The Kitchen: Part 1
Welcome to my kitchen. Actually it’s my desk, but this is where most of the work goes on when I take what gets captured in my camera and the magic begins to appear. Please keep in mind as you read my blogs (my disclaimer), I’m not a writer and thus the name of my blog, “Raw & Unedited"/by KLMoore. My wife is, but I’m not. She could put together a masterful piece of prose in 10 minutes what would take me 5 hours and I still couldn’t come close to her work. Somebody once compared my writing to a bad novel gone horribly wrong. Also, keep in mind that I would feel more comfortable talking to a room full of people than sit down and write anything and I’m really an introvert. Now is your chance to stop reading if you want. You’ve been warned.
I’ve wanted to start putting together my recipes for the way I do things with post-processing for a little while now. However, before I could dive right into what goes in to what I do, I felt I needed to back up and detail what I’m working with and maybe why. I call this my kitchen, because this is the place where everything gets cooked or put together. It may start with an idea in my mind, but it ultimately happens here. So what’s in my kitchen?
The first thing you see is my birthday present from my wife, my new Mac display.
I have been working off of my 15” MacBook Pro after making the switch to Apple late last year. I love my Mac and didn’t really want to add another computer to the equation, but wanted a bigger viewing area to work on. That’s why I opted to go the Mac display route versus an iMac. With this setup, my MacBook is used in a docking station setup and when I travel, everything is still contained on the laptop (and external drives). Neat and tidy and I always have my work with me. This display allows me to see on a larger scale what I’m doing and not miss some of the details. That is very important for me and something we’ll talk about later so you'll know why.
The next thing you see is my Wacom tablet.
This is the one piece of equipment that has probably been the most valuable tool I use constantly. I had heard about tablets for quite some time and this was one piece that my wife insisted (actually demanded) I get and learn to use. Boy am I glad I listen to my wife. She was right. After stumbling through the learning sessions on how to use a tablet, I now find myself where it has made such a huge difference in the way I work. For one thing, I’m left-handed and always used a mouse with my right hand. That worked ok for me for doing everything else but working on pictures. The tablet gives me complete control over what I’m working on to the degree never possible with using the mouse alone. Plus, being left-handed, it feels so natural for me to use. Why does it work for me? First, I am now drawing when I work on pictures instead of stabbing at it with the mouse and second, the pen allows me to use pressure to create bigger or smaller lines as I’m working. That part alone is huge for me to get the control I need and wanted to work on the fine details. There are also controls built into the tablet that are programed for different functions depending on what program I’m working in.
The above are basically my pots, pans, and knives. For Part 2, we’ll look at what I’d consider the ovens since these software programs are what I use to cook everything. Part 3 will look at a couple of lessons that I’ve learned along the way and then follow that with a little background on what I see and how it influences my style. If you’re still interested at that point, we’ll get to the magic and some recipes.