The Strobist Blog - great example of leveraging community

For the past several months, I've been following the Strobist, a blog that focuses on helping photographers learn lighting techniques employing low cost off camera strobes.  What sets them apart however, is that they chose to plug in to Flickr and create a Flickr group where Strobist readers can actively participate in a community by posting shots with descriptions of the equipment they used and their techniques. 

Since the group is a forum, members (close to 7,000 people strong) can create and comment on various topics associated with off camera lighting, they can post samples of their work for feedback and share ideas and expertise.  "The Strobist" uses his blog to moderate and highlight interesting topics that he wants to call out. 

I just created my own Flickr account and have joined the Stobist group.  For me personally, I think there is tremendous value in this type of model and look forward to learning a bunch, but also hopefully being able to pass along some good info that can help other photographers capture that next killer shot. 

Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master Collection

I've been running the beta version of Photoshop CS3 and loving it, so I was happy to see the official unveiling of the pricing today for CS3 + a whole slew of other Adobe and Macromedia products as well.  Next to my camera and lenses, Photoshop (and Bridge) are the most critical components of my work flow.  I rely heavily on actions for example, to automate my workflow and produce post processing effects that help to personalize my photography. 

I'm also a big fan of Macromedia and make prodigious use of Dreamweaver to build and maintain my family website.  When time allows (which admittedly isn't often enough) I like to dabble in Flash and therefore have purchased Macromedia Studio MX in the past. 

Before I caught the photography bug, I was addicted to nonlinear digital video editing.  I remember producing a video shortly after my son Nathan was born (1999) and I'd have to let the video render overnight because the software/hardware just wasn't there yet.  Then in 2001 I dropped $5,000 on an Alienware (now owned by Dell) digital video editing box that was tricked out with all of the latest hardware and software.  I was in heaven except for the fact that I hated dealing with the mini-DV tapes in my camera.  If you didn't black the tapes prior to use, the software would get the time signatures confused and because there are lot's of moving parts, I found that my camera was constantly in the shop getting worked on.  So needless to say, I've back burnered my video editing, and been anxiously awaiting the arrival of hard drive based video cameras. 

Last year I found one that I was ready to buy, but I put it on hold because of lack of support for the AVCHD standard that the camera outputs.  Even Sony's own Vegas product does not yet have support for it.  The AVCHD Consortium site says that Adobe has expressed support for the standard, but I can't find any info on the Adobe site about their support or non-support of AVCHDin Premier. 

To get back to the point of this post, I was excited to see that Adobe is going to offer a SKU called Master Collection that includes the kitchen sink (Photoshop, Premiere, DreamWeaver, Flash, Illustrator, Acrobat and a ton of other tools I'll probably never have the time or need to use.  If Adobe announces that Premiere Pro CS3 supports AVCHD, my order will be placed immediately ;-) 

What a difference a year makes!

Last year at this time, Nathan was starting his first season of playing t-ball.  Today was Nathan's first baseball practice! This year, they have a pitching machine and Nathan connected with his first pitch. 

Last year, it was all about making the kids comfortable with the sport, so they didn't enforce the rules and each kid had a turn at bat and got to run the bases.  This year, they start to play by the rules, which I'm told can make for some long game days ;-)

Then there is Cole.  I was busy watching Nathan's practice and when I turned around to look for Cole, I found him at the top of the monkey bars and quickly shot this picture of our fearless little climber.

Finally, here's a shot I took of Ian before packing it in and calling it a day.  It's going to be a fun Springtime ;-)

Pictures of Nathan on a Rainy Day

I don't think I left the computer all day today.  I worked on the blog and a bunch of other stuff and looked at the time and it's after 9:30PM!  I did take a few minutes however, to capture a few shots of Nathan by the window in my office. 

I thought that each of these expressed a little different side of Nathan. 

Documenting a Child's Life DVD from Me Ra Koh Photography

Our friends Me Ra Koh and Brian Tausend have been slaving away for the last couple of months producing a new DVD series targeting moms titled "Documenting a Child's Life".

They are setting out to make all of the mom's of the world more comfortable with their Digital SLR camera's and instructing them on how to take better photographs of their kids. Me Ra and Brian do an amazing job of simplifying and demystifying the technical jargon that surrounds photography and advanced cameras (SLRs for example).

Erin recently attended one of Me Ra's workshops for women and came back so inspired. She's hardly put the camera down and has been filling up our hard drive with all kinds of creative shots.

Soft Focus Photoshop Action for Professional Portraits

Every once in a while I'll come across an article that will completely change my life. Maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but an article by Eddie Tapp in the June 2006 edition of Rangefinder magazine comes close.

Eddie writes an article about a Carl Zeiss Softar 1 filter that he used to use in the 70s with his medium format camera. He ended up losing it and 30 years later he shows his readers how to create the effect in Photoshop CS2. Before I hand over the effect (saved as a custom action), lets look at what it does and how you use it. First, here's the original portrait before applying the soft focus.
View Sharp image

And now the same portrait after applying the soft focus action:
View Soft Focus image

In addition to the effect being subtle, you'll notice that the subjects features are in focus. An important rule in portrait photography is that the eyes must be in focus. I'll extend that to include the mouth, nose and any jewelry or whisps of hair that look funny with the soft focus applied.

Click Here to download the custom action. Save the file to disk and save it in a folder where you plan to store other actions.
Next, open Photoshop and find the Actions pane. [alt + F9] or select it under the Windows menu.
Next, click on the the little triangle in the top right corner of the actions pane and select Load Actions

Browse to the directory that contains the file you just downloaded (Backlight.atn) and select it.
Now the custom action should show up in the Actions Pane. [TIP] Click on the triangle in the Actions pane again and select Button Mode. This makes it a synch to apply the effect with a single click.
Now open the photo you want to use to apply the soft focus effect to. Now click on the Backlight Soft Focus button in the actions pane and you should notice that the portrait blurs slightly.
Now zoom in to view the picture at full resolution and use the paint brush (which should already be selected) to paint over the eyes, mouth, nose and other features that you want to bring back into focus. When you are pleased with the results, you can flatten the image (Layer / Flatten Image menu) and save it in whichever format you'd like.
That's all there is to it! Enjoy.
Advanced tip:

You can adjust the intensity of the effect by going into the layers window and expanding the Backlight Diffusion Group. You'll notice that there are two layers of gaussian blur being applied of varying degress of opacity. One adds a "Darken" blending mode and the other a "Lighten" blending mode. TAdjusting the opacity closer to 100% in each of the layers will strengthen the effect.

Erin photographs the kids

Click on the picture for a slideshow!

Erin has been honing her photography skills and having a blast taking pictures of the kids. Check out her latest work spanning the last couple of weeks.

Purchase David Streams Photography Prints from Digital Railroad!

I recently created an account with Digital Railroad.  They will help me to manage, market and sell my photography to buyers and agencies around the world!  You can check out my archive here. 

Erin attends her second photography workshop of '07

Erin and I are friends with Me Ra Koh and Brian Tausend who in addition to being amazing people are also accomplished wedding photographers. Last October, Me Ra decided to start building workshops for mom's to learn how to take better pictures of their kids. Last weekend Erin and a couple of her friends attended Me Ra's last workshop for the winter season and she came back absolutely inspired. I don't think she's put down the camera since she came back Satursday evening.

Me Ra is also putting together a DVD series packed with great information that is going to be ready later this Spring.  Check her blog for more info!

Erin took some amazing pictures at the workshop.  I'll post some of them as soon as she's had a chance to process them in Photoshop, which by the way is another skillset that Erin is picking up so quickly!