What it means when someone says RAW

Today marks my first real foray into the real of RAW. No, I'm not talking about the 7degrees that marked the high temp today. I am talking about RAW format... which in the case of Nikon means a file type of NEF. I spent a fair bit of time today exploring options using Nikon's Capture NX software. It is more like working with a negative in the darkroom than anything else. Not really the same as Photoshop or any other editor. Working in RAW really gives you enormous latitude in terms of exposure, value, depth, focus, fixing lens abberations, color, white balance. Too many things to mention. Suffice to say, anyone exploring the RAW setting on their camera needs to own this book: Art of RAW Conversion: How to Produce Art-Quality Photos with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Leading RAW Converters by Juergen Gulbins, Uwe Steinmueller (find it at Amazon )

this is the original image, no post-camera processing

This is what I was able to do in a very short time with the RAW converter in Nikon Capture.




In the studio things have been wicked productive. I feel like I am starting to catch up on orders (though they are still coming in almost everyday!) and I feel like the pots are even better than what was being made a month or two ago. Always a good feeling for sure.

Nancy and I spent the New Years holiday making new forms from which to make our new oval trays, new dessert plates, and finally the new dinner plates. All are squared forms, with the oval being the most "oval". After roughing out the ideas on paper, we jumped straight into working out the forms in 2x12 fir. My little old jigsaw just couldn't do it so we found ourselves at Home Depot looking for a replacement. This is what we found... a Bosch.

So here are some images of the new wooden forms and the plates we've been making so far: