Really good Wolfgang! Silver Efex Pro can often really add some extra to B/W images!
As can FilmPack. And that allows you to remain in a RAW workflow.
India in lovely warm colors brings memories from the Kerala Coast and Goa. In the seventies there could have been “hippies” swimming naked in the sea and lots of indians from Bombay watching, exited over what they got to see that they probably never had seen before.
Especially there were a lot of people gathering at the Friday “Flea Markets” at Anjuna in Goa these days. There are several places where pretty spectacular “street life” takes place during different “Flea Markets” in Goa.
6 Flea Markets in Goa: Best Places For Shopping In Goa - Tripoto
Your image reminded me of that I still have to reproduce my images from Goa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala digitally. I just have a months to do that before the winter goes away and I move out in the islands for a completely different kind of life. Maybee it will be next year instead.
I use both and still NIK has a few advantages but I also think they shall port a few more of the features in NIK to Filmpack/Photolab that aren´t there yet.
I´m no fan of intermediate formats like old TIFF-files either
Like what exactly? I hate the Nik UI - it feels much more “multi-platform/non-native” than PL.
So far, I haven’t found the need for anything other than FilmPack integrated into PL.
Memories… How right you are. I’ve been traveling back and forth to India since the early 1980’s, to do volunteer work at Aravind Eye Hospital. I’ve always taken what I felt was an appropriate camera, but I learned over the years that a small (but good) camera was best for me. Because of the images up above, and my recent thoughts about this, I’ve been looking through my old photos again.
Bad timing. Now that the virus has been brought under control, and I think I once again feel safe to travel, I’ve been noticing that the cost of airline tickets has been going up astronomically. What cost me $1,200 or so for a round trip ticket is now up to $4,000 or so, and if I travel in a better class as my relatives tell me to do, for my health, this can go up to $8,000 or $10,000. Sadly, I may not ever get back there again.
In 2011 I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, with a Leica lens, and it did everything I hoped for. Sadly, I was only shooting ‘jpg’ back then, but I love those photos even today. All I had for an editor back then was Lightroom, but I wasn’t all that good at it, and I realize how much more control I have now using PhotoLab. This tiny, pocketable camera fit into my pocket, and I even bought a digital “viewfinder” that fit on top of it when I wanted. 10 megapixels of wonderful quality, in a tiny body - and yes, I still have it. I should dust it off, and start using it again, but this time, in raw format…
Anyway, I was with some friends, traveling by car to the west coast of South India, and we passed an old fashioned ox cart. I asked them to stop, walked backward to what I felt was a good place to shoot from, and captured this image. It may never win any awards, but it’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken, and it’s now my “desktop image”. Neither the driver, nor either of the oxen, paid any attention to me, which would have ruined the photo.
There is hardly any editing - I can post the original jpg image if anyone wants me to. I very much appreciate that with hardly any effort on my part (Smart Lighting, mostly) the image was so easy to make into a “finished” photo. It’s still a “photograph”; I can remove the post at the left, turning into a Photo Illustration, but why bother…
One more thing. In India, and Nepal, I could find an infinite number of scenes I loved to photograph. Around Miami, and Miami Beach in particular, it’s hard to find anything I really care to shoot. I’m not really a “people person”; I find photogenic locations and scenes so much more interesting, and if there are people in them, I think of them as “props”, to be positioned in my photo in a way that seems balanced and natural to me. I love @Joanna’s ability to travel somewhere and capture such lovely images.
One last thing. Years ago, I had my Windows laptop (Lenovo W530) and either “borrowed” or “real” Adobe software. I would buy it once, but couldn’t afford to be updating every year. My photos looked good on the laptop screen, but I never, ever, felt comfortable editing them in Lightroom, even less so in PhotoShop. One of the nicest things about PhotoLab, which I didn’t realize until recently, is that it makes it so easy to make a perfect (to me) image from my files, and usually in a way that unless I really screw up, doesn’t look “over-cooked”. PL5 is like “modeling clay”, I’ve learned in this forum how to use it in “moderation” and not over-do things. I enjoy the open source “DarkTable” software, but it feels “clumsy” compared to PL5.
To anyone reading this - while shooting with your phone, or capturing jpg images with your camera may be fast and easy, eventually you will realize how much better your images might look had you captured them in ‘raw’.
We haven’t done much travelling since the start of 2020 due to limitations and we are unlikely to travel very long distances currently due tot he sky-high price of petrol. Nonetheless, we still have to travel from our home in the middle of farming land to find something worthwhile photographing.
But we also do still life photography on the kitchen table and, when you do get out and about, we tend to look for details rather than the whole scene.
Take another look at the shots from this post - all taken within 32km of our house.
Well…
Not sure how to reply. I remember looking them over earlier, but I didn’t see what I think you see.
- First photo is a lovely view, but if I would have posted it, I’m sure you would all be telling me I “over-did” the processing, especially the sky, that looks …well, “Photoshopped”. I love all the details, and the masts, and that there are so many boats, and I enjoy the reflections, but my eye is instantly drawn to the “scary” looking clouds.
- Photo #2 is a fascinating boat, and I love the reflection in the water, but I don’t enjoy the photo. It leave me anxious to see the whole boat, but there was probably no way you could have done that, unless you could somehow cross to the other side of the canal. It reminds me of all the times I wanted to photograph ships or boats, and could never find a good place to do so from. Beautiful colors, and obviously low tide.
- Photo #3 I feel just as confused today, as I did back then. I can’t tell what’s what… but I doubt you could have gotten a better view, unless you rented a rowboat or something. It’s just way too confusing to me.
- Photo #4 I think is awesome!!! Use any number of adjectives. I love it! I think it would be even better if you cropped closer at the left, and my brain would be happier if all the horizontal lines were made parallel, but they’re off just enough to give the photo some life, and to relate to what I think the original scene really was. I absolutely love this photo.
For a “wall hanger”, I would love to have that last photo hanging on my wall. It takes time to figure out what it is, and so on, but both before and after I do that, it’s beautiful!
If you’re in the middle of “farming land”, I would think there would be an infinite number of fascinating photos to take, for people like me who live in the middle of a city. I love the “old farm gear” type of photos others have posted, some old piece of retired farming machine left to rust away in a field or barn…
I have. Not all the prests are ported and I guess that’s just DXO wants it becsuse that way som people will buy both NIK and PhotolabFilmpack. A few things like the sharpening and denoise in NIK just feels obsolete but not all foes for some people.
I also had JPEG only time I regret. The problem with JPEG is the limitations in Photolab. Unlike Topaz denoise like Deep Prime in PL only works with RAW.
The problem is, it is hardly processed at all. Here on the North coast of Brittany, we don’t have anywhere near the air pollution you get in some places and the skies can be blisteringly clear with strongly defined, high contrast, clouds, just like these, especially when photographed from the right angle to the sun
The problem there is that it is not on a canal, but on a basin with a lock to maintain the water level when the tide goes out. I could have photographed it from the digue on the other side of the boat but all I would have got was a very busy background with lots of buildings like our favourite café…
… which would have totally lost the boat’s rigging against all the detail.
If you want to see what I mean, here’s a shot from the digue on the other side, taken at the end of December, a couple of days after the person responsible for closing the lock gates forgot to do so one night and a lot of the water flowed out off the basin and holed and capsized the Black Pearl…
What can one say but - Ooops!
But this is a detail shot, all about the patterns and shapes made by the anchors, ropes and bowsprit. Very much an abstract image. Taken because that is what caught my eye in passing, with the sun shining at just the right angle to leave the minimum of shadows and to give a beautiful texture to the water in the background.
And this is the trick - to leave room for the image to “breathe” and to reflect the reality that it is an old structure and is truly not square.
Contact me if you’re serious.
Our nearest neighbour is a dairy farm, and there really isn’t any “picturesque” stuff around, unless you count the odd dead cow waiting for the slaughter truck to pick it up. But there are the odd sites within an easy drive that do have some derelict machinery to be photographed.
Oh boy! That was an expensive mistake!!!
I know it’s not “artsy”, but if you had your “photojournalist hat” on, I bet the local news would love to have had this photo.
Please don’t get upset at me - when I look at your photo, I don’t really see the photo. I see a boat in distress, and wonder how it got there - which you answered. Then I wonder how they’re going repair it - get it floating I expect, pump out the water after patching the hull, and take it to a boat yard where it can be repaired properly. There’s going to be a lot of damage inside the boat as well. At least it isn’t lying on its side. Hopefully the crane can lift it, without the crane toppling over into the boat and the canal…
All you need is the 5 W’s, and you too are a photojournalist - Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
One more photo from the past, and after this, I need to go looking for new things to photograph. But I’ll never be able to capture photos like this in the USA, and it was only with a LOT of effort that I captured this photo at all, in India, during the Chitherai Festival. The camera was held way over my head, and I cropped it down to the essentials.
The original is buried away on my MacBook Pro - I guess I need to find a way to copy the entire PICTURES folder with all my images on my MacBook Pro onto the expansion drive on my Mac Mini.
My recommendation: Copy all folders containing your image files into one “root” image folder.
I put all my images in the “Shared Photos” folder like so:
Most users will find their own Pictures folder to be a better place than macOS’ Shared User.
For subfolders, check out this page: About Digital Asset Management - TuTo DxO
Once the structure is built (and you feel comfortable with it), back up DPL’s database, delete it and have DPL index the folder “root”. This will take a while, let it run through the night and make sure that power is available, batteries charged etc.
Prevent your Mac from sleeping: Open Terminal, enter “caffeinate” and hit ENTER, leave Terminal open! When indexing is done, press control-C to stop the caffeine, then enter “exit” and quit Terminal.
Hi Platypus,
is using the terminal the only possibility to prevent Mac from sleeping?
nice Sunday
In Stockholm we don´t have any tide at all but we have a freshwater lake with a water surface a meter over the Baltic Lake and we of that reason we have locks. Below you can se an historical image from Carl Johans Slussen that we used to refer to as the “Divorse Trensch” since it happend that men and women abord really got mad at each other. What everybody was waiting for above was that some not so good sea men should tie their boats the quays before they started to release the water from the locks.
Here an image from the sixties:
Historiska fotografier - Digitala Stadsmuseet (stockholm.se)
and another from 1909:
Historiska fotografier - Digitala Stadsmuseet (stockholm.se)
Today there is a huge construction site at that place where a new lock with much higher capacity shall be buiilt in order to secure that the Lake side of the lock shall not be fooded in the spring. Percipitaion is increasing so this is necessary to prevent water from pooring into the thunnels of our Underground commuter trains.
I knew I had one somewhere…
And, no, the shed is perfectly upright, it’s the world underneath that’s tilting 
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In every way imaginable, I love this photo, and photos like this. Beautiful in ever way, and it looks like a photo that could have gone into a text book on how to properly expose b&w photos - there is detail even in the darkest parts, far into the shed.
I don’t like the mailbox though, as it takes my eyes away from the tractor deep into the shed. Not sure how I feel about the reflection in the windshield - a polarizing filter may or may not have helped. Reminder to myself, maybe I should always carry one, just in case.
I know you don’t do that, but there is a space at the bottom right where your “signature” could go…
Interesting about the land tilting the way it does, so the tractor is tilted, but the shed is perfectly straight. My eyes just wander around, looking for details.
Was this a “straight print”, or was it done with “film pack”?
