I want to start this review off by saying that I wasn't given this class as a freebie to review (I paid for it), and Erin didn't ask me to review it. In fact, even though Erin and I live in the same city, I don't know her and have never met her...but I love the way she teaches!

I was first introduced to Erin Cobb's Clean Color editing system when she came out with a version for Photoshop a couple of years ago. At the time I was enrolled as an auditing student in Karen Russell's fabulous Photographer's Workshop class, and Karen brings Erin in for one week during each session to talk about editing. As an aside, if you've ever considered taking the Photographer's Workshop, DO IT! It's simply amazingly worth every penny. After looking at Erin's photos and editing style I was very much interested and purchased the Photoshop version of Clean Color, which is available to all of Karen's current and past students at a discount (along with Erin's other Clean Color offerings).

I loved what I learned in the Photoshop version of Erin's Clean Color workshop, but I'm really a Lightroom girl at heart (as you may have guessed from this and this). I took the principles of what I learned, but never really popped over to Photoshop to actually put them into practice after completing the tutorial. When I received an email a couple of weeks ago that Erin had just come out with the same type of system for Lightroom instead of Photoshop, I only hesitated about 2.7 seconds before hitting the "Buy Now" button. The workshop is priced at $129, which I know is more than most scrapbookers are used to paying for classes, but I'm not joking when I say that this system can be life-changing for your photography and is worth considering.

The workshop is an instant download and includes an almost two hour hour instructional video, four Lightroom Presets (plus she shows you how to make your own!) based on Erin's system, and several practice images that you can use to follow along with the tutorials.

While the title and main focus of the workshop centers around Erin's editing system, the video covers so much more- importing, sorting, editing, exporting- basically an entire workflow from start to finish, straight from a professional photogapher's point of view. Though I'm by no means a professional photographer, I'm fairly comfortable in Lightroom after using it for several years and I still learned about so many parts of the edit module that I'd never ventured into- gradient filters, the tone curve, and new ways of adjusting exposure.

If you're unsure of whether or not Clean Color can work for you, Erin has a free introductory video that gives an overview of her Photoshop workflow that you can download to see what it's all about (you'll find it on her Clean Color page). It won't be specific to Lightroom, of course, but it'll give you a general ideas of what the capabilities of the system are. You can also read Karen Russell's review of Clean Color for Lightroom here, and see an example of how she put the process to use on one of her own photos.

Both Karen and Erin are professional photographers and have gorgeous images straight out of the camera, so I thought I'd show you some examples of what a non-professional's (barely amateur!) shots look like when edited with this process. All of the photos below are from a trip to the Dominican Republic last December, and when on vacation I tend to shoot quickly and not pay a lot of attention to getting the perfect exposure and white balance for every frame- the perfect images to use to test out this system!

The first two sets of photos (straight out of the camera on top, edited with the Clean Color process on the bottom) are great examples of shots that I would have struggled with previously. I would have over-saturated the color and overdone the contrast, but by following Clean Color I was able to get the scenes to look just as they did in real life.






This photo, taken in the lobby of our hotel, is an example of what Clean Color does for iPhone photos!




And I blew the exposure on this one a bit, but thanks to Clean Color I was able to pull it out.




Erin Cobb's Clean Color for Lightroom definitely helped the last pieces of my photo editing process click into place for me. If you're a Lightrooom user whose skills range anywhere from never-installed-it-before to comfortable-with-your-process, I highly recommend giving Clean Color a try!

a photographer's guide to cha

We R Memory Keepers Washi Tape at CHA Winter 2012

After I photographed my first CHA show (Summer 2011) I had several other attendees ask me for tips on taking photos at the event, and I was actually able to meet up with a couple of them at the Winter 2012 show a few months later to give an on-site crash course in convention photography. I've wanted to get the information written down and available to a wider audience for quite some time, and with the Winter 2013 show rapidly approaching, now seems like the perfect time!

I know that this post is targeted to the small number of people who actually attend CHA, but I think that some of the same principles apply when you're shooting at any similar event- I actually followed almost everything here when I was taking pictures at Star Wars Celebration VI (with the exception of also packing a zoom lens for the larger auditoriums), and a lot of these items apply to pretty much any large, multi-day indoor event. Hopefully there will be a little something here to help everyone no matter what event you're shooting!

Equipment

May Flaum taking video of a Tim Holtz demo at CHA Winter 2012

You can, of course, shoot CHA or any similar event with any camera ranging from an iPhone up to a DSLR. For image quality and functionality reasons I recommend a DSLR that is capable of producing images that look decent at ISO 1600. Most DSLRs (even the inexpensive ones) in the Nikon and Canon lines that have been produced in the last 12-18 months fall into this category, including Nikon's D3100 and D5100 bodies (since I shoot Nikon cameras I can't speak for any Canon models except for the 5D Mark II (my dad shoots one), which definitely qualifies). I recommend a camera capable of capturing good images at such a high ISO because it will eliminate the need to use a flash- I'll get to that in a minute.

Looking back at my photos from the last two shows, I found that I shot most of them with an f-stop (aperture) between 3.5 and 5.6 (if that doesn't make sense to you, please hang on until the next section- I'll refer you to some reading that will help!). I used a 35mm f/2 or 50mm f/1.4 prime for all of those shots, and most kit lenses (normally the lens that ships with the camera) are capable of those f-stops and zoom ranges. Chances are that if you have a kit lens already you won't need any new glass to carry at the show, though a prime lens (a lens that shoots at a fixed focal length) will produce much sharper images (because the kit lens is wide open at f/3.5-5.6 whereas the prime is stopped down, sometimes to exactly the sweet spot of the fixed-focal lens) and is a much lighter option to carry since zoom lenses tend to weigh more (sometimes a lot more).

If your camera is not full frame (for Nikon, this means a DX camera and not an FX) keep in mind when purchasing a prime lens that a crop factor will apply to the advertised focal length. For Nikon this crop factor is a 1.5, and for Canon it is either a 1.3 (for the 1D series) or a 1.6 (most common). To find out what the actual focal length of the lens would be on your camera, multiply the advertised focal length of the lens times the crop factor. For example, a 50mm lens on a Nikon DX body is equivalent to a 75mm lens (50 * 1.5 = 75) on an FX. In a confined space such as a trade show floor, this means that you might not have room to back up enough from the subject to get all of it in the frame. If you have a DX Nikon, my recommended prime lens would be the 35mm f/1.8 AF-S DX. It's an excellent lens (my husband shoots one on his D5100, and the photos are superb), is inexpensive as far as glass goes (currently under $200), and is roughly equivalent to a 52mm lens on an FX body.

As far as flashes or external lighting, as long as your camera can shoot well at 1600 ISO and you have one of the lenses mentioned above, you shouldn't need any sort of external lighting at the show. In fact, flash photography in a booth can be distracting to other patrons, especially if you are taking several photos in a row. Flash photography can also lead to photos with a harsh tone or with unnatural shadows, so it's best to only use it when absolutely necessary.

The lighting on the Anaheim show floor is actually quite good, and I find that it's adequate in most cases. It's also decently white-balanced for daylight, though I do have to go back in post-processing and correct the white balance for some booths that use their own overhead lighting, where the bulbs have a different temperature than the show floor overhead lights. You can use a tool like the baLens white balancing lens cap to adjust for the lighting in these booths, but most of the time I find that it's easily smoothed out in post processing (more on that in a bit).

Since you'll be on your feet for most of the day and will have to carry everything you have with you, you might want to stick to carrying just one lens and not toting along a heavy camera bag. Also, there are many options for a more comfortable strap than the one that shipped with your camera. My favorite is the BlackRapid RWS-1FB, which slings your camera in a cross-body carry and makes it very easy to pull the camera up to shoot or just leave it hanging at your hip. I used to have terrible problems with my factory camera strap making my neck ache, and the BlackRapid completely relieved those issues.

You'll likely be taking enough photos to fill your camera's memory card each day, so either take along extra cards or have a laptop in your hotel room to download photos each night. Also, don't forget to charge your camera batteries! Right before you leave for your trip and in the hotel room each night are perfect times to do so.

Camera Settings

As I mentioned earlier, I shot almost all of my photos from the two shows I attended at f/3.5-5.6 with an ISO of 1600. I almost always keep my camera in aperture priority mode, so the f-stop is easy to set where I need it. As a rule of thumb, I try to set the f-stop as high as possible (to get the maximum depth of field possible) while keeping the shutter speed at or above 1/60 of a second (to reduce the risk of motion blur).

If you've never shot in aperture priority, I encourage you to read the Pioneer Woman's series, What The Heck Is An Aperture? for more information. Ree does an outstanding job of easing photographers into aperture mode (it's how I learned!) in this four-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).

Etiquette

Lily Bee's Buttercup collection at CHA Winter 2012

Yes, it's a lot of fun to attend CHA as a designer or member of the press and see all the new goodies firsthand, but it's good to keep in mind that the trade show is first and foremost a business environment. The purpose of the show is to connect store owners and resellers with vendors, and photographers need to be aware of this. When at a show, I always do my best to stay out of the way of customers, even if it means I need to leave a booth and then come back later to finish photographing when it's less busy.

It's also required that you obtain express permission from the owner of the booth (or booth staff, if they have authority) before photographing anything on display, whether product or projects. Some companies do not want their items photographed and may ask you to leave if you start shooting without permission. Some are fine with you photographing product, but not the projects. Many are happy to have you take photos, especially if you are planning to blog them or offer some sort of publicity. The reaction to having you photograph booths is also going to depend on your badge type- press badges and for the most part store badges are usually welcome to photograph items, but if you have a designer or vendor badge for another company, you might not be as welcome to do so- remember that these companies are all competitors!

Also, two minor points of photography etiquette in general- if your camera has an auto-focus assist light and/or a focus beep, turn both off. They're the photographic equivalent of texting or talking on the phone at the movie theater!

Post-Processing and Sharing

CHA Winter 2012 - We had to eat sometime!

Now that you've shot all these great photos from the show, what do you need to do in order to share them?

There are, of course, lots of ways to do this, but for the sake of time I'm going to cover my personal workflow.

I start by downloading all photos from my camera to my computer using Adobe Lightroom (you can get a 30 day free trial from Adobe here). Usually my photos need at least some editing (adjust exposure, sharpen, correct white balance), so after I've gone through my photos and chosen the ones that I want to blog, I edit using Lightroom presets (my current favorites are Totally Rad and Adrienne Looman's presets in the 2 Peas store). Here's a quick hint- usually if you adjust one photo from a booth, those changes can be synced in Lightroom (highlight all the photos and click the "Sync" button, then select the settings you want to share across all the selected images) across all images from that booth. Normally the lighting conditions don't vary much within a single booth, and this helps get all the major adjustments out of the way while leaving only minor tweaks to be made here and there.

Lightroom also integrates seamlessly with Flickr, and I use a Flickr Pro account to host almost all of the images on my blog. Once your images are uploaded, each image page in Flickr has easy-access to the exact code you'll need to paste into your blog's HTML editor to show that photo at the proper size (there are a variety of sizes to choose from). I had a miserable time sharing lots and lots of photos on my blog until I switched over to using Flickr Pro (after Star Wars Celebration V, actually!), and now it's as easy as can be!

And, one final tip- try to keep in mind your purpose for shooting photos at CHA as you're taking them. Do you want to show all of the product from your favorite manufacturers? If so, you'll want to take shots that show all the pieces of each collection. Do you want to highlight trends? Getting closer to the action and photographing just bits and pieces may be better for you. Above all, have fun with it, and enjoy CHA!

using lightroom to print multiple photos on a single 4x6 canvas

I've finally put together a tutorial showing how I use Adobe Lightroom to print multiple smaller photos on a single 4x6 canvas- with optional white borders! I used to use Picasa for this task, but I've found that Lightroom gives me finer control over border size and also allows me to make multiple prints without having to go through the process of formatting every. single. one. over and over again by allowing me to create and save printing templates.

Lightroom has revolutionized my printing workflow (much the same as it did my editing workflow when I first started using it), cutting it down to literally a fraction of the time that it used to be. The software is also not as expensive as it used to be, with the newest release, Lightroom 4, currently priced at $124 on Amazon. When I first started using Lightroom with version 3 it was more than double that price! Adobe also offers a 30 day free trial if you want to try to the software out first.

Just a warning- this tutorial is rather long, but most of the effort involved is in the initial setup of your Print module and templates. Once you've completed those steps you should never have to do them again (unless you set up a new computer or suffer a crash of some sort) and printing from Lightroom will take just a few simple button clicks. Also, these instructions will work for you whether you print at home or send your photos off to a developer (I tend to use the terms printer and developer interchangeably throughout this tutorial). I do a little of both, but my home photo printer is an old HP model that only prints at 4x6, so my process for preparing photos to print is the same either way.

Before I get started on the printing portion of this post, I want to briefly touch on a couple of pieces of information that are relevant to my printing workflow. You see, I first loved Lightroom for its organizational and editing capabilities. I'm not going to go too far into either, but if you're curious I use Totally Rad Presets for editing (though I mostly stick to basic white balance, contrast, and exposure adjustments), and I organize my photos in folders first by year and then by event. I've also got a folder for each month that holds one-offs and random photos. I don't tag or rate my photos- basically if I've edited it, I like it.

 

Even if you do nothing in Lightroom to organize your photos, though, it does a lot of work under the hood for you. For example, if I were to just dump all 75,000+ photos in my library into a single folder, simulated here by the "All Photographs" catalog, Lightroom would still allow me to quickly search based on date, file name, and a host of other options.

 

There's a small filter bar running across the top of the Lightroom screen, and my most-used option on it hands down is the "Metadata" filter.

 

This filter works based on data that's automatically embedded by your digital camera into every photo you take (also know as EXIF data), and includes information like date, time, camera body, lens, focal length, and a whole slew of other bits of data. Most useful among these is the date, and Lightroom lets you quickly filter through all of your photos (remember, I'm looking at more than 75,000 of them at once here, and it's doing these searches in less than a second) by year, month, day, and even a date range.

The date range is especially useful if you do Project Life- you can easily narrow down the photos you're shown to a specific week and edit/print from there, with no need to download from a card and put things into specific date folders on your own.

 

Filtering by camera is useful if you use multiple cameras at an event, like when I was at Celebration using both my Nikon and my iPhone. Here I've narrowed the date down to one day's worth of my Celebration VI photos, then chosen "Unknown Camera." For some reason Lightroom always flags Instagram photos as Unknown, while regular iPhone photos are properly identified.

 

But this isn't a post about organizing, right? Because honestly I could go on and on about all the little features in Lightroom that make my life so much easier. So let's look at how Lightroom helps streamline your printing process.

Let's take my photos from the first day of Celebration VI as an example, starting in the Library module. Take note of the other module names in Lightroom (located at the top right corner of the screen) as this is where you'll come to in a bit to switch to the Print module.

 

huntsville fireworks + how I shoot fireworks photos

Okay, I promise, these are the last Independence Day fireworks photos I'll post until next summer. I'm not saying I won't post any scrapbook pages of them, though- haha! Fireworks are seriously one of my favorite things to photograph, and once you get the settings and timing down, it's so very, very easy.

I use my big camera (I have a Nikon D3), a telephoto lens (70-200 f/2.8 Nikkor), and a tripod since they're fairly long exposures. I also use a remote shutter release to a) avoid camera shake and b) allow me to watch the fireworks while still photographing them. To avoid focusing issues with such a dark field, I put the lens/camera in manual focus mode and focus the lens to infinity. The on-camera exposure settings I usually use are manual mode, f/14, ISO 200, and the shutter in Bulb mode. Bulb mode means that the shutter remains open for as long as I have my finger on the shutter release button (which is why I use a remote release). I vary that time based mostly on feel...there's a delay from the time that the rockets are launched to when they explode, and I try to time it such that I get just a little bit of that trail in the photo along with the entire burst. Sometimes I leave the shutter open for multiple bursts, but be careful about leaving it open for too long (especially when shooting finales) as it can really blow out the photo, leaving you with a bunch of massive white blurs.

It'll take a few shots to get the timing down (every year I have to re-learn it myself), but eventually I fall into a click-release pattern almost on auto-pilot while watching the show.

Now, about this particular show...so the fireworks in my hometown (the ones after the 5K I run there every year) are always on the Saturday before the 4th, meaning I'm usually back home in Huntsville in time to see the display at the Space and Rocket Center that are actually on the 4th. It's seriously cool the way they shoot them off right over the massive Saturn V (though last year it was much cooler when they left the lights on around the rocket so you could really see it). This year it was $20 a car, though, to park at the USSRC and watch from the rocket park, so we made alternate plans- the crowds and the cost just didn't sound like much fun to us at all.

So, in true Darren-and-Melissa style, we did something completely different- we parked at the university (thank goodness for Darren's grad-student parking decal) and hiked a mile and a half or so by foot over to the hotel right next to Space Camp and watched from there with maybe just a dozen or so other people around us. I'm sure we looked seriously nuts- Darren was carrying our two fold-up chairs, and I had my camera and massive lens in my backpack with my somewhat bulky (but not too heavy, thanks to magnesium and carbon fiber) tripod lashed to the outside. Did I mention that we were both wearing toe shoes? :)

Even with the hiking, I think that we still got back home before most of the people who were in the rocket park- they had to wait for traffic to clear to leave, and we were able to simply walk around all the cars that were sitting at a standstill- love it!

I took more than 150 photos that night, and I'm sharing just a few of my favorites here. I especially love the ones near the end where the rocket is silhouetted so well.

indpendence 5k 2012 + fireworks photography

So, the 2012 Independence 5K. I have to admit, I had nightmares about this race. Not that I didn't run well, but that I overslept or had the wrong time and missed it entirely. This run and Cotton Row are my favorites every year, and I'd be heartbroken if I missed either. I think I checked the start time and my phone alarm about a dozen times before going to sleep the night before the race!

The morning of the race started out hot and then just got hotter. Luckily running in the heat doesn't bother me, but I snapped a screenshot of the weather about 15 minutes before the race just for fun.

Last year both Jake and Michelle (my cousins) ran the race with me, but this time around Jake was busy working that morning, mowing the grounds at their church, so it was just Michelle and I. We love running together, though, so we happily found some shade and stretched out while we waited for the fun to begin,

water gardens and day lilies

I've been catching up on editing photos off and on this week (I was three weeks behind in editing my Project Life photos, but am all caught up now!!), and I found a set from early June that just begged to be posted here.

I've mentioned before that we spend a lot of time at the Botanical Gardens. They're relatively close to our house, and we have a membership so it doesn't matter if we go for 30 minutes or several hours. On this particular June day, we found so many pretty things in bloom! June is one of those weird times in the south when all the spring plants die off, and the summer ones haven't really taken hold yet, so it was great to go somewhere that had some new stuff to see (it's been so dry here that no matter how much we water, our yard still takes on a Sahara-like appearance).

Our first stop this visit was the little water garden just past the main entrance. I dunno what's up with the "acid frog" painted sculptures they have out for the season, but I'll take lotus and water lilies any day!

diy copy stand resources

I've had quite a few people email me over the past few months (ever since my big scrap room overhaul post went up) about the copy stand I use to photograph my layouts.

You can read the whole story of how I acquired my Bogen TC-1 + light arms in this post, but it's not going to help most people to know that I lucked out and Darren found mine at an engineering surplus auction and only paid $12 for it. In reality these things are pretty expensive, and I've often wondered what sorts of DIY options were available.

In that vein, I did a little research and came up with four DIY options that look fairly inexpensive and not terribly complicated. I'll admit up front that I haven't tried any of them, but hopefully they'll be helpful to some of you looking to build one for yourself.

 

• This version at Curbly looks to be the easiest to build.
• This stand at macc.com is one of many versions that are shown. Some fairly cheap and easy routes here, too.
• Coin collectors have a need for copy stands, too, leading to this post on Coin Community.
• You'll find lots of copy stand tutorials with very detailed instructions at Instructables. Be sure to browse their site for several other options.

While I'm no expert on building the stands themselves, one area that I can make a recommendation in is the lighting. I use four CFL bulbs that are pretty much dead-on equivalent to natural light at a temperature of 5500K. I see a lot of variation in temperature when trying to shop for bulbs using terms like "sunlight" and "daylight" equivalent (so don't trust those words!), but most CFL bulbs have the actual light temperature marked somewhere on the package. If you find that magic 5500 number you should be good to go.

If you build a copy stand using any of these methods (or if you've designed your own DIY), please drop by and share it here- I'd love to see what you guys come up with!

prom photo shoot

My niece asked me at the last minute (as in the day before) last week if I would take her prom photos for her. After a few emails back and forth with her and her mom, we finally settled on a time (which happened to be right after my gym class) and a place (which happened to be two minutes away from said gym class on the university campus).

The result was me running over to the lake in running shorts and a Star Wars t-shirt, while Elyse and her boyfriend, Zack, looked...well, they looked like this:

Gorgeous, right? I loved Elyse's neon orange dress, and her shoes were toooo cute! She wore silver glittered Bobs, which are the Skechers version of Toms.

cherry blossoms

Cherry blossom season has come and gone for the year, and, as usual, I was an obsessed photographer for those fleeting two weeks that they were here.

It always starts with the weeping cherries in my front yard. I still remember how...concerned...Darren was when I brought home two semi-large-ish (they're the dwarf variety, so not that big) trees to add to our not-so-large-ish yard. One now lives in the front, and the other in the back where I can see it straight out of my scrap room window.

They're still young and doing more leafing than blooming, but they're getting taller every year and are so pretty!

Then there's this gorgeous beauty on the university campus (right outside the building I used to take math in when I was a student there) that has such bright pink buds and tiny, tight flower clusters. I'm not sure what variety of cherry this is, but I know it is one because it actually fruits.

fall color

We've had a rare burst of fall color around here lately, which is really, really unusual for northern Alabama. Usually our leaves are green right up until it suddenly turns cold and they all commit a mass botanical suicide overnight, leaving piles of icky brown leaves on the ground and equally icky bare branches on the trees. This year, though, the cooling has been more gradual, so I guess the little guys aren't as shocked as they would have otherwise been and are showing their happy colors before blowing away.

Darren and I went out on a couple of little photography expeditions last weekend to capture these shots, but what's more amazing to us is that all this gorgeousness is still here this weekend!