My Helmet

I went snowboarding for the first time today. I managed to get a board and bindings for $15, and boots for $35. Pretty good deal I think. I already had my downhill helmet for biking, but I was instructed that it would impair my vision. So instead, I rented a helmet. Turns out, the only difference in field of view is that on my helmet you can't see straight down. Side to side is the same because the goggles are farther out than the helmet. So tomorrow I'm trying my helmet instead of paying for one.

I think you can guess what I shot for today...my helmet.

It's not the cleanest photo out there, but neither is my helmet. It's still caked with mud from the last runs I did with it last summer. I wanted to capture both the helmet, but also the use I've gotten out of it. The mud, stickers, and scratches are just as important as the helmet itself. The white isn't all the way white, and the black isn't pure and fluid like it was when it was new. It's dirt strained and scripted. Exactly the way a helmet should be. 

The set up for this was as follows. One 560 up to camera right pointed down at the wall behind the helmet. This was to put a bit of light on the helmet but also use the wall behind as a reflector. To touch up the shadows a bit that were cast by the hard light of the bare 560, I used my Orbis ring flash adaptor shooting up from camera right. This filled in inside the helmet and under the visor. It also added a bit of specular highlight along the chin piece or whatever it's called. 

Back in Lr, I selectively raised the clarity on bit of the helmet with high contrast. Over the big areas of tone the clarity adj. doesn't do much except make it look terrible. I also raised the blacks and shadows quite a bit to get more detail in the helmet. Lastly I raised the saturation to bring out the pad and stickers.

One other thing I did was correct for lens chromatic aberrations. Aberrations are essential out linings of color around details. They are usually shades of purple or green, although they can be any color. If your photo just looks a little weird, almost like it has too much noise, it might be chromatic aberrations. Taking them out really does a lot to the photo. It gets rid of that low quality look. There's a simple check box and sliders in Lr to do this, so there's no reason not to.

The camera setting were the usual. Not even going to list them. 

See you tomorrow.