HDR@Bannack

5/25/2011 – 12:56 PM * Bannack, Montana: Mead Hotel * f/4.5 * 1/500 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Tripod with Bracketing

5/25/2011 – 12:56 PM * Bannack, Montana: Mead Hotel * f/4.5 * 1/2000 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Tripod with Bracketing

5/25/2011 – 12:56 PM * Bannack, Montana: Mead Hotel * f/4.5 * 1/4000 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Tripod with Bracketing

"Come and Stay"  I set this up on a tripod and strategically positioned the camera in a way so I could get the clouds. They looked really unrealistic already so when it blended, it brought really great color. I editing the photo in HDR using tone mapping and turned down the brightness, increase the vivid colors and smoothed it out. I kept it on the eye catching setting.

5/25/2011 – 2:48 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/5.6 * 1/1000 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Tripod with Bracketing

5/25/2011 – 2:48 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/5.6 * 1/4000 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Tripod with Bracketing

5/25/2011 – 2:48 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/5.6 * 1/250 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Tripod with Bracketing

"Paint me a River" * Used bracketing with a tripod and zoom to capture the bend of the river. I played with the color equalizer on Dynamic Photo and the hue compressor to have more brightness in the foreground. I played around with the different features and decided to use the smoothing feature to make it look almost like a painting.

5/25/2011 – 1:08 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/3.5 * 1/3200 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

"No more waiting" * My original of the photo was obviously really dark and you could hardly notice the chair. I did, however, like this effect so I decided not to brighten it up too much when I took it into Dynamic Photo. I increased the brightness a little and worked with the color equalizer to bring more color in the window. It created a simple light on the seat of the chair that I really liked. Then I took it into photo shop and lighten it up a little more.

MacroAbstract@Bannack

"Hitting a Brick Wall" * 5/25/2011 – 12:47 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/5.6 * 1/2500 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * When I took the bottle shot, I wanted to get a cool angle. The blur was great even though the aperture wasn't at it's highest. The boardwalk helped with the alignment and the lighting was decent because there was a large tree blocking a lot of the sun, but not bringing shadows. Later, I shot the brick was from the Mead Hotel and knew I could use them together. I dragged it on top of the bottle, decreased the opacity and started trying different blending modes and decided to stick with overlay.

ReverseShallowDepth@Bannack

"A day in the life of..." * 5/25/2011 – 12:02 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/3.5 * 1/800 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I really like the reflection of the fence in the window. I wanted to try a side angle to see if I could bring more depth as I focused on the house instead of the fence. I increased the saturation and it added a rust to the window frames and increased the greens in the grass.

"A day in the life of..." * 5/25/2011 – 12:01 PM *Bannack, Montana * f/3.5 * 1/1250 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I had to be at this angle for the picture that I wanted or else you could see my reflection in the window. I took it into photoshop and added saturation to see the greens. I matched the saturation levels from the picture above.

"Temptation" * 5/25/2011 – 12:40 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/3.5 * 1/3200 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT* This is my hand I took a picture of. I wasn't getting an amazing shots of just the door knobs so I thought adding another object to have a reverse shallow depth would make it more "fascinating". I focused on the door knobs and it blurred my hand. There is a slight angle to it to bring personality.

"Temptation" * 5/25/2011 – 12:39 PM * Bannack, Montana * f/3.5 * 1/3200 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT* This is my hand I took a picture of. I wasn't getting an amazing shots of just the door knobs so I thought adding another object to have a reverse shallow depth would make it more "fascinating". There is a slight angle to it to bring personality. I took it into photoshop and added more nail polish to my thumb because I had a lot peeling off and that was all the editing I did.

ActionBlur&Freeze@Bannack

"Jumping Evolution" * 5/24/2011 – 11:52 AM * Bannack, Montanta * f/20 * 1/250 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * This shot was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I set my camera on shutter priority and took 2 sets of 2 pictures. Obviously, you can tell a difference because of the people int he background but I still wanted to merge them together. I changed it to black and white and increased the greens so the grass would appear lighter and it would be easier to see his shadow.

"Dave the Ghost" * 5/24/2011 – 11:09 AM * Bannack, Montana: Mead Hotel * f/9 * 5.0 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I used a tripod to set this up so I could have my shutter open longer. It took a couple tries to figure out what shutter speed worked best. For edits I took it into CR and decreased the exposure and then took it into photoshop and increased the saturation to make the walls more yellow but masked out Dave.

Portraits@Bannack

"Waiting" * 5/24/2011 – 11:21 AM * Bannack, Montana: Saloon * f/4.5 * 1/1000 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I used the lighting for the window to light the left side of her face and there was a pretty think shadow on her right. I took it into CR and brought up the exposure but increased the blacks to keep the background darker. Then brought her into photoshop and did cosmetic editing with burning and dodging her eyes, eyebrows and hair. Then used the paint tool to smooth out her face as well as the healing tool. She had a hair tie on her hand so I stamped that out, too. I liked the color of her shirt so I increased the saturation and then masked out her face so she didn't look too bronze.

"Content" * 5/24/2011 – 11:27 AM * Bannack, Montana: Saloon * f/4.5 * 1/125 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I had hit sitting in a chair close to the window with the light coming in. I only made a few healing edits with photoshop on this one because I really like the lighting. It makes him look relaxed and very natural. I like the symmetry that the light is creating, as well.

Portraits

Head Shot: "Are you really there?" * 5/18/2011 – 6:39 PM * Rexburg, Idaho * 1/8 sec * f/4.0 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Jeremy was getting ready for bed and I was just about to leave the room and I saw him looking up. I knelt down and got the shot! His face had a red rash on it and I thought, hey, this is a baby, so I smoothed out his skin using the paint brush and gave him baby smooth skin.
Fun Fact: I asked him to act like he was sleeping at one point and he covered his eyes with his hands. I laughed and so he took them off and then squeezed his eyes really tight. It didn't look very natural. (Also-he likes identical to his dad who teaches Political Science on campus.)

Head Shot: "Meet Kaylee" * 5/20/2011 – 10:11 AM * 1/3200 sec * f/4.5 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * We found this bench and I really liked it but everything behind it wasn't very appealing so I thought I would get it as a head shot. I really like how the colors in her shirt match very well. I had her sit more towards the middle of the bench to get some of the bench in. She had a few blemishes so I cleared those up but I used the paintbrush to smooth her skin out. I also used the dodge tool to lighten up the white in her eyes.
Fun Fact: Kaylee was my last companion on my mission. I thought she may struggle and giggle too much in this photo shoot but she was an amazing model and I was so impressed.

Side Composition: "Picnic Time" * 5/20/2011 – 9:50 AM * Rexburg, Idaho * 1/4000 sec * f/4.5 *  Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * This picture turned out really good. It was a little too bright at first to I had my assistant use the reflector to block some of the light. All I had to do was adjust the exposure and then I used the adjustment brush in camera raw to whiten her teeth.

Fun Fact: Right as we were getting up after taking the pictures, the sprinklers went off! Just our luck.

Full Body: "Steps of the Tabernacle" * 5/20/2011 – 10:01 AM * Rexburg, Idaho * 1/4000 sec * f/3.5 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I took a few shots to catch this angle. The lighting wasn't the greatest and we were having a hard time reflecting light with all the gray around so I had to lighten it up in camera raw and I increased the colors in the effects palette and used an adjustment brush to increase the exposure of her undershirt because it started to look gray. Then, added a a very visible vignette.
Fun Fact: I love the positioning of her feet. She did it because she was embarrassed of them because they didn't match her and then she started laughing and I got this shot.

Group Activity: "It's bedtime, kids..." 5/18/2011 – 6:29 PM* Rexburg, Idaho * 1/80 sec * f/3.5 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * This shot happened right as Mom was telling the kids it's time to brush their teeth and get ready for bed. There was so much interaction, I didn't know which picture to choose! Also, since there was a lot of movement, I caught a lot of blur. I added another layer of gaussian blur to and a mask increase the focus on Mom and Ruth and then smoothed out their faces using the paint brush.
Fun Fact: Ruth is a born to be model! Any time her mom would tell her to do something for the camera, she would do it right away.

Group Posed: "Prayer Time" *  5/18/2011 – 6:36 PM * 1/25 sec * f/4.0 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I didn't get as much blur to the background of this image so I turned it black and white so the audience could focus more on the central image. Also, there was a piece of paper hanging that interfered with the picture too much so I used content aware to get rid of it.
Fun Fact: After saying this prayer, Mom turned to me and said, "it feels like we do a lot of praying around here." Such a great family.

Natural Work Environment: "Story Time" * 5/18/2011 – 6:34 PM * Rexburg, Idaho * 1/15 sec * f/4.5 * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * I caught Ruth getting a book for her mom to read to her before she went to bed. I thought I would make it back and white and mask out the books so it would show how books are magical to children and it is part of their 'natural work environment.'
Fun fact: Ruth fell asleep so quickly, Mom didn't even read her the book she picked out.

This photo shoot will be one of my greatest memories. Afterward--I felt like I didn't get the greatest shots but I learned a lot about motherhood and about having a family and I guess that is what I needed to get out of it. This is a righteous family.

Photoshop Edits

  "Lean on Me" * 5/20/2011 – 9:43 AM * Rexburg, Idaho * f/5.0 * 1/1600 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT * Opened the picture in camera raw and decreased the exposure and increased the contrast. I used an adjustment brush on the left part of her face because it was a little dark. Other than that, I was really pleased with it.

Used replace color in Photoshop to change the color of her sweater. I had to use the healing brush and clone stamp a lot around the edging to clean it up because there was a purple blur.

"Waiting" * 5/20/2011 – 10:07 AM * Rexburg, Idaho * f/4.5 * 1/3200 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT *  I used reflector to block leaves that were creating a shadow on her face. That made it a little darker so I opened it in camera raw and lightened the exposure and added a little contrast.

Then I brought the photo in to photo shop and use spot healing to get a few blemishes off of her face and used it to fix a hair standing up on the top of her head. Then I added a guassian blur to a copied layer and masked out her eyes. It didn't soften her enough so I used the paint brush tool to soften her skin and her arm on the right side of the photo. I played with the opacity to find the perfect balance. I noticed her lips needed more color so I used the brush to bring in the natural darker color of her top lip to her bottom. For her eyes, I brought in a light green and painted them and used the dodge tool to lighten up the white in her eyeballs. 

  Color Wanted * 5/20/2011 – 10:05 AM * Rexburg, Idaho * f/5.0 * 1/320 sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

 Picture Wanted * 5/20/2011 – 10:05 AM * Rexburg, Idaho * f/4.5 * 1/1250 sec sec * Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Match Colored Photo * I ended up adjusting the color a little because it was too bright.