3 Quarters Today

My Life, my photography, my passions

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Photo Friday: Lilly Pads in Lightroom

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Lightroom 4  is my new friend and I’m pulling out old photos that needed some more work. I used to have a feature Photoshop Friday, but it’s now named Photo Friday. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of photos to “fix” or improve. I have thousands on my hard drive.

Pond Lilies in Summer
Pond Lilies in Summer

I love how the result and am even further excited about being able to decrease the jpg noise from my old Fuji Fine Pix S1500 camera. My old camera took good pictures, and I pushed the limit with it, but now I’m using a Canon Rebel shooting  RAW and I can see a huge difference.  This is one setting I’m putting into my presets.

Below is the straight out the camera photo. Look for yourself the difference.

Pond Lilies in Summer SOOC
Pond Lilies in Summer SOOC

Click on the image below to see the larger tutorial Lightroom4 screen.

Decreasing noise in Lightroom 4
Decreasing noise in Lightroom 4 (click on image for larger view)
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Photo Restoration: 1960’s Era

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Photo Restoration 1960s
Photo Restoration 1960s

I’ve finally removed hundreds of old photos from nearly a dozen “magnetic” glue photo albums. Not quite acid free. My Mother thought she was doing a good thing in the 1980’s by organizing and putting them into albums, when in actuality they would have been better off in the desk drawer in the original envelopes.

There aren’t many photos of me when I was little, so I want to preserve what few photographs I have of my childhood. They were so stuck I had to use the pointy end of a fondue fork to pry them off and carefully unstick the back. The paper came off on some, but at least now the family memories are back in a shoebox, in a cool dark location in the closet so I can start on the photo restoration part of the project..

At first glance the photos look to be in pretty good shape, but it only takes one scan and a white correction on levels to see how far these photos have faded. I am using Photoshop to adjust the color and white balance to bring back the vibrancy. The white border is the perfect point to select in either layer curves or adjustment levels.

I have just started scanning the snapshots, but the really old photos from the late 1800’s and early 1990’s I’m going to have professionally scanned at Hamilton Color Lab, where I work, they do professional photo restoration. My home scanner will only capture so much detail and they are too important to trust to a Best Buy over the counter scanner.

Photo Story: Here I met my brother for the first time. We were both adopted through Children’s Services of Connecticut. As you can see, although my brother Lance was a baby, he wasn’t a newborn when he went to our parents. My birthday is Sept. 21, 1965, yet I didn’t go to my adoptive parents until January 20, 1966.  Along with photos I now have my adoption records, certificates, and letters from the agency. Still don’t know if I will search or not. Even after witnessing my husband and his son’s adoption reunion.

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Day 268-269: The Longest Panoramic Photo

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I love my job, really I do. Everyday is different, every day someone brings in new challenges and a project they envision and we make come to life. Where do I work? At a pro photography color lab, specifically Hamilton Color Lab in Omaha Nebraska. We can print just about any photography, just check out this 243″ panoramic print of the country of Jordan for Amoura Productions.

It was printed on a EPSON Stylus® Pro 9600 printer then took two people to laminate, all in one shot, with no splicing. Stay tuned later for the full story on how this came about on the Hamilton Facebook page.

Hamilton Color Lab, laminating a 243" panoramic print
Hamilton Color Lab, laminating a 243" panoramic print
Bill trimming the prints, a little bit stressful as you only get one shot, no redo's
Bill trimming the prints, a little bit stressful as you only get one shot, no redo's