8:28 AM

8:28 AM, originally uploaded by ted.sali.

I was almost at work, with a couple minutes to spare, when I look across the street and see this old building lit up by the reflections off the glass of a new building, giving this old building this weird blue and gold light paint job.
Hmmm...be on time, or get this shot....
Anyway, I took one frame, and played with it a little. The result was weird and kinda abstract, the bricks, depending on how much light fell on them, almost seemed to fade in and out of focus, which was needless to say, really weird.
The point here, if there is a point, is that my new habit of carrying a camera almost all the time does have it's benefits. I walk by this building 5 times a week, and although I've seen this pattern before, it never really registered with me. Now that I carry my little camera (that is, my original dslr, I've done some upgradification) I have the tool to take a pretty neat shot whenever and wherever they happen.
Heck, I've almost convinced myself to do a 365 project, but I'm not sure if I'm disciplined enough for that.
There's about 9 or 10 readers a day that hit this site, sound off for me, you can be anonymous but let me know, should I try a 365 Project (that is, take at least one original photo, every day, for a full year)

Topaz Adjust

Topaz Adjust, originally uploaded by ted.sali.

Hey, how would you like HDR type photos without having to spend all that time mucking about with HDR?
Better yet, how about some very cool and dramatic enhancements on action shots? Kinda hard to get the whole world to stop while you bracket 3 images.
Topaz labs has a stopgap, a plugin called Topaz Adjust that nicely fits that bill.
I've been using the trial version for a month, and decided it was worth the 50 USD to get a liscence key to call it my very own.
Topaz is easy to use, and pulls a lot of detail out on raw files, not so awesome with JPG, but I tend to shoot almost everything raw anyway, even with my "little" camera which is my K110d with the kit lens on it that I have taken to dragging around with me pretty much everywhere I go.
Granted, I can be known to let the saturation get a little out of hand but it's hard to resist those candy-bright colours and electric skies. Sometimes, though, that's what you want, the world of photography is about making people see things the way you want them to see them.
Topaz adjust is just part of a whole suite of plugins available, and I may go back and get more, but for now I've come to rely like the looks I can get out of adjust, especially when I want emerald green cotton candy grass and leaves like this.
Adjust is only 50 USD, and the whole suite is a very affordable 135 USD, plus the trial version is completely functional and free for 30 days, so it's worth a bash.
Available for Photoshop on both Windows (32 and 64 bit) and Mac.

Ahh...unity!

Stobist Boot Camp II Assignment 2

For years I have referred to technology in casual conversations with my peers as "Amish Porn", as electronic blinky things are forbidden by that particular community.
David has served up, to turn a phrase, what I would like to think of as "Dietitian Porn" for the second assignment within the Strobist Boot Camp II exercise for this summer.
I get to play around with two of my favorite things, cameras and food to enter this one, and my idea hamster has been spinning the wheel for a couple days now trying to figure out exactly what I should shoot.
Of course, my first instinct roars in my belly, literally, a single word that carries so much passion, so much love that it is almost deafening, "Pizza". However, because it's summer, and I'm coming off a week of holidays with my kids, I think I'm going to do something a wee bit more emotional.
For the sake of nostalgia, I'm going to find, and shoot one of my favorite treats from childhood, something that I still enjoy as an adult, but was a really big deal when it hit a the table when I was growing up; Watermelon. I used to be absolutely bonkers about it as a kid, would burrow into huge slice after huge slice while my parents would bark something about leaving something for someone else. I'm also going to do it for the sake of my middle boy, who has taken up the flag of watermelon fiend and was so horribly wronged last week at dinner when the server removed his plate of 2 precious pieces when a bathroom break called him from the table, resulting in a look of pure sadness that nearly broke my heart.
So now I get to find a suitable candidate melon, one with a rich pink flesh and dark black seeds to serve two roles: model for my project and prey for my kids.
Be vewy, vewy, quiet...I'm hunting mewons.

Doing the Classic Head Shot

06-19-2009 Holly-8, originally uploaded by ted.sali.

So what exactly do you need to have at your disposal to to a really good looking head shot?
Well, if you subscribe to the ideology of Joe McNalley and David Hobby, all you really need is a camera, and the ability to fire a couple hot shoe flashes off camera.
That's how I got this shot of Holly Fossen, an aspiring model. I used one flash through an umbrella just off to her right, and a second bare one off to her left just giving a wink of light to make sure she wasn't too dark on the left side there.
To pull that outlandish blue sky off, I used your other best friend, the CTO filter.
CTO have become one of my favorite tools as late, as I have recently really learned how to use them. Basically, you chuck the CTO onto your flash heads (by means of the super expensive dollar store tape) and then set your camera into tungsten white balance. The CTO's make your flash the same color as a tungsten light, that is warm and orange, and that means the camera's white balance shifts to the blue spectrum.
The result is that your lit subject is now nice and warm, and your background, in this case a cloudy sunset, it pushed into the blues much more.
This does a couple nice things to your photo. First of all, it makes your subject look nice and warm, like they are lit by the golden glow of a beautiful sunset, like a nice artificial magic hour going on. The other thing it does is by pushing the background into the cooler spectrum is creates a sense of perspective, known as temperature perspective, making your subject stand well out of your background.
I've recently just discovered the concept of temperature perspective whilst reading one of my books, so I'm knot just making this up.
Turns out there are three very good ways to provide a sense of perspective in a photo. The first being linear perspective - this is what we all think of when we say perspective, parallel lines converge into infinity, closer objects look larger, the stuff we all learn in middle school art class.
The second is called Atmospheric perspective, and landscape shooters use this a lot. You know how on those especially great mornings if you are lucky enough to live in an elevated location, you look out your window and the distant hills get more and more hazy? That's atmospheric perspective, a sense of distance is provided by atmospheric haze, the more haze the more of a sense of perspective, fog can do this too, giving the sense to relatively close objects.
And finally, there's temperature perspective, which is what I exploited here. Basically, if you warm your subject more than your background, the mind separates them and says "oh, I like warm things, so that must be closer" or something like that. If you cool your subject, and warm your background, they will seem to be much closer together. To be honest, I don't really get or care about the psychology behind it, all I gotta know is that it does in fact work, so I use it.
Yay for books!

How much editing?

Before and After, originally uploaded by ted.sali.

Sometimes, a whole lot.
I said in my post last night that this shot was very boring out of camera. I did want something more memorable, but right out of camera I couldn't pull it off, this one needed editing in photoshop and lightroom.
Now what's really interesting is that it looks like I may have spent a long time on this image, when in reality I only spent a few minutes. Now that I really understand how the orton technique works in the digital realm, I've gone ahead and created an action to perform it automatically. To create the dream like quality in some of my other portraits now only takes a few moments of my time, and to blow it over the top like this only takes seconds more in lightroom.
The result is an image that the client will look at and think "wow, that's amazing" without knowing that it's actually a combination of techniques the photographer uses every day.
Still, saying that it's simple now betrays the fact that getting a really good handle on the orton technique takes some time. I've been messing around with it on and off for about six months, only recently getting a good grip on it. It's simple to do this now because I've done all the work already, and now I know what works.

Orton + Lightroom = Unearthly

Orton + Lightroom = Unearthly, originally uploaded by ted.sali.

So, I have this ho-hum photo of the bridal gown from a wedding a shot a few weeks ago. It was hanging in front of a sheer curtain and wasn't doing much for me.
I decided I'd try a few things with it, using the Orton technique to see if I could bring some life to this otherwise drab and very ordinary photo.
So I take my boring photo into Photoshop, make my layers, overexpose them, add the blur and blend them.
Okay, so that worked pretty well, so I take it back into lightroom, crop, straighten...much better but still not really amazing.
Then I start playing with the presets. I mouse over the cold tone and WOW! Now that's what I'm looking for!
The straps hanging the dress disappear, the window blows way out, and the detail in the corset becomes a magnificent pattern of cool blue tones, all with a near angelic feel courtesy of the Orton Technique.
Oh ya, this one is going in my portfolio now.

Details

Details, originally uploaded by ted.sali.

Here's how my week goes:

Sunday - Multiple model and photographer shoot in a downtown studio. Got some great shots, but have not had time to process them. Got some engagement shots done, have to get them to client.
Monday - Thursday: Day job and Soccer in the evening.
Friday - Company Golf Tournament - spend all day shooting that. Evening event: Winnipeg Caribbean Carnival fundraiser & fashion show - I'm a sponsor so I was there all night. Great group of people, BTW.
Saturday - 10 AM phone call from my friend Jerry, frantic that his second shooter has called in sick hours before a wedding. I really enjoy shooting alongside Jerry, so of course I jump in with both feet.
Back to Sunday. The sun is shining, and I'm going out with the family to do some geocaching...

Can it get any better than this? Don't think so.