gloda.net » Action

Photo Shopping

gloda — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:10:05 +0000

Last week I posted a bit of behind the scenes information about the setup for the picture Zombies at an Airport. This time I’m publishing the original image along with the finished photo so that you can see what can be done to give a photo some flavour.
I actually shot this for a competition on Photogen, but then it turned out I had misinterpreted the topic, so I submitted something else instead. If it wasn’t for the competition which requires anonymity though I might have taken the picture the other way around, showing myself pushing the trolley.
I borrowed Alison’s EF 17-35 2.8L lens for this. (I don’t have a proper wide angle lens for the 5DMkII yet. I’m hoping for Canon to release the 14-24 2.8 L that’s being rumoured about this year.) The camera is mounted to the trolley’s handlebar using a Manfrotto superclamp. I dialed the camera to ISO100 to get the best possible image quality, and then closed the aperture down so that I could get a long enough exposure time. In this case I ended up with f/9 and 1,6 seconds.
The post-processing should be pretty self-explanatory from the pictures. I fixed a highlight from a ceiling light with the clone stamp, then I used Curve and Hue/Saturation/Lightness adjustment layers to add contrast and shift colours the way I wanted them. The advantage of using adjustment layers to do this is that you can re-adjust them later if you change your mind, and that you can easily apply layer masks so as to apply the effect of an adjustment layer to a specific area of the image only. As you can see it’s nothing too fancy, but I think it makes all the difference between a picture that looks fairly flat and one that pops.
In case you’re wondering what I was shopping for (I didn’t go to our local supermarket just for the photo), it’s Spicy Moroccan Stewed Fish with Couscous from Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food. Lots of great recipes without too much fuss in there. And some cool and helpful pictures by David Loftus and Chris Terry (although I think they went a bit overboard with the tonemapping on some portraits).

Similar stuff: Connecting Generations

Dudelange on Wheels (DOW) 2009

gloda — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:04:01 +0000

Dudelange on Wheels is a popular event among the skater community and photographers from Luxembourg and the Groussregioun. Like last year I spent a few hours on the Parc & Ride area to photograph the competitions.

Connecting Generations

gloda — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:55:23 +0000

About an hour ago the results for a photo competition entitled The Connection Between Generations (Lëtz: D’Verbindung tëschent den Generatiounen) organized by 45Plus together with photogen.lu were announced. My photo above won the public voting and convinced the professional jury. I’m now the happy winner of a Macbook, the photo will make the first page of a calendar and I can take part in a workshop during the Rencontres d’Arles.
I’m a happy camper, and the least I can do is to share some of the behind-the-scenes info of this photo. The competition had been announced months ago, but students are masters of deadline dodging: the picture was taken the day before submissions closed. I had had the idea for the shot in mind for a while, but the problem was my lack of models: pretty much anyone I know in the UK is around my age, whereas I needed to photograph a parent with their child. So I got on my bike, cycled to the playground looking for a family to take pictures with. It didn’t take long before I met Dan and Esme. I explained Dan why I wanted to take photographs with them and offered them a copy of the photo for their family album in return. So when Esme was ready (going down the slide takes priority, after all) we started shooting.
The concept required the photo’s point of view to correspond with Dan’s. So I put the Canon strap (see setup photo) around his neck; the Tamrac strap which can be clipped on went around his waist to further reduce camera shake. After some test shots the camera was set to burst mode (6.5fps) at f/5.6, 1/80, ISO 160 and 10mm, the camera was triggered with a radio-controlled shutter release. Dan was spinning fast which meant that I could get away with quite a short shutter speed and still get enough motion blur on the background. Four of the about 80 taken photos had enough sharpness on Esme’s face, the others were blurred. With all the movement and spinning, the camera ends up wobbling around a bit. Before packing up I asked Dan to sign a model release for Esme – this is something you should do whenever you take pictures in which people can be identified. The one I use confirms that I as the photographer retain all the rights to the image, including the right to publish it, and on the other hand states that the people who were photographed are entitled to a copy of the image(s).
At home I processed the RAW image in Lightroom 2.1, with multiple virtual copies which were adjusted for the different areas of the image. Those files were then put together in Photoshop CS3, where I added a picture of a blurred sky which I took after the shoot. I cloned out some distracting elements on the ground and selectively worked on contrast and colour. Finally I added a slight vignette to draw the viewer’s attention even more into the middle of the frame.
Many many thanks to Dan and Esme for spontaneously shooting with me, and to the jury as well as all those who voted for my entry!

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Dudelange on Wheels

gloda — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:44:05 +0000

The good old Peleng Fisheye came in quite handy for these skate photos at the Dudelange on Wheels skating event. The fisheye effect looks best when you get really close, and one of the bikers (in the second photo) missed my camera by only five centimeters. No risk no fun.

Similar stuff: Dudelange on Wheels (DOW) 2009