Paul Barr + Stonecarver’s Garden + Lightroom
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Water Basin Copyright 2009 Paul Barr -- Nishimura Stone Lanterns -- Kyoto, Japan
Water Basin
Copyright 2009 Paul Barr
Nikon D3 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 2800 — map & image datanearby photos

As I mentioned yesterday, Paul Barr and I made a return visit to the Nishimura Stone Lantern workshop today.

It was more amazing than I could have possibly imagined. It was overwhelming. I am so exhausted (from it, and from not having slept last night trying to build a plugin for Adobe Lightroom to import face-recognition data from Google's Picasa photo app) that I have not even unloaded my images from the camera.

But Paul, who has never used Lightroom, wanted to give it a try, so I loaded his images and gave him about a minute's instruction, and let him loose. Having been inspired by some of Stéphane Barbery's recent work – such as his Jidai Matsuri shots, or what he posted on Flickr last night (is there a way to link to a specific point in a Flickr photostream???) – Paul's experimentation tended along those lines.

Paul was limited by a lack of understanding about the tool (Lightroom), and a lack of ever having thought along these artistic lines, but one of the results before he, too, got too tired is really impressive, and with his permission I show it above.

I created a snapshot of his version, then lowered the vibrance way down, which quieted the colors considerably, and suggested that that would be Stéphane's version, but who knows? 🙂

For context, here's another of Paul's photos of the same stone water basin, from a different angle, without any post processing....

Copyright 2009 Paul Barr -- Nishimura Stone Lanterns -- Kyoto, Japan
Nikon D3 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image datanearby photos
Copyright 2009 Paul Barr

The garden behind the stonecarver's workshop was awe inspiring chin-dropping emotionally-overwhelming amazing.

Continued here...


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