Just read an interesting post on the The Most Important Photography News of the Last Decade. It was direct and interesting and caused me fond memories of my first digital SLR the Canon D30. No, not 30D but the original “prosumer” DLSR from Canon. It was a great camera and I wish I still had possession of it.

I also agree with the writer, Scott Bourne that the most important and the saddest topic is the “war on photographers” that has cropped up since 9/11. It never ceases to amaze me when I see stories of photographers getting harassed taking photos of buildings, landmarks, cities, etc. that can readily be found with a simple Google search. As if the photographer was endangering national security or something. I’m afraid the next decade may bring more attempted bogus prosecutions and the need for photographers everywhere to fight back with multiple types of civil disobedience. For some examples photographer harassment see Los Angeles Teen Incarcerated Seven Months for Videotaping Cop, NYPD Handcuffs Magazine Editor for Photographing Trains, and Amtrak photo contestant arrested by Amtrak police in NYC’s Penn Station.

It should be exciting! Technology will be mind blowing and business changing. Let’s hope our freedoms remain intact so that we can enjoy all these new advances.

I was honored to try my hand at newborn photography with my two week old grandson Luke Samuel. I’ve not really ventured off into this venue of photography but had a lot of fun with these shots. We didn’t really spend a lot of time so there were no clothes changes and not a lot of variety but all in all I like the finished result. I also took a few shots of Luke’s older siblings and even some of the whole family.

My son and daughter-in-law’s house has two great big windows facing towards the south in their living room. It made for some great natural light photos. So here are a few of my favorites of Luke.

Emma, Noah, and Ethan.

Finally, all the Rector kids. I may be partial but my grandkids are the cutest!

It seems every month that more tools are released for photographers to help them with enhancing their photos. The trick is not to over do it and make the shots look natural. I personally work to make my shot look like I saw the scene when I was there. Undoubtedly, the final product is closer to my perception of what I saw opposed to what the scene really looked like. I’ve reprocessed some shots from Yosemite National park. Some were taken on October 2007 and others in September 2010. All were reprocessed using tools from NIK Software. Almost all were run through Color Efex Pro with added brilliance and warmth. One new tool I just got is NIK Software’s HDR Efex Pro for processing High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos. HDR is where you take multiple exposures of the same scene using a tripod. Some of the shots are underexposed so that the highlights have detail, and some shots are overexposed so that you have details in the shadows. Then the shot are combined to make an overall photo with a full range of tones. I never really got the hand of other HDR software or Photoshop’s built in HDR processing. All I can say is HDR Efex Pro rocks! If you’re a photographer and want to try your hand at HDR I highly recommend HDR Efex Pro.

Here’s a shot I took of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. It was processed using three varying exposures. It was a cloudy day and this shot is close to what I saw that day. The cloudy sky is probably a little more dramatic that it really was but I like the look.

This shot is from Yosemite Valley that I took in October 2007. We were leaving the park and stopped one last time as the sun was setting to get a shot of El Capitan.

This shot is of the Chapel in Yosemite Valley. I wanted the shot to look a little different and used NIK Color Efex Pro’s Tonal Contrast to boost the image. I like how it came out.

This shot is in Yosemite Valley and another view of Half Dome. My wife Carole and I were simply walking around the village along the road. Crossing a bridge we saw this scene. A beautiful expression of fall color in Yosemite. Shadow and color detail brought out with NIK Viveza and Color Efex Pro.