Winter is great climbing in the borderlands deserts! My favorite spot in winter: Cochise Stronghold, AZ. Quiet, beautiful, and unique climbing. Trad, sport, cragging and multi-pitch. Last month we took our friends from Montana out for a weekend in the AZ desert. Here is some eye-candy from that trip:
A designer friend of mine recently wrote to ask me what process was responsible for creating a certain “look” of an image she found on Flickr. I recognized it as a combination of HDR (high dynamic range) photomerge, and some other Photoshop filters and tricks. While I personally think the HDR craze is a little overdone, I’ll address the technique here.
Traditionally, an HDR image is created by merging 3 or more photos together that were taken at different exposures. By doing this, you maximize the details in all elements of the photo; underexposure to grab sky/highlight detail, correct exposure for midtone detail, and overexposure for increased shadow detail. However, taking three identical shots is not always possible, especially when your subject is moving. With Photoshop Camera Raw and a few other tricks, it is possible to imitate the HDR effect with a single photograph. Continue reading »
Female climbers are awesome and inspiring.
Climbing is one of those sports which, in theory, is entirely egalitarian. Different body types lend themselves to different climbing styles, and women can just as easily send a 5.13 as men. Granted, perhaps the style of 5.13 may be different, but it is a fact that some of the best climbers in the world are women. Lynn Hill, Katie Brown, Steph Davis… just to name a few.
As a climbing photographer, and a female climber, it has been my personal mission as of late to take more photos of women climbing hard. Despite the 10:1 male to female ratio in the climbing community, I’ve been able to shoot some photos of some very inspiring ladies. Below are a few from my recent trip to Indian Creek, Utah. Continue reading »
It was finally time to integrate the blog with our site theme and brand. The old blog needed a serious facelift, and unfortunately the version of WordPress that was installed on my server was antiquated. So, I upgraded it, tried to install a new theme, and… ta-da! Database failure and blog crash. Therefore, we are starting fresh.
I recently ran into another pre-press dilemma for one of my newsprint clients. Of course the phone call came in the day after my print deadline, while I was in the eastern Utah backcountry. So there I was, standing on a rock, trying to get enough cell reception for a 5-minute phone call. There wasn’t much I could do 1,000 miles away from my office, but the problem was this:
I often use colored boxes or gradient sidebars with black text on top of them. I find it helps give color to the page, and adds some visual interest to an otherwise monochrome copy space. I had never had a problem with these in the year and a half that I have been designing this particular publication. Yet, the printer informed me that this time the black text was overprinting, causing rich black text in the colored sidebars. Continue reading »
