Bringing Out The Best

Same white flowers, adjusted in post to bring out the browns. I think the spots really add something to the image, in the prior shot of the single flower, you could just make out some pale yellow dots, but here the flowers really stand out.

Ramming Speed

Even with the cyclical lighting the lighting was only so-so. And of course some of the most dynamic poses came when the lights were at their worst.

Case in point, great pose, terrible lighting, so off to LightRoom for conversion...

Using PhotoShop Here

When shooting a concert, some details are lost while caught up in the moment. The lead singer for Doom Syndicate (awesome name by the way) pictured here, for example, has a rather large hole in his pants in a rather revealing place. I didn't notice it until working with the pics in post. Couldn't show that without some adjustment, so parts of his pants are blurred out. Hopefully he won't mind.

To Claw The Clouds

Okay, remember that part about disliking Photo-shopping pictures? Well the right tool for the right job and all that, but if I'm going to PhotoShop something, I want it to be obvious that's what has been done.

Case in point here: The pose is great, and the lighting was pretty good, but the original picture didn't gel well with me as I took it, so out came PhotoShop and a few filters later, here is the result, which I think works better.

Thanks much to Unto Thee for letting me photograph you guys, much luck with your tour!

Sunset

A bit of downtown and sky for the weekend. The sky graced me with interesting clouds and the traffic was light on the bridges. The water was low to expose an interesting rock formation and the weather was nice.

This has been adjusted in PhotoShop, to bring out the colours, but hopefully I've not overdone it.

This, On The Other Hand

Is most definately PhotoShopped. The colour has been boosted, and there's a border palced around the pic, and I softened some features. This was done for a woman that I met at the run who's daughter was in the event.

It was overcast, and raining at times at the run, though by this point in time it had stopped the downpour, but the colours still needed to be boosted

Yes, it's photoshopped

It's still film, but it came from the developers with a slight blue tint to it, so I upped the saturation level and went with it.

Nikon f3hp, expired film and a sunny day.

Water

If you've never been to Niagara Falls, there is a walkway going along the river area that gets pretty heavily sprayed by the Falls.

The mist is very fine and eventually you are totally drenched as you walk from the main bridge to America to the actual waterfalls area.

The Yashica wouldn't be harmed (no electronics) but I was curious how the spray on the lens would affect the pictures being taken.

Turns out, not so much, but in this false-coloured image you can see the spray pattern.

Different

When going nuts in PhotoShop, I wanted to ensure that each picture was different, and hopefully fit the style of the picture. Not always easy when starting with a Black and White image, but I think I successded on most of them.

So, Part 3

PhotoShop, like LightRoom (and others whose names escape me at the moment) are great tools, but in my mind ones too easily overused to cover up bad photography. I have met more than my fair share of people who claim not to be great photographers, but great photoshoppers. Sure their work looks wild, but underneath it all, is there a good image to begin with?

But it is amazing just how much you can do with PhotoShop (and in this case, LightRoom as well) with you pull out all the stops.

Fun With Medium Format

I love shooting with Medium Format cameras, and especially Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) box cameras from the Japanese company Yashica. There is something about shooting with technology made in the 60s that appeals to me.

The best Yashica TLR ever made is the Yashica-Mat 124g and I've never been able to buy one. They've always been (even bad examples) several hundred dollars. Mint condition ones go for $800 and up. But to my surprise a local one popped up for sale for the whopping price of $50. Naturally I had to snap it up. It even came with 12 roles of 120 film that had expired in the 80s. Score! (I love shooting with expired film, the effects are unpredictable)

So naturally I had to take it to Canada with me and go nuts. I got one roll back so far, shot with new film, and while the lens is very sharp (which is what I was hoping) the shots are less than interesting. So I went nuts in PhotoShop to spice them up a bit. The following series you will see are the results. Let me know what you think.

This one has some adjustments on it

Specifically, the colour has been knocked out, otherwise it's from the same photoshoot. In deference to those viewers with dial-up connections, I've made the images smaller if you wish to click on them.

Full size (30+ MB) images are still available upon request, but now in addition to this journal being family friendly, it's now dial-up friendly.

No applause, just send money ;-)

Last one from the frozen lake

Last one, I promise. As I walked around the frozen lake shooting from various angles, some of the shots were overexposed from flare from the sun. A drawback with shooting ultrawide angle lenses. In any case, I really liked the composition of this shot, but the overexposure ruined it, "as is" so a little (ok, a lot) photoshop adjustments and the picture was salvaged.

Not all pics can be saved by photoshop, but it can help when the original pic isn't a write-off. You can still see the overexposure in the ice on the lake, but it's not like I can reshoot this composition easily.

Deep Falls

This is clearly a photoshop manipulation. I took what was otherwise an ordinary closeup of the rapids caused by the waterfalls, deepened the colours and blurred out the background.

The result, I thought, was better than the original. Again, from my Colorado trip.

Busy

The weather is been great for this time of year, these past few weeks, so I have been out with the gear. My internet connection has been broken at home (more correctly, absent) so I've not had a chance to upload things until today.

I will start with pics from the local zoo. Not great pics, but I had much fun taking them. The tiger here is somewhat photoshopped, as I was behind a rather filthy window and couldn't get a good clear image, but you get the idea.

Evocation VI

A dramatic sky can take an ordinary image and turn it into a memorable one.

I'm not saying this is a memorable image, but the sky completes it I think.

Evocation V

Playing hopscotch on the rocks allowed me to get fairly far out in the river. I found a good flat(ish) rock to set my camera down and do a short timelapse shot of the riverflow.

Adjusted for clarity and colour.

Evocation IV

The Depth of Field isn't what I wanted it to be for this shot, but I'd stupidly left my tripod at home and with the light fading, handholding the camera became something of a challenge.

Nonetheless, I am pleased with the final result. Very little was done to the image, it's pretty much as I found it.

Evocation III

Same bridge, different angle and adjusted differently as the clouds were sporadic and the light was much stronger for this scene. Lots of ducks added to the overall tone I was aiming for.

Evocation II

This image is not from the Pony Pasture, though it was taken on the same day. This is a bridge that I go over on the way to the Pasture. The sun was fading from view as the clouds rolled in, but enough was left to make for an interesting scene.