This is a shot from Jason and Meghan’s wedding a week ago. This was one of my favourite photos of the day. I actually processed this image about five different ways. This version uses the same method as I described in yesterday’s post. I love the contrast of the red dress against the green grass.

It was an interesting day for a shoot. Thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon and we had over an hour of the shooting planned in the great outdoors. When we got started it was overcast, which was fine – better for portraiture anyway. As we approached the end of the pre-wedding shoot, the clouds were darkening and the humidity was going up. Unfortunately that brought out the mosquitoes. A lot of mosquitoes (they’re the worst Edmonton has had in years). Between shots, everyone would be slapping away. At least it kept us moving.

The rest of the day progressed well as we moved indoors. The wedding was in a glass pyramid (at the Muttart Conservatory) which made shooting a fair bit more tricky when the sun came out as the sun took over control of lighting. That said, the sun was well-timed for the ceremony. It came out just as the bride arrived. Almost like it was all planned out for them.

 

Yes, it’s another cherry blossom, but I promise it’s the last (for now). The flowers are all withering now so I’m out of time. As the title says though, I’ve chosen a different approach here. Back in the good old pre-digital days, a friend of mine and I enjoyed making slide-sandwiches. That is, we took two slides, removed them from their slide carriers and put them together carefully aligning the two images to create a composite. We then snapped them back into their slide carrier and voila! Slide sandwich.

There was a process we used (he used it first – I just followed the master) called Orton Frames (or the Orton Method). The process involved two over-exposed images of the same subject – one in focus and one very much not. The two images are then combined to create a correctly exposed image with both a sharp and softened focus creating a dreamy kind of image with warm, saturate tones.

Somehow it’s just not as satisfying a process since the tactile nature of the process is gone. Now it’s just duplicate the layer in Photoshop, apply a Gaussian blur and change the blending mode to multiply. Fuss with the layer opacity a bit until you’re happy and that’s it.

Somehow it the images seemed so much more satisfying when I had to shoot them separately and combine them and align them by hand. Doing this with Photoshop is just a bit disappointingly easy.

Yesterday morning, a salesperson came to my door telling me she’s aerating lawns in the area and would I like her to aerate mine. I said no thanks. She decided to push on anyway. She started by telling me about the virtues of lawn aeration and what it can do for my lawn. She then pointed out the bare patches in my lawn that need desperate help. I told her how we only just moved in before winter arrived and with Spring only young in Edmonton, perhaps it was a bit soon to panic.

Concerned that she wasn’t quite engaging my interest she said I must be embarrassed to have people over with my lawn looking like it does. At this point, I take a step back into my house to subtly indicate that she has put me off a bit with her aggressive tone. She didn’t notice. She then suggested that I must not care about my lawn and wanted to know if I even water it.

I suggested that her sales approach was perhaps a bit aggressive and she might want to try not insulting her prospective clients as that might lead to fewer sales. She assured me that she is the top salesperson in her company so she must be doing something right.

I can only sigh and shake my head (and enjoy my lawn just the way it is).

 

Okay, so apparently I forgot to blog yesterday. I didn’t even realize I didn’t post anything until I got up this morning. The thing is, my wife’s away. So, I blame her. It disrupted my routine. She’s off enjoying some conference.

In the meantime, I’m spending altogether too much time sitting in front of my computer tinkering with photos (like the one above). Last night, when I’m sure I had every good intention of posting a photo, I had my nose in the depths of Photoshop. I look up at some stage to discover that it’s nearly one o’clock in the morning and I decide maybe I better get myself to bed.

The blog never even entered my mind. You’d think 138 days of blogging would have established some sort of routine.

Processing notes: While I can apply this technique to a photo in about five to ten minutes, it would probably take a long time to explain. If anyone cares, I’ll post a follow-up with the details.

I seemed to have developed a nasty habit of late posting this week. I’ve been busy during the last few days finishing up the wedding photos from the weekend. It definitely took me a little longer than it should have, but I wanted to take particular care. I also had more photos that I wanted to give a bit of special treatment to than I should have strictly allowed. I’ll have to try to streamline my workflow a bit for next time!

I prepared today’s cherry blossom a couple of days ago. It’s a simple crop, B&W conversion and split-tone.

We’ve been doing well in Edmonton up until a couple of days ago. The sun has been shining and it’s been a warm, well-deserved Spring. Unfortunately we’ve finally received the weather that much of the rest of Canada has been tolerating – cool weather and rain. On an exciting note though, we had a major gas leak in the neighbourhood tonight. Around 7:30 as we were finishing dinner, a loud, pulsing whooshing sound started, much like the sound you get from a hot air balloon as they pour on the flame to get lift. Turns out there was good reason for the similar sound.

While it was very loud in our back yard and sounded like it was coming from the next street over, it was actually coming from about 8 blocks away. I hopped in the car to go see what was up (along with half of the rest of the population of South West Edmonton). Police were just cordoning off the roads and the fire trucks were pulling up.  They blocked off a very wide stretch of streets around the leak which continued to pulse very loudly for just over an hour before they got the gas shut off.

Apparently they evacuated homes and local businesses, but thankfully nothing  more happened than gas billowing into the air (and scaring my youngest enough to have her ask if she can sleep with her big sister tonight).

Processing notes: This is a simple light-touch split tone (using Silver Efex Pro 2) of a black and white image. I took the photo with the camera pointing directly into the sun with a flash to fill-in the shadows.

Look, more cherry blossoms! I’m looking a bit repetitive this week, but having this beautiful tree in my backyard is really allowing me to get blog material rather easily while I work through the 750 photos or so from the wedding on Sunday. I’m really happy with how the wedding shots have turned out and I’m looking forward to sharing them with the bride and groom in the next couple of days.

Processing notes: I used Silver Efex Pro to convert this to B&W. In Silver Efex, I washed out some of the details in the background and brought out the details in the foreground. I added a bit of a white vignette before dropping on the border. I then chose a hard light blending mode and changed the layer opacity to around 50%. That gave me the ability to darken and desaturate some of the colours while bringing out the details in the foreground flowers.

135 days ago, I’d never penned a blog before. It started when I was looking for a project to help me push my skills as a photographer, to rediscover what I love about photography, to test my abilities and to try out new techniques and styles to find my own voice. It has been an interesting 135 days and I think I’ve learned a lot.

One thing I’ve learned is how supportive a blogging community can be. I’ve met the nicest folks amongst my fellow WordPress bloggers. I’ve seen some amazing and inspiring photography that has pushed me to work harder and to try new ideas. Plus, having other daily bloggers in the same boat sure helps keep the pressure on.

Early on I spent a lot of time looking at my stats, seeing how many people had visited each day, where they’d come from and which pages drew the most attention. I was thrilled when I had high numbers and a bit disappointed when the numbers were low. It was an over-simplified popularity metric and I was definitely obsessing a bit about my numbers and forgetting why I was writing this blog. So, the next thing I learned is to ignore the numbers. I don’t remember the last time I checked my site stats. It’s better this way. Counting site visits presumes that the goal of my blog was to be get lots of hits. That was never my goal. The quality of my photography is in no way measured by the number of hits my blog gets.

The flip side is that visitors represent community and the members of the community have a wide variety of views, opinions, and tastes that I really like tapping into. I’m so pleased when you drop by to read the blog and especially when you choose to share your thoughts on a photo. I like getting feedback and love it when someone offers specific ideas on what works and what doesn’t. Critique me. Tell me what you’d change if it was your photo.

Ultimately, this blog is about what I’m doing as a photographer and the photographic techniques and styles that I’m exploring to help me grow. So, in response to my own question, I blog for me. I share the details of how I make a photo to give back to my fellow photographers out there. I read other blogs for inspiration and I comment on others photos to be a member of my new blogging community.

Who do you blog for?

One of the best features of our place is the two cherry trees in the backyard. I actually posted a picture of it before, but you’d have been hard pressed to identify it. Now that we’re enjoying Spring, Edmonton is undergoing a rapid transition. Our cherry trees have sprung to life. I reckon the plants and trees here have adapted to the short summers and know to hurry up, turn green and get flowering before winter sets in again.

You can actually see the trees in the backyard change from day-to-day. Where there were just buds yesterday, there are leaves today. Where the leaves were a bit sparse yesterday, today they’re densely packed. Where there was just green yesterday, today the cherry tree is bursting with little white flowers. I don’t remember the green stuff recovering this fast from winter back in Northern Ontario, but I suppose it probably did.

Well, wish me luck. I’m off to shoot a wedding this afternoon and the folks at Weather Canada are predicting thunderstorms. Current weather conditions (sunny and hot) seem to defy those predictions though, so let’s hope the weather stays nice!

Processing notes: This is a macro shot which was processed very lightly in Silver Efex Pro to bring out a bit of detail in the leaf on the left and add the border.

…you just have to make your own friends.

Back when I was in high school and even in university, I had a bit of fun with making multiple exposures using film. Back then, I accomplished it by shooting in a darkened room with the camera shutter open (using the bulb setting) and using a flash to expose a person or object in different places within the frame. Of course, these modest attempts always ended up with images where one or two of the multiple exposures were looking more like Casper than a real person. I got better at it over the years by using darker backgrounds, but I never succeeded in eliminating all the transparency from parts of the image.

Welcome digital and the whole multiple exposure trick is so much easier. Just put the camera on a tripod, move your subject through the desired positions taking a frame for each position. Make sure you keep your lighting consistent from image to image and watch those shadows. Combine afterwards in Photoshop by choosing a master image and individually clipping your subject out of each other image and pasting them into the master as new layers. Since the camera was on a tripod and you kept the static parts of your image static, you should be able to easily line up each layer (using Free Transform) one by one to create a seamless image.