Uploads from nickwheeleroz, tagged nickwheeler

Karli Before and After plus step by step PS processing

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 06:14:42 -0700

One of my Flickr friends asked about the processing on the last Karli portrait in my stream. I don't normally mention too much about processing in the write ups because to be honest, Photoshop is not really one of my strong points. I know enough to muddle by, but anything trickier than a bit of tidying up tends to defeat me. I make no claim that the step by step process I have included in the comments here is the right way to do this, the simplest way or even the best way. It is just one way that works for me. Having said that, I have just taken delivery of Scott Kelby's new book Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop (snappy title, no SEO going off there), and after a quick skim through, I am hoping to make some definite improvements in my retouching skills.

Karli Setup

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:47:50 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

The final pictures have notes on how this shot was put together.

Final pictures here: Karli

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Karli

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:48:48 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

At the end of the last dress shoot we did, Tim, our hair and makeup guy asked if we could have a go at reproducing the look from a magazine cover he had. It was a low key head on head shot with very desaturated colours and the model wrapped in a big bow of fabric.

We hunted out a suitable length of purple material and made it into a bow. All the models volunteered to have a go and this is the result from Karli.

The main light is a single AB1600 with a large octobox to the right of Karli's head, very close in and on its lowest power setting. Behind Karli's head is a SB-28 on 1/4 power with a purpley blue gel to light the black seamless background paper.

In the end, I did not desaturate the colours as much as they had been on the magazine cover, but I was still happy with the look of the final shot.

Setup shot here: Karli Setup

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D'arcy

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:10:59 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Kate and Belinda asked me if I could do another Birthday shoot for D'arcy now he is two. Always happy to have an excuse to break out the lights I of course agreed. He has changed a lot since I did his naming day shoot but he was happy to sit and pose for a few shots, helped along with a couple of toy cars and the odd tasty treat.

We had him sitting on a cushion on a trestle table (to lift him up to the lights) and I went with a large gridded octobox as the main light. I also had a couple of gridded strip lights slightly behind him and to each side. We shuffled these round a bit, depending on the picture.

Kate did tell me about an interesting incident with one of the previous pictures I had taken of D'arcy. She had printed it out and had it in a frame on her desk at work. She had been in the process of moving offices and realised she had forgotten to take the picture with her. She went back to get it but found that the new occupant of the desk had removed the picture from the frame and replaced it with one of her own. When Kate asked where her picture had gone, the lady told her she had thrown it in the bin as she thought it was just the insert you get when you buy the frame. I guess the take away of this story is that you know you have taken more than a snap when someone throws it away because it is too good! :)

Setup shot here: D'arcy Setup

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D'arcy

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:07:06 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

D'arcy Setup

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:03:46 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

The final pictures have notes on how this shot was put together.

Final pictures here: D'arcy, D'arcy

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Kim, Damian and Zack

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:13:26 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

This shot is from a series of pictures we took at a dinner party we had for family and friends. We set the studio up with the good old white background setup so everyone had a chance to get a few pictures to take home. It was a great laugh and much fun ensued.

Zack (the little boy in mid flight) was a huge bundle of energy. Any notion of getting him to stand still for a picture was quickly put to one side and I just let him run riot while I snapped away. I think he was somewhere in the rough vicinity of the lights about 10% of the time, but when he was every picture was a keeper.

Setup shot here: White Background Step by Step Setup

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Juliana

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:30:51 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

This shot is from a series of pictures we took at a dinner party we had for family and friends. We set the studio up with the good old white background setup so everyone had a chance to get a few pictures to take home. It was a great laugh and much fun ensued.

After creating the Andreas triptych I wanted to make a matching black and white picture of his wife Juliana. I went with a diptych this time and picked these two shots as I liked the way they looked together.

Setup shot here: White Background Step by Step Setup

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Andreas

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:36:02 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

This shot is from a series of pictures we took at a dinner party we had for family and friends. We set the studio up with the good old white background setup so everyone had a chance to get a few pictures to take home. It was a great laugh and much fun ensued.

I put this triptych of Andreas together after he pulled a whole series of crazy faces one after another (while being egged on by his wife, Juliana). I was pretty much just holding the shutter button down to get these. He has a real Mr Bean ability to pull these faces and I thought these three shots made a fun photo.

Setup shot here: White Background Step by Step Setup

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Karli NOT Barbie

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 04:49:59 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

After a few comments received on her last picture, Karli would just like to point out that she looks nothing like Barbie and her boyfriend Ken agrees one hundred percent! :)

Setup shot here: White Background Step by Step Setup

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Kat

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 03:36:44 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

This is one of a series of portraits I did at the same time as a dress shoot for Keoula. The portraits were done for the portfolio of our hair and makeup guy, Tim.

I have not included the actual setup shot for these pictures as they all used the good old Zack Arias White Seamless back ground setup.

Setup shot here: White Background Step by Step Setup

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Erin

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:02:28 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

April

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:06:00 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Emily

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 02:59:20 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Karli

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 02:37:37 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Ashleigh Ring Light Portrait Revisit

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:43:14 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

I have been using Paint Shop Pro for photo editing from back when it was a shareware program from JASC. It was a program I grew comfortable with and I never felt it lacked any features that stopped me from doing the edits I wanted to my pictures. When Lightroom came along, I found I was using PSP a lot less than I had been, but still found it did everything I wanted. When JASC was taken over by Corel I thought the development of PSP could only get better and looked forward to each new release with anticipation (I am a programmer so new software is still exciting to me). Unfortuantly, each release has been something of a disappointment. Not only were the updates slow in coming, they added little or no value to the basic program. The last update (to X3) was a particular let down. The showcase new features (Smart Carver and Object Extractor) simply do not work (or at least I could not get them to work in any useful way). I decided it was time to look for a better editor. Of course the obvious choice is Photoshop, but here in Australia it is prohibitively expensive for a full license.

I was still pondering my options when the office manager at work got an e-mail offer from Adobe for a half price copy of CS5 (as an upgrade from Elements which she had purchased a year earlier). She did not want to use the coupon so I took advantage of it. I was a little dubious as to whether it would work, but took the plunge and was rewarded with an (almost) reasonably priced full copy of Photoshop.

At first it was a bit of a struggle to find my way around. After years of using PSP, it was as familiar as an old pair of shoes. Suddenly I find myself having to relearn everything from scratch, but I am slowly getting the hang of it and my limited editing skills are definitely being helped by such a fantastic tool.

One of the first things I tried out was a revisit of the Ashleigh ring light portrait (taken in October 2008). I was never happy with the final version of this shot as I could not remove a horrible shadow cast by Ashleigh's left ear. Using the patch tool in PS made removing this as simple as marking a line round the shadow and dragging it off to a patch of skin with no shadow.

I have uploaded a before and after comparison shot and the original PSP edit is still in my stream.

Setup shot here: Ashleigh Ring Light Portrait Setup

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Ashleigh Ring Light Portrait Before and After

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:42:20 -0700

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Final edited shot here: Ashleigh Ring Light Portrait Revisit

Setup shot here: Ashleigh Ring Light Portrait Setup

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DIY Short Sync Cable (with build instructions)

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:16:20 -0800

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

After the recent purchase of a set of Alien Bee flashes, I was short of a few sync cables to connect the flashes to my Pocket Wizards. While they are not terribly expensive to buy, if you have a bit of speaker cable and a few 3.5mm mono jack plugs laying around, why not make your own?

Review: Bokeh Masters Kit

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:19:12 -0800

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Strobist summary:

SB-28, 1/16th power, fired by PW into large soft box camera left.
LED Christmas tree lights in the background.
Bokeh shaped with Bokeh Masters Kit

A few months ago, Udi, over at www.diyphotography.net/ asked me if I would be interested in taking a look at a new project he was working on. I agreed and a few days later an envelope arrived in the mail containing an early prototype of what was to become the Bokeh Masters Kit.

Following is a run through of using the kit and the things I found that worked (and the things that didn't).

Porsche 911 GT1

nobody@flickr.com (nickwheeleroz) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:27:55 -0800

nickwheeleroz posted a photo:

Strobist summary:

SB-28, full power, 24mm zoom, fired by PW into home made soft box, camera left.
SB-28, 1/2 power, 24mm zoom, fired by PW into home made soft box, camera right.
Sunpak 383, 1/8th power, fired by PW through cardboard grid for front fill.
Sunpak 383, 1/8th power, fired by PW through Ikea chopping board diffuser for front fill.
SB-28, full power, 24mm zoom, fired by PW into top of fiber optic lamp for background pattern.

Lighting Information:

I have been on a bit of an extended Flickr break for the past couple of months but I have been taking the odd shot now and again during that time. Hopefully I will get a bit more time this year to post but for now, I am going to put up a couple of the pictures I have sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to do something with them.

If you have added me as a contact or sent me Flickr mail in the past couple of months, please bear with me as I work through the backlog that has built up. I will get to them all eventually, I promise! :)

This picture was made possible following a holiday to the UK. While we were over there, we stayed with my Mum. Venturing into my old bedroom I uncovered a pile of old 1/18th scale model cars all neatly packed away in boxes. I remembered a few of them, but equally there were quite a few I had forgotten about. In particular I had collected a whole set of Le Mans GT cars, one of the best of which was this Porsche 911 GT1. As I only had limited space in the suit case to bring any of these models home (they are quite heavy), I had to choose the best four (well six actually, I slipped a couple into Keoula's case). This is one of the one's that made the cut.

For the picture, I had originally planned to try lighting the car from underneath. I had seen a picture of a Lamborghini in a car magazine lit entirely from below and it looked fantastic. I began setting up by placing a sheet of gray acrylic on four large cotton reels over a black cloth. The plan was to put a flash under the acrylic sheet and see what it looked like. I went back to the photographic supply cupboard (junk pile) to get some more things and saw the top off my fiber optic lamp staring at me. I bet that would look good in the background I though and pulled it out of the cupboard. I then went about setting it up to test and ended up with the setup you see here.

By the time I came to placing a flash under the car I had run out of strobes. I still want to try the under light setup, but that will have to wait for the Mercedes CLK-GTR currently sitting next to the Porsche! :)

Setup shot here: Porsche 911 GT1 Setup

Learn how to light: www.strobist.com

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