Journey Into Lightroom

English: Adobe Lightroom Icon Deutsch: Adobe L...
English: Adobe Lightroom Icon Deutsch: Adobe Lightroom Icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the month of March, Adobe is running a good discount on Photoshop and Lightroom Creative Cloud. Normally quite cost prohibitive for the non-professional, the cost of $10 a month was too much to pass up. My daughter wants Photoshop for her artwork and I’ve been wondering how Lightroom can change my photography. As WOW is becoming quite boring for me, it was an easy switch.

Once purchased, downloaded and installed, the search for tutorials started. On YouTube, I came across Anthony Morganti and his Quickstart training tutorials. After going through part 1, it was time to import some pictures to do some postwork. I went through some old photos and came across some from our vacation in Utah. When we visited Antelope Island on Salt Lake, it was overcast and rainy.  The rocks had more color and beauty than the lack of light allowed. How well could Lightroom open up these pictures?

Shooting in RAW mode on the Nikon D7000 has several advantages. RAW saves far more data about the image than JPEG and Lightroom takes full advantage of it. Once imported, it was time to see the adjustments Anthony suggests in his first video.

The first changes Anthony suggests is in the Basic area, setting Highlights to +100 and Shadows -100. The first will flatten the picture and the second will open it up. After performing this on several photos, I am not sure it is always necessary. It does seem a good place to start. It will be interesting to play with these settings as I learn.

Finishing the Basic section is adjusting the Whites and Blacks by holding the Option key down while moving the slider. Anthony’s suggestion is to just allow the Whites in and deepen the Blacks quite a bit. It will depend on the photo, of course. This is also to the taste of the photographer and what is wanted with the post-processing. Here too is another place to learn. Clarity, vibrance, and saturation are adjusted to preference.

Lens correction is another section visited. On some photos, it makes little difference, but on wide angle shots it helps to straighten them out. As the Nikon D7000 will save lens information in the EXIF data, Lightroom will compare against its database and adjust as required. The photos loaded so far used a Nikkor lens. I do have some using my Tamron and it be interesting to see what changes are required for it.

Sharpening and Luminance under Noise Reduction are the next standard place to use a standard setting: 70 and 40, respectively. Adjusting the various colors and details is all according to the needs of the photograph and what the photographer is trying to do. I have learned that push the various colors dials too much can give the picture an other-worldly look. This is good to know, though, as there are times when such results will be wanted.

Here are a few pictures I’ve placed in my Flickr photostream:

Salt Lake Rocks - V 2 - 2012
Salt Lake Rocks – V 2 – 2012 (Photo credit: BrainMuffin)
Salt Lake Rocks - #2
Salt Lake Rocks – #2 (Photo credit: BrainMuffin)

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Tell Me Again About My Metabolism

Fitness
Fitness (Photo credit: JAMES LORD productions)

Growing up, I was the skinny kid. Though I liked to play sports, I was usually the last picked in school games and I hated “shirts v. skins”. Being 6’5″ and 150 pounds soaking wet, I was very self-conscious of my body as a teenager.

After high school, I did gain a little bit of weight over the years. In 1990, as I approached 22, I started to start lighting and learned what I could. I didn’t have much money for supplements, so I ate quite a bit. The first 20 pounds to 190 were easy. After that, I got stronger, but had plateaued in my weight. No worries. For the next several years, I lifted regularly and did ski patrol during the winter. Then we had kids.

I took too many years off and when I finally got back to working out on a regular basis, I was over 200 with a 36 inch waist. I wasn’t in the best of shape and looked forward to gaining some more proper weight. That was about two years ago.

The first year back, I used the 200 pounds of dumbbells I had at home, pulling each heavier set out of the garage when I reached their need. It was humbling to start at 5 pounds, but that is life. During this first year, I noticed I was still gaining in the waist, so I started cutting back on sandwiches and at more salad. It made a small, but noticeable difference.

A year ago I upped the game.

Now all sandwiches are out. Gluten was giving too much weight gain in the gut. I also really started to cut my sugar, fructose in particular. The more research I did on sugar, the more I realized what a poison it is for the human body. Artificial sweetners are not much better. Best to get rid of it. I also cut back on beer, chocolate, pasta, tea. I greatly increased the amount of water I drank in a day to at least 3 liters. More lean protein, brown rice, red potatoes (sometimes sweet as well), more fiber, good fats, nuts.

My workouts also changed. I had been doing many of the workouts Steve Holman gives in his articles in Iron Man Magazine, but now I did them more split. I also started to look at the suggestions and articles of others. I was spending too much time in the gym. I upped the intensity and aimed to finish in an hour, warm up and stretching included. Now sets were 20-30 reps, done in 1 second positive/2 seconds negative caidance. I did hyper-extensions and crunches before every workout.

Then came November and the planking challenge.

The first few days were easy, but once it got to more than a minute, it became tough. I mean very tough. My abs shacked. My shoulders shacked. I had to pause, then go again. The results, however, spoke for itself. My abs started to get tighter. It helped my squats. It helped my dead-lift.

A year later and the result is I went from average 209 pounds to 215, but my waist is now an inch smaller. I went from a 35-36 inch waist to 34-35. Yes, a year to lose an inch. Me. Mister High Metabolism and eat anything. Because, I can’t eat anything I want. My cheat days consists of a single doughnut. No more going crazy over the weekend. The crap food I used to eat now makes me ill. I’ve not gone fully Paleo, but I am headed that way. Eat like the government tells you and you will gain weight. That is a given. Eat like you should and the results will be their own encouragement.

Enhanced by Zemanta