Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone

One thing I try to do not only as a photographer but as a person is to recognize my weaknesses and turn them into strengths. That being said one of my weaknesses as a photographer is photojournalism, and taking portraits of complete strangers. I prefer being in a studio setting where I have complete control of the lights. If I want a shadow to fall a certain way, or if I want soft light I have control over that. I can direct the model and have them look in a particular direction or move how I see the image in my head. Take me out of that situation and I am uncomfortable. I have great respect for people who can go out and capture great photojournalism and street photography. I want to get better in this aspect of photography so this past weekend I decided to go to the Renaissances Festival in Nashville and practice doing more photojournalism and editorial portraits. I figured it would be a good place to get some nice characters and it is more controlled environment rather than just going to the streets and start shooting (when I get more comfortable with street photography and photojournalism I will then do that). Here are some of the images from my experience of stepping out of my comfort zone. I don't know if I would consider these images photojournalism, or more environmental/editorial portraiture. 

The Beast

A glass artist working at the festival

Wood fairies blowing bubbles

This was the first actor I encounter walking to the festival

This wood fairy looks so happy that she caught her bubble

Recent Composite

This is my most recent composite I have done. The original concept fell through so myself and Keely (another talented photographer the model for me) were sitting at my house after a long day of shopping for wardrobe and props were talking about what else we could do. We then came up with the idea of a wife trying to be the perfect bride with a slob of a husband. We started to talk through the idea and the concept and came up with the bride is finally getting fed up with the husband and is about to through the eggs she just cooked for him on him. I wanted to have a more cinematic feel to the image. So I used multiple lights. I used a large parabolic umbrella, a ring flash, and a reflector with a 20 degree grid. I was also able to get the composite done in two shots, which makes putting things together in post a heck of a lot easier. Unfortunately though with how I ended up positioning the models in the final composite some of the props we purchased ended up not being used.
The first shot is of me, I guess I fit the role of the jerk husband.
The second shot was the last one we shot of Keely as the eggs fell out of the pan right after that shot, some how she managed to catch the eggs and not get any on the dress, I was quite impressed.
The last one is the final composite.

Lincoln MKX Shoot

ƒ40 @ 1.6 ISO 400

ƒ22 @ .6 ISO 100

Last week I got access to a brand new Lincoln MKX. So Robert Glover (if you haven't seen his work or been to his website I highly recommend it RGPhoto.com) and I decided that we would take it out and photograph it. We set up a couple of rigs to capture motion blur while the car was moving, unfortunately for us we chose the wrong day to shoot in Percy Warner park, as they were getting ready for the Steeplechase being held that weekend and traffic was unusually heavy. But luckily we did get a few good shots from the motion rig. As the sun started to go down we went to an open field to do some still shots as the lighting was getting just right. As each minute passed by the lighting just kept getting better, to be honest at that time of day in that location you would have to try really hard to get a bad image of the car. After the shoot I started coming down with some bug so I haven't had much of a chance to edit a bunch of the images we took, but here are two images. One from the motion rig we set up and one in the field. For the image in the field I waited for the light to be balanced with the headlights on the car, I then positioned the tripod so I would capture lens flare from the headlight. I knew I wanted a star burst type effect so I stopped my lens down as low as it could. I believe that image was shot at ƒ40 @ 1.6 ISO 400. When I get some more edited I will add them .

I have recently been asked by multiple people when am I going to post my first tutorial, I must apologize I have been pretty busy lately, and  just haven't had time to post one, but it is in the works. When I get over whatever bug I have I will start recording it. I will keep you updated as to when it is up.

Photoshop CS 6 Beta Version

I finally had a chance to start playing with Photoshop CS 6 beta version...
I have to say I am really loving it, the smart people at Adobe have made some great improvements from CS 5. In general I am usually pretty hesitant on changing programs, I worked in Photoshop CS 2 on my personal computer (it was what I first started using) up until I CS 4. I didn't upgrade to CS 3, and the jump for CS4 to CS5, was one that I made for hesitantly. Having said that I am really looking forward to the upgrade from CS5 to CS6. Here is a list of new tools and features in CS6 that I have been really impressed with:
1. Photoshop now saves in the background while you are working on your project. I generally work in 16bit mode with large files and multiple layers (which we will get to further on the list). Needless to say Photoshop becomes a computer hog, and there have been numerous times where Photoshop and my computer had an argument and Photoshop decided to take it's ball and go home (it crashed) and I lost hours of work that I would have to go back and redo. Now with saving in the background I am less worried about losing hours of work.
2. They improved the crop tool in Photoshop. The crop tool is more like the tool in Lightroom, which is nice. But what I really like about it now is you can crop non-destructively inside Photoshop. I generally like to crop after my editing and manipulating. To keep a non-destructive workflow I would have to import my final composite into Lightroom and crop from there, this now saves me a step in my workflow.
3. You can now search for a specific layer in Photoshop. This is really nice when I am working on a illustration with 50 plus layers. You can now edit and change opacity in multiple layers at the same time.
4. In Photoshop CS 6 enables you to edit video inside the program, and add a soundtrack. I have been a little hesitant about shooting video with my cameras, because in order for me to edit it I would have to purchase another program. Not anymore, I don't think that Photoshop is going to replace Final Cut or After Effects but it gives people who are used to working in Photoshop a chance to edit their videos.
6. New Content Aware features. I like the patch tool in CS 5 however I never use it. I do all of my retouching on empty layers so there was nothing for the patch tool to sample. Now with the content aware option on the patch tool I am able to keep my normal retouching workflow and use the patch tool when needed. The content aware move tool is an interesting tool too. It will allow you to move a selection on a single layer, then fill in the area you moved with the background for you. This is a nice tool however I am not sure how often I will use it.
7. Adaptive Wide Angle Filter, I have been surprised how much I used this filter in the short time (3 days) that I have been using CS 6. This filter allows you to target and correct distortion issues in your images, and the great part is you don't loose any pixels with the filter! With the lens correction filter your image gets cropped and you loose pixel information. With the Adaptive Wide Angle filter you scale the image up inside the dialogue, so the image doesn't get cropped.
8. The new Blur Gallery. Photoshop introduces three new blur options, a Tilt shift blur, Field blur, and an Iris blur. Tilt shift is pretty self explanatory. The Iris blur does a great job in recreating Depth of Field in the program, where previously I would have to use layer mask, and depth mask to recreate Depth of Field. The Field blur is a nice tool where you can go and selectively blur your images for effects that cannot be created in camera. I will play with it and experiment but I am afraid that it might get gimmicky.
9. Improved Liquify filter. The Liquify filter is now a lot more user friendly and forgiving
10. New ACR settings. Gone are the Recovery, Fill light slider. Now you have White, Black, Shadow, Highlights sliders. That you can move in positive numbers or negative so you have greater control. In previous versions of ACR I would only use the curve just to enhance contrast, really that is all it was good for because you couldn't go into individual color channels and make corrections. Not anymore the curve in ACR 6 you can go into individual color channels this gives greater control and allows me to do the majority of color correction in ACR. I had times where I was given 100 plus images and asked to do quick edits, I could knock out most things in ACR,  but I would still have to go into Photoshop to fine tune the colors, now I am able to do the same fine tuning inside ACR.

There is one last thing I want to mention is the workspace, it is more streamlined, and feels bigger than previous versions of Photoshop. The dark grey colors are pleasing on  the eye and allows your images to be the focal point on the screen. There hasn't been much upgrades in the past that I have looked forward, but this time I am excited to hand over my money to Adobe.

Smoky Mountains Day 3

I thought today was going to be a wash after getting caught in a hail storm. I was about to give up and go back to camp with how late it was getting and I was almost out of gas. Luckily the storm passed quickly I was able to make it to a gas station with time to head up the mountain. I was able to get a few shots off of the sunset. I shot the last of the color slides that I brought with me. So for the rest of this week I am shooting black and white film.

Great Smoky Mountains Day 2

Today I took it a little easy. Didn't do much hiking had to have some time for my body to recover from yesterdays extravaganza. I also decided to work on a little personal side project of photographing folk artist with the works. Today I photographed a couple of wood carvers in Towmsend and Wears Valley. Tomorrow I am planning to get an early start get some landscape photos then I am going to head down to Pigeon Forge to photograph some quilt makers, and go to an art league to get some more leads on some other local folk artist. Tomorrow should be a fun day.

Great Smoky Mountains Day 1

Day 1 in the Great Smoky Mountains. I felt like taking a week and shoot film, so I loaded up my 4x5 camera and hit the road. It is a nice change to slow down and take my time. Unfortunately the long hike caring a heavy pelican case was a tough one. Images will be posted once I get them processed and scanned. When I get back home I will begin work on my first video tutorial. It is going to be on using channels and blend modes to edit images. Using this method will help you to start separating tonality from color when working with your images in post. It will also teach you a little known tool in Photoshop called Apply Image, and will be a brief introduction to using LAB mode for improving and enhancing color. Keep an eye out for that.

1st Blog Post Ever!!!

For my first post I figured I would just post some of my more recent work. Some of it is heavy Photoshop work, and a little of straight photography.

 A composite depicting the destruction of the Pennacle building in Nashville TN.

 Taken at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville AL.

 Belle Meade Plantation Nashville TN.

 Robert's Western World Nashville TN.

 Legends Corner Nashville TN.

 Random guy on the street in Nashville TN.

 Self Portrait 1, I was looking at a lot of surrealism when I made this.

 Self Portrait II, I didn't have a Halloween costume so I made one in Photoshop.