Adobe Flash Galleries (October, 2017)
Because most internet browsers no longer support Adobe Flash Player, the galleries I created using Flash (those between Fall, 2007 and Spring, 2015, will return an error message when viewed. When creating the vast majority of those galleries, I also created dublicate HTML versions, which are still viewable in current browser versions. Until I can redirect the links to all of those HTML galleries (which will likely take months,) there is a workaround: When you attempt to view a gallery and get the Flash error message, look up at the address bar for the word "flash" (as in, "www.lightbay.net/gallery/flash/xxx/index.html.") If you delete the word "flash" and replace it with the letters "html" in between the two forward slashes, you will be redirected to the HTML gallery and should be able to view it normally.
Since 2015, when Flash stopped being supported, I've been posting only HTML galleries, so the more recent galleries can all be viewed normally.
I Bleed Tungsten Blue (July, 2009)
We went to Rockies Photo Day last weekend, the perfect opportunity for me to play with a technique picked up from the McNally/Hobby sphere. Setting my camera's white balance for tungsten to get a blue shift and shooting manual exposusre to underexpose the ambient light gave a nice blue shade to the overcast sky (or was supposed to--some worked better than others.) The subject light is corrected by adding a color temperature orange gel to a handheld speedlight, bringing everything within the range of the strobe back to daylight balance. It took a while to get the exposure right, and to figure out how to aim the strobe while shooting a constant progression of players and coaches. But once I got the hang of it, I was pleased with the effect. It's unfortunate that Don Baylor arrived before that happened, and it took quite a bit of Lightroom work to get the picture of him with Evan and Benton to a passable state. The highlight, however, was Baylor shaking my hand and calling me sir. I always cringe at such epithets (being too young to be called sir) but Don Baylor could say "Sir, you're standing on my foot," and it would be the highlight of my day. And I have yet to wash my hand.
More disappointingly, IE8 is having compatibility issues with this site's navigation bars. Not a big deal for navigating the site, but it took a long time to get them to look the way I wanted, and I want them to work. I'll keep investigating fixes.
Tweaks (November, 2008)
Using Lightroom, I've rebuilt and updated the Favorites and Nature galleries, as well as created a new gallery of my favorite marine images. I'm now shooting RAW exclusively, after learning more about the format from the RAW Without FUD DVD series. Since Lightroom doesn't differentiate in how it handles RAW and JPEG files, yet offers much more control, it was an easy switch.
Several months ago I read Joe McNally's The Moment it Clicks, and spent the summer studying and putting into practice much of his advice. I've been following his blog, as well as that of David Hobby, The Strobist. Both have made me a better photographer.
The theme of The Strobist is how easily one can use off-camera flash to add definition, perspective and drama to otherwise mundane photos. I've been experimenting with the techniques, as well as with the use of various diffusion devices, for the better part of the year. While the results are rarely what I intended, I've got some keepers and try to learn from the failures as well as the successes. I'm also starting to educate myself more about high-speed synch flash photography.
The common thread in all of this is the control of light, and how it can be used to the photographer's advantage when capturing an image. As I think of it, that's a pretty good definition of photography in the first place.
Makeover (April, 2008)
As the Internet continues to increase its role in our everyday routine, and as I continue to learn new ways to use it to enhance my photo displays, the time has arrived to apply some of the things I've learned to make my photo galleries more useful, and hopefully, more appealing.
Learning to use Adobe Lightroom has not only made my photo processing more versatile and efficient, it has made the process of creating galleries and posting them much faster and less cumbersome, both at home and on the road, a trait the journalist in me finds invaluable. Lightroom's processing power has also vastly increased the quality of the finished project, far beyond what was possible with Photoshop's pixel-based editing.
On the web-editing side, I've learned to enhance the use of dynamic navigation bars and add musical background to many of the galleries, as well as streamline the process for publishing updates. I also decided on a new name that focuses more on the medium than on the photographer, and to add this Notes page to include my thoughts when something relevant comes to mind.
As the technology continues to advance, and as we continually increase our use of the Internet in performing our daily tasks, I hope one of those for you will be to check in now and then to see my latest work. Thanks for visiting.