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The Starving Artist

~ Still an artist but no longer starving!

The Starving Artist

Tag Archives: Arts

Two Cows

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by Colin Crowdey in Photography, Wildlife

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

animals, Arts, camera, Cameras and Camcorders, cows, Digital single-lens reflex camera, nature, opportunities, outdoors, photography, popular point, seasonal, Snow, two cows, weather, wildlife, winter, winter wonderlands

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

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Creating Composite Images – Part 2

21 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by Colin Crowdey in Photoshop

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adobe Photoshop, Arts, Blend modes, business, Compositing, fantasy images, illustration, Image, Photoshop

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

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Creating Composite Images – Part 1

18 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by Colin Crowdey in Photoshop

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Adobe Photoshop, Arts, Background light, Composite Images, Compositing, Facebook, fantasy images, Graphics, light, photography, Photoshop

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

 

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Best of 2012

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by Colin Crowdey in Photography, Portraits

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arts, beauty, Bride, entertainment, Fashion, Hairdresser, Hazlewood Bridal Boutique, Make Up Artist, shoot, Shopping, style

the-starving-artist-2012

 

So with 2012 almost at a close and 2013 nearly upon us I thought I would take a look back at my year as a pro photographer and showcase some of my best images taken throughout the year.

Of course, I could never take these images without the help of all the pople that are involved in making a shoot and this includes stylists, MUA’s, clothing designers, researchers, hair stylists, prop buyers and of course last but by no means least the models themselves.

I have had the pleasure this year to work with some absolutely amazing professionals, way too many to mention you all, but those that made it into my best of 2012 are,

Lorena F, Franki, Forsaken Desire, Emma S, Holly T, Miss Laura Mai, Jodie Winter-Smith, Helen D, Mary L, Emily L, Bubblefaery, Hazlewood Bridal Boutique, Findadress Bridal

Now to the best bit – the video – I must stress that some of the images in this video are unpublished and while there is no nudity some of the images show more than I would normally publish and probably not safe for work, so if that type of thing offends please do not watch the video.

Once again a BIG thank you to EVERYONE I have worked with this year and here’s to a prosperous and happy 2013!

Best – Colin

 

 

 

 

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Always open your post

11 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Colin Crowdey in Business, Photography, Wildlife

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Arts, Arts and Entertainment, Associations, Award night, business, Gold Award, photography, POTY, Professional Photographers of America, SINWP, SWPP, SWPP BPPA Society, Wildlife Photography

Morning

Most mornings when I open the mail it’s either bills 😦 junk mail 😦 😦 or some other meaningless piece of paper that either ends up in the bin, or worse, left unopened.

Today though was a different matter!

In the mail today I received a certificate from The Societies.

The Societies are the fastest growing worldwide association for professional photographers. They manage eight internationally recognised photographic organisations focusing on prime services to full time and aspiring full time photographers

Each month they run competitions under each of their organisations, I myself belong to the SINWP and the SWPP (Society of International Nature & Wildlife Photographers & Society of Wedding & Portrait Photographers)

The standard of these competitions is very high as the entries each month come from photographers from all over the world. Each entry is ranked as follows:

Gold: Awards will go forward to the annual judging and are deemed to be images of the highest standard and will be published in Professional Imagemaker 

Highly Commended: Above standard. These images will be reviewed every three months and have the potential of being reclassified as Gold.

Not Awarded: Unfortunately these images fall below the standard required to be given an award.

Disqualified: These images have not adhered to the competition rules or category definitions.

The annual judging takes place at a hotel in London in January where the winner of each category is crowned Photographer of the Year and wins a nice trophy.

So I was happy today.

The image is of a common Buzzard in flight and posted below – along with the certificate 🙂

Buzzard

goldawardswpp-blog

Best – Colin

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