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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. 

Category Archives: Camera

The mechanics of taking a photograph.

ISO, Noise and Lightroom

Noise lives in the dark parts of our photographs.  All those little random dots of color which appear in parts of your images are just random data, when the camera sensor doesn’t have enough information to capture a picture.  This last weekend I got to visit my folks and attend an unusual reunion.  All the...

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What’s a Histogram ?

Just as soon as you learned the difference between an aperture and ISO, some smart-alec throws in a new term – what the heck is a histogram?

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Lens Profiles in Adobe Lightroom 3

Between work and trying to think of something to write about now that I finished the Greece series, I realized that there was one feature in the new Lightroom 3.0, which really has made a visible difference in the processed images.    All lenses have a degree of distortion.  One of the reasons expensive lenses are...

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Assignment: Self-portrait

Self-portraits are nothing new and have been done throughout antiquity by artists in painting and sculpture.

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Not All Blur is Bad

Everyone likes a sharp, crisp photo, but sometimes conveying motion requires a little blurring.

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The Rhythm’s Gonna Get You

Patterns and rhythms are powerful devices to help make your photographs grab the viewer’s eye.

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Museums can be a photography challenge

For me one of the most interesting parts about traveling in Europe is visiting the museums.  Thousands of years of history are captured in sculpture, paintings and other precious artifacts.  Taking good images of those things home is harder than it might appear.  First and foremost many museums do not allow you to take photos at...

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Get Natural with Candids

As someone who loves to shoot portraits, I am aware that the sight of my camera will usually cause people to lose their “natural” look.

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