Lightroom CC :: Back to the future

Quiet a while ago I expressed my disappointment with the LR 5 beta, and I actually haven’t bothered updating lightroom since then. Having being a little more at ease with her now and seeing a fair bit of hype about the new version LR 6 or CC, I decided it is time to give this version a trial.

So I began at the adobe site and then the lightroom version 6 page and selected the trial option, which took me to the CC version (not the standalone version). This wasn’t really what I wanted but I could not find any way to download Lr 6 as a trial, it was only the Lr CC(2015) that was available as a download trial. So that will have to do. Ok its actually a three step process that involves firstly downloading the full creative cloud setup. As I already have an Adobe ID I used that rather than setting up a new one. That took quiet a while so I went and got a coffee, then a second. Next I had to logged into creative cloud again and then selected to try Lr CC (2015), the message I got seems to indicate I’m about to download Lr CC (2014) so I cancelled that and logged into creative cloud yet again with my same Adobe ID and check yes I definitely asked to try (2015) and got the same warning that I was about to download version Lr CC (2014). Ok I will give that a try, and this time I didn’t even have to re-enter by Adobe ID yet again. Now the status screen did indicate it was downloading LR CC (2015) but it sat on 0% download for a long while, more coffee,  and a very long break.

So its two hours since I started trying to get the trial version and …..lightroom cc(2015) is just 23% downloaded.

Well I have plenty of time to write this blog post then. Another hour later and 42% downloaded I get another warning of an installation conflict. Ok that’s simple to fix I still had lightroom open because I had started then with the upgrade menu. I did remember to ask for a backup, more delays with my hard disk whirring away.

Four hours after the start finally! I can try something, No I definitely don’t want Lightroom to upgrade my catalogue! Why only 18 days on the mobile app trial? Synching to mobile phone (hey I didn’t authorize that!!) Now my phone “hung up””, Yet another wait!

The feelings of being underwhelmed yet again is very strong but I will follow through.with giving Lightroom dressed in her new version a fair try in the sun.

Letting Lightroom regain her dignity

I have not been able to find out exactly why lightrooms started forgetting things, particularly distressing was her forgetting collections. I knew she was a high maintenance mistress and I had been routinely backing up her catalogue but it would seem the problem occurred in bits and pieces, just a few collections here, then a collection or two at another time. This hasn’t stopped me using lightroom but I am careful to use just a smaller catalogue of recent photos I wish to post process at the moment and no memory losses so far.

There where almost 100 backups so going back through everything looked like a nightmare. Transferring collections is possible (you have to export them as a catalogue) but it does involve exporting the images in the collection and the last thing I wanted was having to alter existing the folders and files, or generate a lot of duplicates. I had also got very used to using AfterShot Pro to write sidecar files as a way to transfer metadata and ratings. I had also worked out that the collections (or albums) could also be written into the metadata, using something like the ~alb (for album) prefix in your metadata. This are then easy enough to find or filter in your photo manager and can be used to “re-find” the desired collection (album).

So I haven’t tried to rebuild a full catalogue of all my archived photos, what I have done is progressively worked through the backup (with the catalogue running from an external backpack location and then use lightroom to write a suitable ~alb collection name  tag to the photos in that collection into the metadata, creating a xmp sidecar file for the photos involved.  Ok that is taking time but I think storing the collections in a way that can be shared around the software packages I use (the one that can read the metadata in xmp files) is a worthwhile step. Reloading the photos into lightroom is now just on an ad-hoc basis. It will still take me a few months of occasional work to recover all my collection organization but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

For new photos I really like the OnOne Perfect Photo Browser. version 9.5 now supports Albums and it is a simple task to transfer these into lightroom collections. More importantly I only load those photos in the collection into lightroom. Naturally I also make sure I add the ~alb codes into my metadata before doing this transfer.

The days of trusting lightroom to look after my entire collect are over but I am still glad to let her beautiful develop tools enhance my work.

Cameraphone :: One Phone 3 Cameras

   

I have a new phone an LG Android and the review’s seem to can it as very ordinary but to me it is s reasonably decent camera to have always in my pocket. Specifically to get simple snaps and collect reference material for my sketching.

One thing that many people don’t realise you are not locked into the supplied camera app that came with your phone. There are dozen of good camera enhancements out there.

Pudding Camera gets some favourable reviews and has a simple and easy to use controls, the special feature is you can choose the style of camera you wish to use (the above left photo) is Basic Camera with a vintage look.. I’m still experiment with this one but being able to see the final effect before you take a photo is great.

HDR Camera+ was a favourite back on my HTC wildfire, it takes three exposures and then creates a HDR image, all processed on the phone and it has a range of tone mapping in the form of little filter style icons. I still like it (centre image above)

A Better Camera, is another camera app from Almalence who create HDR camera+, for a small cost you can get am impressive array of extra controls for your camera, akin to the controls available on most Bigger DSLR Cameras. They are on a pull down icon menu but easy to learn and navigate. For me its bihggest benefit is that it does produce clearer and more vivid images (see the image on the right above), with the DRO (Dynamic Range Optimization) option set. This is a propriety technique similar to tone mapping that seeks to make the camera see like the human eye!

PhotoEditingTools :: White Balance, When & Where

Colour correction, usually just called white balance these days, has been an issue since the earliest days of colour film. Some aspects even stretching back further into the martials used in the construction of black and films. Looking around current net explanations the need for colour compensation might be related to a technical limitation of colour film or modern digital sensor, actually the truth is they are pretty good at capturing the true light and they are getting better. The issue is the human eye (and yes a lot of this pre-processing is done at the back of the eye and on the way to the brain) is very good at accepting that a wide range of illumination is actually a “white” light source and reflection of it in the surroundings. This acceptance of what is supposed to be white is general subconscious and takes a very short time. Yet light sources (particularly artificial ones) can vary in strength and their colour profile, which can be measure on the Kelvin Scale (shown on the right), which actually an absolute measure, but it has been adopted in photography as a measure of colour temperature. These measure all very technical and somewhat theoretical but essentially different light sources emit light that corresponds to different hues (colours). A candle or tungsten globe seen in daylight will appear quiet yellow/orangish but in a room just illuminate by that light source our eyes will happily convey the image as if illuminated by a white light. The camera however will “correctly” capture the image a with distinct orangey bias. Objects that our eye saw a white will actually be orange and other colours will have excessive yellow and/or red tints. Thus the photo may look wrong.

Cambridge Colour  website has a great tutorial on the theory of colour compensation (aka white balance) as well as good practical advice, for those that want to investigate this deeper.

The best place to adjust white balance is in your camera, and this is an area you will need to consult your camera manual but most digital cameras, even the less expensive point & shoot ones will have a number of white balance options typically indicated by icons like those on the right. They normally cover a decent range of common lighting sources. What’s more AWB Automatic White Balance techniques have become very dependable in most modern cameras, so it is the obvious default setting. Older Camera phones might be the biggest exception here, particularly in low and/or artificial light. So it is worth looking at you camera settings on your phone. understanding the right setting and changing them as required could make a big difference to your low light photos taken with your phone

When It comes to RAW photos the white balance may not have to be set in your camera (ie just leave it on the default AWB) because there is usually enough information stored in the RAW file to allow the colour adjustment to be undertaken on the RAW image, Most RAW photo editors then allow the recalibration of the image to either a given Kelvin temperature, standard light sources or even a better estimate of the “as shoot” balance.

Having advised that AWB (Auto White Balance) is probably the best default I need to point out that there can still be situation that can confused the camera (ie an scene of dominantly warm or cool colours). Alternatively if you are always reaching for the warming slider trying setting your white balance to cloudy or shade.

Archiving Long Term, a timely warning

Vint Cinf recognised as one of the fathers of the internet, recently warned of a coming “digital dark age”, which was picked up by the UK Amateur Photographer magazine in a nice article titled “Photographers are sleepwalking into a ‘photographic Armageddon’“ I must admit I fully agree with the issues raised, the media we rely on today to store digital images does have a limited life, probably shorter than we realise.

My first digital images where recorded using a Sony Marvica Camera on 3 ½” diskettes and whilst I have a few of the diskettes still I think I might be struggling to find a diskette reader, and that has only taken 15 years. I did have the foresight to back them up, but my preferred media then was a zip drive, Damn yet another obsolete format! Ok I have taken some photos into my main photo archive and most have already been recycled onto CD (but already computers don’t always come with a CD/DVD drive, phones & tablet certainly don’t)

The essence of Vint Cinf talks was that photographers also need to print there work to ensure its long term survival. However even with the best archival papers or other media the longevity is never guaranteed yet it is certainly a better choice for important family snaps. By Prints, I’m sure this doesn’t necessarily mean the same old 10 by 15cm snapshot (that’s 4”by 6” for the metric-impaired) you can store in an old shoebox. in could be printing to a photobook. If you want to do you own printing, remembering many ink jet printers use dyes rather than pigments and the colour will quickly fade if exposed to daylight. (ie display on the fridge door)

The morale of this story is make sure you include some form of hardcopy print to provide an additional archive security for your most cherished photos (better still print two copies or have one print and include the same photo in a photo book). If you intend to fames and display the print, put it behind glass and/or have a second print stored safely.

Indian Ocean Dawn

Taken at altitude as the sun rose over the Indian Ocean.

Getting my Toshiba laptop to use the right graphics driver

I’ve recent upgradeg to version 9.5 of OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite, but instead of the browser becoming faster it had become decidedly unreliable and prone to “hanging”. Checking the compatibility requirements in OnOne support had me puzzled I had enough memory and a Nvidia graphics card also with required memory. Updating the cards drivers didn’t help. Finally the penny dropped, my Toshiba has two graphics card, one an Intel CPU (for standard widows stuff) and a Nvidia Card (for games and advanced video) and supposedly some intelligence to let the application find the right card and driver. Well basically the latest version of Perfect Browse was trapped in the standard Intel graphics card, when it actually wanted the more sporty Nvidia, Yes now I remember a similar issue long ago but how to fix it. Don’t bother with manuals, The answer is buried piece by piece across a number of forums. Here is my simplified approach for those with a Toshiba laptop with dual graphics cards.

The Nvidia control panel does allow you to select the programs that you wish to start with its drivers (and overrides the supposed automatic select of the most appropriate driver). On the Toshiba laptop with dual graphics card you need to go into the control panel then double click on the Nvidia Control panel. Here you just need to select the desktop item in the main menu and check that the item called Add "Run with graphics processor" Option to Context Menu. Now the final step is to right click on the Prefect Photo Suite icon on your desktop, which will bring up the context menu, now with the run with graphic processor option, and this will bring up a submenu.


You can then select to run the perfect suite under the Nvidia driver for just one run. or better change the default driver associated with this program. Changing the default brings up the Nvidia Control panel again this time in a dialogue that lets you select the Nvidia processor as the default driver for a given program and the Perfect Photo Suite will be selected. Make sure the Nvidia processor is associate with it and then press Apply.

I realise this is a kind of double loop but you seem to need all these steps and  it worked for me, I now have a speedy photo browser in Perfect Photo Suite 9.5

Wow… 10 years …camera roll please

I was checking out flickr’s new Camera Roll, it is a timeline based display of your images you can scroll through by Date Taken or Date Uploaded. So I had to go back to the beginning and wow I started posting on flickr 10 years ago!

The Camera Roll is just square thumbnails, very calendar stylish and nice layout, plenty of white space. I doubt many will use it instead of the in your face clutter of the photostream but it should appeal to older flickr fans and is certainly a quicker way to find things if you remember when the photo was taken (not so sure the upload date is going to be that useful, other than my search above). Once you find the photo just click on it and you get that photo page within your photostream.

PhotoFriday :: Wet

Cyclamens left in the rain (given the HDR treatment)

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Wet

A good reason to delete

I have noticed a few significant changes in some of the on-line sharing services I have been trying out recently (enough of the sharing already). Canon’s Irista desktop loader has been tripping a mirosoft .NET error lately and its attempt to Autoupdate kept failing. I was just trying Irista out as google+ photos was getting me frustrated, and I still have a tiny bit of loyalty to Canon. alas I don’t want yet another thing quickly ripping photos from under me and uploading copies to yet another location.


Sorry canon this need fixing but I’m not waiting around I’m just going to delete the Irista desktop app.

Enough of the sharing already

I’m in the process of swapping from and old HTC android phone (still on version 2.2) to a newish LG android phone (running 4.4) The transition has been very straightforward, You just go to the My Apps section of google play, from my computer, change the device (the number is the same as I just swapped the SIM over) and tick the apps you want (there are a few duds in the my apps list and a few I haven’t used much). So whenever I’m on WiFi I get the apps downloaded (a couple at a time).

Unfortunately I hadn’t anticipated that a number of the apps would be updated (for compatibility with android 4.4) and that entailed turning on the default settings, which on most of my camera related tools involved “free” upload and on-line storage. Suddenly every time I took a picture I would get a copy sent to google+ autobackup, Carousel/Dropbox, flickr, adobe and a few others. Most of which I didn’t know about. Worse google has restarted its auto awesome blooper campaign, sending me enhanced version of photo I didn’t really want rather than the ones I would have preferred and the occasional humorous miscalculation. Where’s the off switch on autoawesome again?

Ok it was easy to turn all the auto-uploads off (except the dropbox, which only uploads when I have a WiFi connection). Fortunately all the uploads where set to “private” (ie not automatically shared). Still it is a timely warning to check those “this app requires access to” settings, particularly around the Photo/Video/Media files  and Camera item(s) and what internal settings are defaults in those apps.

PhotoFriday :: Sunset Collage

A collage based on a series of photos of the sunset taken at Venus Bay

as posted on imageo.withknown.com

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Orange

Last Lunar Eclipse Opportunity for a Long While

We have been fortunate in Melbourne having seen a several lunar eclipses over the past four years, but this will be the last for a while (next for Melbourne will be 2018) . So the eclipse will start at 9:16pm, hit the total eclipse stage (where the moon might be a strong red) around 10:38pm and then finish 12:45am. If you haven’t tried to photographing the moon here is some good advice, its fun.

However the cloud cover is getting thicker fingers crossed it will clear later tonight.

The age has a nice article on-line called  Total lunar eclipse 2015: What you need to know if you want some more details.

Trying out a new phone

The Gums

Just an experiment with an LG L7, nice clean colours ....but "super difficult to see the screen in strong light!!!" Autumn Light here in Melbourne can be beautiful but it still has a lot of contrast and often leaves digital cameras very confused.

taken with Pudding Camera App & uploaded to flickr via Pilxr. 

All the apps I had used on my older HTC phones are easily downloaded and most benefit from the extra screen space

In Search of Aurora Australis

 Last night had a high K index so I went out for a while looking for Aurora activity, but the ambient light of the city was probably too bright, the maximum activity was over New Zealand and probably I'm too far north anyway. Still I had a little fun doing some low light multi-stitch panoramas. This is a three photo vertarama, created with autostitch.

Looks like its back to the drawing board and a visible copyright icon on my flickr photostream.

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten in Picasa & Google+ Photo

For me picasa was the first software to offer a seriously easy to use straightening tool. There were some tools with stretch out tilts but most only offered slides and or the ability to type in an angular change. They were not easy to use and generally didn’t show you interactively how the photo was being rotated. Picasa even in its early versions (pre-google ownership) included a straighten tool in the first basic enhance panel. By comparison the picasa straightener put a detailed grid over your image and as you move the straightening slider. Moving the slider to the right is a clockwise tilt and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt. The big improvement was that as you moved the slider the whole photo was moved on the screen so it was relatively easy to line up the horizontal or vertical straight lines in your photo.

The on-line end of picasa is now google+ photo (I’m expecting that name to change name soon) and it also has some good basic editing tools. Specifically a decent straightening tool. However it is somewhat hidden because the tile that activates it is called crop, but it does have a curved arrow above the typical crop icon. To find it firstly click on the edit item on the tool bar above your image, which appears above any single photo display. This the brings up a side panel which has a number of tiles representing various tools and filters. At the top of this panel are basic adjustments and these are all green tiles with “identifying” icons. The crop & straightening tile is on the lower right.

The crop/straighten panel (shown above) is then displayed and it has a number of tools to rotate the image. I’m using the ruler called straighten. Using it you first select one point, say on the horizon, click and then you stretch out desired the desired new horizon, and click on a second point on the horizon. The photo is then adjusted on screen and you set where the automatic cropping is also displayed (outside this the triangular salvages are still displayed but subdued). The two icons with the small rectangle and curved rotation arrows can be used to rotate the photo through 90° to right or left (ie correct for the camera held at 90°). The sliders also rotates the photo but only by a limited amount. Like the original picasa straightener moving to the right is a clockwise rotation and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt.

Learning Workspace & Tools rather than Workflow

I have never been a fan of the idea of “the” workflow to control how you work on images. At least for a creative person this approach will guarantee that your work looks just like almost everyone else’s. Instead I prefer to think a better way to "learn" your own style and skills should be a self exploration of the workspace and the tools available.
I'm actually falling back on the way an artist might be expected to learn to sketch. Some of that instruction might be how to hold the pencil but most of the time will be dedicated to seeing the subject and making the appropriate marks on the page, sometimes using a HB pencil sometimes sometimes much softer like a 4B or charcoal and other times maybe coloured like a watercolour wash or crayons. To this end I began a series of simple post where I described the workspace available in common software (specifically software I have used). This was a lot like opening the page of your sketch book or perhaps a setting up a ready primed canvas and getting out your pencils, pens and/or paints. However once you are familiar with the workspace it is time to find out what tools are available and what they can do.
What I am going to tackle next is an exploration of tool types, by tool type. Not trying to cover everything  but definitely those which I consider the important photo editing tools. This is somewhat like using different media in the sketching but I will be focussing on specific tasks that most photographers and/o artists will commonly encounter. I have picked a dozen common tasks and the tools to do them and divided these into three groups

Basic Tools	Flourish Tools	Special Tasks
White Balance	Sharpening/Smoothing	Noise Reduction
Exposures	Selective Refinements	Red Eye Reduction
Tonal Enhancement	Layers, Masks, Gradients	Lens Corrections
Straighten	Filters, Presets
Crop

You probably don't need to learn all of them or even learn them in the order given. They are just a set of tools I think are important to learn. They are not a comprehensive list of tools to answer every possible modification of a digital photo. I intend to discuss each tool, one at a time, and generally one tool in one or just a couple of software package at a time. I don't intend to explain every possible option for each tools but I want to start you on the journey of learn new tools and which tools can be used for which tasks. I particularly want to leave you with a desire to experiment with those new tools and skills.
So next time you have a photo you think has potential, look at which task/tool is likely to deliver that improvement and start to experiment with just that tool. Shift the sliders both ways. Look at the extremes. Perhaps even try the same image in a different package or the same tool on an on-line service. Like any artist you should become skilled at making your mark in the way you feel comfortable.  You could wait for me to discuss that tools (you might have a long wait) but If you aren't comfortable yet just set aside some time to experiment with the tool, try every which way. The big advantage with digital images is it will cost you little more than your time.

There are dozens of expensive books that follow elaborate workflows but I don't think you can beat learning how to use one tool at a time on a task that is important to creating/enhancing your own image.

Once you know the way in which you want to use the tools and you find yourself doing the same tasks time and time again, then  this is the time to considered work flow, But it should be something that suits you and enhances your creativity.

PhotoEditingTools :: Straightening up in AfterShot Pro

Something that everyone seems to be an expert on is straightening when the horizon is water. Everyone seems to “know” that the horizon will be flat and can be harsh when it isn’t. However straightening is one of the tools that often get overlooked when learning photo software. Further straightening is one task that is handled very differently in different packages.

I am using AfterShotPro on my laptop much more, often in association with Picasa to review photos when I first load them. I find this is the best time to cull, rank, add the metadata and perhaps do some very basic edits. Whilst Straightening is never a high priority. I find that AfterShot Pro has a really wonderful straightening tool, it is the small tilted picture icon at the bottom left of the main image display. The tool displays a bold arrow, clicking and holding the mouse will then select this point as an anchor and as you move the mouse away from this point a circular target style image opens up which has a horizontal and vertical grid markings (useful in aligning both vertical and horizontal items) Movement of the mouse can rotate this target circle. As you move away from the target a bold line is draw on one of the prime directions (right. left, up or down) closest you you movement. If you move the mouse outside a certain size (ie the circle almost fills the shortest axis of your image), the circle no longer expands but the bold reference line continues as you drag the mouse further. In the example above I have anchored the first point on the horizon on the left and side and draw out my desired horizontal to the horizon on the right hand side. Releasing the mouse rotates the image to use this new horizontal.

Unlike most other straighten tools, the one in AfterShot Pro does not automatically crop your image. So you are left with triangular salvages (shown in grey On the left) along the sides. The crop tool is the two overlapping L shapes with a tiny scalpel icon, its is to the left beside the straighten icon. Clicking on it displays a small dialogue box, in the upper right hand corner is a button labelled fit, clicking on this will then automatically fits your rotated photo into the largest rectangle that it can generate without displaying the salvages, (ie it trims off some of the edges or your image). This basically matches the automatic cropping of other packages. However when you rotate the image the aspect ratio of that fill rectangle can vary, so being able to crop to a defined ratio instead of the best fit could be desirable in many situations. Finally for all the “pixel peepers” and/or folk with a micrometre, here is my straighten version of my contre-jour seascape

Sketching & Photography ….continued

Artist have know about the golden hour(s) long before photography was developed. They realised that the intensity (and purity) of light transformed for a short period each day. Whilst is wasn’t until the British water colourists and later the French impressionist really focussed on painting en plein air, that the power of this magical lighting became recognized, and popular with the general public.

I enjoying trying to capture the evening light in a sketch. It can be a challenge because the colour and atmosphere can be fleeting, seldom long enough to mix more than a couple of colours. Last night I could not find a pen or pencil at hand so I only had time to try and capture the tone and colour with a few simple washes (no line work).

Comparing this with the photograph (below) taken immediately before the one of my sketch (on the left) my sketch might look pale and lack detail, but it definitely gives me a stronger sense of the moment, the descending cool and echo of bird calls. I also didn’t have a telephoto lens at hand so the sketch is just a tiny part of what I photographed in the failing light.

I’m very unlikely to formally paint this image or sell a photograph of it. However in the scheme of things, understanding light and knowing what I am actually seeing is more important. I feel the sketch, even though it just a couple colour washes, is likely to help better recall the scene. More importantly it highlights that we should not always assume a photograph straight from the camera is always the perfect record of what we saw.

Recuva to the rescue yet again

I’ve had a few SD card trouble of late and have upgrade to a new set of SD cards (named brands 8GB and 10mps ie decent cards), No problems in the Canon but the cards with Pentax files have played up, on two occasions the files where not deleted by Picasa as I uploaded. No real problem I could clear the the photos in the camera. Then I uploaded a few photos and was looking at them in picasa on my laptop and picasa refreshed the screen, but the new folder had disappeared! Really disappeared! No amount of search the recycle bin or scanning for the photo file names of just recent files could locate them.

So I decided to run a disk recovery utility but it had been a long time since I had had to used such a utility and it was nowhere to be found on my computer or useful photo tools USB key. Also I had forgotten the name (which is recuva, remember that name) so I had to do a little search back into my blog and then check on-line, recuva still has a free downloadable version. Just 4mb, so I had it downloaded and recovered the files in just a few minutes. The two things that are important to note are. Firstly recover the files to a different disk (not the SD card). Second Recuva will not see the RAW files if you just ask to recover photos (it will however recover the .jpeg files). So it is important to recover all files. So I will make sure I keep an up to date copy of recuva on my useful photo utility toolkit

I’m a bit puzzled by the loss of files within picasa, this has never happened to me before. As a precaution I’ve also reformatted the SD cards in the camera I will be using the cards in and not swapping them between cameras.

Returning to the Sand Goddess

Returning to the Sand Goddess Theme pic.twitter.com/ekVP6D6j3j
— AP@imageo (@APimageo) March 2, 2015

I am getting more and more convinced that it is truly important to ensure that the first place to post my ideas and photos is a place of my own (or controlled by me) this is the POSSE approach. The down side is very few folk actually look at my places (perhaps with the exception of this blog), The compromise, which is what POSSE is all about, is to syndicated that post elsewhere after you have posted on your own place. For example I post the above photo on Known and then syndicate the image (above) in Twitter. This establishes a precedence (and thus “legal” ownership of the intellectual property via publicly searchable publication and time stamps) and also very importantly clearly established provenance.

My sand Goddess project is about recreating some of the classic imagery of goddesses in sand, where better to start than raking these images on the magnificent beach at Venus Bay.

The Human Camera - Stephen Wiltshire

Stephen Wiltshire has an amazing talent, he can sketch incredibly detailed images from memory.

Experiments with the Long Black

I'm normally an espresso drinker (aka the Short Black), but over summer I've been getting used to larger coffee's still black but larger (aka the Long Black), Trouble is the quality from different cafes is very variable, and often undrinkable. So I've been experimenting with my own variation of the "standard" procedure, and I might have found a good and repeatable method.

Ontop of a small amount of hot water (not boiling) "float" a double espresso shot. 

That's all there is to it, and it keeps the crema & flavor of the short black without seeming diluted or heavy & bitter.

PhotoFriday :: Tree Fern in the Rain

Tree Fern in the Rain

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Leaves

Sketching .vs. Photography

Here are a couple of YouTube videos by Kenly Dillard giving a demonstration of sketching and its similarities to still photography. Whilst he is demonstrating sketching the context about seeing the light and creating a picture, his video and examples are well worth watching, even though they do jump around a bit (Unfortunately the talk is incomplete, some bits are missing)

Seeking Shelter (before the storm)

Ibis seeking shelter as the storm front arroves