My Travels

I recently spent a little bit of time exploring Europe. Sadly most of the time I was enjoying myself so much that taking good photographs were the least of my worries, which I now regret!

Looking back I also wish I had taken a DSLR despite the size. I had bought a Panasonic Lumix Tz-6 as a point and shoot substitute and it wasn't half bad. I am finally getting round to posting a few of the pics I took while abroad!

This particular photo is a view of the Louvre in Paris. I liked the effect on the people in the foreground and their colouration through PP even though it did mess up and smudge some of the edges of the archway. I felt it was a worthy sacrifice though that I may fix at some point (when I learn how).

'High Dynamic Range' Photography

Hi there,

Hope all you regular readers (me and jim) are enjoying the new look of the blog, it will be evolving over time this is just the very very basic look of it just now while we sorted out the sizing to make images look a lot nicer!

Anyway back to my post! Ever since happening upon a photo blog that goes by the name Stuck in Customs I have been fixated on HDR photography. I have tried it before but without much success! It was just luck if it came out decent after running it though the HDR software. But after heading over to Stuck in Customs and checking out Trey's excellent tutorial he has written I have increased the odds of getting a keeper!

Basically the process is you take 3 photos (my D90 only supports 3) that are all exposed differently. It usually goes like this... under exposed 1-stop ---> correct exposure ----> over exposed 1-stop.

This can be changed to +-2 stops depending on the contrast of the light.

These are then merged together in special HDR software and after playing with some sliders and merging and masking in photoshop (read the Stuck in Customs Tutorial) you have the finished product!

Here is one of my attemps! Click the title of this post to check out some more!

Self Portrait Challenge

I challenged Craig to come up with a self portrait and that I would do the same. It seemed like a good idea to challenge each other as we have never really done self portraits, especially not ones we'd consider showcasing on the blog!

Sadly Craig so far has not produced a single result! I am hoping that he is just working so hard that the final photo will be amazing - watch this space!!

Anyway, here is my attempt!

Sooooo..

So I havn't posted in a while due to not having much time to get out there and shoot some pictures to talk about and also Jim is travelling Europe for a month so has been slacking with the posts which isn't acceptable!

Anyway... Just an update on some of the equipment I am starting to get. I am focussing on lighting at the moment so I have invested in a new flash gun, the Nikon SB-900 to accompany my SB-600. It's a really great flash and nikons flagship mode with a better screen and menu as well as more power and zoom range to throw the light further.

I also got my 1st lighting kit which consists of a light stand, hotshoe adapter, umbrella adapter and an 80cm all in one umbrella. I am really looking forward to testing this out. Just need to find someone to model for me! I'm sure Jim will when he gets back. As long as everyone is comfortable witll full frontal male nudity. joke


-- Craig

Wacom Bamboo A6 Tablet

I can't help but get the feeling that every time that I post it is about a new piece of gear that I buy!

This time its not camera related but it is relevant to the post processing section of the blog. Its the Wacom Bamboo A6 graphic tablet.

I decided to buy this after I got a bit tired of struggling to do fine details with the brush in Lightroom and also the lasso tool in Photoshop. It is a very nice piece of kit and it serves its purpose very well! Using the brush and lasso tool among others work much better and more accurately. The tablet itself is small but not to small to limit the accuracy of the pen placement. It has customizable buttons and a touch sensitive scroll wheel (like an ipod) This comes in extremely useful in Lightroom/Photoshop because it can be used to zoom in and out without having to touch the mouse or keyboard.

It cost £55 from EBuyer and my conclusion is that it was worth every penny!

I have uploaded a little unboxing vid so you can see the dimensions etc of the tablet.

(Soz it doesnt really fit in the box you may need to click it to watch it full)

Photoshop Rounded Photo Edges

Rounding the edges of your photos in photoshop, the quick and easy way!

This can be done  in most versions of Photoshop (as far as I am aware), and I tried it in Elements and CS4. I found a few different guides but I though

t they were slighlty over complicated. I am not going to use any photoshop jargon, just what buttons to press and when! I'll break it down into simple steps:

Step 1:

Select the rounded rectangle tool from the shapes option in the tool bar as seen in the picture.Change the radius of the rounded rectangle to about 125, this is done in the bar above your photo. Then select the area of the photo you wish to keep with the rounded edges. It will be a big black blob at the moment but that's what we want!

Step 2:

You need to unlock the background layer in the layers palette, right click on the first player which will be called background layer and click duplicate layer. Call it what ever you would like but now it will be unlocked and free to be moved. Do this by dragging it above the big black blob layer.

Step3:

I won't bother to explain what this process is as this is meant to be a quick and easy guide. So for this step simply click on the background layer in the layer paletee and press Control and G. Now press Control, Shift and E to combine all the layers! and there you have it, nice rounded edges!

Step4:

The photo you have just rounded will automatically have a white background, which means if you try to put your picture onto a website with a black b

ackground for example, the corners you have rounded with be white where the square edges used to be. Therefore if you want to post your photo onto  a black background, simply use the bucket fill tool to fill in the background with black, or any other colour you desire. This will mask the areas the rounded tool has cut away.

I hope this tutorial hasn't been too longwinded! Below are some examples of what your photos will look like, however these are using the black background.

 - James

Free photo software

I enjoy making photos into more fun and interesting things, just as turning a standard photo into a polaroid. I have had a look around the net for some good free and quick piecies of software to enhance your photos without the need to follow a detailed photoshop tutorial!

The first Program is called Polaroid, a small and extremely simple piece of software designed to turn your picture into a convincing polaroid! Not only does it mess with the colours it also adds smudge marks and lines to make your picture look like it has actually been handled.

I then simply found a decent looking handwriting font and bob's your uncle, perfect polaroids everytime!

The second piece of software I would like to recommend is Tiltshift. Where Tiltshift lenses can be expensive, this free site allows you to upload any picture and it will convert it to give it the miniature model look. My example is not that good as I did not really have any photos suitable enough, but check out Hammerhead's picture from Flickr for a really good example. Below is my example:

- James