Cutting the Christmas Tree

One of our family traditions is to forego the Christmas tree lot and drive into the mountains to cut our Christmas tree. Living where we do, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, there are many places only a few hours away where one can drive into the mountains on Forest Service logging roads and choose from thousands of fresh, pristine mountain pine trees.

We were fortunate to have good weather for our excursion into the mountains. Although the road was snow-covered, the snow was not deep and the clear skies and mild temperatures made for a safe and enjoyable day.

Finding the right tree from among literally thousands can be a daunting task.  "This one looks good," I'll shout to my wife, about a hundred feet away.  "What do you think of this one?"she'll holler back. Our sons' will also weigh in with their opinions.

After much tromping around through the woods, we eventually agree upon a tree.  For the size we are looking for, no chain saws are needed. A simple, sharp tree saw is all we need to fell a nice 9-foot pine, which you can see in the video below.

Once the tree is cut, the next task it to haul it back to the truck. Easier said that done!

It's not until the tree is cut that you realize just how heavy a freshly cut pine tree really is. It makes you appreciate how much hard work in involved in cutting loading, wrapping all the trees you see on those lots. I'll settle for one, thank you very much!

Once the tree has been dragged to the truck, we load it in, tie it down and take the obligatory family photo, proving once again we braved the elements and got our Christmas three the old-fashioned way.  However, as you can somewhat see from this photo, the truck gets a bit dirty in the process.

The next day it is clearly apparent how much Forest Service road the hard-working pickup took home as a souvenir.  While I'm all about driving around the neighborhood and letting the neighbors see how 'authentic' we are when it comes to tree procurement, at some point the rig needs a good, thorough cleaning. 

After we got home and had dinner, we unloaded the tree from the truck and set up the tree stand. My wife and kids washed up and got the lights ready. I placed the tree in the stand and get it properly situated. I washed up, and finally it was the pickup's turn.

What a difference a shower makes!

Let's Get Raw

I have had a passion for photography and image creation for over 30 years. I remember developing black and white negatives by hand in college, and purchased my own chemical tank so I could process my own film in the bathtub (yes, I really did that).

As a TV news photographer in the late 80s and throughout the 90s I became accustomed to instant image gratification – shoot video in the afternoon, edit for broadcast in the evening, watch it on the news that night. I often carried a still camera around with me in addition to the video camera, but in those days it was still film.
I invested in a Hasselblad camera and dabbled in Wedding and Portrait photography, but never pursued it to the point of ‘going pro.’ What I realized was that I didn’t want to make photography my living – it was better suited to be a passion.

When digital cameras came along I was thrilled. No longer concerned with the cost of film, I was free to experiment to my heart’s content. I sold the Hasselblad ( for half of what I paid for it!) and bought a digital camera and a Mac.

For years I was content shooting JPEGs. Instant photography, without the Polaroid limitations. Shoot it, see it. Import onto the computer, open Photoshop, play around. What could be better?
RAW.

Yes, I am a RAW convert now. If you are reading this and don’t know what RAW is (from a photographic standpoint, not a meat standpoint), the best way I can explain it is that a RAW photographic file could be thought of as a digital negative. If you processed B&W film and creative negatives, you took your neg into the darkroom, put it under the light and created a print. If the print did not turn out as well as you had expected, you went back into the darkroom and tried dodging and burning. After much trial and error, you got the print you wanted or gave up in frustration. What you still had, at the end of the day, was a clean negative. No matter how many prints you made, as long as you didn’t scratch the neg, you still had a chance to create the print you envisioned.

A RAW file is the equivalent of a negative. Using programs such as Lightroom or Aperture, you import a RAW file and can manipulate the color, saturation, hue, sharpness and more. You can correct for chromatic aberrations, adjust the color temperature and exposure – all without physically changing the pixels that make up the file.

To see the results of your digital manipulations, you export the file from Lightroom or Aperture as a JPEG, PSD, TIFF or other format.  Don’t like what you see? Go back into Lightroom or Aperture and try again. Your RAW file is still pristine.

Full disclosure – RAW files tend to be large. They can become storage hogs. Because they are digital, they don’t fit into the polyurethane sleeves I used to store my old negatives in. Now I buy portable hard drives and store the RAW files there. Expensive? Yes, to an extent. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone in search of a specific RAW file to provide an element I wanted for a photo composition, or to adjust an element of a photo I once liked but now wish to improve.

If you are interested in learning more about working with RAW images, do a search for Aperture or Lightroom and go from there. But let me warn you – once you go RAW, you’ll never go back.

Nikon or Canon?

As a photographer, whether professional, pro-sumer, or simple snapshot-taker, you never know when you might stumble upon a scene or image you want to capture. That’s why I almost always carry a small digital camera with me wherever I go.  There have been several times I’ve used it and been grateful for having the camera at hand. Particularly if you have kids, you never know when you will see your children do something clever, cute or simply ridiculous, and can capture the moment for future memories or blackmail.

My current ‘pocket camera’ is a Nikon Coolpix S8000. It is small, lightweight, has 14.2 megapixels, captures video (for those rare occasions when I want to do that) and a 10x zoom lens. It fits easily into a pocket and the battery allows for about 210 images per charge. I’ve been very pleased with the camera, and had planned to keep it for a long time.

On the other end of the camera spectrum, my primary or ‘real’ camera is a Nikon D300. This is the camera I use when I shoot sports, scenes and other images where I want maximum sharpness, resolution, and may want to color correct, sharpen or experiment with. One other key feature the Nikon D300 has over the pocket camera is the ability to capture images in RAW format. The ability to work with RAW files allows the user to enhance the image without losing or compromising data. If you don’t like how an image turned out the first time, you can start from scratch. It’s like a negative from the old film days – you can make several prints from the same negative, each one a bit different from the others, and still have your original image capture in pristine condition.

Once you’ve become comfortable shooting RAW images, when you work with a camera that only provides a JPEG output, you feel stuck.  Which is how I have been feeling recently, wishing I could capture RAW images with a pocket camera.

I took a trip to my local camera store (Pictureline – Salt Lake City) and lo and behold, there actually are ‘pocket cameras’ which capture images in RAW format. The Nikon Coolpix P7000 and the Canon PowerShot S 95 both offer RAW image capture capabilities.

It turns out there are other ‘pocket’ cameras that allow for RAW image capture. I don’t know why I didn’t think to explore this sooner, but for whatever reason I always thought RAW capture was a high-end, digital SLR feature only. Turns out that is not the case.

Having been a Nikon guy for awhile, it pains me to look at a Canon model, but I have been looking at the Powershot 95. But after looking online and comparing the two cameras, I’m torn. The Nikon CoolPix P7000 has some terrific features, including a 10MP CCD sensor, a 7x zoom (28-200mm equivalent) f/2.8-5.6 with 2 ED elements and built-in ND filter, ISO range from 100-3200, the RAW capture option (.NRW format) as well as NRW+JPEG (fine), 4 Picture Control preset modes + custom mode, four Picture Control preset modes + custom mode and Dual IR receivers (front and rear) for wireless remote control ML-L3. This is a very nice feature set in a relatively small package.

The Key word for me, though, is ‘relatively.’

I almost always carry my Nikon Coolpix S8000 with me. I have two kids and when we are out doing something, it doesn’t matter what, I will usually snap a few photos of them. Sometimes it’s a ‘we were here’ thing, other times it’s a ‘look how ridiculous we are acting’ thing, occasionally it’s a ‘oh no, did I really do THAT?’ thing. These moments have yielded some fun images, and it’s because the camera will fit nicely into my pocket. I would not have captured any of them with the Nikon D300 – even if I did have it along.

Occasionally, though, I will also see a scene or object that I would like to capture. In my mind’s eye I am already seeing the image in Lightroom and visualizing how I will use that program to make the object or scene come to life. With the Nikon Coolpix S8000 I cannot capture RAW, and therefore can’t realize the end result of what my minds eye has already created. This has been frustrating.  

Having been a Nikon guy for awhile, it pains me to look at a Canon model, but I have been looking at the Powershot 95. But after looking online and comparing the two cameras, I’m torn. The Nikon CoolPix P7000 has some terrific features, including a 10MP CCD sensor, a 7x zoom (28-200mm equivalent) f/2.8-5.6 with 2 ED elements and built-in ND filter, ISO range from 100-3200, the RAW capture option (.NRW format) as well as NRW+JPEG (fine), 4 Picture Control preset modes + custom mode, four Picture Control preset modes + custom mode and Dual IR receivers (front and rear) for wireless remote control ML-L3. This is a very nice feature set in a relatively small package.

The Canon also has a 10 MP CCD sensor coupled with a DIGIC 4 sensor with iSAPS technology. The lens has a 3.8 Optical zoom - a bit less than the Nikon (okay, maybe more than ‘a bit’ less), an ISO range from 80 – 3200, RAW capture, second curtain sync, built-in flash, and a host of shooting modes. The Canon P95 shoots HD movies.

Bottom Line for me, the Nikon is too large for me to consider it a true ‘pocket camera.’ It looks like it is going to do just want I want it to do – allow me to capture my kids silly moments as well as provide a means to get more ‘semi-professional’ images, created from RAW files.

Check back in awhile to view some images made with this camera.

Lovin' Lightroom

For those of you who use Lightroom, a new set of presets have been released. Perfect Presets for Lightroom 3.0 now offers a third volume of effects, encompassing 192 presets in all. 
 
Not to be a shill for private companies, but if you use Lightroom as much as I do, you will find having presents can speed up your workflow. I enjoy playing around with my images and experimenting to achieve different effects, but there are times when I know what I want, and presents can cut the time spent on the computer down significantly.
 
Perfect Presets for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, available in the Develop Module of Lightroom, includes 3 collections – The One-Click Wow collection includes presets for quick and easy image optimization such as color and tonal correction. Rather than futz around, if you like the results these presets deliver you can run your batch and be done. 
 
If you want to experiment, Wow effects includes presets and brushes for adding special effects to images. If your looking for powerful and popular effects including noise reduction, black and white conversions and several stylized effects, there is a package for that as well.