Monday, March 31, 2014

Mah Shoo, Brah

Now that the snow is pretty much melted in Bozeman (but it might be back, who knows it's Montana), I thought I might continue yesterday's theme and do a light painting with my shoe!

I love these shoes, they're La Sportiva something or others, they're trail/mud/snow running shoes. They have 1/4" spikes on the bottom, which give unbelievable traction in almost any conditions. I have never slipped with these shoes, even in solid ice. They also have a big Gortex gator that comes up and around the ankle, which keeps snow completely out of the shoe. I've been in keen deep snow and never had it get in. They're aren't complete water proof though, but they can hold their own in the wet. I can't wait to try them out in deep mud this spring, I can only image the traction.

Anywho, enough about the shoe, this is a photo blog! Right?!

So, I set this up exactly like yesterday, except that I used three lines this time. I taped on to the back of my closet to keep the shoe from flipping over and also to keep it steady. Worked pretty well until 5 seconds ago where it crashed to ground and scared me.

Gorilla tape and fishing line. All you need for awesome product shots.

ohh product shoot...I should do some of those in the field soon. Like outside in the mud...I like mud...this could be fun.

I digress..

Like I said I did this exactly like yesterday. Four shots, one to light the shoe (I cross lit this time, but with light painting of course), two with light trails, and one for the background. I shot at f13 ISO100. The exposure times were however long I thought I needed to get the shot. Between 5 and 13 seconds.

In Ps, I actually didn't do any masking. I did remove the fishing line from each frame, but I just stacked the layers and set the light trail ones to lighten. Worked perfect. I also re-colored the light trail ones to be orange instead of blue. I like orange better with this shoe.

I liked, there were 6 exposures. I had one more light trail one, and I had one to light the bottom of the shoe. The latter exposure I did do a little masking on, just to tone it down in places. I set it to lighten and it blended in perfect with the cross lit layer of the shoe.

After I had everything blended, I did a bit of dodging and burning, using a layer of 50% grey set to overlay to make it non-distructive editing, and then applied a high pass layer filter to a stamp visible layer set to overlay to further the hard light effect. Finally, I made another stamp visible layer and applied a lesser high pass filter to sharpen things a bit.

I didn't do anything in Lr.

Except export it.


Do you see the orange peel?
See you tomorrow!

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Koko Rock

I have this little rock thing, and it was perfect for a light painting.

or rather multiple light paintings I would then stitch together in photoshop.

I set up the rock thing in my closet, hanging from two things of fishing line. Three would have been better, but I didn't have three points to attach to. Two at least kept it from swinging too much.

I put my camera on bulb, and used an aperture of f32 to really block out the light. I used my iPhone, bare and sometimes gelled with an orange gel to light the rock.

In hindsight, the rock is a little blurry because of motion blur, so it would have been nice to make a shorter exposure of figure out how to keep it still more.

I took four exposures. Two of light trails behind the rock, just playing around with the light. One of the rock which I painted with light from two sides, cross lighting it effectively. And one of the back ground, which I made by shining the light down from above.

I took the images into Ps, and masked out the rock from my cross lit exposure, and put it below the two light trail exposures. I made the light trail exposures to blend mode "lighten" and then applied the same mask I had just made for the rock. I inverted this mask, and so everything around the rock was visible and not the rock. This way, I had the light trails and the rock blended into one. The background layer was simply put under the other layers.

To get rid of the fishing line in every single shot, I went into every layer and removed it with a combination of the stamp tool and heal brush thingy tool. Ps took care of it for the most part.

Back in Lr, I applied some split toning, green and orange for the highlights and shadows respectively. I also raised the clarity a bit, as well as saturation and vibrance.

Then I exported it and posted it below.


See you tomorrow!

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Ready For Summer

I needed to practice some lighting stuff tonight, so I started out with some simple portraits. I was originally planing on having multiple me's kind of portrait, but I got board with that and it didn't really work out.

Then I tried to have three of me on a couch. But the composition wasn't right and the room was boring and blah blah blah.

Next idea. Have a bunch of random hands attacking me. Cool, I went for that one. I had a hard time getting my position down, partly because I am vertically unchallenged and didn't quite fit in the space so well. Eventually got something I liked, now just for the hands. Basically, I just made claws and stuck in arms in the frame from different angles. Not too complicated.

The lighting set up was a umbrella on the right, and a soft box on the left a little farther back. The soft box was mainly a rim light and made cool highlights, while the umbrella made some nice, soft light.

Camera was at 1/200, f2, and ISO100.

In Ps, I masked out each of the hands, which was a pain, and got everything composited into one layer. Tedious...blehhh.

Next, I made a stamp visible layer, duplicated it and applied a high pass filter. That made a hard light effect, which I made a layer mask for so I could apply it where I wanted. Next filter was a black and white filter, which I left alone for the most part. Finally, I made another stamp visible layer, darkened it, and then made a layer mask so it became a vignette layer.

Back in Lr, I applied some local contrast adjustments to make it a little more dramatic.

But the image wasn't really working. There was a big empty space in the middle that was really distracting...I had to put something there.

Then I thought, this could be a conceptual piece! Like one that actually was saying something...

So with my nifty cloud brush, I made a "thought cloud bubble thingy" and then put a picture of my helmet in it! There we go. Instant conceptual piece.

In Lr, I applied Grandma's Lemonade filter, played with the split toning and contrast a bit, and that was it! All done.


I love the washed out, old photo look for most of the photo, and then the random, full color helmet. It draws the attention very well. And all the hands, even mine, (they're all mine, I know, but the ones connected to a body) all point to the helmet, so that helps the composition even more.

See you tomorrow!

Friday, March 28, 2014

I'd Rather Be in an Abandoned Pool

I can't disclose the location or what I shot tonight... it never happened and you never read this.

But..

we were in an abandoned pool :) It's been that way for a couple years, and some friends and I thought it would be an awesome place for some light painting. Which turned out to be right. We spent about four hours there, just playing around with lights and very wide lenses.

It was incredibly dusty though, so next time we are wearing masks...like its that bad.

Anywho, back to the light painting. I decided to go with 30 second exposures, which is the longest I can do with out my introvelometer thingy. Probably spelled that wrong but whatever.

For most of the pictures, we all shot with the same settings. 30 secs, f11, ISO800. Why was I using such a high aperture? Well...because of reasons. Mostly, it was to bring everything into focus. In hindsight, it was actually unnecessary and I could have used a much more open aperture with a lower ISO but you know sometimes you gotta branch out. For long exposures, you usually go wide open and with the lowest ISO you can use, not really sure why I didn't do that...I probably had a good reason but I can't think of it at the moment.

So how do you light paint anyway? Well, basically you run around with colored flashlights! That's about it. I just put gels on flashlights and bam...colored lights. We just ran around with them and thats the colored light trails you see.

For the flashes...that's a different story. I couldn't fire a strobe three or six times while the camera was exposing...at least from the camera. To work around the camera, I put on my old remote trigger and receiver on one strobe, then put the other strobe to slave. Works perfect. I also had snoots on the strobes, so they would make that cool spotlight effect. I left the camera exposing for 30 seconds, and then popped the strobe to make the exposure of me that I wanted.

One exposure we went along the bottom wall and for another we went on the top level. All the copies of me are from those two exposures.

I also used a remote trigger so that I wouldn't have to touch my camera and throw frame alinement off.

In Ps, I composited 6 exposure we'd taken. There were a couple for the pool, one of the bottom me's, one of the top me's, one of the ceiling, and one for the upper light trails.

I painted black on layer masks over the parts that I wanted of the exposures, then inverted the masks and I was left with just the parts I wanted! Super simple and fast. I then set the layers to lighten, which helped blend things. I also made a stamp copy layer or whatever it's called, set it to overlay, and applied a high pass filter. This is a way of sharpening the image.

In Lr, I added some noise reduction and that was it. Maybe a touch of highlight bumping.


See you tomorrow!

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Experiment

I went out to shoot some night shots tonight. I took just my camera and one strobe.

I spent the first couple minutes chasing an owl around campus. Which was awesome.

So when I got back on track with pictures, I found this cool section of vines on the side of a building. I set up the strobe to cross light it and make tons of contrast. The shot I got I kindaaaaaa liked. It was meh.


It has some cool contrast and lines and use of negative and positive space...butttt it just doesn't do it for me. Part of it are really cool, but other than that...

I played around with it in Ps and suddenly had the idea to invert the image. I did...and it sucked. Looked really bleh.

Except for the half on the right. That actually looked kind of cool. I cropped the left half out and suddenly I had an image I liked. It looks very abstract and pretty much what I wanted. The positive also looks pretty awesome, but the negative just looks so different.


I had to mess with the vignette a bit because as you can see, the sides of the image are very washed out and not to great. They are still not perfect, but I think it works with the image.

It probably wouldn't be too hard to make a luminosity mask and invert it to select the shadows and then CRUSH them. But I don't feel like it.

I really like this image, it's not very polished or anything. It's just so different from a lot of stuff I do, and yet it's very me.

For camera setting: 1/80, f1.4, ISO100. Strobe at 1/16 and a foot from the wall on the ground pointed at 30 degrees up.

See you tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Snow and backlighting

It randomly started snowing really hard today, so I set off to get some backlit pictures. I haven't done these in a long time and I really have wanted to, so I figured I might as well use this opportunity to get some.

Since it was snowing really hard, I brought along a plastic bag to throw over my flash so that it wouldn't get soaking wet and fry it's self. I should really get a waterproof camera cover too...

To protect my camera, I leaned over it to keep snow off it, and only raised it up when I needed to actually take the picture. I had to be really quick at composing the shot.

To make it seem like night, and to get a strong backlight effect, I shot at 1/200 and f9 to really cut out any and all ambient light. The strobe was set to 1/8 power to compensate for the stopped down aperture, but since it was pointed right at the camera I didn't need that much power.

The photo for today was actually the very first shot I took. It was just a test shot, but I really like it. Madison is barely illuminated, but I love the mood it brings to the photo. It would have been cool to play around with more lighting placement. Putting the light on the side or up high could make some cool effects. Maybe next time.

In Lr, I raised the clarity and highlights a lot to get every last snow flake I could visible. You can see how hard it was snowing. I also raised the exposure a little on Madison so that she popped out a little more.


That's all for today, I may have to work in the morning, so I'm turning in early tonight. See you tomorrow!

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Night Trails

On a whim I decided to go up to Hyalite and try for some star trials tonight. It was kinda cloudy, but there were enough stars when you got up high to get some good trails.

My initial test shot was about 5 minutes, and that was much to short, and not focused, and with the wrong lens. So I set up again with a 10mm lens, f2.8, and ISO800. I worked out that about 10-13 minutes gave a pretty good exposure. Just got lucky with the first test.

I didn't have much time, so I quickly framed a shot and hoped for the best. Near the end on my exposure, a car started to drive around the parking lot which splashed a lot of light on the trees. At first I was a little mad because I thought it might ruin the picture, but it actually didn't turn out that bad.

In Lr, I ended up brightening the tree area a bit, so the light from the headlights probably helped that quite a bit. I did have to darken the snow and parking lot because the car made so much light that it drew the eye away from the stars. For the stars, I put on a graduated filter that upped the contrast a ton and dimmed everything a bit.



There you have it, a night exposure of some starts. It's not my best image, but it still is pretty cool. I wish the snow wasn't so over powering, but I'd really have to redo the composition to change that.

That's it, see you tomorrow!

Monday, March 24, 2014

Leap!

The Leap Motion controller thingy came out less than a year ago. I, of course, had pre-ordered it and was soooo excited when it finally arrived.

Annnd I've used it about four times since then.

The idea of the Leap is awesome, but as far as I know, they don't have any practical app integration for things I use. For gaming it's awesome, but I don't really game...

but I do take pictures! and so why not use it for a picture?

I set up the picture pretty much the same as my iPod picture. I had a bare strobe on the right side, and a soft box on the left. They were set to the same power, but the soft box cut out a stop of light, so it turned that strobe into a fill light. The white seamless background acted as a big soft box, which had even more fill.

I was shooting at f8 to get some depth of field, and also because the strobes were very bright.

The big problem that I ran into was the reflection of the white background in the black surface of the Leap. To fix this, I took a black piece of cloth and positioned that to reflect in the Leap. Problem gone.


Note: as usual, blogger has messed up the image. The white around the Leap is supposed to actually be white, I'm not sure why it doesn't show up as white right now.

Anywho, what did I do in Lr? Well, first I reduced noise and sharpened a bit. Then I painted in an adjustment brush around the Leap to increase the brightness and make the negative space actually white. And that's all I did to the image. It's pretty much how it looks in camera.

If I were to do this again, I would make sure to add in some light to make sure the white background was very very white while I was shooting the images. So that I wouldn't have to do it in post.

All for today, sadly no star pictures :( it's cloudy tonight. Maybe tomorrow! See you then!



Sunday, March 23, 2014

Really Not Sure...

Tonight was another no idea what I'm going night.

I set up some lights, the mini nuke gelled orange in the back, and a gridded 560 gelled green in the front, and just made weird faces at the camera. That's literally all I was going for. I really had nooooo idea what I was going to make.

I got some interesting looking shots. The green complimented the orange, and the mini nuke made a weeeeeeird lens flare across my chest that looked like a sash. Kinda cool, right?

In Ps, I decided I should have two heads. So I made a layer mask for one shot and just used a big, soft brush and blended it onto another shot. And bam, I had two heads. With a weird lens flare.

Next, I grabbed some texture I had on my hard drive and stuck it on there. Set to screen and good to go. I added another behind everything, and then selected the white background and deleted it. To I had a cool texture background too.

I then went in and merged the two headed me layers into one layer, duplicated, and applied a high pass filter so there would be a cool, hard light, sharpener effect.

So it was really random and not planned what I did. But it looks kinda cool!


Camera settings: 1/200, f2, ISO200. I wanted the mini nuke to be as bright as possibleeee. Maximum nuke effect.

I think I added a lens flare filter in there too. Probably also added a bit of a blur to that to soften it.

Anywho, I want to do some star trails tomorrow, so if it's clear I'll have that tomorrow. See you then!

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Can't Decide

Tonight was another fire making night. Jamie and I got the new creamer canon working, and had a bit of fun with it. We went through almost 50oz of coffee creamer and 8oz of gasoline :) 

We had taken a bunch of pictures just of fire, but there wasn't anything good going...so we grabbed our awesome stunt model and gave her a lollipop. And made her stand out in the cold while we shot fire next to her. 

And no we didn't set the roof on fire this time either. That's the one upside of making fire when it's below 0 outside. 

So the first photos I did were wide angle from low down, which didn't really work. Not very dramatic at all. The was too much extra space around the subject, and the fireball looked oh so small. 

I zooooommmed in a bit and tried a second time. Better, but not quite there.

On the last shot, I went all the way to 135mm and luckily got the model lined up with the fire ball exactly. I was shooting in drive mode, so I got about 5 pictures that I liked. And as it turned out, I couldn't even decide which one I like more. They all have just a slightly different feel, and I love them all. I'll post my favorite on this blog, and the rest will be on my Fb page. 


I just love how the fire good wrapped around and lit up her face. I am definitely going to start using fire more for lighting more. It just makes amazing effects. 

Camera settings: Drive mode, 1/400, f5.6, ISO320. 

Drive mode because fire burns fast and changes even faster. 1/400 to capture the fire and freeze it. f5.6 because that's the mode wide open aperture I could get at 135mm. ISO320 so that it was bright enough. 

In Lr, I applied Grandma's Lemonade preset...and that's it. I didn't feel like it really needed anything else. I might mess with it later, but for now it's good. 

Well that's all, see you tomorrow. 

Friday, March 21, 2014

Aliens

I was going to do some long exposure of the stars tonight, but unfortunately it was cloudy so that couldn't happen....

Instead I decided to go to the top of a parking garage in town. But it was cold and windy and there weren't any good pictures to think of so that didn't work.

Next, I went to the abandoned underground parking garage. It was somewhat warmer and so I could actually think of a picture. There were these really cool stairs at the end of the garage, and I immediately thought of an alien abduction.

I grabbed a 560 and my grid, and climbed up the stairs. I held the strobe over Cara, who was holding the remote. It was set to a two second delay, so she had time to press the button and then hide the remote for the photo.

In Lr, I set to black and white, then applied on the onOne presets for grungyness. Basically, it added contrast, clarity, and some digital grain.

Camera settings: f1.4, 1/100, ISO400. I wanted a fairly fast shutter speed....because that's what it was before. and the wide open aperture so there would be enough light, and the ISO so it'd be properly exposed.


That's all tonight, see you tomorrow!

Man on Fire

Finally, Jamie and I got a working creamer canon. Basically, a creamer canon uses compressed air to shoot coffee creamer into a big cloud, which is then ignited by an open flame. And we made one that worked quite well.

This photo really weren't set up or planned well. I just set up the camera and took some shots really just to see how big of a fire ball we'd gotten. But they actually turned out really cool and so I had a photo of the day. It's just taken me a bit to get the blog written....

To take the photos, I set the camera to 1/80 of a second to get a little blur in the fire. It did over expose it a bit, but I think that adds some cool quality to the overall image. I shot at f3.2, and ISO 100. I used a 10mm lens because why not?

I was shooting in drive mode, so I had a lot of pictures in a sequence. In Ps, I took two of those and combined them to make the fireball biggerrrrr.... lighten blend mode and then a layer mask around the area I wanted.

In Lr, I used a preset from onOne grunge presets, and that was it. Pretty quick edit with a cool result.

I also cloned out a bike pump in the frame.

But here is the magical fire!!!


Jamie is actually a fire lord and can shoot it from his hands...just by the way.

And don't worry the building didn't burn down :) maybe next time.

See you tomorrow!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Last Minute Photo

I had planned today to do some fire pictures, but sadly that didn't work out. I was hoping it would later tonight but as it got later and later it seemed more unlikely. So I just did a little lighting experiment instead.

Earlier today I was working on my bike, and broke out some tools I haven't used in months. It was so strange but so natural at the same time. Even though it's been a long time, it seemed like only yesterday I was back in the shop working on my bike. It's going to be so nice to get back there this summer.

I chose to do a little product type shot of my allen wrenches. They are invaluable at the shop, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't use them. Last summer, I somehow lost my beloved set of tools I'd had for five years and had to get a new set. It was a very traumatic experience.

This new set of tools hasn't yet earned my famous tape job. Usually I'll wrap electrical tape around my stuff so people know it's mine and don't steal it. But I haven't done that to these tools yet. So they're not that interesting looking.

To light them. I wanted to turn my bare speed lights into soft lights and have cool specular highlights on the tools. I put the lights in really close, and but a soft box on one. This effectively turned them into fairly soft lights since their relative surface area to the tools was quite large. I angled them so I go just the specular highlights I wanted. I had to shoot at f7 though, because the strobes are so bright up close.

I also hung the tools from fishing line from my bed over my mini studio. This eliminated any shadows and made a cool background. In Lr, the only post I did was remove the fishing line. Other wise the photo is completely out of the camera.


That's all for tonight, see you tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Zion

At last, I have completed editing the photos from spring break!

I had 631 to go through and choose from. And that number is actual photos, I deleted ones I didn't like when I took them to save space. So it's taken me about 13 hours to editing everything! Very enjoyable process though, sort of like building a new bike. You see all the individual parts and can kinda what it's going to look like and feel put together. But when it finally done you're sometimes amazed at what you've created!

And the process from start to finish is quite fun, in my opinion. I think on every single photo I had at least two or three different edits, trying to get it just right.  I hardly every take a photo and try to make it exactly like reality. That's kind of boring to me, I mean I've already seen it in real life so why recreate it in two dimensions? When I take and edit photos, I want to make them look like I see them. How they make me feel. What emotions come from them. Sometimes I'll see the unique colors in something and so I'll over process it to pronounce the colors I see and feel coming from the photo. Or sometimes all I'll see is a cool shadow or texture or form, and so I build the photo around that. The point is, these photos are not life like for the most part, and they are not supposed to be. I wanted to showcase how I saw Zion and the other sites on the trip. I wanted to show the great beauty and uniqueness of what I saw. That's the world I chose to live in every day, and show I want to show people. I figured out a while ago that if you're taking photos that you think people want to see, but you don't necessarily like them, then it completely defeats the purpose of photography. Take the photos you want, the ones that mean something to you. Show people how you see the world.

Enough talk, you want photos, right?? I'll give a brief comment on each photo and explain the tech stuff as best I can. No promises I'll remember everything I did though...lot's of photos and really complicated edits you know.

Day 1:

Day 1 was the long drive down to Park City, UT. I have a couple more photos from this day I really really like, and I had such a hard time deciding what to put in the blog. I eventually went with this one because out of all of them, I'd be most likely to hang this one on my wall. The others I love, but this one is just epic. I love the dark clouds and then the super bright light beams just shooting thru them. So dramatic.

Camera settings: ISO400, 135mm, f5.6, 1/500 sec. I was shooting from a car at a long focal length, so I needed a high shutter speed. I could only get down to f5.6 at that focal length, so I had to go to ISO400. In Lr I upped the contrast and clarity a lot, also bumping the highlights and shadows. Vibrance went up a bit too.

Day 2:


Day 2 we spent getting to Zion. We arrived late at night at a campground just south of the park, and before I did anything I took this panoramic. This blog doesn't display pictures right, and so this picture looks kinda meh on it. I'll have these all posted to my Fb page with a link at the end of the post today. But anyway, day 2. Like I said this was in a campground, and you can tell from the lens flare in the lower right. I think that was from a RV lamp. Grrrrrr. The stars there were so amazing, and I wish I had taken more of these. Sadly, the days were exceptionally long and literally I only had energy to make food and fall right to sleep as soon as we got to camp. Plus it was really cold and I'd have to stay up another 4 hours to wait for dark. So wasn't going to happen. Yet...

I forgot that my polarizer was on, which kills two stops of light. Even though I shot at ISO2000, f/3.5, and 30 seconds, I had to bump it up like three stops in Lr. I threw it in Ps to make the pano, then back to Lr. I bumped the clarity, and contrast after applying a preset from onOne software. I can not remember which preset, as there are like 100. Presets are really nice if you get the right one. Saves so much time and you can get different looks to tweak right away.

Day 3:


This is definitely one of my favorites. Day 3 was the first day of hiking! We started in this amazing canyon, descending down into the park. I took this pano early on in the hike, maybe the first mile or so. It's a HDR of course, which I made using Photomatix Pro and then Ps. I applied the onOne preset "Grandma's Lemonade" (don't get me started on that name) and then just tweaked a few things here and there. I'm not going into everything because I adjusted pretty much about everything so it's too much to cover. Just know I started with a preset and then tweaked it to my liking.

Camera settings: ISO100, 18mm, f3.5, 1/100 sec, and a polarizing filter. That filter is what makes the sky not blown out as much and defines the clouds. I also helped that a bit with a graduated filter in Lr that bumped the clarity and contrast of the sky.

Day 4:


This one was tricky, I couldn't get it quite right in color, and only when I toned it in grayscale did the image I wanted come out. I really wanted to show the water as it moved. When you're backpacking, water is everything. When ever you can get it, you fill up as much as you can. We filled up probably three times from this stream, and I'd brought my ND filters, so I thought might as well get a shot of it. I took this in the early morning while I was supposed to be getting water. Hehe. I had tried it the night before but didn't like the result too much. This one turned out awesome.

A ND filter basically blocks light to the lens. This lets you use longer shutter speeds to make motion blur. For this I used 1.6 seconds, f22, 50mm lens, and ISO100. The super stopped down aperture gave me awesome sharpness and depth of field, as well as blocked out more light so I could use a long shutter. This is actually a vertical pano, or two shots stacked vertically. I cropped it down to a square image. I was using a 50mm which is rather tight for the shot I wanted, so the only way to get the field of view I wanted was to make a pano. It turned out really well I think. In Lr, I used a warm toned preset, then adjusted the contrast up a bit to make it a little more dramatic for my liking.

Day 5:

Day 5 was the second long day. Day 4 was 16 miles and day 5 was 13. Less, but there was more uphill. Way more uphill. Basically died. But got some cool photos!! This photo pretty much sums up the day for me. Barren waste land for most of the day. Very very cool wasteland, but it was the site of an old fire, so there where burned, dead trees everywhere. It was very bleak and sad really. Made the last part of the hike rather difficult actually, because it was so bleak. But I just love this shot. The particle symmetry of the tree against the grey sky. It reminds me of a analog photo, which is also long and boring to print.

Camera settings: 1/320, ISO100, polarizer, 75mm, f5. In Lr I converted to grayscale and then toned the blues down to make that tone of grey. I upped the contrast a lot to make the tree almost black.

Day 6:


We started out this day with a brisk walk down a cliff. Yes, a cliff. They literally make the trail into a cliff. It's probably and 300 or more foot drop to rocks below. Kinda scary wearing a heavy pack in strong winds. At least there wasn't ice. Oh wait, that's right, there was ice. Perfect. But despite the danger of the giant cliff, I climbed out on this rocky outcropping to get this photo. It's a three shot HDR pano. Created in Photomatix pro and then Ps. It turned out very well to show the beauty and also danger of the trail we were on. Right on a cliff, but just great taking. This was my favorite day by far. So so beautiful.

In Lr, I hit this is Grandma's Lemonade (not going to get over that name) and then tweaked a few things like exposer and contrast. I like the little light leak effect the preset has in the middle. It also has a cool split filter of green and orange I think. Unusual but it works.

Camera settings: ISO100, 18mm, f3.5, 1/250. Nothing special. I bracketed in one stop increments. So 1/125, 1/1250, and 1/500.

Day 7:


The beginning of day 7 was spent in Moab, UT. I took this pano on my iPhone and then edited it in Snapseed. Yes, its very processed, but wanted to give some texture to the photo. It's of Slick Rock, one of the most famous trails in Moab. In Snapseed I raised the structure and applied the Retrolux filter. Maybe a bit heavy on the texture overlay, but that's the photo from the day so I can't change it. It looks great on the tiny iPhone screen though. ;)

Day 8:
Day 8 was the long drive home. We spent the day in Carbondale, and then stared the drive about 7pm. So not the best idea. We switched drivers and took a break to eat at this "scenic overlook" about 50 miles north of Glenwood. While Madison was eating, I grabbed my camera and set this up. It's a four photo vertical pano. I shot at 25 seconds, f3.5, 18mm, and ISO800. It was a very bright night be cause of the full moon, so I didn't need a super high ISO. The stars are a bit weak from light pollution, but it captured the night perfectly. Us out in the night, barely surviving the drive back. Lots of little stops to eat and one to sleep a bit. That was a long day. In Lr I added Grandma's Lemonade again and as usual messed with the settings a bit. Pretty simple.

Day 9:

Day 9 was fun. I stayed with my friend, Drew, and his room mates. We made a creamer canon, which happened to work very well. I won't go into details because I'm planning a few posts with it soon. :)

In Lr, I cropped the images, and then aligned them in Ps to make that enlarging effect. The goal was to visually represent the expanding fire in the photos. For the photos themselves, I raised the clarity, vibrance, contrast, and also split toned things a bit. I had a strobe in the background to make a bit of a rim light, which worked well. I was using 1/125 of a second, f/3.5, ISO400 and 18mm. There was also a man in a penguin suit riding a unicycle if you hadn't noticed.

Well, that brings us up to speed. These are only a few of many, many photos from the trip. I had such a hard time choosing which photos to post, as there are so many I love. Check them all out here, on my Fb page.

So now for today's photo...


Snapseed is really dangerous for me. I play with it too much and this happens. Not at all true to what I saw, but I love the way it looks soooo :)

I was running today, and the sunset was just beautiful. But my phone didn't have enough dynamic range, even on HDR, to get it all. Soooo I put my polarized glasses over the lens and bam! more contrast and instant tinting. That orange tint is actually from the glasses. In Snapseed I added some structure (not even sure what that does), the drama filter, and the retroflex filter. I cycled random filter setting till I got one I liked. Then tweaked it a bit to make it a little less fake. 

Well that's all for today! Hope you enjoyed it, and don't forget to check out the rest of the pictures on my Fb page!

Monday, March 17, 2014

Alternative Process

Since I'm still editing (almost done!) the photos from last week, I decided to do something a bit different today.

For my final project for school, I'm going to try to use a Holga Camera. A Holga is literally a plastic camera, so it's not the most widely used camera ever. It makes some really cool pictures though, full of light leaks and softness. I decided to take a picture of my Holga and make it look like it was taken by a digital Holga! So I used my iPhone.

I don't think I've posted anything taken on my phone before. There's some coming from the Zion trip, but that'll be later. Today I wanted something quick, but also to look good. The iPhone is incredibly fast to edit on, and you get some really good results! Sometimes better than with a DSLR and Ps.

I set up my Holga on my custom seamless background (curved mat board taped to a chair) and used my desk lamp to light it. The actual picture was super fast and straight forward.

I imported the picture into Snapseed, an awesome editing app. I did a few things to it...firstly I raised the structure, ambience, contrast, brightness, and saturation. I then added the B/W filter and added A LOT of grain to it. I finished off with the Retrolux filter. I cycled through random combinations of that filter until I got something I liked.

So there you have it, a super simple, quick and easy photo. It's very processed, but I really love the orange glow and imperfections i.e. scratches and dust. It's all a filter but it just looks cool! Just my opinion though....


That's all, I'll get back to editing so you can see the good photos tomorrow! It's going to be hard choosing only 9 to show in the blog....see you tomorrow!

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Back!

So tonight there won't be any pictures from the last week and a half. I filled up a card and a half, so it's been taking me a bit of time to edit them. They're coming soon, just not tonight. 

Instead, I did a really quick shoot tonight so I could continue editing. 

Since I've been editing since about 1, my brain was a little photography'd out. I did manage to come up with a little something.

Last fall, I did a ride on a rocky trail and went maybe a too fast. I flatted both wheels in the span of about 5 minutes. I kept those tubes for some strange reason which I only came to understand tonight.

Tonight, I threw those tubes in the air. And when they landed that was my photo. It was kind of a mini series of randomness as well as form and texture. I love light playing on interesting forms and lines. I recreated a big soft light by using two strobes on the same plane as the tubes. It made a night top light and exaggerated the texture and depth of the tube. 

The two strobes were set to 1/128. I shot straight down on the tubes. The mat board was a little worse for the wear, and so the desired solid white background is not so solid. But it worked as well as I wanted int he time I had. 









Camera settings were 1/80, f2.2, and ISO100. 


















So there you have it. A mini series of punctured bike tubes. In Lr I just converted to greyscale and that's it. Simple. See you tomorrow, hopefully with some pictures from the last week!

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Keys

Today's post is rather symbolic, as for the next week or so I'll be gone. I'm going on a trip over spring break and I'll not be near any internets. But never fear I'm brining almost all my camera gear so there will be photos!

Today's photo was made with only a Maglite. No fancy strobes or tech talk, just my little flashlite in a dark room. Camera was set to 1/80, f2.2 and ISO400. I angled the light so that there would be a lot of texture and depth to the keys, but other than that I was just shining a flashlight on my subject. Natural or continuous lights are always nice to go back to sometimes after the hightechness (don't think that's a word) of artificial lighting.

In Lr, I lowered the clarity, saturation, and vibrance to give it almost an nostalgic feel. It's not perfectly sharp and crisp. It's rather soft and isolated. Just some keys in the blackness. Key's I won't be using for the next week.


That's all for now. See you not tomorrow, but in a week or so!

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Fluffy Bunny mrk2

Second installment of the Fluffy Buffy Series.

If you missed the post yesterday, read it here. I'm going to keep today's really short.

The set up was identical to yesterday except that I did this...

This made a big, wrap around light for the iPod, and made it so there was fairly even lighting from top to bottom on it. It's the same principle as a ring light. Light from everywhere makes everything even!

Other than that everything is the same as yesterday! I shot from a lower angle, which solved the perspective problem.


Here's the image for today! It looks a lot better than yesterday. Much cleaner.



I got those strong highlights in, and got even lighting! Yay!

All for today, see you tomorrow!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Fluffy Bunny

You're probably wondering why I've title this "Fuffy Bunny." It's the name of my iPod, of course. Why is it the name of my iPod? Because Devin Caplow Munro has awesome names for things. Ask him.

Anywho, you've probably guess what today's photo is of. Yeup, my iPod!

Sadly, it didn't really work out. I stubbled with the lighting, and I don't think I got it right. Nor the framing. I'll go through what I did, then what I'm going to do differently next time.

The set up is shown below. I had two strobes with soft boxes cross lighting and a white mat board acting as a backdrop and a reflector. To get the right color on the iPod, the long extra piece of mat board was needed to cast the specular highlight up onto the iPod. Without mat board, it's very very dark and boring. It might be interesting to do it with black mat board to give that dramatic lighting, as the only specular highlights would be from the strobes. Next time I suppose.


So what went wrong. The iPod is too flat. Way to flat. There's no strong cross lighting going on and no strong specular highlights on the sides of the iPod. I also was at way to high of an angle and it just looks wrong. Next time I'm going to crank up the power in the strobes to fix the lighting problem. As for the lighting, I might use a shorter piece of mat board and tilt it more to get that reflection of light on the iPod. I might try a longer lens too. If that doesn't work. I'm going to make another curved piece of mat board, cut a hole in it, and shoot through that. It'll be light a ring light except its a reflector.

Camera settings: f/6.3 (to compensate for the strobes at a close range) 1/8 sec (to get the screen lit OK) ISO100. Strobes at 1/128 power.

In Ps I cut out the three iPods and then put them on a white background. I then added the highlights on the screen and back by painting a gradient of white then masking out the areas I didn't want. To make the reflection, I duplicated the iPods, flipped them, corrected for a new perspective by lengthening one side, and then making a gradient layer mask for the fade.

All for tonight, see you tomorrow.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Mid terms

Basically this is what I've been doing all weekend. Study, study, study. With the occasional trip to the dark room to finish my photo mid-term. 

I wanted to do something simple today, nothing extravagant with complicated lighting. So I used my laptop for the light source. It actually worked wonderfully at 1/10 and f3.2 at ISO400. It was just one big soft box. Being me, however, I strategically places a 560 with a grid behind me at very low power to give some separation for my back. It didn't really do the hair and I wish I could have done that but oh well. Gotta get back to studying. 


That's it for tonight, see you tomorrow. 

Sunday, March 2, 2014

HDR Panoramic

I decided I'd do a photo taken outside of my dorm room today. I think the last 389798 photos on this blog have been in my room so I needed some air. 

It was somewhat sunny today, so I thought I might go do some sunset pictures. I went out to Peat's Hill, a trail network on the east side of Bozeman where I run a lot. It's pretty much the highest point in Bozeman (besides the mountains obviously) so I'd get a really nice view over the town. 

I showed up about half an hour before sunset, which is when "golden hour" is. This is that lovely golden light just as the sun is beginning to set. There were some clouds on the horizon, and the sun was just beginning to dip under them as I took my photos. 

I did a series of HDR shots that when put together would be a large panoramic. HDR means high dynamic range. Dynamic range is basally the tonal range in an image. A human can see a much bigger range of tones than a camera can. For example, if you were taking a picture of someone backlit against the sky, you can see the detail in both their face and the clouds in the sky. The camera only has the range to see the clouds and leave the face underexposed, or the face and the clouds completely blown out. Taking an HDR photo means taking multiple exposure of the same scene at different exposer values and then sticking them together later to compress the tonal range and fit it all in one photo. For todays picture, I took three exposures, -1,0, and +1 exposure values. Since I was doing a panoramic as well, I did this with three photos.

In Lr, I exported the groups of three photos to Photomatix Pro, which is a program that makes HDR images. Once I'd got them all made into HDRs, I exported them to Ps and used the automatic panoramic tool. Cropped that down and then went back into Lr. I raised the clarity and vibrance, while lowering the saturation just a bit. This turned the snow gave the image that pop that it has in real life, while not making it look completely enhanced in post. At least I hope it did. 


The camera settings I used were 1/200, f5.6, and ISO 100 on my 18-135mm lens. 

See you tomorrow. 

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Light bulllllb

I really love the 1/8 grid I have, so I thought I'd do a picture with it tonight. I happened to glance at a pack of light bulbs sitting on my shelf, so light bulb picture it was.

My first thought was to put the light bulb on the upturned grid and light it that way. The problem was getting the light bulb to balance upright...it was not going to happen on its own.

To solve this, I used duct tape of course, because duct tape fixes everything. I added a bit of tape to the back end of the bulb where you wouldn't see it, and then tilted everything down so I was shooting up at an angle at the bulb. The weight of the bulb kept it balanced upright pulling against the tape, and the grids texture kept it from sliding out from under it

self.

I had the strobe under the grid set to 1/128 power, and I used another snootted strobe off to the side to completely light up the bulb. Also set that one to 1/128.

In Lr, I used Cross Process 2 (love that one) and painted a vignette in to get rid of the edges of the grid. I liked the patter of the grid under the bulb so I left it.



See you tomorrow.