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Archive of ‘Technology’ category

Personal, Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Friday the 13th

It’s a full moon tonight, and on Friday the 13th too! I know there are some crazy stats on how many times that congruence has happened, and how many years it will be until it will happen again. It will be a cloudy evening for us in the metro DC area. So, it will not be a good night for moon watching. I will have the camera at the ready in case there is a break in the clouds! Here are some photos from a less cloudy day in DC.

Washington, DC - Smithsonian Castle - ©TimeLine Media
Washington, DC – Smithsonian Castle – ©TimeLine Media

We walked back to the Smithsonian Castle to get more exterior photos in the gardens at this time. It is always nice to get a second chance at a shoot. This is something that is impossible in most situations. At sporting events, weddings, or corporate presentations, you only get one chance to capture the images that they are wanting. Practice with my gear is really needed in personal shoots like these photo walks. It gets me familiar with all the different settings, where all the buttons are located on the camera body, and how to dial them in. I remember something that I used on this walk to help with the events I covered over the weekend. Moreover I will probably use on my next shoot.

Smithsonian Castle, Washington, DC - ©TimeLine Media
Smithsonian Castle, Washington, DC – ©TimeLine Media

The red bricks of the castle really pop out nicely in high dynamic range photos. With the sun high in a partly cloudy sky, the background becomes a beautiful blue. After putting the bracketed images through the HDR processor, you can really boost the structure of the bricks, and the color of sky to make them contrast nicely. I was much happier with the image I was able to get from this walk through than the one a few weeks ago. It was much later in the evening, the sun was a little closer to the horizon giving more direction to the light.

Reflecting pool by Smithsonian Castle - ©TimeLine Media
Reflecting pool by Smithsonian Castle – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Personal, Photography, Technology | 0 comment

OnOne Perfect Effects – Tech Thursday

Post Processing

Almost there with getting through my backlog of photo edits! Just in time for the weekend coming up. I am scheduled to cover the That’s Dancing Summer Showcase on Saturday. If you will be dancing, please see me at the studio! I will be taking orders there for special event pricing for your photos. For today’s post, I will be looking at the OnOne Software Perfect Effects 8 plugin for Adobe Lightroom.

Washington Monument - out of camera - ©TimeLine Media
Washington Monument – out of camera – ©TimeLine Media

Lightroom Plugin

If you follow OnOne on social media, or if you are on their mailing list, they have lots of tutors and offers for their products. A few months ago, they offered this program completely free! I have wanted to try their software for a while, but I know that I do not have the time to really invest in a new program. After downloading, it easily integrates into Lightroom. To start working on an image, right click the photo, select “Edit In” then select “Perfect Effects 8”. You will then have the option to work on the original image (if it is a Tiff or JPG file) or to work on a copy with Lightroom adjustments (if it is a RAW file).

OnOne Software Perfect Effects 8 - ©TimeLine Media
OnOne Software Perfect Effects 8 – ©TimeLine Media

The program will open and you have all the presets listed on the left. When you select one of the presets, the large preview in the middle of the screen will change with each selection. On the right panel, you can see that Perfect Effects uses layers, much like Photoshop, to have more control over the adjustments. For this preset, I like the saturation that it adds to the sky and the grass. Here is the photo after export-

Washington Monument - Magic Forest preset from Perfect Effects 8 - ©TimeLine Media
Washington Monument – Magic Forest preset from Perfect Effects 8 – ©TimeLine Media

The presets have a large amount of choices to change your images. You can add borders, grain, you can even make tilt shift images with their blur options. Many of these functions are already available from mobile photo editing apps, but now you can have this in the desktop. The control that you have over them can be fine-tuned with the layers in Perfect Effects 8. I will definitely try more of this with future projects to see the power of the program, but as a first try, it is really impressive!

Washington Monument with grain and borders from Perfect Effects 8 - ©TimeLine Media
Washington Monument with grain and borders from Perfect Effects 8 – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Ballroom Dance, Event, Photography, Technology | 2 Comments

Follow Subjects for Better Photos – Tech Thursday

Technique

It has been a very busy ballroom dance photography time! We have had a lot of amazing events to cover in the last month. I am finally completely through all of them and have them available to view online. We do have a little break here until we have another dance event. With this in mind I am taking a step back to review the images. With a few new photographers helping us at events, I have been asked about how I take photos. This is probably the most I have reflected on this process in a while. Usually I am just worried about getting to the location, and getting setup. Finally I make sure we have everything to do the job successfully without losing any images.

American Star Ball Championships - ©TimeLine Media
American Star Ball Championships – ©TimeLine Media

My best piece of advice for photographing ballroom dance or any sporting event, is to follow your subjects with your eye in the viewfinder. Some of the dancers are moving so fast that you would not be able to catch that moment in a frame. By the time you see the moment, then put your eye to the camera, the dancers may already be passed you, or their position may have changed where now the angle is not quite right. If you always have your eye in the camera, and follow the action, you will have a much better chance of catching that perfect frame of very fast action.

Dance Photography

Baltimore Dancesport Challenge - ©TimeLine Media
Baltimore Dancesport Challenge – ©TimeLine Media

This lesson is applicable on both a crowded dance floor or on a showcase of only one couple on the floor at once. If you try to photograph at Professional Standard competition, there are only a few moments where you can catch both dancer’s faces in the light. Their constant closed hold makes it easy to get either one of the dancers, but getting both can be tough unless you are tracking their movements. If there is only one couple on the floor, the job is easier as the distractions are much less. But all the same, you cannot just watch them with your eye out of the viewfinder, then see them start a line, and expect to get it framed up and captured well. This is the challenge, and the fun of photographing dancers on the floor! I am sure as I go through more of these photos, I will come up with more tips. I hope you enjoy all the photos currently on the website, and I will be back to making more soon!

Arthur Murray Spring Freestyles - ©TimeLine Media
Arthur Murray Spring Freestyles – ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships – follow dancers on the floor ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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