Every journey must come to an end, even if that journey is a crazy 10 month trip through South-East Asia by means of an even crazier mode of transportation (a bicycle) loaded with the craziest weight of photography stuff such as a flash umbrella and a printer. Last monday, I touched down in Zaventem, aka Brussels Airport. My partner-in-crime Ruth takes the proverbial Long Way Home: as I write these lines, she’s on a container ship from Mumbai to Rotterdam, hoping not to be hijacked by Somali pirates. PortraitsOfAsia, the journey, may well be over for me, but PortraitsOfAsia, the project, isn’t quite finished yet: many of the photos I took will see their way into upcoming publications, workshops and seminars.
One of the next blogposts will feature some behind-the-scenes photos of PortraitsOfAsia , and I also hope to give a review on the gear I used. Finally, if you happen to live in Belgium or the Netherlands, I’ll be hosting a couple of seminars at the Dutch Photography Fair, Professional Imaging, on my Lightroom workflow during PortraitsOfAsia. More about that here.
I’m excited to go there on March 7th, 8th and 9th. Excited, and also a little stressed: the auditorium can hold up to 600 people, so I’m told. Maybe the fair’s Keynote Speaker, Scott Kelby, who’s used to talking to much bigger audiences than this and who probably thinks of a group of 600 people as an ‘intimate get-together’, kan give me some relaxation tips. I’ll keep you… posted!
P.S. I thought I might as well include a Lightroom tip in this post. The photograph at the very top of this blogpost shows, apart from the crappy bokeh of a cheap Nikon lens, a defocused nightly street scene in central Mumbai. As you may know, Lightroom has a Spot Removal Tool (shortcut N), that lets you (non-destructively!) remove spots and blemishes. It’s great for removing sensor dust, because you can correct 1 picture and then synchronise your settings with the Sync… button. But you can also use the Spot Removal tool to add elements to your photo. Here, I used it to clone two light sources into the picture (to improve the balance), rather than to clone them away. I simply chose an existing light blob, and set that as the Source of the Spot Removal Tool. I clicked where I wanted the clone to be, and… voilà. I also cropped the picture using the Crop Tool (Shortcut R). P.P.S. Don’t get too hung up on that Spot Removal shortcut (N): it changes in Lightroom 3 to… Q
