Snow Day!

This week was the first time in years that we got a decent snow in the Raleigh area. No way I was driving in it, so I worked from home that day. But over my lunch break, while the rest of the country was watching Obama flub his Inaugural Oath (thanks to the Chief Justice), I grabbed my geat and heading out for some shots (I did get the DVR to capture the historic moment).

I'm in a fairly new neighborhood in the middle of what used to be farmland. There isn't too much left in the way of the old life around here, but I'm lucky enough to be a short walk to several farms. One old farm was recently bought my the town and going to be converted to a park focused on the agricultural heritage of this area. But the town has done nothing yet, so I was still able to capture the beautiful old buildings in a great snow storm.




I decided these pictures would look great as B&Ws, so used the Alien Skin Exposure 2 software I talked about in my previous post. They have a "Fog" option for the B&W exposures, and it gave the pictures a beautiful effect - blowing out highlights a bit to make the snow whiter and making the tree look like it is in fog.

Alien Skin's Exposure 2

I recently discovered that there was a software company here in Raleigh that did some pretty nifty photography software. As a photographer and software engineer, this was pretty interesting to learn. Then I discovered I actually knew the wife of one of the engineers. I decided to try out one of the companies more interesting offerings, Exposure 2. The program is available as a Photoshop plugin that takes a digital photo, with its typically flat curve and often "blah" colors, and lets the user mimic the effect of various classic films. They've profiled Velvia, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, T-Max 100, and tons and tons of others. Whether Color or Black & White, Slide or Negative film. The software tries to match the contrast, the color, and even the grain.

Pretty cool stuff. And I am happy to say that it works. And the plug-in offers plenty of tweaking on top of all the different film presets. The only downside to this program is that it is damn expensive. Is it worth it? If you are making money with your photography, it may be. It does a fantastic job and it simplifies stuff you might otherwise be able to do in Photoshop. For me, in this economy, with this just as a serious hobby....I think I'm gonna pass for now. But I've still got a few weeks left with the fully functional demo. So we'll see.

More in a future posting.