Capturing Time

This photograph is actually a confluence of three thematic interests. Copying Joel Meyerowitz’s approach in his book, Cape Light, I have been taking shots of the cove in my back yard in upper Narragansett Bay. If I were enterprising I would title my collection of these shots, Narragansett Bay Light. That may or may not happen.

However, this shot was my first attempt at long exposure photography using a neutral density filter from Heliopan ND 3.0 (10 stops). I would have liked to have had clouds but then the water would not have been so blue.

Finally, the shot was enhanced using OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 8, to which I had just upgraded. Having used Photoshop for years, getting used to the workflow of PPS 8 takes some getting used to, even though about 80-90% of the interface is the same as Photoshop. This does not mean PPS 8 has the same tool set and precision; it does not. This is not bad or a knock against PPS 8; it’s just that PPS 8 is about doing something different. Each program has their place. Right off the bat I find OnOne’s software more fun to use. I feel a little guilty doing this because to do the same thing in Photoshop would take a lot longer and involve a different level of skills. For this cove photo I used matt Kloskowski’s presets in the Effects module of PPS 8. Obviously, OnOne has packed their Suite 8 software with a host of tools, and each with its own set of adjustments. Some of these I will probably use regularly, while others will just languish.

With the prospect that I may not be upgrading any more to Photoshop due to Adobe’s stance on monthly fees for their software (I disagree with this type of money stream), having tools as contained in PPS 8 provides a viable option.