NIK's Silver EFEX Pro 2 is a plugin that works with Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, and Apeture. It is not a stand alone program. It does a great job of color to B&W conversion, is relatively easy to use, comes with a nice array of presets and allows for the addition of user made presets as well. Good tutorials are provided on the NIK website as well as other sites on the web. IMHO, it is definitely a winning application worth having if you are interested in B&W photography in our digital darkroom age.

The edit is an improvement. I would suggest cropping with more space to the left of piggie and less to the right. The current crop feels a bit like one is about to fall out of the image to the left.

For me it depends entirely on how I am visualizing the image and what expressing my visualization seems to demand. I neither "believe" nor "disbelieve" in editing. I do as much or as little as I need to get my image to express what I want it to.

This information is helpful. Since you are coming in Via Denver on I-70, you will be heading directly into the Moab, Utah area. Thus, Moab becomes the logical starting spot to work out from. The advice about driving distances needs to be well heeded; the distances make seeing "The Southwest" in a limited amount of time very difficult. For a first trip, 8-10 days is pretty much a necessity IMHO.

From Moab, you can do pretty well with morning and evening shooting in Arches, Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands, The Needles District of Canyonlands, and Dead Horse Point State Park. A great evening location near Moab is to run out 128 to Fisher Towers and the Castle Valley area. Goblin Valley is about two hours from Moab. You could easily spend a week photographing this area alone; give yourself at least three to four days in this region.

Keep in mind that photographing the Southwest does mean planning for a lot of morning and evening light shooting. During the day, the harsh light very much flattens out the colors in the red-rock.

Since you are interested in ancient dwellings, but don't want a lot of hiking, I'd advise going south from Moab to Mesa Verde (3 to 4 hours southeast). The ruins here are amongst the best, and generally easy enough to get close to without overly difficult hiking. From Mesa Verde you can head west and visit the ruins at Hovenweep, The Valley of the Gods, and the Goosenecks of the San Juan. Then continue on to Monument Valley. The trip to see this region will easily add another three+ days.

From there you will need to decide how much time you have left for "The Southwest". You might continue west and stop in Page AZ and shoot Antelope Canyon and maybe still fit in some time further west at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, or go more northwest and see Bryce and Zion. But you will be adding a number of days to the trip if you do. The Grand Canyon is at the far end of a trip from MN, so if this is an area that you feel you absolutely must see, then head straight there and fit in the places mentioned above on the way home as time allows.

The advise to get the "Photographing the Southwest" guides by Laurent Martres is good. Another resource, once you have an itinerary somewhat worked out is to purchase Robert Hitchman's "Photograph America" guides for specific places you plan to visit. They are inexpensive, very detailed, and written with the photographer specifically in mind. You can purchase and download them at http://www.photographamerica.com/

I currently carry a Canon 5D and a 5D Mark ll. I held on to my original 5D when I bought the M ll, to insure I had a backup body for when I travel. I had a near disaster a while back which could have resulted in my being without a camera on the first day of a 10 day trip while 1000 miles away from home. I had been thinking of upgrading anyway, so it became a much easier decision to pull the trigger and buy the new body. The nice thing about having "twin" cameras is the ease of switching between them when I set them both up in order to shot with different lens combination.

I think this comment (as well as those by CaptainC and Elliot) is right on the mark. In the digital age, computer and camera technology changes at a very rapid rate. True, many of the improvements are wonderful, but from our perspective as consumers we need to temper our buying behavior by realistically accessing our true needs. Do we really need the newest, fancy technology if the older technology is not imposing any limitations on our ability to express ourselves through our photography? We need to keep in mind that the major camera producers are marketing to us by following that old adage, "CREATE a need in the mind of the consumer, then fill it". We don't need to join the marketing rat race; we need only buy when the limitations of our equipment prevents us from meeting our goals as photographic artists.

As a side, I remember a story told to me by another photographer. A fine art photographer is at a dinner party. The hostess is talking to him about his art and makes the comment, "Your work is absolutely stunning. You must have a great camera". At the end of the evening, the photographer is saying his goodbyes at the door. He says to the hostess, "Thank you for a simply wonderful meal. It was one of the best I've ever had. You must have a great stove".

Its not the equipment, its the photographer behind the equipment that really matters.

I am also retired and have started to persue a "second career" selling my photographic art. My experience so far is that I seem to be "flunking retirement" in that I am spending a GREAT deal more time and energy than I had anticipated. The term "starving artist" certainly has validity!

Upon retiring from the education profession after 35 years, I started taking my photography hobby much more seriously. With consistent ssuccess in local, regional, and state level competitions, and a suggestion from my wife that if I wanted to continue to take extended photographic trips and not constantly drain the grocery budget, I might consider selling my work.

So ... formed a company, got a domain name, business license, reseller permit, etc., set up a web site, and off I went. What I soon learned is that there are literally hundreds of photographers selling fine art photography online, and getting anyone to notice your site, or better still buy from your site, is very, very difficult. I also tried selling through a few galleries. Unfortunately, a sluggish economy and a soft art market has increased the difficulty of making sales.

My decision has been to take my work directly to the people by setting up to sell my work at art festivals. This has turned out to be much more successful, but also requires MUCH more work, and a hefty up-front investment in evrything needed to pproperly market at festivals (quality canopy, display panels, jury fees, entrance fees, frames, prints, etc. etc. ETC.

The festival approach has started to pay off. I believe this is because most people who are going to buy art want to have some connection to the artist him/herself. Art patrons don't just buy a pretty picture; they buy a part of the artist as well. There are tons of very taleted photographers out there; getting people to notice your work, even to the extent that you can sell enough to break even and have the photography support itself, is a big task. Those who wish to make their living selling their fine art need to realize it will take a large investment in time, work, energy, money, and patience.

There is one other app I have although I haven't used it in the field yet. It's called NDCalc. Pros: the timer works all the way down to 4 secs. Cons: they don't list "stops", just ND 0.9 (8x) etc. not a real problem, just annoying (well, to me at least).

I considered the B&W 10 stop, but went with the Hoya 400x (8 2/3 stops). With the ND4 and ND64 I already had, I can pretty much get a combination that works in most any condition.

I have two: ND Timer and LongTime. They both work fine. NDTimer has a nice feature in that it allows you to dial in stacked filter combinations. It also will display a timer for whenever your exposure time exceeds the normal 30 second limit on most cameras, so you can set to Bulb and use the timer from within the app. There may be other apps, but those are the only two I've used. It comes in real handy when I'm doing long exposure daylight photography and have 15 stops of ND filter to deal with. Figuring that out myself would only make my brain hurt! :shock:

This is basically the right idea, but I'd do two things differently. First, I'd take the meter reading with the camera in aperture mode set to the f-stop I plan to use, THEN switch it to manual mode and set it to the meter reading you got. Get the shot framed and focused. Be sure to turn auto-focus OFF, then put on you ND filter.

Secondly, (assuming the 8 stop ND filter example) since each stop of the ND filter will half the amount of light, your shutter speed will have to be doubled for each stop of the ND filter in order to get back to the equivalent of the exposure setting you measured. I think this is what was meant, but since shutter speeds often are in fractions of a second, you can't simply multiply by eight. You have to count off the stops, or do some mental math to get to the right timing. example: a metered reading of 1/60 would become 4 sec. with an 8 stop ND filter.

To make things easier, there are a few pretty nifty apps for smart phones that will calculate the shutter speed for you. You simply enter the metered exposure time, select the ND filter you will be using, and it tells you where to set your your shutter speed for use with the ND.

Just for giggles, the Canon 9000 Mark II uses dye inks and the Canon 9500 Mark II uses pigment inks. :lol:

one of the biggest problems I've had when attempting to simulate brush strokes, watercolor effects, etc. is that running a filter (ie. PS5 or 6 Oil Paint filter) is that the end result is very much a product of the filter's algorithm rather than my vision. So, I seldom use the built in filters, plugins, or add-on programs. Rather, I make use of a digital tablet and techniques I found in a book by Susan Ruddick Bloom, Digital Painting in Photoshop. The techniques make strong use of Photoshop's brush library and layers. The techniques take a little bit to master (although the learning curve isn't all that steep), but the end result is well worth the effort. You have a lot of control, and can fit the effect to your own ideas of what you want in the final image.

Here is an example. In the first image, I wanted a painterly effect but I wanted it to be more pronounced in the lower portion of the image than in the upper half.

In the second image, I wanted the painting effect to be more pronounced, but in places I wanted fine detail (fine print on the labels) to still come through.

Three Lanterns


Ten Dead Soldiers

This is a related follow-up question rather than a direct reply to the OP.

Can anyone recommend a good plugin for use with a WordPress web site that will add a transparent layer to photos so as to restrict right clicking/save on images on the site? (preferably one which is free or at least inexpensive. Easy to use would be nice as well).

You don't mention if you are selling images to clients who have hired you to shoot or just shooting the event and making your images available to people who want them. This would factor into your decision. If people are hiring you to take photos for them, you need to have a backup body to insure that should something go wrong you can still fill your client's order. Since you are not happy with your current second camera, a new body would be a logical choice.

On the other side, if you are not shooting directly for clients, and your budget restricts what you can do right now, going for another high quality lens that adds versatility to your shooting would be a good move.

Hopefully you will continue to do well with your sales and can soon afford to do both! :-D Good luck.