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Photo Goals 2009

I really like this short set of new year Lightroom resolutions over at the O’Reilly Lightroom Blog. I have lots of room to improve my own use of Lightroom specifically, and my approach to my photography in general. I do think I have a good start at some of it, and I’ve really enjoyed writing about my experiences with Lightroom: Specifically apropos of Gene’s article, I’ve written a bit about my approaches to Lightroom file organization, cleaning up duplicate keywords, and adopting a backup routine. It has also been very rewarding to get nice feedback from other LR users on those articles. I’m looking forward to continuing my Lightroom writing projects in 2009.

Beyond the software/organizational side of things, I’ve been thinking the past few days about other elements of my photography that I want to develop [aargh] in the coming months. I’m hesitating to call these “resolutions,” but perhaps that’s what they are. In no particular order, here are a few of them.

  • I’d like to take more photos of people. There’s a vibrance to portraits that I love to encounter in other peoples’ photostreams, and I don’t get much practice at it. H tolerates my saying “just a couple more” for only so long, after all.
  • Related to the above, I would love to make my photography a more social endeavor. Flagsbürgtown should offer lots of possibilities for this, but I haven’t really taken advantage of them. My first attempt at generating some interest in a photowalk via the local flickr group garnered exactly zero responses, but I’ll try, try again.
  • Seems like as good a year as any to start learning lighting and flash, doesn’t it?
  • Creative vision, etc, etc.

I kind of yadda-d that last one, but it’s probably the most important one to me. I’d really like to start turn my photography into something more personally expressive. To tell the truth, I’m not sure what that means, but I do think it’s time. This may mean I shoot more but post fewer photos, or identify some projects to take on — who knows? I’ll keep you posted.

To closeout, here’s a set of a few of my own favorite photos from 2008. No particular criteria, just a couple (or so) per month that I particularly liked. Click through to the flickr page for the full sized version and links to the individual photos.

A few faves from 2008

Happy new year!

The year in Lightroom, by the numbers

I started last year to play with pulling data right out of my Lightroom catalog. How fun to combine interests in photography with my need to make data out of things. Last year about this time I posted some 2007 photo stats, and with the release of Lightroom 2 I came up with some keyword network maps of my flickr images.

Over at The Online Photographer, Marc Rochkind did some writing about meta metadata and released a tool for OS X that produces much more summary information than I had previously considered: His tool produces by-lens statistics on cropping and aspect ratio in addition to focal length usage. This generated some thoughtful conversation about composing in the viewfinder versus cropping, and Marc’s work spurred me to think more about my own stats, and so I went back to my own Lightroom 2 catalog with the sqlite browser and R to see if I could reproduce for myself some of the more interesting data that Marc’s tool generated. After some tinkering, I think I have a functional, reusable set of R tools for generalized reporting of Lightroom image data.

Like Marc’s ImageReporter, I can filter by image type, picks, ratings, Quick Collection, camera model (though this matters less for me since I have one P&S and one DSLR) and time period, and I added filtering by color label as well — hey, just for fun, even though I don’t use the color labels (I generally get rating fatigue using anything more than picks.)

So, what do I have? First, a reproduction of the stats I checked out last year: Monthly photos and focal length:

The year in Lightroom

I continue to primarily use my prime lenses, and my picture-taking appears to have notched down dramatically as compared to 2007. This is partly because of work, of course, but also because I’ve become much more selective about what I actually keep in the catalog.

We can break out focal length a bit more. For the two zooms that I use on my K100D, what are the mean focal lengths?

> lensFL [1] “5.8-23.2 mm“ “15“ [3] “85.0 mm f/1.8“ “85“ [5] “smc PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL“ “31“ [7] “smc PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2 AL Limited“ “21“ [9] “smc PENTAX-DA 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED“ “121“ [11] “smc PENTAX-DA 70mm F2.4 Limited“ “70“ [13] “smc PENTAX-FA 35mm F2 AL“ “35“ [15] “smc PENTAX-FA 50mm F1.4“ “50“

So that’s kind of interesting, suggesting that I use the 200mm zoom at about the middle of its range. But the mean isn’t necessarily informative. Here’s a plot of focal length for one of those zooms:

Focal lengths plot, DA 50-200mm lens, 2008

So, I use the 50-200mm lens primarily for shots at either extreme of its length, and I already have a 50mm fixed lens that takes better photos than the zoom at that distance. Moreover, breaking out just picks with this lens shows a three-to-one preference for 200mm than for 50mm. I think that means I need a long prime. Ka-ching!

I can also consider crop: How am I doing at composing in-camera? Here’s how often I crop, by lens, as a percentage:

	smc PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL   9.13 %
	smc PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2 AL Limited 17.67 %
	smc PENTAX-DA 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED    6.93 %
	smc PENTAX-DA 70mm F2.4 Limited    23.78 %
	smc PENTAX-FA 35mm F2 AL           10.71 %
	smc PENTAX-FA 50mm F1.4            24.67 %

And, when I do crop, how much of the original composition do I keep?

	smc PENTAX-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL  78.3 %                            
	smc PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2 AL Limited 81.8 %                            
	smc PENTAX-DA 50-200mm F4-5.6 ED   81.6 %                            
	smc PENTAX-DA 70mm F2.4 Limited    80.9 %                            
	smc PENTAX-FA 35mm F2 AL           83.4 %                            
	smc PENTAX-FA 50mm F1.4            82.5 %

So, I’m cropping quite a bit. As Marc found in his exploration, these numbers go up when I filter by picks. I was surprised that I crop as much as I do with the DA21mm in particular, since I think of my use of it as being mostly for wide landscapes; but even those often enough are a bit crooked, enough to warrant at least some adjustment of tilt —- and Lightroom calls that adjustment a crop (fairly).

Does cropping mean I do a poor job at composing in-camera? Possibly. I have to admit that knowing I can crop gives me a conscientious freedom when I’m shooting, but these numbers give me something to think about. Maybe careful composition will be something to work on as I go forward.

We can cut all this in a few other ways. I’d like to take a look at my common keywords during a given time period, for example, but that will wait for the follow-up post, I think. This is more than enough nerdery for one January 1st afternoon.

Quick Lightroom 2 Tip: Show untagged images

I haven’t used Lightroom 2’s library filter extensively, but it’s really pretty powerful and I found a good use for it this morning. Having tagged a big batch of new images somewhat helter-skelterly, I found myself wondering if I could view just the images that I had not yet tagged, so that I could take care of them and be all done with this round of keywording. The library filter does this handily:

lightroom 2 metadata browser - setting presets

Open the filter pane (hit \ to activate and deactivate it), then select the “text” controller, and set it to “Keywords” “Are Empty”, and there you go: Lightroom 2 will display just the untagged images in the current view. Very handy, and the display will update as you proceed to tag, slipping newly-tagged images out of view.

I saved this library filter view as a preset using the dropdown controller available in the upper right of the pane, so I can quickly retrieve it any time I like.

Update: I see the following in a good post over at the O’Reilly Lightroom blog:

One of the example smart collections that is installed with Lightroom is Without Keywords. Take a look at the image count for this collection. If it’s anything other than 0 then get in there and add some keywords!

Nice! I haven’t much explored smart collections. That built-in collection is a great find.

Lightroom 2 Raw Development: Exposure

Last time in my ongoing ramblings on Lightroom 2 raw workflow, I focused on white balance. Today we move along a bit further with some elements of exposure.

A note about workflow seems pertinent: Lightroom’s preset abilities are pretty extensive, but I don’t make a whole lot of use of them, particularly for raw development (Though I do have lots of metadata presets that I apply at import to apply information about location). The develop presets make the most sense to me for repeated, reliable situations: Shooting in a studio, for example, where you know combinations of lens and light and in which case the effort to tune and save those presets will be rewarded. That’s my experience so far, so I’ve neglected to spend much time working with develop presets.

So let’s talk about exposure. Lightroom provides an exposure histogram in the upper right pane. The histogram quantifies the amount of light found between black, at the left end, and white, at the right side of the plot. A histogram with nothing but a steep peak at the right end will likely appear washed out or overexposed; likewise, a plot with nothing but a peak at the far left will be dark, lacking highlights.

Lightroom 2 histogram screenshot

Here’s what this particular histogram is telling us:

  • In its histogram display, Lightroom provides some basic image information: ISO, focal length, aperture, and shutter speed.
  • We have light basically all throughout the plot’s range, with a particular peak close to the bright end.
  • Overall, the exposure of this image isn’t bad. We can adjust exposure either with the exposure slider or by grabbing and dragging the center portion of the histogram left or right to obtain the kind of effect we want to get. I tend to boost exposure a bit when working up my photos —- but be careful when sliding exposure rightward: too much will add speckly noise to the image.
  • The filled triangles at the upper left and right corners are clipping indicators; since they’re filled, it means that this image has some amount of both cut off highlights (right end of histogram: “blown highlights”) and clipped darks (left end of histogram). That is, some detail is lost in the brightest and darkest areas of the photos. The more clipping, the brighter the fill of the triangles. You can see the clipping in the histogram as the blue peak pressed up against the left edge, and the grey/red smooshed into the right end. To see just what’s lost, hit J. The blue and red superimposed over the image represent lost darks and lights, respectively.

Here’s a sample image. On the right is an illustration of the highlight clipping revealed by hitting J in the develop module:

Lightroom 2 sample image Lightroom 2 sample image

To bring a bit more detail back into this image, especially some of the texture in that yukon gold, you use the “recover” slider in the develop pane, or simply drag the rightmost edge of the histogram back toward the left side: hover the mouse along different parts of the histogram to identify the various draggable regions. As you increase the “recovery” value or drag that right end leftward, you’ll see the red blown highlights indications start to fade, as in the image below where the recovery slider has been pegged all the way rightward:

Lightroom 2 sample image Lightroom 2 sample image

Adjust per taste. See how much more gray the background of this image has become by pegging the recovery? Lightroom can often recover a ton of detail in highlights, but at the extreme end the cost will be a dimming of the overall image.

The same goes for darks: You can bring detail back out of a black swatch of image by reducing the “blacks” slider or by dragging the leftmost end of the histogram back to the right a bit. I often find it works nicely to drag that histogram until the leftmost slope of the dark end of the plot rests just at the edge of the display — that is, where you’ve just barely recovered all the clipped dark areas.

While measurements of light and dark can be quantified in the histogram, appreciation of light and dark are subjective. Leaving blown highlights (or intentionally blowing them by increasing the exposure — grab the middle of that histogram and pull it rightwards until you see something you like) and lost black regions of an image may help convey exactly what you want an image to do.

One more exposure-related tip: Fill light. Use this slider (or, as always, slide the histogram itself — the fill light region is just shy of the leftmost “darks” region of the plot) to bring up the light in the image’s shadowy regions without boosting the overall exposure. This can do wonders for errant shadows across a face.

Be watchful for new noise when you add fill light, and it’s a good idea to bump up the “clarity“ slider in conjunction with fill light, since fill light tends to take a bit of the punch out of the image.

So, there’s a quick take on adjusting exposure with Lightroom 2. Between white balance and exposure, you have the core set of adjustments to your raw images covered, but there’s more to come: Further tuning involves sharpening, noise reduction, and crops, as well as other adjustments we might make to color. Some discussion of those are coming up in my next installment of Lightroom for the Rest of Us (or whatever it is I’ll be calling this series by then).

Getting Things Done: Task Writer

I got a nice email this morning from Katy at Task Writer, asking me to take a look at their web app for getting things done.

It’s been a while since I considered myself an active devotee of the GTD methodology, so I’m a bit out of touch with the state of the art, but Task Writer looks to me like an app that is both a) pretty highly usable, and b) built with GTD in mind — that is, it’s not like a broader list-making web app like Remember the Milk or gubb, or an all-purpose tool like stikkit (rest in peace) that can be turned into a list-making app that can do GTD; rather, all the organizational elements of GTD are built right in.

Actions are organized by lists (inbox, waiting, someday, etc) and @contexts (@car, @computer, @email …) and can be further associated with specific projects and given due dates. A set of checkboxes along the left-hand panel of the app turns on filters that display only the selected tasks.

Task Writer tinkering

Adding tasks is really straightforward (I’d like to see the option to not put new tasks into a project – after all, that’s what the #inbox is usually for), and projects are easy to add/edit. There are a few interface quirks — Safari-specific, perhaps? Text doesn’t always seem to wrap neatly in column headers, for example, and the overall interface is a little wide on my screen.

For the most part, Task Writer seems to achieve a couple of things that are noteworthy: It’s specifically built for GTD, so there’s no obstacle to experienced users jumping in and immediately using it. But it’s also approachable enough, and starts with enough pre-built structure (a few lists, contexts, and projects) that one could use it without being a full-bore Next Action Acolyte.

I can see Task Writer really taking off. There’s nice room for some improvement, too: More keyboard shortcuts, a review mode (“what did I get done this week? last week?“), and being able to email/twitter tasks straight into it are features that could really give it a big boost.

If you’re looking for a new Getting Things Done-focused app or in the market for a capable list-making tool, I’d give Task Writer a good look.

From Raw to Rawwwr: Lightroom 2 Raw Development for the Rest of Us

I have a casual obsession with Lightroom 2 and have had a load of fun tinkering with the Lightroom catalog database to extract information about my photographs. More recently, I’ve been writing over the past handful of weeks about my workflow in Lightroom 2 from the perspective of an enthusiastic but non-professional user. I’ve previously covered organization and keywords. This time around, the topic is using LR2 to work up raw photos.

Why would one shoot in raw? Raw is an image format meant to preserve as much original image data as possible; that information can be manipulated much more flexibly and effectively than the comparably limited range of image data contained in a JPG or TIFF image. A raw image with bad exposure or white balance can be salvaged, while a JPG — lacking the image information of raw — offers far less latitude for recovery. Meanwhile, JPGs produced by most digital cameras have some amount of sharpening, exposure, and contrast adjustment applied in-camera, while raw images are essentially straight representations of what the camera “saw” when taking the photo. This means that raw images will almost always need a bit of color tweaking and sharpening. Hence the eternal quest for a reliable, easy-to-apply workflow for “developing” raw images to best effect, and the subject that brings me to the MacBook today.

After importing and doing preliminary tagging, flagging and deleting of images, I start in on working up the raw images.

White Balance

White Balance is the first thing to tackle. The point of correcting white balance is to give the right color tone to the “neutral” (white or grey) colors in your image. In other words, you want white to look white. If the WB is off, your photos will have an unnaturally cool or warm cast.

In Lightroom 2, you can adjust white balance in both develop and library modules using presets for different light types, and in the develop module via the temperature sliders. (There are a couple of quick-develop buttons for temperature, but I generally avoid using them.)

The most common white balance adjustment I make starts with selecting the “tungsten” preset. This immediately removes the too-hot feel of photos taken in incandescent light — ie, most sources of indoor, non-flash light.

LR2 screenshot

After using the Tungsten preset, it’s usually necessary to make a few adjustments: This is when I use the Tint and Temperature sliders in the develop module for subtle shifts, often to add just a bit more warmth to the light by nudging the Temp control a tiny bit back to the right. It’s a good idea to swing the Temp control around a bit just to see what kind of difference it makes to give a bit more warmth or coolness to an image.

Mixed light provides a dilemma for white balance. Light from an overhead lamp plus natural sunlight through a window, for example, can be tricky to adjust. I find that setting the Tungsten preset will cool off the overall color cast, but will also amplify the parts of the image that are already a bit cooler — the natural sunlight — giving them a sharp blue tone, especially around highlights. My solution to this is to desaturate the blues a bit, which takes the edge off that coolness. In Lightroom 2, you have even more ability to make that correction by using the adjustment brush to spot-desaturate the highlights that are made too cold by adjusting to Tungsten. The below shot illustrates an image that’s been tweaked by first presetting WB to Tungsten, and then backing off the blue saturation just a few points.

LR2 screenshot

But wait, there’s more! While the Tungsten preset is good, it’s not always quite right. As alternative, use the White Balance Dropper — that’s the dropper button next to the WB selector in the develop module. Click it, then click a spot in your image that should be nice and neutral, a white or grey spot. Presto! Instant white balance. When I can’t quite decide on the right balance, I often use this tool on various spots of the image to quickly try out a range of white balances. The shortcut for the WB dropper is W, which you can use in both grid and develop modes.

Once you’re happy with the white balance of a given image, you can quickly apply those settings to the remainder of similar images with the “sync settings” command: Swap over to grid mode, select the corrected image first, and then click-select the others with similar light, and finally sync ( shift-cmd-S).

There’s much more to the raw workflow: Exposure, sharpening, and so on, and I’ll tackle some of those next time.


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