Wedding pictures, Event photography, Fashion photography

I'm really enjoying Photoshop CS5, I always have. I fell in love with the software the first time I opened it. Of course, the day I opened it and tried to do something, it was so daunting with all the different things that you can do. A lot of people ask me for help on PS and they really think that im very good at it. In saying that, I believe that I only know about 20% of the capabilities that the program can offer. I think that the best way to learn new techniques is to follow tutorials. There are thousands of sites that post all the time. When you follow tutorials, they often provide the links to the stock photos that you can download. It helps when you have the photos but I feel that in order to really appreciate the final manipulations, I should rather try use some of my own images. Sometimes, its difficult to use my own but for the rest, I would rather. I'd like to post a few that I have done so far with a brief description of my Photoshop techniques. Here goes:

This is an image of my cousin Jen. She models for FHM South Africa. The process for this manipulation was a lot of different vectors and the photo of Jen. I used both CS5 Illustrator and Photoshop. Basically all I did was cut our the skin of her body using different selecting tools and then took bits and pieces of various vectors and replaced then in the shape of her body. It came out really nicely and the last touch that I added myself was to leave a bit of her face as you will see. I love this image and had a absolute blast doing it. It took about 8 hours to complete.

I love this image. I took the photo of Kiara at a gorgeous venue in Johannesburg about 2 years ago. Kiara is my girlfriends daughter. With this image, I had to paste Kiara in a backround using different selection tools. I download the other images and used them to where they were needed. Most of the images had to be cut and pasted. In order to make everything look good, I also had to paint the mist in and get the colours right. With the picture of the planet, I had to put glows and change the temperature of the colour. It worked well!

Nobody said that Photoshop was an easy program to use. Of course...once you know what you are doing and how to do it, then I am sure its easier. This photo manipulation took me a while. About 11 hours or so. With the different Photoshop techniques that I used, I learnt how to take sections of other photographs and use those pieces to create something. I had about 10 pictures of different fire scenarios that I used to create fire-wings of this model. It was a really lengthy process. Once that was done, I played with all the shadows and highlights of the different images that I used. So far, this has to vote as one of favourite manipulations to date on the basis that It was really difficult to get the results that I wanted.

In the image above; you will see that I used a different photograph of Kiara. I downloaded a different background of forests and put her in it trying to make it look like she really was there. I used different techniques to try and make this picture as surreal as possible. The butterfly has broken glass covering it. I really like this Photoshop manipulation and have used the techniques in other pictures that have worked out nicely.

To end off, I really feel that any person who is interested in developing the Photoshop skills and techniques needs to read a lot of books or register with different sites that post tutorials. You need to try the basic tutorials and then you can always move on to the more complicated ones. That's what I did and it has really helped me in what I know today!

Like its predecessor, the Nikon D4 looks as if it’s going to be an incredibly impressive camera. Nikon has looked to its professional user-base and tried to work out what it needed to add or adjust on a camera that just a couple of years ago represented the best they were capable of. The result is a camera with few big changes but a extensive series of small improvements.

The biggest change is, of course, the improvement in video capabilities. Given the increasing demand for video footage from professional photographers, and the incredible success of Canon’s 5D Mark II in the professional video market, it was inevitable that Nikon’s pro flagship would need to offer a more compelling feature set than the existing models.

Beyond this, the changes to the stills-shooting specifications are relatively modest – there’s a higher-resolution, 16.2MP, full-frame CMOS sensor and the ability to shoot at 10 frames per second with autofocus, but that’s about it. The new chip's capability has prompted Nikon to offer an ISO range from 100-12,800 that can then be extended to 50 – 204,800 (Hi4). The significant changes, beyond video, are a profusion of smaller tweaks, additions and improvements to what was already a well worked-out camera. These include a carbon fiber shutter rated to 400,000 actuations that can fire at up to 1/8000th of a second.

The biggest technical changes are the addition of a 91,000 pixel ‘metering’ sensor, replacing the 1005 pixel example used up until now. This sensor is used for much more than just metering, playing a key role in subject tracking, white balance and 'Active D-lighting' (a trick Canon seems impressed with, given the appearance of a similar system in the 1DX). The higher-resolution sensor allows the camera to offer face detection when shooting through the optical viewfinder.

Then there are the ergonomic changes to the camera’s body. Again like Canon’s 1DX, moves have been made to make the ergonomics of portrait-orientation shooting more closely resemble those of shooting in landscape format. The camera no longer features a dedicated AFL button, instead gaining push-button joysticks for both the vertical and landscape shooting orientations. An additional rubberized lump has also been added to provide a better grip in the vertical orientation and an additional function button added next to the vertical shutter button.

Key Specifications:

• 16.2 effective megapixel, full-frame sensor (16.6MP total)
• 10fps shooting with AF and AE, 11fps with focus and exposure locked, 24fps 2.5MP grabs
• 91,000 pixel sensor for metering, white balance, flash exposure, face detection and active d-lighting
• ISO Range 100-12,800 (extendable from 50 – 204,800)
• MultiCAM 3500FX Autofocus sensor works in lower light and with smaller apertures
• Two sub-selector joystick/buttons for shooting orientation
• 1080p30 HD video at up to 24Mbps with uncompressed video output
• New EN-EL18 battery (21.6Wh capacity, CIPA-rated at 2600 shots)
• Twin card slots - one Compact Flash and one XQD

I often go through stages in my life where people just get on my nerves. It would be easier and way more pleasant if they just kept quiet, and said nothing. Its no offence to anybody in particular, just really a thought from my side. That's when the notion comes into my thoughts that Photographs speak higher volume than words can.

Since I picked up my camera, Photojournalism has been my favourite part of Photography. I always read books and articles about various Photojournalists all over the world. South Africa has an extreme talent both in our country as well as overseas in the Photojournalists that we produce. I was thinking the other day that I read an article in a book once about what photographs depict in what is going on in the image. Imagine looking at a photo from a war of, lets say 10 people throwing rocks and killing someone. When you see that image, straight away you would think "this is so barbaric" or "how can people throw rocks and kill someone else?". Now, what this article was saying is that when you look at a photograph like that where the photographer has captured this event, we tend not to think of the reasoning behind the actions within the picture. With the scenario I have mentioned, the man they these men were killing actually just raped a girl of 10 years old and has been doing similar things for years until they caught him. Of course, once they caught him, the killed him by stoning him. All of a sudden, that same picture, tells two stories. Pictures speak louder than words.

I want you to look at the photograph below and think to yourself about what is happening in the picture. I will explain what is happening in the photo below.

As I first looked at this photograph, I saw a woman with tears in her eyes. Majority of the time, when I see tears, I think of hurt, pain and sorrow. That's what I felt when I saw this image. Automatically in my head, I thought it was a ceremony of mourning, a funeral of some sorts. Here's the thing...this image is over a bride getting married. She is crying out of joy and happiness. That thought never crossed my mind. I really like this image and feel its exactly what I always think about photographs, their meanings and what is actually happening at that time the photograph was taken.

I was looking through the web and came across this image that I also think suits this blog article.

This image is really cool. I also think that this photographer is really good at capturing moving bikes. When I came across this photograph for my blog, I had two separate thoughts on what is happening here. Any 14 year old boy would look at the picture and think "wow...amazing". I thought that for a second however my other thought was this. This picture is of a Super Bike. As you can see, it is in the air at an angle. There are two things that happened here. Either this was a cool thing that happened and the bike was lifted in the air, or, this guy who was riding this bike...fell really hard. If this guy did fall, I feel really sorry for him because that must really hurt. If someone told you the story without showing you a picture, you would be able to imagine it but seeing it in this picture really tells the story. Again, I believe that photographs speak much higher volume that words can.

I belong to the Jabula Camera Club. Most of the members are guys and ladies over the age of 50 and only shoot wildlife. I used to feel like the odd one out being 27 years old when I joined and had never gone to the bush. I decided at the beginning of 2011 that this year, I would go with friends to the Kruger National Park and photograph the wild. As an obsessive compulsive photographer; I went and found myself a nice long lens and off I went this October. I had the vision that I would relax and come back to JHB feeling refreshed and re-vitalized. Far from it! We woke up at 4am every morning so that we could be at the gate at opening time which was 5:30am. I found that the park was a bit dry being October just before Summer. It was really beautiful being in the fresh air and being able to see the animals that we saw. I would like to post a few images below.

This picture of a Male Lion was taken early in the morning. We were driving along the main road on way to a camp for breakfast when we saw 5 Lions walking next to the road. What a treat! We followed them for about 5 minutes while they were walking and in this photo above...I was actually leaning out the car window (which is not allowed) and I photographed this male walking towards me. My friend Daniel was also taking photos however when this Male got close to me he got a little nervous and started closing my window while I was leaning out. Scary thought if I got stuck out the car while a 500 kilogram Lion is less than a metre away from me.

I went to the bush with the intention of seeing countless animals all the time. It doesnt work that way. We really had to practise patience. It was hard to spot animals in the tall grass and overgrown trees but we managed to see really beautiful animals and birds. Ive always had a liking to beautiful birds.

I think I may have even taken this picture on the same morning that I photographed the Lions. This is a Yellow-Billed Hornbill. The quite common in the Kruger Park. The my favourite birds so far. I really love this image. To me it looks like a painting. I havent done much re-touching to it other than adding a little bit of contrast and increasing the clarity ever so slightly. They gorgeous birds.

Baboons are really cool to watch. The walk in troops of many and the few troops that we saw specifically had a minimum of 20 baboons...adults and babies. I loved just watching how they behave. The babies are always playing with each other and running around. This image was a Female who just stared at me for a few seconds. As nice as the animals are to watch, they are very dangerous. The have strong muscles and when you look at their fangs...all I can say is, be very careful.

Ive posted more pictures on my Facebook profile. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

The new way to Batch Process in Lightroom 3 is amazing. On Photoshop CS5; when batching (adding the same setting or action to each photograph) could only be done with settings that you could only do to all your photos in the batch. I really find that the Lightroom 3 way of doing things is really quick and simple saving loads of time and effort. Let me show you how easy it is.

Specifically with my wedding pictures; I generally like adding a little bit of contrast and also a little bit of clarity to the pictures. If when going through my process I have to do this to each photo out of the shoot, it would take me a while. Now, I can make whatever changes I like to the first photo and synchronize those settings to all the photos. Its so quick that it does it in a matter of 2 seconds or so.

Once you have chosen your pictures that you want to edit, open up your {Develop} module. On the thumbnails at the bottom; click on your first image and make your changes. Maybe add a little bit on contrast up to 35 and take up the clarity to say 25. I don't normally batch exposure values or things like that because sometimes the exposure may be slightly different. I'm going to keep this simple and just focus on that.

Ok...so, now press cmd+A {Mac} or ctrl+A {Windows}. As you will see now, all of your images below are highlighted. On the bottom right of your Lightroom 3 window, you will see the Sync Button. Its just below your editing tabs. Click on Sync and a pop-up will appear like seen below.

The pop-up is the Synchronize Settings. It has all the changes that you can do in Lightroom 3. When adding only 2 settings to all the images, its easier just to leave everything ticked except of course for Cropping as well as your Brush. You then click Synchronize and all your photos will have those settings that your first image has.

For a little more advanced settings; you can edit all your images and at the end of your edit just before you export, if you think that all the images will look nice with just one of the settings; you can synchronize just that 1 setting. Be careful though. If you do not un-tick what you don't want to synchronize, you will synchronize all the settings and then you will have to restart your editing because all the pictures will be synchronized to one all the settings. Try it, it really makes editing your images just that much quicker.

I always tend to play around with my images after I have photographed a wedding or anything really. This Photoshop tutorial is really a simple technique that I like doing to some of my pictures. It really is a technique that can be used for any image whether its portrait pictures or even a nice landscape that you have shot. Try it on different images and see what results you get.

Before:

After:

The image above is the outcome of what I am just about to show. I really like the gorgeous lines and the softness of this picture. It really works for me.

Start off by opening your image in Photoshop. As you will see on your right, you have the background layer. We need to duplicate this layer. Do that by pressing {cmd - mac} or {ctrl - pc} + J. You can also do this by clicking (Layer) and then by clicking (Duplicate Layer). Now you have 2 layers of exactly the same thing. 

On the top layer (Layer 1), we need to desaturate it. Do this by using the shortcut {cmd + shift U} or {ctrl + shift U}. You can also click (Image) then click (adjustments) then click desaturate. I always use shortcuts, it just save time from plenty of clicking. Once you have desaturated the layer, your image should be a black and white image.

The next step is to add some Gaussian Blur. Click on (Filter) at the top, the click (Blur) and choose (Gaussian Blur) and a new pop-up will appear as seen below.

When the pop-up shows, you can choose how much Radius you would like for your filter. For this image, I have chosen 50 pixels. It always differs how much you choose however, you want to blur the image completely but you must still be able to see the soft lines of the image rather than seeing nothing at all that resembles your image. Click OK. Dont be freaked out that your image is blurry, we still have one more step to complete.

In this last step, we going to change the blending mode of our top layer that will create the effect that we looking for. Above our layers, you will see a drop down menu. It should say normal. Click it down so that the blending options show and look for Overlay and click it. Your image should look like this...

If you find the effect too strong or too harsh, you can play with the opacity a little or even change your Gaussian Blur filter to a little less radius. I love this effect for some of my wedding pictures and events. I hope you enjoy!

I would like to start this blog post by saying; I am a brand loyal customer to Nikon; however, this article is not to promote or talk about any specific brand. This article is about all camera's, DSLR's, compact camera's and the likes thereof. I was inspired last night when playing with a few settings on my Nikon D300s. In the past few months, specifically in my wedding photography and most of my wedding pictures; I have been wanting my images to be extremely sharp. I use a 17-55mm lens of that body which is one of the better lenses for a DX camera. If I really new the back end settings of my camera body, I could have solved this problem a long time ago. I was at the park yesterday afternoon shooting some of the dogs that attend socializing in the park and I met a photographer. He said to me that I should change my RAW processing output to {Vivid}. I tried it and thought it was...not bad however not great. I went home last night and photographed my mom with the Vivid setting and really didn't like the colour of my mothers skin. I played around with the setting I originally had it on and worked out that I can increase the sharpness in my RAW output. AMAZING!

How well do you know your camera? Have you played with all the back-end settings? I dont know much about other brands like Canon or Sony however I really believe that all these camera brands have settings that will aid a photographer in getting the best quality picture that the camera can produce. Although I use Nikon's for my photography projects, I do have a Canon compact camera. Whenever I travel overseas; its always nice to have a compact camera to fit in your pocket.

I'd like to talk about Nikon for a bit. The new Nikon DSLR camera's have such advanced technology. Im not talking about your settings that are visible through the different buttons but rather the settings that are in the {Menu}.

These images are exactly the setting that I played with last night to adjust the sharpness of my images. If you press {Menu} and the {Set Picture Control}; you can choose one of the four options as you see on the first image on the top left. The photographer in the park said that for my wedding pictures, I should shoot on Vivid. As I said above that the colour for my preference was not right, I left in on Standard but tweaked it a little. As you can see on the top right image, you can adjust all your settings for each mode that you shoot.

Play around with your settings on whatever camera you use. Try new things, it may change the way your pictures come out giving them a bit more punch!

In the older versions of Adobe Photoshop, I always struggled when selecting and cutting something from my photograph. When I do my wedding photography, I like to select part of my image and maybe work on that specific area. The old way of doing things would be to create a mask and work on the image through your masks. I saw a tutorial a while ago that virtually saved me so much time and energy and thought today that I have to share what I have learnt.

Refine Edge:

Once you have done your selection with one of the selecting tools (quick select; lasso tool; magnetic selecting tool etc), you will see a tool button {refine edge}.

In most of the Photoshop tutorials that I have read and seen; they say that when you select a part of your image, less is more. Don't try and make the selection 100% perfect, Refine Edge will sort that out in no time. Once you have clicked Refine Edge; a new pop-up will come up and you will see a few options that you can use to make your selection exact.

This image from my wedding photography portfolio is quite a difficult one to use when cutting out the bride. As you can see from the Vail that because its a little transparent, you can see the grass in the background through the white. I have chosen a black background for my selection. There are a few that you can choose from; depending on the colour of your subject, there are different ones you can choose. 

There are 2 brush type tools that you can use use: Refine Radius  and Erase Refinements  tools These let you precisely adjust the border area in which edge refinement occurs. To quickly toggle from one tool to the other, press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS). To change the brush size, press the bracket keys. When you brush around the edges, you will straight away notice how the edges become clearer. Try it with you next image. Don't forget; when you first make your selection; always remember, less is more. After you have made your basic selection, click Refine Edge and make the edges look better and sharper.

As you will see below, I have included a simple description on what each of the points in the pop-up mean. Play around with them; try them and master them. It will change your Photoshop experience.

Smooth: Reduces irregular areas (“hills and valleys”) in the selection border to create a smoother outline.

Feather: Blurs the transition between the selection and surrounding pixels.

Contrast: When increased, soft-edged transitions along the selection border become more abrupt. Typically, the Smart Radius option and refinement tools are more effective.

Shift Edge: Moves soft-edged borders inward with negative values or outward with positive ones. Shifting these borders inward can help remove unwanted background colors from selection edges.

Decontaminate Colors: Replaces color fringes with the color of fully selected pixels nearby. The strength of color replacement is proportionate to the softness of selection edges.

 Amount: Changes the level of decontamination and fringe replacement.

Output To: Determines whether the refined selection becomes a selection or mask on the current layer, or produces a new layer or document.

At the end of your selection; you should have a mask like on the image below. The Refine Edge tool is awesome for my wedding pictures or anytime I need to make a selection.

Refine your work with the Refine Edge tool.

So many people call me or mail me and ask me for help with the process of editing their shoot. Whenever I do a photo shoot, specifically with my wedding photography, I always eliminate the wedding pictures that I am going to discard and keep the rest in a folder that I need to do colour corrections and cropping. I discovered Adobe Bridge when I first installed Photoshop onto my computer. Adobe Bridge comes standard with the Photoshop CS packages. Its normally an orange icon in the Adobe folder.

Im going to talk about Adobe Bridge CS5 because its the latest version that you get at the moment. The picture below is an image of what the bridge interface looks like. I really feel that every person who takes photos and enjoys processing them on their computers, should use bridge for viewing and sorting.

As you can see from the picture, i have customized my interface to suit my needs as a photographer. You can change they way you look at your images any way you want. At the bottom right of the screenshot, there are a few different options you can use. The view can be tiled, thumbnails, lists and pictures with the meta-data of the photograph. You can also increase the size of the picture.

Often when looking at all your pictures, its always a bit easier when a picture is enlarged or made full screen. In Adobe Bridge, this is very simple. Just click on a picture with you mouse and press {space bar}.

I really like this function of bridge. For this wedding picture, I am able to see exactly what is going on in the picture. Here is the only issue I have with Adobe Bridge CS5. Whenever I increase the size of any of my images, the picture always looks "soft" or "out of focus". After many phone calls and extensive research, I discovered why this happens. Every time you increase your picture {space bar}, all it does is increase the size of the thumbnail. It does not physically open the photograph. Now, by increasing such a small image of the thumbnail, the quality of the picture that you are seeing is not full resolution. What I normally do is, if I'm feeling a bit weary of the sharpness of the image, i just double click the thumbnail and it automatically opens in Photoshop as the picture perfectly sharp.

Now, after i have uploaded my pictures to my Mac/Pc, i need to make a selection of the images that I am going to edit. It makes no sense whatsoever to manually select each one by making the pictures bigger for each selection. Adobe Bridge have made this process really easy and user friendly. Simply press {cmd-b MAC} or {ctrl-b PC}. This function is called the bridge.

As you can see in the picture above, your images are now ready for selection. On your keyboard, you use the left and the right arrows on your keyboard to go through the images. Basically the way it works is it automatically selects all the images and it is your choice to either keep those images or discard them from the selection. To discard an image, you press the down arrow and it will fall away. Once you have discarded the images that you do not want to keep for your selection, you press the {esc} button on your keyboard.

Now that the images that you have chosen for your editing selection, you will notice that your chosen images are highlighted with a blue boarder and a dark grey around the images. All you do is {right click} with your mouse and choose copy and then direct it to a specific folder for editing. Adobe Bridge CS5 has a function after you have clicked with your mouse, you can find (copy to) and click which folder you want to copy the pictures to.

This is the basics of bridge. It has more in depth functions where you can see meta-data for each picture, exporting options and so much more. I will cover this in more tutorials to come.

If you need to get over something...build a "Adobe Bridge" and get over it!

This article was inspired by a good friend of mine who has taken up photography as a hobby. Most people who start photography always get disappointed when they take a few photo's and once they gone home and review them on their computers, feel disappointed on the outcome of the image. My blog is not only for professional photographers but really for anyone who enjoy taking pictures. Some articles will be advanced and some may be basic however, I subscribe to lots of photography magazines and I always appreciate the basic tutorials because without those, advanced photography would be really difficult.

I would like to focus on composition today. Composition of a photograph means where the subject is placed in the frame. I'm going to start of with basic rules of composition and then divulge into a few advanced subjects of composition that I have read and learnt about.

Below, you will see two images that I would like to discuss.

As you can see, these two images are of a mug. The photograph on the left is shot landscape with a lot of empty space on all sides...bad composition. The picture on the right has been taken as a portrait and the frame is filled correctly. This above is the basic composition.

My friend yesterday made this mistake at his son's matric dance and when the image was taken, there was too much space left open and the photograph did not look appealing. He was very disappointed. Some might say "I wont worry about it too much, I'll just crop the photo in Photoshop". Crucial error if you do. You see, when you take a photo like the one above on the left and you crop your picture in an editing suite...the picture may look like the one of the right however because you have cut most of the picture (pixels = data), the resolution of the picture will be so small that you will not be able to print bigger than a postcard if that.

The next part of composition is the famous theory in photography. The Rule Of Thirds. As you will see from the picture below, i have put some guide lines to show what i am talking about. The rule of thirds apply to every single photo you will ever take whether its professional or just for fun, landscape or portrait.

This picture is of a beautiful sunset and a tree in the middle of a lake. You can see that the main subject of the picture is the tree. If this tree were smack in the middle of the frame, it would do this photograph no justice. When you look at the guide lines, the tree is in the right third of the frame as well as in the bottom third of the frame...perfect composition.

I believe that you could photograph the prefect subject (lets say a model) with the wrong composition and the photograph will look horrible. Take that same subject and photograph it with the right composition and it will be perfect. 

Lastly I would like to show you an image of a person with the correct composition.

You can see from the picture above that this is good composition. Imagine if this lady was photographed and her head was in the centre of the frame, it wouldn't be appealing. This photographer has taken this picture aligning the lady's head on the top right third giving a little space at the top and at the same time, filling the frame correctly.

I hope this article helps with your images. Go and try, shoot anything and keep it in the rule of thirds!