Category Archives: The Photographs

hardware, The Photographs

Understanding and Shooting Images in RAW Format

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When I first jumped on the digital photography bandwagon, it was with a bridge style Nikon Coolpix camera. I’m not even sure it was capable of shooting in RAW format, not that I would have understood what it was in the first place. With my first DSLR, I saw this format and thought, considering the money I had laid down, I’d better find out more about this image option.  It took a bit of lurking around on the Internet until I found many describing it as a digital negative. Many years later, I think that is over simplistic.

Continue reading Understanding and Shooting Images in RAW Format →

Black and White, lightroom, Photoshop, Restoration, The Photographs

Black and White Photography in the 70’s and 80’s

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I got the camera thing going on early in my life. My first camera was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 110 for my birthday in 1973. I have no photos from that time, but later on I saved enough to purchase a Sears Brand Pentax SLR. I set up my own darkroom and developed my own film, favoring Ilford HP 5 over Kodak’s offerings.

Continue reading Black and White Photography in the 70’s and 80’s →

hardware, Restoration, The Photographs

Pusan South Korea, 1983. Scanning and Restoring a Negative

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Color Picture of a open stall owner in Pusan, Korea. Image was recovered from a color negative. Howard J King 1984

It was a big mistake to take this photo. Koreans are very suspicious of having their photo taken; candid moments are included. She heard the shutter noise and let loose a stream of what I image was some serious Korean profanity, chasing me off the street and into another part of town. Continue reading Pusan South Korea, 1983. Scanning and Restoring a Negative →

lightroom, The Photographs

De-Hazing a Photograph in Lightroom CC…

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The original Image taken during a light rain.

I’m starting to warm up to Lightroom CC for two simple reasons. One is that, as a bundle with Photoshop CC, it’s only ten dollars a month for both of them… My emphasis.  The second was Lightroom CC’s ability to edit gradient shading.

There was a few features that attracted me to Lightroom CC/6. The initial being the ability to edit gradient shading which takes a bit of work to get right in my older version of Lightroom. Panoramas and HDR are all nice and fine, but I can do that in Photoshop CS6 thank you very much; the gradient editing was the kicker. Continue reading De-Hazing a Photograph in Lightroom CC… →

Photoshop, Printing, The Photographs

Print Colors vs. Web Colors and Photoshop CC

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Side Entrance to Hampton Court Palace. Howard J King 2011

A few days ago I posted an article about optimal print sizes, resolution and scaling up an image. Call me racked with self doubt as I always find myself going back and checking the spelling and grammar. This time it was the image. I noticed the heading image was kind of flat. I knew what I did, or failed to do. You can go back and look, but I fixed it… didn’t need that picking at my brain any longer than it did.

Continue reading Print Colors vs. Web Colors and Photoshop CC →

Photoshop, Restoration, The Photographs

Restoring a Father’s Memory.

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“… know this is very grainy. I have the print. If there’s anything at all you could do with a higher resolution scan of this one I’d owe you for life.”

What do you do when someone you haven’t laid eyes on for 30 years asks a favor of you? Well, if 30 years ago, you, him and 220 other guys were stuffed in a 450 foot floating tub made of steel, aluminum, asbestos, oil, grease, paint, sweat, body odor and really monotonous food, and somehow, you did’t get your brains beat out, then you really owe him a favor.

Continue reading Restoring a Father’s Memory. →

Photoshop, Printing, The Photographs

Print Size, Resolution and Scaling Up

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Image of two children


I’ve done it before and learned. People have asked me to print them 13 x 19 prints from photos they captured with their iPhone and I ended up warning them off. It’s not a good idea. It would be a waste of time and money. How about a nice 8.5 x 11?

But it does raise the question of how large of a good quality print can you get from your camera? Continue reading Print Size, Resolution and Scaling Up →

lightroom, The Photographs

Lightroom CC vs. Lightroom 6

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Update: If you haven’t noticed, this article was written 3 years ago and a lot has changed. Lightroom CC has come far in that time and is a excellent method of editing images, process RAW files and manage your image folders.

Adobe is also moving in the direction of mobile photograph coupling Lightroom with Adobe’s collection of mobile editing app’s.  If you are on the Creative Cloud subscription, you have access to your mobile files as part of free cloud storage. Additionally, Lightroom as I know it, has a additional version closely mirroring the mobile version. 

Last April, Adobe released the latest version of Lightroom. Dubbed Lightroom CC for the subscription version or Lightroom 6 for the one you picked up at the local software outlet. I gave it a few months and then took the plunge by purchasing the disk version, sometimes referred to as the perpetual license version by users. I understand why Adobe pushes it’s subscription plan; Adobe Photoshop was the most pirated software out there and it was also top of the food chain in prices too. When I jumped to CS6 after years of using Photoshop 5, it cost me in the neighborhood of $650, which is no small chunk of change for me personally.

Continue reading Lightroom CC vs. Lightroom 6 →

The Photographs

St. Denis, Notre Dame Cathedral

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Notre Dame Cathedral is beautiful in its entirety. Occupying an island on the Seine River of Paris, it is sometimes hard to get a picture of the detailed carvings that grace the entrance of the building, owing to its popularity with tourists and worshipers.  I got very lucky with this shot as the crowd of visitors thinned momentarily. The lighting was not good; an overcast day and some personal blame for the light temperature on my camera not being at the proper settings. All this was corrected in the RAW file where I deepened the shadows and brought out the rich patina on the statues.

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Photoshop, Printing, The Photographs

Learn to Soft Proof and Save Some Money

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Soft proofing a photograph is one of the least understood aspects of making a hard copy of an image I have ever discussed with photographers. Prosumers (consumers with a taste for the professional) rarely check their images before sending it to their printer, risking the possibility of printing a poor representation of their work. Even some professionals make a hard copy then adjust from there. Waste of ink and paper in my opinion.

Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS6 and CC6 can save you a ton of aggravation, as well as wasted ink and paper, by using a very helpful tool under the View Menu called Soft Proofing. Continue reading Learn to Soft Proof and Save Some Money →

hardware, Photoshop, Printing, The Photographs

The Trouble With Printing

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Image of two children

Printing photos is one of those things that everyone does eventually, but relatively few people do right. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you are one of the millions who purchased that Kodak all-in-one color printer at the local Best Buy and are reasonably happy with the quality of your prints, more power to you.

But I do want to let you know that it could be a lot better. Continue reading The Trouble With Printing →

lightroom, Restoration, The Photographs

Saving a Photo from the delete key

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Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris France.

There are a thousand reasons why a picture doesn’t come out right: bad weather, poor lighting, light temperature at the wrong setting. Camera settings can be a major culprit when dealing with even a modest prosumer camera.

Please note: I hope this post to be informative and I use several screen captures and the resolution of the images has been left at a relatively high dpi. I hope this will add to the post, but may require a bit of patience when loading the galleries.

Continue reading Saving a Photo from the delete key →

lightroom, Photoshop, Restoration, The Photographs

The Progression of a Restoration Project

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I estimate this picture was taken in 1983 due in part to the existing sensor and weapons mounts. I have a box someplace of picture that look similar to this one on the left. We all thought our pictures would last forever back then. But like the photos our parents stored in shoe boxes and photo albums, the chemical process that created our images eventually fails and the image fades away. Continue reading The Progression of a Restoration Project →

Europe, The Photographs

The Ravens

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One of the Ravens of the Tower of London. Howard J King 2011

There is a legend concerning the black ravens that occupy The Tower of London. It simply states, should the ravens leave The Tower, the Crown and the Kingdom would fall. As superstitious as this sounds, it has been the policy of The Crown to keep seven ravens within the walls of the Tower; six being necessary to service the protective properties of the myth. The seventh acting as a backup. Continue reading The Ravens →

Europe, Photoshop, The Photographs

Islington, North London

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Canal tunnel in Islington, North London. Howard J King 2011

Just off the plane after a 14 hours flight. It’s 7 am local and I am fighting the effects of jet lag. After renting a car and a long drive from Heathrow to Islington, North London, I grab my camera and take a walk along one of the canals that was once the backbone of British commerce. Later I followed the canal on a map to it’s final destination; an old armory that once served the British army during the Napoleonic Wars. Continue reading Islington, North London →