Neil March 10th, 2011
Stacey Doyle is a Providence RI based, wedding photographer with 16 years experience.
For her workflow these key Lightroom topics were key:
Neil November 9th, 2010
The trick to doing artistic photo retouching effects is to keep them simple.
In this image, I used an An image from my Organic Vignette package to bring a slight dreamy quality to the image.
I knew what I was looking for when I started, but let me outline the art theory principles behind what I ‘saw’ in my minds eye before I completed the image.
First, hue I knew that I wanted to blend and tie in the warm yellow skin tones, and the blues/purples of the grooms suit and boutonnière. The dreamlike quality of the image comes from the blended and smudged look of the tonalities so their close relationship in Hue is very important. The clever part of my texture sets is their interrelationships within the close Hue relationships-here that close relationship is yellow to orange, with a vignette in the complementary color of blue. Here is the sample image form the texture set for you to see what it looked like:
If you notice carefully there is a rim of natural light on the bride’s right cheek – the sunshine was coming through trees near sunset, and the bride and groom had their backs to it. So the overall contrast in the luminance of this photo is not very high – that’s good for applying a lighting effect or texture…because you can trick the viewer more easily. So it’s important to note that I’m starting with an image basically lit by open shade…nice and soft. The Hue of the overlay image is important because I want a unified color theme – but also because it creates a brighter spot of sunlight (of sorts) on her dress. That dapple of bright highlight where her hair ends and the semicircle of her necklace dips rounds out the counterpoint of her smile in the composition. The rest of the image’s contrast is burned down by the vignette pushing the viewer’s attention to the warm emotional embrace, and the warm sunshine dappled across their embrace.
The simple steps to getting this done in Photoshop is to use a “Hard Light” layer of somewhere between 15-25%. You want to look to smudge the tones, but not make the texture file in any way prominent to the main image’s subject matter.
Neil October 12th, 2010
“In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
— Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers)
I just wrapped up my P90X Core Synergistics workout.
And heavy breathing aside.
It brings me to thoughts of discipline, as the core workout for the creative indivisual.
How’d I make that big leap? I dunno, I think it’s my creative intuition telling me so, maybe I’ll be able to explain it after a shower.
The P90X graduates are all people who took control of their lives for 90 days straight and said, “I am going to do this. I will not back down, and I will not give up. I will stay focused on my goal of making it to day 90, and I will not allow myself to be distracted in any way from reaching my goal.”
Hmmm…that sounds a bit like the recipe for success in any endeavor, doesn’t it? The P90X grads, however, have an edge that most people don’t: They know that the system works.
They know that by staying disciplined and on track, that the results will be there. It isn’t hearsay to them, it isn’t a rumor, it isn’t some vague bit of personal development advice – it is a fact.
Someone today after looking at my website said “How do you get such amazing colors?”
And I’m afraid the answer is in my current life situation. I am traveling on a commercial photo assignment photographing a new hotel each day. For 7 days straight. I’ll take a few days off and do it again. I compose, light and make a final image for 7-12 rooms a day. ”Neil, how to do you get so good at lighting?”
Such amazing color and tonality is the pinnacle of composition, then lighting, then processing.
This just popped up in my twitter stream:
“Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
— Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers)
“In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
— Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers)
“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing that makes you good.”
— Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers)
Want to be better at lighting? Then stop reading this…and shoot a 10 rooms a day until you get to 10,000 hours.
Neil September 30th, 2010
Mac Pro quad 2.6ghz for sale $1350
• 6gbRAM
• 500gHD
• SuperDrive PLUS LightscribeDVD (both slots full)
• 4 Slot SATA PCI card
• 2 slot STAT external converter (from motherboard to external)
This is a massive data crunching machine! You can easily run in 9 SATA connections putting you at 9TB of fast live storage. Two slots for RAM are still open so there’s space to upgrade if you need more RAM.
I will ship UPS or FedEx 3 day insured delivery included in the asking price of $1350 – OBO, want to sell by Oct. 5.
PAYPAL (click link here) – Credit Card (call with your details 585.721.0632) – and money order by mail accepted.
Neil September 8th, 2010
857 views
Neil August 2nd, 2010
When we learn that the priority beyond failure is restoring relationship rather than accepting punishment, we begin to cultivate them.
Neil March 21st, 2010
Pay Yourself First – So You Can Pay Others Too
Anything you do requires energy. And everything you do creates energy. Anything. Even reading this article. You’re spending energy by focusing on the text, processing the info in your brain and matching it against what you already know. At the end of this process, you get some energy back in the form of new ideas, new approaches or possibly some answers. Hopefully, you’ll get some positive energy by reading this :- ).
Have you ever thought what happens with this energy you get back? How much of it you really use? How much of it you discard unconsciously? We’re usually thinking in spending patterns rather than in receiving patterns. We think: how much it will cost me to do this, or how much I will have to give to make this happen. But we almost never think in terms of: what’s the reward of doing this?
Finish this intriguing article about energy balances and you
Neil February 18th, 2010
The Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet and Evernote « Evernote Blogcast
On bother Windows and Mac, use the Wacom Bamboo Pen tablet to annotate images in your favorite image editor, then bring those annotated images into Evernote. We’ll process them and make the handwriting searchable. If you already have an image in Evernote, right click and open it with your image editor. When you’re done annotating, hit save, and the image will automatically update in Evernote thanks to our Live Update feature.
The great folks at Wacom are generously offering three (3) Wacom Bamboo Pen tablets. Here’s how to enter:
Neil November 3rd, 2009
Methings | Podcast | Episode: LW0562: The Seduction of Potential Podcast
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“I think this is one of the great barriers in the creative life. It’s so seductive to spend all of our time and energy developing potential; that is to say learning techniques, gathering equipment, putting our life and our creative life in order, cleaning up the darkroom…….but if we don’t actually make something – then all that time goes to naught.”
“Am I doing it because I need it – or am I doing it because I might someday need it in theory – but never in practice. There is a bit of a hoarders mentality in this.”
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