More editing fun

I take a TON of photos, but I've always been a little afraid to do much more than crop them. Had some fun this week playing with some of the editing options in Photoshop CS2....not sure how often I'd use them, but it was fun to try them out! First....here's an edit of a shot I took a long time ago while taking the ferry across Lake Champlain. I like the original well enough....but I played with it a little and really liked the result I got using the "Neon Glow" option.



Next is a portrait I took of my son Cody....I still don't really know how I got the White Balance so wrong. I use a tool called the Expodisc to help set custom WB before every series of shots in changing lighting conditions. Apparently I got something wrong this time. And.....I didn't shoot in RAW even though I could have. DAMN!! Well, all I could do was play with the RGB levels and get it close to acceptable. Still not good enough to print I don't think, but it gives an idea of what can be done by hand....even by a hack.




Then I wanted to try something a little more challenging. I shot a John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band (the guys that did the soundtrack for the Eddie & The Cruisers movies) concert this summer and got a few really good shots. I liked this shot of Michael "Tunes" Antunes, Cafferty's sax player. Last week I posted a couple examples where I cut a player from one background and posted it onto another. So.....for this shot, I wanted to really make the person stand out on the same background I had cut him from. I found a cool way to do that, using the Artistic/Plastic Wrap option in CS2. I created a duplicate copy of the original and then applied the Plastic Wrap.. then I cut "Tunes" from the background using the eraser tool. Once I had that done cleanly, I dragged him back on to the original and covered his original position. Whatcha think?

Combining photos

I have served as "Official Team Photographer" for the Vermont Ravens semi-pro football team for the past two seasons and this is an example of the individual collages that I did for each player (hopefully this is acceptable for the assignment). I used the team photo for the background by fading it so that it didn't compete with the player I was making it for. I took a photo of each player and cut them out using the lasso tool and erasing the background of the original. Then I copied the cut out player to a new layer on top of the team photo and added the player name and number. The players seemed to like them.

A contrast in Capitols

Spent Sunday in Manchester, New Hampshire with my football team and went in to Concord after to take a few shots of the Capitol Building, in the rain unfortunately. So... went to Montpelier today to have something to compare them to. Not for any assignment...just because....

Landscapes

By definition, landscape photos are an expanse of scenery visible in one capture (or something close to that). With that in mind, here are a few of mine. The top photo is a capture of Camel's Hump at sunset. I tried to follow the rule of thirds, while allowing a little more silhouette. The waterfall photo was shot using a Neutral Density filter (these act like really strong sunglasses and cut down the light significantly, allowing the use of slower shutter speeds). I like the angle of the tree limb and think that it adds a lot of depth to the shot. The photo of the fog I tried to create a diagonal in the viewers mind between the trees because of the angle and how that affected their positioning.

I am hopeful that I can get out tomorrow and shoot a couple more...will update my blog if I can.

Framing slideshow

Have seen TONS of awesome examples in my classmates work of nature's little frames. Decided to focus most of my effort on finding man-made examples and then threw in one that Mother Nature made for us.

Rule of Thirds....by example

My goal was to highlight the tree in relation to the rest of the cemetery. In the first shot, I centered the tree like we all grew up doing....I think we did it that way because with film cameras, there was no "delete" button....we only got one chance to capture the subject. Put it in the middle of the viewfinder and we were more likely to get it. Not very artisitc...but effective.

In an effort to bring a little more life to the shot, I changed my angle a little and allowed the expanse of the area to show up a little more. By moving the tree over the left third of the photo, I've created a much larger scene.

Composition - The Diagonal Rule

The "Diagonal Rule" says that diagonal elements or lines generally make a photo more dynamic. Be creative - use roads, tree branches, river banks etc. When shooting cool subjects, I always try to play with this idea and have ended up with some interesting results. Here's a photo of Alan Jackson in a little different way than he is usually seen.

Color Schemes

"Think" that these two fit the assignment. Wanted to capture two very similar things using different color scheme techniques. I shoot a lot of car shows....and never thought much about the differences in the flames on the cars I see. Think that these photos demonstrate them. The photo marked "Analgous" shows a paint scheme where the flames goes from yellow-orange-red and the photo marked "Complimentary" shows a flame outlined in orange on a blue background.

Week 4: Lighting Effects

Kept waiting for decent weather...realized I better just make do. So....here are four photos of the same object taken in different lighting conditions. Each is labeled but here's a little more information. I make reference to my "light-tent" often....here's a video thing I made to show how I made my tent. I started a group on Flickr a few years ago and made this video for that, but thought you might find it useful as well. Sorry if I swear in it (can't remember, but probably). Light tent construction

So...in the first example, I set up the light tent as I normally would but then had my flourescent light shine through a red screen to add a little bit of color to my subject. For the 2nd photo, I used the light tent without the colored screen. In the 3rd photo, I used the light tent but shot it using a Gary Fong Lightsphere Cloud Diffuser I love this thing for portraits....and anytime you really need clean light and control of shadows. For my 4th photo, I took my subject out on the porch and shot it in natural light. Not big changes in how I shot them.....but some pretty noticeable differences in the results!