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

It's a Ring Thing

At least for the time being we are not wedding photographers, not that that may not be a direction we take in the future. But for now we will work in the periphery of wedding photography.

Some friend of ours just got engaged and wanted some nice pictures of the engagement ring. Not having taken thee images before I spent some time earlier in the day experimenting with different lighting to see what worked the best. I tried a pair 580 EX2 Speedlites in Lastolite EZ-Box's. As those are soft boxes they did not provide a hard enough light for the sparkle of the diamonds. The flashes by themselves being hard but created double shadows and just was not doing the trick.

Enter the AlienBees™ ABR800 Ringflash. This jewel worked as well as those that were being shot. No shadows and with a 20° grid mounted the light was not going every where. The hand shot was done in somewhat of a duotone fashion to isolate the ring. Lets face it... Even nice petit hands such as Aly's still look harsh under a flash. So in addition to the duotone effect, using Lightroom's adjustment brush I dropped the clarity and sharpness down and painted the hand. The detail that helps here was in the nails. The duotone effect made the nails look flat so I brushed in a little increased exposure to bring the tips back.

We took the ring and slid it though some white nit fabric to just get the ring itself. I had the ringflash dials way down and the aperture at f/16 so the flash would not overpower the ring with the closeness of the lens. If I recall I had the EF 24-105 f/4 IS lens all the way out and moved into the ring until it would not focus then backed off about an inch to catch the focus. It was about 10 to 12 inches from the ring if I remember.

I think Aly enjoyed the process as after the shoot I let the images download to Lightroom while we all had desert. We finished by going through the 60 or so images until we came up with 15 or so that I would further process. While there I did finish off one image so I could e-mail it to her so she could get it up on facebook. The left the house about 11:oo and I noticed on Facebook that at 11:53 she had posted the picture. Guess she was happy with it. Thanks for letting us be a part of your experience Aly.

Time to blast!

Cya... Doug