A New Year...

The new year is here. After a round of major snow and work piled up, I find myself looking for ways to clear the clutter and focus on arranging opportunities for the next few months. I had a great opportunity this past fall to shoot the squad pictures for the local high school marching band. I am looking forward to working with them again.

So in the short term, I am working on setting up shoots for this winter and spring. In addition to scheduling sessions and events, I am building out my fine art portfolio. I will have several new images available in black & white and color.

I started to review the Nik Software Silver Efex Pro plug-in. I will embed a set of variations. I believe the result will get better, but at this time I reserve judgement. One of the features I did like is the tone temperature control provided by this plug-in. I shot this on New Years Day during a temperature inversion as often occurs during winter here in South Carolina. The tone temperature could be cold as shot. But the plug-in allowed me to process the Black&White in the characteristic of one of the warm tone film processes that originated in the traditional wet darkroom.

 Mountain Lake Covered by Fog

 Mountain Lake Covered by Fog (Variation 1)

 Mountain Lake Covered by Fog (Variation 2)

The variations are a neutral tone process and an Ilford process that always tended to high key the blue light.   The drawback I found was the control of the grain was not like that available in Lightroom 3 or the Nik Define plug-in. I need to have a set printed before making any decision. Let me know your opinion.