A Photo Shoot For A Friend

A friend agreed to allow me to shoot her family here recently. She has a little boy just younger than my son. Her youngest daughter is my older daughter's age, and her older daughter is my step-daughter's age. It was so much fun to shoot someone outside my family.

I was itching for some new equipment after that. It really made me wonder how you achieve professional studio lighting without breaking the bank. Here are some of my favorites from the shoot. Most of my successful shots were shot with my flash bounced off the ceiling or else they were super closeups of the baby under my lights. My lights are 250watt each and while they seem to blind the subject, they don't end up being nearly bright enough for moving subjects.

Her baby boy is an absolute doll.

Playing Around

I've been playing around with Photoshop tonight. Mostly, I've been playing around with this tutorial:

http://pshero.com/photoshop-tutorials/photo-effects/calculations-and-colorization

The tutorial is all about converting to black and white using Image > Calculations, and then adding a gradient to the black and white image.

The Calculations method of converting to black and white is really dramatic and super easy. There are so many interesting methods of converting to black and white. One of my other favorites, I write about here:

http://createdforinspiration.blogspot.com/2009/03/black-white-baby-portrait.html

But, this method seems simpler to me and gives you a different result.

Of course, you can also simply:

Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Or,

Image > Mode > Grayscale.

Or,

Create An Adjustment Layer (Round Black/White circle at the bottom of your layers pallette) and choose Black & White from the pull down menu, and play with the sliders.

Or,

Create An Adjustment Layer and choose Channel Mixer. Then, click the Monochrome box in the Channel Mixer and play with the sliders.

Here are some images I made tonight with the Calculations and Colorization tutorial listed above. I used the exact tutorial on my flower pictures. Then, I used the high contrast black and white conversion using Calculations to adjust some photos that never quite showed the full range of colors or contrast that I saw with my eyes, using different blending techniques (soft light and overlay and different combinations of opacity for various layers).

Even enhanced here in Photoshop, this photo didn't do justice to the BLUE, BLUE stream I saw here at Yellowstone. Unfortuneately, we drove by it at noon day and then stopped by when the light was lower in the sky. The irradescent blue bacteria in the stream were really cool.

Truly, the Grand Prismatic pool at Yellowstone has all these colors and more. It's a sight to behold. Make sure, if you ever go to Yellowstone, to stop at this one.

Girl - Fix It Friday

It is another Fix It Friday over at I Heart Faces.

I had a lot of fun with this image. The subject has such contrasty features, it was really fun to see Photoshop bring them out with a few edits.



Here is the original:

Here is a Sepia Edit:

I thought this photo especially lent itself well to adding sepia.

Here is my first Color Edit:

Here is my Textured Color Edit:

Fix It Friday - Little Girl & Doll

It's Fix It Friday over at I Heart Faces. This picture with the girl and her doll is precious, and captures perfectly what being a little girl is about. I have two renditions for Fix It Friday: one with increased contrast, texture, and a text; the other in black and white.

Here's the original.

Here's the color "Fix It".

Here's the black and white.

I Heart Faces - Angles

This week's theme at I Heart Faces is angles. So, I submit a photo I took at an interesting angle. This photo was taken just after a late spring rainstorm and jumping in puddles and being silly is a lot of fun after it rains. So, I got a lot of fun photos on this particular day.

Photoshop Shapes

I came across a Photoshop Shape Tutorial. Photoshop actually has quite rich shape features. They are a lot of fun to play with.

Here is the link:

http://www.showandtell-graphics.com/fun-with-shapes.php

Here are some images I made with the technique:

I Heart Faces - Bundled Up

I Heart Faces theme this week is "Bundled Up". This photograph popped right into my mind. It is one of my absolute favorites. I love the rich tones and the sweet moment in time when my littlest girl was all bundled up. Although we had no snow to speak of this year, I think this photo describes that theme perfectly.

Enhancing Skies

Thanks to Marla, I learned a second method for enhancing dull skies. Part Two of this tutorial: http://www.layersmagazine.com/exposure-blending-in-photoshop.html

This technique is also good for high contrast photos that have heavy shadows and heavy highlights. It brings out the details in the photos that are typically missing in deep shadows or bright highlights.

Basically, by opening your RAW image as a Smart Object, you are able to create a second version of your image which you can adjust with Camera Raw. Then you apply a adjustment filter to it, to hide portion where you want to use the original settings from your first Camera Raw version of the photo.

I compared this to the other technique I learned for enhancing skies...which is to add a second layer at 50% grey, apply color burn, and make an adjustment layer to get back your original image for the non-burned layer.

Just for fun, I played around with these two techniques to compare them. I took an old photo from Hawaii and applied the two techniques. Basically, the Camera Raw/Smart Object version seems to restore the actual details of the sky. The Color Burn version seems to be an artistic addition to your photo. It produces slightly unreal colors in the sky...but color popularly seen in digital photography today. Here are the versions...

Original

Camera Raw/Smart Object

Color Burn (again this technique brought out the noise, so I ran the Noise Filter on it when done)

Neat Trick - Enhancing Skies

OK. Here's a neat trick that I read about in one of my Photoshop books. If you have a washed out sky, you can darken or intensify the sky pretty easily. I did notice that it intensified some of the noise of my original picture, but the effect was minimal and my camera typically has some noise with sky pictures.

• Add a layer above your picture and fill it with 50% gray
  
• Choose a Blend Mode of Color Burn. (To get to Blend Mode right click on your 50% gray layer and choose Blending Options. Blend Mode is one of the top pull down menus.
  
• So that the rest of your picture isn't darkened too much, make an Adjustment Layer (the "square with a circle in it" icon at the bottom of your Layers Palette) and using a soft black brush, fill in the areas of your photograph that aren't the sky.
  
• Adjust the opacity of the 50% Gray Layer as necessary.
  

Here are a couple screen prints of the process, followed by a before and after shot of a enhanced sky on a photo.

This was the original.

This was the enhanced version.

This was the enhanced version with Noiseware Community Edition run on it.

A Few Pictures

I saw my middle girl outside today without any shoes and I had to run outside and try and capture her. This is so my daughter. As soon as she learned to take off her shoes, if the car ride was over five minutes long her shoes would be off. And, while it was a "warmer" day today (in the fifties) those are cold, red feet. She was out there for well over an hour without those shoes on.

My oldest daughter makes the greatest of faces and totally ignores me when I come around with a camera.

And, while not the most engaging picture, this picture means a lot to me, because it shows the shear curli-q-ness of my toddler.