This is really big! We’ve tracked down some of the coolest photography prizes we could find, passed the hat round the office for some b…
This is really big! We’ve tracked down some of the coolest photography prizes we could find, passed the hat round the office for some bubblecash, stuck the megaphone out the window, and now we’re ready to launch the RedBubble Real Photography Competition. Prizes include: / – Leica M4-P plus 50mm F2 Summicron (or a Canon 400D + 17-85mm IS USM) / – Elinchrom D-Lite 4 – Studio Lighting Kit / – Gitzo Carbon Fiber Tripod with a Really Right Stuff BH-40LR Head / – 15 x great photography books / – $2500 bubblecash There are five categories, and you can only enter once per category. Simply upload your entry and tag it as follows: 1) Landscape, Travel and Nature Tag your entry with landscapephotocomp 2) Portrait, Fashion and Commercial Tag your entry with fashionphotocomp 3) Black and White, Street, and Reportage Tag your entry with bwphotocomp 4) America Tag your entry with usaphotocomp 5) Europe Tag your entry with europephotocomp See www.redbubble.com/promo/photocomp for full details
I have had a couple of requests asking me how I do my portraits. / I may not do this the right or the most effective way, but this is what…
I have had a couple of requests asking me how I do my portraits. / I may not do this the right or the most effective way, but this is what I have learnt from playing around so far, only just a newby to all of this. FOR STARTERS, BACK DROP AND LIGHTING / Sheet on the good ol’ hills clothes line for the backdrop, and the sunshine for my lighting. I havent used reflectors before, but would like to get some eventually. Other than that, I cant really say what I do, I just shoot. PHOTOSHOP / Using one of my shots ‘Blue’ as an example, using 4 steps to achieve, the eyes, the skin tone, converting to mono, and selective colour. The way I bring out the eyes is something I do for all my portraits. TO BRING OUT THE EYES / To start with, use the lasso tool, and select the eyes and mouth, then apply the unsharp mask. / To help bring out the eyes even more, use the dodge tool, set for midtones at about 7% using a small brush. *I never sharpen the entire image in portraits, just the eyes, and mouth, sometimes the hair. SKIN TONE / I use a program called ‘Neat Image’, a noise reduction program, which helps smooth out skin tones. This is the only shot i have used on a childs portrait, as I dont really think its necessary, and it can also effect the eye and mouth area, so careful not to overdo it. CONVERTING TO MONO / Layer – New Fill colour – Solid colour – set mode to color. In color picker set all values in RGB to 28. / This is the way I convert most of my images to mono, much more effective way than desaturating image. SELECTIVE COLOUR / Select the second layer and using a small soft brush eraser tool, delete the parts you want in colour. / For the edges change the opacity to about 20% to avoid a harsh line and to blend between mono and color. / Then going back to the first layer, I play around with the levels / and colour adjustment until you get the effect you want. I think thats about it. Hopefully this helps, and if anyone has any other tips, corrections, or better ways to do this, would love to learn.
As it is coming up for Christmas, I am feeling generous and so I am running a competition for you all. The title of the comp is “naked…
As it is coming up for Christmas, I am feeling generous and so I am running a competition for you all. The title of the comp is “naked photography” now before you all get to excited, what I mean is untouched photographs. The categories are 1) Macro / 2) Portrait or people / 3) Abstract (this includes odd camera angles) / 4) Everything else THE RULES. / They have to be untouched photographs, exactly the same as you took them, no messing with contrast or saturation etc and definitely no Photoshop / You can enter as many categories as you like, but only one entry per category (does this make sense?) / Please tag all entries poppykittencomp and state which category you are entering. / You can add you image to this post or just your profile, but remember to tag them :-))) THE PRIZES (OOOooooooohhhhhhhhh) / The overall winner will receive a small laminate of their choice, from any artist on RB / and the winners in each category will receive a card of their choice. As I thought it would be nice to have these for Christmas the comp will end Nov 30th, Remember, its supposed to be fun.
I have just learned a really useful little tip for Sharpening images in Photoshop which I thought I should share with you all. Until n…
I have just learned a really useful little tip for Sharpening images in Photoshop which I thought I should share with you all. Until now when I sharpened an image in CS3 with Smart Sharpen I used to sharpen and then leave it at that. As you may well know over sharpening can produce exaggerated noise and produce “halo” effects on your edges which look plain nasty. Here’s a few useful tips to help you improve the quality of your sharpening. – Always sharpen to a NEW LAYER (Merge all to new layer using SHIFT+CTRL+ALT+E on PC’s) – I always convert this layer to a smart object to allow me to modify any applied filter effects. – Always change the blend mode on this layer to LUMINOSITY. This massively reduces the halo effects on your sharpened image. (Try over-sharpening an image and then changing the blend mode to luminosity just to see this in action) – Follow these guidelines for smart sharpening for the best results For STANDARD SHARPENING – Amount 100, Radius <=2 / For SOFT IMAGES – Amount 140, Radius <=1 / For PORTRAITS – Amount <=5 Try these guidelines out and see what you think.
I PRODUCE & DIRECT PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES FOR STILL CAPTURE TO PROMOTE AND MARKET EMERGING TALENT / for Amateur & Professionals alike *PRI…
I PRODUCE & DIRECT PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES FOR STILL CAPTURE TO PROMOTE AND MARKET EMERGING TALENT / for Amateur & Professionals alike PRIVATE ENQUIRIES ALSO WELCOME / I work out of Europe & Australia. I source, manage and market emerging talent from both continents. / I engage photographers, models, actors, performers, stylists and artists alike. I create opportunites that merge a miriad of creative talent into marketing events for the International marketplace. / Je travaille à la fois en Europe et en Australie. / Je cherche, dirige et lance de nouveaux talents. / J’engage photographes, modèles, acteurs et stylistes. / Si vous désirez en savoir plus sur les diférentes / opportunités que je peux vous offrir, veuillez me contacter à / director@arthouseproductions.com.au / to register email me your areas of interest with your location subject MAILING LIST + LOCATION in captials please / 3 Faces: Courtesy of Maree Toogood / photo courtesy of MAREE TOOGOOD / / photo courtesy of Jodie Johnson / / courtesy of Phil Wright / / courtesy of dominic o’brien / / / / courtesy of photoeclipse / AERIAL ACROBATS ARTHOUSE PRODUCTION / If you are interested in attending any of the PHOTOGRAPHIC SESSIONS that i stage and stepping off the virtual platform for a shoot, meeting other bubblers, working with excellent models, picking up tips on the job, let me know! and i will add you to our mailing list and keep you in the loop. I organise, models, drops & props, venues, equipment etc. for on location and studio shoots. So jump on the mailing and stay informed. / These are some of the ways YOU & YOUR WORK gets promoted. / ARTHOUSE PRODUCTIONS VIDEO MONTAGES / Some of the sessions are by invitation only as location can restrict numbers so let me know what areas interest you ie, dance, portraiture, black and white, cityscape, sports, nudes, fashion, catwalk, landscape, storms, seascape, animals, babies, night , long exposure, photo journalsim, macro, etc. etc / ARTHOUSE PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION MELBOURNE / & / EUROPEAN EXHIBITION Look forward to seeing you at the next ART HOUSE PRODUCTION !! / A SNAPSHOT OF THE WORK BEHIND THE SCENES
Hi Everyone, Vikkie Smith has done a portrait of Axel based on the picture of him posted he…
Hi Everyone, Vikkie Smith has done a portrait of Axel based on the picture of him posted here on RB…please check out her work its amazing! Its an incredible likeness of my baby boy and she even managed to capture that naughty glint in his eye that he was never without!
I have been asked by many people via comments, and directly, how I get the clear skin effect on my *Portraits...
I have been asked by many people via comments, and directly, how I get the clear skin effect on my Portraits / . So, as I am now a leader in the Photoshop Help group, along with my good buddy Faizan Qureshi – I thought I would kick off my participation with this brief tutorial on how it is done. / / This was done in Photoshop CS2, but as the effect only uses the standard Photoshop tools, most if not all versions of the program will suffice for this tutorial. / / First things first, you will need a file to work on. The settings in this tutorial are based on the low resolution starting image here, and if you use higher resolution images – the settings will be different. / / You may right click and save the starting image below and use it to work through this tutorial to practise – you may also upload your finished work into your portfolio for feedback and to show others how you did – You MUST not, however, place the image for sale, or use it for any other purpose other than this tutorial, without my permission / / So, follow the steps and have some fun with this. / / 1. Save the image below and open it in Photoshop / / Starting Image / / startmodel / / / 2. On the toolbar on the left hand side, click on the healing tool / / healing brush tool / / Use the following settings for the healing brush / / healing brush tool settings / / / 3. Zoom in on the model so that you can see imperfections on the skin. Hold Alt on your keyboard and click on an area of skin close to an imperfection once – release the mouse and the Alt key / / healing brush step 1 / / / 4. Click the mouse again over the imperfection that you want to hide, once / / healing brush step 2 / / / 5. Repeat the last two steps until you have removed all the imperfections, until the image looks similar to the one below. / / model after healing brush applied / / / 6. Down on the right hand corner of the Photoshop workspace – you will find the layer pallette – Have a look – you will notice that there is one layer called background, or Layer 1 in the pallette at the moment. / / The Photoshop layer palette / / / 7. Go to the menu bar running across the top of the workspace – click on the word – Layer, then click on Duplicate Layer. A box will appear, just click OK. Notice that a new layer, called layer 1, or background copy now appears in the layer pallette above the background layer. Make sure that this top layer is highlighted/selected / / 8. Just above the highlighted layer, there is a drop down menu [which probably has the word Normal in it at the moment]. Click that drop down menu and click on multiply. / Multiplying the layer / / / your image will go very dark like the one blow. Model after multiply / / / Still working on this same layer / / 9. On the menu bar running across the top – click on the word Filter, then on Blur, then on Gaussian Blur – a box will appear. Change the settings to that below and click OK to apply the effect. / / Blur settings / Your image will now look like the one below / / model after blur applied / 10. Go to the top menu again, and click on the word Layer, then on New Adjustment Layer, then on Levels – a box will appear. Adjust the settings to that in the image below. / / Levels adjustment settings / / / Your image should now look like the one below / / Model after the levels adjustment / / / Note here that you now have 3 layers in the layer pallette. You will need to be working on the MIDDLE layer [see below] for the next step, so make sure it is selected. / / Selection of the middle layer for the next step / / / 11. On the toolbar on the left, click on the History Brush to select it history brush tool / / / On the top toolbar menu, set your brush to a small soft brush [so that you can fit it into the corner of the eyes], and set the opacity to 25 / / All in one stroke [thats important with low opacity] paint over one eye totally to bring the detail and brightness back out. Repeat for the other eye, and then for the lips. / / The effect is quite subtle here, but it will make a big difference at the end of the tutorial and will give life to your model. / / Your image should now look similar to the one below / / model after history brush / / / 12. Now go to the menu up the top and click on the word Layer, then click on Flatten image – this will result in you having one layer in your layer pallette again. / / Ok – so your model has great skin now, but she is a bit on the bright side. We are going to darken her up a bit, but if we just do it now, she will likely turn orange with the current saturation level. so we need to adjust it a little. / / 13. Go to the menu up the top and click on the word Image, then Adjustment, then Hue/Saturation – a box will appear. change the settings to that below. / / hue/saturation settings / / / The image should now look a better colour model after hue/saturation settings applied / / / Now lets darken her up / / 14. Up to the top menu again – click on the word Image, then Adjustment, then Levels – the levels box will appear. Change the settings to that in the image below. / / Levels adjustment settings / / / Your image should now look much darker / / model after levels adjustment applied / / / Finally – we need to bring out highlights and for this we use the dodge tool. / / 15. Over on the toolbar on the left, click on the dodge tool to select it / / dodge tool / / / Use a soft large brush [about the size of her whole cheek], set the opacity to 18 and work on highlights in the drop down menu [up the top]. Click and drag once across the eye area, then once down the models right cheek to brighten these areas up. / / Your image is now complete and should look something like this / / finished model / / / I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. The settings will be slightly different with other images of different resolutions but the methods will be the same. When adjusting levels blur etc on other images, use the sliders to get similar looking effects to what you used here and the effects will work nicely for you. / / Good luck everyone, Please come back here and let me know how you got on.
I was recently asked for some advice regarding shooting portraits. Since it winded up being rather lengthy I thought I’d share, for those…
I was recently asked for some advice regarding shooting portraits. Since it winded up being rather lengthy I thought I’d share, for those that are interested – or would like to discuss it. / / Let me make it plain – I am not a professional portrait photographer and these points are more for casual portraits without the use of studios / backdrops / professional lighting equipment. / / Composition is extremely important when shooting portraits. It is essential to get the right framing and perspective happening, to display the person to the best that you can. That doesn’t mean they have to look beautiful – I am speaking technically. / / Perspective – / In general, there are three levels of plane that you can shoot from. Above, below, and straight on. They each produce a different effect to the viewer, and also depict the subject in a different aspect. From above – lends vulnerability. Can also impart a ‘questioning or questing’ mood. Emphasizes the cheek bones and eyes, which when looking at the camera, are wide open with pupils at the top. / / From below – imparts dominance. Gives greater power and impact to the face, while reducing the cheek bone lines. Emphasizes the bones around the eyes and chin and gives strength. Generally a more square look. / / Straight-on – An ‘honest’ portrait. ‘As-is’ feel. Great for illustrative/documentary shots, or when you want someone to look as natural as possible for a particular reason – for example, as part of a written piece about the character of a person. Also gives a simplified feeling, that can be great for humorous shots or anything that has an associated story other then the portrait itself. / / Of course, throw in angles, and you have a virtually unlimited range of choices to work within. / / Lighting - / _ / / As with perspective, different lighting gives a different feel and meaning to a portrait. Play around with side lighting, curtained windows, lampshades, off-shoe flashes, bounced and reflected light. Two semi-diffused hard lights from either side of a face with a soft central fill adds drama. Harsh light on one side with none on the other adds mystery. Soft all around diffused light looks glamorous (something people try and achieve by blurring their image – silly, really). / / Depending on the background, try and find a bit of back lighting. It brings out clarity in the hair and edges of the subject, delineating them. This is sometimes called ‘separation, and is used in videography also. / / Eyes are the shiniest thing on the human body. They are little mirrors. If you shoot a subject with their back to a window, you will have little to no light in the eyes. If they are facing a light source, you will get nice little _catch-lights that give life to the eyes. You can alter how these look by changing the angle of the subject’s head, moving your light source, or changing what the light source is. Or – you can play around with Photoshop, and not learn anything photographically ;) / / Composition - / The old rule is a strong and valid one. Give more room to the direction of the gaze. Not doing this asks more of a question, and needs to be substantiated in the subject’s attitude and/or expression to work well. Why are they looking off-frame? What’s out there? etc… / / Try not to amputate too many features – like ears. If you must, choose the frame line carefully. There are natural frames within frames – try a few crops/compositions and feel what works best. Personally, I try and spend a little time thinking about the subject, the environment – watching, trying to find the best angles to bring out the nature and character of the person. / / Group portraits - / Generally speaking, a good group portrait composition is one where the subjects’ faces are at different levels. Try it and see. Line ‘em all up – looks like a snap shot. Position the ‘family/group’ at different levels – voila! 100% improvement. / / If photographing a child, expect your best shots to be candids. Children have a short attention span and while you can amuse them for a while with sparky things and little jokes – I find the best shots wind up being those while the child is unaware. Burst mode helps a lot here, just as it does with pets ;) / / Choose a depth of field that either isolates a feature entirely, or brings the entire subject into focus. Don’t wing it. Winging it relies on luck. The more prepared and skilled you get – the luckier you get ;) There are DoF calculators around online if you search. Figure out what works well for a certain distance. / / Editing - / Ok, so you have discovered Photoshop, Gimp, PaintShop Pro – or whatever. I find there is an initial learning curve where everyone tries their hand at manipulation – from plastic skins, to glaring alien eyes, selective colouring, and so on. This may sound a little arrogant, but – leave your portraits as natural as you can. You do not do any favours to the subject by making them look inhuman. Seriously. My personal philosophy is, I edit anything that is transient. By this, I mean, a pimple /zit / love-bite/ wayward hair in the eye/etc. But I leave anything that is intrinsic to the subject – scars, eye colour, and yes, even double chins (and ladies – we all have them). If you position your subject (and choose your light and angles right) you will not need to do extensive editing. Saves a lot of time, faithfully portrays the subject and gives you a finer work. / / Any magazine portrait you see (unless it is one of those horrible before shots) has been manipulated for what the market now expects. Perfection. Perfection is not beauty. Perfection is unreal. There is no perfection. Repeat that. There is NO perfection. I do a lot of portraits. I see peoples’ skins magnified a hundred times very often. Our skins are not plastic. They are dynamic, breathing, living organs. I could carry on with this subject forever, but I hope this helps some.
Some of you may remember a while ago I put up a self portrait – it had me stuck inside a dryer. I did it for a competition in the magaz…
Some of you may remember a while ago I put up a self portrait – it had me stuck inside a dryer. I did it for a competition in the magazine “Digital Photography + Design”. Well I popped out to the newsagency this morning and this months edition was out, hot off the presses. Guess who won? My squished up face is printed on a page with the words “winner” next to it….I can’t believe it…Someone pinch me…please!!! Guess what I’ve won?...... I will soon be the new owner of a Sony Alpha A200 twin lens kit. OMG!!
When I had an email from RB 2 weeks ago ,I couldn’t beleive it,one of my pic was going to be edited in «Gaïa the living planet»…after …
When I had an email from RB 2 weeks ago ,I couldn’t beleive it,one of my pic was going to be edited in «Gaïa the living planet»…after a while I just thought it wasn’t true ,but YES ..IT’S TRUE….thank you so much…..one of these two pics was chosen…...yaaaahouuuuuuuuuuuuu !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This technique is an oldie, but a goodie. I think Eddie Tapp was the first person I saw do it and there have been variations, but for a …
This technique is an oldie, but a goodie. I think Eddie Tapp was the first person I saw do it and there have been variations, but for a quick and interesting portrait effect this is terrific. It is not a beauty retouch. The image is brought to us by hamletnc over at Stock Xchange I have the original image as well as one that I tidied up a bit, you can choose which one you work on. I used the Making Eyes Shine Tutorial on the eyes. I also used the Adding Depth To Eyelashes I also did some general tidying up of the image (still needs lots, lots more), removed the earrings (and normally I would have done something with the ear) added a little bit of length to the hair and tidied the edges a bit, and cleaned her teeth You’ll also noticed that I reduced the darkish lines under the young lady’s eyes. I did this in combination with her smile lines, the line on her chin and the lines on her neck on the one layer, then reduced the opacity of the layer to 40%. Don’t make the mistake of only reducing the lines under the eyes (example) because it will unbalance the face. Just another point before we get on with it – in this tutorial we are going to be using the Red Channel, if your image has quite a lot of red in it i.e. dress, b/ground etc., it is going to fade the red. You can of course use the mask to bring it back (as we will in this image), but you might want to try the Green Channel first to see what kind of effect you will get, and it will preserve the red in the image. Click through for the larger images. If you’ve opened the second image, go ahead and duplicate it. Next, go to the channels palette and click on the red channel. Press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select all – press Ctrl + C to copy – click on the RGB channel, switch back to the layers palette, make aure the top layer is active, then press Ctrl + V on the keyboard to the paste the red channel. Change the blend mode of the layer to Luminosity and take the opacity down to about 30%. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur the image by about 6 pixels. Try and maintain some texture in the skin. Add a mask to this layer by clicking on the Add Layer Mask Icon at the bottom of the layers palette, make sure the f/ground colour is set to white and go and grab a soft edged brush. You’ll probably have to zoom in a bit for this – paint over the eyeball, the lips and teeth, the eyebrows, the scarf at the bottom of the image, and the hair around the face, leaving the outer edges. Probably go about half way back into the hair. If you want to view the mask at any time hold down the Alt key and click on the mask, to return to a normal view – do the same. Hopefully you’ll be able to see what I’ve done in the image below. We’re going to create a new layer, make sure that you are still working on the layer with the mask, then press Ctrl + Alt and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. A dialogue box will appear, change the blend mode to Soft Light and check the box that says ‘Fill with soft light neutral color (50% gray)’ Make sure the new layer is at the top of the stack and grab your Dodge Tool from the side Toolbar. In the top options bar change the Range to Highlights and use about a 15% opacity, then I want you to go over the highlights in the hair – leave the outer edges of the hair – perhaps don’t go any further out than half way. Once you’ve done want you want to do with the Dodge Tool you can either carry on, on this layer when we use the Burn Tool or create a new one, so you have these on two seperate layers. Grab your Burn Tool, change the Range to Shadows and the opacity to about 15% and burn over some of the darker areas. When you are happy with your work Flatten the image, then duplicate it. Change the blend mode to Overlay, then go to Filter>Other>High Pass and set the pixel radius to about 1.5 Add a layer mask and then press Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert the mask. Make sure the f/ground colour is white, select a soft edged brush and paint over the same areas as you did before – eyebrows, eyeballs, lips and teeth, hair. Take the opacity of the layer down to suit. You might end up with something similar to the image below. If you think this is a little pale, you can always use a curves adjustment layer to add some contrast to it. And here is a comparison image – original and adjusted. Have fun :-)
I think this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a nice portrait in Photoshop. Again, it isn’t beauty retouching. Unlike the…
I think this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a nice portrait in Photoshop. Again, it isn’t beauty retouching. Unlike the Dreamy Glow effect this should :-) be a little more realistic. You can use the image here to start with or use one of your own. Once you have the image open, duplicate it and then you are going to run the Surface Blur filter. If you are working with a version of Photoshop prior to CS2 you are going to have to use the Median filter, this filter isn’t quite as good as the Surface Blur filter but you should still be able to achieve a similar result. I’ve divided my image into two so that you can see what is going on – don’t you do this :-) unless you want to of course. You are looking to keep the lips, teeth, eyes to a certain degree – see image below. If you are working on the same image you can just punch in the same numbers. Still working on the blurred layer, hold down the Alt key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This will make the mask black (hide all) which is exactly what we want, because we are going to brush back in the Surface Blur. Make sure your f/ground colour is set to white and you have a comfortable size soft edged brush – start painting back in the face avoiding the eyebrows, eyes, mouth and teeth. If you make a mistake, just switch your f/ground to black by pressing x key on the keybaord, fix it, press x again to switch back to white. If you want to make sure that you have painted back in every bit of blur, Hold down the Alt key and click on the mask this will give you a B&W version – see below – and you can fix it from there. Alt click on the mask to take it back to the normal view. I’ve taken the opacity of the surface blur layer down to 80%, you can choose whatever you want. Normally, this is the time where you would start evening out the skin tones, but you’re not going to do that :-) Before you go any further, rename the layer you just did the surface blur on to ….. hmmm …. Surface Blur. Making sure that layer is active, hold the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette – a small dialogue box will appear. If you don’t change the mode in the dialogue box, you won’t get the ‘Fill with soft light neutral colour 50% grey’ Now you’re going to pick a colour from the original b/ground to use on the face – so, with a soft edged brush selected hold down the Alt key and the brush will change to the eyedropper tool – once you have the colour selected just release the Alt key to go back to the brush. I used R-192 G-141 B-121. This is going to look terrible when you first brush it on – panic not – just dial the opacity of the layer down to about 40%. You will have to be quite careful with this layer, remember you are not working on a mask. The image below has the opacity at 100% and is not completely covered so that you can see what is happening. Turn the opacity down and complete the skin. The image below shows the completed colour with the opacity at 40% You can try some things now, like reducing the opacity of the surface blur layer … if you are using this image try about 55% and you could stop here if you wanted to – but there is more. Leave the opacity of the surface blur layer at 80% for the moment and the colour layer at 40%. All skin has some texture in it and you are going to replace some of the texture that was wiped out with the surface blur filter. Hold down the Alt key and press on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette – fill out the little dialogue box as you did earlier. Now go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and use 5, Uniform, Monochromatic – press OK to accept. Now go to Filter>Stylize>Emboss and try an angle of -90, height 15, amount 100%. Next go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and on this particular image try a radius of 0.5 pixels. And there you have the texture for the new skin. Once you are happy with the portrait, flatten the image duplicate the layer change the blend mode to overlay and sharpen with the High Pass Filter – Alt click on the layer mask icon to get an inverted mask (black – hide all) and with a soft edged brush, brush back in the areas you want sharp. Try different opacity levels for the surface blur layer and the texture layer. I’ve gone ahead and lowered the opacity of the colour layer to 20%, left the blur and texture layers at 80% then used seperate layers created in the same way as you did before but without clipping them with the previous layer, to burn the eyebrows, eyelashes, eye makeup and hair – then did the same to use some dodge on the eyes and hair. You could also use another layer to slightly sharpen the image overall to give the skin a less blurred look, as I have in the image below.
We recently did a test shoot for Maria Gonzales and “R…
We recently did a test shoot for Maria Gonzales and Rogue Artists With very bad rain forecast, we abandoned our location scouting and set about using any available space in her store, including the tea room, out the back and yes, even in the toilet. James was set up in the main shop room with studio lights so hopefully we got a mix of my random roaming around and some nice clear polished shots. I haven’t even made it half way through my shots yet, but here are a few if you’re interested.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR PORTRAITS BY COMMISSIONING ME, / AND / BE COUNTED AMONGST THESE WONDERFUL AND HAPPY BUYERS….. !http://images-1.redbub…
CUSTOMIZE YOUR PORTRAITS BY COMMISSIONING ME, / AND / BE COUNTED AMONGST THESE WONDERFUL AND HAPPY BUYERS….. / to SYLVIA TAX / and / / to ANGEL WARDA / / 6 of these to LIESBETH / to ROMO / to JO HODEN / to SUSAN BERGSTROM / to RED ADDICTION / to DAVID PARKIN / two of these to TKROSEVEAR / to MAR SILVA the hours spent…..the sleepless nights…the packs of Marlboro lights…..and the crazy beautiful ideas bombarding my cranial nerves….. / thank you so much for being a part of my heART…...!!! but the matted and framed prints sure made me smiling from ear to ear!!!
I have put together this year’s collection of my favourite photos in a gallery. A couple of things - / These are not necessarily my bes…
I have put together this year’s collection of my favourite photos in a gallery. A couple of things - / These are not necessarily my best photos, whatever that means. They definitely are not my most popular photos – in fact, the majority of them have not been seen before. But they are my personal favourites in 2008 (in chronological order), for many and various reasons. You’ll find many genres, from landscape to street, from floral to abstract. However, many of my favourites cannot be shown, as they were taken for clients who do not give permission for public display. Another bit of trivia – I counted 11 photos that have been cropped. I mention this, because one of the things I enjoy about photography is to frame and compose on site. Anyway, enjoy. There are a lot of them – 105, I think. Slideshow works best, on black. If you skim through them, I’ll know, and come and eat your cat. 2008 – A Photographic Retrospective
Ok, I thought I’d give back what I’ve learned since so many people on the Internet have helped me out! If you already know this and I’m t…
Ok, I thought I’d give back what I’ve learned since so many people on the Internet have helped me out! If you already know this and I’m the only one who just figured it out recently, then I’ll slap myself silly and call it a day LOL. Today, I’d like to show you how to get the most in terms of pixels on your subject, without cropping or enlarging the actual subject. We all know that when you crop an image, you lose pixels, when you enlarge, you may get blur depending on the software you use. I use Photoshop CS and CS4 (recently got). Let’s take this picture as an example. / It’s a nice tight shot taken vertically with some white space all around her. I have learned to frame my subjects like this and ensure I have space all around, because later I can have more options to work with. Now with that image, all you can pretty much do is print vertically, which is ok. Now let’s say you wanted to achieve the same shot but framer her to the right, like 1/3 of the picture for an interesting composition. With you camera, you would turn it sideways and have to “zoom out” to fit her in the right or left side and have all that white space on either side. Now, it will be a great image, except now your subject has gotten much smaller in terms of the overall portrait. Get it? You got that shot, but you had to lose out on the size of the subject. So if you cropped or enlarged, you would lose out a bit on pixels and maximum enlargement size. Well I just learned that the crop tool, ain’t just for cropping in photoshop, well at least just not for cropping “down”. What I’m about to show you will work mostly on solid white or black backdrops, with very little effort, since colors will match perfectly. You can do it with other shades of white, but you will have some cloning, dodging or burning to do. I opened Kaylie’s picture, the one I took vertically against a solid white backdrop that was overexposed. In photoshop, I took the crop tool and dragged it over the entire photo. Then instead of dragging one side in to crop it smaller, i dragged it “out”, making my canvas larger! Before doing this, i made sure my swatch color was white. After I expanded the crop to one side, I hit enter. This made the canvas size larger and filled it in with the white color from my swatch! Really in like less than 2 minutes! Now you see the same image with Kaylie on the right and all this white space on the left, looking as if I shot it this way. But, you will notice now that it is landscape and Kaylie’s body size remains the same, so we have not lost any pixels on her. ! So now we have an image that works either in portrait or landscape printing! You can also do this in case you wanted a subject centered, etc. You can also do this by increasing canvas size, etc, but this is quick and super easy! This works great if you shoot musicians or anything that later may require that extra white space for words for a poster or CD cover, etc. Final image: / Please note that this image wasn’t completely white, so I did some cloning in the final image. But you will get the point I’m trying to make in this tutorial. Let me know if you have any questions! Enjoy! xoxo / Jen
The start image is brought to us by mirimcfly over on Flickr, you can find it HERE...
The start image is brought to us by mirimcfly over on Flickr, you can find it HERE The image is available with a Creative Commons License, which you can read about HERE You’ll notice that the image is a little flat i.e. not very much contrast going on, and this will suit the type of effect you are going to do very well. The settings are relevant to this image 1024X768 @72dpi, but personal taste has a lot to do with the settings as well, so please experiment and don’t take the settings I apply as stock standard. There are a gazillion ways that you could finish this effect with, I’ll show you a couple of different ways at the end. I’ve added a comparison image below of the original colour image, the desaturated image and a (maybe) final version of the image and also a look at the layers you will using. Open the image, Ctrl + J to duplicate the layer, I used a black and white adjustment layer set to Green Filter to desaturate the image. If you have anything before CS3 you won’t have this available to you, so I have added the image above for you to work with (incase you were wondering what that was for). Open both images – the Start image and the desaturated one, then make sure the move tool is selected by pressing V on the keyboard. Hold down the shift key and drag the desaturated image onto the coloured one. Then duplicate the desaturated layer. If you have CS3/4 you can use the Green Filter and then Merge down and then Ctrl + J to duplicate. You should have 3 layers – the original colour layer and 2 desaturated layers. Change the blend mode of the top layer to Overlay and go to Filter>Other>High Pass and use a radius of 20 pixels. Click OK to accept that and then hold down the Alt key and click on the add new vector mask at the bottom of the layers palette to assign a black (hide all) mask to the layer. If you’re working along with the same image as I am then you can simply brush back in the face,neck, ear, hands, arms with a white soft edged brush. You want the High Pass effect to be visible on those parts. See image below. Make the mask pretty accurate because we are going to use it over and over again throughout this project. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible then go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur, use the Hexagon shape set to a radius of 5 pixels. Take the layer opacity down to 30%, blend mode set to normal. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible again, change the blend mode to Overlay and then go to Filter>Other>High Pass and use a radius of 10 pixels, take the layer opacity down to 50% add a layer mask by Alt + clicking on the Add Vector Mask at the bottom of the layers to add a black mask (hide all). Hold down the Alt key and drag the mask from the first High Pass layer onto the layer mask, let go when it is over the layer mask thumbnail – a small dialogue box will appear asking you if you want to replace the mask click yes. You should end up with something similar to the image below. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E again to stamp visible and then go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur and choose Hexagon with a radius of 5 pixels. Take the opacity of the layer down to 50% blend mode set to normal. This blur will be used on the b/ground, not the man, so add a layer mask by clicking on the add vector mask at the bottom of the layers palette (white mask). Grab the layer mask from the layer below Alt + Click + drag and drop it onto the layer mask thumbnail. Ctrl + i to invert the mask. You might have something like the image below. You could leave the image at that if you wanted to. Maybe give it a bit more contrast and a sharpen, or you could carry on doing some more things to it. In the image below I’ve used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer set to colorize with Hue 200 and Saturation 5 Brightness to 0 – opacity set to 50%. I’ve used the mask to confine the adjustment to the man. In the next example, I’ve dupicated the original colour b/ground and dragged it to the top of the stack, changed the blend mode to soft light and taken the layer opacity down to 50% The next image shows what happens if you leave the blue adjustment layer turned on underneath the original coloured layer. Next, I decided that I didn’t like the quite white background of the composition so I added another Hue/Sat adjustment layer, chose colorize and used Hue 25 Sat 10 changed the blend mode of the layer to Multiply and took the opacity down to 75%. I used the mask again to isolate the effect to the background. Next I used a Levels adjustment layer and took the middle slider to 1.25, then used a radial gradient on a mask to lighten the image in the centre. Then I used a vignette to darken down the edges. Next I used an S curve in a curves adjustment layer to give it a bit more punch and confined the effect to the man with a mask and finally I used a High Pass layer to sharpen the image, radius set to about 2 and a mask to again confine it to the man. Below is my final image, if you have any questions, just ask. Have fun!
“If God had intended photographers to use more than one key light, he would have made more suns.” Just about every single shot includi…
“If God had intended photographers to use more than one key light, he would have made more suns.” Just about every single shot including the food and still life shots in my portfolio was made with one light. One light in the right place. You won’t need any more except possibly to light a background. In this case make sure that they light the background, and do not spill back on to the subject. Use barn doors or large black sheets of card if necessary. Very early in my career I learnt that light bounces around all over the place in a white studio. This is unwanted light. When I worked for top food photographers and fashion photographers like Barry Lategan, we actually blacked out the studio with drapes or black screens. Great for glassware too. I ordered funeral drapes to cover an entire studio when I was asked to light a “Finish” (the dishwasher stuff) TV commercial in Milan. The essential shot was of a glass. How do you get a glass to look sparkling clean? Answer, outline it in black, make it totally transparent and have one clean reflection of light on it. How do you do that? Black out the studio; this creates the black edges which are the walls reflecting in the edges of the glass. Use one ‘window’ type light. In this instance I used a 6×4 sheet of opaque white Perspex and stuck some halogen floods behind it. Result – one clean reflection of soft light, no glass to be seen, just the black outline of one. It looks as clean as a whistle because the glass is invisible! The actor doing the demo in the commercial looked good too, with a similar lighting quality to that in my stills. The cameramen were two old hacks from Rome who scoffed in bemused wonderment at this 22 year old kid who had made the studio look set for a funeral. The drapes were all that the three funeral companies could provide. However, the results were crystal, the client was thrilled, I was a hero for a day, and I got more work from the production company who shot the ad. This lighting style was often copied after that, and is still the basis of many British commercials today. So where were we? Yes one light. One light in the right place. At John Cowan’s studio, I persuaded John to have the entire walls of the studio painted black to which he agreed. Why black? So that the light does not bounce all over the room filling in shadows where you want shadows. To start with black and then paint with light gives you much more control over your lighting. It makes you the master of it. It gives you the contrast you want without having to print on grade 4 paper, thus allowing more detail in mid tones. I painted my studio in Milan black, and would do the same today. It gives you a quality that is sharp and precise. OK so where does the One Light go? More or less above your own head and slightly above the subject. This will slim the face by putting the cheekbones in shadow if the model is facing you head on. Take a look at the head shots in my portfolio and look where the shadows are. Then figure out where the light is. Above the camera, maybe slightly to one side. This should be the side the model faces if the shot is three quarters on or the shoulders are three quarters on. When you have set up, always use a tripod to establish your camera position and then adjust the light until it is exactly where you want it. Don’t run around the model with your camera in hand. It may look good in the movies, but it will look crap in your contacts, with no consistent lighting whatsoever. Just one more thing, what sort of light you may ask? The light should be intense but soft, so a single umbrella is fine, a soft box is fine, and a bowl light is excellent. This is where the flash head is reflected into a shallow bowl and the head is shielded. If the bowl is then opaqued by a thin sheet of plastic, you will get the same quality as some of the Vogue photographers. It is a very flattering light. You can tell when it has been used by top photographers. You will see the circular highlight with a black center reflected in the model’s eyes. OK folks so that’s how I light head shots (and many of the top guys I have assisted). Give it a whirl and see if you can take some shots that stun you, the girl you are shooting, and the horse I rode in on. ‘til next time – John
You don’t need a lot of lipsticks to draw a picture. / I used a coloured paper, 4 Elizabeth Arden lipsticks (gold shine, bronze lame, redw…
You don’t need a lot of lipsticks to draw a picture. / I used a coloured paper, 4 Elizabeth Arden lipsticks (gold shine, bronze lame, redwood, echoes), lip liner, eye liner, eye shadow, foundation and a white chalk. / Use my fingers to blend the colours. / Think of 3 tones. Step 1: / Draw the outline. Step 2: / Add darker tone. Step 3: / Add lighter tone. Step 4: / Still working and adding darker tones and lighter tones but take advantage of using a coloured paper, keep sienna as a mid tone. Step 5: / It is almost finished. / But it is getting dark outside and I realised it didn’t have enough light for the camera. / So I had to stop working it. Final image: / Lipstick girl E Join our group Make up Your Mind and show us your works with make-up products. / The best artworks from this group will be shown at the art exhibition “Make up Your Mind” in Manly, Australia in September 09. The exhibition will be open by Karen Pini and it is a part of the Manly Arts Festival!!
Video of photographer Clay Enos – how to get over your shyness when you shoot on street … / Usual, when i make my street shots, i fee…
Video of photographer Clay Enos – how to get over your shyness when you shoot on street … / Usual, when i make my street shots, i feel like i stole something… :-( / not nice … Street portrait photo feel free to visit my FB fan page ! / stran9e twitter account
I want to draw attention to the fact that Redbubble has given birth to a male model in the form of Madvlad – himself a fantastic artist. ...
I want to draw attention to the fact that Redbubble has given birth to a male model in the form of Madvlad – himself a fantastic artist. Look out Kate Moss, Gisele Bundchen and Tyra Banks … you have competition. Walt can be hired for modelling from Madvlad Supermodel Agencies (Worldwide) for a humble $1,000 per hour … plus a cup of tea and a muffin :) Seriously though, I’ve just been inspired to do a portrait of Walt (Madvlad) and here it is: BUT … I am not the only one to be inspired by Walt’s face. I am going to show a little glimpse of each Walt portrait I have found on Redbubble. I am unable to get permission from the owners of the paintings yet, because of the time difference between our countries, but I have included links to their portfolios, so I don’t think they’ll mind. If anyone does object though, I will willingly remove their work from this Journal – is that fair? First, here’s a portrait of Walt done by Andrea Verstegen ... and John Dicandia has also done a portrait of Walt: ... oh, and funkyfacestudio has done one too: .... and Martin Derksema did the Madvlad Museum of Art: .... and Paul Romanowski did a comic strip feature of Walt: A lady called Olga Romanova (click here) did this of Walt: ... and now Sarah Hoffman has done a painting of Madvlad too - .. and finally, to show how prolific The Man is himself, here is a display of Walt’s work: More can be seen here Now go visit this great guy’s portfolio by clicking here
Update: It’s finished. I started another self portrait today….
Update: It’s finished. I started another self portrait today. This time it’s for a redbubble challenge. This particular challenge happens to have a good prize. A really good prize. So for the last 6 hours or so I’ve been painting, and I’m really happy with the result so far. So much so that I cannot go to bed without sharing this with someone. Entries for the happy challenge don’t open for another 6 days, so I’ve got a while to refine this.
Greetings. Here below are a few of my ideas about portraiture. Please feel welcome to add any thoughts you may have on the topic! What…
Greetings. Here below are a few of my ideas about portraiture. Please feel welcome to add any thoughts you may have on the topic! What purpose does the contemporary painted portrait serve? Historically, the portrait was a record of a person; a substitute or a memento. Later, it was employed as a symbol of status or wealth, and far fewer paintings of the lower classes exist as a result. Today, records and mementos are the domain of photography, and portraits are no longer the fashion of the elite… so why do we want them? / My immediate response is that they serve a similar purpose to so many human images; they are a mirror in which we can view the other and compare our ‘self’. The popularity of celebrity portraits seems to back this up – we especially like to see the successful and the famous and seek out the mystery ingredients that they must have in order to have ‘made it’. But do we learn anything about the identity of the person represented in a modern portrait? What’s in it for them? And the artist? I’m one of those, a portrait artist I mean, and I sometimes feel that I’m adding very little of worth to the world… / So, to start from the start, I decided that I needed a definition. I looked to the writings of Richard Brilliant, who submits that, ‘only physical appearance is naturally visible, and even that is unstable. The rest is conceptual and must be expressed symbolically’. He adds to that that portraits can be physical, psychological or emblematic representations of a subject, which I find to be a fairly neat way of categorising such paintings. Shearer West goes a step further, allowing for a portrait to be not only a physical or symbolic likeness of a subject, but any ‘works of art that engage with ideas of identity as they are perceived, represented and understood in different times and places’. West is well aware of our globalised, post-modern world and acknowledges that the fundamental aspect of portraiture, identity, can be perceived very differently if viewed by an audience not possessing the necessary tool-kit to decode it (for example, a Gainsborough would have very little relevance to a teen in future Tokyo or a Masai of the time). / The reason for offering these definitions of portraiture is that I think they work quite well in summarising just what constitutes a modern portrait. The works of Lucien Freud, Fiona Lowry, John Beard, Jeffrey Smart and Jenny Sages all very diverse are all allowed within this definition, whereas some have labeled them nudes, abstracts or expressionist. That’s enough to get us started, I think. So what are your opinions? Does a subject need clothes? The painting a background? Do they require symbols of their life and culture? Does the artist imbed his/her identity within the work? Carry on…
Hey y’all! I am slowly sticking my toe into the portrait photography pool and am hoping for some feedback and advice before I really div…
Hey y’all! I am slowly sticking my toe into the portrait photography pool and am hoping for some feedback and advice before I really dive in. I have already spoken to a few friends regarding this but would like to hear from more. I would love to know what people charge for their services. Do you charge per hour. Do you do a flat rate presenting the client with a disk of a certain amount of images. Do you have package prices? I have been asked to do a wedding in June and have been asked by others to do family portraits and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by what to charge. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance for your time :) / I’ve added some lovely music to listen to while (hopefully!) reading through all of the adivice I am going to receive ;) Peace…..........
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