The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Tag: Photography

  • Back to Monticello

    Saturday we went back over to Monticello for their monthly running of their “Southern 401” steam engine. David enjoys trains period, but particularly likes the sights and sounds of the big steam engines. Between runs I got to take David up to the engine cabin so he could see everything, including the fire.

    On our ride from the station to downtown Monticello we rode in “the green car” at David’s request, and on the way back we rode on the wooden open-air car so we could really see and hear everything. If you decide to try it out, the timing of everything works out well for a ride into town, lunch at the Brown Bag Deli, and a ride back.

    There are plenty more photos available, have a look.

    And finally, here’s a video of our ride.

  • Sharing iPhone Wallpapers

    I have created a page here where I will be sharing images I’ve cropped and re-sized to be used as iPhone wallpapers.  Navigate to Wallpapers -> iPhone Wallpapers on the menu above (or go directly to the page here).

    I won’t be noting new uploads here, so you’ll need to just check back periodically.

  • How I Use Lightroom: Collect and Share

    This post is part of an ongoing series related to how I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  If you haven’t read them yet, check out How I use Lightroom: Getting Photos In, How I use Lightroom: Taking Out the Trash, and How I use Lightroom: Getting Photos Out.

    Collections, Quick Collections and Smart Collections

    In the first post in this series I discussed importing your photos into Lightroom and explained how I have Lightroom configured to import into a nicely organized, folder structure based on the import date.  So you’d think I’d use this all the time, right?

    Not as much as you may think.   And the reason is becuase the primary organizational unit in Lightroom is the Collection.

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  • How I Use Lightroom: Getting Photos Out

    How I Use Lightroom: Getting Photos Out

    This post is part of an ongoing series related to how I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  If you haven’t read them yet, check out How I use Lightroom: Getting Photos In and How I use Lightroom: Taking Out the Trash.

    First Some Background

    One of the first hurdles users new to Lightroom run into is how to get to the images they have edited.  It’s common to think I imported them to the My Pictures folder, so I’ll just use Windows Explorer to grab a copy.

    Wrong.

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  • How I Use Lightroom: Taking Out the Trash

    This post is part of an ongoing series related to how I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  If you haven’t read it yet, check out How I use Lightroom: Getting Photos In

    In the previous post I described how I use the Import window.  As I mentioned, I don’t exclude any photos at that stage.  I bring everything in and then quickly make a pass where I figure out which need to be deleted.

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  • How I Use Lightroom: Getting Photos In

    Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is an excellent piece of software I’ve recommended to many of my friends who have been bitten by the photography bug.  It catalogs and organizes all of my photos, allows me to quickly and efficiently edit them, and assists in pushing the end results for others to see. While on the surface it is targeted to professionals, I’m no professional and wouldn’t enjoy photography nearly as much without it.

    Because it is so configurable, it is often very helpful to get a look at how others use its many features.  So that’s what I’m going to do with this series of posts titled How I Use Lightroom.  I won’t go to mind-numbing depth into every feature it has to offer, but instead will show you what I think is a very approachable and practical method for getting your money’s worth out of it.

    So let’s get started with the first thing you need to do with it – get photos INTO lightroom.

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  • Art Fair

    This weekend we went downtown to the Old State Capitol Art Fair.  I always enjoy the photography most of all (shocking, I know), seeing such a wide variety of styles and subjects helps to inspire as well as solidify what I do and do not like.

    I also took the opportunity to try and get some more interesting photographs of the Old State Capitol.  I didn’t end up with anything outstanding, but it felt good to just walk around and focus on this for a while.

    The morning started off looking like it was going to rain, but cleared up shortly after I took this.

     

     

    This one was from a week or so ago, but it fits the theme.  It’s surely not the typical photograph of this building.

    A colorful exhibit.

    Here’s David taking a breather from all of the walking.  He has about as much fun as a 3 year old can at an art fair.

    Here are the rest of the photos from the Old State Capitol.

  • Lightroom 3, the iPhone, and Crashing on Import

    A few weeks ago I imported photos from my iPhone into Lightroom 3.  Ever since, I’ve had Lightroom crash on several occasions when I’ve gone to import photos off of a Compact Flash card.  I’m running Windows 7, 64-bit. I was resorting to a reboot to clear it up, but tonight I had too much other stuff running that I didn’t want to stop for a reboot.  So I started looking around.

    I noticed that in Windows Explorer, there was a “phantom” iPhone appearing when my phone was definitely not plugged in.  Here’s how it looked:

     

    My theory is that Lightroom was trying to enumerate devices and was getting to this one and failing.  Unfortunately there isn’t an option to Eject the device from here, so I turned to Devices and Printers in the Control Panel.  In the list of devices, sitting down in the Unspecified section was one called Apple Mobile Device USB Driver.  If you right-click and select Troubleshoot, Windows does a decent job at figuring out that there is no longer a device attached and removes it from the system.  No more phantom iPhone.

    I opened Lightroom back up, clicked Import… and Voila!  Fixed!

  • Summer Portraits

    It has been a while since our last photo session, so this morning I got all of the gear out and setup for a quick shoot.

    Unfortunately, it wasn’t so quick.  And wow it takes alot of effort to get a 2.5 year old to cooperate!

    After about an hour and a half I felt like I had a sufficient set to choose from and we called it quits.  The rest can be found in the gallery.

  • David at the 2010 Illinois State Fair

    Yesterday after work we went out to the fairgrounds to partake in the 2010 Illinois State Fair.  Unlike the past 2 weeks, the weather was great and made for a very pleasant evening of walking around.

    David got to see and touch many animals, as well as enjoy a Corn Dog and some Lemon Shake-Up.   With the small crowds and great weather we were able to make our rounds to everything we usually do, with the exception of Conservation World which closes early.  If this great weather continues we may just head back out there sometime this week.

    There are plenty of photos in our gallery, enjoy!