Back with another entry in my Photo Diaries series! Trail Adventours sent me to shoot photos of this twin-destination dayhike at Pangil, Laguna. These cover two separate waterfalls along the Panguil River, Buntot-Palos Falls and Ambon-Ambon Falls. This post covers the hike to Buntot-Palos Falls.
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Better Milky Way Photos in Under 5 Minutes: An Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorial for Beginners
Following up on my previous guide to shooting the Milky Way, this quick and easy tutorial is meant to give beginners a solid starting point for editing Milky Way and night sky photos in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. While it doesn't address the finer points of a perfect Milky Way edit, it will definitely give you a more visible and dramatic Milky Way galactic core and can save photos taken in less-than-ideal night sky conditions.
A summary of the basic workflow I followed in the video:
- Shoot in RAW with the right aperture/ISO/shutter speed for your setup. You want your stars to be pin-sharp and not streaking lines. Use this handy calculator to get the right settings. No RAW photo? Download the RAW photo used in the tutorial here.
- Set your camera calibration to Adobe Standard and turn on automatic Lens Profile Corrections for your lens. If not available, try to manually select your lens from the dropdown menu.
- Set Contrast to 100 and compensate overall brightness using the Exposure slider.
- Bring down Highlights slider to minimize effects of light pollution.
- Set white balance by maxing out Vibrance and Saturation, then moving the Temp/Tint sliders until you have a balance of yellow, blue, magenta, and green. Set Vibrance and Saturation back to 0.
- Increase Clarity to taste, taking care not to introduce unwanted artifacts and too much noise into the photo.
- Apply Noise Reduction. Attempt to minimize grain without smooshing out detail excessively.
From here, you can proceed to perfecting the photo with localized edits, composites, dodging and burning, etc. Hope this helps! Til next time.
Shoot the Milky Way Today: A Starter Kit for Beginners
A lot of readers and followers on social media ask me how to shoot the Milky Way properly. I'm entirely self-taught, and the good news is, all the resources I used to learn are easily available online, right now.
Read MorePhoto Diary: Mt. Ugo Trek with Trail Adventours Part I - Kayapa to Domolpos Village
Though much lesser-known than Mt. Pulag, the more difficult Mt. Ugo trek should count itself as one of the great world-class treks of the Philippines.
Last January, I was finally able to do the two-day traverse of Mt. Ugo with Trail Adventours, which had been long recommended to me as a trek of outstanding beauty. I had actually won not one, but two free day hikes from Trail Ad during the Muni Meetup: Travel & Truth, and decided to combine them into a weekend.
The actual distance of the trek is around 30km over two days (12km on day 1, 18 km on day 2), but the actual distance we ended up covering was over 40km.
PART 1: KAYAPA, NUEVA VIZCAYA TO DOMOLPOS VILLAGE
Read MoreVisiting America's Cathedral: A First-Timer's Road Trip to Yosemite
Admit it: If, like me, you’re not from the USA, you probably know Yosemite either as a Mac OS or a cartoon character. And you might pronounce it “yos-e-MIGHT” instead of “yos-em-it-EE.”
Yosemite National Park is actually one of America's most treasured landmarks and has been the inspiration for countless artists and great men and women.
Read MoreTravel Photo Diary: Five Days in Zambales with FlipTrip.ph
For the recent five-day weekend, I got a spontaneous invite from Jackie Yap, co-founder of FlipTrip.ph, to join them in Zambales. Having no plans or itinerary whatsoever, I let them handle everything and ended up staying the entire five days there.
Read MoreTo Post or Not to Post: 5 steps to living in the moment in the age of Instagram
Don’t worry: I’m not going to tell you never to post on social media again. I’m on Facebook and Instagram more than most people I know!
Instead, I’m proposing this: when you’re having an amazing experience, take the “insta" out of Instagram.
Read MoreBalikbayan Magazine Feb-Mar 2014
Check out the latest issue of Balikbayan Magazine! The Philippine Voyagers piece on rediscovering diving in Negros Occidental that I talked about to in my last post is there.
Crowdfunded products could make photography cool again (for this jaded shooter)
Seven years after I first picked up a film SLR, I have to admit: the love isn't what it used to be.
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