Ok, so with the social obligations over, time to concentrate on the matter at hand: photography and today more specifically: the Model.
I have had the opportunity to do a lot of photography shoots during the holidays. I have shot (I'll never get over the feeling of 'murderer' that phrase gives me) five different models, out of them one was a dog. A really nice dog, have to say.
Sunique Valkyria "Saaga"
I hope you notice how nicely still she is? That is because owner Heidi (who else) has dog candy in her hand. Her hand being in the direction Saaga is looking. What can I say, she's a lady... You guess which one I'm talking about.
A few days ago I photographed the only other not human model. I took 52 photos of an omelet. Yes yes, I know what you think, but this was a BACON omelet!Y'all hear? It took 52 tries to get the photo to look right, you know to get the beautiful brownish-yellow crispy surface to look right? 52 pics is not much in that case I think. I'm not a professional photographer, this was the first time I tried shooting food. (This time the phrase sounded much better?!?)
It is like that with all models, you need to figure out the right light and have the right settings in the camera in order to get the model to look 'right'. You can fix a lot in Photoshop, but not all things, good planning really makes the picture. If your shadows are in the right place, your photo get dept, it gets a feeling. You can enhance shadows and light spots in Photoshop, but it is hard to move them. It can be done, of course, but sometimes it is just easier to do the photoshoot over again with the right light. I mean, you would want your model to look beautiful, wouldn't you? I do. I believe that, as photographer, it is my job to get the model to look good. There are different poses you can use for you model, different lights and also different colors. I want to make people, dogs and other things look good in my pictures, otherwise I don't think I have done a good job. (Except for the theme photos, they have a little rougher story, thus they have another purpose.)
No matter who/what the model is, you're going to need more than one photograph of it. Yes, it might be hard to choose which one to start photoshopping, but you might want to have some alternatives. Worst case scenario you can 'build' you photo from bits and pieces of multiple photos from the same photoshoot. Sometimes you might want to do that on purpose. But it comes down to choosing the photo, the one you think have potential. Often you know when you take the photo that this is the one, other times you have an idea but end up changing it because something else comes to mind. No, I don't use the word 'better' since there is no way to know. You'll have to finish both photos to be able to tell.
I like working with Photoshop. I like looking at lights and shadows. I like fooling around with colors and lately I have also tried some composites.
Digital compositing is the process of digitally assembling multiple images to make a final image, typically for print, motion pictures or screen display. It is the evolution into the digital realm of optical film compositing.That's great fun. But I think that the biggest problem is choosing the 'right' photo to work with. That always gives me some trouble. Well, if there is more than one alternative, there is going to be some amount of decision anxiety. Especially when you're familiar with the 50-50-90-rule: if there is a 50% chance to get something right, there is a 90% risk to get it wrong. Been there, tried that...
What I always do, and I think I always will, (Heidi, be warned) is that I send the in-my-mind-ready-picture to Heidi for a final check before I publish it. I think many use similar processes, because after a photoshop-while your eyes get tired and you might not see everything correctly anymore, your eye get used to the picture. Therefore it is always good to get a fresh pair of eyes to look at it. In this case we discovered an interesting feature, the picture actually changed when viewed on the mobile. Well, lucky this time, since the color hue was actually better as the mobile showed it. It took some time though to figure out how to change it to match the distortion. But I think I got it just right.
"Waiting In Shadows"
QUIZ: How many of you expected a photo of the omelet?
