taken in the past. Ultimately I did this to justify my purchase of a Flickr Pro account. Which, if you are a photographer is totally worth the price. While I personally believe that a good photographer has to be created, the tech that they may or may not use is always interesting. So today I thought I would tell you about what I am currently using.

Camera: Nikon D5000 with Nikkor 18-55 mm AF-S VR Lens
Computer Stuff: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
-LR2/Mogrify Plugin
-Flickr Uploader
-GIMP
-Photomatix Pro 3

As you can see, I go through a few steps before I actually upload to flickr. Step one is always just go through the pictures and weed out the ones that are blurry, too dark/light, etc.(i.e: ones that cannot be fixed). I then go through the ones that I kept and color correct them. For fast action things that may be random like weddings or sports or children, take as many pictures as you possibly can and always try to get your lighting adjustments set before things happen. Cropping is the next major thing for me and I almost always crop things out of the pictures that I like. For pictures that I think would look cool if altered I through them into the GIMP (a free photoshop alternative) and play with the filters. This is the part where people just go crazy though and end up ruining a picture. I’ve seen people just layer filter on filter until you can hardly tell what the picture once was. A tip to all photographers amateur and pro is to keep it simple. Over saturated HDR pics may be all the rage right now, but instead it should really be used to take photo’s that show all parts of the picture in great light and rich color, not a rainbow exploding in your face. Photomatix is a great program, but there is a special way to use it and not everyone can take a good HDR photo. It’s the same with Tilt-shift and every other type of artsiness in photo. Moving on. The plugin that I mentioned is wonderful and is the best possible way that you could add frames, watermarks, titles, or all of those to one or multiple pictures. At first I thought I would just upload my work as is, but then I looked at people that did frame their stuff like this and it really made the picture pop, but it also added a name to the picture and I could use it multiple places and not have to worry about copyright or getting any recognition. Then we export and use the uploader. Yes, I do know that there is a flickr uploader plugin for lightroom, but I have had horrible trouble with it and it took forever, It has also crapped out on me in the middle of an upload overnight, so it was there for a good 5 hours doing completely nothing. Not very helpful. I think I have said all that I need to. I’ll add links to all the software tomorrow, it’s kinda late. Stay pretty.