Archive for Photo Technique

Fugue with Useful Muse

{ March 27, 2008 @ 10:45 am } · { Concerts, Daily Photo, Hothouse Flowers, Photo Technique, The Sandcarvers }
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A.J. Laird — and a little bit of Chris Trotier — belting out some no-holds-barred Celtic Rock at The Abbey On March 15th.

It goes without saying that a shot like this would not be possible without the consent and cooperation of the musicians involved, and the ‘Carvers have been more then gracious with the access they’ve allowed me. I humbly thank them all.

Here, I was standing off in the wings — stage right — just out of sight of all but a few in the crowd. This is the kind of shot that concert snappers hope for; the live, spontaneous interaction between the musicians.

It is, however, a little hit or miss in that the musicians, for the most part, are looking away from you. This would be a very boring shot and as the photographer, you can’t waste too much time waiting around for a moment like this as you’ll miss a bunch of other opportunities.

In the case of this shot, there were also a bunch of technical hurdles to overcome, such as the darkness from the audience area and daylight streaming in from the windows along the side of the venue…both of which are behind the performers (in this case), with the subjects themselves bathed in stage lighting … exposure has to be spot on for a balanced shot.

But, when you’re there in the wings … and you see it coming … and everything comes together and you’re there to actually capture it …pure magic, indeed.

It makes you feel good, not only in your own ability, but more importantly, to be able to pass along a shot like this to the performers.

With shots from side or back stage, there are, of course, rare opportunities for shots like this:

…but in all honesty, more times than not — from an aesthetic point of view — they just don’t work. I was lucky with this shot of Liam from Hothouse Flowers, in that I was able to capture some of his profile in the shot. If not for that, this would’ve been a complete dud of a shot.

All things being equal, covering concerts is probably my favorite type of photography.

And while I’m on the subject of concert photography, I want to pass along that tomorrow night I’ll be at McAuliffe’s Pub in Racine, WI, covering the Two Loons for Tea show with the incomparable William Kopecky guesting on bass guitar. Come on out, have a pint or three, see a great band …

… and stop over and say hi to The Celtic Camera!

The Sandcarvers: St. Patrick’s Celebration 2008 – March 1 thru 17 Various Venues

Slainte
Gareth—The Celtic Camera Photography

Prints and photo gifts (Mugs, T-Shirts, Puzzles, etc) are available for non-commercial purchase by clicking on the shopping cart at “The Celtic Camera Photography.” Photos are also available for commercial contracts by simply contacting me via the “mailto” links which can be found on the homepage of “The Celtic Camera Photography.”)

The Depth of Life

{ January 7, 2008 @ 2:29 pm } · { Daily Photo, News Updates, Photo Technique, The Sandcarvers }
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Today’s photo is a shot of my wife, Raven.

It’s also an example of using 2nd curtain flash and zooming your lens to create trails … I’ll explain.

First, set your camera to manual mode with a slow shutter speed of at least 1/4 second and the widest aperture your zoom lens can allow.

Next, set your flash to “2nd Curtain Sync,” which can be found in your camera’s customization menus. This setting will force the flash to fire right before the shutter closes, as opposed to when the shutter first opens.

Now, set your zoom lens to either focal length extreme. Go ahead and compose your shot, push the shutter button and, while the shutter is open, manually zoom your lens either in or out, depending on where you started from.

Viola! You’ve created trails.

For this photo, I started with my lens zoomed in on my subject and zoomed out after pushing the shutter.

This is a very fun but very unpredictable technique … you never really know what you’re going to end up with. In this case, it turned out exactly as I was planning. I’ve used this technique successfully at night, with my subject backlit by neon signs or the like.

CAMERA INFO
Hand held Canon 20D; Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (stabilizer on) @ 28-135mm; Manual Mode; 0.5s @ f/3.5; ISO 100.

POST PRODUCTION
I adjusted the white balance on the RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw to remove the indoor lighting color cast by the desk and ceiling lights and then just tweaked the levels to achieve the contrast I wanted.

**********

As of this writing, I’m still working on the redesign of my main site. It’s been a slow go and kind of frustrating, as I’ve yet to achieve the look and functions I’m striving for, but luckily, it’s only just half-a-mess right now and still accessible. Hopefully, I’ll have most of it finished within the next day or two …

… Aarrrgh!

I’ll also be posting some photos from the Sandcarvers – Seven Nations show I attended last Friday in the next few days as well.

Slainte
Gareth—The Celtic Camera Photography

Prints and photo gifts (Mugs, T-Shirts, Puzzles, etc) are available for non-commercial purchase by clicking on the shopping cart at “The Celtic Camera Photography.” Photos are also available for commercial contracts by simply contacting me via the “mailto” links which can be found here).

The Luminous Precision of Death

{ December 15, 2007 @ 12:56 pm } · { Daily Photo, Macro, Photo Technique }
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I was out in the yard looking down for some leaves to shoot. Nothing was really catching my eye until I looked up and saw this little gem, still on our maple tree, barely clinging to the home it’d known all summer, its stem already halfway off of the branch.

Needless to say, I finished the job. After plucking, I brought it back in the house and set up.

The method I used for this shot is one I learned about two years ago. First, you decide on a subject, be it a leaf, flower, some herbs … whatever. Next, you find a window in your home with plenty of light and a natural looking background (no buildings). Making sure that the window is clean and streak free, you then simply tape your subject to the window by its stem. Now, you have a stable subject without having to fight the breezes normally associated with outdoor macro photography.

Set your camera on a tripod and you’re ready to go. For portraiture or still life work, simply include some of the view outside your window in the shot, making sure to use a fast aperture of at least f/5.6 or larger to throw the background out of focus. You’ll still want to be as close to the window as possible however, to avoid glare on the glass. For thicker leaves and flowers that won’t allow light through, try a white reflector to bounce some light back onto your subject or a tiny spot of fill flash.

For this shot I wanted a more traditional macro feel to it, so I focused in tight and waited for the right moment after the sun was just up, but not yet peaking over the tops of the trees. This provided enough back lighting to produce a somewhat transparent look for the leaf, but not as extreme as if I’d waited for full sunshine directly behind it. I was going for subtle on this one.

CAMERA INFO
Tripod mounted Canon 20D; Quantaray 70-300mm f/4-5.6 LD Tele-Macro Lens @ 176mm; 1/500s @ f/7.1; ISO 400.

POST PRODUCTION
A quick Levels adjustment for contrast, a boost of saturation up 10%, a bit of noise reduction and sharpening … finis!

Slainte
Gareth—The Celtic Camera Photography

Adding a Duotone Effect in Photoshop (CS3)

{ December 6, 2007 @ 8:34 pm } · { Photo Technique }
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So, here’s how you can create the duotone effect as seen in the previous post.

1. First, open your image in photoshop. I always work with TIFF, but JPEG’s work too.

2. If you haven’t already done so, open your Channels and Layers palettes from the pull-down menu at the top:
Window > Channels (same for layers).

3. Now, from the pull-down, go to:
Image > Mode > Lab color

(please assume the pull-down menu at the top for commands separated with “>” from here out.)

4. Now, click on the “Lightness” channel in the Channels Palette.

5. Next, convert to greyscale:
Image > Mode > Greyscale (click ok to “delete other channels”).

6. CMD-Click (CTRL-Click on PC’s) on the Gray channel in the Channels Palette. You now have the “Marching Ants” on selected portions of the image.

7. Now, invert this selection:
Select > Inverse

8. Next, convert to RGB:
Image > Mode > RGB Color

9. Now, create a Solid Adjustment Layer:
Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color (click okay… you don’t have to rename it).

10. You now should have a “Pick a solid color” dialog on your screen. At this point you can either move the vertical slider up or down to choose your color range or you can type a color code into the “#” box at the bottom of the dialog. This is what I do if I’m looking for a “true” blue, red, whatever.

11. Now, hover your cursor over the large color box on the left side of this dialog and you’ll get a round color picking tool. Just click on an area within the box to select the range you want. I find that choosing from the lower third of this box, where the color starts to blend with black, works best but, if you’re going for an extreme effect, click in the upper two-thirds.

12. Now click OK to close this dialog.

13. Go to your layers palette and change the Blending Mode to “Overlay”. This is the pull-down at the top left of the Layers palette that reads “Normal” by default.

14. At this point you can choose to change the opacity (the little box just to the left of the blending mode drop down you just used), but I usually leave it at 100%).

15. Now, flatten your image:
Layer > Flatten Image

… and you’re done with the duotone process. At this point you can mess around with your levels, curves or other commands and techniques as you see fit.

Pretty easy huh?

Slainte
Gareth—The Celtic Camera Photography

Liquid Mind Reflection

{ September 29, 2007 @ 8:14 pm } · { Daily Photo, Landscape, Photo Technique }
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This was shot from a beach on Lake Michigan, a few blocks from my home in Kenosha WI. It’s a three image HDR merge; one shot exposed for the sky, one exposed for the water and one exposed for the dark shadows on what’s left of the pier. After merging the three photos in Photoshop, I did a little dodging and burning in the sky to bring out the shadows and on the crest of the wave to pop some of the highlights.

This technique of combining two or more images into one can be very tricky on water shots like this, or any shot where there is any movement at all. Ideally, this process works best on completely static subjects, such as church interiors and urban and nature landscapes. Any movement at all–such as waves in a body of water–can produce unnatural looking areas that kind of “sparkle,” almost as if you’d placed white xmas lights in the scene. If they’re small areas, you can usually clone them out but, if they’re larger then ten pixels or so (a surprisingly large area, really), the shot can be ruined, no matter how good the rest of the shot looks.

I remember when I was first researching and learning this technique a few years ago all of the source info was basically saying, “My god, man, whatever you do, never use this technique on moving subjects!“

Harrumph! Rules are made to be broken.

On this one I was pretty lucky, as I was able to use fast enough shutter speeds to “catch up” with the wave, as it moved only about eight inches throughout the entire capture time of the three shots. Even so, if the wave had broke more dramatically then it did, things might have turned out differently.

Slainte
Gareth–The Celtic Camera Photography

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