That's odd, I have the app and I live in Mississippi (which is not in Canada)

Craft and vision is also an iPad app you can install and it acts like a viewer for any c& v books you put on your iPad. Plain downloading works too. When the PDF loads, click in the upper right corner to select "open in iBooks" and it'll add the book to your iBooks document library.

I am not sure about this thread either, but as best I can figure, you just take a picture and turn it into something else in post processing, the more unusual the better. Is that it?

gourd birdhouses +1 resident starling

Thanks!

I think all of it is interesting- locations, times, settings, equipment, processing. There is a lot of chatter now about full frame cameras & it is interesting (to someone like me who probably won't ever buy one) to judge for myself the look of the resulting images in the hands of normal people, not the company itself. It's also interesting when I see great looking photographs captured with less than optimal equipment such as point-and-shoots, phone cameras (like Dewitt Jones's iphone photos), & old cameras with outdated sensors.

On most photo sites, there are very good photographs and very bad ones, and a lot of snapshots of various quality. Sometimes it is interesting to figure what the ingredients were that contributed to the outcomes. And there's those posts about "something is wrong with my camera" and if you can see what the settings are, you sometimes know what caused the problem (usually not the camera), and can help the person on their journey, which is one of the values of online communities. Critiques are another value of online communities, though most folks tell you only what's good rather than how you might make it better.

As far as processing, I have learned a lot by what other people do and I see. Where I live, there is maybe one photo workshop a year in a day's drive from here, and it's always very superficial. So I read a lot, take lots of pictures & process them, and sometimes learn from others online. I have a decent array of software already, so if someone tells me they use a certain plug-in in a certain way, I won't go buy anything new, but I know what I have that may be similar. One of my favorite processing recipes started with some information I learned from another photographer, then adapted to suit my own style.

I don't think information ever hurt anyone but it may bore some to tears.

I agree with those who are interested in cameras and settings. I wish the site itself retained that info automatically with the images as some other sites do, but if it does that, I can't figure out where it's hidden. Settings are an interesting part of the learning process. I don't mind sharing mine, but it's a hassle to look it up and add it manually and I probably would forget more times than I remembered. I'm also interested in how photos are processed to get certain looks. I am probably more curious than most, though, a bad habit of mine, wanting to find out everything about everything.

Concur. They are free, good, and contain enough information to actually treat each chapter like a lesson you could practice. Would anyone else be interested in sharing pictures that illustrate a point you studied? I think that might make it more fun for some. Either pictures you took practicing what you learned, or an old picture you had an "aha" moment about based on what you're reading. Or maybe you re-processed an old file to make it something new.

I read the recommended book and there wasn't much to it. It did encourage me to practice with my flash more. I don't use flash much so this was good for me. The only subject I had available was my cat, whose nap I disturbed. Results attached.

Some books I have read and liked:
The Craft and Vision Series esp Michael Fryes' Light and Land
David Duchemin's "Within the Frame" & "Vision & Voice"
Michael Freeman's "the Photographer's Eye"
Guy Tal's "Creative Processing Techniques"

Books I'd like to read
Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure
Brenda Tharp's Extraordinary Everyday Photography
Bruce Barnbaum's The Art of Photography
Art Wolfe's The New Art of Photographing Nature
Harold Davis' Creative Series (most any of them)

herself, waking from nap

Really like the second one, the b & w of the little one. Shadow makes the image!

Raven Steals The Light - artwork in the Smithsonian Museum of Native American History, Washington, DC - one of my favorite artworks. Northwest Coast art is another of my obsessions (besides photography)

For those who are interested in knowing more about RAW vs JPG, here's a link to Cambridge in Color, a great resource for curious photographers' minds
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm
and a resource from Laura Shoe about shooting RAW+JPG and managing this in Lightroom
http://laurashoe.com/2012/09/24/shooting-in-raw-jpeg-mode-lightroom/
Some years ago when I first stuck my toe in the water with RAW, I shot RAW+JPG because I was afraid I wouldn't know what to do with the RAW files. I've looked back at some old shots from the wonderful Hopewell Rocks since this conversation developed and am posting a pair (same shot) below. The JPG did not capture the amazing landscape, but left much of the seafloor in deep shadow, the crusty rocks just silhouettes against a bright blue sky. With the RAW version, I could safely tinker, and pull back much of what I saw with my eyes - texture, color, detail.

http://www.naturephotographers.net/landscapephotography.html

There are a links to number of detailed lessons by respected professionals, oriented toward nature and landscape photography.

Lightroom is a good start. Gives you a way to keep Your photos organized and do most of the editing you'll ever need to do. There are lots of plugins and more complex image editors you can add and lInk to LR if you decide you like post processing. It is great fun to me, especially when rainy weekends keep me from going out looking for birds or sunsets.

When I first looked at these, I thought "I don't remember posting those". Even though they're textures rather than landscapes, I recognized Big Bend, right down to the mud in SantaElena canyon. It's one of the most beautiful national parks. We got a lot of the same texture photos! Our photographers eye must be similar.

If you capture the largest RAW file possible, you maximize the amount of data in your picture. When you process it, you'll have way more data to work with and can raise shadows, recover highlights, alter WB and colors, sharpen, add contrast to make it look just like YOU remember it instead of how the CAMERA remembers it. With Jpg, adjustments degrade your file, and increase the noise, artifacts, posterizing effects and other problems. Also, we all make exposure mistakes. Occasionally I get in a hurry, forget to change settings, meter on the wrong part of the frame. RAW lets me come closer to repairing these mistakes. There's times when Jgs can be preferable (burst shooting or when you run out of storage on your memory card), but there does not seem to me to be any reason to NOT learn how to get the most from your photos when you want to. I respect everyone's right to make their own choices but some folks may avoid RAW for the same reasons I was tempted to- intimidated, worried that this old dog couldn't learn new tricks, concerned it would take too much time. For those, I'd say: t's way easier than I thought, and my pictures are a lot more reflective of the scenes I tried to capture. I'd urge anyone who's even tempted to at least give it a try. There's lots of good folks on this site who'll be there to help you!