The Photo Journey » Photoshop

Star Trails @ Ballow View

Scott — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 01:16:52 +0000

Anna and I had been invited out to a property called Ballow View which is about 45 minutes west of Boonah on the border of Qld and NSW. I had been wanting to get out of the city and try some more star trails after a little more research on getting the desired results.

Canon 40D @10mm, f5.6, ISO800, 45 minutes of 30sec exposures stacked with StarStax

I have taken about 4 other star trails but still hadn’t been happy with the finished images. Heading out I knew I wanted to make sure I pumped my ISO up to at least 800 and that I wanted a fairly clear landscape. Ballow view offered the best bet with some amazing trees that had been ring-barked over 50 years ago.

This week I want to share with you some quick tips on shooting star trails but I will be concentrating on how I process my star trails with photoshop and a great new free program I use called StarStax. I will have a video post latter this year on the technical side of star trails from the field.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I couldn’t be much happier with the way the image turned out. My gamble on the rotation of the stars was spot on and I have a few more tricks up my sleeve for the next star trail adventure. Here are a few more shots taken the following day just down from my location the previous night.

Canon 40D @85mm, f5.6, ISO800, 180sec

Canon 40D @17mm, f4, ISO800, 250sec

Natural HDR Processing Tips

Scott — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:19:32 +0000

I headed off to Shorncliffe Pier at 4:45am to capture the sunrise at 6am. However 3 wrong turns latter and I missed the sunrise, but only by a little so I was able to save the shot. Shorncliffe is a great location with plenty of possibilities and one mammoth pier. It was my first time to the area and it looks like an exciting spot for many return visits.

This week I have put together an in-depth (28min) post processing tutorial where I take you through Photomatix, Lightroom 2 and Photoshop. Because it is a little long I have also created a 1 min fast forward so you can get a quick glimpse of what I will cover to gauge if the tutorial will be of interest to you.

Many people have been inquiring how I manage to keep my HDR images looking so natural and fairly noise free. These tips are shared in the full length video plus a few other tricks.

Here is the 1 min fast forward teaser.

Here is the full narrated tutorial.

Stitched Panorama Video Tutorial – 2/52

Scott — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 04:12:50 +0000

I have heard from a few people that they are having trouble with stitching together panoramas and most of them think its the software that’s the issue. Unfortunately a lot comes down to the base images you are using.

Its not the most amazing subject to be shooting for the weeks image but it will have to do considering the devastating flood Queensland has been hit by. I haven’t had another chance to go out shooting this week with volunteering to cleanup some of the worst affected areas in Brisbane by pushing mud out of homes.

This is a 3 image stitch taken with my Canon 40D and a 50mm f1.8 prime lens. The real trick to a good stitched panorama is to make sure that there is at least a 25% overlap from 1 image to the next. All this and more is explained in my first of many video tutorials for the Landscape 52 Project.

If there is a post processing tutorial you would like me to do please drop me a line on the contacts page.

Seamless White Video Tutorial

Scott — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:30:39 +0000

My Self Sportraits on white backgrounds have really generated some interest in the first 60 days of my 365 Photo Journey,. A few people have asked how I do them. So for day 63 I setup my very dodgy Fujifilm D5000 and recorded my setup and then did a quick post processing tutorial. Sorry for the lack of video and sound quality. Its my first go at something this in-depth.

I’d love to hear your comments and see your result from following the tutorial.

Jedi Lightsaber Video Tutorial

Scott — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:55:02 +0000

I have been getting lots of comments on my recent Star Wars Strobist Themed week about how I do my lightsabers. So today I want to share with you my technique.

Its been a great week. I recommend setting a weekly theme every now and then as it really makes the weeks shots so much more enjoyable and you can sort of plan ahead.

I hope to do more tutorial like this in the future to supplement my Project 365. Please leave me a comment about the video and drop me a line with any links to images you make using this tutorial. I’d love to see the results.

Capping off a big weekend – Product Shoot

Scott — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:49:09 +0000

After a massive weekend of photographing babies one day and a formal themed Christmas party the next, I finally had time late on Sunday afternoon to do a few test shots of Hats. A Queensland clothing company has approached me to shoot their hats and shirts for advertising and online sales. I needed to present them an idea of what we can do for them.

The setup for this was very easy. Obviously for the actual shoot I will use a table and not my super comfy lounge.

I made use of all 3 of my lights. 2 bare bulb @1/4 power and the other shot through my umbrella @ 1/4 power.

Using my large white foam core boards I setup one as the base and the other about 2 feet behind the hat as my background. This board will provide fill-light that will bounce back at the hat.

I shot from underneath the right corner of the umbrella. This gave me a nice angle on the hat with its leading logo on the peak of the hat.

I achieved a black shadow inside the hat by rolling up my black reflective umbrella material into a ball and sticking it inside the hat. Not sure I will go with this in the actual shoot as the hats will be the truckie style.

I then headed off to Photoshop to cleanup the image and make sure my white backdrop was pure white.

Added a Levels Adjustment Layer, and made sure my surrounding white areas are pure white
Added a Curves Adjustment Layer with a slight S Curve
Added a Colour Adjustment Layer to improve the yellows and greens
Added a Vibrancy Adjustment Layer and boosted the colours a little
Cropped the image to a tighter fit

The Client is very happy with the results of the test shoot and has set me up with 9 different hat designs to shoot and a heap of Mens shirts. I will blog about the actual shoot soon and let you know who the Clothing company is. Oh and BTW the designs of their gear are very funky.

Viva Le Tour & DIYPhotography.net

Scott — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:57:18 +0000

Well one of my favorite blogs DIYPhotography.net has just launched a competition series about setting yourself up a cheap but professional studio at home. DIYPhotography.net has been bringing interesting projects to us hacks for years now and Udi has decided its time for us to make a background and take a photo that will remind us the photographer of the things we love.

Its been a month of late nights for me watching the Tour De France. So I wanted to pay tribute to the great race. Bike in the pictures is actually my brothers GT single speed that we are looking after currently. Its not a light bike I would like to add.

Canon 40D,17-85mm, ISO 800, 17mm, f5, 1/200th

For the above shot I basically used my garage as a massive light tent. Its actually much easier then it at first looks.

After a nice new coat of white paint to the brick wall we were ready to go. The wall will now allow me to make it a brillient white or what ever colour I gel my flash for.

To get the whole wall and roof illuminated I setup my Canon 430ex and set it to full power for the bike shots, and 1/4 power for my profile shots. I had it resting about 2 foot up on my esky as i don’t yet have a light stand let alone an umbrella. (Its my birthday in like 5 days so that will be rectified soon).

Attached was my DIY Yogurt Diffuser. I went for this as it will spread the light in all directions like a gary fong. However this mod is alot cheaper and tastes better too. If I had just used the flash without the mod only the back wall would get a proper covering of light. Flash was fired with my Cactus remotes. All shots were on a 10sec timer. Trust me 10 seconds flys when you are trying to pop-a-mono.

The below shot was the portrait version of the leading photo on this post. Not sure which one I like the most.

Canon 40D,17-85mm, ISO 800, 17mm, f5, 1/200th

Below are 2 shots taken with my nifty fifty. I didn’t need as much illumination as by background was much smaller. Flash was set yo around 1/4 power.

Canon 40D,50mm, ISO 800, 50mm, f3.2, 1/250th

After a few edits in Lightroom 2.0 and adjusting to the white space like removing a few objects in the side of the frame I recon its come out ok for a first attempt. Next time I think I would snoot a 2nd lighton my tyre tread.

Next upgrades to the studio setup will be some sort of white flooring and a curved board where the wall meets the floor. Then I can do head to feet shots. I can also do a shoot longways down the garage once I clean it up a little more.

Viva Le Tour & DIYPhotography.net.

Smokin…Tutorial

Scott — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:20:30 +0000

In the last week I have had a few people ask me how I photography and process my smoke photography. So I have recorded a tutorial on how I process the images. Some of the audio is a little messy in parts, its the first time I have tried the software and will be working on better results next time.

Firstly I will explain my setup.

Canon 40D
17-85mm f4-5.6 lens
Snooted Vivitar 285 flash @ 1/2 power
Poverty Wizards for flash
Cable remote shutter
Black sheet for a backdrop
Chair to prop setup up
Tripod in Portrait position
Incense sticks on plate
Matches

The Vivitar 285 has to be snooted so that the light does not spill onto the black backdrop and so that we don’t have any light hitting the lens. In the past I have used a Pringles chips tube and that worked well. However I have destroyed it so this weekend it was spare paper and foam core wrapped around flash head. I have angled the flash below at about 45° to capture the most smoke possible.

Manual focus is the only way to go as we are working in a dark environment. Place the box of matches or something on the plate as a marker to focus on. Let the Autofocus do its bit. Then you want to switch the lens to MF (Manual Focus).

In manual mode set your exposure to 1/250th and your aperture to around say f9. ISO of something around 400. Connect you remote shutter button and light one incense stick. Using your remote shutter button start firing away.

Lightly blow on the smoke or intersect the smoke path with different objects like a spoon to get different patterns.

Also try different apertures and see what works best for you. You are looking for something like this straight out of camera.

So once you have a few nice shots its time for the fun bit, the post processing. Below is a video tutorial by me about how I process my smoke shots in Photoshop CS2. If you use CS3 or higher there should be no issue in replicating the steps.

So whats everyone think of the video? I plan on doing more of them on other post processing I do and any input would be great.

Here are a couple more smoke images from the weekends shoot.

Star Wars R2-D2 Shoot

Scott — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:27:06 +0000

One of my favorite photography forums Ausphotography is currently running a Star Wars themed competition in the lead up to Star Wars Day. Obviously held on May the 4th (May the force). Being the massive Star Wars fan that I am I just had to try a few things.

I’m an R2-D2 fan and though it would be great to create a shot of R2 escaping from the Skywalker’s moisture farmer in search of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I had some old R2-D2, C-3Po, & Chewbacca figurines that I got as a kid from Pizza Hut. They had been sitting in a box for 10 or so years.

In the cover of darkness grabbed a handful of sand from the spare block up the street from us. It was very weathered and almost like concrete in some spots. Much like the planet Tatooine’s surface.

I then folded out m trusty multi-purpose ladder and placed 3 wooden boards salvaged from a crate across it. Poured a fair bit of sand onto the middle board in a mound formation and began brushing the sand around my little R2 unit with an old tooth brush. The base of the R2 figurine is bright yellow so I needed to cover this up.

Then it was time to setup the camera and tripod. Lens for this shot was the Canon 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS. Reason for this choice was that I could try closer up and wider shots without the need of changing my lens. Tripod was setup so that the camera was in a portrait position at about the same height as the boards.

I then placed my Vivitar 285 flash at the back left of the sand mound at 1/16th power. I placed an orange gel that I had picked up from reverse garbage shop a couple of months ago. The flash was directed at the white brick wall in the garage, and positioned so that the hotspot of the flash would be to the left of the composed image.

To light up R2 and give him a shadow I used 2 LED lights that I have for our mountain bikes. One was aimed at the sand and the other was held above left pointing at R2′s head and gave a nice shadow behind him.

Camera settings were

Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 85 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Vivitar 285 set at 1/16th power with orange gel

Post Processing in Photoshop CS 2

Cropped image a little to place R2 on a vertical and horozontal 3rd
Auto Contrast
Saturated the blues a little and decreased the light level for blues by just a little
Added curve layer, small S bend
Sharpened image
Added a small border by adding some guide lines and then using the paint brush with a soft edge I painted a white thin line around the edge except where the text will be
I then added the Text R2-D2 and centered it

This weekend I plan on doing another Star Wars themed shoot once I find which box my model Tie Fighter is in. I have a few ideas for it that I have drawn up on some paper. I might scan that and upload it too.

For all things Star Wars check Wookieepedia

Any questions please ask in the comments or contact me via the Contacts page.

Warhol Coke Cans

Scott — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:56:59 +0000

Its amazing how many times you can take a photo and in your minds eye compose what the final processing will deliver. This certainly wasn’t my initial idea but I quite like it.

The setup for this shot was rather easy.

Lens choice was my Canon 50mm f1.8 mkII.
Tripod for stability during manual focus
Vivitar 285 flash -1/16th power
2 White foam core boards for fill light
Table with black fabric draped over it
Clear plastic board under Coke can
Coke can (obvious I guess)
Remote trigger
Spray bottle

Camera was set to Manual with an aperture of f3.2 and a shutter speed of 1/400sec. I set the lens to manual and aimed for the sharpest focus on the words “Uplifting Refreshment”.

White foam core boards were used to bounce some of the light back onto the can to define the sides of the can.

Flash was set at 1/16th power with a home made snoot and grid. Flash was hand held during the shoot for 2 reasons. The main reason being I don’t have a light stand, and the other being I was wanting to try a few different angles.

Tripod was set so that the camera was slightly looking down at the can.

Can was placed on a clear plastic board and sprayed with a fine water mist. This will give the Coke can to a cool and refreshing look.

Here is a straight out of camera photo of using the above setup only without the water mist on the can or the clear plastic board.

Once I had the images captured it was time for the post processing in Adobe Photoshop CS2. After sorting through the hundred or so photos I had decided on one particular shot that had a good reflection on the plastic and no major over highlights from the flash.

Here is the post processing for this image.

Crop out the white foam core boards
Clone stamp tooled the clear plastic boards slight reflections in the background of the image and the other foreground reflections
Increased the Canvas size and stretched out the black on the sides of the can to fill in this area
Increased the saturation of the reds in the image
Increased the contrast
Adjusted the levels
Unsharpen Mask to around 102% @ 2.5 pixels radius

Then for the final Warhol image,

Duplicated the layer 4 times with the blend style on each layer set to Screen
Increased the Canvas size by 400% Width
Created a background layer with a black fill
Aligned the 4 Can layers vertically and distributed evenly
Then on each layer using the Image –> Adjustments –> Replace Color tool I made the individual colours
Flatten the image
Then to finish off the image I adjusted the Levels by moving the blacks down a little and then the greys down a little. This cleans up the background and gives the cans more attitude.

Any questions on the image please ask in the comments section below.

My First Self Portrait

Scott — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:16:52 +0000

Well I have seen plenty of self portraits of people in their bathrooms (Clothed thankfully) on flickr in the past. Mainly used for Avatars but also a way of finally getting their mug out there. So I decided to give it a go after doing some product photography the other night.

I wanted to have a photo that displayed the camera as the core subject and me as merely the driver. So a nice amount of DOF was required. The lens choice was easy, as for a greater DOF I needed a larger aperture setting. So out came my Canon 50mm f1.8 II.

As you can see from the photo I was using my Cactus wireless remote to fire my Vivitar 285 flash with my small homemade snoot with grid (I’ll blog about this soon). It was to the camera’s right and about as high as a toilet. Why the interesting height well that’s where it was sitting. I had angled the flash towards the back right-hand corner of the small room. By bouncing the flash off the wall and roof the light will spill over the camera and not leave a massive flare in the mirror. You will notice plenty of people on Facebook and Myspace have self portraits with massive flares in the mirror. This is from on camera flash. It looks crap.

So the lighting was sorted. It was time to throw the camera in to Manual and set the Vivitar 285 to 1/16th power the lowest setting possible. I set the camera to a shutter speed of 250 and the aperture at f1.8.

I positioned myself outside of the bathroom perfectly head on to the small 40cm wide mirror, but I had the camera body inside the bathroom.

For the Autofocus points I selected the centre focus point only. This made the camera the focal point not me. If I wanted to set myself as the focal point I would have selected the left corner focal point.

As you can see in this photo the door frame is intersecting my hand so its no good. Its actually not a bad photo otherwise. I needed to shift myself left. Now I had positioned myself correctly and just needed the correct relaxed look on my face.

Because the photo was taken in a mirror I needed to flip the image in Photoshop. I also gave boosted the sharpness and saturated certain colours like the blue in my shirt. Using the burn tool I tried to patch up the brightness on my arm. I still have a lot to learn about post processing but hey its a start.

Next time I do the shoot I would probably check my background wall, as the framed photo kind of annoys me. Also the brightness on my arm is something I would be carefull of. Otherwise I’m very happy for a first time attempt.