Process Series - Vision

Vision - Compose - Capture - Process - Present

This is the second post but first subject in the Photography Process Series. A last week was the introduction to the series and I hope you will stick around with me. Anytime you would like to leave a comment just e-mail me at doug@peekfoto.com. Here we go!

Vision - What is it, where does it come from, how do we influence it and finally what do we do with it. How about this for a definition.

Vision is the clear mental image of an undefined 


or previously unknown goal.

In the creatives eye it is a sculpture, painting, building, or to a photographer, a image. So why did I include building in that list? Creatives by nature imagine things and see things other people do not. To an architect, the vision is that finalized mental picture of a building

Where - Where does vision come from. Well if it is previously undefined, it must come from the mental inspiration we receive from viewing other created things or beings.

When we look at other creatives work, we often get inspiration. These inspiring thoughts and views help to prompt or awaken our own creative thinking. This is not just a different take on the same image or work, but a whole new idea that the viewing triggered in our own mind. That is vision. You could call it synergy of thought.

How - Here is an example. Writing takes imagination and creativity. If there is no goal set to what you wish to write, you are simply babbling. It might be nicer to call it brain dumping, rambling of ranting if you actually have a point but no course to follow. Kind of what I am doing right now in this paragraph.

Ok, that might be a little simple but hopefully you get the point. There are many ways to gain vision but one thing for sure is not to have your mind full of thoughts of other things in life. Bills, arguments (past and present), relational problems all need to be cleared from your mind if you expect to have any hope of being inspired to gain vision.

Step one - Clear you mind. Some people will meditate, others listen to calming music, unfortunately some turn to drugs. What I do is pray. Giving my thoughts and concerns to God allows my mind to open up to fresh new ideas. Are any of these 100% successful? No! Sometimes we just get into a creative funk. Thats when it is time to step back for a couple of days.

Step two - Observe things that can generate inspiration. A musician might listen to music of other artists of the same style. I occasionally do technical writing and I will read other tech manuals prior to starting a project to get into the mode of writing. Photographers have it easy. There are literally thousands of web sites to peruse to get inspiration for whatever type of photography you are shooting.

Take time to look beyond the facade of what you see. Look at the shadows, the lighting, the detail. What went into the image? If you spend the time you will get a glimpse of what the originator had envisioned. Did you see the gaff on the opening image? Scroll back and take another look if you missed it.

The catch lights are from different directions. A vision is also a malleable entity, never complete until the final touch. In the eyes gaff, when I noticed it (right after I flipped a single eye in Photoshop) it became part of the vision of this posting. Not knowing exactly where it would be used until right now, yet a piece of the visionary puzzle.

Do - Harnessing the creative vision that results in an image or object that others enjoy is a great incentive for the creative mind.

Clear your mind, expose your thoughts, start to imagine an idea and allow a creative exercise turn into a vision.

Next week we will dive into composition.


Take care all... Doug

It All About The Process (Introduction)

Call it Workflow, Process, Task Management or what have you... What ever you call working on a project, it still requires some planning which requires preparation and organization.

When we are talking about a photographic project, be it a simple portrait shoot or a full fledged video production, the following five steps are required.

Vision - Compose - Capture - Process - Present

Actually there are many more points to consider but if I got into all of them here this post would be way too long and I would not have any material for later posts. I will be expanding on these every other Thursday so there will be links to all the other posts on each posting so not to worry if you find this interesting. He we go!

VISION

What I am referring to in vision, it the point of seeing the end before the beginning. You may have no clue what so ever about how you are going to get there but you have a clear idea of what you what the end to be. That is a fairly concise vision.

COMPOSE

We will get into just how the vision is brought to fruition in the composition of people, places and things.

CAPTURE

This point in the process is the joint application of technical and artistic talents of the photographer.

PROCESS

This is not the process in the usage of the term to this point but rather the post processing of the images attained during the capturer stage.

PRESENT

No that the project is done, it is truly not complete until it is in condition to present it to the public. We will hit on this point as well.

So come on back over the next couple of weeks and we can get into it.

Take care all... Doug

Expo - Saturday Summary

The morning started off at 7:30 with Rick Ferro. Rick is a renowned portrait photographer who has worked with the Miami Dalphins made the Walt Disney World people. Rick covered a range of topics including posing, lighting, and business practices.

After Rick spoke, David Ziser introduced one of the most prolific wedding photographers in the world today. Australian born and now living in Southern California Jerry Ghionis took the platform and spoke of relational photography. 

How we interact with our brides and what our mindset is makes all the difference in how we approach our profession. Seeing the person you are photographing through the eyes of a loved one changes how we see and photograph that person.

The afternoon was left to the trade show. There one aspect of the trade show that stuck out to me were the number of processing labs with booths.

Above is the ribbon cutting by David Ziser and his group. Below Sigma made its presents known with some really big Glass. I can't say much for Canon and Nikon which both had booths but really didn't bring anything to the game. No bodies, no lenses, nada!

FJ Westcott lighting brought to the show a really unique opportunity. Using their TD-6 content lights and some really really big softboxes, they set up four shooting stations with models and all. The did this at Photoshop World and brought it into town.

Above is a group of photographs that says it all... Shooting & Chimping! Below is one go the models that were being shot. I took these with my iPhone 4s.

Here is David Ziser who originally was not going to be speaking at the Expo found himself with a Lightroom 4 Beta demo.Being the organizer it is amazing he was abel to carve out the time to present anything. He told us that he was able to get Adobe to come is as a sponsor as long as he did the demo on LR4 Beta. 

The day finished up with another seminar on creativity presented by Joel Grimes. Joel is color blind in that he can not see greens and to be able to produce the beautiful images is not only a credit to him, but the human experience. Joel shared with the group his creative process, seeing the end before you start shooting.

Well, there is a quick update on Saturdays activities. I'll update again tomorrow night.

Take care... Doug

Expo - Friday Summary

 Before I get going with todays summary of the PhotoPro Expo I wanted to put up an image I took last night before I went to bed. This was an iPhone 4s shot from my bedroom window. Post was done in an App called Perfectly Clear. The camera in that phone continues to amaze me.

Friday morning started off with Jason & Rebecca Weaver, their topic was about creating sticky customers. How and what we can do to create a relationship with our customers so the stay our customers. That seminar was held in the Marriott. Most all of the other seminars were held in the convection center. You can see what it looks like below.

Following was the marketing master planner Sarah Petty which presented her BUMP process. The session attendees learned about Branding, Understanding your numbers, Marketing, and Promotional process in managing and promoting your business.

After a break for lunch we were all wowed by the imagery of Vincent LaForet. An amazing and Pulitzer prize winning photographer we learned that the breakthrough video Reverie was his first shooting with a camera that took video. Here is the Canon link if you have not watched it.

I had not gotten very much sleep the night before and I knew if I did not want to fall asleep during one of the seminars I needed a nap. After about an hour of Vincent's look at this wonderful image I have created, I snuck back to my room and took a good nap. When I returned, he was still going at it. They were dazzling images and very inspiring but my sleep deprivation needed attention.

After Vincent LaForet was done, Lindsay Adler came on stage for her presentation.

Lindsay is a New York Fashion photographer and was presenting her work and motivating the attendees to consider a fashion flair in their portrait and wedding photography as an option to provide to their clients.

The day was really getting long and yo could see it in the crowd. The final speaker of the night was Kirk Vuclain. All I will say is the following image explains the rest of the evening,

Kirk was a hoot with plenty of takeaway information. Probably the most entertaining of the entire expo. His message was to make your studio the coolest one in town.

That is going to do it for tonight. Cya... Doug

Expo - Thursday Summary

I found where the photo competition was being held in our hotel and I enter this dimly lit room. A number of people are sitting in the from of the room looking at an image somewhere has entered in the competition. The room is as quiet as a mortuary at a viewing. Suddenly one of the judges calls out a number there starts justifying why that chose that particular number. These end up ranking the image in the competition. They would spend ten minutes on one picture with the photographer describing the emotional connection (or not) they they were trying to express when the captured the photo. Enough for me, I was outta there. I was going back to the room and catch up on some stuff when I ran into the man himself, David Ziser. As he saw me come out of the competition room, I asked home where all he excitement was. David directed me to the second floor.

 This is where stuff was happening. This image was taken a little later as you can see Ziser across the image getting a shot of the group. So take a group of photographers in a hotel they do not have to drive away from, add some beer and wine with a scoring competition and what do you have. A secondary competition only for cash. People would pay $10 to get a dry-erase card to put their name on and when the image was brought up on screen (from the actual competition) people would write down the number they though the judges would score the image. After ten images the one who got the most correct guesses won half the pot. The other half went to the association. It kind of reminded me of the movie Rat Race when all the old gamblers were in the hotel suite betting on wich of the five or so hotel employees hanging from the curtain rods would last the longest. It was fun to watch.

Here is a zoomed shot of David Ziser on the other side of the room. These were taken with my iPhone 4s and run through an app called Perfectly Clear but are still a little noisy as the light was low in the room. 

Tomorrow we start out bright and early at 7:00 so it is off to bed.


Cya... Doug

Expo - Arrival

Today was real a day to get here and get settled. There is a seminar this evening but the real learning starts tomarrow.

I arrived in Cincinnati this morning to attend the PhotoPro Expo 2012. I am super excited as this is my first foray into photoaphic conventionering. I have been to a number of aviation conventions and there is always so much to see in such a compressed timeframe. 

Exiting the airplanes presented a striking image of the economy in this area as seen below.

 When the economy tanked, ComAir had been one of the largest regional airlines in the country meriting their own terminal in Cincinnati. The had been bought out by Delta Airlines while Delta was using CVG as an international hub. Post economic crash, the ComAir terminal was closed and was incorporated into the main terminal.

Enter the Northwest/Delta merger. There goes the international hub. Detroit was already serving that capacity. If the lack of people in the terminal at 10:30 on a Thursday morning does not make it clear, the image below brings even more clarity.

I was able to get a room at the Marriott which was the convention hotel and the one that was directly connected to the Greater Northern Kentucky Convention Center. This was the view I was given from my 12th floor room of the downtown Cincinnati waterfront. 

Once I get going with the various seminars it will be non-stop action here is the line-up for my next few days. 

Thursday 

   7:30-10:00 PM for Youth Sports with John Pittman and Jim Seers

Friday

   7:30-9:00     Client Relations with Rebecca and Jason Weaver

   9:30-12:30   Marketing withnSara Petty

   1:30-2:00     Lightroom 4 Preview with David Ziser

   2:00-5:00     Future of Photography with Vincent Laforet

   5:00-7:00     Fashion with Lindsay Adler

   8:30-11:00   Cool Studio with Kirk Voclaim

Saturday

   7:30-9:00     Lighting with Rick Ferro

   9:30-12:30   Style with Jerry Ghionis

   12:30-4:00   Trade Show

   4:00-6:30     Artistic with Joel Grimes

Sunday

   7:00-8:30      Speedlight with Syl Arena

   9:00-12:00    Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It with Scott Kelby

   12:00-4:00    Trade Show

   4:00-6:30      Surviving with Skip Cohen

I'll have more later... Doug

A Timely Christmas Gift

This all started this past Christmas. Admittedly I am a very hard person to get Christmas presents for. Generally if I have a need and the money is available I will purchase the item. So this past Christmas I was the only one in our family that got absolutely nothing and I was fine with that as I had so much fun seeing the joy on others faces as they opened their gifts.

So in early January, my dear wife suggested I go to this photography she in Cincinnati. This was a shock to me as I have never considered asking her if I can go to these events as I am already away from home so much. I must have been surprised as my reaction did not impress upon her how much I would enjoy this as she asked if I really liked it. The significance of this gift of time has sunk in even further as the Expo approaches.

The next few days I will have some posts regarding the Show and Expo.

Take care all... Doug

Wedding Composite

Every composite image has at it's core a destination where the artist must in-vision the end in order to know how to navigate from the beginning. Sometimes though a composite may arise from the ashes so to speak. Todays post is about the latter and not the former.

In todays example I am using a bride who signed the second verse of a song to he imminent husband. Obviously this can not all be captured in one image so a composite image lends itself to this situation. Here are the steps I took.

First was an image that can be used as a background. Of course the elements obstructing the background must be cloned out in order to provide a clean slate for the subjects in the foreground. One point here is that you may want to wait until you have the subjects positioned in the foreground befor you completely clone out the background. This way you don't have to do as much cloning as the foreground images bloc much of what gets cloned anyway.

In the case above I chose to completely clone out the background subjects so I could use this image another time rather than just for this composited image. From one of the images with the bride and groom I extracted the groom for this image.

All images are on separate layers to allow a logical stacking of the subjects. Below I have the bride in the position she was standing in relation to the groom.

The bride had to be extracted in order to make the stacking of the brides work for the composite. Below is the next image (sign) of the bride.

There are a total of five images of the bride that needed to be extracted from other images. This was a simple but tedious process. Selecting the bride from each of the images and copying them into the composite image was the easy part. Each bride layer had to have a layer mask to isolate the bride from the selection of the original image. This was the tedious part but well worth it to make it half way believable.

These two layers were critical in aligning the brides for the composite. Below you can see how they gave me a reference to each head and shoulder of the bride.

Now comes the tricky part. While the brides are placed in a stack, the overlap of parts must be worked to again make it believable. This first image shows the stack uncorrected. You can see where the vail is blocking the dress and arm of the bride stacked behind.

Through a series of selections, opacity adjustments, the image became more believable. Below is the layer of parts that needed to be added to show some transparency in the vail. (It is shown on a black background so you can better see the example).

Part of the problem I had with the vail is being transparent, it brought over the background from the original image. Some cloning... Ok, a lot of cloning was employed to eradicate the remnant background. The image above is not all on the same layer as that would not have worked at all. Each part has its own layer because it required a different level of opacity to make it realistic.

So now with all the layers on to show the entire sequence we have an almost finished composited image.

This would be fine for a final image except for anyone who was at the wedding, There was a trellis made from branches that set the outdoor scene for the couple. In another image I had extracted the trellis which in and of itself was a monumental task but now I have one. So I dropped it in just in front of the background, did a little free transformation and viol á, a composited image of a beautiful moment in a scenic outdoor wedding. 

Double click on the last image as it will actually get bigger than the other images in the post.

Enjoy... Doug

Two Starts Posting

I thought I would try something that I haven't before. Start a post on my iPad while not in a WiFi area and push it up to the web when I get to my hotel room. Ok, nothing earth shattering here. I did need something to do while sitting at one of my favorite restaurants. That would be Carrabas Italian Grill.

Ok so onto the real post. I said the other day that I would put up a post on the lighting setup for my pregger session. Well, I didn't get to it. Don't you just hate that when someone drops the ball. So it's just a blog and for the ten people who may be tracking ok, I'm sorry.

The shoot was with constant light which used to be called hot lights but with the daylight balanced flouresents available today they are far from hot. They may not have the warm temperature of a 500 watt incandescence that's what the temperature slider is for in Lightroom. Yes I could get some a gell and work it so it would be right in the camera, but technology wins this one hands down.

Here is the setup:

At the top of the diagram is a six foot opening from the studio to a sunroom that is a giant soft box after about 10:00 AM. Normally the opening is closed with a pair of pocket doors so I can work with the studio lights.

A while back I had picked up a sectioned folding divider from Hobby Lobby and have been waiting for the opportunity to use it. The two soft boxes were covering a pair of Westcott TD5 Spider Lights (below) to provide the constant light.

I had replaced one set of five thirty watt bulbs with the fifty watt kit. That left me with five spare bulbs. I also had picked up a Photobasics green screen kit which came with an umbrella softbox with on incandescent bulb. Westcott also sells a unit that is really slick.

It handles the 30 Watt bulbs just fine. It does not put out enough light to light a backdrop but it really shines in product work as a kicker.

Well I got the post in. I have been working on a project that I should have something up here in a day or two.

Take care... 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

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

Back to Work

This tittle has two meaning, first I am back on the road and second I am done with the directory shoot and can focus my energies back into the seniors before it is too late in the season. One of the features I like to do with seniors is to have a customized design using their schools logo and colors. This can be time consuming at times depending on the detail of the school logo or masthead. Here is an example of a web page with the masthead.

Using the pen tool in Photoshop makes a detailed selection real easy. I must say it takes a little practice to master this tool as you learn how much stretch it will take to create the bezier curves that allows a vector mask to be created. See below for the points that re-created the logo for my use.

With the points and segments established you can either establish a selection (marching ants) or a vector mask. I like the vector mask myself as it is only a Command Click away from generating a selection from the vector mask.

The next stage in this image was to get a "letter" style image. The font they use for the letter jackets are popular and identify the senior with their school. So it was back to the web to see if I could find that one. 

This is all I had when I started. Resizing the image to 240 dpi smoothed things out a bit but it was still back to the pen tool to get things under control. The Eagle had came from another image on their website as this one was not going to work at all. Here is the result of the work.

So how was I going to use these elements to get a pleasing result to the client. There is a little back story to this in that the seniors dad had a picture of him holding his Gibson guitar and was interested in having Tyler in the same pose with the same guitar. Here is the layer pallet for the image to follow.

Both the logos were brought in from their own files, the image of Tyler was extracted from a white background and the rest is some tweaks here and there in CS5.

The final image is a mix of these multiple images and some drop shadows and bevel and embossing to enhance the text and I ended up with a 16x20 sized image weighing in at a slender 320 MB.

Hope you enjoyed the journey... Doug