A couple of mtn biking pics

[tadrscin]

I haven't posted anything in a while so I thought I share a couple of pics I took of my wife while riding over the last few days. Nothing fancy, just some quick shots with the Rebel and 430.

[Jimmy B]

Tad, Your wife is looking good on the trail, glad you stopped to shoot.
JB

[tadrscin]

Thanks Jimmy. I've been making a point to stop and get at least a couple of pics on every ride. I just got a new back pack to take the camera with me on rides. It's a Tamrac Adventure 6 that has a camera bag on the bottom and a single compartment at the top that I put my bladder in. I tried it out last night and it works great. It's so much easier and quicker to get the camera in and out now. It's got enough room for the Rebel, 430, spare batteries and my angle finder. I'll need to make a few modifictaions to accomodate the bladder better, but it'll do the job really well. Just as an FYI, there's going to be a freeride competition at Colonnade on May 30th. Should be a great opportunity to get some great shots. I'm going to go and just shoot. I won't even be bringing my bike. If you're in town you should come down and shoot it as well.

[Jimmy B]

Just checked the calender I am free that day, I did see that on the bike club website. It could be a fun day down there, maybe some urban stuff before the bike stuff? We need to get together well before that, if you know what I mean !
Jimmy B

[brmill26]

Great shots, Tad. I love the contrast and great sky in the first one. And the background in the second shot is fantastic.

[tadrscin]

Thanks. I was quite happy with the first one. I only had one test shot to dial in the flash. I started at 1/16th power and then made an educated guess at 1/64th and it turned out pretty good. It's still a tick hot and I should've stopped down maybe 1/3 of a stop more. What you're seeing is straight out of the camera with the exception of a small crop and resizing. I should open it back up in Camera RAW and tweak it some. I underexposed the background to get the darker look. This was shot a bit before sunset so it was still pretty light out. Unfortunately it starting raining just as I was getting this shot so it was time to leave. We managed to get back in the car right before it started pouring!

[Photo-John]

Tad-
Good stuff. You're a lucky man to have a wife who rides like that!

I was gonna say the first photo looks too hot. But I see you've already discussed that. Almost all of the photos you see from me - especially flash stuff - use Photoshop masked adjustment layers to balance the light. Good exposure gets me good raw material to start with. And then Lightroom and Photoshop masked adjustment layers allow me to squeeze as much as possible from the original files. There's a lot of room to balance that photo out in post, if you use the available tools correctly. I think you've got a pretty good start. Now you just need to take the time to polish it up.

[tadrscin]

Thanks John. Right now I'm trying to learn Camera RAW and get that down somewhat and also trying to learn to do more with Photoshop. I pretty much only know the basics in Photoshop so I have a long way to go there. Just not enough time in the day with that darn job thing getting in the way. You're right about being lucky to have a wife that rides the stuff I do and is also really good at it. This is us over the weekend at a DH race clinic in Port Angeles where we got snowed out after 4 runs.

[tadrscin]

Here's a new version after doing some tweaking in Camera RAW.


One thing I really need to get figured out is color management. I finally got my monitors and printer to agree, but this doesn't look quite the same on the web as it does in Photoshop or in print.

[Photo-John]

This definitely looks more balanced. But now it looks a little dark to me. You need to look into Photoshop masked adjustment layers. That's where the real power of Photoshop lies. When I learned about adjustment layers, it was an almost religious experience. My whole photographic world just opened up.

To get your photos to match on the Web, make sure to convert them to the sRGB profile before you save them. Master files should be Adobe RGB or another wide gamut colorspace. But when you set one up for the Web, the past thing you should do before saving it is convert it to sRGB. All Web browsers use the sRGB colorspace so if your photos have another profile attached, they will not be displayed correctly.

[tadrscin]

I actually like it a little darker like this. I used the recover tool to bring down the highlights a bit and increased the blacks a little. I joined NAPP late last year and I've started going through some of the tutorials online. I haven't gotten to layers yet, although I also went to a CS4 seminar last year as well where they talked about layers a lot. To say I was overwhelmed with tips etc would be an understatement. Good thing they included a workbook that had it all I'd really like to take a class in person, but so far I haven't been able to find one that I thought would be worth it. Good tip about web photos. I guess I'll start saving a 2nd copy with web in the name so I can keep them all straight.

[Photo-John]

I make three directories - one with my RAW files and inside that there's a "Master" folder and a "Web" folder. That way I don't have to rename them. They all have the same names, they're just different file types and different sizes. The Master files are all layered TIFFs.

[SmartWombat]

All Web browsers use the sRGB colorspace so if your photos have another profile attached, they will not be displayed correctly.

Except Safari, which understands colour profiled images.
But almost no-one uses it so you can ignore that