I thought I'd take a moment to share what acutally goes on while I'm working on your photographs.  I know that photographers tend to take quite a while to turn around the images, so here's a sneak peek into what we do.  I've decided to use a recent self-portrait taken for this demo.

So first, here's a before and after.  What you should be looking for is the difference in exposure adjustments, color balance adjustments, the quality of the skin, how the eyes look, cropping, and the removal of distractions in the background (e.g., hardware).  I'm not going to lie, the photograph in its original state was not great, but self-portraits are hard, ok?

Ok.  So the nitty-gritty.  Are you ready for this?

Alright.  Step one is importing the files into Lightroom (software for photographers from Adobe - it's a lifesaver!) and selecting the best photograph(s) of the batch in the 'Library' module.  

After reviewing the batch and figuring out which one I'd like to use, Step Two is opening in it the 'Develop' module.  This is the place where exposure and color balance adjustments are made.  Using the sliders in the panel on the right-hand side of the screen, I dropped down the red tones so that the skin is closer to its natural color and brought up the exposure a little bit so the image is not so dark.  

Step Three is exporting the image out of Lightroom so that I can next open it up in Photoshop for the retouching phase.  This is what the photograph looks like upon export:

Step Four is opening the image in Photoshop and getting into the details of skin work.  Most of my skin touch-up is done with the patch tool and the clone tool.  I always work up the eyes with a simple dodge and burn... lightening the whites just a touch (especially close to the pupils) and then darkening the lash line and outer rim of the pupils as well as a light clone under the eye to slightly reduce (not completely remove) circles, darkness or puffiness.  My aim during this phase is to remove blemishes and slightly reduce lines/circles/etc.  It is important to me that the final image actually look like the person that was photographed, so there is absolutely no plastic surgery going on here.  Natural is what I'm after.

This is also the step that includes removal of background distractions (e.g., the hinges on the right side of the image) as well as stray hairs.

Here is a before/after for just the retouching:

Step Five is the final save!  

There are many photographers who do not do this much work on all of the photographs they show their clients, they may only work up those that will be printed or used in an album.  I just can't bring myself to show my clients anything but the absolute best I can do, so every single image you see has gone through all of these steps.  

I hope this was helpful and please do keep an eye out for more posts on technique in the future!

Want more photo technique?  Learn about the rule of thirds!

Want even more technique? Watch for the next intro to SLR photography class on Saturday, July 18th!

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I thought I'd take a moment to share what acutally goes on while I'm working on your photographs.  I know that photographers tend to take quite a while to turn around the images, so here's a sneak peek into what we do.  I've decided to use a recent self-portrait taken for this demo.

So first, here's a before and after.  What you should be looking for is the difference in exposure adjustments, color balance adjustments, the quality of the skin, how the eyes look, cropping, and the removal of distractions in the background (e.g., hardware).  I'm not going to lie, the photograph in its original state was not great, but self-portraits are hard, ok?

Ok.  So the nitty-gritty.  Are you ready for this?

Alright.  Step one is importing the files into Lightroom (software for photographers from Adobe - it's a lifesaver!) and selecting the best photograph(s) of the batch in the 'Library' module.  

After reviewing the batch and figuring out which one I'd like to use, Step Two is opening in it the 'Develop' module.  This is the place where exposure and color balance adjustments are made.  Using the sliders in the panel on the right-hand side of the screen, I dropped down the red tones so that the skin is closer to its natural color and brought up the exposure a little bit so the image is not so dark.  

Step Three is exporting the image out of Lightroom so that I can next open it up in Photoshop for the retouching phase.  This is what the photograph looks like upon export:

Step Four is opening the image in Photoshop and getting into the details of skin work.  Most of my skin touch-up is done with the patch tool and the clone tool.  I always work up the eyes with a simple dodge and burn... lightening the whites just a touch (especially close to the pupils) and then darkening the lash line and outer rim of the pupils as well as a light clone under the eye to slightly reduce (not completely remove) circles, darkness or puffiness.  My aim during this phase is to remove blemishes and slightly reduce lines/circles/etc.  It is important to me that the final image actually look like the person that was photographed, so there is absolutely no plastic surgery going on here.  Natural is what I'm after.

This is also the step that includes removal of background distractions (e.g., the hinges on the right side of the image) as well as stray hairs.

Here is a before/after for just the retouching:

Step Five is the final save!  

There are many photographers who do not do this much work on all of the photographs they show their clients, they may only work up those that will be printed or used in an album.  I just can't bring myself to show my clients anything but the absolute best I can do, so every single image you see has gone through all of these steps.  

I hope this was helpful and please do keep an eye out for more posts on technique in the future!

Other posts in this series: Rule of Thirds

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This past week I decided to get the VSCO films presets for Lightroom.  These presets emulate the look of a variety of specific films.  I've just started playing with them, so there is still a LOT to learn.  I have the standard pack because the color profiles of my camera are not supported with the Pro edition yet, so this is the 'one size fits all' solution.

In any case, I'm finding that the presets react differently on different photos, so it's hard to get a sense of what to expect at this point.  I've had some success trying to feel out how the different presets function while practicing on this photo of Heather.

The first image is the original.  All I did to this was bump the exposure by .15 of stop.  Normally, I would do quite a bit of tweaking to get it exactly where I want it, but I decided to pretty much leave it alone for the purposes of this experiment. :)

For the second image, I applied the Kodak Porta 160 preset with the orange skin fix.  I decreased the contrast a tad and bumped the exposure by .08.

The third image uses the Ilford HP5 preset.  I think this is going to be my new favorite BW conversion... I love that you really get the elegance of the Ilford feel with this preset.  I did knock the preset down one step and then bumped exposure by .15.

The fourth one has the Fuji 800C preset on it.  The only tweak I made to this was the exposure bump by .15.

The last one is with the Kodak Porta 800.  I applied the auto black preset as well and then added a little fill.  I bumped the exposure by .15 on this one as well.

So it's been interesting to see how these presets work.  I'm excited to try them out some more as I have time.  I'd love to hear about other folks' experience with them, so if you use them, please feel free to comment on this post with how you like to utilize them.

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I made a new pinhole that was a little bit cleaner and took the setup down to the Farmers' Market last week.

Here are a couple results from that:

In other news, I have sent off my first set of files to boxcar press to get some plates made for the Kelsey.  I'm excited about finally getting everything set up and giving this thing a try!  Wish me luck!

Last night I decided to finally give the digital pinhole thing a try.  For those of you that aren't familiar with pinhole photography, it is the simplest type of photography out there.  You can make a film pinhole camera with a roll of film, and empty film canister, a matchbox and some black tape.  Pinhole images (at least the uber-rudimentary kind) are generally at least a little bit blurry, may have some vignetting (dark areas around the edges), are made with a long exposure (usually at least a few seconds), and have a pretty specific feel to them.  I want to say 'vintage', but I'm not sure that's the word I'm looking for.  Anyway, I think right now there is a trend to create images using old-school technology in conjunction with new dSLRs, and the digital pinhole thing is just one example.  There is a pinhole group on flickr if you'd like to see more.  Maybe I should start one at SmugMug. :)  Of course, all kinds of 'distressed' and old-school imitations can be created in Photoshop or whatever, but that's just cheating :)

So, onto the process: I took the body cap to the camera (it's a 40D in case anyone cares) and drilled a small hole in that then sanded down the edges to make it nice and clean.  Then I cut a square from an aluminum drink can and colored it black on both sides with a sharpie.  I used a pin to make the tiniest hole I could through the metal (next time I'll cut the can, make the hole, then sand it down and lastly color it black to make sure the hole is really even and clean).  At first, I affixed the pinhole to the outside of the body cap, but I decided to put it on the inside of the body cap instead and that seems to have helped the final result in terms of sharpness and light interference (having inside the cap is like having a lens hood and I think helps bring out the vignetting a little bit).  The exposure for the image below was somewhere in the 10-20 second range, I believe.

I know I still have a lot more to learn, but here is the best of yesterday's first attempt.  I did adjust levels/curves and saturation, and yes, that's most likely pollen on my sensor O_o (it's pollen season here, absolutely everything is covered in yellow).  All of the shots came out very limited in tonal range; probably about 1/3 to 1/4 of a normal histogram.  I was shooting in low, even light. I would like to try it with some brighter light and hopefully get a little more tonal variation in there so I won't have to adjust levels/curves.

If you have experience with digital pinhole photography, please feel free to comment!