Lauren #4

Another shot from the trash the dress photo shoot with Lauren. I can't remember exactly if the strong backlight here was natural or with a flash. I think probably a combination of both, so I went with it and made the skin tones a little more high key. What is it about a portrait subject looking off camera that makes it a more intriguing image? Especially here in a wedding dress. Anticipation? Nervousness? Somehow this photo appeals to me, but can't seem to figure out if it's the pose or the contrast between the soft subject and the rough background.

Lauren #3

Back to the Lauren bridal shoot for this one. In this alley in Galveston, there was a doorway about 5 or 6 feet off the ground. Weird, I know. Galveston never ceases to amaze you with its quirkiness. I guess it's part of the charm ... or local flavor as they say. Anyway, this doorway to nowhere was on a cream-colored wall and was just too good to pass up. Luckily Shirley brought a ladder so we were able to get Lauren up there. A flash in a softbox was firing from across the alley -- about 15 feet away; and while most people shot, I decided to change lenses to the 70-200. So from my position farther away and down the alley after changing lenses, I decided to shoot some really shallow depth of field shots. I asked Lauren to lean out, and I shot away at f/2.8. The vintage texture was added and masked into the shot in Photoshop. The three protrusions from the wall on the left are part of windows in the building, not part of the texture. Cindi has a good shot of the scene here on her blog.

Bonaventure Cemetery

This photo was taken in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. I was heading to Tybee Island that afternoon and didn't have a lot of time to spend there, but there were some amazing trees, headstones and Spanish Moss there. This one was shot as I walked from one section of the cemetery to another. I added the sepia tone and vignetting with Nik Silver Efex and did a little touch up work on the road down the center. But even after the touch ups, there are a fair amount of shadows and high contrast areas along the path. I'd be interested in getting comments about that -- would it be worth the time to "clean up" the path? Nikon D200 at 85mm 1/100 sec at f/6.3.

Lauren #2

Here's another shot taken last weekend at our Trash the Dress photo shoot with Lauren. It's funny shooting wedding portraits in nontraditional styles and poses. At times it throws you a little -- like it breaks all the rules of formal portrait photography, but after shooting a while you start to see the appeal. This is Lauren in an alley on the Strand in Galveston, posed against the great red door we found. Like I said, it's a little disorienting at first -- color break across her head, nontraditional pose, pink Chuck Taylors, grass and bricks at the bottom. I decided to add to the texture here by adding a color shift layer done with OnOne PhotoTools, another texture layer to further add to the overall grunge, then a photo edge in overlay blending mode. I've been working with edges for a while now, and this one was a little different. I tried to work the image into the edge a little more -- first by putting the edge in overlay blending mode and second by masking selected parts so the tones of the photo would interact a little more with the black frame. Nontraditional postprocessing for a nontraditional image.

Jekyll Island Shore

Here's another from Jekyll Island. This was taken before the dune shot I posted yesterday. I thought it was interesting how the reflected sunrise played with the moving water in the surf. Shot on a tripod - f/11 at 1 second.

Jekyll Island Dune

This photo was taken last Saturday on Jekyll Island, Georgia. After shooting the sunrise for about 30 minutes, I turned around and took some shots of the dunes and clouds in the western sky. This is a 5-frame series merged together with Photomatix Pro. It had an odd pink color cast to it so I used Nik Silver Efex to do a black and white conversion, and I think it helped this shot alot.

Forsyth Park Fountain

Sorry Lauren fans out there, back to Savannah for this shot -- taken last week in Forsyth Park. I was trying to get a little added motion in the water, so shot it at 1/100 of a sec. Went back at night and tried some really long exposures the next day and the white balance was really difficult to deal with all the light sources in and around the park. This was taken on a very cloudy day. Nice that there were no hard shadows, but since it was fall, lots of long-hanging branches -- enough so you can't see the top of the fountain. Cropped panoramic, cloned out a few distracting elements, added a Silver Efex layer in luminosity blending mode to add a little contrast and pop, also added a slight gold glow to the three lamps.