Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Feb 27, 2013 in Blog, Photography |

This is a light sketch!  I set my shutter speed to 6 seconds with a two second timer.  I had to turn the lights on to get the camera to focus, take the shot, and then quickly turn off the lights and starts rapidly “drawing” in the air with a small LED flashlight as soon as I heard the shutter click.  I was trying to draw Navi for The Legend of Zelda so I deliberately was trying to draw wings and ended up with this. I wish I’d had a flashlight with more focused light so I didn’t have to point it right at the camera to get light trails, bu ah well.  As it was, I had to go to six neighboring apartments looking for flashlights and AAA batteries.  I used the clone stamp tool in Photoshop Elements to remove the speck of sensor dust from the image.   I recruited my roommate Brit to help set up and light this scene.  Most of the beautiful things in this image belong to her. It took several shots to decide where we wanted the light.  I sat by the table manning the camera, while she turned of the light and used a tiny pocket light to illuminate the scene. the greenish light on the mask was caused by Brit shining the light through the glass candy dish on the left.  I used a very subtle Gaussian blur in Photoshop elements to soften the whole image, and added a shadow vignette to add more mystery to the photo.   If I didn’t know any better, I’d look at this image and think it was made in Photoshop simply by dragging a white brush over a black canvas–but it’s actually a camera motion shot!  I pointed my camera at the moon, took the shot, and used my 2.5 second window of time to “draw” the shape by rapidly moving the camera.  For reasons I don’t quite understand, I had to “draw” the heart shape upside-down in order to get it to appear right-side up in the image.  It took a lot of trial and error to figure that out.  It still amazes me that the light looks so crisp!  For editing I merely cropped it in...

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Feb 11, 2013 in Blog, Photography | 1 comment

My home teacher came over to help with the shoot and brought along his Nikon D40.  I was so impressed by the aperture capabilities but intimidated by the manual focus.  I’m still dependent on my automatic!  Felicia let me practice with it by taking shots of her pulling faces.  Just look at that bokeh!  I can’t wait to get a 1.8 aperture lens of my own.     Brit and LC were called as Ward Directory Coordinator and Ward Directory Assistant, respectively, and so were tasked with tracking down the info of every member of the ward along with photos.  Since my assignment for this week for Digital Imaging was portraiture, I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to practice.  I borrowed a small light kit from the school and a tripod and a large reflector from my home teacher.  We used a bed sheet as a backdrop.  We still needed more light, so we opened all of the windows and doors, turned on all the lights, and brought down two desk lamps.  The shoot itself was a riot!  We had over fifty people come over throughout their day to get their photos taken and some of them really let their personalities show.  This will certainly be a ward directory like no other!     You might not expect it, but Kayli’s husband Joseph is very savvy in women’s fashion.  He picked out this beautiful wine red gown for his military ball this past weekend.  I thought she looked absolutely stunning, so I asked if she would model for me.  She was such a trooper!  It was freezing outside, but we really wanted to show the dress against a backdrop of snow.  Kayli wants to give this photo to Joseph for Valentine’s Day since it will be their first together as a married couple.  Here’s to the both of them!     It was quite difficult to get the right lighting for this photo! I resorted to two lamps and the full light kit, and even still, I had to use the adjustment brush in camera raw to increase the exposure on their faces and other spots. Getting a good angle on this shot was also difficult, because the room is pretty small. My roommates have such cute robes and pajamas!     Since we only had a black bed sheet for a backdrop for the ward directory photoshoot, we had to work really hard on the lighting to keep our subjects (many of whom were wearing black suit coats) from disappearing into the background.  It became quite the team effort! Felicia served as a point of reference since she has such dark hair, and the other girls helped by holding the lights and reflector as close to her as possible.  I thought it was so funny that the framing of the images for the photo shoot hid...

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Feb 10, 2013 in Blog, Photography | 2 comments

Portrait Touch-Up Bethani’s smile is absolutely adorable in this shot, but her mother was mortified that I caught her on camera with a dirty face.  She’s been sick lately so her eyes are watery and her poor little face is crusty. :( Still, I think her smile is priceless so the shot is worth saving. To clean her up I went to town with the lasso tool, content aware fill, and the clone stamp.  I had to zoom in really close and make small selections to maximize the power of content aware fill, and the spots that I couldn’t fix automatically I cloned over with the stamp.  I focus mostly on cleaning up right around her mouth, but I also tidied her onesie and removed the tears from her eyes.  To finish I took the image into Camera Raw and lowered the clarity to smooth out her skin. I also bumped up the highlights just a touch.  I decided against completely cleaning up her face because I didn’t want to strip away the reality of this moment in her life.   Replace Color The bold color of Daymon’s shirt makes this a great photo to experiment on with the replace color feature in Photoshop.   To pull this off, I simply went to Image > Adjustments > Replace Color. With the eye dropper I selected the yellow on Daymon’s shirt, and then adjusted the scrubbers for hue and saturation in the Replace Color panel to get this vibrant shade of red-orange.  I also touched up a few spots on the image with the lasso tool and content-aware fill.   Match Color Cory was caught in the act swiping some Chex cereal. She’s trying to hide the evidence in her tummy, but there’s still a bit on her face… Although I liked the colors and tones in the original, I wanted to try experimenting with Photoshop’s Match Color feature. I opened this image alongside Angel Light (below) and went to Image > Adjustments > Match Color and chose Angel Light as the source.  I then lowered the luminance and increased the fade so that the change wouldn’t be quite so stark....

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Feb 3, 2013 in Blog, Photography | 2 comments

I considered this image a throw-away until I learned how to edit it camera raw.  I liked the composition of the original, and the focus on the drop of water was nice, but it was so washed out by my flash.   In camera raw I reduced the clarity and temperature and darkened the shadows to give the whole image a soft, dream-like quality.   If the edit above was a throw-away, this one was even more so!  Brit looked darling with her hair, makeup and outfit all ready for the ballroom dance, but you’d never know it from this photo.  Fortunately, camera raw saved the day (and the shot)!   I decided to go for a soft black and white effect for this photo.  I started by bumping up the exposure and draining the saturation.  I also tilted the tint toward the purple side because it gave the image more life-like depth, and smoothed the image by reducing the clarity.  The shadows, whites, blacks, and vibrancy had to be adjusted down to bring out the detail and I finished off the photo with a subtle...

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Feb 2, 2013 in Blog, Photography | 1 comment

A fresh, thick blanket of snow followed by blue skies makes for some beautiful scenery.  This image is composed of eight shots, taken in quick succession.  I didn’t have a fancy panorama tripod so I just had to swivel my body.  I used Photoshop’s automate feature to assemble the panorama, and then experimented with content-aware fill.  This image was too busy for the content aware tool to work as well as I would have liked, so I chose to crop down the image instead.  However, I did use the content aware fill tool to remove some dark spots from the sky, which I learned were caused by a speck of dust on the sensor of my camera. :/ I haven’t had time to take it in for cleaning yet, so content aware fill is going to be my friend for the next couple of shoots… I also boosted the saturation and vibrancy a touch. Here are the photos I used for the panorama – as you can see, the scene was initially much wider, but it wouldn’t look good online so I cropped it down a lot. Panorama 1 | Panorama 2 | Panorama 3 | Panorama 4 Panorama 5 | Panorama 6 | Panorama 7 | Panorama 8   This was quite a harrowing shot to take.  I risked life and limb running up the icy, snow-buried bleachers of the BYU-I stadium to catch the last glimpse of the sun as it set behind the clouds.  By the time I made it to the top the sun had almost completely disappeared.  Even so, it was exhilarating.  This panorama is composed of four shots and, like the pic above, had to be edited to remove the dark spots on my sensor.  Since this shot isn’t as busy, I was able to use the content aware fill to flesh out the edges of the compiled panorama.  I lowered the contrast and raised the brightness to capture more of the orange and pink tints diffusing in the clouds. These are the photos I used: Panorama 1 | Panorama 2 | Panorama 3 | Panorama...

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Jan 26, 2013 in Blog, Photography |

I learned this week how to do “non-destructive editing” by converting photos into Smart Objects.  Slick!   I love the dramatic contrast between these delicate white flowers and the mysterious dark background.  But I don’t love that the focus is right in the middle! I’ve finally learned how to use spot metering, (thanks Abby!) but that doesn’t help THIS photo…but a smart filter edit will!   I started by converting the photo in Photoshop (Filter > Convert for Smart Filter).  Then I added a black mask to the image and chose Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.  I used a combination of the lasso tool and a brush with white paint to reveal the sharpening filter around the cup and petals of the left-most flower to create a solid focal point.   When I took this picture, I didn’t have any idea how to compensate for the over-bright vanity light that washed out the color of Felicia’s scarf.   I love the intensity of her gaze, though, so I decided to try and fix the image using adjustment layers.   I began by using a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to bring down the brightness of the whole image.  Then I used the lasso tool and the quick selection tool to select her scarf.  I inverted the selection and filled the adjustment mask layer with black, so the adjustment would be applied only to the scarf.  I used the Content-Aware Move tool to smooth out her complexion a little and then took a hard small brush to the edges of the black on the selection tool to clean it...

Posted by CallyAnn Hamilton on Jan 25, 2013 in Blog, Photography | 2 comments

Bromeliads remind me of living in Florida.  I found this one growing in the Benson greenhouse.  I wanted to really underscore the brilliant red, so I added a soft black shadow around the edges in Photoshop by adding a black layer and then deleting a feathered rectangular selection from the center.  Then I turned down the opacity of the shadow layer to blend it more gradually into the image.   A far cry from the pampered bromeliad above, most of the flora in Rexburg pretty much looks like this: encrusted with ice and half-submerged in snow.  Even so, it can be beautiful–I was mesmerized by the crystalline texture on these blades of grass.  I had to raise the saturation and vibrancy in Photoshop to bring out the beautiful contrast of the yellow and green grass against the lavender-tinted snow.   This rose looks large, but it’s actually really tiny–about an inch across.  I’d like to get a macro lens someday so I can take even closer shots than this, but that will likely have to wait until I’m through school.  I didn’t do any edits on this shot.   This is my cousin’s fat cat, Simba.  He’s getting on in years and has all kinds of annoying and endearing idiosyncrasies.  I had a hard time getting a good shot of him since he kept moving, and it was too dark to set my shutter speed any higher.  I got lucky with this one.  I increased the vibrancy significantly and the saturation just a little to capture the last glow of the sunset in his fur and...