Bugle Blog - maxblackphotos.

Camera menu mono settings

11/3/2016

Figured out how to record the menu screen on the D750 so I thought I'd mumble my way through the steps needed to get you shooting and once set up, looking at the world in Black and White through using the Live View option of your camera screen...enjoy?

Terenez Bridge

7/3/2014

I'm getting my head around how best to use the road system around here now, so many good routes, but which ones to use??? Nipped off to the Crozon penninsula the other day as a break from all the work down on the farm, well it was raining so we thought we'd explore, and as neither of us had been over to Crozon we though we'd toddle off there. So lots of excellent places to get some images from found and then we came across the Terenez Bridge. Supports in the shape of the greek letter Lambda and a crazy curved suspension bridge with access points all over the place. From the banks of the river I'll go back in Autumn once the leaves have dropped, as this will open out the view more. Now the light was a bit grim but that's never a reason not to take a snap so here are a few in camera multi shots from there. Gone for a 16 x 9 crop, 6 in camera exposures, light was so naff they were almost mono anyway so just helped them along in LR 5.5

Locqueric

6/20/2014

Well not really in the groove at the moment but did have a bit of time to limber up and catch some images on the beach at Locqueric on Brittany's northern coast. Tried some tripod based multi exposures but they were all fed to the recycle bin, one avenue of experimentation that I'll not pursue again. So here is a set of ICM images, just a conversion in LR 5.5, yes 5.5 the numbers keep growing, so here you go with some mono ICM shotrs, ND filter and a lot of sunlight.

Straight and Narrow.

4/4/2014

It may have come to your attention, over these last 5 months that I have been pretty busy getting my head around a lot of different shooting techniques, software and new chunks of shiny hardware and really it's all in preparation for a bit of an adventure I'll be off on in about 4 weeks time as from then on I can't see myself having a spare moment for at least the following 12 months at which point I will be hurling myself into my 7th decade..let's all bow our heads for a minutes silence here...7th decade.... aye caramba, thank heavens I've still got my good looks and nothings fallen off yet....ahem...
So, as I am getting more and more 'old stuff' faffed and tickled into some kind of retail shape I thought I'd let you know where I'm up to image wise. If you are that solitary reader who has managed to part the clouds of Guff that hang about this place like a Saharan dust storm smog, you'll remember that I always say..queue funny voice 'Always squirrel away lots of files when it's sunny so during the dross months of winter you'll have somethign to give a good old spanking to and not have to watch telly' Well as I've switched systems from the Steam powered Dell that wheezed it's way through a stack of adjustment layers to Hal, the all powerful pixel muncher..I discovered that, probably like a lot of Squirrels out there, that I'd saved any number of image files in completely random folders all over the place, workflow now is of the sensible kind but as I was switching from Lightroom to Photoshop to Bridge and back stuff was being hoicked all over the show in a multi format unfathomable morrass... after many tears things seem to be making far more sense..new Catalogue in LR5, bring in images from various hard drives..Lightroom to Photoshop then saved to Lightroom and exported via presets from Lightroom to their life on the net. (for the non photographer who may have just read that last passage, it's what we in the trade call Photoshop Bollocks..) So alamy, Getty and redbubble are getting fed on a constant conveyor of tasty jpegs 500px gets some exclusives now and then..they are licencing some of my images now as well as doing prints, downloads and canvas things. Now that Getty has given up on flickr I'll probably stick the odd image on just to let folk I've not passed on, nearly my 7th decade lets not forget...so here are some motorbikes from a stack of files I've had hanging around for a while

Time Stacking

3/21/2014

As a way to break all this 'Painting' spell here is something a bit different that you might want to try. This is Time stacking and , as I can't find out where I've placed my screen capture software, I'll give you a quick run through of the technique.
Tripod, you'll need it, scudding cloudy day, brains switched on, some image processing software that has layers in it.

So the aim is to take a run of images, layer them up in a programme like Photoshop change the blend mode of the layer stack bar the background layer, lay back light a cigarette and bask in your new found creativity.
So, and this is a rough guide because you'll be looking at clouds that will either be whizzing along or gently rolling across the sky, so you may be taking a continuos run of exposures or one every 5 seconds or so, now I'd go for at least 40 exposures to start with and, because this is going to be a big stack of files when opened, I'd set your image quality in the camera to small jpegs, okay shooting over....but....I shot these with a ND110 filter as well, that's just me ... but maybe you'd be better served just doing it 'straight' to start with. Now this is where my way of processing may vary from yours but the idea behind this is to get a stack of images into Photoshop as layers, let the softwre do all the work, so image files uploaded into Lightroom, lens corrections and all you shadow hightlight stuff can be done in one go if you sync all the images as well...now if you right click then a dialogue box pops up, at the top will be Edit-edit in Photoshop and if you scan down the list then there is the option to open images as layers..it's there , take a look, saves so much time so click it , put the kettle on and your images should open up in Photoshop as a layer stack..nice...now click on the top layer and then hold down the shift key and click on the layer just above the background layer...yep, this really is one step away from gobbledygook...now go up to the top and there will be a drop down blending menu that should , at the moment, say normal....time for some magic...change it to lighten....kerching..flatten it..have a swig of tea and remember me in your will
Being the regular reader of all this you may already know that I may be playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order so give it a go, take more exposures, try it with a smoking chimney,crashing waves, take more shots...use an ND filter and drag your exposures..or even an Infra Red filter... but get the basics right and have some fun with it..okay. TFI Friday everyone.
PS..you do all the Lightroom stuff in camera RAW if you have it...okay.

Still

2/3/2014

chuffing coughing as this infection moves around my chest cavity like a holding midfielder in search of the ball....although i did sleep through last night.... I know, not really very intresting is it......onwards then

Some old skool architectural type stuff to start with...here is Ronda in the Andalusian hills, air so fresh it gives you apple cheeks by just brushing past you, sunny by 'oh my lord' we wrere down to about 2 degrees C so every time you went into an area out of direct sunlight...well it was chuffmongously chilly....

So with this mono I actually took some of the contrast out of it, the light was so harsh, it had just finished raining and the air was so clear. Did some crazy wide angle pano's that I'll get around to faffing with soon...vertical ones!!!! Anyhow the next one is where i stayed for 5 of the days, Gaucin, upin the hills and the tightest roads and sharpest inclines I've ever encountered, great place although the tapas weren't brilliant they were passable....

Taken from the top of Castillio d'Aguila..as I managed to get to the top I rang the bell...highlight of the holiday

Working it.

1/30/2014

So I made an exec decision and I'm going mono with the shots from Spain, that include some of the multi exposure stuff as well so without further ado, oh the chest infection you ask, getting there but get your cagoule on if I start hacking.....

Salt caked.

So longish lens shooting into the sun with a 6 exposure in camera multi shot, just remember that the longer the lens the less you have to 'move' the camera during your exposure run. This one babove is 6 shots working downwards until I ended up shooting the sea, remember that the last frame you take will become the dominant part of the image...lots of ship movements around Algeciras.....

Playground

Boats again but the technique modified to achieve this result, very slight movements during the seperate exposures, this is all in camera btw, only conversion work is todo the mono. One thing you have to look out for is dirt and boulders on your sensor...6 exposure multi's means that much more spotting out later so keep your sensor cleaning regime up to the mark. The one below is Vigin Atlantic waiting on the apron which looked like it might work as a multi shot whilst I had a sandwich

Virgin Atlantic

...and to finish off one from the beach...it was 18 degrees...I thought it was hot!!! Locals didn't

Safety

Keen eyed viewers will have noticed the re-emergence of the 16 x 9 crop format on the landscape format shots, if you hadn't then ...er... you've just been told...

Now

1/29/2014

don't come too close and whatever you do try not to lick any emails from me....for I have a chest infection that scares horses and makes toddlers burst into tears..7 days it's been with me know and as it's a viral one , no anti biotics.......grrrrrr.....so I have to let it run it's course even though , to the casual observer, I look as though I'm melting inside my clothes and auditioning as a bird scarer....well that's not the only thing I brought back from Spain
Had a great time, thanks for asking, up in the hills at Gaucin and Ronda....crazy towns perched on rockfaces, even crazier tiny roads with no discernible right of way....loved it, so fresh and clear and of course a plethora of photo opps....
Now just before I went off my graphics card coughed and expired on it's perch and I won't go through all the grisly details but for chuffs sake AMD, if you provide driver software can you make sure it works!!!!!! I've been running on VGA so went back in and did a custom install and waheeeeyyy...super gl smooth enhanced graphics.... nice..... coughing as I type....so cream crackered with this that I watched daytime telly yesterday...dear God, the horror, the horror, was it Thumpers Dad that said 'if you aint got nothing good to say , don't say nothing....' I could be wrong on the quote but you get the gist.
Okay in a quandry, do I do this first lot of shots in mono or leave the inispid winter med sunlight in them??????

I'll stick a colour gallery up first because I have a lot oferrr....'quirky' ones to show you from vertical panoramas to jiggy sea shots..... more pills and fluid and I'll crack on......

It's another Year...

1/1/2014

..well , dear reader, here we are 2014 and all that, don't know what you lot have planned but by early summer I'll be putting all my planning into practice..I'll be enigmatic and not mention it again...hmmmm life changing I think...
Still there's lots of images to create and lots of boulders to scrape off my sensor..I've ordered a big bottle of fluid off amazon, plenty of swabs just need to get in there and do some dislodging...
Photographically very busy towards the end of last year, lots of project based stuff and hoicking stuff up onto image library sites, check out my New Images page for all the latest, just letting Lightroom pull in a load of shots I did in Bath on monday, lets see what comes out and I may post later today, full day of footie action to listen to whilst I process and later on all the neighbours in for drinks and things and New Year cajoling. Off out again tomorrow as the BBC is saying 'sunshine' I hope they didn't have their fingers crossed behind their collective backs.... so one from Sunday to finish off with... fairly wide with the 105...