A quick welcome to Adorama to my affiliate partner fold.
They are a great place to shop for all your imaging needs!
Author: Peter
Welcome Adorama
Welcome Adobe to the fold
Adobe Authorized Affiliate (update Adobe switched to a new affiliate manager and I have not yet re-signed up, something to remember to do for the future)
Just a quick post to welcome Adobe to my Affiliate fold!
I”ve been using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom since their initial versions and am super pleased to join with them as an affiliate.
Vero, the new Instagram Killer?
Another social media image sharing service goes hunting to take over the pack in the cloud Moved to Vero yet?
Look for me as “Peter Pauer” on Vero
New: Vero has launched a desktop app with limited capability, so you can now maintain your id stream from a real computer not just the mobile apps!
What is Vero?
Vero is an image sharing social media service similar to Instagram with some MAJOR usage differences!
Vero has (image, video, music, text, several others) post type capability and you can select which you want to see for the people you follow, and you can restrict who can see your post to your connections or followers.
The differences
there are NO AD’s to flood your timelines.
and it has a NO algorithm linear timeline, so you see what people are doing as they post the content.Rapidly growing
Right now it is experiencing explosive growth. Over the last few days Vero has become adopted by photographers and other creatives who are flocking in droves to set up accounts on the service.
Photographers and creatives who are completely fed up with the crazy things and algorithm scrambled timelines happening over on Instagram.
It’s user base streaked past the 1 million mark to well over 3 million in just the last few days. And its continuing to rapidly grow. This unexpected explosive growth has causing service interruptions as the servers it is on could not handle the new rapid load growth.
Subscription model, a good thing!
Originally the first million users to signup were to have free lifetime access, after which new users would need to pay a small yearly access fee.
However the unintended service interruptions are good news for new people wanting to setup accounts. As they have caused Vero to extended the lifetime free signup access to new users until they get all issues resolved from the high growth rates.A side benefit of becoming a paid access service might be no or few bots!
After all who is going to want to pay to create automated spam bot accounts?The App and futures
The app “Vero – True Social” has jumped to #1 in downloads on google store and itume’s. (Currently it is only accessible from a mobile phone platform.)
Will it be successful and knock the ad clogged, scrambled timeline, berzerk rules on who see what post Instagram out?
Only time can tell!
But if Instagram does not wise up and clean up its growing stupidity Vero has a good chance at taking over.Is it for you? Can’t say. But I grabbed my slot while the getting was good (free) and will see what develops on this new platform.
For more information their website is at https://www.vero.co/
Instagram algorithm changes for 2018
How to have your cake and eat it too with the new Instagram algorithm rules for 2018 Facebook’s changes to the Instagram 2018 algorithm
The intent this year is to make the Instagram experience more “organic” while likely also killing off bots & pods.
As a result many of the standard methods to gain post engagement that were used in 2017 either no longer work or worse have the opposite effect reducing visibility or potentially end up shadow-banning an account.
So just to annoy you New for 2018, here are the main points that have been noted so far this year.
1) Initial post.
- A new post is shown to just 10% of your followers
if the post engagement is good then it is shown to the rest.
2) Engagement.
- To count as engagement a comment on your post needs to have four (4) or more words in it.
- Simple likes do not count towards engagement
- Comments with just emoji do not count towards engagement
- Short comments of 3 words or less do not count towards engagement
3) Hashtags.
Are very important but- carefully crafted five or six hashtags is about the new safe limit
- maxing out or stuffing posts with a large numbers of hashtags now flags the post as a spam post and visibility drops
- using the same hashtags over and over in multiple posts can end up flagging them all as spam posts and may end up shadow-banning the account
- Hashtags are now only valid in the original post caption field,
as of 2018 hashtags placed in the first post comment no longer count and will not show up in searches.
4) Captions
- craft the caption carefully and do not try to edit once posted.
- editing or altering a post after the initial posting will reduce the posts visibility
the more you try to tweak it the less visibility the post gets.
5) Response to comments
posts are no longer fire and forget!- You have 1 hour to respond to any comments on your post or its visibility level starts to drop.
6) stay away from pods
- new 2018 algorithm is targeting pods and all members can end up shadow-banned.
- A new post is shown to just 10% of your followers
Winter Photography – Minden Wild Water Preserve
We decided to take a short day trip to go do some photography at the Wild Water Preserve in Minden, on the coldest day of the year so far.
A little bit about the Wild Water Preserve
The Minden Wild Water Preserver Harrington Park is a stretch of rapids
that run along a portion of the Gull river between Minden Lake and Horseshoe Lake.
They can be reached by following Horseshoe Lake Road [County Road 20] from Highway 35.
About a 2.5 hrs. drive north east of Toronto on highway 35.Wild Water Preserve Whitewater Ontario owns and operates the Minden Wild Water Preserve.
The preserve boasts a campground, amenities and hiking trails on the 100 acre parcel of land for members.The river’s whitewater section is 800 meters long and ranges from Class II to IV rapids with large rocks providing some interesting obstacles.
When kayakers are actively running the rapids, especially in the warmer season, the preserve becomes a very popular and hectic site.In winter the area is more serene, although the water seems even more wild!
Enjoy a short video
I made of the waters rushing through the Wild Water Preserve during a cold snap (around -25c) of winter.
More information can about Minden Wild Water Preserver Harrington Park can be found here
Adobe release new products versions
cloudscapes Adobe releases their new versions of many products.
Of Interest to photographers are the former Adobe Lightroom CC has been renamed to Lightroom Classic CC
And the new Lighrtoom CC is now cloud based.New plan pricing
Lightroom CC plan
Includes the all-new Lightroom CC and 1TB of cloud storage.
US$9.99/mo.Photography plan
Includes the all-new Lightroom CC, 20GB of cloud storage, Lightroom Classic CC, and Photoshop CC.
US$9.99/mo.Photography plan with 1TB cloud storage
Includes the all-new Lightroom CC, 1TB of cloud storage, Lightroom Classic CC, and Photoshop CC.
US$19.99/mo.That’s US$10/mo for 980meg of additional storage?
In a year you could by a 4tb drive for the same amount, and handle your own backups.For now think I will stick to the base photography plan!
Only time will tell how this will work out for them, but working in high end “cloud” systems for years I would not trust my personal important data to any of them.
Hacks, cracks, thefts and redundancy failures oh my.
Now the fun starts checking in on just how well these updates and new programs really work!
Sleeklens Landscape Lightroom presets review
As per my Ethics guidelines I must state I have not purchased this particular product.
At time of writing I am not currently affiliated with or sponsored by Sleeklens.
I was recently asked to provide a review and my thoughts on a product by Sleeklens called “Through the Woods” a Lightroom landscape preset workflow. Sleeklens produces presets and action sets for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CC.After agreeing to a few terms to do the review the product arrived as a zip file
That contained several PDF files- A readme first PDF that contained a link to the installation video and an invitation to join the sleeklens Facebook group for support.
- A TOS (Terns of Service)
- A how to install PDF
- A “recipe” list to help get you started.
And two folders, one for brushes with 30 brushes in it and one for presets containing 51 presets.
Install was mostly painless especially if you follow the included instructions.
I in my usual way managed to get it exactly backwards and had to do a bit of uninstalling/reinstalling.To Install presets follow the video linked in the install document.
To Install brushes follow the instructions in the install document.Screen grab of the presets and brushes that are a part of the Through the Woods collection
Hint: all images in this post can be clicked to open a new window/tab with a larger easier to see image.
sample of what the presets and brushes look like The sample shows one of my annoyances with Adobe Lightroom, while LR presets can be grouped into collapsible sections. LR brushes cannot, you are always scrolling through huge lists to get to the one you want which is invariable at the bottom of the list.
To test what the presets and brushes could do I selected one very over exposed image, one very under exposed image and one with an average exposure but mediocre image.
In all cases these images would normally have seen the big X of rejection in Lightroom.
Here are the images and the “recipes” as Sleeklens calls them that I used to process the three images.Image 1 – The Over Exposed image.
Original on left, Sleeklens processed on right.
Over exposed image processed with sleeklens workflow Over exposed image processed with sleeklens workflow The Recipe used
Presets
All in one – Dawn rising
Exposure – Less Highlights
Color – Deep blue sky
Tone/Tint – Color pop
Polish – SharpenBrushes
brighten (applied to land and reflection)
brighten (applied to land)
add golden sun (reduced effect, applied to land and reflection)Manual settings
Manually reduced Saturation to +19 and Vibrance to +40
Manually adjusted cyan cast in sky towards blue
Manually reset black/white pointsImage 2 The Under Exposed image.
Original on left, Sleeklens processed on right.
under exposed image sleeklens preset test The Recipe used
Presets
Base – High Dynamic Range
Base – Morning light
Exposure – Less Highlights
Exposure – Brightnen Shadows
Tone/Tint – color pop
Polish – SharpenBrushes
Brighten (applied to land)
Add golden sun (reduced effect, applied to portions of land and reflection)Graduated filter
cloud definitionManual settings
Manually reduced Saturation to +19 and Vibrance to +21
Manually reset black/white pointsImage 3 The average exposure average image.
Original on left, Sleeklens processed on right.
average exposure image sleeklens preset test The Recipe used
Presets
All In One – Shine into Sunset
Polish – SharpenBrushes
Brighten (applied to land)
Add golden sun (applied to land)
Darken (applied to a tiny portion of land)Graduated filter
cloud definitionManual settings
Manually reduced Clarity to +30 Saturation to +30 and Vibrance to +5
Manually slightly increased overall exposure and reset black/white pointsMy thoughts
Now for my thoughts on the Sleeklens workflow presets and using presets in general.
The Sleeklens presets and brushes do seem to work well to help process images, or at least get you to a good starting point for heavier editing fairly quickly.
In many cases I had to dial back the effects as they seemed to be a bit over the top.
But that is probably common for development presets as every image is different and would need some custom adjustments tinkering.
They did have an interesting stack able capability where you could apply as many of the presets as you wished and they did not affect each other.What is a preset
A preset or brush is just a Lightroom setting (or settings) you come up with that you then save with a name. Which you can then recall with a single click and apply it to other images as needed thus saving you some time.
With purchased presets like the Sleeklens collections you are buying settings created by people skilled at editing and processing images.
You are getting some of their expertise instead of trying to re-invent the wheel by creating your own preset sets.You still need to learn to use presets and brushes properly and take the time to apply them to each image, there is no magic auto fix!
My personal workflow
The “presets” I do use daily are smart collection workflow driven.
They are based on moving images from import to distribution in a quick timely fashion with very little actual image development to try to recover a flawed image.
The majority of my own under/over/mediocre images usually meet the rejection trashcan very quickly.With the “Through the Woods” landscape presets there is the option of trying a few presets to adjust or recover some of my images if so desired.
Though even in Lightroom it now seems possible to repaint an images so it looks quite different from what was originally photographed.Links to Sleeklens products and services if you are interested
This is the “Throught The Woods” presets I used for this review Landscape Lightroom Presets
Sleeklens products Lightroom Presets
Sleeklens also offers a Photo editing serviceAnd finally Sleeklens has a fairly active and informative YouTube Channel
Our big camping adventure, in the soaking wet rain.
We
(wet)went off for a little camping tripThe first week was one of the wettest ever! Not much chance to wander around and make images.
Standing under a flap I did make many clips that assembled nicely into a short video. So everyone can experience the wonders of another day of nonstop rain.Reading, Photo Magazines of course, consumed much of the time during the first week.
Started reading the “VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography” Book by David duChemin as well.
Watching episodes of “Dead like Me” and “BloodTies” on the old laptop helped pass some of the time.
All the while helping our diet with many varities of custom health foods.
rain food
#junkfood #junkfoodjunkieAlso managed to watch all four of the “Pirates of the Carabian”, three of the “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Back to the Beach” (a Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello) DVD movies in the soaking evenings during that week.
Innovation to keep the wet out!
We did need to innovate a bit and created rain cover stands from 3 inch ABS DWV pipe TEEs. Making the cable end connection inside the pipe fitting is a bit of a trick, but it can be done.
Place one end of the 30amp cord in one side and down into the 90 bend. Then put the other end from the next cord in from the other side and push them together inside the fitting.
The 15amp cord had to pass through frist, there is no room for its ends once the fat 30 amp ends were in place! Then you just stand them up, keeps the connectors dry and up of the wet forest floor. As long as the water does not rise too far!
Or just use bigger 4 inch pipe tees instead! Though they take up much more space to store.
Worked out well for us , no rain caused shorts or power outages, the laptop and camera batteries all charged up and kept on working!ABS power cord rain covers The Camping Cat was not impressed!
Kit-Kat
2006-2017
Taken too sooncamping cat not impressed Fortunately the next week was much drier !
Carden Alvar, new Provincial Park in the making!
Carden Alvar birding area
Sometimes you discover gems like the Carden Alvar lurking in your own back yard!
Been traveling past this area often (turns out it is only a few minutes north of my location) on my way north.
To such destinations as Algonquin, Killarney, Superior, Thunder Bay, Temagami, and many other places one might imagine one has to go to find “great” images.
Little did I realize what a gem was just a short trip away!
So I took a quick run around the Carden Alvar.
It was not a bad trip, maybe should not have used the wife’s small car though.
It bottomed out in a few places and a few rather loud thumps occurred.
But there were lots of other people also trying to drive and bird around portions of it in small cars too.
Would not recommend trying that trail in a small car if it rains though!I did not see the fabled Loggerhead Shrike, but you could hear it singing (rather laughing at all the people) in the trees.
The Loggerhead shrike is the only member of the shrike family endemic to North America making it a rather unique bird to spot.
There were lots of other birds to be seen flapping around the area too, (no rubber chickens though).It has a very nicely set up birding trail area by the “Ontario Field Ornithologists”
A portion of the area has become the Carden Alvar Provincial Park . The Land use amendment to create the new Provincial Park was approved and the new Park is underway. There are hiking trails in the new park that now exist! Brochures, maps and more information can be found on the The Couchiching Conservancy web site.
Oh, the purple loosestrife invasion is doing very well, there were huge fields full of it everywhere!
Purple loosestrife in a field at Carden Alvar The Photographers stages of being.
The Photographers stages of being.
plasma ball lightning stage 1 “The Complete Newbie”
Knows they want to take pictures but have no idea how to go about it.
stage 2 “The Interested Beginner”
Knows there is more to photography they begin the process of learning and spend time looking to forums & groups to help grow their skills.
stage 3 “The Obsessive Amateur”
Has a growing evolving kit of equipment.
They spend large amount of time pouring over manufacturer equipment specs and arguing over even the most trivial of details on forums.
They become overly obsessed with the equipment IQ capabilities.
Unfortunately while sidetracked by all the neat equipment available to them they do not spend much time actually growing their skills by working on task of image making.stage 4 “The Image Maker”
Realizes the equipment is just a tool, a necessary evil.
They finally embark on the real journey of understanding light and imagining. They have a tendency to become a bit reclusive while chasing their new found vision and drop off from or become infrequent visitors to on-line communities in favor of actually working on their skills of producing images.stage 5 “The Master”
at the zenith of their abilities they reach the Zen of image making.
They become one with the image making process and their equipment (Anyone who believes they have reached this stage, have not!)stage 6 “There is no stage 6”
By far most people who embark on the photographic journey appear to progress fairly quickly from stage 1 through stage 2 to stage 3 where many tend to get stuck.
They become mired down in trying to understand all the wonderful equipment that keeps appearing on the market for them to obtain.Many fortunately eventually escape the bling and flash of all the new kit after a while, and get back on track of becoming a proficient image maker.
Though not all make it to stage 4, their hobby becomes the photo equipment in itself. Which is fine, especially if you are a photo equipment manufacturer!
Stage 5 is a myth, no one ever actually gets to this point though some have gotten very close!
