LightCentric Photography

05/30/2026

Just Published - The latest installment of LightCentricPhotography:

GATEWAY ARCH National Park is the smallest National Park in the U.S., at just over 92 acres. Its grounds are on the west side of the Mississipi River near where St. Louis, Missouri's oldest buildings once stood; and very near the start of the Louis and Clark Expedition. Originally built as a monumen...

05/29/2026

A month ago, we visited Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Probably the highlight for me, photographically, was their own "Umbrella Street." As I recently blogged, these umbrella streets and plazas have been springing up all over the world for the past several years and I have become aware of them and now seek out and try to photograph them on my travels.

https://lightcentric.blogspot.com/2026/05/umbrella-streets-they-are-thing.html

In fact the umbrella street nearly overshadowed another image that I made of Puerto Plata's "Pink Street." This one needed some post-processing work, and when I first reviewed them, I didn't think any were worth publishing. This morning I looked again and decided maybe this one was.

05/23/2026

Just Posted - This week's "LightCentricPhotography" Blog Post:

https://lightcentric.blogspot.com/2026/05/umbrella-streets-they-are-thing.html

05/16/2026

Just Published - This week's LightCentricPhotography post:

JUST OVER a year ago, I wrote about this Photoshop tool, and concluded that for the most part, it was "not ready for prime time yet." In fairness, I also concluded that it was a pretty good tool in many cases to create a starting point, with the additional need to "work" the image afterward. Many of...

05/09/2026

Just Published - This week's LightCentricPhotography Blog Post:

JUST A few days ago, Adobe dropped major new releases for both Lightroom and Photoshop. I don't really use Lightroom, so I don't cover it here. The newest version of Photoshop, though, was released on April 27 and contains just a few new features - but they are features with a pretty big impact on p...

05/02/2026

Just Posted - This week's "LightCentricPhotography" blog post:

04/30/2026

This past week, Adobe dropped new versions of both Lightroom and Photoshop. I don't do much with Light Room, but am in PS nearly every day, so I will probably do a blog on some of the new features I find useful in the near future. In the meantime, I am - as usual - dragging behind a bit on my perhaps 5% knowledge of the program. I recently discovered a newish feature in the Lens module of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR): depth masks. I decided to play with it. It this early date, I am not sure how it really helps me - but I am sure I will eventually figure it out. But, I did have some fun again: "playing."

The image here was made recently on our short tour of Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic (just a fraction of the island nation) on our Celebrity Apex Caribbean Cruise. Puerto Plata is on the northern side of the island bordering the Atlantic Ocean. One of the attractions they are proud of is the Fort on the northern beach known as Fortoliza de San Felipe. The day we visited was not a really great day for larger landscape images. The rather small fort's foot print in the landscape is very wide and I found making a pleasing composition challenging, especially trying to include elements in the foreground. Using the "lens blur" feature in ACR (among other adjustments), I created the image below. I kind of like it. This one was kind of a "quick and dirty" playing with it. I know I could improve on some of the details - especially around the fort - and maybe will go back someday. General Luperon was DR's perhaps most famous miltary leader and you can find instances of him throughout Puerto Plata.

04/28/2026

Just a little something I have been "playing" with (snapped a photo on board Celebrity Apex while waiting to be seated in the dining room recently) - Good nose? :-)

04/25/2026

Just Published - This week's LightCentricPhotography Blog post:

SONY's CREATORS App is a smartphone app that is available for either IOS or Android based phones (and can be freely dowloaded from the Apple Store or Google Play Store). Sony's original app was known as "PlayMemories," which was succeeded by "Imaging Edge Mobile," and now most recently, Creators App...

04/19/2026

Just published - This week's installment of "LightCentricPhotography" Blog:

I FIRST began writing this post a few months back. Timing is everything. At the time I saw what I believed to be an inordinate amount of "focus stacking" commentary. It seemed like every other image I saw posted on the various sites I frequently visit would have a comment in the caption about focus....