subtle changes

There will be two images to this post. They both were taken approximately one minute apart, used only natural light, and the spider did not move. The only thing that i changed was the exposure and my camera angle.
For the top image i exposed for the sky and let the spider go to black. I started by only having sky behind it and then included the trees at the bottom and left. For the image below i exposed for the spider and raised my camera up so that i got no sky and only trees in the background.
It was getting dark so i had to use an iso of 1250 and a fairly slow shutter speed. In photoshop i did a fairly heavy curve to each image. Mainly increasing the highlights and darkening the three quarter tones. I also added saturation to the top image to bring out the blue of the sky a bit more. In the original photo the sky was more of a baby blue and was really blah. I sharpened the photos quite a bit, amount of 50 to the bottom one and 100 to the top.
I have taken a pile of photos lately which i really like and i am truly surprised that i am posting two shots of spiders that i shot out my bathroom window about an hour ago. I had planned on posting an image i took this morning which used 4 strobes, two hidden in the scene, and which i did alot of photoshop work on. Guess that will have to wait.

masking black and white

My neighbor is always fixing or building something so i thought i would take some shots of his most recent project, making one good lawn tractor out of two. As i may have mentioned a couple posts ago, i am trying to change up the way i shoot a bit. This image may not reflect that but i shot alot and did have some progress on some of the other images.
In photoshop i opened an image that i had converted to black and white in lightroom. I then went back to lightroom and converted it back to color and opened that one too. In photoshop drag the black and white image onto the color image while holding down the shift key (this will center it). Since they are the exact same photo they are already aligned and the only thing left to do is to create a layer mask on the top (black and white) layer. I painted over the lawn tractor with a brush set to a low opacity, mabey 20% and just built it up until i had the amount of color i wanted showing through.

blending multiple frames

As i mentioned yesterday, i set my camera on high speed drive and these are the four frames i got. I didn't really plan for this but it all worked out quite nicely.
I opened all four images in photoshop and then selected all the layers together. I went to the edit menu and hit align layers. I then used layer masks on the layers to show through the guy doing the trick in his different positions. It is a little friggy figuring out what layers to apply the mask to first and to help me i turned the visibility off on the other two layers that i was not using at the time. That meant i had two layers visible and i could lower the opacity on the top one so i could see where to apply my mask. Sorry to be confusing on this one.

happy canada day

I had some fun today and shot a ton of photos.
It started with a basketball game in the driveway, on to a slippy slide on the lawn, and then off for a walk downtown to take in some canada day events. Oh, and photographed my friend and son taking apart two ride on lawn mowers.
So as i mentioned i have a ton of photos ready to post. I will be adding daily for the next little while.
I really enjoyed last months black and white theme and thought i would continue it for awhile. I will let the images decide.
The shot above is from our walk downtown today. I saw this kid do an amazing jump on his skateboard in front of his friends. I did the stop, watch, and walk away, when i noticed that he was heading up for another run. I rushed back and told him to hang on a sec. I did a test shot for exposure, set the focus, and put it on continous high speed motor drive. This was the first image of the series and it ended perfectly with him landing the jump on his board. He went through the faces of his friends however and i do wish that i had gotten as low as possible. Would have been neat to have him over their heads.
Part of my reasoning for shooting lots today is that i am trying to change my style a bit. This photo is not much of a change but it may take awhile. I want to add more movement and candidness in to my shots. We will see what happens.
In photoshop i put a much darker layer of the image on top of the original exposure and then masked out the people in the shot. I wanted everything in the image darker than it was except the people. I also put a bit of a vignette on it.
Happy Canada Day to you all.

trampoline shots

I like to fool around with mid air trampoline shots and tonight was no exception.
For the shot on the left I set up a sb flash on a light stand that was raised as high as it would go. I set the ambient light where i wanted it (shutter speed) and then waited for the action.
The shot on the right was just ambient light and i did a psudo hdr using the camera raw settings in lightroom.
I will quit stalling from the real work i have to do tonight.
By the way, the shot on the right is a skateboard that has all the hardware removed and then a pair of sneakers duct taped to it.

one light grad photo

I had a busy photography sunday today.
The image above is from a grad shoot with my niece. I really enjoy shooting these kind of images. I use one light and an umbrella (a small silver one because it wont blow over too easy) and walk around downtown and look for cool locations. I like the fact that i can play with my compositions and light and that i only have one person in front of the camera to worry about.
It was pretty much a stress free shoot compared to the one i did just before it where i had 60 people looking at me to make decent images.
Grads are also fun because i like to challenge myself to make them all look different. I may shoot in this particular alley alot, my favorite spot, but i always make it look different. My clients like this because they say i dont shoot "cookie cutter" grad photos. In defense of someone that shoots grads for a living, they dont have time to make them all unique. They have bookings every hour and need some kind of formula to make their business work.
I am all over the place here because i am watching zack arias live online giving a workshop at creative live.com, so i will finish this post up.
I shot this photo at f2.8 (to blur the background) at 100 iso and 1/250 sec (both of these settings were to darken down the ambient, which was cloudy). I used a 80 - 200 lens zoomed out to 80 but for the real shots i was zoomed closer to 200. Without the flash the image was not as good at all. I needed her lit and needed to over power the ambient just a bit.
I will post more of the photos as soon as i have a chance to play with them so you can see the real results.
Back to zack.

new look

Tonight i noticed some new templates on blogger and i was far overdue to change the look of this site.
Hope you all approve.
In keeping with my black and white month i have converted a very nice color photo. The sparks in color make this one but thats ok. I did not do much to this image in photoshop or lightroom but thought i would give you my camera settings in case you have the chance to recreate this one.
I used one off camera flash pointed directly at his face and set to the right of camera. This took care of him and i kept my shutter open to take care of the sparks. Remember to set your aperature for the flash exposure and the shutter speed for the ambient.
I used a 24mm lens and got in close, sparks were hitting me in the face and head but i did use glasses and a helmet. Shutter was at 1/20 sec hand held, f7.1, at iso 160. I have done shots like this before and just get the guy to weld a scrap piece of metal to something he is actually working on and then get him to grind on the angle you want the sparks to fly.

black and white

After my last post i decided to so some more black and white images. Mabey that will be my monthly theme for a change.
Black and white has always been my preference over color but for some reason i dont convert my images that often.
There are many ways to convert to black and white but here i just took the simple route and drug the saturation slider in lightroom to zero. I did do a curve in photoshop later to bring up the highlights and darken down the shadows and brought the clarity up a fair bit also. I added some bubbles from other photo as the original ones were pretty much just in a straight line. I just used the clone tool, as you can go from one image to another.
One thing i remembered after looking at the image i posted yesterday is that i left a bit of warmth in the photo, just added a curve is all. The one above has no color left at all.

im back

I just checked the date on my last post and it was a month and a half ago. Far too long to let this site go untouched.
I have been reading a few really good books which has absorbed my time (vince flynn is the author of them by the way).
I have also been taking lots of photos and have some good ideas for learning posts here. For example i shot a portrait the other night using two off camera small flashes and i want to show the full series from first to last. The first was not good but it got better by the end. I will get those images ready soon and discuss my thought process.
The one above is just me looking in the mirror. I got a new, used, 35mm f2.0 lens and was trying it out.
I did all photo adjustments in lightroom. Mostly heavy clarity, plus clarity in the adjustment brush. I did open in photoshop and did a much darker version and then masked back in the lighter parts i wanted.
In lightroom i did also do a vignette, tone curve, and sharpened.
Thanks for staying with me during my absence. I had over 1000 hits last month, and thats with no posts. Going for a few more this month.
cheers

lightning storm

I haven't shot lightning in probably 20 years, until last night. It was quite a show and when i finally decided to grab my camera and take some shots it was almost over. I was watching the hockey game and was nice and comfy so to get up and go to the car for the tripod, dig out the camera and blow the dust off, set up and shoot, was hard. I was happy in the end that i did so all was good.
I used a 50mm lens as i did not know where the lightning would strike, camera set to iso 200, aperature of f11 to f16, and a shutter speed of 30sec. I just kept hitting the shutter button as soon as the 30sec was over and hoped for a strike while it was open. I cropped the images, sharpened and that was that.

Decisions

This is a photo of my wife i took over the noon hour today. The decision that i mentioned in the title was not whether i would take her photo or not but how i would take it. What would i use for a background, lens, fstop, light, etc, etc. Our experience as photographers is kind of like a large bag of tricks. What have i done in the past on shoots, images i have seen online or in magazines, successes as well as failures i have had, all fill up this bag and give me options when i get to a shoot that i can draw from. Its rarely easy to walk into a shoot and take an exceptional photo right off the bat. You can think of it like sports, you have to warm up first. On this shoot for example we started in my wifes office. I tried some shots just using window light and adjusting her pose so the light worked. It did not work. Not enough light in the eyes. Nice background, foreground, everything else, except the eyes. It was her suggestion to move to the car next. I rarely turn down a suggestion from my subject, especially if the shot is not working for me. If the shot is working i will spend some more time at it and finish up that location and then move to the new one.
New location, new set of decisions. I started with composition on this one, decided on fstop, then set up my light for the proper power to achieve the fstop i had chosen. In this case I had chosen f1.4 (50mm lens) so the flash was set to something like 1/16 or 1/8 power. I used a sb900 with the dome diffuser on it and shot it through a very large umbrella. I placed the light in front of the car so it would go through the cars windshield. I set my shutter speed to 1/200 sec which, by trial and error, gave me the ambient light level i wanted. A good rule of thumb is to get your ambient set first and then build up the flash. I took about 10 frames or so just to get a good content expression on her face and then let her out of the car.
In photoshop i did a bit of retouching to her face and did a curve adjustment. I duplicated my background layer and used lens correction to add a vignette. I then created a layer mask and painted in black over the face so the vignette would just be where i wanted it. I ended up doing this twice as it was not dark enough the first time. I flattened and duplicated the background layer again and desaturated it. I then adjusted the white and black points to make a very contrasty image. I changed the layers blend mode to overlay and lowered the opacity to about 20. I sharpened and was done.
So, would i do the exact same thing on my next shoot. No, probably not. I dont know what trick i will pull out of the bag for the next one. I just hope that it is a good one and i will be as happy with the next shot as i was with this one.

interior in hdr

I shoot one building every year or so for a company that makes steel. I have shot a water treatment plant, a high school, an overpass, and now a gym. I am sure there were a couple more in there but i cant remember what they were now. I started using hdr awhile back because the interiors were very dark and you could always see to the outside, which was very bright. Before hdr i used different exposures and composited them together in photoshop. Hdr has saved me hours and hours.
In between my sons volleyball games saturday morning i took a quick run over and bracketed about 240 frames. I spent a good part of my sunday evening running them through lightroom and into photomatix. I used a mid light smoothing setting in photomatix and cranked up the luminosity slider to the far right to light up the ceiling. I used 5 bracketed images for this one which was shot with a 24mm lens, on a tripod, at 200asa. I was very cold and was worried about camera movement on the slower exposures but everything worked out ok.
I opened the tonemapped file in photoshop and did a curve, a sharpen and that was that.
I am very much looking forward to when the building is completed. I have two shots planned, one inside and one out, and they will both be hdr. I just need a helicopter for the outside shot but other than that it should be pretty straight forward.

interesting people

When shooting an event i always try to take my focus off what everyone is looking at so that i can look at them. I found this very interesting looking man who was also shooting the event and i had to take a few photos of him.
The sky was overcast which made it perfect lighting conditions for every angle. I tried to be a little bit sly while taking this photo as i did not want to attract his attention. I dont think he would have minded being my subject but i did not want him looking at the camera. I wanted him natural and relaxed and focused on what he was looking at. He did catch me later taking another frame and my shot has one of his eyes behind his camera and one looking straight at me.
I think my aperature was around f4 and i wish i would have shot it at 2.8. Most of the shots i was taking of the event needed a bit more depth of field but he certainly did not.
I did most of the work in lightroom. I added 4 graduated filters to darken down the sides and top and bottom just a bit and then opened in photoshop to crop and sharpen.

more flower photography

My wife unexpectedly had her gallbladder removed a couple days ago and as a result we have had a few bunches of flowers delivered to the house. This bunch was sitting on the counter and the light was nice. The background was crap though so i went to the garage and found the black cover for my cars hatchback. I rested it against my tripod and was ready to roll.
I shot the photo at f1.4 with my 50mm lens hand held and only used the natural light.
I prepared the photo in lightroom but once opened in photoshop i realized that i did a horrible job of the contrast and color correction so i applied a curve. I sharpened the photo and that was about it.
Creating an image is a process. Could be trial and error, usually lots of error, or preconception. For example the photo above falls under the latter. I had made all my decisions before i had taken the shot. I knew the background, composition, angle, depth of field, lens, etc. It is certainly not always like that but i prefer it when it is. I like to see an image in my head and then make it happen. Sometimes however i can be surprised with what i end up with when i go the trial and error route and get something totally unexpected.

flower photography

Sometimes, very often that is, I am in the mood to shoot a few photos. I typically dont want to make a big production out of it and turn it into work, so I shoot things that are close at hand. My, perhaps soon to be, brother in law brought my daughter and wife some flowers last week and they were very nice and colorful, and of course close at hand.
I put a close up lens on the camera and set the vase of flowers kind of close to a large window we have in the back of the house. It was nice, soft, indirect light. I was in manual focus so i grabbed a tripod and since i was all locked down, decided to shoot some hdr. I bracketed over a 7 stop range and did this for a few different compositions. I used iso 200, an fstop of around f16 and my normally exposed frame was at 1/8sec. I chose three exposures and ran them through photomatix.
When the tone mapping and processing was complete i opened the image in photoshop. In no particular order I; retouched a bit, sharpened, applied a vignette, burned down the midtones on the center stem, created a curve adjustment layer, and used apply image to bring back some detail in the reds. I have talked about this apply image technique in detail in some previous posts and highly recommend using it when there are reds in your photo.

nice light

I walked by this art studio, which is across from my office, this afternoon and noticed that the light was very nice. Very soft and airy with very muted color tones. My key just happens to work in that door so i accosted my good friend and brought him into the light. The photo on the left is what i had intended to shoot but i had walked in first and he stopped at the door which gave me the unexpected photo on the right.
I used natural light and played a bit in lightroom and photoshop.
I have been in the mood to do some portraits lately but just need some time and subjects.

larger image solved

It was photobucket that was resizing my images afterall. I must say though that for a free image hosting service they are amazing. I sent them a note to see why the images were resizing and within 5 minutes they had replied and told me what to do. It is in the upload options and you have to select the size you want your images. The largest size is 1024x768.

bridge in hdr

My main reason for doing this post was to see if i could get my images to show larger on this blog page.
It did not work unfortunately so i have some more playing to do.
I took this photo last weekend under a local bridge. I used a tripod and bracketed over a 7 stop range. I chose three photos and blended them in photomatix pro to get this result. Without using hdr techniques the bottom of the bridge would have been in shadow and featureless.
I am going to try very very hard to have more of these little photo shoots. I am challenging myself to see a bit differently lately.
As a photographer i realize that i am constantly evolving, learning, changing, maturing, etc. This has always been a conscious effort and battle but one that i have enjoyed.
Becoming a photographer is a great journey that i hope everyone reading this blog is on.

a bit of everything

I got almost an hour today to walk around and shoot in an area that i have never been before.
I took a walk under a local bridge and played with some different techniques, hdr included. I grabbed a 24mm lens and a tripod, for the hdr shots anyway, and ended up taking about 75 shots before i was done.
The comp you see above was just 4 of the shots i liked best from the day. I am not sure that they fit together in a comp like this but thats ok.
I will post the shots individually over the next few days and talk about what i did in each.
As a bit of a summary there is hdr, two images blended together, lightroom presets, three images stripped together, etc.
Plus some retouching as after downloading i noticed a pile of crap on my camera sensor.

group photo composite

I have adding to this photo for years now and expect to for many more.
It all started when i was asked to photograph all the managers from a local hotel for use in newspaper ads. I thought it might be fun to do a silly pose which i later decided to strip together into a group photo. I may have forgot to mention that i shot all the people separately on a white background.
I keep everyone on their own layer in photoshop and then when i have to remove someone i just turn off their layer. I can move everyone else around to make room for new people also. Where they end up in the shot mainly depends on their pose.
I had to take three people out this year and add five. That meant that the photo was going to be bursting at the seams so i asked a couple of them to give me a crouch down pose which worked out nicely.
To keep things looking consistent i try to duplicate previous lighting and even look up last years metadata to see the fstop and lens focal length. I have noticed however that the camera has changed. There are images from a d200, d300, and d700 in this shot.
It takes a bit of time to get looking right but so far i have been happy with the results.