3 Quarters Today

My Life, my photography, my passions

info@3QuartersToday.com

#16/52: My Favorite Country Barn, Edited with Lightroom

by

I love country barns  (okay, it’s really a corn crib) in Nebraska is one of my favorite photography subjects, yet this shot is my favorite. I pass it at least twice a day and it sits in the middle of a field with nothing around it, solitary, no trees, just in the middle of a field with either corn or soybeans growing on all sides. It has different moods depending on the light and looks different in the early morning and at night with the sun setting behind the western sky.

My favorite barn gets my attention every time I drive past and have often taken photographs to capture the mode. They never come out exactly how it looks in real life though. But with the help of Adobe Lightroom this has changed, I can actually say that this is truly what the barn looked like that day.

Photographing Country barns
Barn against a Cloudy Sky

From what I understand in reading various photography blogs and sites a camera has difficulty collecting all the dynamic ranges of lights and darks. In simple terms you expose for the sky or your subject. That leaves the other parts of you picture over or under exposed.

The newest version of Lightroom 4 has an amazing capability of pulling out shadows, highlights, whites and blacks without leaving artifacts in the image. This was shot in RAW and I’m very impressed, puts my Photoshop CS2 to shame. The later versions of Photoshop do have more advanced algorithms that achieve the same thing, but I can only compare the programs I use.

I will still keep using Photoshop, Lightroom is only another tool to use and does not have text or graphic design capability. I still love adding drop shadows, borders and creating custom layouts.

Stay tuned for more Lightroom 4 examples, and possibly redo’s of previous photos as a comparison.

More Historic Country Barns

Barns of New York: Rural Architecture of the Empire StateBarn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail MovementBarn Find Road Trip: 3 Guys, 14 Days and 1000 Lost Collector Cars DiscoveredThe Barn: Memoir of a Family during the Nazi Occupation of Holland in 1940-1945

Country Roads and Friday Finds – Keeping With The Times

A Drive in the Country, barns, country, country living, keeping with the. Later in the day I visited Star Lake and ran into this fellow who was pretty much minding his own (business) … A Drive in the Country, barns, country, …

Barns along Polling Station Road | Hoof Beats and Foot Prints

Drive along with me on a windy country road. Polling Station Road in Harwood, Maryland offers views of a variety of country barns. Most of them from a past era of tobacco farming in southern Maryland and stand in the …

D.L. Marriott » Blog Archive » Living in a Fairy Tale

It draws up images of pumpkins and scare crows, hay bales and country barns framed in russet leaves. I grew up in the city, and although my husband and I have spent all our child raising years in the suburbs, pretty far out in …

Sometimes You Just Have to Hug a Horse

by

Before and After, A Girl and her Horse

The first part of March my hubby and I attended the Great Nebraska Horse Fair in Lincoln Nebrasaka at the Lancaster Event Center. Meet some wonderful people including Jess and her yearling Belgian horse above. Photo was taken inside a horse trailer and lighting was just a little poor. Didn’t want to use my flash so just opened up the aperture.

I first rendered this in GIMP and adjusted the white balance. Although it rendered the image accurate the photo just didn’t give me the warm fuzzies. So after cropping in Photoshop I used a the Color layer adjustment with orange at about a 10% opacity to give the overall image a warmer tone.

What do you think?

Related articles

Chinese Chicken Stir Fry

by

Chicken Stir Fry
Chinese Chicken Stir Fry

I love Chinese food, yet I don’t get a chance to eat it as much as I would like. We live about 30 minutes from Omaha and Lincoln and although it’s not far, we just don’t eat out very much. I do make a mean stir fry at home though and it’s not that it’s hard to make.

By the way the chopsticks above were given to me by my oldest Marine son for Christmas, he made a thrift store run and found amazing presents that fit everyone’s interest and taste. I LOVE these bamboo chopsticks!

I use a wok, but before I had a wok I used a cast iron skillet, the same with the sesame oil and wok oil, it does add a certain flavor, but if you don’t have it leave it out.

Ingredients

  • 3 chicken breasts, cubed, or in strips
  • Bag of frozen Chinese vegetables (or combination of green peppers, shredded carrots, broccoli, etc)
  • 2 TBSP Sesame oil
  • 2 TBSP Wok oil
  • 1/2 onion, sliced
  • 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
  • Jar of water chestnuts
  • 1/4 cup Soy Sauce
  • 1/4 cup Dorothy Lynch Salad dressing (or catalina style)
  • 2 TBSP Cornstarch (or flour)
  • Cooked Rice

Directions

  1. Preheat oils in wok pan, when hot add onions and cubed chicken
  2. Cook till chicken is cooked throughout.
  3. Push chicken and onions to sides of wok, add vegetables and push on the side
  4. Add 1/2 cup water, salad dressing and soy sauce
  5. Cover and bring liquid to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
  6. Steam vegetables to desired tenderness
  7. Mix 1/4 cup water with cornstarch, add to simmering liquid in middle of wok. Sauce will thicken
  8. Mix all ingredients in sauce, remove from heat.
  9. Serve over cooked rice

Eat and enjoy!

#15/52: Prom Season 2012

by

Prom season kicks off early at Elmwood-Murdock high school and my daughter did what all teenage girls do before prom, searched for her dress (bought it online), had her nails done, her hair done and then have their Mom take way too many pictures.

Elmwood-Murdock does prom a little different than the bigger schools where kids rent limos which takes them to dinner and prom. The school prom committee raises money throughout their high school years and rents coach buses which picks the kids up at the school, where everyone rides together to a dinner, dance, and  then takes them to the after prom party. This years prom was held at Dave and Busters in Omaha.

Students walk out of the school on a red carpet while parents get a chance to take pictures paparazzi style. Really a lot of fun, at least from the Mom perspective. Enjoy the images of the Elmwood-Murdock 2012 Prom.

Red Carpet Walk at Prom 2012
Red Carpet Walk at Prom 2012
Glamorous Hollywood Walk at Prom 2012
Glamorous Hollywood Walk at Prom 2012
Yellow Prom Dress and corsage
My daughters yellow Prom Dress and corsage
Blue Prom Dress with Sequins
Blue Prom Dress with Sequins
Prom Dress Fashion Shoot
Prom Dress Fashion Shoot

By the way, all these images were edited in Lightroom 4 (still in the 30 day trial period) starting with the RAW files. I seriously miscalculated the exposure and almost all the images were over exposed. I am now soooo super impressed with Lightroom capabilities.

Related Prom Season Articles

Correcting Exposure Using the Histogram: Rowboat

by

Using the Histogram on your Camera to get Better Photos

Now that I’ve improved my photography and editing skills I’m going through photographs from past years vacation and reworking them in Photoshop. This time I’m using the  histogram to set optimum exposure and getting much better prints. So here is a good example of editing a photo in Photoshop using the histogram, if you remember I took a trip to Block Island, Rhode Island and have hundreds of photos I absolutely love. Too bad I wasn’t shooting RAW then.

Using the histogram in Photoshop
Rowboat on Block Island, RI edited in Photoshop

First I straightened the image about 2 degrees clockwise. I was a little off kilter taking the picture.  The swimmers in the water were bothering me, so I cloned them out.

I’ve learned I cannot rely on my computer screen when it comes to the light balance in a photo. My computer screen is pretty bright and as a result I always misjudge the exposure in my edited photos. The best best is to use the histogram. The same is true when you take photos on your digital camera. Don’t rely on your camera LCD screen, especially during the summer. Use your histogram tool.

As you can see in the initial histogram below, the histogram is pushed to the darkside (left). In the levels adjustment tool I used the far right prompt and brought it to the edge of the curve to brighten up the whole photo. Much better.

Using the histogram in Photoshop
Example of initial histogram in the Photoshop Histogram

Even with my Canon Rebel camera and exposing to the right, I still throw my exposure off, but I am getting better. Although I try not to chimp (constantly look at the camera screen after each shot) I will occasionally check the histogram in camera to make sure I’m not clipping my blacks or whites. As you can see int he photo above the left side of the graph is barely touching, so I didn’t lose very much information in the dark regions.

Canon DSLR Photography Quick Reference Tip Cards & Cheat Sheets for Canon Rebel T5i T4i T3i T3 T2i T1i XSi XS XTi XT 60D 7D 6D 5D Mark III IIBuW OMES L-3 Photography Exposure Meter / Continuous Light Meter with LED Display

If you shoot in RAW then you can recover a lot of digital information in the lights and darks. But I prefer to get a photo properly exposed in the camera as best that I can to eliminate major digital darkroom edits.

Any of the below programs have a histogram function in the editing mode. If you are a beginner then Photoshop Elements is where I would start. That will give you the biggest flexibility as far as text, layers, cloning and photo manipulation. If you just want to edit your photos and not get really creative with layers then Lightroom is the way to go, I LOVE Lightroom. Many people choose to subscribe to the Adobe Cloud for the $10/month you have full usage of both Photoshop and Lightroom and never have to worry about outdated software.

Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan (Photoshop CC +Editors Keys Dedicated Keyboard for Photoshop | PCAdobe Photoshop Lightroom 6 | PC DownloadNEW ADOBE PHOTOSHOP KEYBOARD STICKERS FOR DESKTOP, LAPTOP AND NOTEBOOK

 How to Use the Histogram to Get Better Photographs

Using the Histogram to Get Better Photos – Pentax Forums

Have you ever wondered what that graph-looking thing on your camera display or in Lightroom was? Or what you are supposed to do with it? If so, then read on to find out more about the mysterious histogram and what it can …

News Shooter | Blackmagic Design add histogram and …

Using the histogram scope, customers can now easily and rapidly set exposure in a shot as the histogram shows the the distribution of luminance in their images and if highlights or shadows are being clipped. Images with …

Histograms Explained: How a Simple Tool Can Help You …

There are a few drawbacks to using the histogram to judge exposure, however. Since it only gives you an overview of exposure by showing you the density of pixels, it can’t give you any specific information about which parts …

Lightroom Histogram Cheat sheet | Photographer Abroad

The contrast of the image can also be determined using the histogram. The more spread out the values are in the graph the more contrast is in the image. Conversely, an image with all the values concentrated in one zone is …

Blackmagic Camera 1.9

Using the histogram scope, customers can now easily and rapidly set exposure in a shot as the histogram shows the the distribution of luminance in their images and if highlights or shadows are being clipped. Images with clipped highlights or shadows …