Pieces Of Larger Images

Notice anything similar between the smaller image and today's "finished" image? They're both the same flag. I saw the "original" shot on a cloudy, blustery day when the breeze was snapping the flag at a pretty good pace. It was a great day for getting rich, vibrant colors in the flag, but a dud of a day for anything to do with the sky. The background shot in the "finished" image was taken on a day when the clouds looked great, but there was no interesting subject. If you were to flip back through the posts on this blog you'd find that same flag in a couple of images. The shot of the farm scene has it up on the silo. How it would have been hoisted I haven't the foggiest idea, but people have accepted it as being okay. Another shot, with the flag tipped on a fairly steep angle, is that of the fireman's hat and clouds. It's an element that can be used over and over again. Same with the clouds. They can be popped in where ever needed. Getting the images to combine is the topic of today's post. To find out how easy it is, hit the "read more".

The "trick" is an old chestnut that I keep using. There's no Magic Wand, or Quick Selection Tool, or Channels Masking chicanery. It's simply a Blending Mode. Put the sky over the flag and change the Blending Mode to Darker Color. Once that's done you'd notice that the clouds show through the white strips of the flag. Probably not a good thing. Now's when a mask comes in. Put a layer mask on the sky layer. Use a black brush and "paint" over the flag. You'll see the white stripes of the flag show up rather than the clouds.

Darker Color or Lighter Color Blend Modes are very useful for doing this type of compositing. Today's image is an example of touching up the areas where the "darker color" is on the wrong layer. Not every image will work directly with the magic of these Blending Modes, but a Layer Mask can smooth out the rough spots.

revelations

Up until my junior year in high school, I never read the newspaper, well, that may be stretching it a bit, but I hardly ever read the paper. I still found ways to be informed, but I didn't know all that I could know. Yet, when grade 12 rolled around I took economics and my teacher told us to collect articles that revolved around the economy. This meant that when I got the paper, I would skim through all the other sections before I reached the business section. My second semester of grade 12 I took a political science course, and this teacher really encouraged us to read newspapers. Every friday certain students were assigned to find an article about an issue, then they would proceed to summarize it to the class, and finally, students would take turns discussing the article. I admit that I got used to this, and now that I'm in university, reading the paper has become a natural part of my day. My favourite section is the World News, and I even have a favourite columnist. Lately I've been looking to expand beyond the regular paper that I read; The New York Times is one of my other favourites.

Do you read the paper?

vintage skirt. Capezio boots. unknown tights. United Colors of Benetton sweater vest. Gap shirt. random jewelry. vintage belt.

Going Overboard

Today's image is of a young friend. His team had just placed well in a rowing regatta and he was running over, expressing his joy that his parents had been able to see the team do so well. I thought the shot came out pretty good and gave the parents a print the next time I saw them. His mother took a look at the image and said to her son, "oh, I didn't know you had so many freckles". I looked at the boy and he didn't have the same facial texture as the boy in the print. In my exuberance to produce the sharpest possibly print I had gone too far and wound up with all sorts of artifacts he his face that gave the appearance of freckles. Oops! One thing we have to be mindful of when shooting people is perception. How people record on a piece of film or a digital sensor is not always the way they want to be seen. Another example of being too "accurate" with an image occurred about two months ago. A group of friends offered to take some portraits of the senior citizens group in one of the towns nearby. I setup the lighting, my friend who's the really good portraitist did the shooting and another friend was going to do the retouching and printing. There were a few others handling the paperwork and coordination, so we had a pretty good team. When the images got to the retoucher she commented that there was nothing that needed to be done other than a little tighter cropping. The photographer said "what about sharpening?". I suggested that we probably didn't want to "sharpen" people from a senior center. The prints were printed and handed out to the subjects. I noticed one women looking at her image with sort of a semi-sad face. I asked her if the shot was alright. She said it was very nice, but her expression gave away a hint of disappointment. On the way home I figured it out. It wasn't the shot that had saddened her, it was the person looking back at her. She was a great, dignified looking lady of about sixty-five. That was the issue. When we look in a mirror we often don't see the same person looking back. I swear, when I look in a mirror I see a fairly trim twenty year old looking back. The photograph doesn't lie, but sometimes it would probably be kinder if it did. Five minutes of touchup could have made that regal lady look a little less like the queen and a little more like the princess she once was. It was an interesting lesson. To find out what was done to the young man in today's image, hit the "read more".

The "as shot" version of today's image was taken at lakeside, mid morning on a very cool, overcast day. The background was across the lake with some houses on the opposite shore and a pretty bland sky. Render/Clouds was used to produce a vignette that had some texture.


Some extreme sharpening of the overall image was produced by using the Filter/Other/High Pass technique that's been discussed several times on this blog. To intensify the sharpening, rather than using Overlay or Soft Light as the Blending Mode, I chose Vivid Light to get the fine detail in the hair and sweatshirt. As it turns out, it was probably not such a good idea to use it on the skin surfaces. The "redo" was handled by using a mask and eliminating the sharpening on the large flat surfaces of the skin. The lips, nostrils, eyes and eye brows were left with the heavy sharpening.

Before you go out shooting people, take a look in the mirror. See who's looking back. Would you want a shot of the actual person you see, or something closer to the perception you have. A photograph doesn't have to be merciless, just a little retouching can make it a gentle reminder of the past.

change for you; i'd never do it, i'm not a fool

The other day I went to my university's book store, and I ended up realising that there is so much memorabilia that I want. Unfortunately, I cannot possibly buy it all at the same time, so I'll have to decide what I want first. Oh, the life of a university student. Although I find myself out of money all the time, I think it's a great part of the experience of university. Complaining about being penniless is definitely one of the key topics in discussions. Yet, when I really want to buy something, I always have to remind myself to think about whether I truly need the item. This eventually makes me understand that right now I really don't need the sweatpants with my universities name on the butt or the leather monogramed tote bag or even the little teddy bear wearing a sweater with my school's name. It's rather sad.

On outfit news, I'm trying to break away from all the black I've been wearing. There's just too much of it in all my outfits, which is why today's look is a nice break. This cream coloured dress is definitely one of my favourite dresses, yet I've only worn it once. Today I discovered that it's also a great piece to remix, so you'll all be seeing a lot more of this dress soon.

Hope you all have a fantastic day!

Ps. Favourite song of the moment: Change For You by The Midway State

Urban Outfitters dress. Capezio shoes. AE shirt. Jacob cardigan. unknown tights.

the caffeine machine

This weekend I thought it would be interesting to research various careers. I've always liked the idea of becoming a journalist, but I've never had the opportunity to actually have articles published. Even though my high school had a paper, the editors were terrible, and in my last year, they only managed to publish 2 issues the whole year. Nevertheless, now that I'm in university, I realised I have opportunities given to me each day. Therefore, I'm going to take advantage of these opportunities and see how much I like journalism. This is one of the reasons I'm so grateful to be in university. Whatever I want to do, I have the chance to do it.

When I was younger, my aunt would come to visit, but then she would leave behind clothes that she didn't like much. My mom never wore them, but the other day I found this dress and thought I would see what I could make of it. I'm definitely going to search for more of my aunt's clothes.

Have a great day!

Capezio shoes. Naf Naf dress. unknown tights. Forever shirt. French Connection sweater. vintage belt.

Sometimes You Just Goof Around

I was looking through some older files this morning and came across an old shot of a swan. Notice I said "a" swan. It crossed my feeble mind that the neck looked like the shape of half a heart. How's this for justification? February is coming up pretty quick, Valentine's Day is in February, so let's do something saleable to the greeting card industry. I'm thinking the 2011 season, as any cards that will be out for this year are already on the store shelves. I wanted to make it a little harder for the casual observer to see that it's one swan, copied and flipped to create the second participant. There's a stick crossing the tail of the swan on the right, along with some debris in the lower right hand corner. The right swan has a drop of water coming off its beak, the left one doesn't. It was a little ten or fifteen minutes project to make some whimsical. Every now and then we all need to stop and let our playful side out. Doing something, anything silly is needed by all of us. If we stay too serious for too long we tend to crumple into state of depression. I just read a quote in the paper this morning I thought dovetailed with my mood today. Apparently the author Sue Grafton said "Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between being cautious and being dead". Sounds good to me. Caution is stifling, throwing caution to the wind is liberating. Along the same line is a song that was on the charts a few months ago. Lee Ann Womack had a song called "I hope you dance". The chorus says "And when you get a chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance". It goes right along with the Sue Grafton quote. So much for "inspiration", if you'd like to know how the changes were made to today's image, hit the "read more".

The first thing that was done was to increase the size of the canvas. It's simply selecting Image/ Canvas Size/Relative and set the dimensions to 100%. Using the arrow selectors I made it so all the increase would be on the left. The background color really doesn't matter.

Next, using the Marquee Tool, a selection was made starting at the tip of the swan's nose and covering the entire image beyond the swan. CTRL C to copy and CRTL V to paste the copied image. This will automatically put the copy on its own layer. Use CRTL T to get the Transform Tool. Right click and select "Flip Horizontal". Hit enter to confirm your move. Get the Move Tool (V) and slide the copy to the left until the noses of the swans just touch.

Use the Patch Tool, set to Destination, and bring similarly textured pieces of the water to cover the sticks and water drop off the beck. The reason for looking for similar textures is that the Patch Tool tries to do some "healing" effects and, without the textures being fairly close you might wind up with some funky patterns in the water.

That's it, it's reasonably simple to do. In fact, writing about it took longer than doing it.

Photo Restoration?

Some photo finishers might try to take a "snap" from 1944 and lovingly take the creases and folds out of the image and restore it to pristine condition. Some may even apply a faux hand tint to it to make it look like someone did something special to it 66 years ago. I sort of went the other way on today's image. I took a shot from a reenactment demonstration last summer and tried to make it look like it had several decades of being carried around and then had been tossed into a drawer to be forgotten. I probably need to do a little more work (probably start over with the original) to get it looking aged. The "cracks" need some work. They need to be rougher and have the emulsion look like it's separated. The edges of the "print" need to be more distressed and the overall image of the image needs to be discolored. I print isn't going to sit in some GIs wallet throughout the war and then survive in a drawer without getting pretty well damaged. It's not bad for a first attempt, but if you're interested in how I'll address the next round, hit the "read more".

The first thing I notice is that the conversion to B&W has to be better. The image of the print is pretty muddy. Of course, since this is supposed to be a "drug store" print, it probably shouldn't be a really snappy print with good contrast. Maybe muddy is more authentic, I'll have to think about that for a while.


Step two will, most likely, be the cracks. Any discoloration would come after the cracking because the bare paper that would show up in the cracks would be discolored too. The plan for the cracks would be that the photo had been folded to fit into the GIs wallet, so most of the cracking would be in the center. A stray crack might run counter to the majority, but only one or two lines will do it. The big deal with the cracks will be giving them some dimension. It has to look like you'd "feel" them if you ran your finger across the surface.

For the discoloration there's a couple of ways to go. The first thing would be to choose colors for the effect. Maybe a foreground of a coffee color and a background of a Campbell's Manhattan Clam Chowder broth hue. The using Photoshop's Render Clouds filter and stretch and blur the clouds until they look like blobs would be a way to go. Changing the blending mode and lowering the Opacity could be the way to make it believable. Stealing a trick from Bert Monroy to add some dirt would close that portion of the project.

That's a short snapshot (bad pun) of the work that needs to be done. Sounds to me like a good project for a snowy day.

these winter blues

I want to apologize for the lack of updates. I was perfectly capable of updating, but I felt boring this week, and I didn't want to post boring updates. I've been feeling rather uninspired lately which I think is due to the copious amounts of work I have and the horrible dull weather. I'm quite convinced I've developed the winter blues. All I really want to wear is black. Nonetheless, here is today's outfit.

I have a lot of work to catch up on this weekend, as well as non school work such as organizing my iPod. I'm one of those people who keep songs they never listen to that just waste space. Plus one of my friends and I decided to exchange new songs with each other in order to broaden our musical knowledge.

Have a great day everyone!

La Vie en Rose shirt. jacket/blazer unknown. vintage skirt. Capezio shoes. unknown tights.

The Advantages Of Insomnia In Photography

One of the advantages of waking up at 3:00 AM is that you're all set for sunrise photography. It could be said that another is getting blog entries up for people in the eastern US to have with their morning coffee. The former is cool, the later a little sketchy. Today's image is a result of the cool portion of the equation. Let's see, early morning, cool temperatures, warm(ish) water equals fog. Fog is a good thing for certain types of shots. Today's is one of those shots. About fifteen minutes after this image was made, if I stood in exactly the same spot and pointed the camera in the same direction, at the same height, we'd see the rock breakwater about fifty feet past the last boat. The shot would have been totally different and not anywhere near as interesting. Typically, with a "fog shot" you need a couple of elements. Something strong that attracts the eye, like the light/horn/object at the front of the lead boat. It could be a tree in the mist or a set of railroad tracks fading into the fog. Something to arrest the eye. Another element that makes this work is a splash of color. Here it's provided by the red of the second boat. The green grass leading up to that tree or brown of the railroad tie in the foreground might work just as well. In today's shot the red is pretty strong. The color element of the tree or track shots wouldn't have to be strong, just a hint of color would do fine. Fog shots are, for the most part, opportunistic shots. Sure, you can check the local forecast and increase the odds of there being fog (like when the local weather person says "there'll be fog in the morning"). But, having the right amount of fog, or being able to get the shot without distractions is a crapshoot at best. To find out more about today's image, hit the "read more".

Today's image was taken in mid July. We were visiting the Rockport/Cape Ann Massachusetts area and came upon a combination marina and motel. We tend to like the slightly offbeat rather than the cookie cutter accommodations of the brand names. It does lead to some vaguely suspicious haunts, but in general it's more Americana than hotels stamped out to serve the business traveler. Travelling on business I've probably stayed in a thousand of those. Travelling for pleasure gives us a chance to take advantage of "mom and pop" trying to eke out a living doing their best to make visitors feel welcome (okay, that's a wee bit of romanticizing, but you get the idea).

The only post processing done to today's image is cropping, bringing up the color in the reds just a little and putting on a vignette. Other than that it's pretty straight. You just have to be in the right place at the right time and have the weather gods work with you to get this type of shot. Doing your homework and maximizing the potential is something you should always do. As soon as the weather breaks and we either get a "January thaw" or spring arrives, start thinking about fog shots. Oh yeah, set the alarm clock if you don't tend to wake up the some ungodly hour of the morning.

Negative Space

A friend of mine is a very good portrait photographer. You might want to check out her blog (Click here) One of the key elements of much of her work is the use of negative space. According to Wikipedia, "negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image". Today's image uses negative space to frame the tropical flowers. It was taken in overcast skies. The appearance is such that the impression is that a shaft of light magically shown down on the flower and the rest of the area was under the clouds. Almost, the shaft of light comes from an off camera flash set to TTL exposure determination. The camera itself is set at F5.6 at 1/250th of a second. A reasonably "standard" setting for a Nikon DSLR. Because of the distance to the background elements, F5.6 works fine to produce the "bokeh" of the scene. The reason for the crop being the way it is is due to the light spots at are so soft that they almost look like clouds hanging over the blossom. It also gives the flower some space to "grow" into. Unless you're intent is to do a dramatic crop, cutting into the subject on several sides, the subject needs a little "breathing room". By "dramatic crop" I'm talking about cutting into the subject to create emphasis on a particular piece of the subject. When "the guys" were young we used to send out holiday cards to the relatives. The first was of our older son and consisted of his eyes only. You couldn't see his nose or hairline. Just his eyes. That was a dramatic crop and caught the attention of everyone receiving a card. From then on people looked forward to each year's offering. To find out more about "negative sapce", hit the "read more".

Negative space doesn't have to be empty space. It's function is to concentrate the viewer's eye on the main subject. It shouldn't compete with the subject and the most common form of negative space is formless. You probably can't tack up a calico cloth, keep it in reasonably sharp focus and call it negative space. On the other hand, a totally out of focus calico cloth, where the circles of confusion are so large as to blend the colors into a soft, mottled emptiness might work fine. Dropping the exposure on such a backdrop probably wouldn't hurt.


The use of negative space comes down to control. You cannot let the negative overpower the "positive". The "subject" has to stand out. No one should have any doubt where to look when viewing an image with a large amount to negative space. When used properly, negative space can be a powerful picture element.

i want your revenge

I've always wanted to make my photos black and white but with a tinge of colour, and I finally had my opportunity. This outfit is essentially all black with the sweater being a dark brown colour. This outfit makes me feel like a Lady Gaga song for some odd reason; looking at it, I don't see anything that would make me think Lady Gaga, but oddly I kept getting a strange Gaga vibe when I wore it.

Ever since I started university I've been trying to save my money, which means that when shopping for clothes I only buy items that can be worn many times and in different ways. This AA dress fits those requirements perfectly. I've been wearing it way too much lately, but I'm glad that I spent my money so wisely.

Hope you're all enjoying yourselves this weekend.

Ps. I was featured on the Fashion My Legs blog run by the lovely Oringina.

See me here

Aldo booties. Givenchy tights. AA dress. Holt Renfrew sweater. unknown necklace. Serengeti aviators.

A Place Made For HDR

Ya know how you find a place every once in a while that's the ideal place for a certain type of image? Like the stream on the Kelly Stanton Road in lower Vermont? I've had images from there on the blog a couple of times. Straight ones and faux color shots and really pushed HDR images. It's just a great place to shot a stream with large, natural boulders. Well, I found a place last week that should have a sign on the door saying "enter here, all those wanting to make an HDR image". It's today's image and is Pusser's Road Town Pub in Tortola. Check out their live webcam here. It's a great place to get a bite and have something to temper the tropical heat. We were in Tortola as one of the stops on our annual Caribbean cruise. It has a lot of rich, dark wood and details everywhere you look. On the ceiling they have old rescue rings from different boats. Just above the light you can see a model of a bi-plane. The walls are covered with all manner of photographs, framed newspaper clippings and proclamations. The back of the bar/dining room is dark enough for a lover's tryst and there's the tropical sun shining through the windows in front. The difference is way beyond the dynamic range of any digital cameras out today. (Next year, or the following that could all change.) It's an overall great place for HDR. Today's image was shot hand held using the auto bracketing function of a Nikon D300. To find out more about how the shot was taken and processed, read the "read more".

The aperture was set to F 3.5, about as wide open as it would go. I shot a seven shot burst, one EV per shot. If you're going to try a handheld HDR sequence you basically have to have the camera on it's fastest continuous frame rate. You definitely don't want to try it with seven single clicks of the shutter. You'd have way too much movement between shots. I steadied my elbow on the table we were sitting at. To get more stable my arm was bent so the camera sat back on my left shoulder. You know how people will tell you they "held their breath" while doing something. This time it was literal. Drew in a deep breath, exhaled slowly and fired the shutter at the end of the exhale, before the next inhale. The top shutter speed (darkest image) was 1/50th of a second. (You can tell it was pretty dark by that being the fastest shutter speed I was able to get.) The slowest shutter speed (lightest image) was a whopping 1.3 seconds. Even with a VR lens that's kind of pushing it.

Post process? Today's image uses only three of the seven shots taken. You might think (because of the long exposure times) that they would be the three clustered around the "normal". Nope! The three chosen were the two extremes and the normal. That means I used a -2, 0, and +2 EV. HDRsoft's Photomatix software was used to process the images. A little tone mapping and the result was brought into Photoshop for finishing. All the usual suspects were employed and the result came out reasonably well. Leave a comment. Let me know what you think.

some say i'm paranormal

I've never really found Gap as a store that draws me towards its doors, but I do own a few items from there. Most are just basic tops like my white long sleeved shirt in this outfit, but I have found some rather intriguing pieces like this silver vest. It's so gorgeous and it seems to pull this whole outfit together. I think it balances out the red tights which sort of pop out against the black dress.

This week was very busy, and this weekend will be spent trying to get through the mountains of work. The good part is that I do enjoy school, and my reading is quite interesting.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

shirt and vest, Gap. tights and jewelry, gifts. shoes, Enzo Angiolini. dress, AA. socks, unknown.

i just haven't met you yet

I've currently fallen in love with Michael Buble's new album, Crazy Love. Every song is so sweet and wonderful, the perfect music to relax to. I've been listening to it over and over and over again.

On other news, the other day one of my friends told me how much he loves fashion, art and design and he gave me this little speech about everything that he knows that has to do with fashion especially. It was really wonderful, because although we've been friends for a couple years, I never really knew his passion for the fashion world, yet now that I do know, it's got me really excited. I've never had any friends who knew much about fashion, which is one of the reasons that I originally started blogging. I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that now I would have a person to talk to about fashion in real life (apart from my mum who knows lots about fashion as well).

Do any of you have people to talk to about fashion in real life or is blogging your only outlet for expressing your views on fashion?

vintage dress and belt. Capezio leather boots. unknown tights. J.Crew cardigan. jewelry are gifts.