old quebec pano

We took a trip to old quebec over the march break and had an amazing time. I took about 400 or so photos and thought i would post some here. This scene is just outside the walls of the old city where they have a skating rink and you can buy maple syrup on a stick.
This is a pano that i shot 360 degrees, a total of 19 images. I stitched it together using photomerge in photoshop and then cropped this section out of it.
Believe it or not they have the coolest bathrooms in quebec that i have ever seen. I will post a couple shots of them soon.

portrait lighting

Sometimes i notice that you can get pretty safe with portrait lighting. Lots of fill, not too dark shadows, nice soft light, etc, etc. I would certainly be guilty of this as it is way easier to stay safe and make sure that your subject looks ok. I do have my fun at times no question and this was one of those.
I woulden't say that this is an exceptional shot but i was happy with the light and balance of it.
I used a reflective umbrella to camera right and put up a rectangular piece of cardboard to gobo the light from his shirt, which was getting blown out. I used another reflective umbrella placed in behind the subject and to the left a bit. I just put them pointing at each other really and both at 45 degrees to the subject or close to that anyway.
Thats about it for lighting, but you should feel free to play with those angles and try some different things.
The problems that showed up can be seen below in the raw image. There was a light reflection in the glasses and his ear ended up being really red and bright as the back light was shining through it.
I fixed the glasses by choosing the next frame i shot that did not have the reflection in it. I made a selection of that area and blended it in but rotating it a bit and using transform a bit. I dodged the ear with the dodge tool set to midtones and the tolerance set to about 15%. I did some other retouching and sharpened a bit and had it done.
I have been shooting a ton of images lately and will be putting up many posts in the near future.

more snow

Just wanted to post another of our snow storm shots. We actually had 48cm of snow not 45 as i earlier thought. Everything is still a mess and driving is real fun on the narrow downtown streets.
I did the same to this image as the last one, 100% clarity. I also used the sponge tool (hidden under the dodge and burn tools) and set it to saturate. I then brushed over Mr. B and his snowblower to give some punchier color.
Hopefully this will be the last of the weather shots.
I believe i used a 50mm lens on this image and a 24 on the one from yesterday.

100% clarity

We had 45cm of snow today so really the only things to do were shovel and shoot some photos. As you can see, our neighbors daughter did the shoveling so i did the shooting. I didnt do that much to the photo, nothing really other than camera raw plug in. What i have been doing lately to give the photos some punch and a bit of a different look it to crank the clarity in the plug in to 100%. I then smart sharpened at 30% and that was it.
Another cool idea if you want more clarity and have already hit the image with the adjustment brush like i talked about in some previous posts, it to save the file (after the clarity has been added) as a tiff or jpg and then close it. Go to bridge and find the file you just saved and then go under the file menu and down to "open in camera raw". Now your clarity is back at zero and you can add a bunch more if you like.

pinball clemons

I had the opportunity to photograph and listen to pinball clemons recently.
He was an excellent speaker and i really enjoyed it. As a photographic subject he was also excellent. Very dynamic, outgoing, and lots of gestures. The only trouble i had was that he really roamed around the room, the whole room. While he was onstage he was under the tungsten spotlights but when he was in the crowd he was in darkness. I had no room to set up lights so i just used an on camera flash and bounced it off the ceiling. One tip, if i may, is to never shoot on camera direct flash unless you have absolutely no other options.
He moved so much that i basically just had to keep focusing on him and be prepared for when he made a gesture that i wanted to capture. I also had to predict the flash output as i had it set on manual. I was shooting full power when he was far away and then down to 1/4 when he was close.
On a personal note i would say that i am not really a big fan of celebrities. I have met a bunch and watched them closely while photographing. They just seem kind of fake. This guy was different. He was the most genuine, and personable person i have photographed (in the celebrity world ). He was late for his plane but still took the time to be photographed with anyone who asked him.

just some harmless fun

I was shooting an event recently and the media was covering the event pretty heavily. That means that i had some friends there shooting. Its always fun trying to get funny shots of your friends in these situations.
I opened this image and did my sliders thing in camera raw and also added more clarity with the adjustment brush. I then went online looking for an image of "photography for dummies" that i could strip into his notepad. I went under edit - transform and used the skew, and warp tools to make the cover fit. I created a layer mask to allow his fingers to show through and hide the book to make it look like its going into his bag.

100% clarity and then some

Here are a couple sports shots i took last week that i had some fun playing with.
I opened both in camera raw and cranked the clarity up to 100%. I made the other adjustments with the various sliders to get the right exposure, blacks, etc. I read in the current version on photoshop magazine that you can add more clarity when 100% isnt enough by clicking on the adjustment brush in the camera raw tool pallate at the top of the window. A new bunch of sliders will appear to the right of the screen and you just slide the clarity in this new window up to 100%. Then make the brush nice and big and paint over the whole image, or the parts of the image that you want more clarity in. To exit this mode just select another brush at the top of the camera raw plug in and you will see your original sliders again.

fake model scene

I said that i would post a fake model scene and i stuck to it.
Not sure that i love it but that is besides the point.
I think i actually like the original, or something like that, below. I will talk mostly about this bottom image as you can just take any photo and follow the tutorial i listed the link to in my last post and have this effect.
The image below is made up of three images which i ran through photomatix. I ended up with an image that was a good look for the ground but the sky was too light. I ran the three images through photomatix again and this time make the sky look better. I opened both photos in photoshop and drug one on top of the other while holding down the shift key. This gave me the good sky on top and the good ground as a background. I added a layer mask to the top layer and masked out the ground so that the proper exposure from below shone through. I added some saturation, sharpened, and burned in the sides of the image a bit to make the middle stand out. I also used the dodge tool set to highlights to add some bright spots to some of the scene, mostly some of the trees and equipment.
Photomatix really did a great job on this photo.
This image was shot with a d700 and a 24mm lens by the way.

using selective blur

Just a quick post tonight before i hit the hay.
We did a little skating tonight and i just so happened to have my camera in the car. This was shot with natural light which was provided by some very dim street lights around the outdoor rink. I shot at 1600asa and used a 50mm lens set to 1.4 with a shutter speed of 1/20sec.
I opened the image in camera raw and adjusted it mainly for the jacket and background which made the face and sky go too dark. I hit open and then went back to bridge again and reopened the image in camera raw. This time i adjusted for the face and sky and hit open again. I drug the light version on top of the dark version and then applied a layer mask to blend the two exposures together how i wanted them. Do this slowly with like a 40% opacity on the brush.
I then flattened and duplicated the background layer.
From here i am going to direct you to the internet for the tutorial that i used for the blurring effect.
http://www.recedinghairline.co.uk/tutorials/fakemodel/
After i had the blur the way i wanted it i added a layer mask to the top layer and painted over the face and collar a bit to make sure the sharp image from below was showing through. I flattened the file again and sharpened it. I then went to filter - distort - lens correction and added a vignette.
One more note, i converted to black and white in camera raw at the first.
I applied a curve as a last step to bring up the whites a bit.
My next post will be using the technique i posted the link for above to make an image look like a fake model.

photomatix and original image blend

Above is the original image, shot in raw, processed in camera raw plug in and then saved.

This second image was made from three different exposures, one dark, one middle, and one light, which were then run through photomatix and saved.

This last image was made by opening both the original (top) photo and the photomatix (middle) photo and dragging one onto the other so i ended up with one image that contained two layers. I of course held the shift key down so they would line up right. One more note is that i used a tripod on this shoot.
Before i get too far i should mention the "why" bother doing all this. I liked the photomatix image but just not the chairs as it really showed up every mark on the backs of them. I also felt the ceiling was just a bit dark.
With the one image opened and containing the two layers i then created a mask on the top layer, lets say that it is the photomatix image that is on top and the original on bottom. I painted in black on the mask over the chairs at an opacity of about 45% which i then just redid until i had them pretty well covered in black on the mask and the original below showed through clearly. I lowered the opacity of the brush to about 20% and painted over the dark part of the ceiling.
I think this was all i did on this one. Just realize that you have to change your brush size ([ key for smaller and ] key for bigger) when painting in your mask so you dont get spill on areas that you dont want masked. I also use a brush with a hardness of 0.
When checking out the differences in the photos take a look at the wall behind the stage. Much nicer in the photomatix and blended photo compared to the original. I thought all the walls looked better, the windows were better, lights better, and ceiling better.

reason for raw

I of course realize that everyone out there, especially those of you that follow my blog, is shooting in raw mode. Not because you get thousands more levels of grey and that you end up with an umcompressed image file but because i suggested that this is the mode that you should use. Ha. That was an attempt at humor.
Ok, i was shooting in a horrible gym tonight, lighting wise anyway. None of my white balance settings came even close so i set the camera to "degrees kelvin" and set it to the lowest number it goes to, i think it was 2500 degrees k. The photo you see above on the left is what that looked like. I only opened the image photoshop, shrank the image size and saved it. So, if i was shooting jpegs this is the file i would be faced with color correcting using either levels or curves. If i took 200 photos during that game i could fix the first image and then drag its curve over onto all the other images, which i would have to open in photoshop and then flatten and save. Or make an action and do a batch.
The image on the right was corrected in the camera raw plug in very easily by using the white balance tool and clicking on part of the white uniform. I did a few more slider tweeks like raise up the recovery slider and the blacks while lowering the exposure. I could then just select all my other photos in the camera raw plug in and hit the synchronize button and then the done button. I could have my 200 images color corrected faster that you could read this blog post.
For a little added info, i was shooting on a d700 set at iso 3200 with an 80-200 f2.8 lens. The exposure was 1/180sec at f2.8.

Direct the Eye

2009 is here and with it comes this photo that i took approximately 12 hours ago which i really, really, really, like.
It always amazes me how some shots stand out and grab center stage with both hands, to me anyway. Often times i wont even know what it is about a photo that has moved me until i take a real close look at it and dig in. Sometimes its the lighting, composition, coloring, emotion, etc, etc. A photo can grab you with only one of these all by itself or by a combination and often times it really does take a minute to figure it out.
This photo started for me with the light. My neighbor was just playing around on the couch with my cat phoebie. The light coming in from a large window to her left was beautiful so of course i said "would you like me to take your picture"? I put a 24mm lens on as i wanted to get nice and close so her face would be powerful in the frame but I could also take in some of the background. She looked out the window for a bit, then stuck her tounge out for awhile, and then got a little shy and started to cuddle the blanket on the back of the couch. I liked the other photos as well but this one was the magic.
In photoshop i did alot. The photo looked great right out of the camera and most of the things i did to it were very subtle but very much needed.
I started by figuring out a crop. This was not easy. I tried a square, then a loose, then a tight, and ended up with this. I did a fair amount of retouching next using the heal and clone tools. There was a hair that went right through her eyeball which i took out as well as some other little distractions. I wanted the viewer to be able to really look at that big eye, study it, think about what was going behind it, and then move on the the rest of the image when ready. To help the eye be more powerful i used the dodge tool set to highlights (10%) and dodged the eyeball. I also used the burn tool set to shadows (4%) and hit it once with that. When you do a before and after view of this effect it is amazing how much it helps the eye. Since it had a nice shade of blue i also used the sponge tool set to saturate on the colored part of the eye a little bit.
I then duplicated my background layer and added a vignette with the filter - distort - lens correction method. I wanted to have the center of the image pop and the background to not have any impact. I then created a layer mask and painted in black over the center of the image to make sure the vignette was not darkening it down and dulling the face. You will also notice that you can really bring out subtle parts of the image by painting in the mask with a lower opacity (40%). I wanted the thin green pillow behind her to act as a bit of a rim for the hair so the vignette darkened the outside and i brought the inside back with the mask.
I also wanted the background blurred a bit more so i duplicated the background layer again and then held the option key and drug the mask from my top layer to my new layer. This just copied the mask so that i now had it on both of my top two layers. I used lens blur and blurred it a fair amount.
I then just did a curve to darken the image down a bit in the three quarter tones and brought the highlights up a bit, used smart sharpen and was done.
If i could give anyone one piece of advice it would be the following. Play with the image in photoshop all you want but in the end make sure that none of your work can be noticed. For example, if i had lightened up the white of the eye any more it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. All your hard work has to look natural.

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.

photographers

Like i said in my last post, things went down hill fast, kidding.
While still inside the covered bridge we set the camera on a tripod with a 14mm lens on it, thanks murray. I then took photos while gordo jumped at the camera. We then switched roles and it was my turn to jump. I had two flashes set up, one to each side and at about a 45 degree angle to where we would end up.
I opened the photos in photoshop and placed one on top of the other so i had two layers. I highlighted both layera and did an auto align layers. I then just created a mask and drew a very rough selection around about half the image with the lasso tool, refined edge to feather it a bit, and then filled that part of the mask with black. We were now both showing through.

covered bridge

I did some shooting today with a good friend of mine at some different locations along the coast.
We of course started the day shooting some landscapes but as what typically happens when two photographers get together, the serious shooting quickly ended and the crazy ideas came out. We shot alot of really goofy stuff and then packed up and headed for home. We saw this covered bridge on the way back and decided to stop and have have a little strobist shoot. Strobist for those of you that dont know is all about off camera flash. Here i used one flash to camera right and drug the shutter to 1/8 sec to bring up the sun coming through the slats in the boards. That is the sun at top right, not the flash.
In photoshop i desatruated and sharpened and applied a circular gradient inside his flashes head to make it look like it was going off.
There will be several more shots from this shoot posted and you will see just how silly things got.

halloweeen is coming

I didn't shoot this for any reason really. I was actually just trying out a lens i just got (85 f1.8) and the cat happened to yawn.
I did do the raw funky sliders thing to it and then just duplicated my background layer, went to filter-distort-lens correction and laid down a heavy vignette. Then just added a layer mask and painted in black to take the darkening from the vignette off the cats face. I sharpened, cropped (deciding the composition was the hardest) and was done.

4000asa hockey

I haven't posted in at least a week and it feels like forever. I hit another busy stretch but that should level out soon enough.
I just wanted to throw up a quick image of hockey action. I shot this with the nikon d700 at 4000asa. The speed was needed as i was shooting through the glass (dirty) which takes away about one stop.
I shot the image in raw, uncompressed, and at 14 bit.
You can see lots of grain in the high res image but it holds up pretty good, especially compared to the d2x which would have added huge gobs of color noise.
The only thing i did in photoshop was a quick curve to lessen the cyan cast in the whites and i used the sharpen tool on all the logos on his jersey. The rule is to use the sharpen tool on any text or shiny things, like jewelery.

photographer portrait

I was set up early for a portrait i had to do last week and my friend and fellow photographer graciously offered to sit in so i could check my light. Really easy light actually, one off camera flash shot through an umbrella. I mainly just needed to balance it with the ambient light that was hitting the background.
All i really needed to do in photoshop was to darken down the white trim in and around the windows behind him. I also retouched a bit, added a fairly heavy vignette and sharpened. I did a slight curve also but i usually always do.
A little note to a curve. To warm up an image a bit but not produce a noticable color case you can just slide the shadow point for green a bit left to add magenta and the shadow point for blue a bit left to add some yellow. This will just tint your blacks a bit and as a result warm your image up.
Below is a black and white that i played with in camera raw.
I much prefer the color version but added the other just for fun.

photomatix landscape

We picked out our halloween pumpkins today and I just so happened to have my camera in the car.
I shot seven shots bracketed by a stop each hand held.
I ran the normal exposure, darkest and lightest through photomatix.
I set the strength to the max and once again just played with the sliders until it looked right. The pumpkins however never looked right.
I opened the image in photoshop and placed the normal exposure image on top of the photomatix image. I placed a layer mask on this normal top layer and painted over the sky and trees with black so the photomatix layer underneath showed through. I then lowered the opacity of this top layer to about 40 percent to blend it in with the photomatix pumpkins.
I sharpened the imgage and then used the dodge tool set to highlights and used it on the orange sign to make the light look a bit more mottled. I lowered the saturation of the image by a bit also.
The normal exposure image is below.

photomatix

I showed up early the other day for a shoot and ended up with a half an hour with nothing to do.
Might as well take a few photos i figured.
I set the camera on a tripod and bracketed my exposure over a 7 stop range. I wanted to see what photomatix would give me as i have not had much luck with it lately.
I ran all 7 images through photomatix and played with the setting quite a bit until i got the look i wanted.
I turned the strength all the way up and lowered the color saturation a fair bit. My other sliders ended up being quite far the the right side of the screen also (sorry as i did not mark down what they were). Once i was done with photomatix i saved the image as a tiff and opened it up in photoshop.
I did a bit of retouching and then duplicated my background layer. I applied a fairly heavy vignette in filter - distort - lens correction and then applied a layer mask and painted in the areas that i wanted to keep light (background). I then used the dodge tool set to highlights and a strength of about 8 to paint over the right side of the building a bit, was pretty dark. I hit the tree a bit also with it and some areas of the building. I then used the burn tool set to midtones and a strength of about 8 and darkened up the left side and middle of the building. I used this on the tree a bit also.
I then smart sharpened and did a curve to adjust the colors and was done.
I put the original photo below.