I’m no slouch when it comes to the technical issues surrounding photography. In fact, some would say I’m obsessive about them. Consequently, I myself am amazed that I am having a blast making photos with my new iPhone 4S and an app called “Hipstamatic.” This app is pretty much anti-everything I believe about photography. You have no control over, well, anything! You can only push a fake shutter button, and you get an image like this:
In my last article I presented a video tutorial on how I lit and shot the picture below. This new video picks up where the other one left off. It is about the post-production Photoshop work. The fact is, no one takes the image right out of their camera, especially a DSLR, without doing at least SOME post work on it. DSLRs have a limited dynamic range and a host of other shortcomings that can be improved in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Aperture, Camera Raw, or even the free Picasa!! Film always had the darkroom….we have software. Either way, the idea is to improve the capture.
Compositing in Photoshop is essential for the images I like to create. There are so many awesome functions inside of Photoshop…..even Elements for that matter…..that provide the means for combining several photos into one image. This video deals with Smart Objects……which I use a lot, and a cool use of the Luminosity Blending Mode to create more detail, and how I combined several images to create the final.
I created a video on how I shot the image below. The key is understanding how to freeze action with strobes instead of with shutter speed. I’ll create another tutorial on the post production work, because the final image relies heavily on it. this video deals exclusively with the camera settings and the studio strobes, and how they each contributed to the final shot. I used Paul C. Buff Einstein 640 monoblock lights, which IMHO are the best value for what you get. Among other things, they have an amazingly short flash duration, which allows for some serious stop-action shots.
This video is only half the story. The post-production in Photoshop is where it all comes together. I will deal with that in Part 2.
I’ve been in a creative slump. It happens to everybody. As a result, I forced myself to create a still life. I don’t normally do still life images, so I figured I’d give iot a shot using 3 off-camera flashes. I made a video of the process, which you can see below. I decided to make a video instead of writing an article, in order to save some time.
