Re-thinking the old stuff

I admit it - I've been a bit lazy and havn't been shooting nearly enough as of late but that hasn't stopped my desire to fiddle in photoshop. My good friend Carly posted an old shot of mine of she and her finance on her Facebook page. I'd forgotten all about the evening we took those photos so I went back through the set and found tons of great shots that I'd forgotten about.

Nick and Carly are a very dynamic couple, and its rare that there's a serious look on either of their faces at the same time and as you'd expect, I found many shots where Nick was being a goof ball and Carly was looking rather angelic.

I came across this image and liked Carly's expression very much, but Nick had his finger up his nose (ok, not really).




Time then, for some work in Photoshop.

Here's what I did -
I took the original, and cropped Nick out (sorry man).
I then copied it into a new document leaving me with a much smaller image than I wanted, more square than landscape. I widened the canvas and selected a strip of canvas with the marquee tool. I then used the free transform to stretch out the white wall on the left side of the image and finished with a little blending using a soft brush to deal with the artifacting that the Free transform left me with.

From there, I moved onto cleaning up the rest of the image and making it a bit more presentable. You can see my various layers and layer masks on the right that I've used to complete the final image.



Here's a shot of the work flow:



Generally, I was looking to add a little punch and sharpness to the image. It was taken on my old 30D, 28-135mm lens and my 580EX bounced off the ceiling. I needed to fiddle with the levels, and he hues a bit to offer a more accurate representation of Carly's skin. All in all, pretty basic on the editing front, nothing particularly crazy going on. I did learn a bit more about using layer masks, something that I've really not used to this point in my work flow process.

I think the point here is that just because you don't like the WHOLE original image, it doesn't mean you can't take part of it, and make something out of it. I really think this is a weakness of mine that I really need to work on. Too often, I write off an image looking at the whole thing, rather than thinking in terms of what actually is pretty good about it, and then moving forward with that aspect of the image and creating something pretty good.

Finally, I'd advocate for taking a second look through your old work - Too many times, I'll shoot, and disregard most of the work and only use a couple shots rather than thinking a bit more dynamically about what I captured.

Thats all for now!

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Beard Removal Project - Technical

For my more technical followers, here's the breakdown on the setup for my Mini Project in Black and White.

The setup and work flow is really fairly simple for this set/project. My main goal was to go for simplicity because I wanted each shot to look exactly the same as far as the post treatment/black and white conversions went.

First, the camera/light setup:


Look here for some additional notes on the setup:


The flash was high just right of the camera; The flash tripod and the camera tripod were RIGHT next to each other. The flash was a 580EX at 1/8 +.7 power through a white shoot through 42in umbrella. White reflector below for fill. I had a large white roll of tag board behind me for the backdrop.

Camera settings were...
Canon 5D
50mm 1.8
f/4.5
125th
ISO125
"Standard" in camera processing
shot in raw

I dumped the shots into CS3 and the fiddled in the canon Raw editor, documenting my settings (secret! ha!) and then opened in CS3. I created an action with the look and feel I wanted and then applied it to all the shots for consistency.

To create the grid, I opened a new blank canvas in CS3 with the required dimensions to leave a space between (1200x800 times 3 in each direction with an extra 200 pixels on either end totaling 3800x2600) the shots and then just copied each shot and pasted onto the blank canvas. I Merged the layers and did a final tweak on the levels for a little more punch.

Here's the final -


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Mini Project in Black and White

Well its been some time now since I offered a proper write up on my photography doings and this little project is more than enough reason, and its got a nice little story to go along...so here goes.

I grew a beard. It itched. I was lazy and didn't feel like shaving it off and my girlfriend kinda liked the look so I kept it around despite a few odd looks and comments at the office. Time passed, moons came and went (ok well maybe just one) and so it was time to shave it off.

I don't share many traits with elephants but a good memory is one of them (my friends may disagree with me on this) and I recalled my good friend Nick who after having been sick for a week and had a solid start on a beard, thought to shave it off in stages, taking cell phone pics along the way. I decided to steal his idea when the time came to shave of my beard and here's what we've got.

I consulted my girlfriend on the idea and she was super excited to help. This mini project also would be a great chance to test out a lighting setup for another project 'Friends' that I'm about to start (more on that later). So we disassembled my apartment and got my 'studio' setup and Liz thought of some questions. She did an awesome job at asking me provoking questions and timing the shots getting some awesome expressions. I've never had so many 'keepers' in a single set of shots - huge thanks to Liz for this.

We had a great time getting the shots and watching her reactions to my various states of facial hair was awesome (she apparently doesn't like goatee's - she about ran out of the room when she saw me with it).

Today we finally had a bit of time to settle down and pick out the shots to use and I dumped them into photoshop and did the (rather simple) edits. I will make another post on the lighting setup and the work flow breakdown for this project in a separate post.

Enjoy!

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_____________________________

Teaser

I grew a beard in December and I've since shaved it off...however not before a little inspiration. I shaved it off in phases, taking a few pics of each phase and each look. Liz and I are working together (she's the photog this time) on putting it all together. This is just a little taste of what's coming.

Also - This was also a test session for another up-coming project I'll be putting together - interviews with close friends with pics along the way. More on that later!

A few randoms

A few randoms from the past few days -

A Study In Black and White Pt. II

So I've been trying to work on two specific aspects of my photography:

1) Shooting more/Taking my camera everywhere
2) Getting good looking black and whites

When I take my camera with me I take my 5D and my trusty 50mm 1.8 lens Read about The Most Important Lens here. I figure if I mess up the lens, its only $90 bucks...wish I could say the same for my 5D...but if that gets broken or stolen, its the perfect excuse to go get a 5DMKII :)

Most importantly, the setup is light and for the most part, people aren't intimidated by the small lens. Its the weirdest thing...people see a big lens on a camera and 1)ask questions 2)run from the field of view and 3) notice you (see #'s 1 and 2). These are all bad things when you're trying to get candid shots of whatever's going on around you. You don't want people to notice you and your big ass lens/camera because when they do, people get self conscious or they want to jack your gear.

So I took my camera with me to get coffee with my buddy Tyler this morning. We got caught up and then made way for Guitar Center...what else do you do on a Saturday?

Sure enough, Tyler started wailing away on one of the guitars and checking out some prospective amps...needless to say, the strings were smoking when he was done and all the other customers gave up and left the store knowing that they might as well give up having heard Tyler.

Prime picture taking session-

1) Dude is in his element and having a good time
2) Something is HAPPENING...there's the feeling of action and excitement
3) Cool backdrop that adds to the situation and help tell the story (when you see the wall of guitars, you know he's shopping around for a new axe)

These things add up to help make the ordinary a little more interesting.

A couple final notes -

I've been experimenting with not looking through the viewfinder. I tend to prefer what I get when I guess on my composition. In this instance, I held the camera out with my left hand and roughly pointed it at Tyler and took the shot. I used the light meter just prior (I shoot manual mode) to get the exposure about right and then reached my arm out and snapped the pic. It gives me a cool imperfection and an angle that I couldn't have gotten without making a fool of myself and being noticed and in so doing, missed the shot.

Finally, I dropped the shot into CS3 and used about 9 different layers to get this final product. Chanel Mixer/Dodge and Burn/Contrast/Liquefy/Exposure/Chanel Mixer2/Levels/Curves/Sharpen. Now I'm not saying this is the best method to getting killer black and whites...I know this still needs a lot of work but I figure it may help some of you. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the channel mixers and the levels/curves layers to get what I wanted. Here I was looking for a good balance of white and black (well duh - but seriously, looking for 'punch') and to minimize any 'muddiness' in the mid tones.

Enjoy!

Working on Black and Whites

I've been spending more and more time scouring flickr and my eyes keep landing on black and whites that really pop. So I've been trying to get my own black and whites to get closer in quality to those that really catch my eye on flickr.

Queue carrying my camera with me more often... So I was driving to my grandparents and my camera was in the passenger seat...so I decided to get a couple self portraits while behind the wheel...dont try this at home.

So this is what I got - I'm pretty happy with my black and white conversion.

A few comments -

I used the channel mixer to get to black and white, and spent a fair amount of time fiddling with the sliders finding a combination that I liked. I wanted to boost the general level of light without blowing out the detail in my face and keeping the blacks nice and dark.

I used some vector masks for curves, levels and the channel mixer as well. I created a new layer for my eyes since they had become pretty dark and repeated the same process to the layer for my eyes and a little dodging for a touch more light. My right eye looks weird with the reflection and it being out of focus but I like the outcome with my left eye.

I threw a high pass filter to add some kick to the detail/sharpness of the entire picture.

As for the composition, I was just guessing, setting the camera on the dash... so on that front, I like what I got - Its not perfect which I think makes things more dramatic and interesting to look at. But I don't like how blown out the rear window is. It draws the eye away from the subject of the photo (your eye is generally drawn to the brightest spot in the photo) and my goal is to draw attention to the subject of image rather than the most boring part...more work to be done, more learning to be had. Next time.

Shot on my 5D w/ 50mm 1.8 processed in Photoshop CS3