Red Yeti's Blog

The landscape and outdoor images on this blog are taken by me, with some from LB, unless I state otherwise (and so far I haven’t had to).

All the images are licensed as per the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the page. The license says that you can’t use them commercially. However, please contact me for a very reasonable price if you want to – you won’t be the first, I’m happy to say.

They are all taken on our travels as incidental to the travelling as opposed to travelling to get the pictures. Hence some aren’t quite what I would hope I could achieve had I brought a tripod and spent time setting up the shot.

That being said, I do usually carry a tripod these days; a Gitzo Mountaineer GT0541 along with a Gitzo GH1780QR Centre Ball Head (which is magic). It’s the lightest tripod that still gives me the height but weighs in at a fraction over a kilo sadly (1078 grams to be exact).

My photographic “technique” is to take a great many images, check how the histogram looks as I take them, and keep only around 10% to 20%. I then spend far too long digitally developing them.

Those two things, taking lots of images and developing carefully, are part of what professional photographers have always done. Though of course a professional would also have the skill of getting the images far more “right” in the first place, both technically in terms of exposure etc. and artistically in terms of composure. Digital photography has allowed us amateurs to use those two tricks; lots of images and careful development. Thereby allowing us to produce a far better image, should we be happy to spend the time.

Images from after summer 2007 are mainly from a Canon EOS 400D and probably with either a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.4 USM Zoom Lens or a Canon Lens EF-S 17-85 f4-5.6 IS USM (both from Martin’s Camera Shop, excellent service and price, and no I’m not sponsored by them!). Images taken after June 2010 are using the fantastic Canon EOS 550D.

They are stored as RAW files and then “digitally developed”.

Since January 2009 I’ve been using the amazing Lightroom 2 and I wouldn’t be without The Missing Lightroom FAQ when using it.

Up until January 2009 they were developed using: Capture One 4. I posted my “work-flow” for Capture One for anyone using the same tool. Back in 2007 when I tried all the RAW editors I could find, Capture was by far the best.

But since then Lightroom 2 has arrived and the difference is truly enormous. Therefore all pictures taken from around the end of 2008 have been developed using Lightroom 2.

If you’re wondering which to get – just download both the trial versions. There’s absolutely no contest in my opinion.

For the period from summer 2006 up to summer 2007 the images were mainly taken using a Canon EOS 350D with a standard Canon 18-55mm lens. The earlier ones from that period were taken as JPEGs with some development done in Picasa.

We also use Picasa for keeping track of all the pictures we’ve taken and scanned. It’s extremely user friendly and is a free download from Google. It also allows you to upload the pictures that you keep on your local machine with a single button click to picasaweb.google.com. From where you can choose to either share your albums with the world or just those people that you send a link to.

Some pictures are also from an old Oympus mju 410 (digital) which was my first digital camera and was responsible for re-awakening my interest in photography and therefore having to carry lots of camera equipment around the mountains. I therefore think of it as one of the heaviest and most expensive things I own, even though it never comes on the hill with me any more.