Tuesday Tip: Nonphotography

Thought I might change things up a bit, so instead of a Photoshop tip I am going to  direct you to a website/blog to check out. It is called Nonphotography by Nitsa and there is a blog that accompanies it. If you love the possibilities that photography has to offer you will love this site. One of the things I most enjoy about photography is experimenting with new processes and ways to present imagery. This site is full of experimental photography and a wide variety of processes. I have really enjoyed looking through it, I hope you will too! 

Hey Hey Paula!

 Paula Hardee is a Christian Missionary working with Every Nation Ministries and is the Executive Director of Global Impact Resources. Paula and I attend the same church, Greenville Christian Fellowship. Paula needed images for promotional materials, so we went out last week and had a great time photographing around Greenville. 

Richard + Kelly: A Beautiful Day!!

Rich and Kelly were married on April 19th in Greenville, NC! It was a gorgeous day! Rich and Kelly are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. I can’t even say how many times I overheard people at the wedding say how great they are! A special thanks to Heather Sullivan who assisted me with shooting, etc. What a great assistant she is…I was very fortunate to have her help out. She did an awesome job! So, I was a bit decisive (again) so here are quite a few collection of images from Saturday:

Tuesday Tip: Subtle Color

Today’s Photoshop tip is how to create subtle color in an image. Of course, there are many ways to do this, but we will explore just one. And this may sound repetitive, but techniques do not work for every image, so just do some experimenting. Here we go:
Step 1: Open your image in Photoshop.
Step 2: Make sure your layers palette is visible. If it isn’t, go to Window>Layers and the palette should appear on your desktop. With your layers palette visible, go to the bottom of the palette and click on the layers adjustment icon (half-black, half-white circle) and choose Channel Mixer.

Step 3: Check the Monochrome box and the bottom left of the Channel Mixer dialog box. Your image should now be grey scale. Notice there are three channels (red, green, and blue) that make up your image. You are going to enter values in the three boxes for red, green, and blue, that add up to around 100. You will have to play with the sliders to get the greyscale image that is most pleasing visually. When you are done, click OK.

Step 4: Go to the bottom of the palette and click on the layers adjustment icon (half-black, half-white circle) and choose Hue/Saturation. This will open the Hue/Saturation dialog box.
Step 5: Check the colorize box and enter 40 for for the Hue and 20 for the Saturation. These are the values I chose for my image. You will most likely have to choose what works best for your image. Click OK when you are satisfied

Step 6: Now you are going to drop the opacity of both the Channel Mixer and Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers to bring some of the color back in. The opacity slider is near the top right of the layers palette. I dropped the Hue/Saturation layer to 50% and the Channel Mixer to 30%. You will have to play with the opacity to suit  your image.

As usual here is a before and after set: This is Bree and my Dad. Bree loves her Papa!!

 

 

Helpful Technique Website

Hello all. If you make images in a lot of various settings and situations,  you know that light is one of your biggest obstacles. And rightfully so, we need light to make an image. I love to read about what other photographers do to manage their available light as well as how they add light (artificial light). It’s great to look at images but so much more helpful when they walk you through their process. So, HERE is a sight devoted to educating photographers on various techniques including lighting, compositions, etc. Good day!

Tuesday Tip: Modify it!

I know I usually do Photoshop tips, but I thought we would deviate from the expected today. I had a bit of fun with the holga the other day so I thought I would share. For those not familiar with the Holga, it is a camera with plastic construction as well as a plastic lens. So, yes, it is cheap, but that’s the cool part, if you mess it up when you are experimenting you are not entirely devastated as you would be if you ruined your expensive camera. I bought one back in the day when they were only around $12. (I think they around $25 now). They have quite a following. They are just plain fun. No bells and whistles.  I decided to modify mine with a rounded frame. I made a crude rounded corner cutout and taped it to the frame and exposed as usual. I know what you are thinking…”haven’t you done that in Photoshop?” Of course you can do it in Photoshop, but this is much more fun! Here are some of the images from the altered frame and an image of the modified Holga or “Holgamod” as they call it

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Corey + Ashley

Corey and Ashley are engaged and getting married this October! We took a drive out in the country and had a great time…Corey even brought his guitar. Here are some of my favorites from our session:

Photo Walk Through

So, I guess I am just in the blogging mood today. Thought you Photoshoppers might be interested in this link to tutorials that features photographers going through their images step by step in Photoshop.  Very helpful. It is called Photo Walk Through.

Coming soon……H20 Hellos

I was a little hesitant to go ahead and announce this, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to possibly hear some thought about it. I am inspired by the simplicity of Tom’s Shoes. You simply buy a pair of shoes and someone in needs gets a pair in return. I plan on applying a somewhat similar idea through photo greeting cards. The designs would sell for $10 and $5 would go to the Rwanda Clean Water Project. Hence the name H20 Hellos. The Rwanda Clean Water Project works to build wells in Rwanda where they have a lack of clean drinking water. I am working on designing Christmas Cards, Save the Date, and Birth Announcements. So, more information to come, but here is an example one of the card designs:

Great Photoshop Resource

I just thought I would share a great resource for Photoshop information and it comes directly from the source: Adobe. It’s called the Adobe Exchange. They have a lot of information about Photoshop including a forum, tutorials, actions, brushes…and so much more. I have found it a helpful resource in the past, hopefully you will find it useful as well! You do have to get a username, but I think its worth it.