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Efcubed Photography bio picture

Welcome to the Efcubed Photography Blog!

Roger A. Dallman Jr.    Roger started in photography in 1979, as a secondary job in the Army.  He shot "grip and grins" and Army events.  He began shooting portraits and weddings on the side for extra camera gear money.  He won several photo contests and an Army journalism award.  After career assignment changes, he put the cameras aside and sold his darkroom equipment. In 2006, he bought his first digital camera before a trip to Europe and was hooked again. 

Today he is a dedicated Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop user-advocate and NAPP member.  He is active in photography groups and teaches digital darkroom techniques.  He prefers to shoot portaits away from seamless paper and static lighting.  He is also a photo retoucher and restores old photos - a handy skill when working on his genealogy hobby.

Mark B. Segal.    Mark started shooting when he was 13 and has done it off and on since then.  As a Navy brat and then Naval Officer, I got to go to interesting places.  I wish I had taken my camera more often.  I love the way the camera allows you to dissect the world and shape what people see of it.  Photoshop and Lightroom are great tools to help capture what you thought you saw from behind the lens. 

I love helping people salvage and restore their photographic memories as links to their past.  The patience and dedication needed are usually far beyond what the images are worth, except to the person who owns the picture.  Seeing the smile or tears from when you've brought back an image from the cracked, torn and faded pile is a reward in and of itself. 

Creative Lens Corrections

One of the great features introduced back in LR2 was the Camera Correction panel in the Develop module.  Lenses have built in distortions based upon the design of their optics.  You’ve seen the effect when the tall buildings in your pictures seem to either lean way back away from the camera or tilt to one side in part of the picture while appearing vertical elsewhere. Some lenses get “curvey” out towards the outer edges of the images, some cause vignetting (darkness around the corners) based on how light is processed as it passes through the various pieces of glass.  Because these flaws can be modeled and profiled, the Adobe software designers can correct the image to display things as they “should be”.  Here is a perfectly average picture of the U.S. Naval Academy chapel dome (GO NAVY-BEAT ARMY).  I applied a little darkening to the sky and pushed up the blacks to make it a little crisper, but it still remains a really average shot.  Since not all lenses are modeled yet, they included manual controls which permit you to adjust the various characteristics of your image. But what if you don’t want your image to be normal looking?  Well, LR lets you use the Lens Correction controls for evil as well as for good…

You can stretch the building vertically

You can stretch it horizontally as well

You can squish it inwards

And you can create your own virtual “fish-eye” lens effect. 

These effects work on people as well, but I don’t recommend stretching it horizontally on a spouse or significant other.  You can combine multiple effects until you find something interesting. Best of all, as with all LR adjustments, all of these are completely reversible.  So straighten out your buildings where you can, but have fun and play around with your images.