Caves open for tours geared towards the general public, such as those found in national parks, generally have paved paths and beautifully installed lights. What sometimes makes them difficult to photograph are restrictions like the prohibition of tripods. Outside of those caves, there is a whole world of undeveloped caves that offer a wild and […]
Posted on January 24, 2020, 1:04 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
How many times have you left a scene convinced that you got the photo “in the box”, only to find out upon looking at the file at 100% on the computer that it was unacceptably blurry? Some photographers advocate making generous use of the digital trash can when images are technically flawed. However, when images […]
Posted on November 7, 2019, 12:00 am, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
Despite being one of the most spectacular spots on the entire coastline of Acadia National Park, Ravens Nest on the Schoodic Peninsula is a little known and unmarked location. I will elaborate in the next article, which will be a location guide. In this article I discuss how I photographed and processed the image using […]
Posted on October 8, 2019, 8:10 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
Although paved, the Keno Access Road, in the northeast corner extension of Cascade Siskiyou National Monument was so remote that I hardly saw any other car on it. This made it possible to drive slowly enough to look for photographs, a normally hazardous proposition for the solo driver. One of the advantages of going on […]
Posted on August 12, 2019, 11:57 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
A main technical obstacle in making great prints from digital files is that you are translating an image viewed through the transmissive vehicle of the computer screen to a physical medium which is reflective. In this article, I explain with examples how to compensate for that difference, using as a step by step an improved […]
Posted on May 28, 2019, 10:38 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
This is the first of a possible series of posts where I explain the multiple steps and thought process that led me from initial impression to final image. At Whitmore Canyon Overlook, you face huge cliffs rising in front of you, rather than below you, like at most other Grand Canyon overlooks. My visit was […]
Posted on March 28, 2019, 11:51 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
Brightening an image in Lightroom with sliders looks like a straightforward task, yet there are two ways of doing it, and they can yield very different results, as illustrated with images and stepcharts. This framework is also used to examine the most useful Lightroom slider. Brightening an under-exposed image This image of the White Cliffs […]
Posted on March 21, 2019, 8:52 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
In this post, using images from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison for which I had described the location, I demonstrate two of the processing steps I use most frequently for high contrast scenes. Both consist of somehow counter-intuitive, but extremely simple and effective, opposite slider moves. Although this post is illustrated with Adobe Lightroom, […]
Posted on December 10, 2018, 11:04 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
Amongst the many new controls brought by digital processing, one of the simplest, and most often overlooked, is the possibility to change an image’s aspect ratio. One could do a lot of changes in the darkroom, but altering the aspect ratio by optical means was very difficult. Why would someone want to do that? When […]
Posted on September 23, 2018, 4:50 pm, by QT Luong, under
Techniques.
Summary: One of the photographer’s greatest fears is to lose a significant chunk of images from a big trip or event. In this long-form article, find out how a memory card failure caused a week of photographs to disappear, what I did to try to recover them via software, then physical data services, and the […]
