Don't Loose Hope

When you are shooting people, there are always going to be angles that might turn out to be less flattering than others. I am not going to show the original image because that would not be nice. On this engagement shoot we were at a lighted bridge that covered a creek and had Samantha climb up on the beam that represents the hand rail. I was shooting just slightly off her back and the six in with rail was not kind to her bottom side. With the camera angle and the rail doing unkindly things, her rump was not only not right, it did not represent her true figure. None of this was her fault and during the initial selection she rejected it.
Not content with here rejection, I later brought it back and worked on it to see if I could make lemonade from what she thought was a lemon.

I really like the look over the shoulder look because of what it does to the head-neck-shoulder line. Given another chance and I don't know why I did not see it during the shoot, I would move her hair off of or straighten it over her shoulder.

After strategic cropping and some retouching, Samantha was really happy with the image. Moral of the story, don't give up on an image until you have taken a closer look.

Take care all... Doug

Engagement Round Two

Between being gone and running over to Wisconsin for an exploratory venture for the wedding shoot, I have been one busy boy. I was able to finish editing the engagement photos and upload them to the lab for a first round of prints including a spiral bound print book. Samantha really loved the images but with anyone has her own taste. I had provided a series of images with different treatments for her to select from. The one of her backlit by the sun she liked but thought her eyes needed to pop a little more. Definition was definitely in order.

The only known way to do this right was a trip to photoshop. Most of what I wanted to do in PS I can do in Lightroom but removing improving the area below her eyes and make an adjustment to her arm would require a trip to Photoshop. You can see in the image below Samantha's eyes show much more contrast between the highlights and shadows. This is the definition that draws the viewers eyes.

When an image has as much light in the background as the one above, you would normally think you eyes would be draws to the brighter light. The secret here is to to create a funnel of contrast that draws the view into the eyes of your subject. Ad to that some nice sharpening to the eyes and you mind is compelled to look into the eyes.

Samantha is a very slender lady, but even with that, the camera does bad things to body parts. She asked if I could work on her arm in the foreground so it does not look as large. Thus my other reason for jumping into Photoshop. A couple of clicks in the liquify filter and her arm looks like it really does rather than how the camera compressed it.

Here again, the big, big key is moderation. A little bit of Liquify goes a long, long way. Tomorrow I will have another image that was an example of not loosing hope in your imagery.

Take care for now... Doug

Should you shoot your children?

Shocking, just shocking I tell you! What kind of post title is that? Shooting your children!

Ok it might be a little title shock but the topic is real. Many of today's photographers got their start by taking images of their children and that is a fine way to hone your craft. This usually works great until the kids hit pre-teen and then it is revolution and uncooperative time. Give it a few more years and they are ok with it. When photography starts to hit the pocketbook then they are really ok with it. When it comes to wedding photography I would imagine it could get a little dicey.

This is where I am. My youngest son and his fiancé asked if I wanted to shoot their wedding. I had to think about it and then asked them one question. Did they want me to shoot it because they liked my images or did they ask because they did not want to hurt my feeling as a photographer.

From the images I have taken of them they really like what they see. This was a good answer. Now I had to ask myself a question. Did I want to do that much work at their wedding or just sit back and enjoy the time. Was it going to be to weird photographing my son's wedding? Finally would it interfere with my participation in the wedding. The answers were yes, no, and no. What does the father of the groom do anyhow other than walk down the isle behind his wife being ushered to her seat. As far as weirdness, it will be different but a great honor to do.

So the next thing to do was get some engagement photos as their wedding is this August. This seems like an aggressive timetable but they are both of the mindset that wedding planning is dragged out too long and they don't want to delay the inevitable. They have been in a close relationship for over three years so there is no issue there.

So last Saturday we went driving around to a couple of different location and got some nice images.

These two were actually take last and the sun was already gone so the use of a tripod was in order. I was using the 5D Mk II with an EF 24-70 f/2.8 L mounted. Exposure was 1/13 second at f/5.6 and an ISPO of 1600 while the focal length was dialed in at 35 mm. I did use a flash to expose the coupe and the 1/13th second was definitely dragging the shutter.

This image was shot on a little lighted bridge earlier but the sun was not a factor except for illumination. This was more of a plain Jane image but I played with it in an iPad App and came up with this cepia-grunge look using a little selective focus.

Time will tell about shooting the wedding but we are all looking forward to the event.

I'll keep you posted, take care... Doug

Vacation's Over... Back to work!

I have had a nice break from the regular routine and it is now time to set to plan things for the fall. While summer is not even near over, senior pictures are right around the corner. Not that I have been slacking while on vacation or anything it has been quite the opposite. My time off back in March was spent slacking.

This past couple of weeks have been very enjoyable because we have had an opportunity to get to know our future daughter in law a bunch more. We made a trip to Chattanooga TN to pick up the rest of her stuff and then turned around and spent a week out in Maryland with our daughter, her family and our oldest son. Two days after we got back from MD Evelyn took off on a bike trip (as a cook) with the youth group from our church.

Photographically I have not been totally asleep either. In MD I had an opportunity to do a baby shoot, then in TN I did some pictures of my son and his fiancé. To cap that off this past Saturday evening I did the engagement session for the happy couple.

We visited a number of different locations and while on the way to one I remembered an abandoned barn that I had scoped out previously. As we were pulling up the lane, I noticed the rapidly disappearing sun and asked Samantha to come down the lane. Getting the sun to backlight subject with the proper amount of fill flash is one of the most beautiful lighting condition in photography.

The real key is to use the right amount of fill flash. Enough to fill while maintaining the shadows. Camera specs on this shot; Gear- Canon 5D MkII w/EF24-70 f/2.8 USM lens. Exposure- 1/640 sec at f/2.8, focal length of 42mm with an ISO of 320.

I'll put up some other images of what I have been up to in the next few days.

Take care for now... Doug

Many Parts Make The Whole

I was watching a Photovision video and there was a photographer in Salt Lake City by the name of Busath that was selling multi shot panoramic prints of large family photos. There is a very structured technique to do this properly but the best I had to play with was from the directory shoot I did for our church last year. I still had the images on my MacBook Pro (let's not go there) so I pulled in the pastoral staff to see what I could come up with.

The screen grab below shows the layer stack for the image.

I am not going to go into the technique but the background I used was for the individual shots were good for that purpose but it required me to completely pull the families off the background. onOne's Mask Pro struggled because there was just not enough contrast between some of the hair and the background. Photoshop's quick selection tool and Refine tool was the best ticket but still required a good dose of tough-up selection.

Anyhow the image weighed in at 1.06 Gigabytes. The jpeg file for print at 240 dpi still came in at 24 Meg. This tuned out to be a 15 inch by 64 inch image. I can just see it in canvas in the churches office.

If you have ever heard about sharpening needs to be the last thing you do before exporting or printing. When I am in Photoshop I like to use the High pass filter for sharpening. Here is what you end up with when you sharpen and then resize.

This was not an issue at all in this case because it was just one click to turn off the sharpening layer.

This week will get crazy really quick. I get home and leave the next day be there for our granddaughters birth. on Friday.

Take care for now... Doug

In The Moment

This could go up on a wall as black and white art and no one would be the wiser. What it is though is a well along young lady looking forward to her delivery date. The silhouette of her  curves gives the image a yin-yang feel to it.

There is something special about a pregnant women. Special may not be the correct term but it more or less covers the range of emotional, psychological, and physical attributes that comes with pregnancy. I cannot even imagine the flood of female stuff that goes on in their minds but after three children I do appreciate what they go through and how the attachment with the child is so strong in the ladies. Must be why it is call maternal rather than manternal instinct cause we just don't get it. So in my little way I can use my skills to help a young mother or mother to be appreciate the life that is growing inside of her.

Here we have a nicely lit vase this is waiting flowers... NOT! It is the same pregger belly in the previous shot with a different twist. Creatively cropped in front of a folding divider lit from behind by natural light gives it a vase like look. Here is another image that could be used as a birth announcement.

All the images were shot with a Canon 5D Mk II with an EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM lens. Lighting was by Westcott lights. You can see in tomorrows post how the lighting was done.

Take care all... Doug

New Viewing Process

Yesterday I alluded to a new process of viewing that I have come up with (no doubt someone is doing the very similar thing but in my world I though of it so 'm claiming it as mine) for viewing images online without having to retouch every single image. There is something to say about only showing you best work, on the other hand, I have a life and would like to spend some quality time with my family. So here it is.

After a session I color correct crop and sharpen in light room and export the images to a SmugMug folder. That in turn is uploaded from within SmugMug and they look like the image below.

This is a 72 dpi image for fast display and uploading. Lightroom has a wonderful Publish Service panel that sends files directly to SmugMug and I do use that but not at this point as LR will not send the files with the watermark. There is a slight chance that I just have not figured out how to also. Anyhow these images can be viewed by clients for selection only. Once they have notified me of which ones they want, I will go ahead and retouch those. At that point I take down the proofs and publish the full size images for purchase and downloading depending on how they are ordering as my SmugMug pricing is higher than my direct to the client pricing.

Following the show your best work logic I provide a few images that I feel are the really nice ones and post them (also downsized) with a gold PF in the lower right corner of the image. This way I let the client know that those are images that the finals will look like. Kind of a teaser. Here is an example.

This seems like a much more practical use of time as retouching fifty plus images is time consuming especially when only ten or fifteen images will be used on average.

Hey that was a little insight into how I am morphing the business into an organized process.


Take care all... Doug

Week In Review

Last week from a flying standpoint was a breeze. Two days home, one travel, one work, another travel, one standby at the airport then yesterday was a checkride and airline flight home. This will get posted in the morning but right now I am in LaGuardia waiting for my flight to Grand Rapids. Every time I tether by phone to my laptop at an airport my mind goes wee, it's free free free.

I was able to get a bunch of editing done on a number of shoots I have done over the past couple of weeks which was nice to get caught up a little. Here are some of the images from those sessions.

The first one is a family from the Church Directory shoot and I got to playing around with changing the color of the background in Lightroom. This is not the color we are using in the directory, it is more of a grey lit with two strobe with full CTO gels giving the background a rusty look.

This was a Allan and Ava which are part of my marketing department because the spread the word really good. I had a roll of white seamless under the background and had them show up before the evening onslaught of shooting began. I wanted to do some high key shooting and it turned out well.

This is the other family in my marketing department. Mom just wanted the kids pictures and did not want to be a part of it. This was actually shot on the same white seamless. A trip to photoshop is all it takes to pull them out of the image and place a background in behind them. The gold PF in the lower right corner is a watermark from Lightroom that I am using as part of a selection/workflow process that I am working on.

My daughter Sandy, husband Chris and little guy Levi were in over Thanksgiving so I set up my moonlight background and hit it with a single strobe with a blue gel.

All in all last week was a productive week in one respect or another. This week is at home and I have a number of items on my plate but the one paramount project is the migration to the new iMac which sadly to say is still in it's box :(

Take care all... Doug

Glare-Be-Gone

In my church directory shooting it did not take long to appreciate non-glare glasses. I also had to figure a way to deal with glasses that had a good bit of reflectivity. A catch light looks nice in the iris but a full reflection of an umbrella or softbox in a pair of glasses that obscure the subjects eyes really looks bad.

See what I mean. So how do we work with these types of glasses. If we use the geometry tat the angel of incident light equals the angle of reflective light we can simply position the light so it does not reflect off the glasses. Easier said than done, especially in a limited work space. Glasses can be tilted but can look goofy, the subject can tilt their head done slightly but that can look unnatural. The solution I found works best and only takes a couple of minutes in post is to have the subject remove their glasses and assume the same pose. Shoot off another round and you have the head shot with and without glasses. If the exposure is close (which it should be real close) the work is even easier.

Take both images into Photoshop and make a selection around the non-glassed eyes that encompasses part of the forehead, all of the glasses and some of the cheeks and nose. Command-J to put the selection on another layer then drag that layer over to the image with the glasses headshot. See below.

Alignment can be critical and if the subject has changed the pose, sometimes you will have to split the eyes and do the next sep on separate layers. Now on the eye cut-out change the blending mode to Difference and start to drag the cut-out over the headshot with the glasses. If the pose is very close, most of the cut-out will go dark as it aligns with the other image. See below.

It does not have to be perfect but as close as you can get it. Sometimes you must free transform to rotate the eyes to match up or even split them as I just described. Once you have the images in alignment change the blending mode back to normal.

Now you want to add a layer mask to the eye cut-out and fill the mask with black.

The black mask covers the cut-out and when you paint the mask with a white brush the image beneath the mask will be revealed on the layer.

In the image above you can see that one eye has been exposed on the layer above the glassed eye and white painted in the glass area only. This has the effect of erasing the glare and is really slick. You end up with the image looking like the one below.

One of the problems with this procedure is the shot without glasses is usually a little over exposed in relation to the eyes behind the glasses. To fix this it just takes a slight levels adjustment applied to the masked layer. It is important to make this levels adjustment a clipping mask so the adjustment is only applied to the layer emediately below the clipping mask and not all the layers below.

So why did we make the extra step? Giving the eyes a different exposure will make it look like there is glass in the frames. Compare the image above and the one below.

It does not take much of a levels adjustment to make the difference but you don't want to look too obvious do we. So the above image is the finished product and rather than have you scroll all the way to the top, below is the original image.

When zoomed back out to get the whole head shot, or family portrait, the image will look as natural as can be.

Hope you got something out of this little tip today.

On a posting note, this week we will be having family in and will also be off to other family members for Thanksgiving so I will not be posting this week unless I get extraordinarily bored which I don't think is going to happen.

Cya next week from the road... Doug

It's like Magic

I have seen this piece of software for some time now and have been temped to buy it for a while. The issue I thought I had with the program was in their advertisements. The software is Portrait Professional Studio 9.

I don't have a complete workflow down from Lightroom or Photoshop as it will work as plug-in/external editor for wither of those. It is also a stand alone piece of software which makes it nice for files that are not in the LR database.

Regardless of where the file comes from, when the interface pulls up you are expected to provide some input to the software. Specifically gender and defining points as you can see form the five pints on the face below.

After that the software takes your to each eye/eyebrow, nose & mouth, and finally overall facial geometry. The next three images show this process.

Above is the initial estimated positions based on the relationship of the previously defined five facial anchor points. Below show the points locked down after repositioning them.

Below are the final adjustments on the periphery of the face befor the software starts to work its magic.

And now without further ado, here is what Portrait Professional Studio 9 produces right out of the gate.

Now the fun begins! along the right side isa number of controls that allow total adjustment to what the software just produce. You are able to back off or strengthen any of the adjustments that were automatically made. Here is the control panel condensed.

Here is one of the control modules expanded.

Further you can define or limit some of the objects you want to work with in the image by extending or cutting back the area to be effected by the sliders. Below is an example of the hair having been defined.

Once enhancements have been made and all is said and done, saving the image returns you to Lightroom or Photoshop.

Below is a a before and after example of an already processed image in Lightroom that made a round trip to Portrait Professional Studio 9 and back.

Overall a really nice application fro a specific function but will it ever save some time brushing here and brushing there. Ultimately I think I will use it for specific function and turn off some of the others like the eyes and mouth. I still find the adjustment brush presets I have made in Lightroom do a really good job. From a time standpoint, this application can not be beat.

Take care all... Doug

Kodak Moment - For Real

This post is funny, sad, unbelievable, and audacious all at the same time. Of those adjectives I like audacious the best as it is defined as one showing an impudent lack of respect for another. Of this story that was the bottom line be it intentional or not. I look at it as a funny experience as I had no ulterior motive in my actions. Ok... With all the lead up to this Kodak Moment what in  the world am I talking about.

Sunday I wrapped up my shooting for our churches pictorial directory. One family came in with a disposable Kodak much like the one above. The dad asked if I wouldn't mind taking a picture of them when I was done. My first reaction was "no problem, I'll be glad to." Then I got to thinking, I was not selling the images I was taking for the directory as I considered them high end snap shots. I was not spending a proper amount of time with the "client"/subject for me to consider it professional portraiture. So this guy was looking to use the occasion to snag a family portrait on the cheap.

Here is a sample of the shots I was taking and no this was not the guy with the Kodak.

The setup went like this. The background was side-lit by a pair of Alien Bees B800's at 1/8th power through a 2x CTO gel. The main light was an Elenchrom RX600 set at f/5.6 flashing through a parabolic umbrella on the left side. From the right was another RX600 set at f/2.7 through a Rotalux 39" Mini-Octa softbox as a fill light. Light control was by my little stack of a PocketWizard MiniTT1 on the hot shoe to fire the B800 on the left side with a Plus II transceiver. Stacked on top of the TT1 was the Skyport controller for the Elenchrom's. Here is a picture of the transmitters but you can read the post right here.

The second B800 was triggered by its own built-in slave trigger. I had the RX600 set-up to slave flash also in case I had a problem with the wireless. So back to the story...

I took my two or three shots (I told you it was a high end snap shot) and then grabbed the little Kodak disposable. With the click of the shutter, a pop of the little flash on the camera and all four of my mono-lights popped in all their blinding glory. Hope the dude is not expecting miracles because if he is lucky it will look at best like the one below.

A little over exposed I would presume if not completely white. Guess he will not be looking to benefit from someone else's hard work and investment of time and equipment.

Like I said, I found it to be funny and I thoroughly enjoyed doing the shooting for the church. People are funny though. But thats what makes people different.

Take care... Doug

It's Going to Get Busy - Update 2

Here is one page of the contact sheet in Lightroom from last weeks work on the churches pictorial directory. It started off a little slow last Tuesday night but starting Thursday it took off full swing. I shot for six hours on Saturday and then for a short time before and after the morning services on Sunday. It was first come, first served on Sunday for many of the families that just could not make the evening schedule. The count was up to 19 by the time I left the building at 12:50. Not too bad. So far for last week the count is up to 84 families or individuals. Next week is starting to fill up nicely.

The more I got into the project, one of the biggest question was "Why can't we buy these pictures?" I stood strong on my position that I was giving my time to the church for the directory and the images were not going to be of a photographic quality that I would feel good about selling. Not saying the care taken in posing and composition was at a sub-standard level. It was very much a production line at times. I really did not like not being able to allow myself the time necessary for the level of portraiture I feel is necessary, but the timeframe allotted just did not allow.

That is the position for now, I may take a closer look at the results and if the images are nice enough to reproduce in something more than a directory thumbnail, I may do that. It just is not planned at this time.

When I found out the directories will be printed on the churches color laser printer I just sank inside. I suspected this was going to be the case so I was not surprised but as critical as the print end of the photographic workflow is... I am just nervous about the end quality and how it will reflect on my part. This may be a smidgen narcissistic on my part as I really do not have any control of the out put. Oh well, it will be what it will be.

Take care and cya tomorrow...  Doug

It's Going to Get Busy - Update 1

I had an original thought of naming this post "Biting Off More Than You Can Chew" but it really has not been. What it has been is a serious commitment of time and energy to pull this project off. The project being of shooting families at church for a pictorial directory.

Again Ii certainly do not mind donating my time to this project for the church. As a side benefit, it has been a lot of fun getting to see people in the church that I may not normally see as there are two services on Sunday morning.

I have been shooting between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM at ten minute intervals and that has worked out very well. Only a couple of times have I had people waiting but when I checked the time, they were early and the shoot schedule was right on time. I was even able to squeeze in a call-up at the last minute.

Today was the only day I got a little rushed as I had to do a family shoot before the directory shooting started. We had agreed to meet at the church as this was where all the lighting and background was et up. Arriving at 4:30 the mom was already there with her children and I had to put up a white seamless for this shoot. Rather than taking down the grey midnight muslin I simply took more gaffers tape and secured the muslin to the uprights and removed the hanging rod to slide into the seamless tube. Back up on the stands it worked like a charm and when I was done I simply took the A-clamps and clipped them to the muslin and let their weight take out the sag while over the topside of the seamless.

Of course the 6:00 family showed up at 5:45 which put me into rush mode. BUT! I relied on my flying background that says when you rush, that is when you make mistakes, so I consciously made an effort to slow down and get everything set the way I knew it needed to be.

Being Friday night, there was not a big load on the schedule so I was able to wrap it up a little early, get home, download the files to the Drobo and kick back and watch some TV.

Tomorrow is Saturday and the schedule will be quite busy so it's off to be for now.

Cya... Doug

It's Going to Get Busy

This was the announcement slide that was projected in the lign-up at our church since last Wednesday. The e-mail our pastor put out was titled Pictorial Directory - Not a joke. This was funny as a number of years ago the church accepted an offer by a studio to have a pictorial directory. This became a sales tool for the studio and a bust for the church. When a family had their sitting they were presented with a number of packages order right their. This did not sit well with much of the membership and certainly id not go over with the pastor when he found out there would be no directory form the studio as promised.

Jump forward to present day, the church management software the church uses now has the capability to produce a directory with images. With the ability to produce this document in house, we just needed a photographer. Hmmm... I can do that.

After looking at it more closely, it will be a couple week commitment to get the images captured with my flying schedule and all. It will be a fun time to see as many members come through for photos. In talking with our pastor I proposed what I wanted to do.

It is not about selling prints form this shoot but; I wanted to have a table set up with some simple marketing material displayed so people could ask questions and schedule a session outside of the directory shoot. He had no problem with that so one of the marketing displays I have for this project is shown below.

The idea of this project is to provide jpegs to the church for the directory. They will not be for sale and are not to be distributed for personal use. There are a couple of reasons why we determined this to be the condition.

• To do so would be detrimental to any future income stream.  
• The images will not be retouched as they are not intended to be enlarged but for a photo directory.

The time it would take to retouch to a professional level each of these images would not be a good business decision. When working with families that subsequently employ our services of course we will produce a high level product. Yes we are having special pricing as a promotional during the directory project.

Anyhow it is off and running today. Got to get over to church and set up lighting and such so take care and I'll give an update later in the week.

Cya... Doug

Flower Child

Well this is going to be a short post as I have been buried all week. I have been heavily into graphic development at work and then editing this shoot I did a couple of weeks ago. On the MacBook Pro your wrists rest on a portion of the computer that tends to warm up. Not hot but enough to let you know you have been on the computer for some time.

Anyhow I wanted to get this one up as I it was really the result of some artistic exploration on my part. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. All the flowers are shots I took at the Orchid display at the Hawaiian Botanical Gardens just north of Hilo Hawaii.

Working with the baby files in Lightroom, I was converting some of them to black and white and this idea struck me.

Hey, it was fun and I might shoot flowers at some different angles in the future for a library of 3D looking flowers.

That's it for this week. Cya next week and have a great weekend... Doug