Preparing for a Photo Expedition (Pre-Build Smug Mug Page)

I'm blessed to be able to go on one or two pretty significant trips each year.  I always depart with the intention of building a set of pages on my SmugMug site that will host images captured by me, my family, and when I am lucky fellow travelers. Sorting, rating, post-processing and ultimately posting the images to my site takes a fairly large amount of time and effort.  Having the images appearing on the site as fast as possible is useful, having some of them appearing during the trip encourages other to participate making it even more important to me.

My desire for speed combined with my natural inclination to laziness has spurred me to create a cookbook for pre-trip prep to make posting of images faster during and after the expedition.  This post lays out the steps I go through to setup my working environment for a trip, your milage, will of course, vary.

Fixing Pet Eye in Photoshop CC 2019

Lightroom has a handy red eye and pet eye fix tool but often, at least for me, it seems like pointing in a finishing nail with a sledge hammer the results are just too heavy handed.  I ran across a couple of approaches on the inter webs and found one at digital-photograpy-school.com that inspired me to create my own step by step.

Removing Skin Shine

I'm never very happy when I have to use flash for a shot.  It is so easy to create horrible hot spots of shine, especially on people's faces. It's worst when using the built in flash. or ugly maker, that most cameras have, but even a bounce flash can create nasty bright spots.

What is a BarrettPhoto Book?

The books I create are compilations of images taken at a specific event or series of events.  My intent in putting them together is to capture memories and build something that is a worthy keepsake for the participants in the event.

Photo books allow me to utilize images that would otherwise end up in a shoebox or just sit on a disk drive into something that I am proud to share with people who may be interested in where I have visited and/or seen.

Some of the books are intended for any/all participants in a group trip, such as the Grove City Alumni travels that Linda and I enjoy participating in.  So far, I’ve produced three such books, with one more slated for June/July of 2018:

• National Parks of the High Plains, June 2015
• Galapagos, January 2017
• Machu Picchu, January 2017
• National Parks of the South West, June 2018

Consumer Reports rates Photo Print Labs - 2017

Consumer Reports recently published a rating of Photo Printing Services with some analysis.  Top quality honors went to Walgreens (98 of 100) with AdoramaPix close behind (97 of 100). The best pricing on 4x6 prints was a tie at 9¢ between Walmart, Amazon, and Snapfish.  Several labs charged $1.79 for an 8x10 (Walmart, Amazon, and Costco).  Adoramapix was competitive on pricing for an 8x10 at $1.89 while offering a higher quality print.

The Consumer Reports Article is available on the CR web site.

I am pleased to see my photo lab of choice coming out on top.

Fonts in Barrett Photo Books

My knowledge of typography is fairly sparse. I have picked up a few things here and there in classes and other readings.  I've learned enough to know it is an important element of book / page design and that I don't know nearly enough.  That said, I have settled on a few design guidelines that I think make sense and I try to follow. I'll try to lay them out here, for my own reference at least.

Freezing Flowing Water

This is old hat to many photographers, but the use of shutter speed to freeze flowing water is something worth understanding even at the risk of repeating what might be obvious.

Water in motion can make striking images.  Our eyes naturally blend the motion of falling water drops and make water falls / rapids into silky ribbons of water even when they are actually individual droplets of water.  A camera can freeze that motion, or allow it to flow, it all depends on the shutter speed.

The accompanying shot of the water wheel was shot at 1/50 of a second.  This allowed the water to move a short distance during the exposure and blurring, but not forming a long smooth silky fall.  In this case, I wanted the water to show motion, to make the shot feel like it's in motion, but I wanted the spokes of the wheel to be relatively sharp, nearly frozen in time. That's what I was seeing when I looked at the scene and that shutter speed (on a tripod, BTW) was just right.