A 1 2 1 interaction with Mary Doggett, Norwich, U.K. photographer

Hi friends,

Pandemic did keep us locked up for good one year and still some more time before we feel safe and return to our normal life as before Pandemic. The after Pandemic life will surely be different, not any carefree life as before as there always be a lurking fear some or the other strain popping up.

This restricted life within confines of our homes has in many ways been a boon as we got introduced to newer things to keep us busy in improving our professions with new insights. We did hear about online virtual meetings and we had very vague idea/knowledge about the same. We learnt interacting on various online virtual meeting apps. Students initially had kind of holidays but then their online classes started. Parents had to buy laptops so the children could attend online classes. My elder grand children in class 6 were having online classes, well understood about it. My two younger grandchildren of two and half years got admitted to play school and they too have had two sessions of online activity.

Our BNI meetings have been going on Zoom.us apps and even trainings. This introduced me to online virtual meetings. I am from Noida Region, Chapter Hercules and we have meetings every Thursdays.

Ms. Mary Doggett connected with me by Email for an online virtual meeting. We did have one a couple of weeks back. For both of us it was first ever international 1 2 1 virtual meeting. It was really wonderful. We decided to keep our interactions going on and not leave it as just one time thing. During the meeting I showed my Dilli 6 - Khari Baoli book and later shared a digital copy. Today got an Email invite to have another meeting. This time she wanted to interview me about how started photography and my journey into photography. She will writing a blog and sharing on different SM platforms.

Screen shot of our virtual Zoom online meeting.

Virtual Virtual Virtual...

Recently saw photographers and models doing virtual photo shoots being posted a lot in Instagram. Now what was virtual shooting? I had no idea all. Many of the shoots were great. Fist saw the virtual shoots posted on Instagram. Later googled to know more about it. Both photographers and models really got bored and started this kind of shooting. Today with mobile phone cameras and even laptop cameras are have great clarity and resolution. Both interact with each other with model showing possible locations in her/his apartment or house as may be the case including possible dresses, accessories and share various possible images of shoots as references. They on a decided day and time log on to various online meeting apps. The model uses phone or laptop or computer web camera and poses while the photographer takes a screen shot or uses a camera to shoot the screen. These are edited by the photographer and shared with the poser and post on SM platform of their choice. Well when restrictions are there people do find ways to by pass those restrictions.

I have not tried but very keen to try out with some model or a poser with like minded interest. Though results are not as sharp with good resolution that we get from a camera but it is interesting in its own ways.

Yes we lost on our earnings very severely but we learned very many new things. We all had lots of time to indulge in our passions. It gave me time to design my Coffee Table Books, started slowly to update my website, tried learning new softwares. With Adobe CS 6 Photoshop taken off, trying to practice with some editing softwares that I had bought but rarely used since decades Photoshop was being used and as a routine I used to just open CS 6 to edit images. On searching more alternatives to Adobe products I came across 'darktable app'. Reviews say it is equivalent to Adobe Lightroom or in some ways better. It is a free software and I installed three to four days back. 

I am looking for some bold female models with whom a virtual shoot can be done. Virtual shoots have no borders, no distances to worry about any model from any part of the world can partner in the shoot. Do contact me from here.

Till next time....

Good Bye to Adobe

 Good Bye to Adobe

Suddenly yesterday a legally purchased copy of Adobe Suite CS 6 became illegal which was shocking. Googled to find I was not alone but many whose purchased software copies became illegally purchased. Instead of saying the software had reached its end date.

Tried various attempts to reach out to help center but no where correct guidance was there instead it was like pushing down the throat software on cloud. There has not been so much editing work I did as any commercial shoots I used to guide clients to professional image editors who would be doing maybe better editing in very short time. I did edit far and few to showcase or maybe print.

Having added Fuji Film XT20 and 5D Mark 4 I could not use the raw editing part of CS 6, so I had been using Skylum Luminar softwares work on the RAW files of both of these cameras.  Lucky I had Skylum softwares Luminar 2018 and Luminar 4 that kept me out of the panic mode situation.

I took time off to clear my system from Adobe products. I got more space available after the deletion.

Few minutes back I downloaded Skylum's Aurora HDR to use. It can be used on 5 systems irrespective of Mac or Windows. Very practical thinking. I do not remember if I was using Adobe's HDR creator. Anyways.

Often I used CS 6 to add text when creating leaflets. I had bought me Affinity Suite - AfPhoto, AfDesigner and AfPublisher. Once I thought of creating my leaflet on Adobe CS 6 but since I had not used AfDesigner thought why not give it a try. Wonderful and easy to use. I was trying to create my Coffee Table Book using CS 6 and converting to pdf format, looked complicated in assembly the pages for the book. Tried AfPublisher and found it again pretty simple. I ended up creating four Coffee Table Books in quick time. The pages I created in CS 6 will be deleted to give me more space on the internal storage SSD. More space.

Though it will take a little time to get away from thinking about Adobe but using my Skylum and Affinity softwares it will erase faster.

These two Softwares developers have made really good editing programmes, just hope the Shark named Adobe does not prey on these companies.