Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C.

2012 is the 100th anniversary of a gift.  The Mayor of Tokyo Japan gave 3000 cherry trees to the people of Washingington DC. That’s a lot of trees. And as they bloom (all at the same time), that’s a riot of pink color that draws a pretty big crowd. But this year, if you did not come to this party early, you missed most of the show.

Normally, the magnificent flowers of these cherry trees begin to bloom around March 24 and peak during first week of April.  This year, the warm weather in March caused the trees to bloom far earlier.  And the show was over on March 25.

The first photo here is from March 23.  The second was shot this morning, March 27.  You can see what happened due to rain and wind over the weekend.

The crowd of people on Friday was crazy.  Almost like the Esplanade in Boston on the Fourth of July (almost). 

Not all is lost.   These cherry trees here are the famoush Yoshino cherry trees.  But there are a few other species that are still blooming nicely, for example the Kwanzan cherry trees are stunning (though there are not nearly as many).  The area around the Jefferson Memorial is quite nice.  And D.C. is looking quite green these days as deciduous trees are beginning to leaf out.

PhotoshopWorld 2012 in D.C.

Photoshopworld opens with pre-conference workshops the day before the conference really starts. Yesterday, I participated in Real World Concert Photography.  That was serious fun!

Today, opening day, began with the keynote address.  At PSW, these things always involve a great deal of joking around … mixed with some serious stuff.  The joking comes from the good folks at Kelby Training (official sponsor of PSW); the serious stuff comes from Adobe.

Well, just taking a break here to share a photo (from my phone) of the expo floor.  I am missing out on some good info and inspiration, so I’m heading back in now.

Deeper Into Custom Books

Typically, to create a print-on-demand custom photo-book, you download easy-to-use free software from the vendor/printer, layout your book pages, then upload the result for printing.  But, alternatively, some vendors allow you to use other page-layout software.  For my latest book, I used Adobe InDesign.

Having used the free software from three different vendors, I found them all quite similar and mostly intuitive to learn.  On the other hand, Adobe InDesign is just a bit more complicated to learn, but much more flexible.  If you can imagine it, you can do it.  For example, a frame can be virtually any shape at all (a frame is a container for text or images).  I used this flexibility several times throughout my book.

Adobe InDesign

There is one important difficulty to be aware of.  The printing equipment used to print your book is almost certainly based upon CMYK inks, not RGB.  All images must be converted to CMYK.  When you use free software (downloaded from your PoD vendor), this conversion is done automatically for you.  But when using other layout software, such as InDesign, you are responsible for doing conversion to CMYK.

Converting images from RGB to CMYK can be ugly.  The conversion will necessarily shift some colors.  And because CMYK is a smaller color space than RGB, some colors simply cannot be represented in CMYK. 

In the case of my recent book, Wildflowers of RiverPark, I converted each image to CMYK using Adobe Photoshop.  In general, rich green colors did not convert well to CMYK; no matter which conversion method I used, greens became horribly muted.  With practice, I learned how to compensate for this.  I was able to create a custom action to help this process, but it was still annoying and time consuming.  Furthermore, one image in particular features vivid purple-magenta (flower is Deptford Pink) that could not be represented in CMYK.

In doing the conversions myself, and using the soft-proof feature in Photoshop, I gained one important benefit.  The colors in the printed book are very accurate.  If you rely upon your PoD vendor to automatically convert your images, you may get some unexpected color shift in your final printed book.

Specifically using InDesign provides another small benefit: InDesign works well with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.  From InDesign, create an emtpy frame, then hop over to Adobe Bridge, click on an image and choose: Place into InDesign.  The image is inserted into the frame you created.  After the image has been added to your book, making changes to the image is simple.  Right click on the image and choose: “Edit Original” to edit the image in Photoshop.  When you save your Photoshop changes, InDesign automatically picks up your changes and updates your InDesign document.

On The Ball

Having acquired a stellar small tripod last fall (Mo’ Gitzo) I subsequently needed to outfit these legs with a small-ish ball head.  What is small-ish?  It should weigh no more than 1 lb and should support a camera (with lens) of 20 lbs.

Because I equip my cameras with a quick-release system that called “Arca-Swiss compatible”, I immediately eliminate any possible choices that will not support Arca-Swiss quick-release.   (So, for example, I rule-out some tripod heads by Manfrotto, Giotto, Benro, etc.)

Markins Q3T ball head is designed with a diameter that is perfect match for a Gitzo GT1541T tripod.   However, while the Q3T is ideally suited for the GT1541T, it offers no particular advantage when paired with the GT1542T, which I have.  (If you are taller than 5’7, the GT1542T is a better choice than the shorter GT1541T

Some other possible choices include Really Right Stuff BH-30, Fiesol BC-40D, and Induro BHL1.  But, in the end, I chose the PhotoClam PC-36NS.  The size is perfectly suited for the GT1542T and it only weighs just a bit more than 12 oz (350g).  The variable friction is extremely smooth and requires no break-in period.  Includes a built-in bubble level.   $209 from reallybigcameras.com.

Three terrific ball-heads

Shown in the photo above:   Linhof Profi III  (big, very expensive, smooth like butta) with a Kirk Enterprises clamp, Arca-Swiss Z1 (the standard in professional ball heads), PhotoClam PC-36NS.