25/52 - Waiting

I've seen a couple of images like this and really wanted to try one out for myself.  I wanted to try a picture with a 'blown out' window (meaning there is little to no detail in the highlight) and with Paige laying on a white cover or sheet or something to give the picture a overall high key effect.  I like the way these pictures look as they kind of make it look a little dreamy.

I knew the room and window that I wanted to use in the house, since it is one of the few large windows we have that gets direct sunlight in the afternoon.  On top of that, the bed in that room has a white comforter and pillows, which makes it even better.

So, the other afternoon, before dinner, when the evening sun was shining directly onto that window, I had Paige come up and lay on the bed.  We tried a couple of different poses, with her looking at the camera and looking away, but I think that this one is the best.  It gives a feel to the image that Paige is daydreaming and thinking about the baby to come, just lost in the moment.  To me, it's a very calm, relaxing picture.

I kind of messed up the picture a little bit in that, preparing to take this photo, I was using a different lens, trying to get this same effect.  I had to boost the ISO up pretty high to achieve the blown out window while maintaining a relatively fast shutter speed.  I didn't like that and switched to my 50mm f/1.8 so that I could open up the aperture and have a fast shutter and give me a great depth of focus.  Well, I forgot to lower my ISO, so when I opened up the pictures on the computer, they had a bunch of noise in them from the high ISO and my point of focus (Paige's face) wasn't very sharp.  So, I tried cleaning it up as much as I could in Photoshop.

I really like the way it turned out, minus the mistakes.  I've got a few other ideas in mind that I'm going to try with this same concept, but really open up my lens and close down the depth of focus to a minimal distance.  But, I'll have to save those for another post.

Let me know what you think.

T

24/52 - Painted Hands

We finally got our nursery painted in preparation for our baby boy.  We picked a very masculine baby blue, painted the room and got all of the furniture arranged.  Now, we've just got 3 months left and we can finally put the baby in his own room.  We can't wait and get more excited each day waiting to meet him.

It took me a couple of evenings after work to get the room painted and after my first night of painting, I noticed how much paint I got on my hands.  After seeing the paint on my hands and seeing some of it flake off, this idea came to mind.  I wanted to get a shot with my hands covered in paint and make it look pretty weathered and cracked.

So, after my final night of painting, I took the rollers and ran them over each of my hands a couple of times.  In order for it to look weathered and cracked properly, I kept working while the paint was drying.  So, I grabbed my touch-up brush and went about finishing up a few extra spots around the room.  After about 20 minutes of opening and closing my hands while the paint was drying, it looked a lot like what I was going for.  The fingers had worn away where I was holding the brush and roller and the paint on my palms were really cracked and peeling away.

I went downstairs, got my light set up the way I wanted and fired off a few shots.   The hardest part about it was getting my hands in the right position for the shot.  I put the camera on a 2 second delay and started shooting.  I wanted the shadows to come across my hands at a pretty hard angle to really give texture to the cracking paint, but if I had my hands turned slightly the wrong way, or my fingers bent too much, they would throw shadows across the rest of my hand, so it took a few shots to get it just right.

I really like the way the shot came out.  The paint doesn't look quite as blue as it does in the room, but I still like it.

Let me know what you think.

T.

23/52 - Feeling Bubbly

This is a picture that I've been wanting to do for a while as well.  I've had this idea sketched out for a few months, but never got around to actually putting it together.  I found the sketch that I had drawn with the idea the other day when going back through a notebook of mine and decided to finally try to get it done.

It's really a pretty simple set up.  I filled a large, clear plastic salad serving bowl (square) about 3/4 of the way with water.  Then, I just squirted some liquid dish soap into it and blew into it with a straw to get the bubbles.

For the colors I had a flash on either side of the bowl, one with a red gel and one with a blue gel.  After getting the power levels right and getting the camera settings how I wanted it, I snapped off a few pictures and that was about it!  I really wanted the colors to pop and I tried to get them split about as evenly as possible. 

I had a 3rd flash set up behind the bowl pointing at a white board that I used as a background.  That flash didn't add much to the lighting, but it helped make the water at the very bottom white and it brought just a little detail out in the bubbles as well.

That's about it.  Pretty easy shot of some bubbles.

Let me know what you think.

T.

22/52 - Back to the drawing board

This last week, I was finally able to put together a picture that I've been wanting to do for a while now.

My Brother-In-Law, Chad, has been living with us for the last month as he's been transitioning from moving out of Illinois to figuring out what he wants to do.  He just accepted a job as a camp counselor in the mountains around Asheville, NC and moved out this week.  So, the last night before he left, I figured I needed to get this shot done or the opportunity would pass me by.

Chad is an artist and Art, or Sketch Art (or something like that), is one of the majors that he got from Northern Illinois University.  So, I wanted to do a picture that showcased one of his drawings along with him actually drawing.  I wanted it to show his creativity coming to life or something like that.  I had a rough idea of the picture that I wanted to get and a basic idea of how I wanted to do it.  I've tried this technique before (layering multiple images together) but haven't ever done it with this much detail in the image.

So, while he was at work the other day, I got everything set up the way I wanted it and fired off several test shots to make sure I had the lighting the way I wanted and the room set up properly to get the image I was after.  Once he got home, I laid out the idea to him and we went to work.

It really only took about 10 minutes to get the shots that I wanted, so it was a pretty easy shooting process.  The thing that took the most time was the post processing.

I used the shot of Chad sitting at the desk as my 'background' image, the one I'd layer all of the other images on top of.  Then I put the image of him on the right side of the desk on top of that, and erased everything out of the image with the exception of him and his shadow.  Then, I did the same thing with the image of him on the left of the desk.  Then, I took one of his drawings that I got off of his website, Screw'dTopia, and layered that one on top of all of them.  I blended the drawing in so that it would show all of the shadows and subtle lighting changes through, so that it looks like it's actually drawn on the wall, rather than just pasted into the image.  Then, I just had to erase the drawing where it was covering his body.  After that, I did some final processing to the entire image where I enhanced the contrast, adjusted the highlights and shadows and a few other things to make it look more gritty and slightly cartoony itself.

Overall, I was extremely happy with the end result.  It came out better than I had it imagined, which is always a fun thing.

Let me know what you think.

T.

21/52 - Neighborly Dogs

A month or so ago, I took a picture of our puppy, Ellie, and put it out on Facebook, just because I was bored and felt like getting another picutre of her.  It's different than the one I've posted on this blog as it's just a head shot on a black background.  Well, my neighbor saw the picture and REALLY liked it, so she asked me if I would try to take a picture of their dogs.  It took me a little while to actually get it done, but this last weekend, she came over with their two dogs and I got to shooting.

One of the dogs is a tiny little Chug (Chihuahua / Pug mix), Riley.  She's about 5 pounds soaking wet.  She is a really cute and sweet little dog and was very easy to photograph.  Jodi (neighbor) held her in place on our coffee table and when I gave the magic words (Chicken Bone) she let go, the dog's ears perked up and I shot the picture.  For whatever reason, the dog perks up when you say that, so I got a couple of good pictures out of it.

The second dog, Abby, is quite a bit older and is probably on her last legs in life, so they wanted to try to get a good picture of her before she passed.  She's also fairly small at maybe 15-20 lbs or so.  I'm not sure what type of dog she is, and I don't think they're too sure either.  Since she's so old, she wasn't much a fan of having her picture taken.  She didn't want to look at the camera and pretty much just wanted to lay down on the table.  I guess she gets stressed out pretty easily in new, unfamiliar environments, so she didn't like my coffee table much.  So, I tried all of her keywords, but didn't really get much out of her.

Then, we tried them both together.  Again, Riley, posed for the camera, but Abby just laid there.

 

It was fun trying to shoot pictures of someone else's dogs for a change.  Jodi said that she really liked the pictures and has posted them all over the place, so I'm happy about that.

 Let me know what you think.

T.

20/52 - Window View

Going along with all of the pregnancy pictures that I've been taking, I figured I'd post another one.  I know the theme of these pictures is starting to look very repetitive, but oh well, I've got a pregnant wife, so I'm going to capture it!

We did one of these pictures before when she was just over 3 months pregnant and really liked the way it turned out.  So, we decided to do antoher one this month, but she wore a light blue sports bra (boy) this time, instead of the pink one she wore before. 

This picture was really easy to set up in that I just needed her to stand in front of a window.   I think the most difficult thing about it for her was getting her hair to stay up...it required a few bobby pins to keep her bangs from falling in her face.

I really like this type of a picture since it is kind of a mix between a silhouette and a portrait.  I like the fact that when you first look at it, it looks like a silhouette, but then as you look more, you can see all of the detail still in her face and body. 

It's been a lot of fun getting to document and capture the changes in her body and the 'feellings' that we've had going through the pregnancy so far.  I'm really looking forward to the next few months and getting images as things get closer to the end!

Let me know what you think.

T.

19/52 - Baby Momma

Earlier this week, I had a picture come to mind that I wanted to try to capture of Paige.  Thus far, most of the pictures I've done of her have been more serious or just showing her belly or just her head or something, so I wanted to get something a little more fun.  I wanted it to look a little more like she was dancing or celebrating or something like that.

I had a specific pose that I wanted to try to get, but didn't know if I'd be able to pull it off due to my lack of a real 'studio' or really even very much space to get it all done.

So, after getting home from work, I asked her to put on the dress I had in mind, a bright pink dress she bought for a wedding, and I got busy setting up the shot.

We started off with a few of the poses I had in mind, then changed it up a bit and tried a few other shots as well.  I was right that we didn't really have enough room to pull off the actual pose I wanted to get because she couldn't extend her arm all of the way and I couldn't get her feet in the picture either.  So, I had to crop in a little bit so that I could get the entire background as uniform as possible, without seeing the outer edges of the bedskirt I was using as a background.

But, we ended up getting a picture that was very similar to what I had in mind.  If I thoguht Paige could jump without hurting herself or the baby, I would have tried something like that too, but even not pregnant, she doesn't have hopps, so I didn't want to push my luck with the baby! 

Below is the end result.  I had to over expose slightly to blow out the background so that it went completely white, then clone out some of the wrinkles you could still see.
Oh, and if you noticed, her dress wasn't bright pink any more either.  In Photoshop, I used a "replace color" tool that allowed me to select all of the different shades of pink of her dress, then adjust the hue to get a different collor.  It ended up changing some of her skin color too (since there is some pink in her skin) but a quick layer mask got rid of that.  I thought light blue would be a little more appropriate for a baby boy than the bright pink dress...just a personal opinion.














Let me know what you think.

T.