Monthly Archives: January 2013

Two Cows

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Photography, Wildlife

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Evening

Everyone has a camera these days, ranging from high end through to budget DSLR‘s, the ever popular “point & shoot” or just the plain old camera phone. But even though there are people with cameras everywhere how many people do you see pointing them at things – not very many.

People have cameras, but they don’t take the opportunities for pictures – if you have a camera and carry a camera then what’s the use of it being in your pocket or handbag. Take it out and point it at something and take a picture.

Here in the UK there has been a week or more of pretty bad snow (well, pretty bad for the UK) and I have been out and about in it a fair bit – but I have seen very few people taking pictures. Snow is a beautiful thing, it brings pictures alive, makes landscapes magical winter wonderlands and makes for people wrapping up in colourful scarfs.

I was out walking my two dogs, a regular dog walking area and I glanced up and saw these two cows just looking, it’s just two cows, but the pose and the snow and the look just said it all. Dozens of people walked on by – I didn’t – and now every time I look at this picture I smile

two cows

And putting a smile on a face is what a picture is meant to do – invoke emotion, be it a smile, a grimace, being startled or just going “wow”.

So next time you are out, in the snow rain or sunshine, just take your camera out and have a look around – you never know – you might see something that will make you smile.

 

Best – Colin

Creating Composite Images – Part 2

21 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Photoshop

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Afternoon

Following on from my last post about compositing images, here, I’d like to show you how I created my “Snow Queen” image – quite apt considering the current British weather.

I had been looking at shooting a particular image to go with the composite I had in mind, however circumstances always conspired against either the shoot or the look I had in mind. I was doing some housekeeping in my shoot library and I came across an image that was marked as “throw away”. The image was part of a beach bridal shoot back in December and it didn’t quite cut the mustard.

However, the pose and hand placement were exactly what I was looking for for my snow queen idea.

This is the finished “Snow Queen” fantasy image with the lovely Miss Laura Mai

snow queen finished

This particular creation was (relatively) simple as I was using only a single background image. The following show the three main articles that went into making this composite.

snow queen composite

 

I explained in my previous post that the secret to successful compositing is getting the right perspective (with focal length of lenses) and lighting that matches foreground and background.

The other ingredient for successful images is matching colour between foreground and background images. Now while there are a number of ways to achieve this, this is the method I use. In Photoshop duplicate your background layer and move it to the top of the layer stack. With the duplicate layer still selected, go to the menu bar and select Filter>Blur>Average. Set the blend mode to “Colour” and then lower the opacity to around 20-25% – you may want to ad a layer mask to mask of the background – but that’s it, a simple trick that will match the colour of your foreground image to your background.

This image in total took around two hours to complete – there are only 17 layers in this image and the file size (unflattened) is 130MB.

The sparkles, wings, snow and staff were all added to the image for added realism and finally a small amount of mist was added to the lower part of the image to soften it up.

in my next post on Compositing images I’ll show you how I created a more complex fantasy image

Best – Colin

Creating Composite Images – Part 1

18 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Photoshop

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Morning

I have spent a lot of time recently creating fantasy composite images for a new venture of mine. I have not blogged about them only posted them on my Facebook page. A lot of my Facebook fans have asked how they were created – and whilst I’m not going to write a full blown tutorial on compositing images I felt I could put something together that shows how the images are created and how much work goes into creating them.

The key to creating believable composite images is in choosing the correct images for the composite. All the images should have have been shot with the same focal length of lens, to ensure perspective is consistent have the same depth of field and the lighting should be the same across the images. Colour is very important too – and in my next blog post I’ll share a top tip for ensuring consistent colour between background and foreground images.

The most important piece of the puzzle though is lighting. Light can come from any and everywhere in life, there can be soft shadows, hard shadows or no shadows at all and even a mixture of them all – a composite images will look totally fake if the light and the shadows to not match between background and foreground images.

Ideally you should go out and shoot your subject with a composite in mind – that way you can shoot the subject in a way that will fit in with your composite backgrounds. For instance, if you have already chosen your background images and they have directional lighting with soft shadows – you can light your subject to fit in with that.

Some people prefer to shoot the primary subject in a studio setting, so they have total control over the lighting – this is not necessarily a bad thing, but shooting outside can sometimes give you a quality of light that can never be replicated in a studio. My personal preference is neither, I use studio subjects as well as outdoor subjects.

Background stock images can be sourced from a variety of places, if you shoot landscapes or architecture you will probably already have some great images that can be used for compositing – but if not you can spend a serious amount of time searching places like Deviant Art, or iStockphoto or any of the other microstock websites out there. Some stock you may have to pay a few pounds for, others are free, its up to you to decide on what’s best for you – but there are plenty of amazing stock images out there.

Right – enough of the pre-amble. This is an image of the lovely Gemma, daughter of my favourite Bridal Wear supplier.

Gemma in magical forrest

Gemma in magical forest

This is a composite of two background images, the forest trees, the flowers in the foreground and Gemma. Gemma was actually shot in a studio environment for this shot.

This is the composite image BEFORE any work has begun.

Before

Gemma was backlit in the studio and you can see the beautiful light on her hair – this fits in ok with the final image as although the background trees are misty – they are brighter than the foreground – adding a shaft of light in with a photoshop technique adds realism to the lighting on Gemmas’ hair.

In total, this image took around four hours to create, there are 117 individual layers in Photoshop and the unflattened file size is 270 MB. The butterflies, shafts of light and sparkles are all created in Photoshop, using pre-made brushes. Butterflies were coloured and transformed to different sizes for realism.

Finally I coloured the image an overall violet to match the foreground flowers and keep up the overall fantasy woodland theme.

In my next post I’ll show you how I created a fantasy snow queen complete with horses.

Best – Colin

 

Red Kite Feeding Frenzy

10 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Wildlife

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Morning

There is a great story circulating the Internet at the moment about the BBC Wildlife Photographer Gordon Buchanan sitting in a perspex cage in Svalbard waiting to film polar bears – he gets more than he bargained for – but he captured on film some images that few people will ever see in the real world.

And this got me thinking about one of my own experiences as a wildlife photographer – no where near as dramatic as polar bears but none the less a site that few people will see let alone be fortunate enough to capture on film.

I shoot a lot of birds of prey, in particular Red Kites. These spectacular birds were once hunted to almost extinction in the UK, but after a successful re-introduction programme the species is thriving once more.

Red kites are a chestnut red with striking white patches under the wings and a pale grey head. Viewed from above, a broad white crescent curves across the inner part of the wings, but it is the underside that produces the most startling image.

The head is equipped with hooded amber eyes ringed with lemon yellow. The beak, wickedly hooked and very sharp, is designed for tearing meat and killing small prey animals.

It has a wingspan of nearly two metres, but a relatively small body weight of 2 – 3 Ibs. This means the bird is incredibly agile, and can stay in the air for many hours with hardly a beat of its wings.

There is a Red Kite feeding station in Powys, North Wales, which attracts up to 400 of the birds daily. It was at this feeding station where I captured a site on film that I had never seen before.

Every day the site owner hauls his tractor up to the feeding site and unloads several dozen kilos of raw beef onto the ground. Within a matter of moments the birds descend onto the meat and pluck it from the ground to be eaten on the wing/

It was whilst shooting this behaviour that I heard  lots of squeals and whistles above me and looking up I saw a mass of birds – I immediately pointed my lens to the sky and kept my finger on the motor winder shooting at 9fps. The “event” I had witnessed was over in a split second and I didn’t realise what I actually had on film until I got home and downloaded the images.

The sequence shows a single red kite carrying a large piece of beef in its claws, this kite was attacked by a number of other birds after the beef – not unusual behaviour at this site, but often it happens out of site or too high in the sky to be witnessed. The naked eye saw only a mass of feathers in this instance, it was the camera that caught the sequence and slowed it down to see each frame.

These images have been published around the world.

red kite sequence-1

 

red kite sequence-2

 

red kite sequence-3

 

red kite sequence-4

 

red kite sequence-5

 

red kite sequence-6

 

 

Best – Colin

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iPhoneography – Part 2

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in iPhoneography

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Morning

Since being bitten by the iPhoneography bug and falling in love with “Hipstamatic” I have been filling up my camera roll pretty frequently. But whilst I’ve been having a lot of fun doing so I started to want more – as a photographer and artist I felt that I should be creating art that would not look out of place on my living room wall.

A tall order with just a smartphone and no fancy lenses.

But over the holiday period I decided to go out specifically with the intention of capturing some images that, metaphorically speaking, would look good on my living room wall.

I was pretty happy with my resulting set of images, as photographs, but not as wall art, for that I needed a little bit of post processing to be done, but in the spirit of creating art using just my smartphone I downloaded a smart little (free) app from the app store called, Glaze.

This app turns your photos into actual paintings – pretty apt for what I wanted to do – with a little experimenting some pretty cool results can be achieved. After playing around with different settings and varying degrees of strength I opted for these.

Just a VW

Just a VW

Man in a red jacket

Man in a red jacket

Wrought Iron Gates

Wrought Iron Gates

Parking Bay outside Halfords

Parking Bay outside Halfords

 

Red brick wall with ladder

Red brick wall with ladder

Of course, you actually have to go out and take an image first, and not every image works and some images work better than others

but….

Would I have them hanging on my wall in the lounge – definitely

Is it art – absolutely

 

Best – Colin

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Scotland, land of the brave, the tranquil, and the most beautiful light

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Landscapes

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Morning.

I love Scotland. I go there as often as I can. Sometimes three or four times a year in a good year.

Scotland can be the most peaceful tranquil little piece of Earth I know. It’s good to get away and find oneself occasionally and for me, Scotland is the place to be.

Scotland Scotland2 Scotland3

Scotland4

best – Colin

Facebook – to share or not to share.

03 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in General, Photography

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Morning,

Facebook is big, no, Facebook is HUGE, there are 7 billion people in the world and as of September 2012 there were 1 billion active Facebook accounts!

A staggering 44% of all Internet users are Facebook users and there are 600 million mobile Facebook users.

Facebook is hugely popular for sharing photos, in fact there are reports that we upload 300 million photos a day, every day and some figures are available to suggest that Facebook hosts nearly 230 billion of our photos – truly mind staggering figures.

It’s very easy to see from these figures that content we upload can be seen by a huge amount of people around the world. This can be fantastic for getting content seen by the masses, we are becoming a content consumption society, with our iPads & iPhones we constantly crave content, consuming with an insatiable appetite.

But problems can arise when content is posted that specifically elicits opinions from the masses. A good example if this happened recently, a clothing designer took a photograph of a model wearing one of his new designs, he immediately uploaded the photo to his Facebook timeline and asked for opinions on the photo. As expected there were tens of responses from his Facebook friends all saying things like, “wow, great photo”. But then someone shared that post with a person outside his circle of friends (Facebook security is overly complicated – but that’s another post)

Very soon the post generated slightly less favourable comments – nothing too disparaging – just constructive criticism. As is the way Facebook works I saw this post on another timeline, the picture was of a very well known model, and the clothes looked great on her, but the overall photo could have been significantly improved.

Within 30 minutes of the first “negative post” there were dozens of truly horrible comments made, mostly, believe it or not, by the original poster, the clothing supplier, in response to the negative comments. I watched the thread descend into vitriol and abuse and I finally reported the Facebook user when death threats were made.

The post was swiftly taken down by Facebook and I heard the clothing supplier server a three day Facebook ban.

The point of this story is that art, all forms of art, be it music, paintings, photos etc is very subjective, just because you think it is fantastic, does not mean everyone will think it’s fantastic. With a billion Facebook users you can bet there will be some that don’t like your art. The masses are not qualified to give objective opinion, if you want or need objective opinion find and join one of the many Facebook groups that suits your particular art form.

Best – Colin