Five at Five – John Steiner aka Johnbo of Journeys with Johnbo

Fri 1st Jul, 2022

This week’s Five at Five Intro features Photographer is John aka Johnbo from Journeys with Johnbo. John’s About Page says:

I love to travel and I love to take pictures… I also love to write. What could be more appealing to me than a blog where I can share what I love with others?

When I was young, I was a photo fanatic, even processing my own color prints in my home darkroom. Those of a certain age who remember early color print technology know how color chemistry was an exacting and critical process.

Five at Five Questions

When and how did you start on your photographic journey?

I learned photography skills in high school in the 1960s. I loved darkroom work and for a time even did Kodacolor print processing in my home darkroom, something that was not often done by anyone but professionals (a status of which I was not.)

When I entered my electronics and teaching careers, I fell away from photography but picked it up again when I retired after a 40+ year break.

What subject do you like photographing the most?

I do mostly landscape photography and I focus on travel images for my blog.

Have you been influenced by other photographers, if so by whom and why? If not, who is your favourite photographer?

I don’t like to mention the names of the professionals I’ve admired (like Ansel Adams) for fear that people might think I am comparing my work to theirs. I could only hope to enjoy their works so I don’t even try to emulate their skills.

What is the go-to camera equipment that you use regularly and what software do you use to process your images?

I have three cameras I use regularly, a Nikon D500 with Tamron 16-300mm zoom is my primary camera. I use a Sony RX-100V for street photography and when I want to be less conspicuous, and my Samsung S20Ultra cell phone is my “daily driver,” the camera that is almost always with me. I also use a DJI Mavic Air drone for occasional aerial images. I am a licensed drone pilot.

I use Adobe Lightroom for cataloging, culling, and basic edits on my images. Starting with Luminar 2018, I’ve exported my images from Lightroom into the various Luminar products for final tweaks. I am currently using Luminar Neo.

If I am planning to convert an image to black-and-white, I send it off to DxO’s Nik Silver Efex software.

What is your favourite method of processing an image? (i.e., colour, monochrome, saturated, dreamy look etc)

That’s a hard question as it depends upon the subject. I can say that except when using the cell phone camera, I use a bracketed 3-shot exposure with one stop above and one stop below the meter’s best guess. I then use Lightroom to merge the image into an HDR photo. For a while I was smitten with that “grunge” HDR look. I’ve gotten over that, now using the HDR mostly to open shadows and get details in the highlights.

I also love to take panoramic images, multiple vertical or horizontal exposures stitched together in Lightroom.