Tutorials
Lightroom Quickie: Soften Skin
This tip is actually specific to Lightroom 2 – as it uses the Adjustment Brush, which of course wasn’t present in Lightroom 1. If you’ve yet to upgrade from 1 to 2, I personally think the Adjustment Brush alone is reason to do so – it’s such a versatile, easy-to-use and yet powerful tool!
Soften Skin in action with overlay
Soften Skin is one of the presets on the Adjustment Brush – and it’s quite well hidden, which is a shame as it’s a great feature!
Open a shot to work on, and go to the Develop pane, then click on the Adjustment Brush tool (the far right one of the five icons under the histogram – looks kind of like a thermometer on its side).
Once selected, a new set of menu options appear below – click on the arrows next to the current Effect to get a drop down list of effects and presets. Select Soften Skin from the list.
Now you could just go ahead and paint over the areas of skin you want to soften – but it can be difficult to see which areas you’ve selected. So instead I recommend that you press O before you start painting, as this will turn on the Overlay option, which makes everything MUCH easier! Now go ahead and paint the areas you want to soften – obviously just select skin, not hair, eyes or lips – if you go over the edge and want to delete a small area of selection, just press and hold the Alt key and paint over the area you want to delete.
Once you’ve finished your selection press O again to turn off the overlay and see the effect applied. The default full Amount of 100 can be a little obvious at times, so try lowering it until you get the desired combination of softened and natural (I find a figure of around 60 to 80 looks natural, but flattering).
Another Five Tips to Add Interest to Your Portraits!
Five more liberating techniques from the people who brought you Five Quick Tips to Add Interest to Your Portraits, and the acclaimed follow-up Five More Tips to Add Interest to Your Portraits… This time we’re looking at mixing things up a bit. Ways to break from the norm in order to blow off the cobwebs and reconnect with your mojo… All of these are tried and tested by me, after my mojo recently went walkabout and I had to track it down. (I found it in a pub drinking a pint of Mild and eating peanuts…).
1) Focus Schmocus!
Try rebelling against that photographic instinct to ensure that focus is precise and perfect. Instead try setting your camera (or lens) to Manual Focus, open up the aperture and take a purposely out of focus photo! The results can be surprisingly good (especially with some back-lighting…)
Photo: P.Broome; Camera: 400D; f/5.0, 1/200sec, ISO100
Faking a Tilt-and-Shift Effect in Photoshop
This is a really effective and deceptively simple process that is most commonly used to create a distortion of scale – makes any shot with buildings and people in look like a model village! But it’s also really effective for creating a false depth of field, and forcing a point of focus.
Basically you make a selection of the whole image, apart from a stripe across where you want the image to remain in focus. It works best with shots taken from a high viewpoint, with people and buildings in. …but I haven’t got any of those handy so I’m going to demonstrate on something completely different! A photo of two people walking down a canal tow path!
Open the image in Photoshop...
Open the unprocessed image in Photoshop. Work out where you want the in-focus strip to be in the photo and create a Selection with it. › Continue reading
Flash Light: Direction Equals Mood!
1: 5º angle from camera
55º angle from camera
100º angle from camera
140º angle from camera
I thought I’d have a very quick play around today, with my Speedlite 580EXII flash handheld (fired by the Canon ST-E2 IR transmitter – which, of course, you won’t need if you’ve got a Nikon with it’s fancypants built in flash control system…). I just wanted to show how much the direction of your off-camera flash – in relation to the subject – impacts on the mood of a shot.
The shots here were taken one after another, with exactly the same exposure settings (“cabin crew, set cameras to Manual – thank you”) – f/5.6 and 1/160sec – the only difference is that I moved the flash about 30-50º between shots (holding it in my right hand). But, I think you’ll agree, that one small difference makes a HUGE difference to the final outcome! So think carefully above your flash placement 
Attack of the Clones
In Bed With Ya Bad Self by S.Mackenzie (disco~stu)
Haven’t you always wanted to be in two places at once. I know its something I’d find useful. Well here is a quick and dirty method to achieve just that using photoshop. There are other methods to achieve this effect, but this is probably one of the simplest. I’m sure you could approach this exactly the same in other editing software but I’ve used photoshop as it’s what I’m comfortable with.
Step 1. Shoot the two photographs that you are going to use to give the illusion of having an evil twin of doppelgänger. The important thing here is to get both photographs from exactly the same spot and using the same exposure. So set your camera up on a tripod and make sure you shoot in manual mode so the camera won’t try and be clever and alter exposure between shots. Once you have the photos load them both up into photoshop. (click on images to enlarge)
Step 2. Copy one photograph on top of the other so they are both on the same image but different layers, because you’ve shot them from the same place you should be able to lay one on top of the other quite precisely. › Continue reading
Colour Rules OK!
The use of colour in photography is one of the most powerful tools that a photographer has at his or her disposal. I’d say at times it even ranks above composition. Although, obviously the ideal is the perfect union of both colour and composition.
The correct use of colour can create something so striking that it’s impossible to ignore.
When thinking about colours in photos it’s important to understand why certain colours work together, and why others are just a bit… ‘meh’. The diagram below is a depiction of what is called in colour theory The Colour Wheel – it helps us to understand which colours work with which…
The Colour Wheel
Custom Bokeh Masks
bunny bokeh by ansik
Have you ever seen those pictures on flickr or elsewhere where the background is flooded with heart or star shaped bokeh (blur)? Ever wondered how it’s done?
Well it’s quite simple really, all you do is create a bokeh mask, which is basically a shaped template placed at the end of your lens. I was going to write an in-depth tutorial but when searching about on the net I came across this video by talented photog Michael Warf which sums it all up very nicely in around 4mins. I contacted Michael and he was happy for me to share it with you here so hit the continue reading link to see the action.
› Continue reading
Ghetto Light…A Gangster’s Guide
As I’m sure you’re aware by now, photography is basically about recording light on a piece of film or a camera sensor. To take a photograph you need some light. Most days we can rely on the sun for that but occasionally we want to add our own light sources (especially at night and indoors but not exclusively), we also want to be able to control them.
If you have the keys to the bank vault then you could go and spend a wad of cash on some studio lights or a bag full of flashes (strobes) but a cheaper alternative, and one that offers some unique creative opportunities, is ghetto light. Ghetto lights are not a product. Ghetto is just a term to describe any light source that isn’t specifically designed for photography like a torch or desk lamp. It’s about being creative with the equipment you have available or can pick up for next to nothing at your supermarket or DIY shop (home improvement store). I’m going to run through three examples of simple ghetto light options that I use often and provide some example shots to hopefully give you some ideas of what you can achieve with some simple and cheap creative lighting. I’ve written this from a portrait point of view but that doesn’t mean the same wouldn’t apply to using light in this way for other subjects.
no wires...take these anywhere
Torches (flashlights)
Cost: from £1 up to £30 for a real snazzy one.
Pros: Torches are very portable which means you can keep one in your camera bag and use it anywhere. They come in all shapes and sizes and colours. LED torches these days are much kinder on batteries and will last for a fair time on a single charge. You can easily modify the colour of your torchlight using gels.
Torches can also be used for painting light trails whilst using a slow shutter (a topic for another day).
Cons: Torches generally are not very powerful which may mean shooting at a higher ISO than you would normally and this introduces noise and grain into the shot (if using as the only source of light). Torchlight is very directional like a spotlight so not very useful for lighting a large area. › Continue reading
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