Jim enjoys using Lightroom and Photoshop along with other digital darkroom tools to bring out the best in an image. Practicing processing Milky Way images taken during his recent trip to Yosemite. He’s been learning how to use Starnet++ and StarXterminator with Siril to separate the Milky Way nebula from the stars. This allows the Milky Way to be processed independently from the stars, as separate layers.
For architectural photography, Jim watched a few tutorials on how to convert architectural images into ‘fine art black&white’. So many of the images he shared this month, were black&white high contrast, dark sky images.

Jim’s travel plans took him to Anza-Borrego for the wildflower bloom. There were remnants and patches of the desert blooms but he was probably two week too late. Fortunately, conditions Monday morning Apr 8th were good for photographing the eclipse. With only ~55% coverage of the sun by the moon, a 20 stop ND filter was used on his 400mm lens (ND1000000). Without totality, the eclipse was fun to see but much less impressive. Fortunately, the Street Photography theme was a good opportunity for him to compile & present some photos from a recent Oceanside Pier walk-about.

There was an interesting discussion on the Pier Fisherman photo he presented – see below. Cathy thought the t-shirt logo was distracting; Sharon thought the PPG logo suggested a working-man persona. Gary thought the fishing cart was a distraction. So below is the original presented (which Jim still prefers), an edited version with the t-shirt logo removed, and another with both the t-shirt logo & cart removed. Getting feedback about the images shared is one of the best parts of our meetings. It give a photographer the opportunity to share their images and get a reaction from other people. It’s always fun to here their comments.

After focusing on primarily landscape photography, Jim has developed interest in improving his bird and wildlife photos. During a recent Safari Park visit, he experimented with the ‘get down to eye-level’ with the birds style. It was effective and will definitely become standard practice. He also visited Hawk Watch in Ramona and photographed the bird ‘ambassadors’. After Hawk Watch, he stalked a Red Tail Hawk in Ramona Grasslands during rainy weather. Using these plain sky images, did a quick demonstration of Photoshop’s sky replacement AI>