By Don Barnes
Creating a vignette to highlight the subject of your photograph is an excellent way to enhance your images and is extremely easy to do in Photoshop CS6.  Here are Step by Step directions to make your images more powerful with vignettes. (While not exactly the same, these instructions will also help you create a vignette in Photoshop Elements as well.)

Step One
Open your image in Photoshop like usual... [Read More...] 

As most of you know, I will be retiring, and moving.

I have loved living in the Mason City area all these 30 years.  I came in 1982.  I was Pastor of a church in Michigan for 10 years before coming here to be Pastor of the Rolling Acres Christian Reformed Church.  Ironically, I had an article published on the value of long term pastorates the month I moved here, and have been here ever since.  Being a complete nature nut, I have come to love the prairie, and have many favorite places that have buried themselves into my heart.  I love the Rolling Acres Christian Reformed Church that I have worked in these many years, as well as the Mason City area.  Besides my friendships and deep Pastoral relationships with many people, it has been a place of photography, tennis, gardening, chess, and great bow hunting.

My goal in doing photography is to see and help others to see the glory and the power of God in his creation.  (Psalm 19: 1 and Romans 1: 20) Although Paul talks about his goodness shown in nature in Acts 14:17, to see the love of God we need the special revelation of God in the Bible, and in Jesus himself (John 3:16.)  When it comes to nature, there are many WOW! experiences!  From a sunset, to the distant mountains, to the flower at our doorstep, to a bright orange Baltimore Oriole sitting in the white snow of the last snowstorm in May in my backyard!  Wow!  It was interesting to me that in Anne Lamott’s last, brief, and delightful book:  The Three Essential Prayers:  Help, Thanks, Wow, the illustrations about WOW, were mainly either nature images, or images about grace.  (I highly recommend this book for a stimulating, fun, sassy, good read.)

For me this fascinating world, filled with wonder, leads me to worship this awesome God!  I urge my congregation to develop personal favorite exclamations of praise when they feel this overwhelming response to the star filled sky, the magic of springtime, or a mountain.  My personal  favorites are, “Praise you Lord God Almighty!”  And simply, “My Lord and my God and my King!”  I remember the words of one of the main characters in the movie The Color Purple.  Living in a terrible dark world of brokenness and evil, she still holds hope.  As they walk through a field full of purple cosmos flowers, she says something like, I think that it ticks God off if someone walks though a field of flowers like this and doesn’t see the color purple!  God puts all this beauty around us as a gift, with a smile on his face.  He says, LOOK at that!  Even more, this God is my close personal Father through Christ.  As the song says, This Is My Father’s World!

Dr. Tim McKone and I brainstormed about starting up a photo club.  There had been the Hawkeye Camera Club in Mason City.  I had shown several of my slide programs to them through the years.  But they never did much with learning more about photography, as much as having a time to see a slide program.  I wanted more of a Camera Club.  I had been in one briefly as a college student in Holland, Michigan, and had found it stimulating.  Don Barnes jumped on board to help, as well as Tom Shussler.  The four of us started out as officers.  We had our first meeting on February 20, 2003.  Tom Shussler moved away and was replaced by Tim Ackarman.  Tim has a great love of the outdoors, works to conserve land areas for future generations, and freelances stimulating articles and photographs for The Globe Gazzette.  Dr. Tim McKone has moved away, and has been replaced with Dr. Harsha Jayawardena.  What a great job they have all done!  Don does professional portrait photography work on the side, and I don’t know of anyone better in Photoshop!   Harsha rubs shoulders with professional landscape photographers all over the United States.  He is extremely knowledgeable with equipment and technology, his work is meticulous, his photo excursions range from Africa and Alaska backcountry, to Zion and Death Valley.  (How many people like Harsha do you know who have had a gorilla come up from behind and lay a hand on his shoulder, or walk many miles through a river with waders, or camp out on a fly in with grizzly running all around his tripod while waist deep in water!). 

With me leaving, Don is taking over as president, Harsha continues as Vice President but with more of a co-leader position, and Bruce McKee has come on board with tremendous technological expertise with our web site--which he set up and maintains.  Bruce has been growing in his photographic interest and expertise, has his own web site, and has three of his photos up in the current McNider Photo Show!  [Several photo club members have photos up in the current show, including Bruce, Brad Janssen, Nick Anderson, Don Barnes, and Paulette Searle.  Our next meeting in June will be at the museum to look over the exhibit and talk about the photos.]

In closing, as I have said before, one of the best things about our [photo] club that many of you have appreciated as well, is the warm and friendly attitude of those who come towards one another and our photo work.  (Remember to welcome the newcomers!)  In some clubs there is a fierce competition that can make people very uncomfortable.  Here, anyone can show their work, have it seen, talked about, share it, comment, and it is appreciated by all.  May this supportative attitude continue as photos are shared together and we share our joy in what we are doing, and encourage one another in our work!  As officers, that is the kind of club we want our club to be!

I do plan to come back to visit the North Iowa Photo Club at times and keep in touch with you.  I also plan to be part of a photo club in Minnesota.

The best to you all!

Blessings!

Jack  Vanden  Heuvel

As current president, I want to say what an exciting club this is!  We have a wide variety of people, and excellent contributions to show each meeting!  I have enjoyed the uniqueness of each person’s photos, and love some of the new stuff coming in from some of you newer to the club!  And we can do this all with our new HD projector!  We will also be getting a new white matte screen in June.

We have great learning opportunities such as Don has given us in Photoshop the last couple meetings, and I am excited to hear what Harsha has been learning on star photography at our May meeting!  It is always neat to hear tips on things from all you members, and ideas/equipment you have been using.

One of the best things about our club that many of you have appreciated as well as me, is the warm and friendly attitude of those who come to one another and our photo work.  In some clubs there is a fierce competition, that can make people very uncomfortable.  Here, anyone can show their work, have it seen, talked about, share it, comment, and it is appreciated by all.  May this supportative attitude continue as we share photos together, share our joy in what we are doing together, and encourage one another in our work!  As officers, that is the kind of club we want our club to be!

Don Barnes will take over as President of the Club in June.  Harsha Jayawardena will continue as Vice President, and by design be a Co leader with Don.  Tim Akarman will continue as Treasurer.   Bruce McKee, who has set up our new web site, will also be involved in our leadership team as secretary.  We much appreciate the leadership of these four.

Enjoy the start of Spring photography!

- Jack Vanden Heuvel

[ See Also - Article in the Globe Gazette:
"Vanden Heuvel retiring after 40 years in ministry" ]

Occasionally we provide links to web sites and blogs of club members and friends to highlight topics which may be of interest to club members. Larry Williams wrote a great article for setting your exposure when photographing flying eagles. He discusses some pretty high-end equipment, but all of the techniques apply to any camera. It starts here:

"Harsha asked me to provide a short Blog on how I set up exposure for photographing Bald Eagles at Lock and Dam 14.  This is not an easy endeavor to undertake.  The migratory eagles are at Lock and Dam 14 from December through February.  The skies are usually over-cast 90% of the time.  Under these circumstances, selecting the correct exposure to photograph eagles in flight is a challenge..." [Read more...]

Several club members have been photographing Bald Eagles recently at the Lock and Dam 14 on the Mississippi River near LeClaire, IA (near Bettendorf and Davenport). This is a great place to get pictures of the Eagles swooping down to the river to catch a fish with their talons as well as pictures of the birds flying or perched in nearby trees. The best time of the year is January and February. You can learn more about this photo opportunity by reading recent Blog postings by club members:
Bruce's Blog - Bald Eagles at Lock and Dam 14

Harsha's Blog - Photographing Bald Eagles, Lock and Dam 14, Mississippi River 2013

Often we need to resize our images – one size and resolution for your Facebook posting, and a totally different size and resolution for the print you want to put on your office wall.  Photoshop makes resizing or reformatting your image pretty easy, but you do need to remember a few basic rules.  Let’s go through the process with one of my images using Photoshop CS6.

I’m shooting a Canon 5D Mk II using RAW capture.  When I open an image in Photoshop it is 15.6 inches x 10.4 inches at 360 ppi.  After I finish making my adjustments and corrections,  I want to post the image on my website.  For internet or web viewing, I typically resize my images to 5”x 7” [720 x 1008 px]  at 144 ppi.  This size seems to work well on my website and is still small enough that I don’t worry about the image being copied and printed without my permission.

With the image open in Photoshop I click on Image on the upper left hand side of the Menu Bar.  In the drop down menu that appears, click on Image size.  (In Elements 10 click Image> Resize>image size).  When the Dialog Box opens I will make sure that the scale styles, constrain proportions and resample image boxes are checked.  

Then I will change the width or height (whichever is the longest dimension in my photo)  to 7 inches which automatically changes the other dimension setting for me.  Then I will change the resolution to 144 ppi, and check to see that bicubic automatic is displayed in the selection window (in Elements 10 choose Bicubic sharper – best for reduction).  Then I click OK and my image is now ready to be saved as a jpeg for uploading to my website [remember to save as a different file name].

Once I have saved the lower resolution image I will go to the History palette (Window>Undo History palette in Elements 10) and click on the last history state that appears before my Image Size layer.  That will take my image back to it’s original size and resolution. 

Now I want to prepare the image to be sent to my lab which wants my images at 300 ppi resolution.  I again click on Image in the Menu Bar and open the image size dialog box.  (In Elements 10 click Image> Resize>image size).   After checking to be sure that the scale styles, constrain proportions and resample image boxes are checked, I will change the width to 12 inches and the height proportionally changes to 8 inches (for a horizontal image – for a vertical image change the height to 12 inches).  Then I change the resolution to 300 ppi with bicubic automatic displayed in the selection window and I click OK.  (In Elements 10 choose Bicubic smoother – best for enlargement).

One other  tip.  If for some reason your image opens into Photoshop with really large dimensions like 50 inches x 33.3 inches at 72 ppi, it’s a simple matter to increase your resolution without damaging your image.  Open the same image size dialog box we used above, but this time uncheck the box to the left of Resample Image then enter your preferred resolution in the resolution box.  Watch the dimensions of your image automatically adjust as you enter the new resolution.

Submitted by Don Barnes,  www.dbarnesphotography.com

An easy way to get close up photos of all kinds of different birds is to put up a bird feeder close to a window.  However I have little interest in seeing a bird on a bird feeder.  So I screw a few tree branches to my feeder, and then photograph the birds on the branches.  I put my bird feeder on a big 2 by 6 board to enable easily attaching branches.  In the examples I give here, I waited until autumn to take these.  I put the bird feeder between the window and a hard maple, so when the maple turned in autumn, I could have nice background colors.  Now I am waiting for snow to get a bright red cardinal on some snow!  It is easy, it is fun, and I like having the birds close to the window.  I shoot with the window open when the weather is nice, and when it is not I clean the glass good and shoot through the glass.  I use a 400 mm lens.
   - Jack Vanden Heuvel
                           (click photos below to see larger images)

The North Iowa Photo Club meeting during a session on creating a free web site for sharing photos. Club members also brought photos to view at the meeting. Visitors and guests are always welcome.

On a recent trip to Yellowstone National Park we experimented with time lapse photos of the night sky. The combination that seemed to work best for me was locking down the camera on a sturdy tripod, using a shutter release cable or remote shutter release trigger, 11mm lens, ISO 6400, f/4, 30 second exposure, and long exposure compensation (a custom setting on Canon). If I had a f/2.8 lens that was wide enough I could have used ISO 3200. In post processing of the RAW file with Lightroom 4, I slid the color temperature toward the blue to get better color in the sky, lightened the shadows a bit, and applied a little noise reduction.
[Submitted by Bruce McKee]

Welcome to the North Iowa Photo Club blog. Our club meets at Rolling Acres Christian Reformed Church, 340 19th Street S.W., Mason City, IA the
third Thursday of the month from 7 – 9 PM. Everyone is invited to learn about photographic techniques, how to operate your camera and to view photos taken by other club members.  Our Blog is a place to learn about club meetings and to share photo tips. Bookmark the page or save it to your favorites so that you can easily find your way back here. Please also request to be added to our email list so that we can send you updates about club meetings (such as photo outings held at regular meeting times).