by Andy Bell | Feb 27, 2012 | Photo Class, Poster |
“Wagon Wheel”; February 10, 2012, 11:34pm; Bannack State Park, MT; f/3.5; 1/40; Canon T3i
Edits made in Camera Raw:
- White Balance: As Shot
- Exposure: -1.20
- Recovery: 100
- Fill Light: 59
- Blacks: 22
- Brightness: -58
- Clarity: +50
- Vibrance: +53
- Adjustment brush across upper and right spokes: Exposure – +.95, Brightness +46, Contrast +1, Saturation +42, Clarity +36, Sharpness +34
- Adjustment brush across middle: Exposure – +.85, Brightness +46, Contrast +1, Saturation +42, Clarity +36, Sharpness +34
Sharpening applied in Photoshop to middle of wheel and close spokes.
This photo was a little overblown when I took it. I used a large aperture to get a small depth of field, but that made the photo a little blown out. It still looks nice though. After edits, the color in the wheel really came out nicely. When taking this photo, I was just trying to get photos from every angle I could because the old wagon was very interesting. Of course, everything in Bannack was interesting, so that’s not saying much. My editing technique still mostly consists of playing around with the various options in Camera Raw and Photoshop and seeing what happens, but I’m beginning to learn what the various options do.
by Andy Bell | Feb 21, 2012 | Editing, Photo Class |
“Lamp”; February 20, 2012, 10:00pm; Rexburg, ID; f/4; 1/40; Canon T3i; 3-shot HDR processed with Photomatix Pro
I added a border. I extended the canvas size (and filled it with color), then drew a rectangle on the image, masked the inner side of the rectangle out, and then blurred the inner edges of the inner rectangle with motion blur.
“Lights”; February 20, 2012, 11:56pm; Rexburg, ID; f/10; 20″; Canon T3i
For this one I duplicated the image layer, then changed the new layer to multipy, which darkened most parts. I then deleted the middle portion of the new layer to show the original through. Then I made a blank layer and used a black brush at 30% to darken the lights in the darkened portion.
“Circles”; February 20, 2012, 10:25pm; Rexburg, ID; f/4.5; 8″; Canon T3i; Sharpening added
For this one, I cropped it, then I used a rectangular marquee selection to create a mask, used the sprayed strokes filter, removed the mask, inverted the selection, and filled the inverted selection with black. The tutorial is in Esplin’s Custom Images book.
“Bannack Schoolhouse”; February 10, 2012, 4:06pm; f/7.1; 1/125; Canon T3i; 3-shot HDR with +/- 2 processed with Photomatix Pro
I created a nice white background, added some black squares, added my text, and used the squares as a mask to mask in the photo. Then I just framed it up!
by Andy Bell | Feb 21, 2012 | Photo Class, Photography |
“I Don’t Even Know What to Call This”; February 20, 2012, 10:37pm; Rexburg, ID; f/4.5; 8″; Canon T3i; Sharpening applied
The FHE sisters wanted to help out with this, and they had the brilliant idea of applying some of the glow stick liquid to make a mask. This turned out really neon and just a little creepy!
“Rushing Home”; February 20, 2012, 11:48pm; Rexburg, ID; f/13; 30″; Canon T3i; Levels and sharpening
I wanted to get a photo of cars rushing home, but I wanted to get a little of the circular movement by capturing the roundabout. Unfortunately, there weren’t as many cars as normal, but I still managed to get some good light streaks.
“Running Away”; February 20, 2012, 11:58pm; Rexburg, ID; f/10; 10″; Canon T3i
I used my tripod to hold the camera high above my head and “ran” (walked in reality) past a light. My hands got pretty darn cold.
by Andy Bell | Feb 15, 2012 | Bannack, Editing, Photo Class, Photography |
The following are some of the other best shots I took at Bannack State Park. They’re in no particular order, or presented with any rhyme or reason.
“I Didn’t Know I Was In a Horror Movie”; February 10, 2012, 2:30pm; f/5.6; 1/100; Canon T3i; Cropped to 8×10 proportions to zoom in on subject, and a little sharpening was applied
Fun fact: this doll was purchased at a thrift store. There’s no question in my mind why this thing was donated. It fits in perfectly with the vibe of a ghost town.
“We Done Been Robbed!”; February 10, 2012, 2:41pm; f/3.5; 1/30; Canon T3i; HDR with automatic bracketing, processed by Photomatix Pro (trial)
I was a little surprised to see what looked like a small vault of some kind in the hotel at Bannack State Park. It was hard to get a single good picture of it, so I decided to try an HDR. I decided to give this photo a cinematic look. I cropped it to a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, which is one of the most common theatrical aspect ratios. I used the black and white preset in Photomatix to process the HDR, and added noise and burned edges in Photoshop to make it look a little older. The way I picture this scene in my head is that the camera slowly pulls back, fully revealing the empty vault, much to the anger of the vault’s owners.
“The Gallows”; February 10, 2012, 3:33pm; Bannack State Park, MT; f/14; 1/500; Canon T3i
There’s a story behind this photo. From what the park ranger told us, this photo was taken from Bannack’s original jail. But in the distance, in almost the center of the photo, is what used to be the gallows. It must have been quite intimidating to stare out of the jails single window into the distance and see where you could be ending up in a few days. It can be kind of hard to see the gallows in this small size though, so you can view an (almost) full-size image. WARNING: it’s about 7MB. (I say almost, because my WordPress installation won’t allow uploads that large.)
“Wagon Wheel”; February 10, 2012, 11:34am; Bannack State Park, MT; f/3.5; 1/40; Canon T3i; Sepia-ed in Photoshop
This one is completely unedited except for the application of sepia tone.
“Teeth”; February 10, 2012, 10:40am; Bannack State Park, MT; f/5.6; 1/60; Canon T3i
I don’t really know for sure what this is, other than a part of an old wagon, but it looks like teeth of some kind. I really don’t know though. The only editing I did was a small levels adjustment.
by Andy Bell | Feb 15, 2012 | Bannack, Editing, Photo Class |
The following photos were created using the trial version of Photomatix Pro.
“Reflections”; February 10, 2012, 2:52pm; Bannack State Park, MT; f/8.0; 1/160; Canon T3i + Photomatix Pro + Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (3 Shot HDR)
Holy cow, was I lucky to get this shot. I set up my camera to do automatic bracketing at 0, +2, and -2; and then set continuous shooting. When the moment was right, I held down the camera’s shutter until I heard it click three times. The lighting was all natural, so I didn’t have to worry about a flash or anything like that. The image needed few adjustments in Photomatix, but I did have to remove a little ghosting along the left-hand side of his face. Finally, I applied a little sharpening to his eyes in Photoshop. I’m pretty proud of this shot, even though it’s mostly pure luck that kept him still enough for me to get this.
And yes, this is the portrait HDR that Sister Esplin was talking about, except I cleaned it up a little more.
“Bannack Shoolhouse”; February 10, 2012, 4:07pm; Bannack State Park, MT; f/10.0; 1/250; Canon T3i + Photomatix Pro; Bracketed at -2
This is an HDR created from a single shot in Photomatix. I just let it do its thing and applied the painterly preset. And that was it!
by Andy Bell | Feb 15, 2012 | Bannack, Editing, Photo Class |
“The Volute”; February 10, 2012, 2:27pm; Bannack State Park, MT; f/4.5; 1/60; Canon T3i
“Red Wall”; February 10, 2012, 11:23am; Bannack State Park, MT; f/5.6; 1/50; Canon T3i
I like the way this texture makes the knob part of the volute look like it either has a lot of dust on it or possibly even a ridiculous number of scratches and other blemishes. To add the texture image, I used the move tool to move only the red channel of the texture image into the volute image, and then I masked it out everywhere but the knob. And yes, I did have to look up on Wikipedia to see what the different parts of stairs were called.
