A Walk on Bulow Trail

Green, Yellow, Red

Night photography can add a whole new world of images to your repertoire.  Here is a 20 second exposure at f16, 100 iso.  Note that the stoplight has changed from green to yellow to red.  A car has stopped for the red light.

Gary Siasmon

A Petty Good Deal from Adobe

Many of you may have read about Adobe's introduction of a new way of selling and using their software called The Creative Cloud.

 

Basically, one option that Adobe is offering is to "rent" the software for a monthly fee, as opposed to buying it new or as an upgrade. The Creative Cloud is the digital hub that lets you download and install every Adobe Creative Suite 6 application; access online services for file sharing, collaboration, and publishing; and benefit from new apps and features as soon as they're released — all for the monthly fee. As an example, all the applications that would be available to you within the Creative Cloud would be all those included in Adobe's Creative Suite Master Collection, which sells for about $2,500 as an upgrade. The details of what's included in the Master Collection and the Creative Cloud can be examined at the following Adobe website...

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection.html

 

The standard introductory pricing for the Creative Cloud will be $49 per month. Putting that in context, the upgrade from previous versions of Photoshop will cost $200. But for the monthly fee, you get to download all the applications in the $2,500 Master Collection (if you think you'll ever use them all!).

The deal gets a little better. If you are a registered owned of any of the "CS" applications--the "full" versions of Photoshop, Lightroom, or any of the other applications included in the Creative Suite from CS3 and later--the monthly fee will be only $29 for the first year, increasing to $49 in subsequent years. What this means is that you can get the $200 upgrade of Photoshop as well as ALL the other top Adobe applications for just $29 a month in the first year.

Be advised that with the Creative Cloud, you really are just "renting" the software. Whatever you download will be coded so that if you stop making the monthly payments, the software you have downloaded will be de-activated. You could then re-activate it by renewing your credit card arrangements. Alternatively, if you returned to simply buying the upgraded versions as they were released, you'd have to pay the full amount to buy the upgrade to whatever version was on your computer at the outset.

The Creative Cloud and all the new CS6 applications will be released next Monday, May 7 and will be available for download thereafter.

If this idea appeals to you, visit the Adobe website and look for the Creative Cloud page

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud.html?promoid=JQPEQ

All I can say is that being able to get all the terrific Adobe applications and all future upgraded versions for $360 per year for the first year and $600 per year thereafter is something to think about. Remember, each upgrade to Photoshop alone runs about $200 and they seem to occur about every year. The Creative Cloud and introductory pricing will probably cause the most active users of Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. to put pencil to paper.

Cheers!

PS I copied this from a Yahoo post by a member of The Villages Photography Club. I thought our club members would be interested in this info.

The Two Best Lessons

 I stumbled upon this huge toad on the sidewalk, in the dark, after the last Flagler County Art League meeting.  It reminded me of the two most important lessons for photography; 1: Always have your camera with you, and 2: Pay attention to your surroundings.

You can see from the second shot that I was using off-camera flash (placing my flash unit on the sidewalk to the left of shot and using my pop-up flash to trigger it) from the two catch-lights in the toad's eye.

Another thing I've noticed recently is that the parking lot medians and borders hold a lot of wildlife.  Not only do I see many frogs, toads, and lizards sunning themselves on the concrete, but parking lots with planted trees attract lots of birds too.

For instance, this mockingbird lives in the parking lot of the Publix on Old Dixie Highway.

Wasp Nest with Bounce Flash

While it's common to use bounce flash to light indoor scenes, it's not a typical technique for macro photography outdoors.  There's always an exception though, in this case I found a wasp making her nest under the eaves of my house. 

Most of the flash was directed toward the underside of the eaves, a small amount was bounced with a white card directly toward the subject.  This allowed me to use a faster shutter speed and a lower ISO even though my hands were shaking!

Hot Damn! Let's go RVing.

Kayaking on Bulow Creek