The past few weeks, I have been working on some senior portraits for some people. First off, I did some portraits for a friend around September, however, he came back to me and wanted some more prints, so I worked with him and his mom to get those ordered and processed adequately. It ended up taking quite a bit of time, getting all of the images processed to the right size, etc.

I also had another student come to me for senior portraits. Gabby wanted some new ones, because her other studio was too expensive to get graduation announcement photos, so she wanted different ones for those. So she had me take some for her. We went to Hayden Lake and got some great ones down by the water. We decided that since so many people go downtown for portraits, that we would try some other areas.

Out of the 7 final edits, the first two (above) are my favorites, but there are some others shown below.

The photography portion consisted of my 50D, and my 50mm f/1.8 (favorite lens). I brought along my flash, as the lighting really wasn’t prime, so I supplemented it with the flash. I think that with the flash, the lighting turned out great in the end.

In post processing, the editing consisted of importing to Photoshop (CS5 FTW), processing from RAW, and minimal editing. She complained that her old ones seemed over-edited, so I was sure to avoid that.

Finally, I have below the contact sheets with the images from the shoot.

In other news, I have downloaded a trial version of Photoshop CS5, and I used it for editing my photos for the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I have grown to like it too much, and will be sad to give it up. I don’t see myself upgrading from CS4 anytime soon, but it was fun to try out the newest version. Although there isn’t too much that I would use constantly, there are little differences around, such as the MiniBridge, which is actually quite useful. Another feature, that I haven’t used yet, but really want to, is the HDR Pro. I have seen videos, and really want to compare it to Photomatix.

Another thing that happened was that Sadii decided to give me her Wacom tablet, a Graphire4. I used this for the past week and have grown to love it quite a lot. There is something about writing with a pen, vs a mouse or trackpad that is fun. It also has a mouse that comes with it, so maybe I’ll start using a mouse more often.

Anyway, I decided to shoot some portraits of mi hermano. I shot photos on various backgrounds that had bright colors, then I desaturated all other colors to bring attention to main color. I think it turned out pretty good.

The photo to the left was shot in front of the San Francisco Sourdough Eatery (quite possibly the best sandwich shop ever). It was closed at the time, so the red gate made a great background.

The next image is next a green door, and I desaturated mostly all colors except green and cyan. I was originally going to desat cyan also, but I thought it looked good as this way.

Also, I just noticed a weird Safari bug, it seems to make images look less saturated than they are in Photoshop… So the image looks way different than what it did when I was editing it.

And here is the contact sheet of all of the images shot during this shoot.

Location of first images.

On another note, I shot some senior photos for a friend, and they just got back to me with some more photos that they wanted me to edit. So I went through and edited more, and made some adjustments to the original images.

These images were shot a while ago, but recently they contacted me to do some more editing.

The inspiration for these images is: This flickr pool

So what your saying is that you finally got around to posting your blog and you want me to go and look at it again?

–Bruce Twitchell

Edited

This is a senior portrait shot by the Twitchell during a class demonstration. I was given the photos to edit.

This is just a basic RAW edit. Followed by some unsharp mask and tonal adjustments.

As you can see from this before image, mild color adjustments were done.

The photo was taken in the school’s photo studio with a Canon Rebel XTI that supposedly belonged to me… but it didn’t.

As per request of my teacher, I blacked out some information that maybe should be posted...

Over the summer, I didn’t end up taking too many pictures, as my camera was jacked out of my car. As you can see from the scan to the left, it was stolen out of my car one night. Luckily, the insurance company covered nearly the full price (with a $500 deductible).

Anyway… I started the summer with my final project for school, (which I forgot to post at time). Below you can see the photos I did the the final.

The assignment was to choose a topic, and then create 8 images that represent that topic the best. I chose macro, but it mostly evolved into a stop motion. As you can see, most of the images are stopping motion.

After school was out, part of my photo class went on a trip to Kansas City, MO for the SkillsUSA Nationals. Mike Mattson, my teacher Mr. Twitchell, and I qualified with our Promotional Bulletin Board that we got second for at state. While there, I took a bunch of photos. Some of which you can see below, in the previous post. On the flight, I shot the photo to the right.

More recently, I was hired by a friend to take his senior portraits. To the left, you can see one that I selected, that I thought I did a good job on. There are also a few more below.

Lastly, for the past 2 weeks, I have been in California. I traveled to many different places, such as Eagle Lake, Susanville, Paradise, Chico, Sacramento, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. Below are a few pictures that I have edited from a few of those places.

Senior portrait created for Josh Stevens. The second one is one that he edited and ended up using.

Map of Tubbs Hill