CalevPhoto

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A Status Update

Wow! Things have been amazingly busy.  Between a very hectic schedule at work and a lot of things at home – including gutting the entire interior of our house, I think I am finally back to the stage where I can begin to write blogs again.

Photography-wise, much has happened in the last several months.  I purchased the Canon TS-E 17 and the Canon TS-E 24 II lenses for a number of purposes and they are now two of my favorite lenses.  I will discuss them more in a future blog.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased Lightroom – along with Photoshop CS4.  I am still getting used to Lightroom and have barely used CS4 yet – though I hope to ramp up on them soon.  I do rather like Lightroom – particularly the keywording feature – though I must admit I’m still getting used to non-destructive editing.  I think the thing that annoys me most about it so far is I cannot (or at least I haven’t figured it out yet) overwrite the original JPEG.

I typically use the RAW file as my negative and the JPEG as my currently edited version.  If I change an image significantly – I’ll generally save it as a new file.

I have also learned quite a bit about time management lately.  In the past, I heavily participated in photography forums – most particularly a photography alias at my work.  I have come to realize though that these forums are not that incredibly useful.  In particular I began to notice the following.

1) I was writing more about photography equipment than on actual photography.  This may sound rude, but I have noticed that those who write the most about photography generally don’t take the best pictures.  The reason is the exhausting amount of time it takes to create a decent review and research things.

2) In most forums, the truly professional photographers are few and far between.  If you really want strong criticism of your photos and techniques, you’ll generally need to go directly to the photographers – not to the forums.

Therefore I have ceased participation in most of these venues.  I do still occasionally post in a few places – but only when I have a very particular question and I know there are members there that are very familiar with that subject area.

This has allowed me more time lately, which I hope to channel into consistently writing blogs.

Related posts:

1. Congrats to Canon on the TS-E 17! Recently it has been a bit of a bummer being a Canon user.  Granted, the 5D Mark II is a great camera and competes very well with the D700, but every other camera in their SLR line seems to take a back seat these days. Therefore it was nice to...
2. My first wedding shoot As many of you know, I am not into taking pictures of people other than my kids.  I have never taken a fashion shot and likely never will.  A lot of it is that I find these pictures very fake.  I am just not a “look at me” kind of...
3. Equipment that I hope to buy In my previous post, I covered the equipment that I currently use.  The following is a list of what I am still planning to get. Canon TS-E 17 - This is simply too tempting, especially for my real estate work.  I am currently saving for this lens, which is good...
4. Macro photography lenses In my last post, I started discussing what is necessary to get started in macro photography. I started with the basics – extension tubes and diopters. Eventually though, once you get sufficiently addicted to macro photography you will want to buy a macro lens. So which macro lens should you...
5. My thoughts on what Canon will come out with this year OK, first the obvious disclaimer that, as I do not work for or with Canon, I have absolutely no idea what they are working on. However, it is still fun to speculate. So, here’s what I suspect Canon will come out with this year. A digital rebel replacement – This...

Tags: discussion, photography, status