Simple Poll to see what people do with Photoshop

Adding Clouds to a blue sky

One of the most beautiful aspects of Southern California
is its blue skies, they can be so blue and clear you can see for miles, but how many photographs can you take before you start to get bored with the same blue sky over and over, and what do you do when the situation your photographing in makes you choose between dark underexposed subjects or a blown out sky. There is a way to fix this, and that is with photoshop. Is it cheating?… well a little bit but if it can make your photograph a little more engaging, and more importantly, make your client happy, then it is worth doing. So how do I put clouds into my clear blue skies?

First you have to photograph clouds. Yeah,

Posted my first video to YouTube

Finally learned how to post a video to YouTube. This video goes over how resolution plays a factor when posting a photo on the internet, emailing, or just printing.

I will be doing more tutorials in the future, this one is not as polished as I would like it to be, but I think it is a good first try. If you love taking photos and want to learn some interesting things in Photoshop or Lightroom let me know and I will do my best to post a tutorial on how to do it. Remember to leave comments so I will know what you want.

Screencast

I have been desperately trying to put together a screen cast on resolution. I never thought it would be this hard, you get started and then mess up, and not a little mess up but a big one and have to start over. Its killing me. I am trying to do a screen cast on resolution, I know its not much of a topic but I thought it might be a good one to start with. I think my next one is going to be on retouching, actually a series of them on how to remove blemishes, going to try and make is a short one, but I don’t know, I tend to digress quite a bit. Maybe one on how to remove objects from the back ground effectively, and maybe some on using nik filters. If you have something you would like to see as far as retouching is concerned let me know. I have a realyly cool way of removing stubble from a guys neck that when your done you can never tell it was even there. Thats it for today, I think I will wright more tomorrow though.

J Squared Photography

Today I would like to talk about two photographers that I get inspiration from and enjoy working with on a professional and friendship level. J Squared Photography is Jared Schlachet and Joe Magnani. Jared and Joe have a studio in Los Angeles where they do quite a bit of their work but I personally think they are at their best when they are shooting on location. I met Jared on the first day of my first session at Brooks Institute of Photography and we have been friends ever since. He was three sessions ahead of me and on the rise to being one of the best photographers Brooks has ever graduated, he is truly exciting to watch work. Over our three years at school he and I would bump into each other in the halls or at the studio, exchange a few pleasantries, inquire how things were going and quickly move on to accomplish the stuff we were there to get done. After we graduated we kept in touch, periodically he would assist me on a job, or I would assist him, it was fun, he knew he could count on me to be where I needed to be and I could do the same with him. I met Joe at a shoot they were doing at a bar in Santa Monica about a year ago. They were doing a cover and editorial shoot of Chelsea Handler

Ojai Wedding in October

This afternoon I had the opportunity to visit the wedding site of a couple I am photographing in October. It’s up Hwy 33 towards Ojai, and off the beaten path, it is going to be an amazing place to photograph. The couple that owns the property are totally open to us using just about every square foot of their property for photography, including the interior of their amazing house. For one, the property is very large, with lots of big trees, horses, a huge stable, and a wonderful view of the hills leading up to Ojai. The ceremony is taking place in the couples back yard against a stand of trees and bushes, they have a pool, lots of grass, stone walls, stone decking, and best of all, the sun should be just setting behind the hills when the ceremony begins, giving me some amazing light to work with. I will be photographing the couple before the ceremony, I will be able to use the huge horse stable, a couple of corrals, and the shape and shade of lots of pretty big trees. There are so many wonderful places to photograph I think it will be hard to get them all in before we run out of time. This wedding is going to be a blast. I can not wait!

What is resolution?

Hi there, today I am going to talk about resolution. When I photograph business people they usually are not hiring me to make prints for them, they want digital files that they can use in brochures, on business cards, their website, and social networking sites. Each of the fore mentioned media require files that are of different resolutions. Wikipedia defines Image resolution, as the physical area that a single pixel covers. Well that is all fine and dandy, but what does that mean when I am trying to email a photograph of my little one to their grandparents or put something up on Flickr? Lets get into it.

Resolution can be very confusing if you don’t understand what it really means. Many people do not really understand what resolution means, including some professional photographers I know. Open a photograph on your computer and find the command for image size, in Photoshop “Image Size” is under the Image menu at the top of the screen, I believe Photoshop elements is the same. In IPhoto you go

Backing up photo’s and important memories

Yesterday I talked about how important it is to add metadata to your photographs, today I will talk about something even more important. Your siting at your computer working and minding your own business and suddenly you get the “blue screen of death”. You accidentally downloaded a virus, something in the computer got fried, or that power surger you bought at the discount store really wasn’t as good as the salesperson said it was and lightning has just fried everything on your computer. What is your alternative, take the hard drive to a computer doctor and have them try to recover your hard drive for hundreds of dollars possibly more, or getting a new computer and using your backup volumes to re populate your hard drive with all of your important information. But wait Clinton, I didn’t back up my important stuff on a disk or external hard drive, what do I do? Unfortunately, if you didn’t back up your important information you will be saying goodbye to all of your documents and more importantly every photograph you have been saving for the last three or four years. Back up your photographs, its one of the most important things you can do. Lets list some of the ways that you can backup and protect your photographs from being lost forever.

1. Burn all of your photographs to a disk, CD/DVD
2. Burn your photographs to an external hard drive
3. Upload them to an online storage facility

Family photographs, memories, and Metadata

My mom sent me a photograph in the mail the other day of my Aunt Jo, cousin Simon, and me from 1987 taken at my grandmothers during a holiday. I have been trying to determine what time of year the photo was taken, but its been difficult. Three times a year the whole family would gather at my grandmothers, Easter, Christmas, and New Years, so I have it narrowed it down but dang. It’s kind of funny, we live in Florida so just looking at the photo its really difficult to determine what time of year the photograph was taken. I have experienced Christmas in shorts and other times wrapped in a warm coat so figuring out when it was taken is almost impossible. I have an idea that it was taken during Christmas because I was in college at the time and missed Easter that year, I think, but it could just as well be New Years day. Now seven days doesn’t matter all that much but knowing exactly when it was taken can help you to put yourself back in that moment, I really wish it had been documented better.

If that photograph had been taken with a digital camera I could go to the original and see what time, day and year it was shot. Metadata (data about other data) can be very important to the person taking the photograph and really important to someone who is trying to make sense of it in the future. Most camera’s

Making practical wedding decisions when working on a budget

With the times being what they are it is difficult for a couple to decide which aspects of their wedding to scale back or leave out all together and what should not be. The first thing that you should decide is what is most important to you. Is it important that everyone you know is able to come and celebrate with you, or is it most important that those closest to you attend. Just a year ago having 100 guests was considered to be a small wedding, but recently 100 guests in attendance is large. Consider, for your guests you need a chair for the ceremony, chair and table for the reception, appetizers, food, drink, and if your serving it, alcohol.