Mmm, cookies.

Over the weekend I learned that I’d been included in a list of the top 100 travel photographers in the world. While it certainly is an honor to be included alongside the likes of some very talented photographers, it got me thinking. How do you actually classify something like that? There are probably thousands of exceptionally talented photographers working in the travel arena, both as professionals and hobbyists. Is it really possible to choose 100 and say they are better than others? Isn’t creativity too subjective for this kind of exercise? Looking through the list and one thing stands out. Names such as Steve McCurry, Michael Freeman, Michael Yamashita, David du Chemin, Mitchell Kaneshkovich and Gavin Gough (to name a few) don’t appear. How is it possible to have a top travel photographers list without Steve McCurry?

I guess as humans we like things nicely ordered and neatly ranked. It tries to fit our linear world but for everyone that lands on the list, someone equally deserving misses out. Perhaps, instead of calling it “The Top 100 Travel Photographers in the World for 2013″ it would be better called “100 of the Top Travel Photographers in the World for 2013″. A little less definitive but probably a little more accurate.

Rukai 魯凱族, Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Culture Park, Sandimen, Pingtung County, Taiwan by Rich Matheson

A couple of friends and collaborators are involved in a new travel startup in Taiwan. Below is the press release.

‘LIFE OF TAIWAN’ WEBSITE LAUNCHES

On February 24, Taiwanese people around the world celebrated when Ang Lee, who was born in Taiwan 58 years ago, won a second Best Director Oscar, this time for Life of Pi.

Now, on May 7, 2013, comes a new website introducing the scenery, cultures, history and cuisines of Taiwan. Life of Taiwan (http://www.lifeoftaiwan.com) has more than 150 pages of information about the East Asian island.

“International arrivals have been growing for the past decade, and we think Taiwan’s tourism industry will enjoy a big lift thanks to the success of Life of Pi, which was made right here in Taiwan” said Mark Sinclair, founder and CEO of Formosa Services, the Taiwan-based startup behind Life of Taiwan.

“We’re providing high-end tailor made tours targeting professionals and their families. There is no safer place to travel than Taiwan and as everyone who has been here knows, the Taiwanese are a very special people.”

The website covers everything from Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes and their festivals to the island’s diverse and vibrant religious culture. Gourmands can read about Taiwan’s tastiest foods, while outdoors types will discover that Taiwan has more than enough mountains, rivers and dive sites to keep them busy, plus hot springs where tired muscles can be soaked at the end of a tiring day. And if they’re not already aware of Taiwan’s treasures, birdwatchers and other kinds of ecotourist will find the website’s description of Taiwan’s spectacular natural diversity engrossing.

The website is gorgeously illustrated with photos taken by Michelin and Asian Geographic photographer Rich J. Matheson. Rich specializes in images of religious events and Taiwan’s aboriginal groups; his work can be seen at http://www.thetaiwanphotographer.com

The text was written by Steven Crook, author of three books about the island – Keeping Up With The War God (2001), Dos and Don’ts in Taiwan (2010) and Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide (2010). Steven is currently updating his Bradt guide for publication in spring 2014. Links to many of his published articles can be found at http://crooksteven.blogspot.com

For further information feel free to contact us on contact@lifeoftaiwan.com or call +886 6 2088173.

Streaks of light over Kathmandu’s Durbar Square

I’m currently in the process of a massive edit and portfolio consultation which sees me staring at a computer screen for days on end selecting images from my library. Couple that with moving house next week and all the work that entails, and I’ve not really had many opportunities to go out and shoot recently. While going through my back catalog I came across this image from Durbar Square in Kathmandu and processed it using one of David du Chemin’s presets from the recent Craft & Vision preset release (today is the last day for discounts). It’s a bit over the top but fun nonetheless.

Craft & Vision LR4 Presets by Dave Delnea and David du Chemin

Using presets in Lightroom can be a real timesaver as you move through the develop process. Whether you use a one-click and it’s done approach, or you use them as the basis for further processing work, incorporating presets into your workflow offers you an easier way to reach your final goal. The folks at Craft & Vision have something really special for you this month – not one but two different releases both of which include a series of presets and a PDF guide to using them. They are available as a bundled package for $18 ($16 if you act before May 6th with the code PRESET2) or separately for $10 each. David du Chemin offers up 36 presets, and Dave Delnea chimes in with a massive 46, making a total of 82 presets. Rather than ramble on and talk too much about them, I’m just going to show you a few results when using them. The photos that follow give you a before and after – the first as it looked on import into Lightroom, and the second after applying a preset. No further processing was done, however I will note that I normally tweak presets a little each time I use them. In these intances however, what the one-click option gave me looks pretty good. If you want to read more,click here to view more details.

Cambodia Smile (unprocessed).

Cambodian Smile (Dave Delnea’s Backlight Vertical Right preset)

Bones (unprocessed)

Bones (David du Chemin’s Midtome Lift + Vignette + Clarity preset)

Beng Mealea western entrance (unprocessed)

Beng Mealea western entrance (David du Chemin’s Punchy Sunset .66 grad preset)

Waterfall (unprocessed)

Waterfall (Dave Delnea’s Washed tropics look 2 preset)

I’ve favored the more subtle presets and started off with well-exposed images so some of the changes are only slight, and of you’re not viewing this on a properly calibrated monitor you may not get the full effect. For those of you who like more dramatic processing, there are a number of presets included that will satisfy you. David du Chemin also has a series of black and white presets in his collection.

As previously mentioned they come as individual packs ($10 each) or as a bundle ($18). If you use the code PRESET2 you can get the bundle for $16 up until the end of the day on May 6th. Click here for the bundle.

Should you want them separately click here for the du Chemin pack and click here for the Delnea pack.

A bit of black and white for this month’s desktop calendar. Reaching back into the archives for this image, shot in the Baguashan area of Taiwan. As always, large and small links are below.

Small Calendar
Large Calendar

Village life. (Craig Ferguson)

One of the coolest places I’ve been as a travel photographer are the floating villages of Chong Khneas and Kompong Phluk on the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia. Stilt houses rise out of the water and villagers use simple wooden row boats to get about. Even something as simple as visiting the neighbors can require the use of a boat. I’ve been diving into my back catalog searching out a few older images for some upcoming work and decided that these photographs deserved a fresh look.

Life on the water. (Craig Ferguson)

The busy village and its main waterway. (Craig Ferguson)

Young Cambodian village children. (Craig Ferguson)

Kids at play in Cambodia. (Craig Ferguson)

Strawberry ice cream on a bed of strawberries.

Summer is trying to get a look in here in Taiwan and the freezer sections of convenience stores and supermarkets are once again filling up with ice cream. A bed of strawberries and a few scoops on top makes for a fun morning’s photography.

Lightroom 5 beta

As they did with all previous versions of Lightroom, Adobe have just released a public beta for the upcoming Lightroom 5. This beta is available to everyone to test out, regardless of whether you’re an existing Lightroom user or not. This new version brings a host of new features that will ease your photo workflow. Be aware that Lightroom 5 beta will not read your existing Lightroom catalogs – you’ll be required to create a new catalog if you want to play around. This is a smart move as the last thing you’d want would be a potentially buggy beta to be let loose on your production files. There are a number of new features that are quite exciting so let’s take a quick look.

Upright Tool

Getting your horizons straight in Lightroom is already pretty simple but Adobe have just made it even easier with the new Upright tool. Found under the Lens Correction panel, it offers automatic perspective correction and horizon leveling. Your options include full correction, vertical correction only or leveled image.

Upright tool in Lightroom 5

Smart Previews

One of the great features of Lightroom has been the ability to have your catalog on both a desktop and a laptop, and the ability to preview images when they are offline. You may be on the road with your laptop and all your images are on your desktop at home. Until now, previewing them is all you could do but smart previews changes that. Lightroom 5 can now generate reduced resolution previews of these offline images that you can make edits to. This could be really useful during a long flight when you want to dive into your back catalog and edit some older work, or if you have an idea for a particular edit and you’re presently unable to access your catalog images. Of course there are some limits in the reduced resolution preview – you probably want to avoid detail work such as noise reduction or sharpening, but there is plenty of potential for what you can do. And the best bit – when your offline images next come online, Lightroom will apply the edits you’ve made on the smart previews. Very cool.

Radial Gradient Filter

Radial gradient

As you can see in the above screenshot, the radial gradient filter allows you to place a circular or oval filter over a part of an image and make adjustments accordingly. You have access to the full range of adjustment brush tools such as exposure, sharpness, clarity, saturation, contrast and so on. In its default, the changes are applied outside the radial gradient but you can also invert that to have them applied within. This tool looks to have a lot of potential in helping you call attention to certain parts of the image. It reminds me a bit of the control points in Nik filters. Below is an exaggerated look at an image with a lot of underexposure dialed in. This is obviously not how I’d want to process the image, rather I’ve gone with the over the top look just to highlight the strength of the tool.

Advanced Healing Brush and Spot Removal Tool

One of the main reasons I take a photo in Photoshop these days is to use the healing brush tool. The tool in Lightroom is great for certain spots but has been limited in that it only works in a circular fashion. Not anymore. Now by simply holding the mouse button down you can paint over the spot to create any shape of brush you want tool you want. If you wish to have a straight line, say to remove a power line in the sky, just hold down the shift key as you paint along it. It works a treat for irregularly shaped objects. In my testing of Lightroom 5 so far, this is probably my favorite new feature and promises to be a real time saver in my workflow. In the photograph immediately below you can see the shape of my spot that I’ve created by painting over the leaves, and with it Lightroom’s automatic selection of a replacement area. I can drag the automatic selection around to find the replacement area I want if I don’t like what the software has chosen. In this case I’ve done that and in the second image you can see a before and after look at my photo.

Irregular spot

Before and after removing some leaves.

Visualize Spots

Dust spots are the curse of photography within dirty sensors, poorly stored and scratched film being the main culprits. Lightroom has long had the ability to easily remove dust spots but there are times when they are not so obvious. The new visualize spots feature makes life a lot easier. With the spot removal tool selected simply use the keyboard shortcut “A” or check the box in the tool bar to activate the visualize spot tool. It will highlight dust spots and scratches making for easier removal.

Scanned film image on the left, visualize spots tool on the right.

Visualize spots

Lightroom 5 promises to be another must get update to Lightroom. No word yet on availability but previous public betas have run a few months so I’d guess this will be out in the second half of 2013. But that is only a guess. Click here to download Lightroom 5 beta.

Looking across the river at Bitan

Bitan is a popular scenic area next to Xindian on the edge of the Taipei basin. Of a weekend it will be packed with daytrippers wandering along the riverbanks, paddling in boats and eating in the cafes and eateries above the promenade. Through the week there are fewer people about, and especially when it’s an overcast and wet week. Perfect time for a series of daytime long exposure photographs mostly featuring the river. Of course, being daytime a neutral density filter is required and I’ve used a B+W 77mm 3.0 ND 110 Filter for these images.