Category Archives: Nik software
When I have been out west shooting in the past, I have always focused on the first light and the last light of the day. For me, the magic has always happened at sunrise and sunsets. This November’s workshop will be a little different, I am going to be out shooting in Dark Sky areas during a new moon. This means that the skies will be darker and the stars will be brighter and I can pick shooting times when the Milky Way will be visible in the sky without any natural or manmade light pollution. Shooting in a dark sky area with a new moon will be a treat for this seasoned photographer.
I captured this image in Death Valley while camping with my friend Craig Osterloh.
Orion the Hunter – Death Valley
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Leave a comment | tags: Paul Christopher James, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Clarity, Topaz Labs | posted in Lightroom, Lower Antelope Canyon, Nik software, Photographic Workshops, Pink Slot Canyon, Southwest Photo Workshop, The Watchman, Upper Antelope Canyon, Zion National Park
The Southwest workshop is only a few weeks away and I have been going over images getting ready for the shoot. On this fall day I hope everyone is out enjoying corn fields turned into mazes and spending time in the apple orchards. One of my favorite fall activities has been to find the perfect pumkin to carve my Jack O’ Lantern and with Halloween just around the corner this image popped out at me.
Southwest Jack O’ Lantern-Valley of Fire
The Southwest doesn’t have corn fields and apple orchards but it does have some of the best Jack O’ Lanterns formed by a millennium of wind and rain.
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Leave a comment | posted in Antelope Canyon, Lightroom, Nik software, Photographic Workshops, Pink Slot Canyon, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Labs, Valley of Fire
I am looking forward to Saint James Court Art show this weekend! This will be my last outdoor art fair of the season. After the show I will have a little more time to work with images, as well as get the house and yard ready for winter. Soon I will be heading out to spend time capturing fall colors in the Smoky Mountains and Zion National Park along the Virgin River. The Show season goes fast and I will miss seeing everyone. Thank You All for making it another wonderful year at the shows!
Cottonwoods along the Virgin River
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Leave a comment | tags: Paul Christopher James, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Clarity | posted in Antelope Canyon, Lower Antelope Canyon, Nik software, Southwest Photo Workshop, Southwest Photographic Workshop Tour, Topaz Photo Software, Valley of Fire, Virgin River, Zion National Park
Yesterday I had the opportunity to work with JBrad Lewis on a few of the images he captured during my Novembers Southwest workshop. We used Adobe Lightroom developed module to process his image. Lightroom has a fantastic develop module and its cataloging system to organize my workflow is amazing and over the last year it has become my starting point for working on images. Lightroom’s lets you work with a thumbnail of your images instead of the full image storing metadata of the changes and making my workflow lighting fast. When I work with my images in CS6 program the larger files slow me down. Not having to wait for files to open saves me time to go out and do a little more shooting.
Antelope Canyon – Southwest Workshop
The unprocessed image looks good out of the camera but a few Lightroom adjustments makes it a award winning image.
Antelope Canyon Raw unprocessed image
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Leave a comment | tags: Charleston Photographic Workshop, Digital Photographic Workshop, Paul Christopher James, Smoky Mountain Photo Workshop, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Labs, Tuscany photo workshop, Venice Photo Workshop | posted in Antelope Canyon, Audubon Swamp, Barns, Battery Park, Boneyard, Botany Bay, Charleston Photographic Workshop, Fire Canyon Arch, Fire Wave, Grand Canyon, Hopi Point, Horseshoe Bend, Michigan Photographic Workshop, Michigan photographic workshops, Natural Arch, Nik software, Petroglyphs, Photographic Workshops, Photoshop Elements 13, Pink Slot Canyon, Pink Slot Canyon, Rialto Bridge, Rome Photgraphic Workshop, Rome photo workshop, Smoky Mountains National Park, Southwest Photo Workshop, Southwest Photographic Workshop Tour, The Narrows, Topaz Clarity, Topaz Photo Software, Tuscan Photo Workkshop, Upper Antelope Canyon, Valley of Fire, Venice, Venice Italy Photographic Workshop, Virgin River, Zion National Park
Nature often offers us elegance that takes us out of ourselves and into places of amazing beauty. While in the Southwest I am alway delighted by the shapes that wind and rain have formed over the millennium and I am looking forward to my next trip.
Ray of light Antelope Canyon
When capturing images and looking at compositions it is always important to consider cropping and to try to compose the image both vertically and horizontally.
Ray of light Antelope Canyon Vertical
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Leave a comment | tags: Charleston Photographic Workshop, Digital Photographic Workshop, Smoky Mountain Photo Workshop, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Clarity, Tuscany photo workshop | posted in Adobe CS6, Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Lightroom, Nik software, Petroglyphs, Photographic Workshops, Pink Slot Canyon, Southwest Photo Workshop, Southwest Photographic Workshop Tour, The Narrows, The Watchman, Topaz Clarity, Valley of Fire, Virgin River, Zion National Park
After our last morning shoot and discussion of the trip over breakfast everyone headed home or off to capture more images. I headed back out to the Valley of Fire to spend a few days capture images and taking advantage of the rare opportunity to spend time in the desert reflecting before heading home. After teaching a workshop there is nothing more relaxing for me than to capture images and watch the light in great locations that I have shared with new and old friends. Our deserts in the southwest are perfect locations for reflection and to clear our heads of the distractions that come at us through work and the media.
Cottonwood Reflections on the Virgin River in Zion – processed with Lightroom and Topaz Clarity
I am not sure if anyone driving with me to locations noticed but I never had the radio on to distract us from the beauty of the landscape and the conversations about the images we were capturing and getting to knowing each other.
Cottonwood Reflections on the Virgin River in Zion – unprocessed
This is not to say that I do not enjoy music or want to be informed about the events going on in the world but sometimes I like a break to enjoy the wonderful locations and the people who travel to these locations with me. As I am putting my thoughts down I am listening to a great music station out of Springdale NC http://wncw.org/listen-live 88.7 The reason that I like this station is that is plays an eclectic mix of music. If I hear a song that I like it may be a month or two before I get to hear it again.
I had a great time out west and hope that everyone made it home safely! Paul
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Leave a comment | tags: Charleston Photographic Workshop, Charleston Spring Photo workshop, Digital Photographic Workshop, Paul Christopher James, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Labs | posted in Antelope Canyon, Fire Canyon Arch, Fire Wave, Nik software, Petroglyphs, Photographic Workshops, Pink Slot Canyon, Smokey Mountain Photographic Workshop, Southwest Photo Workshop, Southwest Photographic Workshop Tour, The Watchman, Topaz Labs, Topaz Photo Software, Valley of Fire, Virgin River, Zion National Park
The 4th of July is a great day to have fun with family and friends and plan trips to our great National Parks. My images below capture the beauty of Grand Canyon and remind me of the visual treasures the parks hold for us to photograph. I have scheduled two workshops this fall in our National Parks, hope you can join us.
The Great Smoky Mountains Workshop tour October 26-29 2014
Southwest Slot Canyon Workshop tour Nov. 8-14 2014.
Hope you can join me in one of our national parks!
Shadow Lands, South Rim of the Grand Canyon
Both Topaz and Nix software can work magic on your image. Today Ihave spent a little time today working on images of the Grand Canyon that are in my Panoramic Gallery. The Topaz software that I used to finish these images makes a huge improvement over the original processing in Photoshop CS3 used just a few years ago.
Tapestry of Light, South Rim of the Grand Canyon
Raw image with a few adjustments
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Leave a comment | tags: Italian Photographic Workshop, Nik Software, Paul Christopher James, Smokey Mountain Photo Workshop, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Clarity | posted in Antelope Canyon, Cades Cove, Dogwoods, Fire Canyon Arch, Fire Wave, Fog Bow, Grand Canyon, Greenbrier, Hopi Point, Little River Road, Natural Arch, Nik software, Ogle Cabin, Owl Canyon, Page Arizona, Paul Christopher James, Photographic Workshops, Rime Ice, River time exposure, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Slot Canyon Workshops, Smokey Mountain Photo Workshop, Smokies, Smoky Mountain Photo Workshop, Smoky Mountains Institute, Southwest Photo Workshop, Southwest Photographic Workshop Tour, The Watchman, Topaz Photo Software, topaz simplify, Tremont, Valley of Fire, Virgin River, White Rainbow, Zion National Park
Each year one of the most important art fairs for an art fair artist is the Ann Arbor art show which starts on the 16th of July. For me I always try to bring out new work that I think is not only artistic but marketable. While looking over some of the images that I captured while teaching last Octobers Italian workshops I liked this image which shows the tapestry of homes from Manarola in the Cinque Terre along Italy’s rugged Ligurian coastline.
Tapestry Manarola Cinque Terre
My booth is in front of Real Seafood on Main Street #198
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Leave a comment | tags: Florence Photographic Workshop, Italian Photographic Workshop, Paul Christopher James, Topaz Clarity, Topaz Labs | posted in Cinque Terre, Cinque Terre Photo Workshop, Digital Photo Workshop, Italian Photographic Workshop, Italian Riviera, Manarola Italy, Nik software, Photographic Workshops, Photoshop CS6, Topaz Clarity, Venice Italy Photographic Workshop
In the spring of 2015 from April 28 through May 12 of 2015 I will be in Italy capturing images and teaching. In Rome the balcony gardens have been amazing when I have been there in the fall and I am looking forward to capturing them in their spring bloom.
Madonna and Child Piazza Navona Roma Topaz and Nik pro-Contrast
This balcony garden near the Piazza Navona in Roma is one of the locations I want to spend time capturing.
I used the cloning and healing tools in Photoshop to clean up the image and then used Topaz Clarity to help with the colors in this image and then used Nik Pro Contrast to fine tune my color adjustments.
Madonna and Child Piazza Navona Roma Raw image
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Leave a comment | tags: Italian Photographic Workshop, Nik Software, Paul Christopher James, Rome photo workshop, Topaz Clarity | posted in Nik software, Paul Christopher James, Photoshop CS6, Piazza Navona, Rome, Topaz Photo Software
The Watchman is one of the great locations to shoot in Zion National Park. On the brisk fall morning that I captured this image the wind was whipping through the prairie grasses and creating a nice motion blur in the foreground and the rising sun was setting the sky on fire. Shooting manually at F/11 there were a variety of time exposures and ISO combinations that I tried and this exposure at 1/15th of a second at ISO 1600 is the one I liked the most. There is nice motion in the foreground without losing all of the detail.
Watchman – Zion National Park
After a little exposure and highlight adjustments in Camera Raw I processed this image using Topaz Clarity, then Tonal Contrast in Nik Software. At this point the image looked great but the sky looked a little grainy so I selected the sky and used Topaz DeNoise to remove the grain.
Watchman – Zion National Park – Raw Image
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2 Comments | tags: Charleston Photographic Workshop, Nik Software, Paul Christopher James, Southwest Photo Workshop, Topaz Clarity | posted in Nik software, Southwest Photographic Workshop Tour, The Watchman, Topaz Labs, Topaz Labs Adjust 5, Valley of Fire, Virgin River, Zion National Park
