Camera: Nikon D-5000

Lenses: Tamron 18-270 f/3.5-4.5 zoom,
              Nikor 50mm f/1.4
              Nikor 60mm f/2.8 macro

Flash: On camera (never used)
            Nikon SB600
            Lightsphere diffuser

Computer: 2013 MacBook Pro
                    16GB of RAM
                    768 internal SSD

Photo software: Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Bridge

What I like to shoot:

This one is easy. I like to shoot everything. My special favorites are my grandson (obviously), people when I travel, dogs (especially in action) and just about anything else I can think of.  I love to try new things. I will read about a techniquie I can do with the camera or in Photoshop and I have to try it as soon as I can.

How and what I shoot--Jim Bellomo

I shoot a Nikon D-5000. I have had it for about two years. I love the camera and it does what I want it to do. I need to know it better than I do though. When I went to Las Vegas this month I ended up spending the entire flight down reading the manual for the camera on my iPad. Learned a lot but need to do it again as the flight was followed by a very busy week which got me to forget about 90% of what I read.

Most of the time I shoot with same glass on the camera. (Using glass in that sentence sounds pretenious but I am leaving it.) My 90% lens is a Tamron 18-270 mm f3.5 I had to buy when I broke my Nikor 18-200 on the descent to landing of our flight to Aukland last year. It's a great lens and I love it. I also own a Nikor 50mm f/1.4 and a Nikon 60mm f/2.8 macro that Kathleen bought me for Christmas in 2008. From time to time I also use a Nikon strobe unit and a Lightsphere.

(Added later) I came back to this because I wanted to mention something that I have been noticing. It appears as though there are two types of shooters in our group. One (of which I am a member) shoot every day all week long. For instance, week 10 when I am writing this, I have shot photos on 5 of 7 days and will probably shoot some today as well. The other group seem to be one-day shooters. Whatever works for you is great but I want to really encourage you to try to carry your camera every where you go. I don't leave the house without it. Ever. Well, sometimes but hardly ever. It's in the backseat of my car when I am driving, in my trunk if I don't take it with me when I get out. I find myself constantly looking at everything around me for photos. It helps me a bunch and maybe it will help you as well.

When I walk out the door (or back in) my camera is almost always set on auto (NO FLASH). That's because I want to make sure that I get the first shot I want. The times I have forgotten to change the settings back to auto were the times I messed up entire shoots. Leaving everything on auto means that I will at least capture the things I am pointing at and if I don't get them exactly right, I can go back and fix them in the computer later.

When I am shooting for this project (or for fun) I will often shoot in other modes to accomplish a specific task. I will say that most of the time when I am not in auto I am in Shutter or Aperture priority. Those ususally suffice to get me what I am after. Lately I have been using shutter priority to make sure I can keep my ISO down. I have been shooting a lot at 200 and loving it.

Once I have shot whatever it is I am shooting it comes back into this computer. The one I am typing on right now--a MacBook Pro. That's my main machine for my photography. To get the photos into the MacBook Pro, I am very lucky as it has its own SD card slot. Once any card is inserted Adobe Bridge and its included downloader open asking me where I want to save them. For this project they go into my Pictures folder inside a weekly folder.

I then proceed to do what I like to call Photo Triage. By clicking the space bar on the first photo, each picture fills my screen as I press my right or left arrow. When I see a photo that is blurry, beyond fixing or just something I don't like, I hit the Delete key and it is gone to my Trash. When i see something that has potential to be in the final 7, I hit the 5 key which gives it a five star rating. I use the 4, 3, 2 and 1 keys to give it those star ratings for other purposes. For instance, any photo of my grandson that is not a 5, gets a 4 so I remember to keep it but don't look at while making my final selection.

Once I have narrowed it down a bit, I start opening the files. Since I shoot everything in Camera RAW I do most of my editing in the Camera Raw plug in which is built into both Bridge and Photoshop. When I click OPEN after working in Camera RAW, it opens the photo as a Photoshop Smart Object in Photoshop. There I can do other things to it such as black and white conversion, erase problems areas and more. Since it is a Smart Object, I can always double ciick it in the Layers panel to go back and reedit it in the Camera RAW plug in.

Once I have done all the editing I want, I save it (both as a PSD so I can come back to it and a JPEG for uploading) and upload it to 500PX.

That's my process...what's yours?

© Jim Bellomo 2013

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