Today was a great day in the evolution of relations between Cuba and US. This is an image I shot in Havana during a beautiful week in January 2013 – note the “E Pluribus Unum” on the upper part of the wall. One from many!
With today’s news, I look forward to many more happy images from Cuba and the wonderful people we had a chance to meet while we were there. Change takes time – and generations to pass. It was a wonderful day for Cuba today!
I’m a fan of black and white – especially black and white with subtle toning. My favorite uses the platinum toning in PhotoShop CC.
Here’s an example – an image from January 2013 in Havana. I loved the light on the bicycle – and the toning adds a bit of interesting depth. This image was shot with my Nikon D600.
From time to time, I look back at some of my older images – and my images from our amazing visit to Havana in early 2013 are now in that older category!
This is an image I hadn’t processed before – that struck me as I was browsing through my Cuba images in Lightroom.
We were in a large warehouse with a farmers’ market underway. Lots of nooks and crannies. As we walked around, we mostly had friendly encounters – with one except that I’ll always remember! This is a shot that I took looking out from within the warehouse – just loved the feel of the characters.
Shot with my Nikon D600 and post-processed in Lightroom 5 and VSCO Film.
Looking back through my shots from our visit to Havana a year ago, I came across this image. I had skipped over it previously – probably because it’s not super sharp and that blurred motion of the woman in the foreground. But, giving it a second look, it pulled me in – there’s the element of layers in this image.
Shot with my Nikon D600, I post processed it using Lightroom and Photoshop to emphasize the textures and tonality of the image.
That title is a quote from Winston Churchill that seemed just right for this image from Havana last year! He’s got attitude!
From the farmer’s market in Havana, this fellow was selling produce – and bathed in the beautiful light coming in from the higher windows behind.
This is one of my favorite images from our trip to Cuba a year ago this week. It’s a shot of the lead singer in the band the night we were at Cafe Taberna – which plays that wonderful Ry Cooder / Buena Vista Social Club style of music. By the end of the evening, the band had us on our feet with lots of folks dancing in the aisles. Such a great memory!
I re-processed this image last night and uploaded it to Flickr. Today, it got picked up by Flickr Explore and went viral – resulting in thousands of page views and many new followers to my Flickr photostream. Pretty amazing to watch! The re-processing I did last night primarily involved a new Photoshop action being worked on by Dan Margulis which does some magic to portrait shots. I then processed it into monochrome in two steps – first using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 and then applied a platinum gradient map to give a gentler look to the monochrome treatment.
If you’re curious, here’s the original image straight out of the camera – my Nikon D600:
[Note: First published earlier today on InMenlo.com: A few great memories from photography explorations in 2013]
Looking back over a year is something many of us do at this holiday season. I’ve enjoyed looking back at 2013, as it appears in my Lightroom catalog of images captured over the year.
I find it sort of amazing that Lightroom reports I’ve taken 7,697 images in 2013. Good grief! I recently put together a Flickr set of the top 100 images of mine from 2013 based upon views and votes as favorites. But I wanted to also do a more personal look back, choosing just five images from my photography explorations this year.
Much of my joy of photography, by the way, comes from long walks taken a few years ago with InMenlo co-founder Chris Gulker — a very talented photographer who taught me well.
So, here we go…
People check in from everywhere!
Shot on the streets of Havana, Cuba in January 2013. Nikon D600 with the 24-85mm kit lens. Post-processed in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC.
Here’s a fun shot from our visit to Havana earlier this year – taken outside our hotel with my Nikon D600 with the Nikkor 24-85mm kit lens.
Post-processed in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC with VSCO Film 04 Fortia SP and Topaz Simplify 4.