If you missed the newsletter over the weekend (or the post yesterday about it) then you may have missed the recent Luminar news. So here it is… In a past newsletter, I talked a little bit about how my main workflow has moved away from Aurora HDR to Luminar Neo, now that it has HDR functionality available. That has continued to be the case and every image you saw in recent blog posts was processed on Luminar Neo. It’s a great bit of software and it has been interesting to watch it evolve. Most recently Skylum (finally!) added panorama functionality which removes yet another reason to stick with alternate software. You should definitely check it out. 🙂

Here’s a quick and fun review of Luminar Neo! You can use the code TREY10 to get $10 off the yearly or lifetime plans. For those of you who are existing Aurora HDR users, that entitles you to grab the HDR extension for Neo with special pricing, depending on the version you have and for some of you that might even mean free! Just be sure to sign up for Neo with the same email you used to register Aurora HDR to get access to the best pricing. 🙂

Before we begin, here’s an image I’ve produced with Neo to get you in the mood…

And now on with the review (click here)…

Grab Them Before They’re Gone Forever.

Here’s a pretty wild offer for you…

I’ve spent a number of years building a massive library of photography presets, video tutorials and eBooks and more which sell for well over $750 if added together. Now, for a short time, you can get all of them in one mega bundle for just $24.99 (the normal-ish price for one preset pack). After a limited time, this will rise to $49.99 and then maybe after that they’ll all disappear from the store forever. So get them while you can!

As always I’ll be throwing in my RAW files with the tutorials so you can follow along and also bundled in there are things like my high-res textures which you can use as you please for post-processing. Maybe you’ll find a few surprises in there too. So, check out the link for a detailed rundown of the contents before they disappear forever.

A question for the photographers amongst you… where does Flickr fit into your life? I was thinking about this today regarding my own little chunk of the photography world and really I don’t use it in any useful way. Maybe I should? What am I missing that has been added in recent times (since SmugMug bought it?). I see from the banner on my profile that they’ve added “Virtual Photography” as a category which seems to be sharing game screenshots. Kinda weird (and I say that as a gamer!).

Passport Sunday

Today, you’ll see a cool video where I show the how-to for processing this bad boy. Enjoy, Passport Members!

The Making of

Watch as I get rid of a few of the problems that HDR-ing causes in this situation… and hang around till the end to see how I make the Great Wall look a little bigger!

Exclusive content for Passport members

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Daily Photo – The Great Wall of China at Sunset

This is right where we stayed for the night in one of those guard towers. It was not exactly luxury, unless you call putting a sleeping bag on hard stone to be “luxury.” It was one of the worst sleeps of my life, but it was still worth it… the next day I was a wreck and I had to show up for a photography meeting in Beijing. It was a tough one!

The Great Wall of China at Sunset

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2018-06-06 23:35:41
• CameraILCE-7RM3
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/100
• Aperture4
• ISO200
• Focal Length26.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

Great Interview with Jason Silva and Erik Davis

Daily Photo – Gaudi’s Masterpiece

We were lucky to get a little bonus access to the Sagrada Familia and were able to get into the upper floors. These are quite hidden from the ground level and I never would have known they were there otherwise. I didn’t have to do anything special to get access, just a bit of planning ahead of time with their PR team.

Gaudi’s Masterpiece

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-04-30 09:44:53
• CameraX1D
• Camera MakeHasselblad
• Exposure Time4
• Aperture16
• ISO100
• Focal Length30.0 mm
• Flash
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

Passport Sunday Edit Day

If you’re one of our awesome Passport Members then you’ll get a fun, quick, and easy tutorial that shows how I made today’s photo.

Uniqlo Processing

Today I do a pretty extreme treatment with a little overexposure trick at the end to make all the people feel a little more surreal. (Also, we’ve made a few changes to the site this week and a couple of people reported issues playing the last Passport video. If you are affected by this email [email protected] and he’ll sort you out with a link until we fix the prob. 🙂 )

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Daily Photo – The UNIQLO Store

One thing is for sure about Asian megacities: They really know how to make some cool-looking shopping areas. The lights always call for some sweet sweet night photography. Also, I am pretty much usually the only one out there taking photos. People must be wondering what the hell I am doing. They would come up and ask, but they are too polite. Also, they don’t speak the same language.

The UNIQLO Store

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2018-06-11 01:59:47
• CameraILCE-7RM3
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/5
• Aperture3.2
• ISO320
• Focal Length16.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias