Penny & Earl

This nice young couple from Birmingham, Alabama was staying at the same bed and breakfast as Kim and I were this past weekend in St. Francisville, Louisiana. It seemed like we saw them everywhere on Saturday -- at breakfast, on a tour of Rosedown Plantation, and here at the Afton Villa Gardens north of St. Francisville. They both have that unique southern charm and wit -- it was really a pleasure meeting them and getting to know them a little. I asked if I could take a couple of photos here at the pond in the gardens. After a couple of exposure tweaks and a few texture layers in Photoshop, here's my impromptu portrait of a happy couple enjoying a Saturday together. I mentioned in the previous post about how everyone who visits Oak Alley will come away with a similar shot. The image above, however, is a shot no one has. I think that's why I'm so intrigued lately by photographing people -- the infinite possibilites of capturing a moment that will never happen again.

Oak Alley Plantation

Earlier this month the assignment for the Bay Area Photo Club was “Breaking Photographic Rules,” and I have to say I wish I had taken this shot in time for that night. This is Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana. Kim and I made a trip over to Louisiana this past weekend, touring a couple of plantations and gardens, and of course taking photos along the way. I found myself standing on the grounds of these majestic homes taking this same shot over and over. Honestly, how else can you say you’ve visited Oak Alley without taking this shot? I’m sure a fine art photographer would find some unique angle; but for me, straight in, locked down tight on a tripod was the rule for the day. There’s been much talk about HDR – high dynamic range – photography lately, many thinking it creates surreal imagery – for good and bad. Well, this is HDR – controlled to blending exposures only, no hyper-realism here. Trey Ratcliff, over on his Stuck in Customs blog, has a book about HDR coming out soon, and an excerpt he has on his site mentions that often greens are oversaturated in HDR. I’ve run into this a lot lately – especially in my shots of Virginia and Louisiana. So after merging my five frames in Photomatix here, I desaturated the greens in the foreground grass and increased the pink tones in the building and walkway. I also learned a valuable lesson about lens sharpness on this trip. I shot these frames at f/22 thinking I needed the added depth of field, but after comparing my f/8 shots with these, the f/8 shots were actually sharper. I had to do some extra sharpening to the plantation to get an acceptably sharp building. So, here it is – two weeks late – my breaking of photographic rules. Oak Alley the way every tourist shoots it – bullseyed right down the middle.

Kelly Crabb #3

Another image from the shoot with Kelly Crabb -- this one near sunset along the Galveston Ship Channel. The large out of focus structure in the upper left is the bowsprit of the Tall Ship Elissa. Strobist info: two SB800s fired from left and right, one with a small softbox (left), the other bare flash, both at 1/8 power. I only noticed this is postprocessing but the back of her upper left arm (below the out of focus lights) is backlit in red. There were some ship's navigational lights on the dock, and I believe this is where that came from. Not necessarily good or bad, just something I didn't notice when I shot it, but becomes obvious when you're working at 400% in Photoshop.

Kelly Crabb #2

Here's another photo from Friday's photo shoot with Kelly Crabb. This one was taken shortly after the previous image; lighting setup was about the same also. The location was the pedestrian alleyway behind Yaga's on the Strand in Galveston. Black and white conversion was done with Nik Silver Efex; white emulsion edge was done with OnOne PhotoFrame; and the black negative edge was from Kevin Kubota's Sloppy Edges package. Let me know what you think of the black and white here. I think I've always had it in my mind that black and white was for an image with exposure issues -- and that the conversion offered a quick fix. I've been hesitant to do that with these images of Kelly because they are pretty clean straight out of camera. This one, however, seemed to work pretty well in black and white. I'm posting the color image below.

Kelly Crabb

I had the pleasure of photographing actress/model Kelly Crabb Friday down in Galveston. She was on the reality TV show The Amazing Race Season 13. We've been trying to work out the details for a photo shoot for a while now. Little did we know that a nice cool front would move through Thursday night and the weather would be perfect Friday. Larry Patrick, Cindi Barker, Shirley Pearce and I met up with Kelly on the Strand and shot for about 2 hours, ending with some fitness shots and portraits near sunset. We used our favorite strobist-type lighting -- basically Nikon SB800 flash units fired through some simple light modifiers. The shot above was one of the first I took Friday. Kelly is just as fun and easy going as she is pretty. What a great smile, huh? Please watch my blog for more from this photo shoot.

In the Trenches #8

For the record, here's my final image with matt and frame, and below is the before and after. While texuring isn't for everyone, it sure can add some uniqueness to an otherwise bland image. What I find really interesting is how you can adjust exposure with the overlay's tones, and how you can push an image into a different color palette and mood with blending modes and masks.

In the Trenches #7

What I really envisioned for this image was a dark edge, and while I liked the emulsion and tones from the textures previously added, I decided to add another texture to impart a dark edge. The texture I used for this is below. I also added a mask and duplicated the right side and flipped it over to the left so both edges would be black. I also duplicated the bottom left corner in a couple of other layer blends to warm up that corner of the image because the grey tones from the first layer were showing through a bit too much. As I look at this image now, I think maybe I could have even gone further with the bottom corners -- possibly making them a little more brown to better match the brown emulsion vignetting at the top. One of the most difficult things about adding textures for me is how various parts of an image interact with an overlay tone. For example, in this image the pink shirt goes completely black in the lower right, while there is detail in all the other corners. There's also a pretty extreme bit of grunge in the lower left. As a graphic artist, I really gravitate towards symmetry, but sometimes with these grunge-type textures you just have to go with the randomness they introduce.