• RAB Imaging
    • Portfolio
    • Gallery List
    • Search Archive
    • Lightboxes
    • Cart
  • Search
  • About

RAB's Tip Pad

~ Photographing History, Aviation and People

RAB's Tip Pad

Tag Archives: composite

Belly Dancer/Warner Wetlands Composite Portrait

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Post, Shooting

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Black and White, Color Efex Pro, composite, Lightroom, Nik, Nik Software, Oregon, photo, photograph, photography, Photoshop, portrait, Post processing, Silver Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro2

USA, Oregon, Springfield, Belly dancer performing, Digital Composite, MR (Rick A. Brown)This image was very important to my recent updates to my portrait portfolio and I’ll begin this entry with an explanation of why.

I have been trying to find a model for the “George Hurrell inspired glam shots” that I have been envisioning for a very long time (I’ll tell you more about these images in the next blog post.) It has been quite the challenge since I’ve been working with friends on a TFP basis because of limited budget. I’ve had models cancel on me, potential models go from friends to certainly not friends before I asked them, etc. Thus, I have been constantly on the lookout for someone to ask to do this.

So along came this event that a friend of mine asked me to photograph for the Emerald City Rollergirls, the flat track rollerderby league of Eugene, Oregon. The event photography consisted of photographing the various people as they came through the room where I was setup to get an image of themselves in their cool costumes. When Jenny (the girl in the photo) came through, she made an effort to introduce herself and when I found out she was a belly dancer, this image popped into my mind and I got very excited about making the image. Furthermore, there were some women who had the look I felt was right for my aforementioned, George Hurrell inspired shot, so I went about setting up a shoot with several of the women from the group.

For this particular image, I was looking for a light and airy feel. I picked an old image I had of the Warner Wetlands at the base of Hart Mountain in Eastern Oregon. I was playing around with many different ways to prepare the background image and all of the came close, but none were exactly what I was looking for. That’s when my Google+ friend Monico Havier suggested I try the blending a black and white image with the color for the B-17 image that I have written about here recently. Now, this is a method I knew how to do already, but it wasn’t dawning on me to try it on the B-17, until Monico mentioned it. Well, I loved it and so did a lot of other folks. That got me to thinking that maybe this was the proper approach to this background image.

I opened the background image in Photoshop and opened the Silver Efex Pro2 plugin. I ran the Fine Art – High Key preset and turned off the border and brought the blacks down. This gave me a good black anchor, while still giving me that creamy look I wanted through the water, etc. Then I double clicked on the background to convert it to a regular layer and moved it above the Silver Efex Pro2 layer and changed the blend mode to soft light. At this point I saved the background for when I made the portrait. (I was overly excited about this composite and was messing with the background long before the portrait shoot was scheduled.)

For the actual shoot, I was looking for a little softer look than I usually do for my composites. So, I positioned a strip bank directly to one side and a speedlight in a softbox to the other. Above and in front of the blocked spot was a beauty dish with a diffusion sock. My Dad was there as an assistant, so I had him step in and we established our lighting ratios. The two lights to the side I intended to illuminate the model just slightly darker than pure white. The fill light in front would be just slightly less than that. This is where the setup differed significantly from my normal as I usually set the front light to considerably darker. When Jenny arrived we readjusted the lights a bit as she is considerably shorter than my Dad, but the power settings were already dialed in. After that, the shooting was pretty easy, at least from the photographer’s perspective; told Jenny I wanted eye contact in the shot and she did her dance poses.

Then came post processing. I started with some basic Lightroom stuff with a slight darkening of highlights, slight brightening of shadows. After this I opened both this image and the intended background as separate documents in Photoshop. Then I selected the dancer using quick select and then refine edge, exporting the result as new layer with layer mask. This selection actually worked unusually easily and only required use of the refine edge brush along some of the fuzzy costume accessories. Then, even if there was a mistake there, no one would probably be able to tell unless it was pretty major. Next I dropped in the background and moved it in the layer stack until it was beneath our dancer. After this, I duplicated the dancer layer and opened the bottom one in Silver Efex Pro2. This time I did not run the High Key preset, but instead made it a contrasty image. My aim was to make the skin tones look like they received the High Key treatment, while still keeping the darker tones nice and rich. Once this was done I changed the blend mode of the top layer to soft light. Then it was time to unify the two elements. The color saturation was now low enough that there was no apparent mismatch in the color. Thus, I went to the background layer and opened it in Color Efex Pro4. I ran the Fog filter here and made the fog pretty intense. I then brushed it in just behind her and along the horizon but fading away as I got further from her. Next I stamped all the visible layers on top, the old [shift] [ctrl] [alt] [E] shortcut and opened that in Color Efex Pro4. I ran Tonal Contrast on balanced mode and then ran Glamour Glow on it. This pretty much finished the post.

Please take a closer look at this image and my portrait portfolio.

 

Aviation Composite Portrait Methodology

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Post, Shooting

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

airplane, aviation, Color Efex Pro, composite, HDR, HDR Efex Pro, Nik, Nik Software, photo, photography, Photoshop, plane, portrait, post, Post processing, RC

USA, Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park, Composite portrait of man with his RC plane. MR (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com)

With all the cool stuff I’ve recently posted to my web page, I had a hard decision deciding what to blog about today. Eventually, I decided to describe how I made this aviation themed composite portrait. You may remember, I wrote about this idea here, when it first popped into my head.

After reading and learning the techniques taught in Matt Klaskowski’s,  Photoshop Compositing Secrets: Unlocking the Key to Perfect Solutions & Amazing Photoshop Effects for Totally Realistic Composites and acquiring my studio lighting, I thought that a composite portrait of a pilot with his plane flying over his shoulder would be something fantastic I could offer my clients. So I immediately set upon creating an example piece.

I started with the portrait of my Dad, the RC pilot. This was actually the first serious project I undertook with my lighting kit. I went with a gridded strobe behind and to one side and a bare speedlight on the other side (I currently only have two studio heads.) I then placed a beauty dish without the diffusion sock above and in front. Ratios were set so that the lights behind and to the side were considerably stronger than the front light. Once I got this image into the computer I lightened the shadows considerably, darkened the highlights significantly as well and set the clarity quite high in Lightroom.

 (Rick A. Brown)

Next I decided on what to use as a backgound. I decided to go with this old sunset at Rocky Mountain National Park.

USA, Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park, sunset from Forest Canyon Overlook. (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com)

This is an image where an HDR image was merged with a standard image to arrive at this image. You can see a more detailed account of that process here. A general overview though, is that I tone-mapped the image in Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro. This yielded overall a great image, but I hated how the sunstar looked. So, I picked the original image where I liked how the sun looked the best, layered it on top and then masked everything else out.

Finally, came the plane. This took a while as initially we did not have a plane that looked cool enough, in my opinion. Furthermore, I was initially planning on taking the image of the plane in actual flight and we needed to get good enough to fly the plane at me safely. Well eventually we got the super cool Carbon Cub from E-flite and we figured out a more controllable way to get the image. We hung the plane upside down from monofilament and placed a strobe such that it would closely match the light that should fall on the plane if it were actually flying in the image. Then I placed a fill flash near the camera.

 (Rick A. Brown)

This shot was then brought into Lightroom and processed along the same lines as the portrait.

Then came the actual compositing. I opened all the images in Photoshop and selected my Dad and the plane in their respective images using the techniques of quick select and refine edge as described in Matt’s book. Let me tell you the plane was easier to select, even on the sort of messed up background. I think this is because planes have very defined edges where us Homo sapiens have fuzzy edges with all of our hair and what-not. I output these selections from refine edge as “new layer with layer mask.” I then drug the images into the background image and placed them where I wanted them.

Then came the step of trying to make the portrait and plane look more like they belong there. I started by selecting the mountain and sun part of the landscape and putting that on its own layer and using the Average Blur filter to create a swatch of color. I initially tried the whole landscape, but with all that blue sky, it resulted in gray. I then blended this with the portrait and plane on color mode and adjusted the opacity of the layer so that it only gave the two items a little color. Then I stamped all visible layers to a layer on top, the famous [shift][ctrl][alt][e] shortcut. I then opened Color Efex Pro4 and applied the Tonal Contrast filter on Balanced mode to unify the image and give it a little of the gritty look I wanted.

My final step was to make the prop look blurred. I tried to merge from a photo of the plane running, didn’t like that. So I used Radial Blur in Photoshop. This was quite difficult to get lined up correctly and even now, it sort of looks wonky. Thing is, I like it the way it is now.

Take a closer look at this image and look my entire portrait portfolio.

 

Photoshop Composite Backgrounds: Thought Process to Capturing Them

10 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Shooting

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

composite, photography, Photoshop, portrait, Post processing

It’s interesting to see how moving into a new genre of photography impacts how you look at things.

With my recent move into the composite portraits it has caused a major shift in thinking. Locations are evaluated as potential backgrounds as well as standalone landscape images. The good background for a composite creates a powerful mood and doesn’t necessarily have a distinct center of interest. Thus a broken down building or wall of graffiti can transform from an ok subject to the perfect image.

There is also a difference between the picture made intentionally to be used as one of these backgrounds and those made as a standalone landscape, but can function in this role. The following image has a background that was purpose made for this composite. A wall covered in graffiti in an old abandoned building along the railroad.

 (Rick A. Brown)

The following image, however, started as a standalone landscape intended to show Christmas decorations in Salem, Oregon. When I decided to use it for this purpose, I colorized it to help with the intended mood and placed my portrait subject carefully over the Christmas tree. Christmas was totally not the sought after mood.

USA, Oregon, Salem, Riverfront Park, Patrick Naleway. (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com)

If you are interested in doing this sort of photography, always keep an eye out for potential backgrounds.

Maybe later I’ll write about how I can no longer look at an attractive woman without thinking what sort of portrait she’d look interesting in.

The Importance of Nik Software Plugins

29 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Post

≈ Comments Off on The Importance of Nik Software Plugins

Tags

Color Efex Pro, composite, HDR, HDR Efex Pro, Nik, Nik Software, photography, Photoshop, portrait, Post processing, Silver Efex Pro

 (Rick A. Brown)

Today, I thought I’d tell you a bit about the importance of Nik Software plugins, to my new portrait portfolio.

Nik plugins played a part in every one of the images in this portfolio, to varying degrees. For example the image above had a great amount of Nik plugin work involved. To begin with the background image was shot as a three image HDR and merged in HDR Efex Pro and tone-mapped to create a grungy, exaggerated detail look. Then the portrait image was shot in the studio with gridded lights behind and to the side of the subject and a beauty dish above and slightly ahead. Then the image was imported into Lightroom 4 and the shadows were brought up a lot, the highlights got taken down almost as much and the clarity got around a positive 40. Then both images were imported into Photoshop CS5 and composited according to the techniques found in Matt Klaskowski’s Photoshop Compositing Secrets. At this point, I used Color Efex Pro 4, and applied Tonal Contrast to the portrait to give it a similar grungy look to the background and Bleach Bypass was applied to the entire thing to help them look like one image and desaturate the image as well.

 (Rick A. Brown)

Then there’s an image like this one, where Nik plugins received much less of a workout, but I still used Color Efex Pro 4 for the Lighten/Darken Center filter. I felt the image needed a vignette, and this produced what I felt was the best looking one of the various methods I had available to me.

Megan Points playing cello (Rick A. Brown)

Finally, there’s an image like this one. The initial use of Nik plugins was just the Lighten/Darken Center filter, but then I moved it into Silver Efex Pro 2 and processed it using the Low Key 1 preset  and toned it with the copper toner.

In general, you can see that I think the Nik plugins are very valuable. I am eager to use them in this sort of imagery.

Forming an Idea

14 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Shooting

≈ Comments Off on Forming an Idea

Tags

aircraft, aviation, composite, photography, Photoshop, RC

The hardest part of making portfolio level images is coming up with the inspiration for a really cool photograph. So today, I wanted to tell you a bit about one that I have recently thought up, but haven’t executed yet. I will execute as soon as I acquire the needed light modifiers and RC airplane.

My father and I have recently taken up the hobby of RC aviation. I also recently finished reading and running through the tutorials of Matt Kloskowski’s Photoshop Compositing Secrets. One day, I suddenly thought “that is the perfect idea for a portfolio image.” It will look way cool and also be easily convertible into something I could do for clients. Take an image of an RC plane in flight, flying low, slow, and close to me for ease of making a great image. Then photograph the owner against a grey background. Use the shooting and Photoshop techniques discussed in Matt’s book. Finish off the photograph with some lighting and post techniques that are my own. (For the closest idea of what it’ll look like, before I have something to show you, look at the work of Joel Grimes.) Tada, now you have the badass RC pilot portrait.

Look for it soon right here at RAB’s Tip Pad.

Photoshop Composites

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by Rick A. Brown in Post, Shooting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cat, composite, Kelby Media, Matt Kloskowski, NAPP, photography, Photoshop

USA, Oregon, Pendelton, cat looking surprised at some chicken bones. Digital Composite (Rick A. Brown/www.moosephoto.com)

There you have it, the above image is my very first Photoshop Composite. I have more compelling imagery in planning, but this opportunity was so funny that I couldn’t pass it up.

Essentially, I am writing this to let you know what a great investment I think Matt Kloskowski’s book Photoshop Compositing Secrets: Unlocking the Key to Perfect Selections & Amazing Photoshop Effects for Totally Realistic Composites is.

I used the techniques as outlined in the book for the post processing of this image. The shooting of it was fairly simple. The cat had been in that seat earlier but left when I went to get my camera. The young man of the house saw that I wanted a picture, so he put the cat back in the seat and the cat had this totally surprised look on his face. I then took another shot of the chicken bones on the table, because I needed something visually there to surprise the cat. Then I used Matt’s compositing techniques to put them together.

I suggest you check this book out.

♣ Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

♣ My e-book

Insects in a Flash

♣ Another great Stuck in Customs Product

Discover the Art of Photography

♣ Galleries

    Your PhotoShelter xml feed is broken. Remove all non-alphanumeric characters in your image or gallery descriptions in PhotoShelter. Remove all quotes, brackets, dashes, basically anything that isn't a number or letter. If that doesn't solve your problem, contact PhotoShelter and tell them your gallery xml contains errors.

♣ RSS RAB's Tip Pad

  • Floofie and the Secret of Ptolemy April 12, 2019
    Recently I shot with Kira Floofie for a portfolio development shoot at Cobalt Studios. This is a quick look at …Continue reading »
  • Automotive Lightpainting August 30, 2018
    I recently ran an automotive light painting experiment and just posted a video about doing it. 
  • Second Saturday: Veterans’ Day 2017 November 13, 2017
    For today’s blog I wanted to show you all the fun I had at the Veterans’ Day Second Saturday at …Continue reading »
  • Secret Code Map October 30, 2017
    I recently completed a video for B-17 Alliance Foundation. Today’s blog presents the video with some voice over describing the …Continue reading »

Blogroll

  • Laura Crawford Williams
  • Madras A2A X
  • Moose Peterson's Aviation Photography
  • Nature and Photography
  • The Smaller Majority

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Rick's Main Site

  • Moose's Photos

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.