A Postcard from Nova Scotia

The Nova Scotia, Canada seminar took place in early August, which was a joy.  Not only was it extremely well-received, but also Carol and I got a chance to see the province - something that we had always wanted to do.  We made so many wonderful friends and got to tour a beautiful location (and eat a lot of lobster!)  Some gratuitous pictures are below.

Let's see... Good light?  Check.  Strong composition?  Check.  No distracting background?  Check.  This place makes getting great shots easy! :-)

More on that Lighthouse Shot

Scroll to the top and you'll see a very competent image of a lighthouse at dusk.  But it didn't look like that out of the camera.  Truth be told, to get it to look that good I had to shoot RAW and then post-process.  What did it look like before?

 Just look at all that vignetteing in the corners!  This was because my Zeiss 24-70 lens (the one that got scratched last month) was still being repaired.  On this trip I used the old Minolta 24-105 lens on my A900.  That's OK; post-processing can cure all sorts of optical ills like vignetting, pincushion distortion, and chromatic aberrations. :-)  In this case, I used Photoshop to eliminate that artifact by lightening the corners.

Here's what else I did in post-processing:

• Selected just the sky.  Made it brighter, added a little red.
• Selected everything that wasn't the sky.  Used the curve tool to brighten the blacks.  Used color balance to make things a little less dreary.
• Cropped a little.

The secret to hiding your image manipulation is to do everything in small amounts.  A collection of small tweaks will look more impressive and more natural than any single large tweak.  (A restriction in space prevents me from describing, step-by-step, how all of those things were done.  If you'd like a rundown on how to do some of these things, check out the chapter in my book which describes how to use the software that came with your camera.)

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Florida and Nova Scotia seminars are open for enrollment! http://www.FriedmanArchives.com/seminars