Teach it Tuesday - Family Mashup.

Every Easter we take a family picture... I sketch up a few ideas and then run them by the boss. This year we came up with a couple of cool ideas, packed up the car and headed to the beach only to be met with tsunami force wind and rain. Our plan was nixed and I was pretty grumpy.

Instead of throwing in the towel I came home, drew up a couple of concepts that would work indoors. I set up the backdrop and the lights in the living room and told the family what we were doing.

The initial photo is pretty simple - I wanted a family photos that showed some character but also the "stuff" that surrounds these photo shoots. It is usually something that I go to great lengths to hide from you so this is kind of fun for me.

Once we took a few "safe" photos I then photographed each family member doing "funny" poses on the backdrop.

The concept was - what if the parents were little and the kids were big? My first attempt was to mix and match facial features but the outcome was REALLY creepy... like, Chucky doll creepy.

The next iteration version was the one pictured here... Ya the kids are big and the parents are small but it just lacks anything interesting...

I reached the final concept basically by it being the only remaining option... the feedback on this image has been mixed with some recoiling and others really enjoying it. If you are interested in how I edit photos like these please check out the video below where I show you everything from start to end in less than 3 minutes.

Teach It Tuesday - followup.

Teach it Tuesday - followup.

I was asked how I hand drew the dirt / dust cloud. I created a layer and using a standard brush with a wide pattern started painting. You can see from the animation that I alternated dark and light with the spray pattern. I would add, remove, add, remove until it felt like it was looking right. As a finishing touch I covered most of it up with a 40% opacity brush with the lighter color. 

Teach It Tuesday.

Teach it Tuesday. 

I often get asked how I shot or processed certain shots today I am going to explain how I put this shot together. Last year I shot similar photo to this. The previosu photograph was taken in the early evening when lighting conditions are more favorable. This time around I wanted to challenge myself with a noon day sun.

The camera was placed on a tripod and I used a 10 second self timer to take the actual photo.

Take a look at the animated GIF below. In the first frame of the GIF, my face is completely in shadow. I can increase my exposure, so that my face is shown, but this will blow out the sky. I really want to keep the sky and these awesome clouds so I need more light on my face. I set up 2 strobes. One on the left at 1/8th power and one on the right at 1/2 power. The shot is quite simple.

In processing the shot, as you can see in the GIF, I started by removing the distracting elements like the light stand and the power lines. Then I started working on contrast, detail and color toning. Lastly, I hand painted in the dirt and dust cloud. 

The key to this shot (for me) is adding light to the subject so that they stand out of the brightly lit background. I am using Photoshop to remove distractions and to add more detail and tone in the areas that need it.

The shoot itself took about 10 minutes and processing took about an hour and a half…

If you have questions, please send me a note and let me know!