Photography Critique and Advice

Recent Work

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  Untitled by Courtney Goddard

  still life – first attempt at raw also.

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  Life in a Bubble by Julie Langford

  The greenhouse dome taken at the Welsh Redbubbler’s meet at the National Botanical Garden of Wales. Saturday 28th June 2008

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  Single file... by Carisma

  On the wise suggestion of the Group “Photographic Critique and Advice” I have now added some interesting sky / (that took 3 hrs of more studying of PSP!) Three male giraffes walking / single file….. / I thought it would give more / impact to the silouettes by / rendering in B&W. Imbali Concession – Kruger Nat.Park / South Africa

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  Cloudy River by Crystal Zacharias

  All artwork is © Crystal Zacharias, All Rights Reserved. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, redistribute, or modify this image without my express consent. All photos available with or without text upon request.

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  Face the Day by Dawne Olson

  Buffalo in Yellowstone National Park, quite early in the morning while sunlight in the valley was accentuated by a heavy purple-ish blue fog still lifting as temperatures rose from near freezing overnight. /

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  Startled ! by Carisma

  We approached the sleeping lion…. / on the vehicle someone coughed…. / suddenly we had his full attention ! Kapama Reserve – Mpumalanga / (South Africa) I have now uploaded a better / version of this picture

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  Circles Squared by Crystal Zacharias

  All artwork is © Crystal Zacharias, All Rights Reserved. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, redistribute, or modify this image without my express consent.

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  The Barn by Nikki Trexel

  My grandparents’ old farm is full of old buildings like this dark red barn. The stacks of wood you see are cut from nearby forest, awaiting planing into lumber to be used in new homes. I played around with this until it had something of an antique look to it. Thoughts on this process are welcome!

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  Spare Tire by MKWhite

  I came across this shot while walking around in San Antonio. Here are some more photos from my portfolio. / Here are the links to my Sunrise and Minutes Before Sunrise in Vegas Photographs:

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  Painted with light technique, the tutorial continued...…Alright, I don’t think I need to tell you what a difference proper lighting can make to a photo. But when I was working on my latest phot…

  Alright, I don’t think I need to tell you what a difference proper lighting can make to a photo. But when I was working on my latest photo, Radio Electricity , I was looking at he composition photo and thought: I got to put this on RB as an extension to my painted with light article . I’ve you read my tutorial on my painted with light technique then you already know that I start with finding the right angle to set up the tripod and then I make the composition. All of this I do with available light. In case of Radio Electricity that were overhead fluorescent tubes. Just about the ugliest light you can get in my opinion. During this process I take several test shots to see how it comes out in 2D. / Here is the final test shot of the composition that was used for the actual photograph (minus a slight bump into the tripod, sigh). Rather drab, wouldn’t you say? Ugly, may even come to mind? Now here is the same shot, after I had a go at it with my flashlight and photoshop to melt a few of the images together to get a photo with the light spots right where I wanted them. Not to mention the fact that the radio lights are on, which is kinda hard when it’s unplugged. ;) Something quite different I would say, apart from whether you like it or not. I know, this was a rather silly post, perhaps, but I found the difference quite striking. My wive even didn’t believe me at first when I told her it where the exact same images except for the light. I specially hope that those of you who read the painted with light tutorial and wanted to have there own go at the technique found this helpful. Cheers

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  Grunge Text/Type…So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we ar…

  So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we are going to be using today, but you will need the larger file, so clicky on THIS link. Copyright is mine – yada, yada. Open Photoshop and create a new file 800px X 600px, background set to white. Open the larger image (which you will have saved to your computer) and with your move tool selected and the shift key held down, drag the tree image over to your new file. Holding down the shift key will centre the image for you. Working on the trees layer Go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and I want you to take the slider to the left until it reaches 80 (see image below). We’re aiming to get a lot of white in the image. Next we’re going to add the type. Select a foreground colour, I used Red. Grab your type tool and select Horizontal type – then go ahead and type something, I used RedBubble. (Arial Black > Regular>100pt>Sharp – for those who may be interested) Move your text to where you would like it to be, you can place it similar to where I placed, but it will need to be over some of the black. Once you’ve played around with this a couple times you’ll get a general idea of where the text should go. Before we go any further, we have to rasterize the text. You can either right click on the text layer and choose rasterize type or go to Layer>Rasterize>Type. Now the fun begins :-) click on the trees layer, the one you did the threshold adjustment on and select your magic wand tool, check that the contiguous box on the top menu bar is unchecked and select some of the black. Because you have the contiguous box unchecked, the magic wand tool will select all of the black areas. Now, hide the trees layer by clicking the little eye icon and click on the type layer, then press the delete key. Go to Select>deselect or press ctrl D on the keyboard. And there you have it, some grungey type text. Use your move tool to position the text wherever you want and you can drag the trees layer to the little garbage bin icon … cos you don’t need it anymore. I’ve cropped my final image. Larger file is HERE Enjoy playing, and if I haven’t made anything clear just ask me.

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  Define pattern and then make a brick wall in Photoshop…Define pattern and then make a brick wall in Photoshop Just because you’ve always wanted to make a brick wall :-) You can define a …

  Define pattern and then make a brick wall in Photoshop Just because you’ve always wanted to make a brick wall :-) You can define a pattern for just about anything in PS, sometimes they need to step and repeat and because of that, we will be using our grid which we will need to adjust in the preferences. So go to Edit>Preferences and choose Guides, Grids, Slices & Count. Viewing the image below, change the highlighted area to the same settings – Gridline every 1 inch – subdivisions 11. Now, go and create a new file 800×600 72dpi. Go to Image>Image Size and make sure the Document Size is set to inches. Create a new blank layer above the background layer by clicking on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, then go to the top menu bar and select / View>Show>Grid and then zoom on the image to 200%. With your rectangular marquee tool selected go and make a selection similar to the one if the image below 11 squares across and 5 down. Choose a colour for the bricks and making sure it is the f/ground colour, press Alt + Backspace or go to Edit> Fill and choose Foreground. With the selection tool selected, and holding down your Ctrl + Alt keys drag the brick you made and place it as in the image below. You can also use Edit>Copy – Edit>Paste if you like. Then I want you to repeat that process again, and place the third brick the same as in the image below. The gap between the two top bricks is for the grout, we’re going to create the grout to the left side and below when we select the area to ‘Define Pattern’. So lets do that now. With your rectangular marquee tool I want you to select the area of the image that I have highlighted below. Go to View>Show and click on grid to deselect it. Next, I want you to click on the little eye icon next to the background layer so that the pattern has a transparent backgound. Next, go to Edit>Define Pattern and give the pattern a name – use something like bricks :-) Next go to Select>Deselect and then delete all layers except the background layer. click on the ‘create new layer’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette and go to Edit>Fill and choose pattern from the drop down menu, scroll down because your new pattern should be at the bottom. Hover your cursor over the top and it will show the name of the pattern Press OK and you should end up with something similar to below. Now we’re going to change the background colour to something that more resembles grout. Make sure you are working on the background layer by clicking on it and then go and select a colour for the grout. I used R255 G204 B153. Making sure that that it is the foreground colour press Alt + backspace on your keyboard, alternatively you can go to Edit>Fill and choose foregound. Our next job is to add some noise to the background layer. go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and uncheck the Monochromatic box, because in this instance we do want to add a little colour to the noise. You can punch in the same figures as in the image below if you like, or choose some to suit yourself. Now we need to make the little brown rectangles look like bricks. Working on the bricks layer (the one you filled with the pattern) click on the FX icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or go to Layer>Layer Style and choose bevel and emboss. You can punch in the same settings as I have in the image below, or choose to suit. Next we’re going to use the texturizer to give the bricks some texture. You can use the numbers that I used in the image below. The image looks uniform, so what you can do at this point is just your dodge and burn tools to randomly darker and lighten the bricks. Set your burn tool to shadows and use about 20% opacity, use a soft edged brush and randomly burn some bricks. Set your dodge tool to shadows and with a soft edged brush and the opacity set to around 20%, randomly highlight the bricks. You can change the opacity on both the burn and dodge process to build up the effect. Another thing you can do, is create a new layer and with a small brush set to black draw some cracks in the bricks. Take the opacity down on the layer if you want as well. One more thing you could do is to grab the eraser tool and gently take away some of the brick edges (use a size 2 brush on this size image) so that the whole wall isn’t so uniform. I haven’t done much dodging & burning on the completed image, that’s your job to go and finish it off to suit your needs :-) Larger Image Lots more you could do to this if you wanted, just use your imagination :-) So we’ve learned how to define a pattern and put it to some use in the real world. If there is something that you don’t understand, or that I have failed to explain properly, just ask. Have fun!