There are so many great images to choose from I am glad I do not have the judge's task on this one.
I spent so many hours in the Montezuma Hills (California Delta Area East of San Fransico area)taking shots of the vast windmill farm there. The one day I capture the image I used I got up at 4am so I could be there at sunrise and stopped on the way back home from work to shoot the sunset, it was a long day. I had quite a few shots that were very good but this one stood out the most. Most color and contrast and energy.
I was using my cokin Grad ND filter to tone down the sun but was losing the foreground. So I turned it over and lined it up the darkest top part of the filter along the horizon with nothing on the foreground and the graduated part going towards the top which brought out the blue sky. The windmill effect was done in camera(D300) with multiple exposure setting on 3 shots giving it the many blades. I am not much of a photo shop person all was done with the camera with PP adjustments with Capture NX2 for levels and curves.
I did have some shots with the full moon that if I had more talent with PS they could have been possible. But right now I am concentrating more on exposure and comp.
It is amazing the composites that are created here, I will have to work on that more in the future
I had wondered.
I wondered how you got that beautiful blue sky like that with the wash of the sun being so bright.... now I know... awesome.. and kuddos on the windmill and getting it to show rotation..
My Entry and Why I Chose It...
ok, so this will be the first time I share after the competition, so new at it and bear with me......
There are some who dont understand where I was coming from with my entry so, let me explain....
This is the house of the Goddess Athena. And when I think of Grecian Gods, I think of lightening bolts and power and energy and influence.. So that is what I was going for here. The lights with a bright haze tie the heavenly and powerful “on high feeling” which of course is alive with energy and power both.
The processing is a black and white conversion from a color using the black and white filter tool, "instead" of a simple de-saturation method, which gave me more control over the shadows and stone grain. The clouds were brought in on a separate layer and were originally blue and white. I thought the storm would add to the energetic feeling. The rest is a lot of burning and dodging after the conversion and then there was the light work, which was photographed, so I just accentuated it on several layers with the white line tool and the motion blur tool to make them a hazy up high feeling..
so, when you look up energy you will see power as a definition too and that is where I am coming from here...
this is the original conversion : I went with this to portray power and impact of color at first.. then nobody liked it on the C&C board... maybe because of the pink ?
so anyways the original looked like this and it was difficult to shoot as it was dark and raining on and off and gloomy and I really struggled with the shadows due to it being at night and there being spotlights on it.
this was the angle I wanted however to portray the "power and energy" of the subject.. I know the exposure is a little rough but this is an unedited version..
now..... then at the wee hours of the night, when I was running out of time and looking to my theater photo backup plan, "Chris" came along on the C&C board and mentioned how a black and white would look great, but not sure it would maintain the impact without the color, so I shot for it and decided to add the storm up top, which is a sky shoot I did a few days prior of clouds.. along with haze to the lights to add the energy that the color loss would take away... so this is the final result and I was happy with it and would not have thought of it without "Chris" suggesting it, so thank you Chris... these C&C boards help so much............ and I am thankful to "everyone" who helped me out that night...
I thought I'd throw in a quick "How I did it" here on my image. Pretty simple really.
1. Go outside and shoot straight at the sun, using small aperture and attempting to get cloud spacing desirable.
2. Rest burned retinas for a while. Go back and try to get the sun in the actual frame.
3. Rest retinas again, realize a polarizer would be beneficial (duh) and try a third time.
Original:
4. I took this raw image and reprocessed it 3 ways, adjusting all kinds of things - exposure, temp, saturation, etc., then blended the 3 images.
5. Go out to garden, select a Fordhook lima bean seedling to be sacrificed for the cause. Place on table with black background, in a pot of fresh soil mounded up. Shine table lamp spotlight from the rear, mimicking the direction of the sun and using some foam core to help block flare.
6. I then selected the plant and inserted it into the image, using free transform to shorten the larger leaves and make them look as though they were reaching for the sun.
7. Post for feedback on Dgrin. Thank you all for your input.
8. Decided to add more sky for color and depth:
9. Tried another plant but preferred the first and so just used the added dirt from this shot:
10. Blended, tweaked, selectively blurred, did a bunch more tweaking, called it done.
Hi Emily
What fun Emily, thanks for sharing with us.... I just have to mention when I went to your site to look at your exif, I absolutely love that picture of your child sitting in the garden row.... gorgeous image... I gather you garden a lot.. I do too, but this year it is just not happening with the weather... I am surprised my blueberries made it this year being newly planted... the weather has been weird, at least here is has been in the South and it is affecting all the gardeners here badly.
anyways... I learn a lot by observing your enteries and your setups, you have a lot of experience.. so thank you for sharing, it helps especially with understanding how to set things up for a shot and composites..
your going to be running blind too if you dont protect those retinas..
seriously though i have Live View just so i could save the eyes when composing with the sun...but then i found out that if i use live view pointed into the sun it could cause damage to the sensor.... hmmm.... damage sensor or the only vision i have left....??? thats a tuff one... so what do i do...i just squint harder now
All the previous descriptions about the work all you guys have done are really very impressive!...
I hesitated to give mine, because I didn't want to disappoint the audience...
While all my attempts were highly worked as composite images, especially the one called "Spain",
my current entry is pretty much straight from the camera.
* I know some of you liked my bull composition, some liked the jumping girl or the gargoyle...
To me though, neither one was really showing the energy...
Saturday evening my husband and I were wandering on the narrow streets of a small town near Barcelona,
being of course all eyes to anything exciting that might appear, good to shoot
Suddenly I heard that fantastic music... a big crowd was formed around those 2 performers.
I slipped past the crowd and went right into the front of the musicians.
- The light was not too great, so I set up my maximum aperture (f. 4.0). I didn't want to go with a higher
than 100 ISO, to avoid the noise.
I took several shots of them and their hands beating hard those wooden blades, trying to capture the
intensity of their effort in producing music - which was so great!
(too bad I couldn't record them)
Back at home I chose 2 of them:
#1
#2
I think that the second one shows more energy than the first.
I just cropped it a little and adjusted the levels and clarity.
This is it.
Good luck everybody and congratulations for the great entries!
Well I think you made an awesome choice... and thanks for sharing the story...
the second one does show more intense movement....
kat
Thank you Kat, what I actually hoped to achieve on my last shots was not the motion, but the energy of creating (art)
- I really hope I got that feeling...
Amazing
I am in awe at the amount of both time and thoughtfulness that each of you put into both creating and then following up with showing us how you put it all together. The "behind the scenes" is certainly a really great read and I want to thank each of you for taking the time to show the group how it was done.
I have been reluctant to post my own behind the scenes because frankly this round - kicked my A__.
I struggled the first week with coming up with a vision and finally "POP" an image was settled and I planned it and felt that it would work if I could pull it together. I even managed to find a few cool energy props that were not horribly expensive aka "plasma ball" which I planned for a background to my setup.
Well the last weekend comes along and everything is all panned out. I start and fail, start and fail, Fail, FAIL, FAIL. Nothing seemed to work and the whole spirit behind my minds eye image just fizzled into a slump of frustration. I may try the image again at a later date because I still like how it looks and feels in my mind but for now it will take a rest.
So.. at 3pm Sunday I had to shift gears and shift them hard. No minds eye image, no plan, no inspiration. Take a deep breath.... Oh I like eyes, I haven't done an eye shot in a long while... I have a plasma ball... how can I make them fit together?
Can you say "wing it" ???
My entry is the last minute birth of what little creativity I had left in me after feeling so utterly failed about my original idea.
The biggest "trick" is that I used the opposite of the polar coordinates filter on the plasma ball to make the energy streams straight vs. spherical then used a wave filter to give them a sine wave curve and flow. other than that the rest is pretty much just standard layering in PS. The stars are actually plastic glow in the dark stars that are on my office wall, a remnant of what was my daughters room at one time.
I am happy that I at least was able to enter vs. the first time I felt like I may sit out a round due to lack of inspiration.
My entry is the last minute birth of what little creativity I had left in me after feeling so utterly failed about my original idea.
Sean
I seriously thought you had probably created this image, about 4 days into the contest and then just waited till that last minute to enter it. haha. I don't think anybody had any Idea that you were up on Sunday, probably late into the night, slaving away at this extremely cool composite! Or failing at your original idea like it seems a couple of us did too. When I first saw this image, I seriously thought you must have been taking pictures through some kind of huge telescope to get all that space gas and stars and such! Cause you made it look like space for sure!! Very cool image man! Just shows once again what amazing powers a little knowledge and know how with photoshop can get ya! Good Work!! Now im gonna go read my CS3 Bible if you'll excuse me lol......
Thank you so much!
Brandon and Donna
I think that as photographers/artists we are our worst critiques. So not being able to achieve the original goal made me feel like I was submitting less than my best work but maybe it was meant to be
Thank you Kat, what I actually hoped to achieve on my last shots was not the motion, but the energy of creating (art)
- I really hope I got that feeling...
Hi Photobug.. I most "definitely" see the energy in the photo... I was just focused and commenting on the movement of the action is all.. to me, it is impressive the way you caught it but still allowing for the movement and the movement of course is what speaks for that energy being exerted.
I am in awe at the amount of both time and thoughtfulness that each of you put into both creating and then following up with showing us how you put it all together. The "behind the scenes" is certainly a really great read and I want to thank each of you for taking the time to show the group how it was done.
I have been reluctant to post my own behind the scenes because frankly this round - kicked my A__.
I hear you Sean,, it kicked my butt too.. I have never struggled with such a theme.. why? I don't know...perhaps because it was such a broad theme. I really don't know why it gave me such a hard time...
I had so many attempts and could not make up my mind and then finally at the last minute, I threw something completely unrelated to what I originally started with up there.. anyways.... rambling..
Thanks for sharing your process. I had hoped you would.. you are an inspiration for me with the photoshop and shooting skills, and the way you combine both...I try to pay close attention to what you do and how..
I simply must comment on your attention to detail on that entry. I noticed you got all of the reflections in the eye correct and kept it all so realistic and consistent all under the pressure of the deadline.
oh btw since you seem to be so interested in the "light tent" from the other thread I forgot to mention that a white nylon shower curtain and flash in the bathtub served as my soft box for the picture of the eye.
I am going to have to start trying some of this out... still saving for the basic studio setup.. the camera already broke the bank if ya know what I mean..:D
Again,
Thanks...
look forward to seeing what you do for this next one...
Wow, what a fun and thrilling round. I am honored that i was in the tie breaker with Emily. Such great talent and photos!! And a big congratulations to her on the win! And Congratulations to everyone who made it to the mega challenge! Great job everyone!
Wow, what a fun and thrilling round. I am honored that i was in the tie breaker with Emily. Such great talent and photos!! And a big congratulations to her on the win! And Congratulations to everyone who made it to the mega challenge! Great job everyone!
Vince, im keeping my eyes on you a relativly new powerhouse in da'house:D
(oh and a big congrats on your outcome, except for the suddendeath part i mean)
I've really enjoyed reading some of the "how I did this" posts for this challenge, as well as seeing some of the alternate entries. In that spirit, I'll share one of my potential entries from the Ren-Fest shoot. This one's for the "woulda-coulda-shoulda" file I think. The knight on the horse which I entered seemed to have the most immediate impact of the bunch, but I think there was a lot more potential in the character below:
Burning Calories
This guy was very energetic to say the least and very entertaining, though I had a hard time getting to a good position to capture his larger than life stage presence. Kinda bummed I didn't enter this one instead!
Regardless, my congrats go to Emily for her well-deserved win and the other finalists for excellent work all around. Thanks to all of you for constant inspiration!
Comments
I spent so many hours in the Montezuma Hills (California Delta Area East of San Fransico area)taking shots of the vast windmill farm there. The one day I capture the image I used I got up at 4am so I could be there at sunrise and stopped on the way back home from work to shoot the sunset, it was a long day. I had quite a few shots that were very good but this one stood out the most. Most color and contrast and energy.
I was using my cokin Grad ND filter to tone down the sun but was losing the foreground. So I turned it over and lined it up the darkest top part of the filter along the horizon with nothing on the foreground and the graduated part going towards the top which brought out the blue sky. The windmill effect was done in camera(D300) with multiple exposure setting on 3 shots giving it the many blades. I am not much of a photo shop person all was done with the camera with PP adjustments with Capture NX2 for levels and curves.
I did have some shots with the full moon that if I had more talent with PS they could have been possible. But right now I am concentrating more on exposure and comp.
It is amazing the composites that are created here, I will have to work on that more in the future
http://kadvantage.smugmug.com/
I wondered how you got that beautiful blue sky like that with the wash of the sun being so bright.... now I know... awesome.. and kuddos on the windmill and getting it to show rotation..
Kat
really stunning! good luck man!
ok, so this will be the first time I share after the competition, so new at it and bear with me......
There are some who dont understand where I was coming from with my entry so, let me explain....
This is the house of the Goddess Athena. And when I think of Grecian Gods, I think of lightening bolts and power and energy and influence.. So that is what I was going for here. The lights with a bright haze tie the heavenly and powerful “on high feeling” which of course is alive with energy and power both.
The processing is a black and white conversion from a color using the black and white filter tool, "instead" of a simple de-saturation method, which gave me more control over the shadows and stone grain. The clouds were brought in on a separate layer and were originally blue and white. I thought the storm would add to the energetic feeling. The rest is a lot of burning and dodging after the conversion and then there was the light work, which was photographed, so I just accentuated it on several layers with the white line tool and the motion blur tool to make them a hazy up high feeling..
so, when you look up energy you will see power as a definition too and that is where I am coming from here...
this is the original conversion : I went with this to portray power and impact of color at first.. then nobody liked it on the C&C board... maybe because of the pink ?
so anyways the original looked like this and it was difficult to shoot as it was dark and raining on and off and gloomy and I really struggled with the shadows due to it being at night and there being spotlights on it.
this was the angle I wanted however to portray the "power and energy" of the subject.. I know the exposure is a little rough but this is an unedited version..
now..... then at the wee hours of the night, when I was running out of time and looking to my theater photo backup plan, "Chris" came along on the C&C board and mentioned how a black and white would look great, but not sure it would maintain the impact without the color, so I shot for it and decided to add the storm up top, which is a sky shoot I did a few days prior of clouds.. along with haze to the lights to add the energy that the color loss would take away... so this is the final result and I was happy with it and would not have thought of it without "Chris" suggesting it, so thank you Chris... these C&C boards help so much............ and I am thankful to "everyone" who helped me out that night...
so here is the result
thanks for listening.. Kat
1. Go outside and shoot straight at the sun, using small aperture and attempting to get cloud spacing desirable.
2. Rest burned retinas for a while. Go back and try to get the sun in the actual frame.
3. Rest retinas again, realize a polarizer would be beneficial (duh) and try a third time.
Original:
4. I took this raw image and reprocessed it 3 ways, adjusting all kinds of things - exposure, temp, saturation, etc., then blended the 3 images.
5. Go out to garden, select a Fordhook lima bean seedling to be sacrificed for the cause. Place on table with black background, in a pot of fresh soil mounded up. Shine table lamp spotlight from the rear, mimicking the direction of the sun and using some foam core to help block flare.
6. I then selected the plant and inserted it into the image, using free transform to shorten the larger leaves and make them look as though they were reaching for the sun.
7. Post for feedback on Dgrin. Thank you all for your input.
8. Decided to add more sky for color and depth:
9. Tried another plant but preferred the first and so just used the added dirt from this shot:
10. Blended, tweaked, selectively blurred, did a bunch more tweaking, called it done.
What fun Emily, thanks for sharing with us.... I just have to mention when I went to your site to look at your exif, I absolutely love that picture of your child sitting in the garden row.... gorgeous image... I gather you garden a lot.. I do too, but this year it is just not happening with the weather... I am surprised my blueberries made it this year being newly planted... the weather has been weird, at least here is has been in the South and it is affecting all the gardeners here badly.
anyways... I learn a lot by observing your enteries and your setups, you have a lot of experience.. so thank you for sharing, it helps especially with understanding how to set things up for a shot and composites..
Kat
your going to be running blind too if you dont protect those retinas..
seriously though i have Live View just so i could save the eyes when composing with the sun...but then i found out that if i use live view pointed into the sun it could cause damage to the sensor.... hmmm.... damage sensor or the only vision i have left....??? thats a tuff one... so what do i do...i just squint harder now
I hesitated to give mine, because I didn't want to disappoint the audience...
While all my attempts were highly worked as composite images, especially the one called "Spain",
my current entry is pretty much straight from the camera.
* I know some of you liked my bull composition, some liked the jumping girl or the gargoyle...
To me though, neither one was really showing the energy...
Saturday evening my husband and I were wandering on the narrow streets of a small town near Barcelona,
being of course all eyes to anything exciting that might appear, good to shoot
Suddenly I heard that fantastic music... a big crowd was formed around those 2 performers.
I slipped past the crowd and went right into the front of the musicians.
- The light was not too great, so I set up my maximum aperture (f. 4.0). I didn't want to go with a higher
than 100 ISO, to avoid the noise.
I took several shots of them and their hands beating hard those wooden blades, trying to capture the
intensity of their effort in producing music - which was so great!
(too bad I couldn't record them)
Back at home I chose 2 of them:
#1
#2
I think that the second one shows more energy than the first.
I just cropped it a little and adjusted the levels and clarity.
This is it.
Good luck everybody and congratulations for the great entries!
TravelwaysPhotos.com ...... Facebook
VegasGreatAttractions.com
Travelways.com
Well I think you made an awesome choice... and thanks for sharing the story...
the second one does show more intense movement....
kat
Thank you Kat, what I actually hoped to achieve on my last shots was not the motion, but the energy of creating (art)
- I really hope I got that feeling...
TravelwaysPhotos.com ...... Facebook
VegasGreatAttractions.com
Travelways.com
I am in awe at the amount of both time and thoughtfulness that each of you put into both creating and then following up with showing us how you put it all together. The "behind the scenes" is certainly a really great read and I want to thank each of you for taking the time to show the group how it was done.
I have been reluctant to post my own behind the scenes because frankly this round - kicked my A__.
I struggled the first week with coming up with a vision and finally "POP" an image was settled and I planned it and felt that it would work if I could pull it together. I even managed to find a few cool energy props that were not horribly expensive aka "plasma ball" which I planned for a background to my setup.
Well the last weekend comes along and everything is all panned out. I start and fail, start and fail, Fail, FAIL, FAIL. Nothing seemed to work and the whole spirit behind my minds eye image just fizzled into a slump of frustration. I may try the image again at a later date because I still like how it looks and feels in my mind but for now it will take a rest.
So.. at 3pm Sunday I had to shift gears and shift them hard. No minds eye image, no plan, no inspiration. Take a deep breath.... Oh I like eyes, I haven't done an eye shot in a long while... I have a plasma ball... how can I make them fit together?
Can you say "wing it" ???
My entry is the last minute birth of what little creativity I had left in me after feeling so utterly failed about my original idea.
Go here to see the elements that created it.
The biggest "trick" is that I used the opposite of the polar coordinates filter on the plasma ball to make the energy streams straight vs. spherical then used a wave filter to give them a sine wave curve and flow. other than that the rest is pretty much just standard layering in PS. The stars are actually plastic glow in the dark stars that are on my office wall, a remnant of what was my daughters room at one time.
I am happy that I at least was able to enter vs. the first time I felt like I may sit out a round due to lack of inspiration.
Thank you all again for sharing!
Sean
I seriously thought you had probably created this image, about 4 days into the contest and then just waited till that last minute to enter it. haha. I don't think anybody had any Idea that you were up on Sunday, probably late into the night, slaving away at this extremely cool composite! Or failing at your original idea like it seems a couple of us did too. When I first saw this image, I seriously thought you must have been taking pictures through some kind of huge telescope to get all that space gas and stars and such! Cause you made it look like space for sure!! Very cool image man! Just shows once again what amazing powers a little knowledge and know how with photoshop can get ya! Good Work!! Now im gonna go read my CS3 Bible if you'll excuse me lol......
Brandon
Wow, if that is last minute thrown together burst on creativity...
My SmugMug
Brandon and Donna
I think that as photographers/artists we are our worst critiques. So not being able to achieve the original goal made me feel like I was submitting less than my best work but maybe it was meant to be
Thanks again for the encouragement
Hi Photobug.. I most "definitely" see the energy in the photo... I was just focused and commenting on the movement of the action is all.. to me, it is impressive the way you caught it but still allowing for the movement and the movement of course is what speaks for that energy being exerted.
Kat
Thank you Kat, your feedback is much appreciated!
oh btw since you seem to be so interested in the "light tent" from the other thread I forgot to mention that a white nylon shower curtain and flash in the bathtub served as my soft box for the picture of the eye.
thanks for the share Sean..
I am going to have to start trying some of this out... still saving for the basic studio setup.. the camera already broke the bank if ya know what I mean..:D
Again,
Thanks...
look forward to seeing what you do for this next one...
Kat
Vince, im keeping my eyes on you
(oh and a big congrats on your outcome, except for the suddendeath part i mean)
Burning Calories
This guy was very energetic to say the least and very entertaining, though I had a hard time getting to a good position to capture his larger than life stage presence. Kinda bummed I didn't enter this one instead!
Regardless, my congrats go to Emily for her well-deserved win and the other finalists for excellent work all around. Thanks to all of you for constant inspiration!