What is it?!?!

Well, I was looking at some of the amazingly great photoshop compositions at Worth1000.com, and saw an image of a cat jumping from the water, attacking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I loved the idea, so I decided that I will try to do the same for the landmark bridge of North Idaho… the Longbridge of Sandpoint. At 1.3 miles, the bridge should create the adequate effect I am looking for. Unfortunately, after searching for quite some time on Worth1000′s website, I was unable to find the original… so you will just have to accept my drawing as a substitute for the amazingness of the original and for my work.

EDIT: I found the link to the image…. I like it, it’s nice.

http://fx.worth1000.com/entries/506056/kitty-attack

Darkness – the absence of light. Our eyes trick us during the night. According to our eyes, there is no light – no color – nothing. Photography opened up a view of the dark world, known more frequently as Night.

The above image was shot on the dock at the Honeysuckle Marina on Hayden Lake in Idaho. It was nearly black, but with the help of a slow shutter speed, I was able to capture the colors of the bay adjacent to the docks. As you can see, the lake has started freezing over due to the incredibly cold weather recently.

Exposure:

• Shutter Speed: 30 sec.
• Aperture: f/9
• ISO: 100

This week, I was feeling incredibly uninspired so I had some difficulty coming up with ideas for this week. So I did the logical thing… I did a motion blur of the US-95 and Prairie Ave. intersection. I drove down to the bank next to the intersection, and busted out my tripod and 50D, set the exposure, and out popped this masterpiece (you can bow to me later, I know, you’re just in shock right now).

Exposure:

• Shutter: 20 sec.
• Aperture: f/22
• ISO: 100

I was experimenting with some new filters this week, so after converting from RAW, I threw some Topaz on this pic and then changed the blending mode to soft light to reduce the effects so it wouldn’t be way too fake. Then I ran some high pass (desatted, on softlight) over the image to give it that nice over-edited look.

Finally, I made a fancy animation, because thats the cool thing to do.

Exposure same as above.

While I was out, I shot a panorama of Hayden Lake. This is below.
[RAW]

View Panorama Larger[/RAW]

This panorama consists of 6 images, taken at 30 seconds each, meshed together with photoshop. Because I was out on the dock at Honeysuckle Marina, there was some slight camera movement in the photo, this isn’t too noticeable at smaller sizes, but if you view it full size it becomes more prominent.

Finally, here is the contact sheet.

[RAW]

Stop Light Before and After[/RAW]

Over Thanksgiving break, while at Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, CAN, I decided to try – once again – some High Dynamic Range. I have tried it in the past, and I really want to improve my ability, and work on not over editing them.

This photo to the right was shot looking up a stream/river (what ever it is called) handheld at 1/2 sec. to get the effect of moving water (the blurred ness of it).

I cheated and simply created three jpegs with different exposures of the RAW image instead of using three RAW images. This was simply because my tripod wasn’t handy and the motion would ultimately cause some trouble. These images were put through Photomatix, then into Photoshop for some tone correcting due to weirdness of Photomatix.

This image is also on flickr… Where it has received an average of 8.1/10 from the Score Me! group.

The image was shot with the following:

• Shutter: 1/2 sec.
• Aperture: f/22
• ISO: 100
• Camera: Canon 50D
• Lens: Canon 28-135mm

This second photo was actually bracketed, with separate images for each exposure (not cheating this time). I feel that this one turned out a little bit better on the editing side. I feel that this one has been edited less, so it looks more natural. I really is amazing how HDR really brings out the colors in an image, as you can see below in the originals, there was virtually no color in the original image, but it was brought out when combined.

This image had separate values for each exposure:

• Shutter: 1/40, 1/160, 1/10
• Aperture: f/8
• ISO: 100

Out of all of the photos that I took, there really weren’t too many that would work well with HDR, so I just left them out. Below are the originals, contact sheet, and a epic-failed-edit of another photo. I invested a lot of time editing these, from shooting them, going through the fails, and editing them, trying to make them not fake.

Oh and my Adobe Camera RAW really has been acting up recently, so I am unable to convert from RAW using anything except Photomatix.

After last week’s project, I decided that I have developed a new love for Richard Avedon’s portrait style… or rather making portraits look as if they were shot with Avedon’s Hasselblad. Last week, I shot portraits to look like Avedon’s in that they were black and white, showed true emotion, and had a washed-out, over-exposed background. After last week’s project, I decided to try some more, now that I have a better understanding on how to shoot them. The only difference this time is that I tried to get different expressions from the people; more than just true emotion, I tried to get the people to do different things, it really wasn’t posed, but rather showing the subjects doing things.

This first photo of Jared is probably my favorite of all of them. He is rather serious in the photo; he is showing a different side of him that we don’t normally see.

Above: Sadii Link, Brandon DeSimone, Stephen Sturges, Chris Shoup.

In the above photos, I feel that I captured a different side of the subjects, with the exception of Brandon: he is acting crazy as usual. The photos seem more serious that normal, but I think that these turned out way better than my first attempt at the Avedon style photos.

Over the week, I shot hundreds of photos, and ended up editing many of them. As a result, I spend many many hours on this project, probably the most of any other project in the past. Below are some the rest of the photos.

There were a few photos of Michael Camarino in the mix above, he came into the class to deliver something, so I grabbed him and show a few photos. They would most likely be considered posed, so I didn’t feel that they were the best.

All of the photos above seem to be more fun, but there were a few serious ones mixed in. I feel it provides for a good balance between seriousness and humor.

Finally, I felt that this project wouldn’t be complete without some self portraiture. So I went home and shot a few of myself with my borrowed lights. The setup was simple- but effective. Basically I set up a white sheet over my closet door, and set a strobe on full power behind it. Then I set up two more strobes on quarter and half power (respectively left to right). Finally, I set my camera on self timer for 10 seconds and waited. I actually (to my surprise) got some good shots. I posted them below.

Technical details:

Although the camera settings varied by a lot, there were a few common attributes: 100 ISO, f/8.0 Aperture, and a shutter speed ranging from 100^th sec. to 160^th sec. All photos were shot with my Canon 50D. The lens was mostly my Canon 50mm f/1.8, but the photos of Jared were with my Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-4.5 as my prime was not available at the time of shooting.

The lighting setup was pretty much the same for all of the portraits though: I had two strobes in front of the subject, with a 1:2 ratio of power, and a nearly full power strobe set up behind a white backdrop so that it would be totally white and washed out.

Finally, in editing, I opened the RAW file, bumped up the black slider, contrast, exposure, and recovery. Then I ran my “Avedon” action which consisted of a desaturate, levels, unsharp mask, and a mild high-pass filter on softlight. Then I added the Hasselblad border, resized to 700px, and saved.

Yes I know that this was posted a little late… but I spent nearly my whole weekend processing the photos (all of my free time friday, saturday, and part of sunday – I had to split it with my senior paper). There were many photos that I processed that I didn’t post. My computer was running nearly all day running photoshop actions, etc. Apparently it takes a lot of computing power to do this Avedon style. Please forgive me for the tardiness, but it was seemingly unavoidable as I couldn’t make my computer run any faster.

Other images from the project (contact sheet), and a sample of the unedited images (before and after):

The title would probably be better suited as Scott Sturges, as these are not Richard Avedon’s photos, but rather MY photos.

This first photo really turned out the best. I admit, it was used in the competition this week… but I liked it the best of all of my Avedon Photos. I have gone in and edited it a little more. I reduced the Unsharp Mask on the photo, as I was a little annoyed at how sharp it was. Then I found a border that was similar to Avedon’s Hasselblad’s frame.

This photo was taken in the school’s photo studio. I forced Brandon to be a model, and started taking some photos of him. He really wasn’t cooperating very well, Emily started throwing National Geographic magazines at him. His reaction was perfect. I feel that I accurately captured his emotions toward being abused in such a way – he was quite shocked to have magazines thrown at him… I would too after all.

This photo was probably the best of all of the photos taken that day, it was the only one that displayed his reaction, stopped motion, and was sharp. There are a few others available below for your viewing pleasure.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/160^th
• Aperture: f/7
• ISO: 100
• Camera: Canon 50D
• Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.8

This second photo is of Emily Custer. We needed to do some Avedon-style photography… so we took photos of each other. This one was also taken in the studio, under the same circumstances.

I really didn’t do too much editing to this one. Simply a RAW conversion, De-saturation, Unsharp Mask, and added a border.

This photo – I feel – really shows who Emily is. No, it doesn’t show shooting deer, but it seems to show emotion and personality. This was just one shot of many, but this one really seemed to show who she is. Maybe I’m just over-analyzing the photo though.

Finally, there are some more of her below with the ones of Brandon and the contact sheet.

EXIF:

• Shutter: 1/200^th
• Aperture: f/7.1
• ISO: 100

Out-takes:

At one point, she was a little bit peeved at the photo shoot, so Emily flipped me the bird. While editing, she saw the image and liked it and said that it reminded her of the Johnny Cash photo of him flipping the bird. So… I edited it and came out with the result below. It turned out decent, especially for a first time doing something of the sort. The image below is hidden for the sake of censorship. The original is included below next to the contact sheet and the one of Mr. Cash is side by side once you click the “hidden” image below. No… it’s not exactly the same, but it’s good in it’s own light.

Oh, and if it wasn’t incredibly obvious, my inspiration was none other than the great…Richard Avedon.