Bozeman and the Mountains

I went for a walk today up on Peat's Hill with my mom today. I go running up there all the time, and my mom really wanted to see what was up there. We've spent a lot of time driving around (surprise surprise it's Montana), so a walk was really nice. While we were up there, I took a quick panoramic image of the mountains around us.

This time I went with pretty minimal editing so what I usually do. I felt like the scene needed to be represented pretty close to visual reality. That being said, I didn't slack off on time and quality I put in.

My initial exposures were with a polarizer and at ISO100, 135mm lens, f6.3, and 1/200 of a second. ISO100 so there would be low noise, a long lens to get the mountains nice a big, f6.3 to get things pretty sharp while still opening up enough to shoot handheld at 1/200. Since I was doing a panoramic, I did have to really worry about horizontal cropping, just about getting the mountains big enough in the frame. I could have used a longer lens, but then the tree tops of Bozeman would disappear and I liked them in the shot.

I took about 10 images in sequence. It's super important to have 30%-50% overlap in your images, it'll make putting them together so much easier and make everything look nicer.

I used Ps to stitch them together, and then cropped the whole thing to get rid of any white annoying space left behind. I did a few adjustments in Lr with exposure and some color correction. Mostly this was improving the dynamic range and upping the vibrance and vividness of the colors. I also put in a gradient adjustment to the clouds to increase contrast and clarity.

I sent the image over to Ps again, did some highpass sharpening, and made a new copy of all the layers. To this layer I applied a big blur and set it to overlay to make a glow effect. I put this at a very low opacity and painted black over areas I didn't want to "glow."

And that's it. Exported from Lr at that point.

See you tomorrow!

Little iPhone Photo!

I was with my mom all day today, so I didn't have much time to take a photo. Luckily we went to Olive Garden!

I used my phone to take a photo of some really cool wine bottles and whatnot that was on display there. The bottles were all underlit and in this cool gridded box thingy above the bar. I set my phone to HDR mode for the picture.

I edited this in Snapseed using a a combination of the drama, HDR scape, and Retrolux filters. I didn't use all three 100%, but rather used them lightly in layers. It was a pretty quick and easy edit, so there's not much to write!

It's a little grainy, but it was an iPhone photo heavily edited, so what can ya do? I'm happy with it. It's pretty cool lighting.

Usually you don't think to underlight things, but it can have some really cool effects. I want to do some lighting with underwater lights this summer. There some cool steams with pool in the forest that would just be perfect for it.

See you tomorrow!

Co-op

Don't even know where to start on this photo...guess from the beginning.

My parents came into town today. I spent the afternoon with them, and eventually we ended up at their hotel. I was going to go up to and take some night shots in the mountains, but that didn't work out. Since I already had my camera gear with me, I decided to take some shots at the hotel.

I did some of the hotel, and since we were right next to the Bozeman Co-op, I hoped the street and took some of that. I did HDR triple bracketed shots, this means I did shots at -2, 0 and +2 exposure value. I was using Av mode in my camera at f3.5. So my camera decided what I should use for a shutter. I used ISO400.  At first I just did a single framed shot, but then I grabbed a shot of the sky in case I wanted to make it a pano later.

This is where it gets really tricky to explain. I spent so much time editing this, I do not remember all the steps. I'll explain the best I can.

In Lr, I got the bracketed shot of the Co-op, and threw it into Photomatix. I made a couple versions of it in that, and then went into Lr and made another HDR version. HDR is made out of a raw file by lowering the highlights and raising the shadows. I also bumped the clarity and contrast a hair.

I took all three of these versions in Ps and began compositing them. I combined the first two by use of layer masks and blending modes. I believe I used that luminosity blending mode for the top layer because it had a lot of contrast, and then painted on the layer mask where I wanted that contrast. I then combined those two layers, which I had merged, with the last layer in a similar fashion. I simply painted over areas I wanted on a layer mask to make them show up.

Next..what did I do next. I think....I brought it into Lr and did some more adjustments. Split toning, clarity, shadows, that sort of thing. I let it sit for a bit, then decided it needed more work, so back to Ps it was. I duplicated the layer and applied a massive blur to it, then set it to overlay. This made some cool lighting effects and glow effects. I made a layer mask and painted in the areas of glow I wanted at a low opacity.

I then used the normal method of sharpening with a high pass filter (I've explained it multiple times in the past couple posts) and then back to Lr it was. More of the same adjustments and then back to Ps to add the sky in from another photo. I made a layer mask from the base photo of the building (actually a duplicated I ramped up the contrast on to make it easier for Ps to read the edges) and then applied the mask to the sky image. I had to clean this up a bit, and it's not perfect, but it's good enough for my purposes. I could fix it later if I wanted to print it big or something.

Back to Lr, decide it's need sharpening after noise reductions, another highpass filter sharpening layer later, and I was done. Yay! Except wait...shadows too dark.

Ps again. Duplicate layer. Raise shadows. Layer mask. Paint. Lr. Split tone a bit. good. done.

I really like how the photo turned out, it was a pain so much fun to edit, no really it was fun. It was like playing with a bunch of effect to see how it going to turn out.

Anywho, here ya go.

Blogger...why do I even use you. You can't display a photo properly! what is this... Fb page please to see it.

See you tomorow...

Night Time Over Bozeman

I was going to do some portraits tonight...but that fell through so I decided just to go out and do a night shot of Bozeman. I've been trying to do more night photography lately, now that it's getting warmer and not -40.

I initially was going for a HDR panoramic, but in Lr I got the idea just to merge the brightest of the images into a panorama. The highlights form the cars and such would be overblown, but everything else would look pretty nice.

I got everything into a panorama in Ps, then brought it back into Lr.

note: I'm no longer to be as specific in everything I do in post, as I am beginning to do a lot and it's very complicated to explain it in a daily blob. I just don't have time. I'll happily answer questions if you comment though about any specific steps.

Once I had the image in Lr, I made a couple different versions of it. I made one greyscale, and three color versions. They were mostly done with presets that I tweaked a little bit. The goal here was to get some ideas about how I wanted the final image to turn out.

I then took the three color images into Ps and composited them. I used one as a luminosity blend mode layer, because that layer had the most contrast. In the luminosity blend mode, that layer will determine what areas of the layer below it are light and dark. Since the images were the same subject matter, all the luminosity blend mode did was apply the tonal range. I made a layer mask and removed some of the areas with too much contrast.

The other layer I put to a very low opacity and changed it to color. This transferred the colors in the image to the layer below. As you might have guessed, there was one of the color images that I really liked, but it wasn't quite there yet.

After compositing those images, I merged them all and duplicated that layer twice. I applied high pass filters to both and set both to overlay. One high pass filter was more than the other. These two filters made a hard light effect and also served to sharpen the image a bit.

I went back into Lr and applied two gradient masks raising contrast and clarity to the sky. I wanted a dramatic sky. I also applied a gradient mask and adjustment brush to the ground to brighten the shadows. Finally, I added some split toning just to try to get rid of that ugly orange color that comes with night shots in the city.

And here it is...

And of course Blogger is at it again...view the image on my Fb page please.

See you tomorrow!

Pictorialist

Not sure if I'm spelling this right, but I tried to do a picture that was pictorialist. The pictorialist movement was in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In a nutshell, it had a lot to do with atmospheric qualities and softness in the images. There's obviously a lot more to it than just that, but in a nutshell that's what the images look like. They're more about the "prints" and how they look, than it is about the subject matter.

So I was looking at my running shoes when I got the idea of doing a pictorialist picture. The shoes were just kinda sitting there...being shoes. I grabbed a strobe and grid and then hung it over the shoes to make a spotlight effect.

Camera setting were 1/200 to cut out any ambient light. I was at f2 and ISO100.

In Lr I raised the contrast a lot, lowered the clarity all the way, and added some grain to it. I also converted it to greyscale. I changed the luminosity of the blues and yellows to make the image even more contrasty.

So here we are. It's not quite a pictorialist in that it's not atmospheric or that diffused...but it's a modern take on it :)

See you tomorrow.

Brownies

My sister sent me brownies this week. And not just any brownies, brownies made from beansssss. Don't really know what else, just that they were amazing and I ate them all far too fast.

Well, almost all of them. Since they got lost in the mail for a while, they got a little old. I was saving the last one for tomorrow....but it got moldy :( I know. Terrible. So sad. I was and still am, heartbroken.

In memory of all that goodness that were bean brownies, I decided to take an awesome photo of it. I also had a bunch of old spinach (ran out of veggie burgers), and so what better to put with the healthy, brownies (beans are healthy) than spinach!

The first photo looked like this.

I used a soft box just above the whole foodness, and so it has pretty flat, boring light. 

I needed drama to capture the excitement and glory that these brownies were!

Bring in the grid.

Here's my set up for the final image. 

Grid over head at 1/32 power and the soft box off to the right at 1/16 power, I think. You get the idea of the lighting set up though. Key light from above and then a rim/side light from the side. Drama lighting right there with all the texture of the spinach piled up.

An the final image. As usual, Blogger has butchered the image and so it looks quite horrible. :( Fb for the real one. 

Anywho, how did I edit this. 

I started in Ps, applying high pass filters to two copies of the images, putting them to overlay. These two layers applied sharpening and also some hard light effects. I brought it back into Lr and raised the exposer just a hair as well as clarity. I then went into lens correction and got rid of the pesky chromatic aberrations. This wasn't quite enough though, so I then went and made the blues green and the aquas to more green. This made the blue highlights whiter and not ugly. 

Well that's about it. My tribute to the dead bean brownies. 

Btw, Emma. MAKE ME MORE. :D please....

See you tomorrow. 

Das Park Tool Wrench

For some reason...I really like light painting this week. Third installment of light painting product shots. I think yesterday's is better...but I do like how today turned out. It's Blue themed (which is copy righted/coined by Park Tools btw). Which is an awesome tool company...btw.

So you know the drill by now, use the iPhone to light paint a couple different exposures and then composite them...blah blah. I'll get to what I did different this time, if you get lost here's the other posts to go back to and read.

I didn't use my iPhone for tonight! I used this mega awesome light my parents got me for Christmas this year. It had like 9 LEDs and is mega bright. I only had 3 second exposures most of the time. I light a cross lighting one, and them just flashed the tool with the light for a second to get that fill for the middle part. To composite them, I used LUMINOSITY masks. wohhh what is that word...mannnn. So...a luminosity mask is basically a mask derived from a specific range of tones that you select from an image. I went into the channels (green to be specific) and messed with a copy of the green channel with levels until I had everything pretty much black except for the PARK TOOL COMANY (or whatever it says). I then selected the highlights (the lettering) and applied it a layer mask. Insta easy mask. Just cleaned it up a bit with a brush and good to go. I later brightened it in Lr with an adjustment layer brush that raised exposure and highlights.

Next, in Ps I mean, I used the same technique with a light trail layer to make a layer mask of just the light trails. I actually did this twice to get sharper light trails in one spot because they were very murky and bleh in the original mask. Just messed with levels in the layer mask and like magic they were sharper and better. I then masked the other light trail layer in the parts I wanted the sharp light trails layer.

Finally, I had to add a little highlight to the tool because I failed at light painting it the whole way up. I made a new layer, made a nice path with the pen tool where I wanted the highlight to be, and used the STROKE PATH feature to make a nice highlight. I then added a layer mask with varying opacity to simulate where the highlight would be dimmer or brighter.

To finish it all off, I made a stamp visible layer and applied a high pass filter to it and set that to overlay. I masked off over the main part of the tool but left the rest alone. This sharpened and intensified the lights of the rest of the image. I think this is pretty much what the clarity tool does.

And oh my word Blogger makes it look terrible >:( Please go look at it on Fb to see how it's supposed to look. This looks horrible...why Blogger...why...

Anywho, see you tomorrow.