Border Edits

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1. Edited Light Birds: 2-14-09; Rexburg; f 2.7; 1.0; Sony CDMavica; Shutter Speed Priority
2. Edited Lanterns- see previous post for image details
3. Edited Light Painting- see previous post for image details

For the first shot, I added a flexible brushed-on effect. I did this by adding a new white layer underneath the original image. Then I added a black layer mask to hide to image layer. I used thick, heavy brushes and white paint at various opacities to paint portions of the image back in. On Shot 2, I created a flexible vignette border by placing a new layer on top of the original image in Photoshop. I filled this layer with black and used the Rectangular Marquee tool to cut out the center of the black layer. I then reduced the opacity of the black border and added a 10px white stroke. For the text, I used Skia font and beveled it. For Shot 3, I added a double fade border. To do this, I cropped the image to 7x9 and increased the canvas size to 8x10 with a black extension color. Then I used the Rectangle tool to draw a pink rectangle on top of the image. I added a mask to this layer and drew a black rectangle inside the pink rectangle, using the Fill Pixels option. I reduced the opacity of the pink layer to 60% and used the Motion Blur filter to blur the edges.

Night & Light

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1.Flying Glow Sticks: 2-14-09; Rexburg; f 2.7; 1.0; Sony CDMavica; Shutter Speed Priority; Tripod
2. Light Painting: 5-26-09; Rexburg; f 8.0; .6; Sony CDMavica; Shutter Speed Priority
3. Lanterns: 5-26-09; Rexburg; f 2.1; 1/50; Sony CDMavica; Macro

I had lots of fun taking night shots this week. For Shot 1, I used Shutter Speed Priority settings and placed the camera on a tripod. I had my sister and my cousin sit outside the frame of the shot and throw glow sticks in front of the camera to achieve the flying lights effect. For Shot 2, I used Shutter Speed Priority settings again and pointed the camera at a set of bright lights. After I pushed the shutter down, I moved the camera in circles to paint with the light. For the final shot, I set up a strand of small lanterns and used the Macro setting to achieve a shallow depth of field.


1. Sunday Sunset: 5-24-09; Rexburg; DynamicPhoto combination of three shots

This isn't technically a night shot, but I thought I'd share this pretty Rexburg sunset. I used the Auto Exposure Bracketing setting to take three shots of this scene at +1, 0 and -1 exposure levels. I then combined them with the DynamicPhoto program, using the Eye-catching effect. The picture appears a little duller on this blog than it does in Photoshop.

Bannack Grunge Effects

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1. Edited Stove
2. Bannack Brick:5-15-09; 11 a.m.; Bannack School House; f 5.0; 1/500; Sonny CDMavica
3. Stove Burner: 5-15-09; 1 p.m.; Bannack; f 2.1; 1/30; Sony CDMavica; Macro

First, I lightened the stove image using an Adjustment Layer. To create the grungy text on this image, I used the font Stamp Act. I used the Horizontal Type Mask Tool on the Bannack Brick image and copied this cutout to the image of the stove. I added a drop shadow and bevel to the word "Bannack." Then I used the Skia font to type "what's cookin' in."I also added a drop shadow to this phrase. Finally, I added a slight burned border to the entire image.



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1. Edited Bannack Beauty
2. Bannack Brick: 5-15-09; 2 p.m.; Hotel Meade; f 8.0; 1/1000; Sony CDMavica; Macro
3. Audrey: 5-15-09; 11 a.m.; Bannack School House; f 5.0; 1/500; Sonny CDMavica

I took shot 3 while we were listening to the tour guide at Bannack talk about the school house. Audrey just happened to be leaning against the post in this cute pose, so I whipped out my camera. Unfortunately, the shot was overexposed, and even changing the levels in Photoshop did little to save this cute picture. To remedy this, I created antique grunge effect on the image. To do this, I used the Overlay blending mode to combine the original photo of Audrey with a solid rust-brown colored layer at 44% opacity. Then I opened the image of the brick and used the Channel function to select certain pixels in the image. I dragged this brick outline onto the image of Audrey and reduced the opacity to 75%. I then added two adjustment layers with Hard Light Blending Modes. I added the border and a fun Western font at the end.




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1. Grungy Magic Chef
2. Rusty Barrel: 5-15-09; 3 p.m.; Bannack; f 2.8; 1/250; Sony CDMavica; Macro
3. Magic Chef: 5-15-09; 2 p.m.; Bannack; f 2.1; 1/30; Sony CDMavica; Macro

To create the grunge effect on this shot of the Magic Chef stove, I used the same process listed above to overlay the texture of the barrel onto the original image of the stove. I added a burned border after I finished grunge-ifying the photo.

Bannack Best

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1. Kettles: 5-15-09; 1 p.m.; Bannack; f 2.1; 1/30; Sony CDMavica; Macro
2. Hotel Meade: 5-15-09; 3 p.m.; Bannack; f 8.0; 1/500; Sony CDMavica; Aperture Priority
3. Magic Chef: 5-15-09; 2 p.m.; Bannack; f 2.1; 1/30; Sony CDMavica; Macro
4. Red Car: 5-15-09; 4 p.m.; Bannack; a combination of three photographs taken using a tripod and Auto Exposure Bracketing (+1, 0, -1) made with Dynamic Photo
5. Chanae Ghost: 5-15-09; 5 p.m.; Bannack; f 8.0; 1.6; Sony CDMavica; Shutter Speed Priority

I had a fantastic time visiting Bannack State Park in Montana and taking these shots. There were so many fun items and buildings to photograph, but my amateur skills just don't do them justice. If you haven't been to Bannack, browse my shots and imagine what they would look like through the lens of your own camera.

Although I know it's a common Bannack photo, I also enjoyed taking Shot 5 of the red car. I combined three photos using the Dynamic Photo program to achieve an optimal exposure. I took each of three individual shots using an f-stop of 8.0 to get a deep focus area.

Shot 6, of my fabulous ghost model Chanae, was taken in Hotel Meade. To achieve the ghost affect, I set the Shutter Speed Priority to 1.6 seconds, and Chanae posed against the wall. About a half of a second after I took the picture, I had Chanae run out of the frame. This allowed the camera to capture only a see-through version of her.

Adjustment Layers & Smart Filters

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1. Original Climbing Tree: see previous post for details
2. Edited Climbing Tree: Smart Filter- Accented Edges
3. Original Frozen Tulip: see previous post for details
4. Edited Frozen Tulip: Adjustment Layer- Hue and Saturation; Smart Filter- Paint Daubs

In Photoshop, Smart Filters and Adjustment Layers allow you to make changes to a photo that can easily be altered or undone. These tools also come with masks that can be used to hide effects on certain parts of the image. On Photo 2, I used the Accented Edges Smart Filter and masked out the branches of the tree. On Photo 4, I used an adjustment layer to increase the hue and saturation on the entire image. Then I added a Paint Daubs Smart Filter and masked out the effect on the pink portion of the tulip to create a stronger contrast between the water droplets and the background.

Flora & Fauna

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1. Autumn Leaf: 10-10-08; 5 p.m.; Rexburg; f 2.8; 1/100; Sony CDMavica
2. Frozen Tulip: 5-13-09; 7 a.m.; Rexburg; f 2.8; 1/400; Sony CDMavica; Macro
3. Climbing Tree: 5-13-09; 11 a.m; Rexburg; f 5.6; 1/500; Sony CDMavica
4. Robin's Eggs: 5-13-09; 1 p.m.; Rexburg; f 2.1; 1/80; Sony CDMavica; Macro

I really enjoyed taking pictures of plants and animals this week. Yesterday, the winds reached 40 mph, and most of the tulips in my parents' yard were destroyed. When I woke up this morning, though, I saw a single surviving tulip outside my window. It was bent and covered in frozen droplets of water, but I tried to capture its unusual beauty in Shot 2. I am also especially fond of the Shot 4, which is of three robin's eggs that are in a tree outside my bedroom window. They survived the wind, and I think their color is stunning.

Landscape HDR

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1. HDR Field: This image is a compilation of the three pictures in my previous post.

To create this image, I compiled the three photographs from the previous post using Dynamic Photo. This HDR (High Dynamic Range) program took the best-exposed areas from each photo and blended them to make one perfectly exposed image. I used the Tone Mapping function on this program and set the Method to "eye-catching"and checked the boxes for "add clarity" and "de-haze."

I tried this method using several different images with exposure compensation values from +2 to -2. I found that the blue color in the sky came out best when I used the three photos with compensation values of +2, +1 and o.

Landscape

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1. Overexposed Field: 05-05-09; 4 p.m.; Rexburg; f 4.0; 1/500; Sony CDMavica
2. Overexposed Field2 : 05-05-09; 4 p.m.; Rexburg; f 5.6; 1/500; Sony CD Mavica
3. Field: 05-05-09; 4 p.m.; Rexburg; f 8.0; 1/640; Sony CD Mavica

These three photographs were taken in the field across from the Rexburg Idaho Temple. To obtain pictures with three different exposures, I used the Auto Exposure Bracketing function on my camera. I set the exposure compensation to +1, and the camera shifted the value by 1 for each picture. The exposure of photo 1 is +2, the exposure of photo 2 is +1, and the final photo has no exposure compensation. Separately, they don't look like much, but check out my next post to see how I combined them to make a more appealing image.