Discusson Group Notes November 27, 2009
8 members attended.
George showed us his portfolio with trains, planes and trucks. In one he had a dog that looked like it was driving. George had a number of very good photos of people and vehicles.
I passed around one of my new picture books, this one titled "Paint, The Big Book of Natural Color" by Hilliard and Cliff. It's practically new but I got it at a thrift shop for, as I recall, $1.50. The photos inside are filled with natural colors like adobe, flowers, and frogs as well as man-made colors such as rain coats, painted walls, and chocolate cake. It has photos of candy reminiscent of Lee and Terri's M&Ms and plenty of ideas for tabletop photography. Thrift shops, antique shops, and used bookstores are goldmines for finding picture books for very low prices. Mary mentioned that the group, "Friends of the Library" sells a lot of books for low prices. There is usually a location for a small selection of their books inside the libraries and, periodically, they have large sales with thousands of books. Yard sales are sometimes good too.
I passed around a printed copy of my web-based "Photo Basics I" class that I'm writing up for a possible commercial venture. So far I'm up to 42 pages but it shouldn't get much bigger. I hope to try it out on a few volunteers soon. Donna used to teach 7th grade photography and has a long list of web sites that she used to use.
Phil said that he saw a show on MSN.com which said that the last Kodachrome processing lab in the U.S. is now shut down. If you want to have some of that film processed it now has to go outside of the US.
I saw a show on the Ovation channel the other day about a photographer who made photos on large glass sheets, apparently as negatives. These were mostly of bodies decomposing in a field (I didn't catch where) but also some of her children. One of the child shots took three minutes of exposure. The photographer was Sally Mann and the show was "What Remains.
http://ovationtv.com/programs/276-sally-mann-what-remains
Donna said that she just got a Canon Rebel T1i with 15 MP and two lenses from Costco. I don't remember how much she paid but Costco is advertising the T1i for $850.
We got onto the subject of antiques and Phil said that some of the Santa Clarita thrift shops are well known for selling antique photography equipment. I mentioned that one of the antique malls in Bakersfield (older part of town) has several cabinets full of old camera equipment.
We talked about the LPA workshop on "Color Management." I thought it was good but that it was probably difficult for folks who didn't already understand things like gamut and ICM. I tried my hand at explaining it using the example of boxes of crayons, each with 24 crayons, 8 red, 8 green, and 8 blue. Each color would have shades from dark to bright. This would be the gamut for these crayons. If you wanted to match a picture drawn with some other brand of crayons, that didn't use the same shades, then you would have to create an ICM to select the closest matching shade for each crayon. Donna thought that it was an interesting way of explaining it.
The biggest thing I learned from the workshop was that the White Balance on cameras affects only the color temperature. What bothers me about this is that switching between different light sources, say tungsten and mercury vapor lights, changes a lot more than just color temperature. Doing a web search I found one site that talked about a green-magenta adjustment to take care of some of the source differences not fixed by temperature. In looking at Photoshop Camera Raw I noticed that right under the color temperature adjustment is the green-magenta adjustment. I hope that the next generation of White Balance software in cameras will actually adjust each color individually.
Mary showed us a photo that she printed at home that came out too dark. It was a nice photo but she said that she wanted to make it look like what was on her monitor. We gave her different ideas of what she can do. I suggested that she do like I do, darken her monitor until it matches her photo then go into photoshop and adjust the image until she likes it. Or she could try calibrating her monitor with a Spyder.
Around the table we talked about Photoshop Elements, RAW photos, and such.
If you can, please join us each Friday evening at Denny's at the corner of Ave K and 20th West. We begin about 6:30 PM and usually go to at least 8:30 PM. You can drop by at anytime and stay for as long as you like (you don't even have to buy anything). Denny's has graciously provided us a section to ourselves and the service is great.
All photography related subjects are fair game and there's never a planned agenda. You can bring in your questions, your stories, your equipment, your photos (paper or digital), or even just yourself to sit, listen, and/or talk.
I would again like to extend a special invitation to both new members and the more expert members who would like to participate in these informal discussions.
You are welcome to visit the LPA forum and leave your comments......
Glenn Olson
Coordinator and Moderator
glenn@glenn-olson.com
816-8278
