LPS 15: Behind the Scenes

indiegirl

Give us a treat by telling us your tricks behind LPS 15.

i_worship_the_King

Cue Nikolai Please

photogmomma

Very very quick... ! I knew I wanted to try to do something with the new snow and after I dropped my girls off at school, I saw the tree. I had stopped and photographed it on many occasions, but thought it was perfect this time. (I've always loved the reflection in the morning.) I only took one shot and this was it....

Just being on one person's list is enough! I'm thrilled with the response I got from it so far...

(And if truth be known, I really am not sure it fits the theme so I'll be a bit shocked if it wins.)



(When describing what you did, can you please post your image? I love seeing the photo while looking at the description! Thanks!)

Tentacion

Tough Decision
I really like doing "water" photos... so it was a hard decision to make, I spent the entire day at Atlantis in the Bahamas....I was so relaxed by the water and colors...but I had to make a choice between these 3 that kept grabbing my eye...

But I finally chose this as my current entry in LPS 15, as I liked the color (which was different), the silohuette effect, I also was fascinated at how this little girl was in awe of the wonderment of what she was viewing, that her parents had to come back and get her...

Wonderment


Contender 2 (Beneath the Ocean Blue)


Contender 3

leaforte

This is where I take my dogs, Mount Baker in the background. I figured that since 'monochromatic' was on the table, it would be within theme using an infrared filter. I recently bought one, and have been experimenting. I liked this shot, but thought it looked rather flat and linear. I did like how it stretched from the ending fall colors, across hillsides that would soon be covered in snow, and reached up to the mountain, which recently got fresh snow. The mountain has a bit of a menacing look about it. I cropped it 10/4 to try and gather some of the expanse. I think I came up short trying to capture what I was seeing.



This was my back up choice, It really has depth, and shows what its truly like where I take my dogs. Only thing was, bright hot spot in center image, and can't really see Mount Baker in the background.

And my alternate color shot.


GAS LEAK (Experimental)

Yeah, I know, thats why I didn't enter it.

LiquidAir

The making of Ghost Catcher

The star arrives on set:


A quick primp,


and pose for the paparazzi.


Next a conference with the director


and primp again.



Now adjust the light on stage left to fix an unsightly glare.


Hey, what's that?


A block weighing down the backdrop.


Finally a quick tour backstage before the shoot begins.

Llywellyn

LiquidAir wrote:

The making of Ghost Catcher

Too cute.

i_worship_the_King

honestly, the mere sight of a camera scares both my cat and my 2 dogs. They don't like the clicky sound. Maybe if I let them sniff/lick it they would warm up to it. How do you get the animals to stay put?!

photogmomma

LiquidAir wrote:

The making of Ghost Catcher

Hilarious!!!

(And one of my favorite shots from this round!)

Does your cat sign autographs? Or is she too "big" now?

Nikolai

i_worship_the_King wrote:

Cue Nikolai Please

I'm honored, but it's was a plain moon shot with a few adjustment layers and a few filters thrown in...
My Natalie (the older one) would probably simply drew it on her Wacom, much faster and much better. Me, being drawing-incapable, had no other choice but going layers...

LiquidAir

i_worship_the_King wrote:

honestly, the mere sight of a camera scares both my cat and my 2 dogs. They don't like the clicky sound. Maybe if I let them sniff/lick it they would warm up to it. How do you get the animals to stay put?!

She doesn't stay put, but I can count on her curiosity to come and investigate when I set up a seamless in the living room. She sleeps something like 16 hours a day, but I know she is usually awake in the early evening so I chose that time to shoot. The trick was to set up the lights and camera first, hang the backdrop and shoot as she explored. I ended up using a variety of small toys to entice her onto the backdrop. Eventually she got bored of the whole exercise and left.

LiquidAir

photogmomma wrote:

Hilarious!!!

(And one of my favorite shots from this round!)

Does your cat sign autographs? Or is she too "big" now?

Thanks! She has been too big (at least in her own mind) since the day she showed up on our doorstep; she is a princess and she knows it. That said, if I put an ink pad and a sheet of paper down on the floor, I could probably arrange some signatures on the paper, floor, couch, door...

nicoleshilliday

LiquidAir wrote:

Eventually she got bored of the whole exercise and left.

...and that is what cats do best. I like to call my cats "catins", full grown cats that still act like kittens.

HoofClix

So...
.. One evenin' at about the time when I get whiskey on my mind, I was walkin' by this table in the foyer, and I thought, wow, that's about the same color as a bottle of the better stuff. I made it out of mahogany and an antique panel from some ship:


I then went to the "cabinet" where "daddy's juice" is kept and I found a bottle of unopened Wild Turkey that was in my father's bar when he passed in 1988. It made it all this way because I can't stand the Kentucky stuff. (He didn't like it either!).. Right here it is:


I set the glasses on the table and took a few shots to see which WB setting I liked the best. Then I arranged them in the viewfinder so that the horses could be seen at upper right, poured the shots, poured the pint of Murphy's (has to be a renagade!) and took the shot:


I took the pint of stout with me up to my studio to do the post processing and posting. When I was done, I went back downstairs, and believe it or not, I put the whiskey back into the bottle with a funnel, (as explained above, I can't stand the stuff.) The only problem was that, unnoticed by me until this point, I had spilled some of it on the table, and there were rings on the top!:


I put the pictures back immediately, but I failed to notice that I had put the one of my wife in her wedding dress upside down... SHE on the other hand, apparently looks closely at these shots on a daily basis, so they didn't escape her eye. I was in immediate trouble, as were all of YOU, as the comment was "you and that @#%& LPS!"

Well, we all lived on to talk about it, and I'm working on refinishing the table this evening...!! After all, the Series is over!

Seriously though, freinds, this was the first time in several cycles in which I actually had time to conceive of something and try to follow through with it, not searching for the theme within view of a horse riding by! I'm happy with that for now.... Onward...

peterst6906

Nice post Mark.

Funny...when I'm at home my wife also says "that @#$%^ LPS"...(but she doesn't really mean it because we've had an explosion of prints for the walls in addition to my entries...:D)

Regards,

Peter

kp-pix

Liquidair!! What a gorgeous cat and top shot. Great layout here too, thanks for the laugh!!



First thing, husband arrives with flowers and saved the colour day as our garden is a nightmare atm. I thought a gerbera shot would be easy peasy. This was tougher for me than I thought it would be, because I am fussy and couldn't decide on a crop that I really liked. That matched with deciding on where I wanted the DOF etc etc, so I used the 60mm 2.8 at numerous apertures with window light and flash.

Anyhoot, it is one we are going to put in our house as it matches the furnishings nicely.

Dalantech

We've had an unusually warm fall -temperatures here are still in the low 70s F (low 20s C). I spent the entire month of October working on my flash photography with two goals in mind; to reduce reflections as much as possible and to illuminate the background. I had already diffused the flash so that it looked more "warm" and less harsh -almost like shooting in early morning sun:



Once I had the quality of light that I wanted I set out to reduce reflections as much as possible. With some critters there is going to be some reflections no matter what -they are just too reflective. But I kept at it with the dragonflies, lots or trial and error, and started getting images like these:







About a week before the contest the weather turned cold here -we actually had snow on the top half of Vesuvius! The number of dragons at the lake dropped to almost nothing, so when this semi-final round started I wasn't sure if I'd have anything to enter. We were getting rain and high winds, plus I was getting ready for an art show and had very little time to shoot. But I did manage one good session with the little purple devils

If anyone is interested in learning macro I talk about the gear I use, and how to get close to the critters, at No Cropping Zone. I'm not an expert -I'm still learning new things every day. But I might be able to save you from making the same mistakes that I did... :cool

sherstone

Dalantech wrote:

If anyone is interested in learning macro I talk about the gear I use, and how to get close to the critters, at No Cropping Zone. I'm not an expert -I'm still learning new things every day. But I might be able to save you from making the same mistakes that I did... :cool

Thanks for the link to the No Cropping Zone.. it's a great read!

sherstone

When I saw this thread - I thought I had no behind the scenes for my entry, but then I realized maybe some people do not know how cranberries are harvested.

Cranberries are grown on a very low to the ground bush and are harvested two ways, both dry and wet. Dry harvesting is done to preserve the freshness of the berries and these are the berries you would buy in the store as berries in the bag or used to make dried cranberries. Wet harvesting is done by flooding the fields that they grow in after beating the bushes to loosen the berries off the plants, they float on top of the water and then are harvested for juices and frozen type products.




The green stuff in Berry Border is called duckweed which is a floating plant.





The berries are put into large wooden boxes ready to be shipped off to the processing plants for sorting and grading.




There you go some behind the scenes look at the life of a cranberry

TPBinKC

sherstone wrote:

When I saw this thread - I thought I had no behind the scenes for my entry, but then I realised maybe some people do not know how cranberries are harvested.

Thanks for posting this. I was showing a friend at work today all the entries. He did not recognize what your picture was until I explained it to him. I will show him this post tomorrow and I think he will be impressed with his cranberry juice now.

You did a great job explaining it and had the pictures to make it all clear.

Thad

Llywellyn

sherstone wrote:

When I saw this thread - I thought I had no behind the scenes for my entry, but then I realised maybe some people do not know how cranberries are harvested.

Actually, thank you very much for posting this! I was puzzling for days at what I was looking at in your photo. I love the image, and the textures and lines mesmerized me. I just had no idea what I was looking at! It feels great having curiosity sated.

Swartzy

Some great reads!
I've been very busy wearing too many hats but am finding a little time to participate. 6 of us managed to get up to the Northshore (Lake Superior) after calculating the harvest moon, it's arrival and placement. We all got some nice wall hangers. The next day we were hoping for a nice sunrise but wasn't meant to be...so on the way home towards Duluth, MN we stopped to photograph a few things. This boat was one of them. Personally, I prefer color but will shoot this again in Spring foliage as now, everything is brown and dried up around the subject.



When considering the theme and subject matter, along with the setting, it made sense to me to convert to b&w. I almost entered the color version but something inside pushed me the other way. The conversion is a series of layers as I've spent lots of time learning numerous ways to convert. I typically will do at least 2 versions and compare side by side. I like the whites white and blacks black....like my Grandpa did in his studio/darkroom.

So, this is the result and am pleased with the outcome. The title "Retired Sailor" just fit as it came to me......literally in about 2 seconds after thinking about it.

There were so many fine entries in this session, I was a bit amazed this made it to the top 10.....As Nik would ask, "would you hang it on your wall?"..yes, I would. But know for certain, there are almost 30 others I'd hang as well. Excellent entries people..really.....such dynamic colors, subject matter, and compositions.....I'm still shaking my head.

Tentacion

sherstone wrote:

When I saw this thread - I thought I had no behind the scenes for my entry, but then I realised maybe some people do not know how cranberries are harvested.

Cranberries are grown on a very low to the ground bush and are harvested two ways, both dry and wet. Dry harvesting is done to preserve the freshness of the berries and these are the berries you would buy in the store as berries in the bag or used to make dried cranberries. Wet harvesting is done by flooding the fields that they grow in after beating the bushes to loosen the berries off the plants, they float on top of the water and then are harvested for juices and frozen type products.

The green stuff in Berry Border is called duckweed which is a floating plant.

The berries are put into large wooden boxes ready to be shipped off to the processing plants for sorting and grading.

There you go some behind the scenes look at the life of a cranberry

I recognized it Sherstone, CAPE COD!! . But again, I guess no one watches TV...the Cranberry Juice Commercial....The Cran Exercises...

leaforte

Tentacion wrote:

I recognized it Sherstone, CAPE COD!! . But again, I guess no one watches TV...the Cranberry Juice Commercial....The Cran Exercises...

We have quite a few cranberry bogs here in Washington, also. Including a large Oceon Spray farm in Westport. Cool shot, Sherstone!

Dalantech

sherstone wrote:

Thanks for the link to the No Cropping Zone.. it's a great read!

Thanks for the props :cool

Dalantech

sherstone wrote:

When I saw this thread - I thought I had no behind the scenes for my entry, but then I realized maybe some people do not know how cranberries are harvested.

Thanks for the post! There is a show called "How it's Made" and they did a segment on cranberry harvesting (the showed the wet method).

indiegirl

I have nothing terribly earth-shattering to contribute, but I thought you might want to see an outtake or two.

The first is a comparison between the image before I played with the warmness of it. The first is fairly untouched and shows her true skin color. She has a form of Albinism and I think this particular shot captures her whiter-than-white tone.



I warmed the up tones and I was pleased with the outcome.



Here's another I considered



Things nearly went horribly wrong, but she managed to regroup in the end.

HoofClix

Thanks for sharing, Jessie... I loved what you entered..

Thanks also for kick-starting this forum that was quiet for more than 24 hours! I'm waiting for some poor SF-er to ask for advice so I can crank up the chainsaw...

leaforte

Excellent Indiegirl. I thought it was nice you made your shot seasonal. I've learned here at Dgrin, that besides judging and forums, that a truly winning shot takes both thought and technique; in most cases. Yours was in my top ten, possibly my personal favorite, due to the seasonality of it, if not the winner. Nice work, and thanks for sharing your backstage views.

kp-pix

hee hee what a cutie, love the out-take

well technically, I had no behind the scenes action either but since it has been 3 years since that man bought me flowers, it had to be recognised clap

DaddyO

Quote:

Originally Posted by LiquidAir
The making of Ghost Catcher

Fairly hilarious.

For LPS 15 I considered several maybe efforts but I wanted something strong
and unusual that would easily fit in B&W. Thought of doing a reshoot from a previous effort then decided to do a picture with strong elements that I have never done before. This is that shot as the final.

Line of Duty


I had picked this first then changed my mind about it as not being strong
enough BW.



To get the shot I placed my camera on a tripod in front of blinded window.
Pointed the camera away from the window as I wanted back lighting.
Shut off the lens auto focus and and manually preset the DOF at 4'.
Used a 17 to 50mm lens set at about 35mm. ISO around 800. Fired off some quick test shots to zero onto the exposure i wanted from manual mode. Used the cameras self timer to expose each frame.

That about wraps it up.
Cept for I should have known better to go with such a photo in a general
contest. Glad you all had better sense.
Michael