In the West Field

Monday, March 7, 2011

Different Lightage

Lit with a desk lamp and nothing else.

How's that for texture Matt?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

White Wedding

Just a few of Greg and Christines wedding ;)
Congrats Dr. and Mrs. Borst!

Christine writing her vows at about 4:45 (wedding at 6 haha)

Mr. Pimp

The awesome shoes and socks of the wedding party ;)

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I haven't posted in a really long time...ooops...my life has been a little bit crazy with about 5 photoshoots a week! So I am just going to post a few random pictures from sessions I have already edited...

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Skin Editing Tutorial

I've experimented with a lot of different ways in Photoshop in editing skin and making it look better in photos without it resulting in that Cosmopolitan-plastic-there's-no-one-on-the-planet-with-skin-that-smooth, look. And over the years, this is what I've came up with. (Nicole, I'm using your photo as an example...I hope you don't mind.) This really works well for any photos.

Step 1 - Open your file and duplicate the layer.

Step 2 - Go to Filter>Blur>Surface Blur. Set the Radius to 12. Set the Threshold to 20. (General starting point. You can adjust them to how you see fit.) Click ok. You'll see that it blurs the skin, the hair, and the jewelry. We're going to fix this, stay with me.

Step 3 - On your layers panel, Add a layer mask. Make sure your fill color is black, and select the brush tool.

Step 4 - Start painting with the brush tool on the areas you want to remain in focus. (i.e., hair, eyes, lips, jewelry.) Hint - You can adjust the brush tool on the fly with your bracket keys on your keyboard. Also, click the forward backlash button to see what you've painted in transparent red. (I hit this by accident the other day and discovered it.)

For this photo, these are the areas I want to remain in focus.

Tap the forward backslash button on your keyboard once more and the red goes away, leaving what you painted with brush in focus. Now, hang on...it's not quite done. This is what may set your photos apart from the overkill Cosmo look.

Step 5 - On your duplicated/layer mask layer, take the opacity down to somewhere between 60%-80%. This will bring back some of the skin's original features, but not too much. You end up with a soft, beautiful skin that's not too overly-edited.

Flatten your image, and you're done. Apply other effects if you want. Stand on your head. Profit. Do what feels right.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Filling the Circle

Over the weekend, I met up with Kiely and we shot a wedding together. I went as a backup/assistant to her and we actually ended up doing two shoots. One maternity, one wedding. She had a newborn session earlier in the day too, before I even got there. Between the two of us, we shot thousands of pictures. I can't find heavy enough adjectives that describe the fun I personally had being introduced to this kind of photography. The wedding was a gi-huge-ous learning experience. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was in the right place. Doing the right thing. I especially knew this when Ants Marching by DMB came over the DJ's speakers during the reception. Can't say I remember hearing that song at a wedding before. But I loved it!

I walked away with so much information and some great shots. I'm still trying to file the experience in my brain, detail by detail, page by page, and photo by photo. It'll fit in my intellectual file cabinet somewhere. I'll find room. I'll make room. I'll build a room for it. Wait, no...a house for it. No, a castle. A really big one. With a moat. You get the idea.

Special thanks first and foremost to Kiely for inviting me. Thank you also goes out to Megan and Patrick for inviting us into their beautiful home and letting us torture them with our cameras. And a big congratulations to Nicole and Scott! You guys were swimming in awesome.