Digital Photography's Best Kept Secret

It continues to amaze me how few digital photographers, especially those using Nikon cameras, know about Nikon's image editing program Capture NX2. Capture is built by the people at Nik software who have developed some of the most useful, popular and innovative PhotoShop add-on programs on the market. Capture, however, is a stand alone program primarily design to work with Nikon RAW images. One of its main advantages is that is works with the pure RAW information keeping it accurate. Other programs often have to interpolate this information.

Not all components of a digital photograph, such as focus, can be manipulated as a RAW part of the image but many can. Capture has menu items that correspond to those settings on the camera that control RAW parts of the image. These parts later be be changed in Capture without any destruction or negative impact on the photo. For example, if your picture is a stop over or under exposed, Capture has a tool that lets you correct exposure just as you do with the EV control on the camera. If your white balance is off Capture has a menu system similar to the one in the camera to correct the white balance quickly and easily.

With Capture NX2 you can create a specific shooting profile. Simply shot a photo under the conditions you expect to be working under, edit it in Capture to the way you want it to look under the those conditions. Save these setting as a profile and load them into the camera. Every time you shoot in those conditions you can load this profile using the camera's Manage Picture Control menu and all the photos will be corrected, in camera, to your profile.

My favorite part of Capture NX2 is the U-point technology that lets you create a Color Control Point. The point allows you to very easily make color and exposure change to a specific area of a photo. You simply place the Control Point over the area of the photo you want to correct and use the small drag tool to determine the size of circle that defines the area you want to work with. All you have to now do is slide one of the slide controls that allows you to control exposure, saturation, contrast, red, blue, green etc. The program is smart enough to use the circle you drew to figure, out what pixels around the circle look life the ones in the circle, and change them. The changes are fast, non destructive to the photo, and easily reversed. It sounds a bit confusing as I write this but in reality it is quick to learn and easy to do.

Capture has a lot of other great features including a very easy to use batch processing tool. I use Capture as a regular part of my work-flow. All my RAW editing is done in Capture. If the image needs further works I use the menu item "Open With" and the image is converted to a TIFF and opens in PhotoShop.

If you shoot a Nikon you really should try CaptureNX2. You can download a free 60 day trial versions from the Nikon website: www.nikonusa.com There are several books on the market will speed you through learning Capture and Nikon has a tutorials on its website as well under the Learn & Explore area. There is also a 64-bit version well on the way.

A Visit to Paradise

We just returned from completing a week long Wildlife Photo Workshop at the wonderful Silver Salmon Lodge in Lake Clark National Park Alaska. This area is known for its beauty and the opportunity to get up close and personal with the many coastal brown bears that inhabit this area. This trip was no exception. We photographed several sows with their cubs often from as little as 10 feet. We watched as the moms nursed, play with and disciplined their cubs. We photographed the cubs playing with each other or just playing with a stick or shell they found. In the mornings, when the tide was out, we photographed the bears on the beach as they hunted clams, dug them up and than with a couple of swipes of their giant paws opened the clams to eat the meat in side. The long Alaska summer days allowed us to photograph to well after 9pm.

The part of this trip that always leaves the greatest impression on me, however, is the raw natural beauty of this area. The beach is pristine. Tall saw grass in various shades of green cover the fields. The air is so clear the colors are almost surrealistic. Just beyond these fields rise steep mountains whose snow capped peaks are often lost in the clouds. Along the coast high wispy waterfalls sprout from rain forest covered cliffs that border the sea. Puffins, Murres, Oyster Catchers, huge flocks of Kittywakes and a wide variety of other sea birds soar overhead. The occasional bald eagle swoops in low above the streams to check for fish.

This is the Earth as it should be, as it was before we cut the forests to build mega-cities and strip malls. Before we fouled the rivers, the sky and drove away the wildlife . Lake Clark is not just a place for great wildlife photography it is also a place to refresh the soul.

We have already made a reservation to return to Lake Clark and Silver Salmon Lodge the week of August 19th 2012. We have places for seven of which 4 are already spoken for so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to join us.

As soon as I have a chance to edit and review the many gigabytes of photos I took I will post a few on the site. Please come back and take a look.