It's all a bit of a Blur

If you travel back in time to a previous post way back in 2010 you'll see that for some while I have experimented with the idea of creating movement in some of my images. I love the effect this creates,  a surreal and ethereal quality that is both random and rather pleasing. I was inspired to try some more on the FujiFilm X100 the other day as I was walking through a forrest close to where i live. An uninteresting crop of trees for the most part transformed by blur.

mark bader photography

Broken Fences

The bleak colours that still adorn the landscape make this image work beautifully for me. It won't be long before spring brings a completely new colour pallet. Whilst I can't wait for warm sunshine, in a funny way I'll miss these muted wintery tones. 

Mark Bader Photography

Plug Me In

I'm often asked about my workflow and I always give the same answer 'well, that depends on the image' and to a certain degree that is true, I have historically mostly used Photoshop (now CS6) and Bridge as the main components of my imaging. Occasionally (and depending on the image) I would switch to Lightroom 4 as there are some features I particularly favour for some aspects of image control. Darkening skies in Lightroom is so simple and so effective, no gradient tools and masks to deal with. So for this reason I would mostly use Lightroom for landscapes. Having said that I would often have adjusted Levels & Curves in CS6 before importing into Lightroom. So you see , there is no definitive answer. 

Recently however: actually it was at the end of last year when I purchased my Fuji X-100, I started using a Nik Software plugin for CS6 called Silver Efex Pro 2 which was hailed as the 'best black & white converter  in the world' ... it was ! I love using it, it's genius and completely intuitive. It's like being in a darkroom again and just like any other image processing plugin , if used subtly it produces outstanding results. Even better, it only cost $199 which seemed to be reasonable enough. Nik also had a collection of other plugins, all similarly priced, for colour effects, sharpening and noise reduction. Shortly after I purchased the software Nik were taken over by Google which seemed like an odd partnership and I couldn't really see where the benefit was to existing customers, that was until to my complete surprise and delight I had an email from Nik (Google) allowing existing customers to download the entire package at no extra cast. With nothing to lose I did exactly that, downloaded, installed into CS6 and I've been playing around with it this afternoon. The result below is a combination of HDR Efex and Colour Efex. I won't go into specific detail of which tools and presets I used as we'd be here all day but now the entire suite is on sale for just $149 ... go on, you know you want it !

mark bader photography