A Year of Photos

November 17, 2010 marked the beginning of a photographic journey that has forever changed how I see. It has been a year that improved my technical and composition skills as well as my ability to define a vision and execute it photographically.

In 2010, I was invited by Tim Stoklas to participate in a Photo 365 project. This was a birthday gift to himself but I feel he provided a greater gift to those he asked to participate. It has been a powerful experience for me and I am thankful I was given the opportunity to participate.

Photography has always been a strong interest of mine. From participating in a patched together photo club in high school to entertaining thoughts of being a professional photographer during my college years. Of course, life takes over and most of my photo endeavors disappeared until about 5 years ago where I reintroduced myself to a lost hobby. I've made a lot of progress in the last 5 years but the whirlwind of life always seems to limit time available to make progress. A Photo 365 project changes that. It creates focus along with a pressure to shoot every single day. And with very few exceptions I shot every single day throughout the Photo 365 project.

I think the biggest impact for me is that there are no excuses for not shooting. Prior to this project I often thought I had to "go" somewhere to take photos. This project forced me to see the wonder of everyday objects, things that are sitting right right in front of me which so often go unnoticed. I now have a much greater awareness of all things around me. From the windings of a guitar string to my wife's watercolor paint bucket, life is full of interest all around.

This project pushed my creativity as I didn't want to settle for just a picture. Certainly, out of 365 days, you will find what most of us would call a "picture" but more often than not I tried to push myself to do something just a little bit better. I pushed by trying different perspectives, trying new techniques, and going after shots I had always planned to do but just never got around to doing. Here are some of my favorites where I learned new technical skills.


This group has been so inspirational with great talent and a continuous stream of photographic ideas. The group's members often influenced my upcoming shots. I also found that I learned a lot from the group and it made me realize working with others creates a rich learning environment. If you can participate in something like this then please do. If that's not possible then pick up photo books from the greats and figure out what made their work excellent and learn from it. Continually learning and practicing new skills will create the foundation needed to find your own style and eye.

The journey has ended and I'm feeling a bit melancholy. There has been a sense of comradely and excitement born of the expectation of a shot each day, dialog within the group, and the excitement of seeing each others work which helped to keep the whirlwind at bay. I find that I'm not alone in that sentiment and our group has decided to take a small break and then start the Photo 365 project again next year. We will continue our journey starting January 1st and until then I'll take this time to reflect upon what was learned and prepare for the continued journey. In the meantime check out my shots from the year either on Flickr or Facebook (part1, part2) and this video which is a collage of my shots from this last year.

See you January 1st!!!

Lighting MINI Parts

I've had a recent photography project where I've been taking shots of parts. I thought it would be a fairly boring set of photos to take but I was wrong. First off, how do you make parts look good? Not too many options and for me, interesting lighting was the best approach. Below is an example of one shot.

The final image is show below and is a set of replacement side lamp covers for a MINI Cooper. These items are all "chrome" which can create a challenging shot.

I shot this using two Nikon strobes, a SB-600 and a very old SB-24. Each are manually set and I used inexpensive Cactus triggers. When the camera fires, it sends a signal to the remote triggers which fire the flash. The parts are sitting on white foamcore with a piece of plexiglass on top. This provides for a nice white surface and the plexi provides the reflection. The back is just another piece of foamcore. The main light is being shot through an umbrella to camera left. I have another strobe being bounced against another piece of foamcore to camera right.

For shots that have items that are not so reflective I use the umbrella and then a gridded flash to provide highlights. This does not work well with chrome since you get hot spots which is why I bounced into foamcore. This creates a much larger light source and reduces the possibility of hot spots.

My first shot had a problem where the smooth chrome on the left side ended up being totally black. It was reflecting from the room and because of the fast shutter speed the "reflection" was darkness. That made it look like the piece had a black spot there. See the photo below to see what I mean.

I ended up taking another piece of white foamcore and as I prepared to shoot with one hand, I used the other hand to position the foamcore so that it reflected back into that area of the part. That caused that "black" area to come out white as seen in the first photo. I've placed a photo to help with the setup.

Looking at this photo I positioned the camera between the umbrella and the other flash. I held the foamcore above and to the right of the camera to kill the black reflection.

I never really thought about the scenarios encountered photographing something simple like parts... I've learned a lot and found it to be more challenging than expected.

My Photography Site

After much prodding from Cher, I've finally made a commitment to my photography hobby and now have a photography website. Check out my site which is http://www.differentduckphotos.com

Though I've been posting lots of photos through the years on my Flickr site, this feels different and is begging to make me be a bit more serious about this hobby. On top of that, for the first time ever, I'm showing some of my photography at an internal company sponsored art event. That's really got me a bit nervous but I'm learning a lot and in addition to slicing my finger open, I've learned how to matte and frame photographs! Of course, being married to a wonderful and successful artist has made that journey a bit easier.

Tilting and Shifting

I've been intrigued by the look of a tilt shift lens and though I don't have one, it is possible to recreate it effect using Photoshop. Or at least approximate the effect. There are a number of sites that provide instructions on how to do this and I'll provide links below. In my case, as a rabid member of the AtlantaMINIS club I've been wanting to take a photo of our gatherings from afar. Last Sunday we had an event that ended up at Brasstown Bald which is the highest peak in Georgia. I decided to get a shot from the observation tower to try this effect. Unfortunately, I could have used another 100 mm reach on my lens but had to make do with the 200 mm I had at my disposal.

The steps I took are:

1. After doing my "normal thing" in Lightroom I brought the image into Photoshop - note I cropped a bit in Lightroom as required by my lack of reach with my 200 mm lens.
2. At this point I duplicated the layer - always protecting myself from frequent disaster.
3. On the duplicated layer I created a mask by clicking the create mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4.  Next click the Quick Mask icon at the bottom of the Tools palette so you can see your masking:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Now you will paint in a mask which will be used to limit the areas that a lens blur will be used. I created a gradient that has white where the blur will occur and black where the blur will be blocked. The gradient I created looks like this in the gradient editor dialog:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. With the quick mask turned on and the gradient selected you will drag across the image making sure the "red" mask is in alignment with the portion of your image you want to be in focus. I tried this numerous times until I got the right look. Important: Make sure the mask is selected and not the image. You'll know because there will be a little white outline around the mask in your layer. See below.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Mask is selected
   
   
   
   
7. Click the Quick Mask button again to turn off quick mask mode. You'll now see the "marching ants" around the selected areas.
   
8. Use the Lens Blur filter and play around with the settings until you get a look you like. For the MINI image I used Radius: 39, Brightness: 6, Threshold: 237. Mix to taste.
9. If I didn't like the "blur" when I had the lens blur filter dialog up, I would escape and then redo steps 6 and 7 until I got a look I like. If you redrag a gradient in quick mask mode then the one you had created is just replaced.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. To complete the look put in a curves adjustment layer and increase the contrast. You can go the, um, cheap route and just use a contrast adjustment layer and bump up the contrast to around 30. You lose fine tuning if you do that rather than a curves adjustment.
11. Top it all off with a saturation adjustment and bump up the saturation. I went up to about 40 on this image. These last two steps start to give the image that "plastic" look.
12. The final result for this test image:

For more examples go to these sites:

• Tilt Shift Photoshop Tutorial 
• 50 Examples of Tilt Shift - Also shows the tilt shift technique for videos
• Keith Loutit's 'Little Sydney' - Awesome examples of tilt shift videos, mesmerizing.

Lightroom Love

Bless those Lightroom developers and product managers!!! Just discovered a behavior in Lightroom that surprised and delighted me. I use a collection for all of the images we put on my wife's art site. We've decided to create a "current work" page and an "archived work" page since the number of images had gotten to be so high. I made a copy of the collection of images which will represent current work and the original set for archived work.

We went through the current work and removed all of the images that should be archived. The next task was to go find and remove from the archive collection all of the images that are in the current collection. One would think you would flip back and forth between the sets until the deed was done and it would be a visual activity. Here's where the fun begins.

I'm in the current set. I click on an image. When I move to the archive set, the image I had selected in the current set is already highlighted in the archive set!!! All I have to do is delete the highlighted item from the archived list. Brilliant, what a time saver.

Lightroom's behavior is designed so that any image selected in a collection will be automatically selected in another collection if present. I did not expect this but it was most helpful for this particular task.