Speedlinks January 2010
I hang around on the internet so much and browse so many photography forums, websites and blogs that I stumble across a lot of interesting photo-related stuff. Here are some cool pages that I discovered recently that you may enjoy:
- DIY Gary Fong Lightsphere. The Lightsphere is a popular (in my opinion overrated) but expensive light modifier. Make your own by following Artur Gajewski’s guide on instructables.
- RGB Music Lab. Ever wanted to know what your photos would sound like? Feed them to this freeware Mac/Win software to find out.
- What camera should I buy? This question pops up in forums all the time. The ones who ask them usually don’t give any information on what kind of camera they’re looking for. Read through Scott Bourne’s article and you can probably find the right camera yourself or help others help you.
- Studio Lighting Techniques. Addicted to Life shows some cool studio setups to build upon and experiment with.
- Possible World Record. A Canon EOS Rebel XT falls 3000ft from the sky and survives.
- Classic Portraiture. Joe Zeltsman has written an in depth guide on posing people for portraits.
Photo Shopping
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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).