Gallery (25 images): 2017 Spring has Finally Sprung!
After a long lazy lull in my blogging, I am finally back and plan on trying to post on a more regular basis! I have a backlog of work that I am going through, from previous years of trips, to new lens tests, filter tests, and more. In addition, I was down in southern California for a week to photograph the incredible wildflower "super bloom" they had, and another posting will come with photos from that trip too.
So... we have had many months of abysmal weather here in Vancouver, Canada. First there were months of cold weather with surprising amounts of snowfall that stuck around for weeks and weeks. Then we had a month plus of continuous rainy days, with seldom a hint of any sun. It has been a depressing few months, weather-wise, which probably contributed to my lack enthusiasm. In any case, recently the weather has warmed up and we've had a few fantastically beautiful days, so I've finally got out and started shooting again.
The above gallery are simply shots from a nice evening walk home from work the other day. Flowers and trees are in full bloom, and there were many great photo ops, just walking along one of my usual routes. All the photos were taken with Fujifilm's superb new XF 50mm f/2R WR lens, a light, compact prime that is weather and dust resistant, focuses quite close, is very sharp and renders out-of-focus backgrounds with nice smooth bokeh.
Notably, this is also one of the first galleries in a very long time where I have only relied on Adobe Lightroom for processing my Fujifilm X-Trans sensor raw files. Recent updates to Adobe's Creative Cloud apps have finally allowed Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw to very nearly catch up to the image quality available from third-party raw converters like PhotoNinja or Iridient Developer. While those raw converters still have Adobe beat for the absolute best low-ISO fine detail rendition, the differences are now slight enough that I no longer feel it necessary to step away from Lightroom unless I am making really big prints. So, the shots in this gallery were 100% Lightroom-only processed. Enjoy!
