fotografiar cajones (taking pictures of boxes)

I just finished a product shoot for Roselynn Percussion who make the coolest  hand drums I have ever played. (I like to play a little). These cajons are super-cool!  They also make a snare and bass drum.This represents a great photographic challenge for me.  How do you give visual interest to boxes? Here is my attempt.

Heather & Nick

Heather and Nick were Married on June 13, 2009 at The Vail Church in Colorado. Here are a few favorites.

Dear friends and wonderful people, blessings to you both.

Re-touching with Lightroom

An Apology: this post is more about Adobe Lightroom than photography in general.

After recently doing some portraiture for a client, I was given a list of re-touch specifics to perform on one of the images. The client was very pleased with the imagery but, after consulting a friend in marketing, returned with a list of touches to be made. that list was as follows:

1. Smooth the lines around the eyes. * (most important)
2. Brighten up the eyes * (very important)
3. touch up chin a bit
4. Remove purple shadow from right nostril and chin
5. Take away some of the shadow around you right eye.
6. remove one chain from around the neck.

Here goes...

After

I do not enjoy doing this kind of work... I think it is because of all the bad Realtor portraits I have seen where there is so much post processing done that the subject is almost unrecognizable when you meet them in person. Alas... I decided it was time to try Lightroom's corrective tools rather than the vastly more robust Photoshop CS4.

Read the italicized portion only if you are a grouchy person and will be empowered by the crankiness.

Let me first say that I chose to light the subject as seen in the "before" image. And I must qualify that to me "perfect" light can be achieved in any mall (or strip mall) in America where a portrait studio resides. And- yes in fact i did know that two soft light sources (one slightly brighter than the other) camera right and left will create a lovely key and fill light combination that lacks only a "hair" or "rim" light to complete the shadowless (and wrinkle-less) happiness known as Olan Mills portraiture. So, I confess that i like interesting and/or mysterious light better and secretly I believe it is the very blemishes and flawed skin we all possess that define us, call it character if you like. Alas, this is not a photo essay on career women or the effects of aging, this a marketing piece that relies on a face which must appear both empathetic and palatable. (the more palatable the better evidently) So after a phone conversation with the client to clarify a few things I go to work- Knowing that once she sees a re-touched version, all the other images will appear unflattering, and that whatever realism I stubbornly want to cling to will be gently brushed away by my own hand (and mouse).

So- having aired out my curmudgeonry, It is time to see what Lightroom can do.

I will recite my steps per the list above.

1. Smoothing eye wrinkles- First the "Spot Removal" tool. placing the tool below the eye, sized the same as the pupil, I begin to blot the wrinkles (cloning portions of the the cheeks over the line) two key elements work well for me, first, clone from an area of matching light (find some skin with the same brightness, not darker or lighter) Second adjust the opacity down between 50% and 70% to suite your tastes. I don't want to erase the line below the eye i want to deemphasize it (my three year old has lines under the eyes) ...More eye effects following.

2. Brighten the eyes- Using the adjustment brush. I open up the exposure a bit. Don't over do this! It will look very unnatural if you do. I use separate operations for the eye ball and the surrounding socket (eyelids etc.) First the eyeballs can take more over exposure than skin second, the eyelids can be softened simultaneously by reducing clarity (don't soften the pupils)

3. Touch up chin- Easy spot removal... stick to matching brightness with "cloned" skin. keep your tool as small as you can.

4. Purple shadow removal- (this light is actually reflected daylight seeping through a high window. I should have shaded the window) Using the adjustment brush, I painted a small area of the nostril and began reducing saturation until the blueness subsided. It is still visible but not as obvious.

5. shadow at right eye- This was reduced in step 2. this is the shadow side of the face, completely removing it would be foolish.

6. gold chains- as you can see- we kept the chains but some patience with the spot removal tool will make anything go away.

Extra steps-

1. Using the adjustment brush, I reduced the clarity over the whole face (softening the skin) in trouble spots I did more than one pass.

2. I adjusted the fill light up to 25, the recovery to 10, and warmed the color balance from tungsten 2950K to 3100K (a little white balance warmth goes a long way)

3. Also I worked on the hand!! Using the steps above i removed sun spots and smoothed wrinkles. Hands are a tell tail sign of manipulation, if you ever want to know if a woman has had a face lift, look at her hands. For this image, a young looking hand was as important as the face. (P.S. men don't typically notice this as readily as women.)

A few last thoughts: Subtlety is the key! the moment the image is visibly deteriorated you have failed. (see how her eye lashed suffered for all the smoothing- this may have been a little too softened).

Keep to your original goal with the photo(when you took the photo) and do your best to leave the image looking natural.

Lightroom was great! I love the before and after window and the ease of re-working previous treatments. I will be using these tool more often.

JC

Amy and Eli

Amy and Eli were married in Palm Desert on May 9 at the Desert Falls Country Club. The ceremony was on the golf course with reception following inside. There is an expanse of fairways around the wedding site and i was surprised at how beautiful the enviroment was (I grew up here and have seen alot of golf courses). They were a lot of fun to photograph and prioritized the celebration of their marriage. I felt great freedom to be creative and enjoy my interactions with the bride, groom, and loved ones. These are a few images from the day.

From the rehearsal:


Getting ready:

First sight of the bride:

Ceremony with pictures of the pair:

Reception:

We had a great time.

These and others available at www.joelcmmins.com

Agriculture and Photography

When people think of Palm Springs they don't often think farming, but the Coachella Valley is a major player in western states agriculture. I have to admit I felt like I had traveled to another place to photograph a bell pepper harvest, but in reality I was only 20 minutes from my home in Palm Desert. This assignment gave me the chance to take a more photojournalistic approach to my imagery. Being out in the fields at sunrise and hearing the low hum of the tractors as they idle along receiving bucket after bucket of hand picked bell peppers gave me lots of great compositions and the sense of being immersed in an environment. I had fantastic natural light all morning, even at the packing shed where the peppers travel by conveyor to be washed, sorted and packed within minutes (literally less than one hour)of being picked. The following are a few favorite images.

OK that was fun shooting, time to get back to work. Here's a nice report portrait.

This is shot with two tungsten gelled flashes and a WB of 3200K (warms the tones just a bit over the 2950K tungsten balance). The flash for the subject is diffused through a 43" shoot-through umbrella and the background flash is grid-spotted onto the conveyor. The light blue cast in the frame is daylight.

Environmental Portraits Strike Back

This week has been very busy and I will probably spread my posts out as I get time. This series is from the Palm Desert Chamber of Commerce. These are a few "candid" Staff shots (I use the term candid very loosely).

The image below was shot mid morning with a lot of competing natural light as the building was designed with massive glass elements on both sides. I elected to use a single SB-800 flash fired through a 6ft by 8ft white muslin which provided a giant key light source off camera left. the muslin was parallel to my lens and in front of me enough that the infra-red master would trigger the flash. I also uses a small flag to prevent lens flare as the flash was basically perpendicular to me.There is nothing but daylight here in the next frame but I liked the composition and I admit that I abandoned a three light setup after fighting the sun and loosing to get this shot at near mid-day just out of the direct desert sunlight. Lastly, this portrait employed three flashes all gelled to tungsten. the first and closest (to camera) flash was bounced off a white muslin that both shielded the subject from daylight and diffused the source enough to get a soft and even glow. The second flash was fired through a grid spot onto the old photo next to her to add interest and give continuity to the warmth of the gel. the last flash is subtly fired into the etched glass down the hall- again for interest and continuity. This was a fun and challenging shoot with highly mixed light great architecture.