action shot

Before you think i have given my son weapons for christmas let me assure you that they are just toys. We watched a war movie last night which prompted him to run and grab them from his room. I thought i would do a shot while he had them out and since i havent taken many photos lately, vacation, i was in the mood to shoot also.
I put one light behind him and pointed it straight down at his head. I wanted black eye sockets and a very contrasty look. We were just in the living room here but the background went black as no real light spilled on the walls.
I put it in camera raw and slid the contrast, clarity, and vibrance to 100. I kept the recovery and fill light down as they made some weird effects happen in the image. I took the saturation to -100 and then hit open.
I did a bit of retouching, mainly the light stand that was directly behind his head and some other little spots that showed up. I also did a bit of a curve to bring up the contrast just a bit more and sharpened.

relaxed

This photo of our cat pretty well shows exactly how relaxed and content i am feeling today.
I shot this wide open at f1.4 with my 50mm lens. By far my favourite lens right now.
Enjoy the rest of the holidays.

snowed in

I will not be posting much over the christmas break as i am indeed taking a break. I do have a couple shots lined up to be posted but they will be pretty light.
Here is what we did today. Thirty centimeters fell last night and then blew all into my driveway.

blending modes

Seems like iv'e become a bit of a building photographer.
Not really.
I felt bad for not posting forever and looked through my folders to see if i had anything i could play with.
This is a shot i did for one of the companies that helped create this building. They are great clients, like all of mine, so i spent some time taking a few extra shots for them (all of the shots they needed were inside this building).
The photo looked fine without doing anything to it but of course that would be quite boring as i have a perfectly good copy of photoshop on my computer just begging to be used.
To punch it up a bit i went to my channels palate and copied the red channel (just selected all and went to edit - copy).
I then created a new layer and pasted this red channel into it (edit - paste).
I changed the new layers blend mode to multiply and lowered the opacity to 40%. This muted the colors and tones a bit so i went to my background layer and applied a curve where i increased the whites and blacks on the curve, just to pop the contrast a bit.
What this new layer did was to darken the parts of the image that were not red, like the sky and grass.

photomerge

I had to shoot an event for client that happened outside, at night, in very cold temperatures.
The event was a city hall christmas tree lighting and then a $2000 money drop from a fire truck boom.
First thing i did of course was head to the fire chief and check to see if i could get up in the boom to shoot the crowd. With number one task checked off i then had to figure out how i was going to show the crowd of people. My widest lens is a 24mm f2.8 which got fairly wide but not enough to really show what was going on. I had two flashes with me and three pocket wizards but really what good was that going to do with a crowd this size.
So pano with natural light was quickly decided. I turned my camera to the vertical position and took as many shots as i needed to cover approximately a 180 degree shot. I think it ended up being 7 to 10 shots. I shot at 3200iso which ended up looking really good.
Once back in my warm office i opened the photos in camera raw and adjusted the settings and white balance, which was pretty yellow and green. After hitting done in camera raw i went back to bridge and under tools - photoshop - photomerge. I selected my raw files and hit go. Other than cropping the final images i did nothing else to them at all.
Below are a couple more shots. I didn't spend as much time on the white balance as you will see.

cross processing

For some reason i got this idea in my head for my christmas card this year and could not shake it.
I started this process by borrowing a hunting jacket from my neighbor, thanks john. I then got up nice and early this morning and luckily did not have to go far as there is a christmas tree farm just down the street from my house. Driving there i almost turned around a couple times (even though it only took 1 minute drive) as i had no idea what i was going to do once i got there. When i pulled in i saw that someone had a fresh tree cut and it was laying on the ground. I started by doing some shots of me dragging it around and then, as usual, and gordon could confirm, it went down hill from there, mentally that is. I picked the tree up about a dozen times and tried to time it with the self timer on the camera so i would not have to hold it that long. It was heavy. The shoot was over when i could not feel my hands anymore, it was freezing cold.
Back to the warm office and i opened the images in bridge. I selected my photo and then opened it first in camera raw and then photoshop. I had the idea of using a cross process look so i didnt really do much in camera raw.
I will not go into the cross process technique as i just got a tutorial off the internet
(http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/or/cross-processing.html). I may have tweeked it a little but not much different than the tutorial.
I then wanted a grunge border and again went online
(http://www.640pixels.com/articles/free-photoshop-grunge-borders.aspx).
I opened the border and drug it onto my image. I then went to edit - transform - scale and made it a bit bigger to fit. I also selected the very bottom little line and moved it up a bit.
I then wanted most of the image to be more blurred so i duplicated my background layer and added a gausian blur. I used a layer mask to see through to the background for the parts that i wanted to keep sharp.
I was very happy with the end result.
Before i even took the photos i had envisioned the entire process from start to finish and it did not change once i got started.
I will talk more about this very soon.

smart objects again

I had to do some photos recently for the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra and one of them was a group. This had to be shot during a concert and i was at the far back wall of the balcony. Just before starting after the intermission the group did a quick pose, approximately 1 minute. In a perfect world i would have liked to move the mic at the front of the stage and placed some of the people so i could see them better.
I shot under the available tungsten stage lights and found out that my camera, nikon d700, has an amazing auto white balance. I have tried it out in a few situations and it has always been spot on. I used a 50mm f1.4 lens on it.
Once opened in photoshop all i really had to do was balance out the brightness levels a bit. The conductor at the front was very bright and the people at the back were quite dark. I opened the image in camera raw and when i was done with the settings i held down the shift key (changes the open to open object) and opened the file as a smart object. I then went into layer - smart objects - new smart object via copy. This duplicated the background layer as another smart object. You can then double click on the top layer and it will open in camera raw. Do your adjustments for the conductor and hit ok. I then just used a layer mask to put the new, darker, conductor into the background layer. I flattened the file and then opened the original file again in camera raw. I tweeked it for the people in the background and opened the image. I drug it onto the other file i was working on and used layer masks again to blend the two together.
I did a bit of retouching, sharpened, a little color adjustment curve and was done.

photomerge

The posts have slowed to a crawl once more as my work load continues to pile higher every day. I am however almost caught up so took a minute to do a quick one.
This is a shot of the St. Andrews Algonquin hotel (canadian pacific owned). I shot it a couple weeks ago and thought it might make a nice pano. I stood fairly close to the hotel so it would distort a bit. I have come to like the bowed effect i get in the area that is closest to me in the photo. This is made up of 8 or more vertical shots hand held. I selected them all in bridge and then went to tools - photoshop - photomerge. I chose auto and it went together perfectly.
I am not sure how the color will look as i am using a laptop monitor.

another multiple image

No i dont do drugs.
I did this shoot and once opened in photoshop i decided to combine two photos to replace a couple of the people that looked better in another shot. All the same people were in both images but just different poses is all.
I drug one image onto the other while holding down the shift key to center it and then went to the layers palate and highlighted both layers. Then hit edit - auto align layers. This did a pretty good job but i must have zoomed a bit differently in the two shots as it was still off a bit. To try to align it better i highlighted the top layer and in the layers palate chnaged the mode of it to difference. Thats when this look appeared which i thought had potential. I moved the layer around a bit with the move tool to offset it a bit more.
I liked it at this point but you could not really see anyones face. I hid the top layer (clikd on the eye icon) and clicked on the background layer to activate it. I selected one person at a time using the magnetic lasso tool. I cleaned up the selection with just the lasso tool but they were still pretty rough. Once i had one of the people selected i then clicked on the top layer and turned the visibility on (click on the eye icon at the far left) i had added a mask to this layer earlier before i had anything selected so it was just empty with white. So now with the mask in place and one of the people selected i went to edit - fill - and filled with black. This allowed the background image of the person to show through. I repeated this process for all the people in the shot. The mask at the end of all this was white except for the people from the bottom layer which were all in black.
I flattened the image and did a bit of retouching on the background, sharpened, and did a curve to bring up the highlights a bit and add a bit of warmpth by adding a bit of red and yellow. Oh, and i also painted over the van door in black on the mask before i flattened to show the text clearly.
This image was purely the result of an accident, mode change to difference for another reason altogether, but i think turned out cool in the end.
The client of course chose the unaltered version.

two photos to make one

I have been playing around lately with multiple shots of one scene and how to combine them. For this one i took two photos of my kitchen at my birthday party. As you can see i just turned a little left for the first shot and then a little right for the second, which captured the entire width of the room.
I adjusted them in camera raw and then opened both in photoshop. Once they were opened i went into image size to check to see what the dimensions were. I did this so i could make a new canvas which would fit both images once they were placed on it. I made the new canvas with a white background, i made it bigger than i needed it so i could crop down. Using the move tool i drug both images onto the new canvas and moved them where i wanted them. My layers pallate now had the background and the two seperate layers above it. Next i wanted to rotate each image a bit. I went to edit - transform - rotate and twisted the top layer a bit and then did the same to the middle layer.
To make the images stand out a bit more on their own i created a stroke on each (two actually). To do this i first highlighted the top layer and then selected its contents by holding down the ctrl key and clicking with my mouse right on the layers thumbnail in the layers pallate. Once the selection was made i went to edit - stroke and chose "inside", Black, and i think 3opx size, then hit ok. I then went back to edit - stroke and this time chose "outside", white, and 15px size. I did this for each layer.
To clean up the strokes a bit and remove the white where i did not want it i used masks. I wont get into this as it may get a bit confusing. The short explanation is: duplicate both layers again, place mask, select white stroke you dont want with magic wand, paint in black in mask.
I have taken some more images to play with but have lots in the cue to get up on my blog so they will be showing up soon.
I have a nice night shot to post tomorrow.

birthday party

This photo was taken today at my birthday party.
I decided to have a hanna montana themed party and invite family and friends. Of course the theme was for the kids.
I shot this with natural light, i wanted the backlight to blow out, with a 50mm lens and a 1.4 aperature at 500asa.
I opened it in camera raw and moved my favourite 5 sliders to the far right. I then had to bring the black way up to make it look good. I opened the photo and then did a curve and a little retouching. I opened my negative frame that i had scanned awhile ago and drug it onto my rock and roll photo. I duplicated my background layer (rock) and filled the background with white (just so it was blank and i could see what i was doing). This left me with the negative frame on top, my rock and roll photo in the middle, and blank white as the background layer. The negative was quite a bit smaller than the photo so i highlighted the middle layer (rock) and went to edit - transform - scale. While holding the shift key i brought in the corners until it fit in the frame.
I then just modified the frame by removing a horizontal black line and adding two others, one on top and bottom.
I cropped and sharpened.

night photography

I have wanted to do some night photography for a very long time. Once i get home and all comfortable though it is incredibly hard to grab my camera, bundle up, and head out to shoot. I was shooting a volleyball game the other night however and had the camera around my neck so i had to take a few shots on the way back to the car. My daughter and her friend were walking ahead of me and i was shooting away.
I dont really know if there is anything to learn from this shot other than dont shoot at high iso with the nikon d2x. It was set at its highest iso (hi2) which i think is the equivilant of 3200. The grain is awful, and i really mean awfull.
All i really did to this image was reduce the saturation in camera raw to about -58.
I did a curve once i had it opened in photoshop and that was it.
I will make my next post a touch more informative.

one channel

This is another image i found the other night on an archived disk of mine. I liked the image but am still not sure what i think about the tone in it. I made it fairly cool and i am not sure what else i would do with it.
The reason i am posting this one is to talk about black and white conversion using only one channel.
I looked through the channels to see what one looked the best, i was actually looking for sky information to strip into the color image. When i hit the red channel it looked great. So good in fact that i then decided to make the image black and white.
So to start i selected my entire image and hit edit - copy. I then made a new image (file - new). Now because i had my other image copied, when i made a new image it automatically sized itself to the exact dimensions of my coppied file. I then went to my color image and into the channels pallate. There i clicked on the red channel. I drug my color image, now showing only the red channel, into my new file (remember to hold the shift key down).
This gave me a blank background with the red channel in a layer on top (layer 1).
I burned the sky down a fair bit and thats it.

Rememberance Day

My son was in a parade for rememberance day today so of course i had to bring my camera along. I did some shots, unofficially, of some of the ceremony as well as my son. I made a point to try some different compositions and angles since the shots were just for me. An exercise in seeing i guess is what i had in mind.
This shot was at the end when most of the crowd had left and all the poppies had been laid. I took 7 shots bracketed 1 stop apart for use later in hdr. I ran three of the jpegs through photomatix to apply the affect i wanted on the image. I then did some dodging and burning and applied a vignette.
I have another image which i would say is different for me that i will post soon.

food comp.

I am spending a couple hours tonight going through some old disks and i am having quite a chuckle looking back at some old photos. I am enjoying the family shots the best by far but have also forgot about alot of commercial work i have done in the past. After awhile it all blends together into a haze.
This shot is a comp i shot and laid out in 2005. A local hotel wanted photos, kind of like polaroids they said, taken of every dish they made and then posted on a board in the kitchen so the wait staff could double check to see if all the right stuff was on it before it went to the customer. I coulden't just give them a bunch of 4x6 prints to stick on a wall so i surprised them and came up with this.
Each plate was shot on a black table cloth which i draped behind and under the plate. The dishes were coming fast and furious so i really did not have any time to do anything fancy. I set up two lights bounced into umbrellas and a tripod so each would be about the same size in the end. I opened each photo in photoshop and selected the plate. I created a new image sized quite large, with a black background, and set up a grid system based on the number of dishes i had to place into the final image (drag guides out from the rulers). I then just drug each dish onto this new image and placed it in the center of the square i made with the grid lines. I dropped in their logo and lowered the opacity on it and then placed the name of each dish under them. I had many layers in the end.
I ended up making a very large print which they mounted to a board and hung over the line in the kitchen.

play time

It has been a very busy time for me again in the past few weeks and thus i have had to slow my blog posts to a slow crawl. I was watching a movie with my son this morning however and the light was coming in through his blind in spots and hitting his face. I quick trip downstairs to grab my camera and a 50mm 1.4 lens and a minute later i had my shot.
I opened the image in photoshop and did the funky look by taking my recovery, fill light, clarity, contrast, and vibrance sliders to 100. I took the saturation to 0 and then adjusted the black and exposure sliders to get the look i wanted. I did some retouching to get rid of some of the other splotches of light on his face using the healing and clone tools. I sharpened and saved and then thought of leaving the eye in color. I opened the original raw file and reset the sliders to their default position. I opened the image and drug this new color image onto the black and white one i had opened. Make sure to hold down the shift key to have it lined up right. I then applied a layer mask and filled it with black. I painted in white over the eye to leave it showing in color (top layer).

halloween composite

Halloween is over and my belly is now full of candy.
At the last minute this year i decided to set up a white backdrop and one light bounced into an umbrella and photograph the kids on my street as they happened along. I tried hard to get them to do a scary pose but if it wasn't happening i didn't push it. The most important goal of the evening for them was to get lots of junk, not to pose for photos. I took two or three at most shots of each and then they hit the street running for the next door.
I opened the images in photoshop and selected the person using pretty well all the selection tools available to me. These being lasso, magic wand, and quick mask. Once i had the white background selected i went to select - inverse and then hit the refine edge button at the top of the screen (remember that one of your selection tools has to be highlighted for this button to show up). I did not feather or smooth the edge but just contracted it while viewing on black until i could see no white edge. I saved the selection (select - save selection) in case i wanted to use it again later and then drug each into a new image i created that would be big enough to fit them all into. I placed them into a spot i thought they might fit as i placed each one on the canvas. For some i had to use transform scale to size them properly. I also had to apply a layer mask on some if there was still white around the edge. You also may have to rearrange your layers top to bottom to wedge someone either behind or in front of someone else.
Tip: When you have a pile of layers and you need to highlight one in order to move it just make sure the move tool is active and then ctrl click on the person in the big photo and their layer will be highlighted.
Once i had all the people done i placed some text just above the blank white background layer and transformed the scale to fill the screen with it. I flattened the file and sharpened it.
Now I cant wait until next year to do it all over again.

planets

I was at a trade show a couple days ago and got a chance to meet and talk to a very good pano photographer. I have his web site address at work and will post it soon. He taught me how to do the planet panos that i have seen popping up on some flickr sites and i wanted to give it a try. Above is my first attempt and i have some work to do for sure.
I will not go into detail on the process as i have a link to it which explains very well what to do.
Just in case the site goes down however here is the short version.
Shoot a 360 degree pano and stitch it together using photomerge or whatever software you favor. The horizon has to be level.
Go to image size and make the photo a square (do not constrain the proportions). The photo will now look really bad but thats ok. Rotate the image 180 degrees and then go to filter - distort - polar coordinates.
You will probably then have some retouching to do but that is about it.
Check out this site for more detailed instructions
http://www.dirkpaessler.com/blog/index.php/photographers-tools/2006/09/06/tutorial-create-your-own-planets/

cape enrage

This image was shot with an 85mm lens as that was the longest lens i carried on this day.
I wanted a bit of drama in the shot which is why i included the foreground rocks. In photoshop i boosted the contrast a fair bit to make the blacks black. I duplicated the background layer and did a strong curves adjustment just to enhance the sky. I then created a mask and painted over the land in the top layer so the dramatic sky would show through and the normal forground. I selected the whole image and went to select - modify - border and entered 2 pixels. I then filled that selection with black. I then deselected and went under edit - canvas size and extended the canvas to allow for some printing under the image. I placed a grid line, by dragging it out from the ruler on the side, and placed it at the halfway point. I then selected the text tool and using the centered option i clicked on the gird line. I then typed my name and then selected the text and color i wanted.

dramatic photomatix

Here is another shot from my weekend away. I tried a bunch of different things and have tons of images to play with now, just no time. For this shot i used a 14mm lens handheld and bracketed 7 frames. I ran the proper exposure along with the lightest and darkest exposures through photomatix and cranked up the strength. I applied a curve once i had the image in photoshop and sharpened the image. I also did a vignette on this one, but not on the image below.
The image below is the normal exposure converted to black and white, sharpened and a curve to boost the contrast.

When doing a comparison here not only look at the sky but also at the seaweed to the right that in the original gets blocked up.