Photographing the Easter Bunny

Easter Eve our six year old came to me and asked me to take a picture of the Easter Bunny.  I told him I'd try and didn't think much more about it until later when I was putting him to bed and he reminded me that I "promised' to take a picture of the Easter Bunny.  I think his two older brothers were telling him the Easter Bunny wasn't real and he wanted proof to the contrary.  So I began concocting a plan to photograph the Easter Bunny for our six year old. 

The Power of Post Processing

I often run across other photographers who don't use post processing in their workflow and it always strikes me as somewhat odd.  Are these people so good that they don't need to use post processing or do they not know how to use Photoshop or other image editing tools?  In my opinion, after learning how to use your camera gear and composing an image in your viewfinder, post processing is the most import part of your workflow and it can greatly enhance the visual impact of your images.

Today I was looking through some older photos and I ran across this unprocessed picture of my son at the beach in Destin, Florida.  I like the image but there were so many things wrong with it that I decide to run it through Photoshop and see if I could improve it.

There are four major adjustments that I felt needed to be made.

1. Level the crooked horizon.
2. Remove the two swimmers just above his left hand.
3. Remove the blue shovel and pail near his left knee.
4. Correct the over exposed sky, clouds, sand and water.  

I pulled the original image into Photoshop CS3 and corrected the four problems and also used curves to adjust the colors. here is what i did in Photoshop

1. Level the crooked horizon.
   Rotated the image 3 degrees clock wise and cropped.  I had to use the clone tool to rebuild the far right edge of the image or his left elbow would have been cropped off.
2. Remove the two swimmers just above his left hand.
   A little bit of cloning took care of the swimmers
3. Remove the blue shovel and pail near his left knee.
   A whole lot more cloning took care of the blue shovel and pail.
4. Correct the over exposed sky, clouds, sand and water.
   Added an adjustment layer and set it to multiply to darken the entire image.  I then added a layer mask and masked out him and his surf board so they would not be darkened by the adjustment layer.
5. Added a curves adjustment layer too bring out the color and contrast of the sky and clouds.

The whole process took me about 15 to 20 minutes.  I'm pleased with the result but I can see many flaws and I know that I can do better with more practice.  Let me know what you think.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

One Stop Photography Website Hosting

 As a photography it is important to have a web presence where potential clients can find you and see your work.  Other important functions that a photographer's web site can offer is a place for clients to review images from their photo sessions and even order prints.  A few years ago you would have to have your website custom developed by a web designer and then hosted by a hosting company.  For a photographer all of that could get very expensive and require your time to maintain which results in less time for you to do what produces income, making photographs.

 In the past few years the phorography website hosting niche has been filled by several company's such as Smug Mug, PBase, Photoshelter and others.  Bac in 2007 when I was looking for a hosting site for my gallery I chose Zenfolio because I prefered their gallery layout and the price was right, but Zenfolio fell short in many features such as slide shows, a home or splash page and it didn't allow for much customization beyound the prebuilt layout and color templates.

 Well that has all changed. In January 2010 Zenfolio's latest release has greatly enhanced their site by now offering new functionality that allows photographers to use Zenfolio to host 100% of their web site for gallery presentations, client reviews, print fullfillment services and much more.

 If  you are looking for a photographer's web site hosting service I would strongly recommend Zenfolio.

 

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

Visual Inspiration

As a visual artist A.K.A. photographer I often look to other photographers for inspiration that I can use to push the envelope and develop my skills and creativity to produce better works. I wanted to share some of my favorite artists with you.

Sianp
Location Unknown

Rarindra Prakarsa
Jakarta, Indonesia
What inspires me about this image is the use of back lighting of the
subjects which almost throughs the cat into a silouette. I can't say for certain
but I'm sure there is a good deal of Photoshop work (dodging and burning) that
was performed on the image to create this result.

Copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

What inspires me about this image is the use of contrast and saturation to gove
the image a surreal quality that you can't find in a lifelike image.

Flash Your Christmas Tree

Today the wife and I gathered our three children to take our annual Christmas portrait in front of our Christmas tree. The room lighting was not very good so I setup two off camera slave flashes (580 EX II and 430 EX) on light stands and triggered them using the Canon 7D's built-in master flash. I love this feature on the 7D!

I wanted to capture the available light of the Christmas tree but after a few test shots with the children I knew I would have to go with a faster shutter speed to minimized motion blur because our youngest would not or could not stand still. This resulted in a 1/60 second shutter speed with an aperture of 4.5. to get a shallow depth of field. I setup the camera to manual mode (M) and took a few test shots to dial in the flash to get a decent exposure.

We took several images with all five us but I was not very happy with any of them because the lights on the Christmas tree just didn't show up at all. The children were becoming restless so I made the decision that what we had taken was going to have to do.

After the boys were off in their rooms playing my wife and I continued the photo session with a few images of both of us. Me being somewhat lazy on that Sunday afternoon I left the camera on the same settings as before and again I wasn't happy with the results.

What to do? I decided to slow the shutter shutter speed by a stop or two while leaving the aperture at 4.5 and I also lowered the flash output by 1 stop. Wow, what a difference it made. Now this is what I had in mind when we started.

Next year our youngest will be a little bit older and hopefully a little more able or willing to stand still so I can use the slower shutter speed and get those Christmas tree lights to really glow in our family Christmas portrait.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.