We went to San Francisco twice last weekend, in anticipation of a big project I am working on and hope to complete before summer. 

I photographed the Presidio and Fort Point. I was very lucky, since Fort Point celebrated Living History Days with civil war actors in period customs. It was a lot of fun and while we were there, I also photographed some of the spectacular views you can find at the Presidio and the Main Post, from where the Presidio grew to its current spread.

I parked my car and walked across the Golden Gate Bridge to boost my Golden Gate Portfolio. 

Both locations are a lot of fun to discover and the pictures really turned out exceptional (all shot with the Canon 7D). Check them out and come back for more, the project is far from done.

Which of these do you like best?

Confronted with an unprecedented range of software programs and sliders, digital photographers sometimes struggle finding the right balance. Browsing through the websites of my esteemed photography colleagues, I get the feeling that the opinions on color treatment seem to diverge, rather than converge. New software companies, like Topaz Labs, satisfy the need of the extreme end of the spectrum, while purists contest the unnatural appearance of these pictures. Composition and lighting alone used to make good photographs, but today it seems that color treatment becomes just as important. Since all our senses are overloaded every day, it becomes harder and harder to make a visual impact. Attracting a viewers attention may require a bold statement, but how bold is too bold and how much is too much? 

Train your perception and improve your compositions.

We are born with the capability to see and we hardly contemplate about it unless we lose or eyesight or our focus. Yet the way we see greatly determines our “talent” as photographers. Low-level subconscious brain functions filter the information our eyes capture, before it reaches the slower and more complex areas of our brain where we make conscious decisions. Sometimes we must learn to un-filter information so that we can grow our talent and go beyond our previous capacity as photographers.

How we see

We are incapable to process all the information our eyes capture. Most of our senses have filters, that pre-process and classify information.

While you are reading this, you will not feel your left foot, until you start concentrating on it. This is of course assuming your foot did not send out alarm signals (pain) before.

Perception happens only in a very small field in the center of our vision. While you are reading this page, your eyes follow the words, despite the fact that your field of view is broader than this page. This is because your brain only recognizes things that you focus on.

We also have peripheral vision. In the peripheral vision, we quickly identify movement, but we have no clue what moved. We need to focus our attention, the center of our vision on the moving subject to identify it.

Our brain processes information from the center of our vision different from the peripheral vision. Our camera does not discriminate between the center and the edge of the frame.

One of my favorite parks on the Colorado Plateau is Hovenweep National Monument.

Hovenweep is a delight to photograph. Its remote location at the border between Utah and Colorado and its overshadowing neighboring park, Mesa Verde, make sure that this park receives only a trickle of visitors when compared to other places. It is very unlikely that you get much disturbance during your photo session and if you do, you can easily outwait everyone.

Dani finally analyzed my feelings correctly, after I stumbled through Mesa Verde with an average mood one day and suddenly lit up with delight when we visited Hovenweep the other day. Mesa Verda does not leave much to creativity. You hold your camera into the hole and that is that. Photos either look good or they do not, but your influence on the outcome is limited.

Hovenweep is different. You can have fun with compositions, go crazy with foregrounds and backgrounds, try weird twisted angles, and never tire of the limitless options that this small park offers.

It is all about options, or why I really like SilkyPix Pro.

I have been using SilkyPix, and recently SilkyPix Pro, for a while now and always loved the sophisticated control and ingenious options that the converter offered. Resisting Change is natural and lies within the nature of all things. We have to invest some energy to dissipate on the learning process. Maybe that is the explanation for the monoculture of Aperture and Lightroom, but I am glad I made the effort.

Adobe Camera RAW 3, my previous RAW converter of choice does not support my new Canon EOS 7D camera. I decided not to upgrade Photoshop CS3 and skip a few versions, mostly due to Adobe's funky licensing policy. I ate up my licenses when I had trouble with my raid and re-installed a few times (with and without raid). Photoshop saw a new computer upon each installation and eventually claimed I had too many licenses in use, offering no recourse or help.

SilkyPix Pro does not seem to have this problem. I re-installed numerous times due to computer crashes until I finally got a new machine last fall. The people at SilkyPix (Roberto) are exceptionally easy to deal with in contrast to the call center reps I get at Adobe. I also downloaded the Lightroom 3 beta, but the support for the 7D isn't very good. The white balance looks off and the noise reduction for high ISO noise is insufficient. I assume that Lightroom 2.5 works well with the 7D, but I am not going to buy it and rather evaluate version 3.0 when it comes out.

Amazingly, the support for my 7D was there in SilkyPix Pro, even though I got my 7D when it had just come out. I had the same experience when my 450D had just come out. There was no update for ACR yet, but Silkypix 3 already supported it. Silkypix seems to be Japanese and they appear to have close ties to Canon.

I have uploaded two new Galleries of pictures from my recent trip to the Four Courner States and Nevadea. I shot these pictures with my new Canon 7D. Since the camera is brand new, I had to change my workflow, mostly because my version of Photoshop does not support it and Lightroom 3 Beta does not give me good results with white balance. I worked things out though and finally learned how to use Silkypix Pro (review coming).

Meanwhile, here are some galleries for you to enjoy.

The first Gallery is Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. This is a very diverse park with plenty of alien looking rock formations to explore. Had I known how much fun it was to explore this jewel, I would have come here sooner.

The second Gallery is Colorado National Monument. I have been in the vicinity twice before and couldn't make it here either. Colorado National Monument also was a pleasant surprise. Nearby parks in Utah overshadow this little pleasant park.

I am working on more galleries and some interesting blog posts. Meanwhile, enjoy these two.

It’s been said that imitation is the best form of flattery, but when it comes to creative arts, it’s best to develop your own style. Famous artists and sculptors have their signature styles, and it is their innate uniqueness that allows experts and aficionados to recognize their work and differentiate it from that of their peers. If you want to gain a fair amount of fame and success as a professional photographer, you need to develop your own style too, one that says you’re unique and different from the hundreds of thousands of others in the business. While it’s easy to think along these lines, most photographers don’t know how to go about developing their own style. It does not happen overnight, and to get to a point where your work is easily distinguishable, you need to first build a firm foundation:

With the new EOS 7D, Canon introduced a camera with APS-C sensor and positioned it above its previous top APS-C lineup, the XXD series. With this strategic move, Canon has once more the best available APS-C camera on the market. The 7D outshines all other crop factor cameras and even manages to score points against its more expensive full frame rivals. Canon manages the tightrope walk of combining some of the best features of APS-C cameras, such as more reach and a super fast shutter, with the superior image quality and resolution of full frame cameras through its advanced new CMOS sensor.