photomatix again

I was driving to the photo lab the other day and went past this old train station.
I had the camera in the car and thought i had better get a shot of it before it got torn down.
It was midday and the shadows were fairly blocked up. I thought it would be a perfect candidate for hdr.
I took 7 bracketed frames (bracketed by 1 stop each). I choose the normal exposure, darkest , and the lightest of the 7 frames.
I put all three images into photomatix and hit generate. I kept the strength at about 90% also as i wanted the effect to be strong.
I opened the image in photoshop and applied a curve to up the contrast just a bit, sharpened a little more and was done.

bracketing exposure

This is another shot i took while out on an excellent boat cruise.
The image as you see here looks nothing like what my eye was seeing at the time. The sun was getting close to setting but was still fairly bright. I did a few bracketed exposures to darken the clouds and sun and came up with this.
When the first shot looks lame, try something else, like bracketing.

To crop or not to crop

Here is a photo of a boat i took last week for fun. I was in a friends awesome cruiser and his friend pulled up along side. We were going the same speed for a couple minutes and i thought i would take a few frames. The sun was down and as a result i did not really like the color in the image. I opened the image in camera raw and did the same adjustments to it as my last few posts to bring up the contrast and detail. I took the saturation slider to -100 and opened the image. It did not look very good yet so a dramatic curves adjustment was needed. This brought up the contrast quite a bit. I sharpened the image and that was about it.
Then comes the question to crop or not. I like the balance of the above cropped photo. You will notice that most of the action and lines are toward the center of the image and the boat itself is pretty well centered. This of course would be breaking one of the rules of better photography "dont put your subject in the center of the frame but use the rule of thirds". The boat is actually on the thirds line going across, just not up and down. The crop still works however as the top of the image and the bottom, dead space on both, are equal and balance the image. Being cropped also makes the boat occupy more space in the frame.
There is no real set rule about cropping is what it comes down to. I like to try different crops until the image works for me. It usually only takes a minute and can be very well worth the time.

vacation

I just noticed that it has been almost a month since my last post.
I have still been getting lots of visits to the site and that helps to make me feel guilty for not putting up some new info.
I have been shooting a ton of images that i will be playing with in the near future. A break was very much needed by me in all areas of my work as i was truly burnt out, thus the lack of posts to this site.
I took the photo above yesterday morning on an early walk down the beach. For the next week or so i will just post some images. I will be back to business very, very soon.
Thanks

flowers

I typically dont shoot many flowers but thought i would give it a try last night.
I played a fair amount with the images in photoshop of course after.
Mainly saturation and curves to make them look the way i wanted and then i applied a vignette using filter - distort - lens correction to darken the edges of each image separately. I sharpened about 75% and put them together on one canvas.

autoblend

I took about 6 photos of this bbq fundraiser and intended to strip them together using photomerge.
I tried and it didn't even come close to working.
I then went to my old standard which has never let me down, autostitch.
That didn't work either.
So, what now.
I thought i would try to bring all the images into one new blank canvas and see how close i could get them to where they should be. I did this and then highlighted all the layers in the layers pallate and hit edit - autoblend layers.
It actually did a fair job.
Looking at this finished photo you may be noticing all kinds of blending problems but you should have seen what photomerge and autostitch did. They just made a nasty mess, and even though auto blend was not perfect it was close enough for me on this one.
Just an idea if all else fails.

camera raw details

Just wanted to do another post to further explain the effect i did in my last post on the car.
In the image above you will see the original unaltered image on the left.
In the middle i took the recovery, fill light, contrast, clarity, and vibrance up to 100% in camera raw. I then lowered the saturation down to 0.
In the image on the right i left the camera raw settings the same as in the middle image but brought the saturation back up a bit to keep some color in.
I sharpened all images the same and applied the same curve to each to boost the contrast up a bit.
I like this effect but just need to experiment a bit more with it to add my own flavour.

camera raw effect

I am once again a tad bit on the busy side but had a few minutes to play tonight.
I had a flash set to each side of the car mainly to hit the headlights and then spill onto the body.
I opened the file up in camera raw and then took the clarity, fill light, recovery, and contrast sliders all the way to the right.
I took the saturation all the way to the left.
I then played with the blacks and exposure to get to the look i wanted.
I opened the image in photoshop and did a curves adjustment to further increase the contrast and sharpened the image about 100% in smart sharpen.
I got this recipe from this months issue of photoshop user magazine. I read it a few days ago and did not refer back to the book tonight while doing this image so i may have missed a few of their steps.
It is a very good issue by the way and i highly reccommend getting this latest issue.

photomerge river

I took a few photos at a riverfest event today and thought i would try making a pano with photomerge in photoshop.
I usually use autostitch for this task but gave photoshop a chance on this one.
I shot 14 vertical photos handheld and overlapped each image by about half. I selected the 14 images in bridge and went under the tools menu and down to photoshop and to photomerge. I left everything set at default settings and hit ok.
Once it was done i just cropped it to get rid of the jagged edge and that was about it.

busy time

Just wanted to throw up a photo of a good friend of mine and let everyone know that i have not abandoned this blog.
When things slow down a bit, soon, i have some good tips to post.

happy long weekend

Just wanted to wish all us canadians a happy long weekend.
As you can see our neighborhood started it off tonight the right way.
A bonfire and smores, yum, yum.

face shoot

I was just bored tonight so asked my daughter if she would stand in front of my light for a sec. I was surprised when she said yes and actually managed to take about 10 frames before american idol came back on and she left me.
The main reason for me wanting to shoot was to play with a shoot through umbrella a bit more. I have been using shoot throughs for about a month now and am now officially converted. I have always hated soft boxes as i just find the light too soft, old fashioned, and to me boring. I am finding that a shoot through gives me a compromise between a reflective umbrella and a soft box and when you can get it in really close to your subject you get a nice wrap around type of light.
For the background i stuck a nikon sb flash on a stand and zoomed the head in all the way (85mm) and pointed it straight at the wall behind her, she was out about 10 feet from the wall.
Once i got the images into bridge i really liked the three images placed together. I had not planned this but thought it may work later. I was glad that i kept in the same spot for all three and just her look changed. Just never know what your going to get i guess.

off camera flash

I took this photo recently and thought i would post it to talk about the importance of planning your lighting. My client wanted all these people around this driving simulator and wanted the screen to show. If i had hit the scene with on camera flash the screen would have taken a hit and not looked good. I could not bounce my flash off the ceiling as it was way too high and probably would have affected the screen also. I brought a light stand, an extra flash, and two pocket wizards with me just to be safe. I usually have the car packed pretty well just in case i run into a situation where i need more equipment.
Once i saw the setup i first picked my shooting angle and then placed an off camera flash directly behind the screen and up quite high, with a pocket wizard attached. I placed a second flash on my camera which i did point straight up with the white reflector card pulled up about half way. This on camera flash provided fill on the dark side of the people, i set it lower in power compared to the off camera flash. Both were set to manual so its easy to adjust, if one is too bright just dial it down. I set my shutter speed for the driving screen, i think it was somewhere around 1/60 sec.
Now if you dont have pocket wizards dont worry. You can get a cheap optical slave for your off camera flash and your on camera flash will set it off. They dont work great outside but work very well indoors.
This type of lighting is by no means rocket science. It is actually very easy to do and really makes your photos better than the easy on camera flash only technique.

flood 2

I just wanted to post one more flood photo.
My small town is dealing with a flood crisis at the moment and as i mentioned in my last post i got to take a few photos of it.
I haven't been out shooting again as i have been busy with other stuff but hope to go for a stroll tonight.
I will have a good, informative , photoshop post soon, promise.

water rising

I actually did zero to this image in photoshop. I shot it for western canadian newspapers and apparently it will be the cover of the national post tomorrow.
I am more happy about the conversation i had with her, 81 year old June, than i am with the photo. We talked about the flooding of course, about her husband Karl in his rubber dingy, about their home and how long they lived there, and about eye surgery. We had the same surgeon if you can believe that. She is having trouble with her eyes and they cant seem to help her.
June was just one of those people that caught my interest right away. I have no idea why but i definately did enjoy our meeting.
This was shot for a story on our towns rising river. The water level is very high and getting higher. If you are shooting for newspapers the only tip i could give you is to include a person in the shot. Be as creative as you like but get the human element in there.

black and white conversion

I only have a few minutes tonight but wanted to get an image up that i shot a couple hours ago.
I set up two flashes for this shot. One was placed to camera left and acted as the main light. It was pretty far over, mabey at about 70 degrees. The second flash was placed to the right and just behind her a bit. I played with the shutter until the sky was where i wanted it, i think it ended up at about 1/250 sec.
I brought the image into photoshop camera raw plug in and tweaked the white balance and exposure and brought up the black slider quite a bit to make the shadows strong. It looked pretty good in color but lastly i thought i would bring the saturation slider all the way to the left to check it out in black and white. There it stayed. I felt it was a much stronger image this way.
The foreground grass and top of the sky were a bit on the light side so i duplicated my background layer first of all. Then with the top, new layer, highlighted i went to filter - distort - lens correction and applied a vignette. I made the amount quite high (slider moves to the left) and moved the midpoint to the left also to bring the darkness into the image. I then made a layer mask on this layer and painted in black over her face just to make sure that none of the vignette darkened her. I didn't paint in the mask around her feet as they were ok to go darker.
I smart sharpened about 50% with a radius of 1 and was done.

blackandwhite

My son gave me another 10 minutes tonight to take his photo on his bike. He was sporting his new hair cut and my sunglasses and looked pretty cool so a photo was a must. It was close to dusk and the sky looked on the dramatic side so i grabbed two sb flashes and placed one to the left of him and one to the right. Not copy lighting mind you but more cross lighting as they were directly to his sides and not out in front of him at all. I had a pocket wizard on one and a slave on the other to trigger them.
I set the aperature for the flashes and the shutter speed for the sky behind him.
After i got it into photoshop i played with the image a bit, a curve for color correction, healing brush and clone stamp for distractions, and smart sharpen to finish it off.
I liked it in color but thought i would take a look at black and white and i really liked that approach. The sky became even more dramatic which surprised me. As you know there are many, many ways to convert an image to black and white. For this one i used image - adjustments- black and white. Once you get into this panel instead of moving the different color sliders around try just placing your curser on the image and when you left click the curser becomes a scrubby slider. So for example i placed the curser on the light part of the sky, left clicked and by dragging it to the right (or i think it was to the right) it made the sky lighter in that area. I placed the curser on the dark part of the sky and dragged the opposite direction and made those parts darker.
And so on and so on. Remember that when you click on a part of your image all areas of that color will be affected.

improvements??

I always love it when something about a photo I take interests me. When this happens it seems to stay on my mind until i can get a chance to sit down and play with it and make it even more interesting.
I shot this photo yesterday of a neighbors child as all the kids were out on the street with their new bikes. I was in front of him and his scooter (actually my daughters) and held the camera down at ground level while aiming it up at him. I had it on continuous focus and i walked forward while shooting as he made his way up the street.
I took about 10 or 15 shots of him and this was my favourite. I knew that i wanted to make the shot look a bit more dramatic and to do this i darkened the sky and road. For the sky i ran the photo through the lucis art plug in which helped a bit. I also used the burn tool set to shadows and painted (burnt) in the dark squiggles of sky that poked through the clouds. For the road i made a selection of it using both the lasso tool and quick mask mode. Once i had it selected i just applied a curve to darken it down. I actually did the sky and road adjustment on a new layer which i had converted to black and white. I then changed the blending mode of that layer to luminosity. After that i just retouched out the street light, sharpened a bit and was done.

multiple image parts

I was reworking this image tonight as i was given some ad space in a magazine and i needed to come up with an idea for it. I ended up not using this image but thought i could at least make a post out of it.
I ran the file through the lucis art plug in twice. Once set on exposure and the second time set on wyenth. I liked the cards and chips using wyenth and the skin and body on exposure. Now just needed to combine the two and use the parts that i liked from each. If you would consider using a selection of the chips and cards and then dragging it into the other photo, well you have way too much time on your hands. Take the easy way i always say. I opened both files in photoshop and while holding the shift key down i dragged one onto the other. I then created a layer mask on the top layer and painted in black over the parts that i wanted to hide on that layer so the bottom image could show through. I had the good card and chips on the top layer so i painted over my sons body and head. Always use a nice soft brush and it will blend together quite nicely.
I find i have been doing this sort of thing alot lately.
I have shot a fair amount of group photos and the people in the front row are too bright and the people in the back are too dark. If you do a layer for the proper brightness for both the front and back and then follow the steps above you will be able to match up brightness levels very easily. Today i in fact did this exact technique. I took it a step further though and opened my image as a smart object by holding down the shift key while i was in the camera raw plug in. This will change your "open" button to "open object". Once you have it open you then go to the layer menu - smart objects - new smart object via copy. This will copy your background layer as a smart object so you can double click on either of the layers and be able to adjust them in camera raw independant of each other. If you just drag the background to the new layer icon it will not work the same. When you alter one the other will change also. Using the new smart object via copy will give you some sweet flexibility.

ice

Just wanted to put a photo up since I haven't posted in so long. I have been quite busy with real work and have not had much time for play. This is a photo i took today of a little ice sculpture i was working on. We have had tons of snow and ice this year so i have been breaking it off the driveway in very large chunks and placing it ever so carefully atop some of the snow banks. Its amazing how fast it shrinks.
I ran this photo through lucis art plug in, sharpened a fair bit and then posted.
Oh, right, there was some flaring in the sky and i used the patch tool to remove it as it was fairly large. If you haven't tried the patch tool you should. It is housed under the healing tool and works the same. After you click on the patch tool to make it your active tool you just click on your mouse button and hold it down. Draw a selection around what you want to heal and then release the mouse button. Now click your mouse somewhere inside of this selection and drag it to the part of your image that you want to heal from and let go of the mouse. Thats all it takes. If you prefer to make a selection first using any of the selection tools (marquee, lasso, etc) thats fine too. After the selection is made just highlight the patch tool and drag the selected area to the good clean area of your image so the healing can begin.