As I mentioned on Facebook a while back I had my old D70 converted to InfraRed (700nm filter). This filter lets me work with color IR images as well as traditional B&W. I am just now getting around to shooting a little with the modified camera and learning how to best post process the images to my taste. Down the road I will likely discuss my post processing approach. In the meantime I am sure I will be tweaking it for a while. Shown here is one image processed for color and then B&W. What do you think? Do you like one treatment better than the other?

After you have been shooting a while you end up with a lot of images. This is especially true in the digital age. When I say a lot, I mean tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. It happens relatively quickly (especially if you shoot HDR). Organizing managing this morass of images can be a real challenge and a time consumer.

I am in the midst of a big cleanup and edit down effort. Sometimes you just have to stop your other work and dig in. Even if you do basic tagging and editing down as your download your images, after a while you need to go back over the images. Especially after they are a year or more old. You are able to look at the images with new eyes, some will look better (fun discoveries) and some will just not cut it anymore (delete bin fodder). Knowing how aggressive to be in doing this is a real challenge. It is easy to think you will be able to salvage some image down the road (and sometimes it is worth it). But most of the time you have to ask yourself if you really want to spend that much time on that image. Maybe there are better ones to work on – we only have so much time.

Thoughts on cleaning up you image database:

1. Editing down in passes – don’t try to stop along the way and salvage images (starting editing the image). You will never make it through. Do one pass of eliminating technically flawed images, another of adding tags, etc. if you see something you like mark it and move on (use star, color, etc).
2. If you are just starting. Be disciplined: edit down and tag your images as you load them unto the computer. Take full advantage of your photo organizer – whatever it is. Don’t get paralyzed thinking you might decide to do it differently down the road. If you don’t do anything along the way you are in bigger trouble than not editing/tagging “the best way”.
3. You may want tags to include things like the place (Oregon, Portland, zoo, etc.),what (grass, tree, etc.),colors,technique (pan, HDR, multi-exposure), style (B&W, impressionism, etc.), etc. It is up to you. You will likely come up with new tags as you start to use your image library and can’t find a specific image!
4. Using stacking or sets in your library helps eliminate clutter. You can stack very similar images, HDR sets, depth of field sets, etc.

This whole editing down process can be tedious and long. Reward yourself somehow along the way. May it is stopping after a couple hours to work on that great new image you found or may be you should go out and get reacquainted with your family 😉

Blog Image: One nice find as I reviewed images from Jan 2009.

I have been refocused as of late on sales and marketing. Or put another way, getting my photographs (and name) out there for others to see and purchase.I have established a “web presence”  (this blog, website, facebook and flickr) but that is not enough and  even on the internet my visibility has been limited. Marketing/selling my work has not really been my strength so far (my wife is much better at it). I enjoy creating the images too much and need to discipline myself to work at the marketing part.  Not that I haven’t had plenty of ideas, but I need to pick specific ones and go after them. Ideas have ranged from magazine articles to photo competitions to door to door selling at businesses to art fairs to galleries, etc.

While refocusing on marketing ideas I have slowed down the amount of shooting I do. In addition, I haven’t been posting as many blog entries as you might have noticed. There is only so much time outside of my day job;-)

Not sure this blog entry is of much general interest, but just thought I would share where I was at now days. If you have marketing ideas that really worked for you that you would like to share (or maybe not) feel free to post them as a comment.

Blog image: A circular swipe of a cluster of beautiful flowers in the front yard of a home in Port Townsend WA where my wife and I just celebrated our 31st anniversary.

I have always meant to work a bit on lupine shots when it was in season. This year I did get a chance to “work” the lupine a bit.  Some shots are in the field and some are in the studio.  Click on the blog image (or on gallery) to see a gallery of images.

As you will see I used many techniques when working the lupine: wide angle, telephoto, macro, overlays, pans, multi-exposure, glass panning, etc. Enjoy.

I haven’t had much time to write lately, but here is a overlay shot of Azalea blooms. It was taken in my yard of a bush that bloomed better this year then ever before.  I wanted to capture it in a way that conveyed the profusion of blooms. This overlay consists of two shots. The first, a 9 multiple exposure moving the camera around to fill all the frame. The second shot is a straight shot filled with blooms. I then blended the two to taste in camera using Nikon’s “Overlay”.

Update: I decided it might be useful if I added the two source images that were blended. One reason to blend these two images is to fill the black holes you get with rhodies and azaleas.

The single shot image:

The 9 exposure: