Yesteryear recreated this weekend

With a little patience, and some creative angling I found myself able to recreate a hypothetical scene from an earlier time and era. The building behind the car hosted 20 children getting a group photo before the parade began. There were also some random people walking the sidewalk and lingering where I did not want them in my frame. To remove the crowd I knelt down low, and carefully watched the viewfinder for the stranglers to leave the frame. More than once I had to relax, dip the camera down and practice some patience.

In an age where some magic filters can re-create a scene or eliminate lots of unwanted distractions, it felt good to get it 90% of the way I wanted it as shot. I chose a black and white version to make it feel even more like the period it was to represent.

-ehw

P.S. This is my father’s Buttercup attending the Cherry Blossom Parade with the DC Area Ford Model A club. It was a fun day to drive around the A way!

Expression

Expression is something you have to either create or catch in the act.  This time I did a little of both.  Luckily I had two good sports playing while I shot away!  They did not even know how many I had to take...

-ehw

Creative Lighting

Sometimes kids just inspire you...and you need to simply keep up with what they have in mind!

-ehw

Because I could...

   Maybe the shortest blog post ever for me!  I have not been able to be creative for 10 seconds over the last several months.  Life does that to you from time to time.  This past Sunday I had maybe five minutes to walk the yard and just try to compose a nice shot or two.  This was the best of the bunch.  Edited in Alien Exposure X3 I am using on a trial basis.  So far so good.  I like the program and how it renders an image.

Making a Geisha Girl look Right

  A few weeks ago as I tooled around with my new OMD-10 Mark II I spied a geisha girl doll on a window sill.  I knew it would be a fun image.  So I snagged the shot.

Original Shot

    Now I took a shot.  The doll appears to the camera to be darker than the background in this high contrast shot.  My eyes could compensate, but a camera cannot.  I did not know my new camera well enough to do a could curve tricks I just leaned...but it was a nice high key shot.  The extreme highlights blowing out the doll, and making a quick high key vignette.  Nice.

    Problem is there was a distracting car in the photo.  So a quick trip into Snapseed on my tablet, while my Sushi worked its way out...removed the car.  I elected not to do much more there.  I liked the even tone.  Thought it looked nice.

Snapseed's healing tool is terrific.

   When I got home however I wanted a little bit more high key.  I really wanted to make the area glow, and the doll to be THE subject.  So I went into my primary editing program, Capture One 10, and toggled up a few high key presets until I found one I liked.  The high key really made the doll seem like it was glowing.  I added also a little extra contrast, and the colors became slightly surreal and "contrasty."  The end result was a little different than what I envisioned at first, but through trial and error...what my mind was setting up waiting on dinner.

-ehw

Photos with Impact (Photo Lesson)

    What makes a good photo?  I am photographer but not an authority like some of my great industry friends (Raphael Concepcion, Bill Fortney, Fran Rachalski, Levi Sim, etc).   But I hope this becomes a series on why I chose one photo over another in my culling process, and it may help you down the line.

    I went out and grabbed several dozen photos of the kids riding around the cul-de-sac.  I grabbed a number of keepers which while good family memories, were not public sharing photos.  The big reason for the difference in my opinion?  A photo must tell some sort of story to grab someone's attention.  You need to grab someone for more than 0.7 seconds to make an effect over the average image we see on the internet.  (I made the 0.7 up but if you do the math based on the hundreds of images you see in a day, you'll get the idea quickly.)

   So I started with this image in the stack:

   It is a cute image of a girl, smiling, on her bike in the late morning sun.  Lots of space to convey movement...but the wheels are frozen in time since my shutter speed was high.  It really is suitable for sharing with family and friends.  It does not, however, share any stories!

   This image shares a story of cute kids riding, and a contrast between the five year old and the fourteen year old racing hard.  The problem with this photo is the children have no connection with the camera, each other, or some other focus.  There are stories here, but are two different stories we need to interrupt on their own merits. Just will not work.

   My select for the article however throws stories at you.  Cute posing kid engaging the viewer with a "Come watch me play!" grin.  The juxtaposition with the hard riding big kid behind her, blurred in motion and depth of field says, "Watch me race!" engages the viewer as well.  Since the second child is blurred, and darker than the foreground image, it is the second story in the frame.  This type of deeper engagement makes this a better share with the world photo than the other two.  I set this up while shooting, and cropped it in post to make it more effective.

    So when you shoot...look for the story. When in post...improve the story through technical edits.  In this way you balance emotion and logic...and make a memorable and meaningful photo to share with the world.  Those ideas however, are for another day!