myfineprint.net

So, I tried out Photoshop a few days ago.  Never really found much use for it really, but then I started playing around with some actions here and there.  This is the result of that day.

 Over all I’m pleased with both the photograph itself and the corrections made to it.  This was shot on a greenscreen in my living room, single light source (Canon speedlight 199A shot into a silver 46 inch umbrella) set to the camera right with the center of it just below the chin.

f/10, 1/200, iso-100, 55mm

I had gone out to look at the scenery when I saw a gull sitting on this fence. I took my camera out to get a good close up picture when this other gull came flying by and disturbed him. I was lucky enough to be fast and got a picture of the two of them flying off.

f/5.6, 1/20, iso-100, 40mm

 Over exaggerating your light. So, we went to Seattle last weekend and it was dark by the time we got back to the boat. This staircase is outside of the Harley shop on 1^st Street. I put the flash on the ground and aimed it up at the subjects. At first I was trying to take a serious picture, but after I saw the affect of the picture I abandoned that and went with this theme instead.

I told them to look pissed off, Rhiannon was starting to crash as it was so it worked out good for her.

f/5.6, 1/400, iso-100, 55mm

Patience. Learn to wait for the shot you want. I waited for about 15 minutes before sending Daemian up to the lamp post to scare this gull off of it.

I think it turned out alright. Not really sure what to learn from this, but it was pretty, so I’m sharing.

f/5.6, 1/250, iso-100, 55mm

My inspiration for writing has diminished, partly due to work load… Meaning that I take 20 pictures at a time then put them all in at the same time, or slack it off till I’m behind on putting them in that it becomes to cookie cutter to really say much about them.

The next few images are ones I took that teach me the same basic thing. Lighting. A picture, when taken with an on body flash has the tendency to look flat. The light comes from the exact same angle as the camera and leaves the subject lit full from the same angle. Where this is some times good you have no shadow definition. The picture becomes “blah.”

Its possible to take a very nice picture this way, its just not the norm. This picture is one of the first serious pictures I took with my new lighting set up. You can see that the flash was set to the right of the subject, about 45 degrees maybe closer to the 50 degree range. The flash was about 10 feet away and a foot or more higher. This allowed for the eye sockets to not over shadow but still allowed for some of the facial features to shadow and define them selves. Something that would have improved further on this picture is to have the gold or silver reflector pushing the light back into the right side of the image. That would have cleared up the slight shadowing on the subjects left eye while still allowing for the definition in the mouth cheeks and nose to exist.

f/5.6, 1/50, ISO-200, 55mm, exposure bias -1/3

 This is my favorite picture out of the session. The color in the back ground is all kinds of neat and her expression is very natural. A reflector, or an off camera fill flash would have been useful here. It could have gone about 3 feet to my right and lightened up under her chin and the left side of her face. I think it would have made her stand out against this back ground a little better, and made for a stronger picture all together.

f/5.6, 1/125, iso-800, 55mm

I am not sure why, but teeth and lips have always fascinated me. Not in any depraved way, I just love how they look. So Thaydra was dressed up like a witch for Halloween and I was messing around with my camera just randomly taking pictures of people and I saw something in my LCD that I liked. So I had her shut her eyes and open her mouth just a little bit… This is what came out of it.

There is some make up adjustments down in LightRoom with the heal / clone tool. Nothing major, the lipstick was starting to fade and blot so I fixed it.

f/4, 1/40, ISO-200, 75mm

 Compisition is on today’s lesson. The specific rule is never draw a line into the models head. Much like this one here, I was conscious of the line and I for sure did not want it there. If I had been thinking more about it I would have been able to realize the ledge behind me. I would have been able to use the zoom on the 75-300 lens and the mono pod attached to my tripod. By giving my self a higher vantage point I would have eliminated the rock wall gap behind her and this would have been a much stronger picture.

f/4, 1/30, ISO-400, 27mm

 I have no real lesson from this picture, if you look at it long enough you can come up with a few things.

 Lighting being one of them; it was a very dark room and this picture was taken from about 2 feet with the on camera flash. The camera was tilted to the left, and the candy fiend was jumping at the camera. Given a shorter focal length and a slower shutter speed I would have been able to put him all in light, instead of just his smiling happy face.

f/4.5, 1/40, ISO-200, 37mm

As part of my ongoing endeavors to become a photographic master mind I came across this young lady with aspirations to be a super star on the Holly Wood walk of fame.

 We decided to meet in Gig Harbor for today’s photo session, being that I know nothing really of Gig Harbor, I left the house pretty early to go spot shopping. I found a nice little spot right in the heart of old town Gig Harbor. The Threshold Group has offices there; they have an eco friendly rooftop garden with a few fountains in it and some water plants. It’s quite lovely really so that is where I set the shoot.

 What does this picture teach me? Cropping, mainly. I had the frame to wide in the original image so this one is cropped down quite a ways. Where this is not a bad thing for a web image, and not bad for THIS image specifically, its something I need to watch. There will be times where you need the biggest possible image you can get. This picture would have been a disappointment in that time.