Away From Black & White...

Right, now I don't like to quit on things, but editing those photos in black and white was a bore. It just felt like I was taking so much character out of the photos. I didn't want to just leave the set to another day so I started playing around in Adobe Lightroom and came out with this sort of aged photo look with a Sepia tone, I wanted to stay away from the vintage effect due to the fact I always try and make the photos look vintage. So with a little more playing around I reduced the noise made the photos sharper and came out with this horror esque coloured scene. I only editing 3 like this because I may come up with some completely different ideas for the others.

Black & White

So after playing around for a while I've actually gone out and arranged to do a photo shoot with one of my friends, I usually take photos of people modelling/playing in a band and have been taking snap shots lately and experimenting, so I am now going to get on with some themed work.

So I wanted to start basic, yet something I haven't really done, and that turned out to be post editing in black and white. The only reason I have never really done it is due to it always seemed to be too easy and not much you could do with it, yet I persevered.

I chose to take the photos in a natural environment because the leaves and trees would cause a lot more shadows to play around with in post processing, and unfortunately the weather was not what I was hoping, overcast clouds instead of the sunny winters day I wanted.

So this my first edit from the collection, and don't get me wrong it come out nicely but I still feel the same way, there's really not a lot you can do when post processing in black and white. i chose to make the reds darker so that it would contrast with the with the white face, I also chose to make the greens darker so that the background would seem way deeper. I also found that there's a watermark button on Lightroom, so expect all my stuff now to be tagged!

I will now get on with editing the rest of these pictures and upload them to a different post.

More Instagram/Hipstamatic

so i'm just trying to practice the technique and heres some more of the photos i came up with, personal favourites top and bottom.

Light Leaks.

Light leaks have become the sort of craze which everyone wants to know how to do, the two ways of achieving this is actually using a film camera that is a little broken or post processing a photo.

now, I don't have a broken film camera at my disposal so I went with the alternate way and post processed it.

Original:

Edited:

All in all it was fairly easy to pull off on photoshop, just a matter of having the main picture as the background layer and then having 3 more layers with gradients on them, one white to transparent, one orange to transparent and one red to transparent. you've got to remember to keep the white layer at the top and have the red layer last otherwise you get a bit of an adverse effect. i put the rounded edges on just make it look that bit more vintage which i did in lightroom. i also made the highlights a lightish blue and the shadows a bright pink with not much opacity just to give it that edge.

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Lightroom Presets

Found some lovely Lightroom Templates!

Original:

Toy Camera:

Tilt Shift:

You get a few more presets with the Tilt shift pack, but they're all free :)

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Ripping off Instagram

So, still playing around with the raw image editor, and decided to rip off the instagram style of photos!

Here's the original photo of the council estate near mine, i was thinking of trying to make it look like a photo from the 80's/90's, so a high amount of contrast, film grain, and bluey/greeny highlights to capture that feel.

This is the final product [i need to start getting into the habit of taking screen shots]. I'm quite happy how it turned out, it really captured the essence of the wintery day that it is. one of the issues is that the whites are a little bright, but that was about as dim as i could mange without changing the feel that i wanted. i managed to pick up that Fuji Velvia 100 boarder from PShero. there's some decent Instagram like filters in that collection.

Feedback? cheers :)

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Raw Edit & Original Compare's

Shooting Raw

So, i have recently picked up a Cannon 550d and am now starting to shoot in .RAW.

At first I thought I'd take Jpeg & Raw photos just to compare here is the original Jpeg.

One of the main reasons i decided to start shooting in .RAW was to use the Raw editing software on the new Photoshop CS5, just so I can make additional tweaks to the editing and make them look a little more professional.

So, for a first time at using the raw editor I found it fairly easy, and a great programme.

As you can see there is a massive difference between the photos and the second is a lot more compelling. i found that compaired to photoshop where you'd just put a gradient map over a picture to put a coloured tone over the highlights and shadows, it's way more of a slight minimal adjustment that ends up looking way nicer on the photo.

All in all, I think i will be shooting and editing in raw format now to get the most from my photos!

i'll post a few more of the photos in another post.

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