As should by now be pretty evident. All did not go as planned since my last post. Ive been wacked by lots and lots of work any anything thats not absolutely vital has gone down the drain. Also I'm changing servers, and chances are that this sad excuse for a blog will die in the process. Only to be revived again when I have time. Huzzah.

It does sound lame doesn't it? Reminds me of how I would tease my brother for letting his blog die after so few posts. Sadly I think he might of actually managed more posts then me. All is not lost, however. The things I'm working on now are actually pretty extreme, so look out. Keep checking www.dan-mcnair.com to see if anything changes. Remember, thats dan-mcnair.com NOT danmcnair.cubicflow.com.

Now Ive gota go and be awesome.

Ill have pictures and some words (who cares about words?) for you later today if all goes well.

I should have just tweeted that.

I put one of my more recent projects, a logo for Digitized Solutions, up on the main portfolio page. Take a look and tell me what you think.

http://danmcnair.cubicflow.com/digitizedsolutions/

Some unexpected little bits of work have stopped me from getting to those streetlight (or is it Infinity?) photos but i'll post a few of the ones I got to before.





Now for the good part: I was going to do a quick write up about curves in photoshop. Anyways, I didnt, because I found a video instead. So instead of reading what I have to say you get a video AND the sexy voice of Deke. Curves, by the way is far and away the adjustment that I use the most while retouching a photo. If I actually go through the trouble of opening a photo in photoshop and don't just export straight from lightroom, theres a 99% chance that it will have a curves adjustment applied. So if you care at all about making your photos look nice, watch the video.



Deke does a better job of explaining it then I ever could, but he never gets into the REALLY good stuff: Using curves layers in conjunction with layer masks. This is for me what gives curves (or any adjustment layer for that matter) its power. Layer masks give you the ability to apply an adjustment to parts of an image, rather then the entire thing. By using a few curves adjustment layers, each masked as to only effect a certain part of the image, I can have nearly perfect control of the brightness and contrast of every part of the image.



Above-left is a photo I took before applying any curves adjustments, to the right is the same photo after 3 curves layers each masked to different parts of the image. The car, the sky, and the ground. I processed that image a while ago and there are few things I would do rather differently if i had to do it over again (The vignette and the blown-out side), but it should still give you a decent idea of what can be accomplished. Doing that with one curves layer would be impossible.

Here they are, photos from Camp Zama. Battery problems had me using my backup camera for most of the day, still I suppose they aren't too terrible. I still haven't gotten around to many shots of Streetlight yet so you can expect some more of them in a bit. Fast primes wide open nearly all day, I love it.



Masa (Streetlight) and Steve being intense. D70 w/ 30mm f/1.4. I just love short DOF



D90 w/ 85mm at f/2



D90 w/ 85mm at f/2



D90 w/85mm at f/2.5



Masa appears to be having a... uh... crisis.

Again both are with the d90 and 85mm at f/2

Alright, here goes nothing. Welcome to my blog, where I hope to post an assortment of random informational garbage about webdesign and photography. I'm not an eloquent person so dont expect any well thought out posts about the deeper things in life. What you CAN expect (hopefully) is lots of photos, images, and screen caps. Im hoping to do a series of posts on some photography techniques that I use often, most will probabaly involve small flash of some sort since thats what I get the most questions about.
Enough words, I promised images, so here Ill start you off with one of my favorite photos from the past year or so. If I have absolutely nothing else on my plate then i'll post a few more of my favorites for those of you who havent seen them.



Since they seem to be in pretty high demand as soon as they are finished exporting I'll post some photos of Streetlight and "Chesco and the boyz" from the concert at Zama base.