Zach Matthews
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you didn’t tell them you’re an ambassador?
Ha! Yeah, that would have gone over well on that Brazilian Indian reservation.
Zach
Carter –
It’s a good point, but I really have only batted .500 on guides who have previously guided fly anglers while on assignment abroad.
Zach
Mike –
Photoshop offers a whole lot of ways to skin a cat.
My standard workflow for color-correcting an image is as follows:
(1) Open in Photoshop RAW or Camera RAW (I can’t tell a difference between these two functions). Simply use File/Open and locate the JPG or RAW file you want to edit (doesn’t matter what type, but be sure Photoshop is updated for the newest RAW files for your camera), and then open it up. This will give you a set of RAW sliders.
(2) Generally digital cameras favor a grayscale that I don’t like. Thus, I usually up the exposure slightly while also increasing the blacks a little bit. If I get areas that are blowing out, use the Recovery slider to get them back.
(3) Once you like the image, open it into the main workspace. Chances are it won’t look quite the same (I have no idea why). At this point, I get the computer’s opinion with Auto Contrast/Auto Color/Auto Levels. Usually I then undo the changes and tweak those sliders myself, but it is nice to know what the computer would do with it.
(4) Once I have color-corrected, usually using the Levels tools, I will sometimes go into the Selective Color menu and tweak a color or two. The best results here usually come just from picking the color you want to edit and sliding the blackness slider. Darker coloration tends to pop more.
(5) Finally, having made all color corrections, I will apply a little bit of sharpening using Unsharp Mask. Generally I leave it on one pixel and slide either 100% or 75% depending on the amount of foliage (the more complex the image, the less sharpening it can take without looking funky). Most digital images can benefit from a little bit of sharpening.
If at any point you go too far down one road, you can always use the History function to go back to the original image as imported (i.e. post-Camera Raw). I rarely use the Saturation Sliders, the Brightness/Contrast Sliders, or any automatic color filter.
Hey Mike –
I did what you suggested and talked to a former fly fishing travel agent friend of mine who has been watching the BC situation closely.
Hey Mike –
One key difference in what April is doing, I believe, is working outside the BC government.
Hey guys –
I understand where you are coming from but I would offer a competing perspective. Basically, I think I can sum up John’s and others’ argument as follows:
We know the steelhead and salmon in BC are threatened, but the BC government is obstructing out-of-province anglers from using their resources, so we shouldn’t assist them in conserving their fish.
Here’s why I think that viewpoint may be a bit backward:
(1) The BC government is primarily motivated to restrict the resource to locals because the resource is limited. When the fish were there in huge numbers, the government was more relaxed, because there were plenty of fish to go around. The province is now in the endgame of the Tragedy of the Commons and is enacting protectionist policies to allow its residents to sip the last drop.
(2) The logical way to reverse this policy at the root level is to alleviate the perceived need for restriction. That means supporting conservation groups like April is doing, so those groups can go after the commercial mining, fishing, and extractive industries which have diminished the resource. My understanding is that if the commercial fishing, gravel mining, and industrial uses of the Thompson watershed were ended or decreased, the fish would likely bounce back.
(3) Finally, we have a moral tool at our disposal. How ridiculous does the BC government look, trying to wall off the resources for its own (apparently unappreciative) people, when outsiders are freely giving to conserve a resource that they are only likely to get to fish once in a great while? You have a situation where people from outside the province have recognized the uniqueness of the fishing there, while people within the province are concerned only with their own self-interest and enrichment. Short term, the outsiders look like starry-eyed idealists who get nothing for their philanthropic gestures. Long term, the insiders are revealed as voracious consumers of what should be a national and international treasure.
(4) This isn’t a new fight. This extractive industry v. conservation interest battle is playing out all over the world (Bristol Bay, Alaska; Atlantic long-line tuna and marlin; Crooked Creek, Arkansas; Everglades, Florida — I could go on and on and on). Usually, conservation interests get railroaded by the deep pockets of heavy industry. But not always. It isn’t starry-eyed idealism to hope that community pressure to conserve can overturn the rapacious desires of a small industrial oligarchy. In fact, conservation interests win all the time. Everglades is now a National Park. Crooked Creek, Arkansas gravel mining has ceased. The Pebble Mine is likely to founder as its investors realize the political capital expended is not worth the possible gain (especially as that gold is not going to be easy to get).
I’m not much of an idealist myself; conservation interests usually lose or at best reach a weak compromise. But not always, and after all, fish are pretty prolific. Even a weak compromise is likely to maintain the Thompson as a steelhead and salmon fishery for the present, and one day in the future the regional government may change its mind on what resources are worth promoting.
Zach
David –
I’ll shoot in RAW if the image is technical (sunrises, for instance) and I know I’ll be fixing it later.
Chris that is an RSS feed. The iTunes store reads it off that file but it has special tags; the core RSS feed is still there. That feed validates in an RSS tester.
Zach