White Horse
Some of you might follow me on Facebook and might have seen some recent images I posted of a few of our horses, Molly and Apache.
Before & After
I’ve been asked by a few followers to show my workflow on achieving the look and feel of them, so I’m going to dissect one of them.
Here we have the untouched image.
Unretouched colour image
Just sort of a foggy, dreary overcast sort of feeling; flat light and low contrast.
Then with a few global corrections and b&w conversion in Lightroom.
1st stage retouching
basic global corrections and b&w conversion in Lightroom
The boost in contrast along with the black and white conversion and some heavy vignetting, really begin to draw your eye in towards Molly. Her muscles and facial features start to stand out dramatically.
Now when I take it into Photoshop,
2nd stage retouching
Photoshop adjustment layers and masks
I can selectively darken and lighten area using adjustment layers and layer masks. I boost the contrast some more while still keeping the highlights from totally losing it. I’m not too worried about the shadows blocking up because this was a very low contrast predominantly light image to begin with. At this point I’m quite happy with the image and it stands on its own fine.
Although if I wanted to play with it some more I could.
If I wanted to give this the feeling of an old Polaroid T55 negative that I might have taken on location then solarized it during processing, it might look something like this.
3rd stage retouching
Cropping and Photoshop T55 solarizing effect
Now in Photoshop I crop it down roughly to a 4×5 negative size. I then layer it with another image from a set of images I use specifically for this purpose. Then by using different layer blending modes I choose the desired effect. At this point I add a layer mask and continue to paint in or out with a Wacom, different sections of the layered image to further the effect.
I hope you enjoy the images and keeping shooting.
Please feel free to comment.
Film vs. Digital . . . . good bye digital. . .
Well, I'm going back to film.
I've had enough of digital.
We had a good run together.
But it's over.
I'm going back to tried and true film; both medium format and 5×4 or 4×5 depending on where you are.
I've run the tests and I can't see any advantage anymore to digital beside speed and I don't want to be know as a "speedy" photographer. As well, I feel both photographers and the creatives that work with them have become lazy, very lazy. Gone are the days when you might shoot 40 or 50 rolls of 120 in a day. Now it's not uncommon for clients to be looking at thousands of images from a multiple day shoot.
Remember Polaroids? You would shot a couple maybe per set up to show the client and creatives, then they would let you play with it from there; cover that off and then let your own creativity go and paint your own scene. Now they want to see almost every frame you shoot, just so you don't veer too far from "their" original brief. Hold on though, isn't that why we were hired in the first place because we are creatives ourselves and bring something of our own to the table? Has digital given them and us too much information? Are we processing all these visuals and coming up with better ideas on the fly? NO, we're looking at the backs of cameras so we know we have covered off the needed and the client doesn't give us shit. That doesn't really breed creativity in my books. Well now they get to see just the Polaroids with me.
So I've got myself a decent little 5×4 hand holdable camera and a 6×7 medium format and I will be using this from now on. All my digital equipment is going up for sale. I'm covering off most of my usual focal lengths in medium format and just a couple on the larger sheet film. Film is just giving that warmer glow; that internal glow and feeling that digital lacks. It becomes a smoothness, both leading from the transition in tones to the actual grain. The grain on film is long imitated but never replicated. And the tones just act smoother when going from the burnt out highlights to those deep endless black shadows that always prove to be the bane of digital photographers.
Here is a 6×7 image.
As you can see, the tones moving from the highlights, down down down into the deep shadows on the right hold their own. The colour is accurate without being cartoon like. The contrast is pleasing without being so crunchy that you start to block up in the shadows and blow the highlights to the moon. You can feel the texture in the flaking paint on the walls. The skin tone is bang on.
I just don't see the use for digital anymore.
Please feel free to comment.
btw 
wink wink
Calotype
I have been asked recently to submit to about a dozen different photo competitions and exhibitions. The only thing is that since my last show two years ago, I haven’t really worked on any personal projects for myself.
Recently I’ve taken up going backwards in time. I’m ditching the digital and capturing images like we used to in the olden days, on silver based emulsions. Below are a couple of test images I created using the calotype method. It involves exposing photographic paper instead of film to create a paper negative. From that you can scan the image into Photoshop and play with it from there.
These images though are a little different. They are actually the positive prints right from the camera. The silver media is a positive print paper; very smooth and very very contrasty. By using a couple of different techniques I’m able to better control the contrast and lower it to a more natural feeling of a true black and white image. More experimenting to come and hopefully I’ll have something I feel is worthy of a new exhibition.
The Kernvale Eight
The Family
Draining the Batteries
I had to drain the batteries on some of my portable flash gear so that I could give them a proper charge. So instead of just hooking them up and firing them off into space I figured I would shoot some quick images around the homestead.
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Just a quick image of me, one light with a standard reflector from camera right and the sun directly in front of the camera at 11 o'clock high. I've also added a .6ND filter in front of the lense to bring the sky down a bit and give a little more definition. -
I took this on the side of Grace's wood cabin. Just one light again, over camera with a standard reflector
Looking Way Back
This is an image from one of my many road trips across the south west. This was the landing gear of one of the warbirds at the Pima museum outside Tuscon. if you are ever anywhere near it, its worth a check out.
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