Far from my best shot at the Renaissance Festival, but this one has an interesting story. Doug and I met these two guys in armor and of course wanted to photograph them. He was up first and got to shoot the bright silver one; I on the other hand, got the guy in full black armor. What luck. After a couple of shots in shade and almost giving up, I moved him into a little bit of sun. Still dark on my LCD I shot another 3 or 4 shots, but I didn't really have much hope for any of these images. But I needed to get a decent image to the guy under the helmet here, so I went to work in Photoshop. This is where Topaz Adjust really saved this shot. It opened up the shadows and added some nice texture to an otherwise bland and dark image. After Topaz, I realized how hard the camera was working here despite the dark subject and background. Note how sharp the eye is even through the helmet, and the background is really rendered pretty nicely. I have no idea how a catchlight ended up in the eye with all that mask in front. As I remember it, Doug was off camera right with the flash. Goes to show you no matter how badly things look on the LCD, there is still decent data being captured on that sensor.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Renaissance Festival #2
Far from my best shot at the Renaissance Festival, but this one has an interesting story. Doug and I met these two guys in armor and of course wanted to photograph them. He was up first and got to shoot the bright silver one; I on the other hand, got the guy in full black armor. What luck. After a couple of shots in shade and almost giving up, I moved him into a little bit of sun. Still dark on my LCD I shot another 3 or 4 shots, but I didn't really have much hope for any of these images. But I needed to get a decent image to the guy under the helmet here, so I went to work in Photoshop. This is where Topaz Adjust really saved this shot. It opened up the shadows and added some nice texture to an otherwise bland and dark image. After Topaz, I realized how hard the camera was working here despite the dark subject and background. Note how sharp the eye is even through the helmet, and the background is really rendered pretty nicely. I have no idea how a catchlight ended up in the eye with all that mask in front. As I remember it, Doug was off camera right with the flash. Goes to show you no matter how badly things look on the LCD, there is still decent data being captured on that sensor.
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Really amazing that you brought this image back from the dark. Fantastic background too. It looks great on the computer, but is it printable too? It almost looks like the catchlight came from the light from the softbox going through the eye hole on the softbox side of the mask to the eye on the far side!
ReplyDeleteMy point first. This is one reason why I do not subscribe to deleting images in camera. I like this shot and we would never have seen it if you had dumped it off the card. It's also why I don't automatically dump them off my computer.
ReplyDeleteThe gentleman was with his son when we shot this. I wrote down everyone's email, a trick learned from Larry Patrick. After sending him a photo I made of his son he had wanted one to place beside it on the mantle. That put Steve under the gun to come up with a shot.
I remember being to the right of the knight, his left, with the softbox. I also remember both of us looking at the back of the LCD and saying "man that black helmet is sucking up all the light". It looked pretty bad on the LCD. Steve had commented he never got anything worthwhile from that shoot.
I actually like his shot better than mine because of the eye being so visible and sharp. I only got part of the son's eye, and it seemed to be on the wrong side for some reason.
Nice work Steve!
ReplyDeleteI like the finished product a lot!
Cheers!
Barry