LPS 13: Backstage
indiegirl
Registered Users Posts: 930 Major grins
indiegirl
Registered Users Posts: 930 Major grins
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Idea just kinda came to me while I was driving. Found a nice leaf, placed in a shadow, and shot ~15 images. Chose the one I liked best, little PP, and presto entry.
pyroPrints.com/5819572 The Photo Section
Sometimes it comes easy...sometimes it comes hard...
I love the easy.
Plan B. I hit up my neighbor who has a pool. She graciously agreed. She even helped me set up and assisted with lighting. My model was also a total champ!
A little PP and done.
www.feliciabphotography.com
So, I called up a friend and had him bring over his CAS (Cowboy Action Shooting) gear. I told him I wanted a fire-pit shot (for the contest) & that I would do some portraits as well.
I lit the fire-pit, posed him and took 3 shots. I would have prefered to take more, and setup props, but it was hot and humid, and he was melting. (Cowboy gear is hot)
For better or worse, my interest lies with trying to get my vision in camera, or as close as possible. I was trying to get a shot that would visually and emotionally have the viewer feel like they were sitting/laying around the fire also. Everyone has done it, and that's what I wanted to connect to because you all know that sitting around a campfire is heavy into the darkness and shadows of night with the light of the campfire playing with it.
Also, I like our (American) Western history and like to perpetuate it as much as I personally can.
Anyway, hope that wasn't TMI
That wasn't TMI. It was a great explanation and a glimpse into who you are. Thank you.
Jesse, how about you? What was your backstage setup other than being at the farm?
www.feliciabphotography.com
I was coming off one of the most emotionally-charged weeks of this year. Work and my personal life are sort of crashing in around me and when my dh's grandma died, I had to catch my breath for many reasons.
We were forced to clear our schedules and leave town for three days. Sometimes you find gifts in the most unexpected places. Our trip proved to be both healing and relaxing, despite the circumstances.
After the funeral, we arrived back at the farmhouse. Everyone was pretty thrashed from the emotion of the day. While most of the house full of people slept, I ventured out on the farm (in my stupid city slicker Crocs) to take some shots.
The solitude was healing and I had a lot of fun playing with the camera, testing my skills. I happened upon a beautiful orchard and picked some apples and brought them back to the farmhouse.
The sun was setting and I grabbed my neice. Initially I wanted feet and hay and sunset and apple. Then I saw a cool flatbed pickup. Did some shots, nothing seemed right.
I took a step back and decided to narrow my focus. I find this helpful when I'm writing, too. Focus on a small detail, forget the rest. So that's what I did. The shot embodies the peace of the weekend and the hope for the coming months. It speaks to my sense of letting go of some personal issues I'm facing.
How do you like them apples?
The story of my LPS13 is that it came in one of the busiest two weeks of photography that I've had since the early spring. In those two weeks I personally shot something like 3,500 competition images and managed another 8 or 9,000 from others who were working for me, and then got most of them uploaded to my site.
In the cracks I pondered the meanings of light and shadow, realizing ever so clearly that all of those years as a philosophy major had been of no help whatsoever. I only knew that I was going to find something that fit, that it would present itself to me.
So at 9:31 AM this morning at Pine Top, a venue near Augusta, GA, I was waiting for the first competitors on course, holding a nice cup of coffee, and my camera, and it hit me that it was coming right at me....
So anyway, I'm in with the underbelly of a grey horse, and win or lose, that keeps my entry string alive!
I haven't even looked at but two or three of the last 50 entries, so Indie, I'll definitely NOT beat the judges, but I will come back to your other thread at an appropriate time with my usual statistical :bigbs , and since you're giving extra credit, maybe even some comments...
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and I do believe its true.. that there are roads left in both of our shoes..
Was in Sacramento and my husband wanted to visit an old bookstore he used to work at before going off to a wedding. On the corner was standing a statue of a man in silvery metal. I was thinking light reflecting off metal since my other idea for LPS #13 would have been very complicated to set up.
So there I am, standing in my nice "going to a wedding" outfit, in a light drizzle, taking photos of this statue outside what appeared to be a sundry type gift store called "Etc." The owner eventually came out and I think was watching me ina rather amused fashion. He said people come by and photograph the statue all the time.
Everyone, meet "Bob". Apparently that's the statue's name. He's been through a rough time (notice the sticky tape residue on his head). His hand was taped onto his arm and his neck soldered.
So I took about 15 photos of varying angles and such, with flash, without, closeups, full... "body". I decided a black background would make the "light" part stand out more but the background was trees and such. So this is my very first ever Photoshop project, knowing basically jack about Photoshop.
That's it.
Heather
Well, this shoot is one of those wonderful things that happen when you start out with a slightly different idea and it evolves during the shoot.
I had the idea of a "magic treasure box" and decided right away to use Christmas lights inside to attempt a non-uniform, sparkling kind of glow. I went out and found the perfect box and the lights (yes, Christmas stuff is already for sale!).
I had two shots originally in my head and started working on the first, which was to have my daughter peeking into the box with awe as though she'd just found an amazing treasure. These shots were looking like this:
I wasn't getting exactly what I wanted and was havig to use a little light painting to get any kind of detail in the box. I was getting a lot of motion blur too as getting a three year old to sit still during such long exposures was a huge challenge. Finally, I had the idea to start working with the motion blur. I started seeing what I was getting and got really jazzed:
A new idea formulated:
So, we did an outfit change and worked with her wonderful imagination. We were pretending inside the box was a fairy kingdom and every now and then the fairy queen would tell her that a particular fairy or unicorn had escaped and she must go catch it. She would crouch down next to the box and then the queen would tell her "one, two, three, go!" and she would run off and flit around the yard in her fairy costume to capture the escapee. My exposures were anywhere from 1 sec to 3 secs and I would trigger the shutter release on about count "two" or "three" as I wanted to burn in her image before the motion blur. On my last take I got this and knew it was the shot I wanted:
I really liked the color, but a B&W conversation brought out more detail and gave it a whole new feel.
It only took very minor PS to connect her to the lights in the box and remove a tad of the detail that was too far behind the box. A little crop and that was it. Thanks to everyone who gave input to help me settle on the B&W version!
Emily
There really wasn't too much to this photo: full moon, cemetery, tripod and camera. And a little bit of Photoshop.
My intent was to capture details of a full moon in conjunction with a cemetery. When I got there, the moon looked good so I walked in and set up. I was planning on bracketing shots to get the details that I wanted.
Well, things don't always work out as planned.
The moon looked positively surreal in all my attempts so I figured I'd just "go with it".
This was the original I decided on mucking around with:
Initial results yielded a lot of noise in the sky:
I thought I might be able to pull it off but wasn't sure, so I tried a different version with some Gaussian blur applied and then posted the photos to a whipping thread here:
Several of you commented on the lack of contrast in the stones. So in my last attempt I burned in some detail around the inscriptions and also removed some of the blur (via a mask) from the treeline to make the look more crisp against the sky whilst keeping the noise to a minimum and came up with:
I had originally intended to call this "Claire de Lune" ("Light of the Moon") but because the moon didn't look as it should I had to take another route. I then started thinking along religious lines: where people go when they pass away -- they go into "the Light", they go to Heaven; Divine Light; The Coming of the Lord, etc. I tried a few Latin titles and they didn't seem too catchy. It was harder coming up with a title that didn't use the words light or shadow than it was trying to figure out how to remove the noise from the sky.
There you have it! I'd like to thank everyone for their constructive feedback!!
http://lrichters.smugmug.com
Ah! Christmas lights. You weren't kidding when you said very warm.
BTW, this shot is truely awesome:
The asymetrical flare from the moon in that shot is very odd. What lens are you using? I think it is worth looking closely at that lens to see if you have a chip or crack in one of the elements.
Yes, one set of white lights and one set of golden - super warm!
Thanks for the commpliment on the other shot. It was one of my other big contenders, but I felt the one with her looking at the camera and appearing to come out of the box had more of a story, plus I her face was really over exposed and I couldn't pull the detail back in. Live and learn!
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Quarks are one of the two basic constituents of matter in the Standard Model of particle physics.
The lens I used that evening was a Canon EFS 18-55mm lens. It's always had either a UV or a Polarizing filter on it and the camera's never been dropped. Just checked it and there appear to be no chips or cracks anywhere. Many of the shots I took that evening came out "as expected" with an f-stop setting of f8 or f11. But some came out very surreal like this one. I don't know what to tell you -- I've never photographed anything like that before.
http://lrichters.smugmug.com
Maybe you weren't alone... (insert Twilight Zone sound effects here)
http://lrichters.smugmug.com
Did you have the UV filter on the lens when you took the shot? It might have been the cause. Most UV filters are uncoated and made from relatively cheap glass so they can cause flare in high contrast situations like your shot.
I was at the WPBC in San Diego. We were about to shoot the ceremony at the St. Francis Chapel in Balboa Park and had some time to scout the location for the formals. I have just learned about the theme for the #13. When I stepped outside the dark chapel, the very first thing I saw was the brightly lit archway. I thought that it could be a possible entry and decided to take a shot. I still had my 100mm Macro on and it seemed to be able to get me a nice tight framing.
Later when I got to my CS3 I toned down highlights to show the texture. I also brought it to BW to emphasize the whole light vs shadow thing.
As to the caption, I love Tarantino movies, so it was in my head before I took the shot.
HTH
Regardless of the cause of this abberation, I loved its effect.
http://lrichters.smugmug.com
The sensors in DSLRs are reflective so light can bounce off the sensor back into the lens causing flare. You won't see that kind of flare through the viewfinder. Lenses specifcially made for digital cameras are coated to prevent sensor reflections from causing flare so I wouldn't be too surprised it the cause of flare was moon light bouncing twice, first of the sensor and then off the filter. Pardon me for obsessing about this, but I do a lot of shooting in very high contrast situations so understanding and controlling flare is a big deal for me.
One way or the other, I am glad it worked out well in this case.
Not much to tell or learn from mine...
I took a ladder and hooked a couple boards to hit to get my light source high in my garage. I clamped a 250/500 watt work light to the board at the top. I built a long "snoot" from black construction paper to focus the light on the piled chip area. I took the darkest moving blanket that I had to cover up the stored items in the back ground. I set up a card table, made the drink (apple juice), set up the chips/cards, and grabbed my cigar/ashtray. I really wanted the cigar to light up the sunglasses more...but the cigar was a cheapy because I knew I wouldn't finish it...and I got tired of puffing it...;)
I got the look I wanted...just need to work on the scene/pose better.
It was fun. Got ideas running through my head for the current theme.
Jon
For me, I had several ideas - this was one. I LOVE the long shadows that we get at the end of the day. There is so little air here in Crested Butte that the shadows are very strong.
Anyway, I'd had an idea along these lines for a long time, but thought it might work here. I tried several shots mainly as ideas for a final shot, but came across two I liked a lot! After some great feedback, I decided on this one - with no further changes - and was shocked to have won.
I like that it touches on both themes - light (subtly) and shadow (my main thought) - and that it is so happy with the child just running with abandon.
As a side note for those that commented on my original post, this was my first idea and the others just happened to conform to the contest. I felt this hit it strongest, although I know others didn't agree.
This is fun seeing the thought processes of others!
www.tippiepics.com
I'm still shocked this wasn't in the finals group. Amazing!
www.tippiepics.com