Don Riepe, Kevin Karlson and I are pleased to announce the 5th Annual Jamaica Bay Shorebird Festival will take place on August 14th and 15th in conjunction with the National Park Service, American Littoral Society and NYC Audubon. There will be slide show presentations as well as walks on both the East and West Ponds. If interested, and you should because all past attendees have enjoyed it immensely, please either call American Littoral Society at 718-318-9344 or email Don driepe
We’re asking for a $20.00 donation to cover expenses. More information will be available in the coming weeks.

Tip #7 Due to popular demand I’m going to give tips from time to time. Sometimes you think things you know are pretty basic and then after talking to people in the field you realize they aren’t. In Photoshop, to bring up your contrast to proper levels, go into Levels and hold your alt/opt key and move both the white and black slider located beneath the histogram. When holding the alt/opt key and pressing the little white and black triangle you’ll notice your photo will either turn black or white. Move the slider until you start seeing some color coming back and then move it back very slightly. When finished your image should have some pop to it. As always if you have any questions you can always contact me.

Birds are on the move. This is the time of year that most birders wait for. There was a major flight of northbound migrants on April 30th. Today is May 3rd and there are still plenty of birds around. Central Park here in NYC is one of the prime stopover points for the birds to feed. Not only do they gather here but so do the birders. On any May weekend you’ll find several hundred people scouring the treetops in search of warblers, the “jewels of the forest” along with tanagers, grosbeaks, orioles etc. Here are a few images from the last day or so.

I’ve been very busy over the last 2 weeks and haven’t been able to devote time to the blog. My computer went down after the power supply died, so had to wait for the new one to arrive and install it. After that, with a little detective work on my part, I had to replace the cable that runs from the computer to the monitor. Needless to say, I lost several days. I learned that, at least for me, it’s near impossible to process images on a laptop. What normally takes 5-7 minute was taking over 10. That’s unacceptable! Finally something good, my new Canon EOS ID Mark IV arrived. What a camera!

This is supposed to be about photo tips so here goes. This one came as a special request from a good friend. If you have a question, send it to me and I’ll see if I can help.

The question: “I started in Lightroom and straightened my image or so I thought. When I moved my workflow to Photoshop I realized I needed to straighten the horizon a little more. What’s the easiest way to do it?”

Here’s the answer: Go to the eyedropper tool and find the ruler tool beneath it by  right clicking (Photoshop CS4. As I recall, earlier version might have the ruler tool in another place). This is with a 2 button mouse. For you Mac users I’m not quite sure how to do it but I’m sure you do . With the ruler tool open, draw a line along the horizon line or beneath a duck on the water as another example. Next go to Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary and click OK. This will straighten you photo but you’ll have to crop away the white areas that are created. Of course this all could be avoided if you get it the way you want it on the original crop. In both Lightroom and Camera Raw, it’s a very simple task. After you make your crop move the cursor outside the cropped area and you’ll see a curved arrow replacing your normal cursor. Just move it up or down and your image will begin to rotate. Lightroom even brings up a grid so you can see straight lines to guide you.

This one came up today. I’m currently organizing a program that has to be done by Wednesday the 27th. On that date I’m giving a slide show presentation to the Sierra Club’s Photo Club.  It will be held at the St. Paul the Apostle • 405 West 59th St. • 2nd floor • New York, NY (1½ blocks west of Columbus Circle, between 9th and 10th Avenues) Suggested donation $5.00. Doors open at 6pm, the show begins at 6:30. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s proceed with the tip.

I had 75 large format tif files in a folder that needed to be converted to 1000 x 667 jpegs. Of course it could have been done one by one, but talk about tedious. If you ever run into this situation or one like it, here’s what to do. Create a new folder on your desktop or a location of your choice and move all the photos into it. Now, create another folder on your desktop and name it something like “photos small” or whatever you want. Open Photoshop and go to File > Scripts > Image Processor. In the first box choose the folder where the images are. In the second box choose the folder you created (photos small) and in the third box choose the file type you want, in my case JPEG, the quality 5 -8 is good for email or the web. Check “size to fit” and put your largest dimensions into the boxes.  For the web or email check “convert to sRGB. Click on the RUN button and watch the magic begin. This is an extremely useful feature of Photoshop and really saves a lot of time.

This tip is easy to do but somewhat difficult to explain. For you seasoned veterans, nothing earth shattering here, but a good tip nevertheless. Let’s talk about the “Fade” command. It is used when there is no layer involved and you want to reduce the opacity or use a blend mode. Let’s say you do a “Shadows/Highlights” adjustment found under Image > Adjustments. A sometimes very useful adjustment but once it’s done, it’s done. Well not so fast. Immediately after doing it press on a PC Control/Shift/F or on a Mac Command/Shift/F and the fade control will appear. Adjust the opacity and or blend mode here. Remember, this is a one shot deal. If you make any other adjustment prior to the fade it will be unavailable. I hope this makes sense because I know I use it all the time and it really improves the image. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them. These are the types of things I can teach you in my private lesson sessions. Top image has a shadow/highlight adjustment. Bottom photo is exactly the same but with a fade of 65%. The effect is subtle but makes the subject look more natural. Click on each image for a better view.