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Foul Weather Play

1/1/2017

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Don't let foul weather keep you from shooting during the winter. You can bundle up and venture out-of-doors to get those magical snow shots and earn the bragging rights of winter-wonderland explorer.

But, if being cold and wet aren't your cup of tea, setting up indoor sets with makeshift backdrops and ambient light is an easy workaround to keep your camera and creativity going when winter odds are working against us.

Here are some examples of fun, creative shots that we took indoors using our own DIY photography sets. We hope these shots bring you inspiration to keep on shooting through the dreary, bitter weather.


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White Christmas
We shot this photo to use as our 2016 Christmas card. This is a collectible toy truck with miniature presents, Christmas tree, wreath and linked fence.

Where did we set up?
Right on our kitchen table! We used this seamless white tabletop background by MyStudio (found here on Amazon) as our starting point.

To create our snowy scene, we sprinkled unbleached all-purpose flour through a sieve around the base of the set, then gently tapped dustings of flour, a little at a time, from a small makeup brush onto the fence posts and vehicle's hood and windshield. Remember, less is more when doing setups. It's easier to add more than subtract excess.

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This project created hours of photo fun for us to tackle as a team. We later added the falling snow in post in Photoshop. We've shared some links below to a few tutorials for a few alternate techniques.

Helpful Snow Tutorials:
  1. ​How to Create Snow in Photoshop by PHLEARN.com -- Learn more...
  2. Adding Fake Snow by Fstoppers — Learn more...
  3. Instant Snow (Action for Photoshop) by Gavtrain.com — Learn more...


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Ghosts of Christmas Past
We tied this lively bunch by their necks along the length of a chopstick and hung the ensemble with thread and pins from a foam board off our kitchen counter. We positioned the camera at a sharp angle to the skeletons and shot with a 100mm macro lens set to f2.8 so that the fellas in the back fell out of focus.

How'd we make the funky background?
We simply saved a bokeh JPG from online to our iPad, opened it in the Photos app, and handheld the iPad steadily behind the last skeleton.

The sun beamed gloriously through our patio window to spotlight our subjects perfectly. Minutes after we clicked the shutter for this frame, the sun was already around the corner of the house and no longer helpful. When using ambient light, timing is everything. Plan ahead to ensure the sun's position generates the perfect intensity and duration of light.

​Here are a few BTS (behind the scenes) shots of our DIY setup for our bony friends.

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A Productive Photo Holiday

11/1/2016

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​​Just because the Crew is taking a brief holiday hiatus doesn't mean we should neglect our mantra of "practice, practice, practice!" Here are some tips for easy, low-stress, no-pressure, photo productivity during the holiday season.

1. Social Sniping — Spend quality time with friends and family and document those precious moments. Capturing the moment is the biggest priority, regardless of device used (cell phone, p&s, or SLR). Share your captures with others by email, on social networks, and load digital photo frames for display on the mantel.

2. Feast Your Eyes — Snap those fun food shots at holiday gatherings. Take time to experiment with shooting just the food, the entire table, and the whole gang gathered 'round for the feast.

3. That's A Wrap — Capture the glitz, glitter, and holiday sparkle ... from decorations and lights, to ribbons and wrapping paper. And ... don't forget to "wrap up" the loose ends of processing your awesome images from our Crew events.

4. Holiday Academia  — Create self-imposed assignments before heading out to holiday gatherings and events. During your time enjoying food, fun, and the company of others, study your surroundings and be on the prowl for photo opportunities that meet these assignments. This practice will help keep your photographic eye sharp. Use a stealth approach in capturing those images to avoid upsetting the host and fellow guests. Examples: capture only specific colors, numbers, shapes, textures, themes, poses, expressions, emotions, and other endless ideas.

Regardless of where this holiday season finds you, make sure to follow the ABS Rule ... Always Be Shooting!

Post your favorite holiday photo traditions below in comments to share them with others.

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Do You Dragan?

8/31/2015

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Dragan is one of my favorite secret post-processing weapons. If you don’t know about it, you should. If you haven’t tried, you’re missing out on something really special.

Simple, yet powerful, this processing technique adds ‘light’ to the image, and can be used to fix hot spots, enhance or shape subjects, add drama and depth and elevate images to a new plane with a magical glow, even rescue those otherwise headed to the trash bin.

It was developed by renowned photographer Andrzej Dragan, whose impressive accomplishments include a Ph.D. in quantum physics, award-winning music composer, CGI artist, and movie producer.

Thankfully, the Dragan technique is easy to use. You simply need an image, Photoshop or other processing software that allows layers, a little time, and a vision to pursue.

How simple is it? If you can trace, you can Dragan.

Example: I signed up for a fun apocalyptic model shoot in a low-light environment. Admittedly, I’m a newbie in lighting...like, my-brand-new–speedlight–arrived-moments before-leaving newbie. But, that didn’t stop me from going and shooting. I unboxed my new gear, stuffed it into my bag and headed out the door. My Nikon D750 shoots with superb clarity and minimal noise in low light scenarios, so that was a huge plus. I scored some shots that I was really happy with – now, how do I ‘fix’ the lighting in post!? DRAGAN!
Model: The amazing Brenna Maura (http://www.modelmayhem.com/brennamaura)
View my final image, here.
How to Dragan
Create a new layer, with blend mode set to overlay, and use the paintbrush tool to paint areas you want to affect (black to darken and white to brighten) without muddying or washing out the colors. This creates more depth and definition and preserves vibrancy and clarity. Try a different opacities for variance in depth. Experiment with the burn and dodge tools and use whichever tools best achieve the desired effect.

What Dragan Does
Add light
Paint with white in various opacities to enhance or shape subjects, or black to push areas into the background. In my example shots, the model was backlit, leaving her face was in shadow but, from my histogram, I knew detail was there. Working carefully with my paintbrush tool and white, I coaxed the details out from darkness, enhancing her beautiful eyes, the highlights on her lipgloss, her hair color, and other features.

Open shadows
We’re taught to use sliders in the RAW processor to open shadows. I’ve discovered through my own work that using sliders simply ‘lightens’ the contrast and ‘exposes’ existing noise which results in a hazy, milky image with added noise, especially in the shadows. YUCK! No self-respecting photographer wants that! Dragan adds light to darker areas without exposing existing noise, muting colors or killing contrast. How brilliant is that?!

Fix hot spots
Use the burn tool or paintbrush with black to ‘retouch’ hot spots, those brighter areas where details exist, but can’t be seen.

Add detail
I wanted to emphasize her wild hair for greater detail. So, I used a very fine paintbrush, several pixels wide, and traced in a few individual strands, just enough for more texture.

Dragan S.O.S. (save our shots)
Don’t dismiss shots from a quick glance. Invision their potential and work them. Dragan will enhance data in properly exposed images which contain data in both dark to light areas. It will not recreate data that’s missing. So, rely on your histogram when shooting.

How much?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Play, explore, and find what works best. Post-processing is a journey. Dragan is just one of the amazing techniques bequeathed to us by our trail-blazing fore-tographers. Practice brings proficiency … set your inner explorer loose and discover the potential of this and other groundbreaking techniques.

Good hunting,
Linda

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    Linda O'Donnell

    Co-founder of NJ Photo Crew...multitasking overachiever with a vast array of interests, including, but not limited to, photography, travel, and growing our photo family.

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