Sunday, September 13, 2009

Before & After, Episode 7 | WESLEY CHAPEL FASHION GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

This fashion/glamour image has gotten more comments than any other in my portfolio since I uploaded it to my profiles on ModelMayhem, OneModelPlace, and FashionPage. Perhaps it's the whimsical expression of the model, or maybe it's the splash of color on the background that complements her dress, but whatever it is, people really seem to like it.

I put this image through my normal glamour retouching routine, enhancing the eyes, teeth, and skin, and making colors pop a little more. I also added a light green gradient to the background to make my subject really stand out and enhance the overall appeal of the image. If you look at the original, you'll see part of the chandelier that used to hang from my studio ceiling (it has since been removed), and you'll also see the edge of the white tileboard that the model is standing on. These things are really easy to clean up in Photoshop-- the only thing you really need to worry about when doing shoots like this is making sure that the model completely surrounded by white.

Drop me a comment if you'd like any further details about how this was done, or if you just wanna give me some feedback.








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Sunday, August 9, 2009

Before & After, Episode 6 | WESLEY CHAPEL CHILD PHOTOGRAPHER

This time I'm digging out one of the first photos I took with off-camera flash. Being a newbie at the time, I was still trying to figure out how to balance ambient light with artificial light, and I ended up overexposing this scene pretty badly. Rather than trying to restore some of that lost detail in the blown-out areas of his face and her shirt, I decided to go in a completely different direction.

First step was to remove that annoying white bench in the background, which I felt was much too distracting. Next I desaturated the image, leaving only a hint of brownish sepia-tones. I also added a texture to give the image a really weathered & scratched appearance, and placed a border around the edges to round off the corners. Some vignetting (darkening of the edges) was added to draw the viewer's eye toward the center, and also to emulate the look of vintage photographs. Lastly, I "painted in" some lens blur to certain parts of the photo in order to complete the transformation.

Do you like the end result with all of its adjustments and effects, or do think I should have stuck with fixing the exposure in the original photo and kept things simple and straightforward?








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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Before & After, Episode 5 | WESLEY CHAPEL PHOTOSHOP RETOUCH

This episode is dedicated to all the folks out there who have scratched their heads in wonderment trying to reverse-engineer my profile picture on Facebook. I've had a ton of people ask me to explain how I made it, and although everyone correctly assumes that it involves Photoshop trickery, few have been able to really latch on to the process as I explained it to them.

In short, all I really did was: 1) take a picture of myself sitting Indian-style on a bench, 2) take another picture of just the bare wall behind me, 3) combine the two in Photoshop, and 4) "mask out" the bench to reveal the wall behind it, and 5) add a fake shadow behind me to create the illusion that I was really floating. Take a look at the unedited versions over to the right and you'll quickly see how it was done (click each picture to enlarge it).

Enjoy, and please share the love by leaving me a comment! :-)









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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Shannon Landers - 7/3/09 | NEW TAMPA BEAUTY GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHER

Aspiring model and all-around sweetheart Shannon Landers stopped by a few weeks ago to update to her modeling portfolio. The pics she had done up that point weren't all that great in my opinion, so I wanted to give her something that really did her justice and accentuated her natural beauty. She was pretty thrilled with the final product, and I have to admit that she looks amazing in these.

As I often say, if you really want to increase your chances of making great photos, choose beautiful subjects! Enjoy....










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Thursday, July 9, 2009

Before & After, Episode 4 | WESLEY CHAPEL FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHER

In this episode we'll take a look at an image that I captured a couple of months ago while hanging out with some dear friends of mine....well, actually it's two images combined into one, but I processed both of them the exact same way. The kids are Carter and Katie, who are just flat-out adorable, and so photogenic that it made my job an absolute breeze.

Anyway, I had the kids stand in front of their respective parents and then asked mom and dad to put their hands on the kids' shoulders. I was trying to grab a couple of shots that would draw attention to each child's size, relative to the parent standing behind them. These are the sorts of pictures that you look back on many years later and your heart just wells up thinking about how tiny your kids were. As with all of my clients, I wanted to give Rob an Rachel a family heirloom to cherish for years and years, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

When I was retouching the images in Photoshop, I decided to take a risk and try a technique that I had never really played around with-- it's called cross processing. Back in the darkroom days when you developed film by hand, this process involved dipping your undeveloped negatives into a chemical solution that was designed for a completely different type of film. Whether done by accident or intentionally, it produced a photograph with wildly unpredictable color tones, and oddly enough this look eventually became a mainstay in the fashion industry.

Well, in the digital days this same look can be emulated with much greater ease, thanks to programs like Photoshop. It's also possible to exercise a much greater degree of control over the final product, because in the digital world the tools work exactly the same each time-- it's just a matter of a few mouse clicks.

The only thing I really did to these images, besides cross processing them, was to re-crop them to improve their overall composition. Tell me what you think by leaving me a comment below (just choose "Anonymous" if you don't have a Blogger or Gmail account).








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Tampa, FL, United States
I'm a commercial photographer in Tampa, FL specializing in band & musician promos, CD covers, press kits, posters, and the like. Please feel free to check out my website/blog using the link below, and give me a shout if I can be of service to you!

http://TampaBandPhotos.com

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