gelled flash

I broke down and bought a new fancy pants flash last week and i got five minutes to play with it tonight. It came with a gel filter pack and an attachment that holds it on the flash and everything. In case you didn't know, it dosen't take much to impress me.
I put a full cto gell (orange) on the flash and set the cameras white balance to tungsten. What this does is make your flash lit subjects a daylight balance for color but throws your background, ambient light, blue.
I set the flash on a stand and zoomed the head in a bit and aimed it at the girls faces. I put it on ttl and used the pop up flash on my camera to trigger it. I set the on camera flash to not register and could use the cameras flash menu to adjust the power of the off camera flash. It was friggy to say the least but it worked. I ended up with the flash compensation set to -1. I just set the shutter speed for the brightness of the background, you could flavor to your own personal taste.
The girls did some funky poses and since some black flies wanted in on the action, the girls ditched me before i had the light tweeked just right.
My light was wacking the girl on the left in the face and falling off on the girl on the right, there by under exposing her by probably a stop.
I downloaded and converted to dng in lightroom and did all the corrections in the develop module. I cranked up the saturation a bit and put the clarity around 25 or 30. Once i had it looking alright i hit control - E , which opened the image in photoshop. Here i duplicated my layer and did a curve on the copy to darken down the left girls face. I added a layer mask and filled it with black to hide my darker adjustment. I then painted in white on her face, allowing the dark layer to show through, at about a 40% opacity on the brush and just built it up. I sharpened about 35% and was done.
I started to retouch the image a bit but had to go out and then ran out of time.
I will experiment with this approach again as i like the look.

dancing queens

The scene you see is the tester for the dancing segment of my sons first house party. We set up the dancing area in the living room, complete with christmas lights, and my mom and daughter gave it a spin. The party has now been over for an hour and a half and the house is still standing, whew.
This photo was alright as is but i found the floor and my mommas legs a bit on the light side. I duplicated the background layer and did a curve to darken the whole photo. I then created a mask on this copied layer and filled it with black, to hide all of the darkening. I then painted in white on the mask with a nice large brush and an opacity of about 40%. I just built it up until it looked right.

a few shoots

Anyone who follows this blog must have thought i gave it up or something. Not the case. I hit a very busy stretch once more and then the flu moved into my chest. I havent really had the computer on in awhile and am now a touch behind in getting a few photos out.
I had the chance tonight to look at some and thought i would just post a smattering of things i have shot lately.
I will give a brief overview of the images starting with the top left. This was for a brochure on downtown shopping, the shot on the lower right was part of this also. I had to take about 20 shots or so before i had the light looking right. I finally settled on one sb flash bounced into an umbrella and hitting the foreground subjects. I think i turned it a bit away from them also so the light was feathered a bit. This was placed to camera right. I put a flash on the background people and bounced it off the ceiling. It was placed to camera left and zoomed in a bit as not to spill on foreground.
On the bottom right image i had a flash bouncing off the ceiling to camera left for the people and one bounced of the ceiling for the background also to camera left.
The bottom left image was an hdr shot and i used 5 images run through photomatix.
The top right photo was just available light shot from a low angle with a 24mm lens.

couplea things

We stayed at a not too far away hotel last night and our room had this nice high vantage point of the pool area. I had the camera on a tripod and bracketed 9 frames. I like doing 9 because i choose the first, last, and every second fram inbetween, giving me 5 images to export to photomatix.
I may have forgot to mention in previous posts on this subject that by default lightroom will export your images as 16 bit adobe rgb98 files. So when you save your tonemapped file as a nice big tiff and then open it in photoshop it will be 16 bit, rgb98.
Now if you want to save the image as a jpeg and pop it up on the web or send it to your local one hour lab for a nice big wall print then there are a coupla things you may want to do.
1) convert to 8 bit ..... image - mode - 8bit
2) convert to srgb ..... edit - convert to profile - (in the destination space choose srgb)
You are then free to save as a jpeg, use all your photoshop menu items that were greyed out in 16bit, and have good color reproduction from your lab and the net.

hdr kitchen plus contrast

I didn't expect to do another post this soon but as i mentioned last night, i am in the mood to shoot.
I did a nine frame bracket of the kitchen this morning. It was sunny outside and dark in the kitchen so the difference in brightness range was pretty good. I chose the 5 images in lightroom and exported them to photomatix. I saved it in photomatix and then opened in photoshop. I wanted to first of all do a curve to bring up the brightness a bit. This made the chairs in the foreground a bit too bright but that was ok. Remember that everytime you do a layer adjustment (puts it on its own layer) it comes with its own mask, built right in. I used a nice big brush and painted in black, 30% opacity, over the foreground until it darkened down a bit.
Now that i had that looking alright i flattened my file and duplicated my background layer, drag the layer down onto the new layer button at bottom of layers palate. I went under adjustments - desaturate, to convert to black and white. I then did a curve, not on its own layer, and increased the contrast by moving the white and black points in quite a bit. Looked very high contrast. I then changed the blend mode for this layer to luminosity and lowered the layers opacity to 50% (just go to where it looks right). I flattened once more and then once again duplicated the background layer (some people like to keep all their layers but i tend to try and keep it simple). Then went under filter - distort - lens correction and added a vignette to darken up the edges a bit.
I sharpened the file and thats about it.
What i noticed after adding the black and white high contrast layer is that the image without it looked soft and cloudy. I would not have noticed before i did it as i had nothing to compare to. This is a good reason to make adjustments on a new layer so you can turn it on and off to see before and after. Of course the ability to turn down the opacity to blend the layers together is invaluable.
see the original below (before photomatix)

the bug in hdr

I was in the mood to shoot tonight, plain and simple. So what to shoot. Could get out the sb flashes, set up on the lawn with the nice setting sun behind a model, sounds good to me. I have the flashes, sun is in the right spot, just need the model. This is where it gets tricky. My wife has never been interested in posing, even though she is crazy hot, and i think i wore the kids out by the age of 5. Ok, no model tonight.
Hey the house looks good and the bug that we have had for the past two hours dosen't seem to be complaining. Recipe for a shoot i figure.
I put the camera on a tripod, as my longest exposure was 3 seconds (i can hold em slow, but not that slow) and bracketed over a 9 stop range. I imported the images into lightroom and then exported the 5 i choose to photomatix.
Photomatix looked pretty good but the sky wasn't working for me. I saved the photomatix version and opened it in photoshop along with one of the darker exposures where the sky looked good. I dragged the photomatix version on top of the original, while holding down the shift key, and then added a layer mask. I painted on the mask in black at about 30% opacity. I took the sky pretty well to 100% as i went over it multiple times at the 30%. I also painted in the foreground to darken that up. I painted around the light spot in the driveway to create a nice little patch of highlight behind the car. I retouched a couple flaws, sharpened and cropped a bit.
Now the question is who will be my model tomorrow night? I actually know already as i have a shoot booked, with about 200 or more people at 2am. Stay tuned.

lightroom to photomatix

I realize that there are many problems with this image but thats ok for tonight.
It was very cold and rainy and my tripod was in the car which was almost 30 feet away. The distance seemed like miles at the time and i knew that i would have to just shoot and ask questions later. I held my breath and waited 10sec for the steam to clear in front of me. The image was appearing, it was almost ready. I slowly closed one eye and held the camera ever so steady.
Ok, i will stop now.
I had mentioned I have been wanting to do some more hdr shots and i just happened to have my camera in the car with me tonight while my daughter was at soccer. I downloaded the images in lightroom and then chose the 5 i wanted to run through photomatix. I selected these 5 and then went to file - plug in extras - export to photomatix.
They all went in and my hdr image was generated. Very slick. I then used tonemapping and saved the file as a 16bit tiff. One thing i did not do was to hit reduce ghosting when i generated, mistake.
I opened the tonemapped tiff in photoshop and did just a little retouching, a curve for contrast, sharpened, and did a saturation boost. I cropped a bit of the top and bottom off and was done.
Now i want to do some more.

more biking

I haven't had a chance lately to get out and do some shooting (really in the mood to do some more hdr) so i have been grabbing the camera when someone goes by my front door.
This of course was a beautiful evening at sunset, how could i go wrong. I started by holding the camera down at ground level and trying to track the bikers as they drove by me. I may have got this image from that recipe but not many more as focus was a bit off on some and composition was all over the map. It is more likely that this image came from me laying on the ground so i could see what i was doing. I put my focus on continuous and moved the focus area in the camera over to the top left, where her face would be.
The surprise element in this image was a human gobo. Her dad was standing on the sidewalk and his shadow hit all but her face which to me ended up making the shot better than the ones where she was fully lit.
Hopefully my next post will be a cool hdr image. That means i would get an hour or so to do some shooting.
Oh, one more thing. Notice the difference camera angle makes in this shot compared to my last post. The low angle really changes the feel of the image and the dramatic effect.

learning lightroom

I have been trying to learn lightroom and so far so good. I have a good book and have been just clicking buttons also. I found the presets tonight and thought i would try the creative aged photo on for size.
I shot these images with a 50mm 1.4 lens and set my camera to continuous focus. I ran beside the girls as they biked up the street and shot along the way. I did everything to the photos in lightroom and just combined them in photoshop. I just flipped the right side image horizontal and moved it into place.
I upgraded my photomatix today also and installed the lightroom plug in that comes with it (thanks gord). You no longer have to open the images and save them as a tiff. Just select the images you want to use, raw, and still inside of lightroom just export to photomatix. I love it when things get easier.
So is learning lightroom like learning how to ride a bike???? I think everything is.
If you want to check out gordos blog head to
www.gordophoto.blogspot.com

processing for hdr

In the last post i talked about shooting for hdr and i wanted to follow it up with what to do after that.
I shot 7 frames of this building all bracketed by 1 stop, unfortunately hand held (remember how i despise tripods).
I chose the normal exposure, darkest, lightest and two in between and converted them to tiffs in photoshop and saved them in a folder on my desktop.
I then opened photomatix and generated an hdr image from the 5 tiffs. I have talked about the photomatix settings in previous posts. Mainly just generate the hdr file and then use tone mapping in photomatix to make it look the way you want it, trying to keep detail in the highlights and shadows.
Save this file as a tiff just like you did with the others.
Now go to bridge and under file "open in camera raw". Tweak the image in the camera raw plugin and open it in photoshop.
From here the sky is the limit as to what you can do with it.

shooting for hdr

I recently attended two classes on hdr. One was given by matt kloskowski and the other by ben willmore. Both were different and both were excellent. I have had some pretty good results with hdr but learned that i can make some improvements. I always welcome training as i think everyone of us in this crazy business can improve in all aspects of what we do.
In this post i am going to give some tips for the shooting side of hdr and in the next post i will go over what to do with the images after you have them shot.
Tips:
- Always use a tripod.
It will still work without one but just not as good. For example in the image above i did not use a tripod and it is not sharp. Things are shifted and could be much better. I hate tripods so if i can start using one so can you.
- Choose a scene with a full tonal range.
You can once again start shooting in the midday sun. You are looking for blocked up blacks and blown out whites, and of course everything in between.
- Bracket enough that you get full detail in the shadows and highlights.
You can shoot over a 7 or 9 stop range. Since its digital its free so shoot more than less. When you are shooting, have your cameras drive on high speed so you will get less movement, in clouds for example.
- Bracket using your shutter speed and keep your aperature constant.
I set my camera to auto bracket by 1 stop, shutter speed, using the function button.
- If you have a cable release and mirror lock up, use them.
I dont have a cable release so i just hold my breath. It helps mentally.
- Shoot in raw mode and at the highest bit depth your camera will go.
The d700 for example will shoot in 14 bit. This will give you many, many levels of grey.
- Last but not least shoot at a low iso.
Along with enhancing detail, grain and noise will also be brought to life. Keep it low.
Thats all i can think of for the shooting side of things.
I will go over the computer tips tomorrow.

spring is coming

There was no snow in boston and the weather was very nice. It really felt like spring and this photo said spring to me. Of course i am home now and it has been snowing ever since. Last i heard we were getting 10 - 15cm tonight.
In this photo i wanted the colors to pop a bit. I increased the saturation in camera raw to 60% and increased the clarity slider, black slider, and exposure to bring up the contrast a bit. I also did a slight curve in photoshop to increase the contrast in the midtones.

long exposure

I noticed while in boston that my friend matts room overlooked an intersection below and a street leading into it. I had a tripod with me so of course a nice long timed exposure streaking the cars lights was in order. The proper exposure here was 15 seconds at f13 at iso 125. I turned off all the room lights but was still a bit worried about a back wall showing up in the window so i held a black jacket behind the camera while it was exposing. I took a bunch of photos and am going to overlay them in layers and mask out everything but the streaks to make more of them in the shot. Unfortunately there were not many cars on the road that night.

breakfast

Just another shot from boston. I have shot a fair amount of images in the past week and will be having some fun with them once i am home and have some time. I only have two weddings to get out the door next week and then its on to the fun. I am actually really looking forward to the wedding shots as i was very happy with them.
This shot was brought a little more to life by increasing the saturation and decreasing the vibrance. I wanted to have the red menu stand out and be pushed even more to the foreground, bright color will seem to be closer to the viewer.

boston day 4

I have walked by this bank of windows for the past three days and finally captured them in a neat way today. I tried some shots from regular height of my eye and then tried placing the camera on the floor and shooting on an up angle. I shoot with the camera away from my eye alot. I like the angles i can get plus the surprise of seeing an image that i really did not see.
I processed this one in lightroom because i finally learned today that i should be using it more. Now i know that my buddy gord is rolling over laughing saying "i told you so". I am slow to change old habits but i saw a couple classes on it today and feel that i should now use it more.
The image is untouched other than camera raw adjustments for blacks and exposure. These were also minimal. I did use a bit of recovery to keep the sky a shade of blue that looked good. I also sharpened the file by about 50 percent.

models

This is the model that the previous group were aiming at. I have a few shots that i liked but really could not decide which i liked best. I will post a couple more tomorrow. This is just natural light with the sky as a background. I really did nothing in photoshop except use the sharpen tool to sharpen the eyes and lips a bit. I dont think the skin could have handled being sharpened.
I was using a 80-200 lens at f2.8.

nikon safari

Here is another shot from the nikon safari.
Moose peterson is the guy on the left and i found this image funny because you see everyone shooting in the foreground and the model standing in the background. There were four models is why. My next post will show what everyone was shooting.

shooting in boston

I was very glad today that i got a chance to watch joe mcnally in action. I have read his first book and look forward to his second which i will pick up tomorrow. Although the session was mainly aimed at people just starting out using off camera flash, and it was a touch on the cold side, i still enjoyed it very much.
The three of us that went from my office mainly took photos of each other which was fun.

more volleyball

I of course got very busy and didn't get a chance to post for the last few days.
I am shooting a ton next week and will have lots and lots to post.

volleyball action

I shot something like 10 volleyball games a couple weeks ago and have been meaning to post some of the photos i took. My job, volunteer, was to take 20 - 40 shots a game and then download to a laptop for the organizing committee of the national womens university volleyball championships. They would then send these images off after the games to accompany the results, to who i am not sure. They were not for press, i know that much.
When you shoot that many games in the span of three days you start to look for different angles. I tried to not make any two games photos look the same. I stuck to my long lens (80-200 f2.8) but moved around alot. I have always liked shots from the game that are away from the action and since i wasn't being paid and was taking upwards of 40 photos, i could take some of these type of shots to go with the action photos.
I chose this one to start with, not because it is the cats meow of action photos but because it contained 9 out of the 12 players on the floor at that time in a relatively small area of the court.
I had a great time, got to play, and got some photos i really liked. This was also the first time that i have ever shot jpegs with my camera. I was nervous really, just like shooting film again. I even set my shutter speeds in the menu to 1/3 stops to fine tune the exposure.
I will post a shot or two a day for the rest of this week from that set of photos.
I will be shooting in boston for a week soon and will be posting photos from there, so many photos to come in a short period of time.

martini time

It was martini time last night and the girls had to do the taste testing, before any liquor was added of course.
I tend to use alot of off camera flash but one thing i always do is evaluate the ambient light first. This only takes a second and in this case no extra flash was needed. I put the iso up to 800 and had a fairly shallow depth of field using a 24mm lens. There was stuff in my way on the counter so i put the focus on face detection and just held the camera down at counter level and shot blind. A few of the images were out of focus but of course i took enough and managed to get a couple good ones.
Once in photoshop i put the clarity on 100% and opened the image. I then duplicated the background layer and desaturated this new layer. I applied a curve to that black and white top layer to make it look the right contrast and then added a layer mask to it.
I painted in black at 100% on the layer mask so the color of the drinks would show through from the color layer below.
I sharpened and thats it.

chateau frontenac photomatix

This is the chateau frontenac in old quebec which was also a cp hotel (i posted a shot of the algonquin hotel a ways back). I hand held the camera and shot 7 bracketed frames. I choose the lightest, darkest, and the proper exposure and combined them using photomatix. I opened the image after in photoshop but only sharpened.
I kept the tones quite cool in color just as a personal choice.

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.