Like I said in last week’s UW Wednesday, I’ll be showing some turtle images from our recent trip to Grand Cayman for the next couple of weeks.
I found this guy munching away at the base of this barrel sponge (the whiter area above his left front flipper in the image below). By the about that has been removed I’d say this guys visits this sponge on a regular basis.
As I approached he turned toward me and gave me a look like, “What are you doing interrupting my lunch?”
And then swam right over me; literally inches away.
A very exciting encounter. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever had a problem getting the crop marquee to stay where you want it. Especially if you are only cropping a small portion and the marquee is near the edge of the frame. You drag out the marquee and it snaps back to the edge of the frame. The reason for this behavior is that, by default, Snap is enabled and Document Bounds is selected. (Located in the View menu shown on the left. View > Snap.) To permanently disable that behavior you can click either Snap or Snap To > Document Bounds to remove the check mark and disable the feature.
But a faster way to work is to temporarily disable snapping by simply holding down the Control key while dragging the crop boundary. This will allow more accurate placement of the outline when placement of the crop is critical. So when you are trying to place the crop marquee near the edge of the frame and it jumps back to the edge; holding down Control and then dragging will enable you to place the bounding exactly where you want it and it will stay there. Give it a try.
Last week I posted an image of a Union Solder’s Coat. This is an updated version of that image.
I did two more things in Nik Silver Effects Pro for this update. The first was to add a control point to add contrast and slightly darken to the bottom of the solder’s jacket. This accentuated the folds in the coat and created more depth.
The other was to add a bit of a vignette. Besides the usual framing to draw the viewers eye into the subject, the vignette added to the chiaroscuro-the visual interplay of highlight and shadow to make the coats the focal point of the image. Read the rest of this entry »
During our recent trip to Grand Cayman we had a number of encounters with Hawksbill Turtles. There has been a lot on news programs about how the environmental disaster in the Gulf is, and will continue to, affect sea turtles. So I think I will post a few turtle pix over the next few days. Hope you enjoy them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Anyone who has taken any of my image editing classes knows I’m a strong proponent of nondestructive editing in Photoshop. And I’m always surprised by the number of experienced Photoshop users that don’t know it’s possible to do a nondestructive crop. So I thought I would do a post to show how simple it is.
First off, some basics. In the default Photoshop workspace the Tools panel is a vertical bar on the left. This bar hold all the tools, including the Crop Tool. And across the top of the workspace, just below the menu bar, is the Options Bar. Every tool has a unique Options bar that lets you set various options to determine how the tool will behave. And the Crop Tool is a little unique in that it’s Option Bar changes after a crop outline is made. Here is what the Crop Tool’s Option Bar looks like when the tool is selected but before a corp outline is made:
And here is what it looks like after a crop outline is made:
Read the rest of this entry »
Since I’m on a B&W kick I thought I would post another monochrome image. This is another shot processed with Silver Effects Pro.
This was shot last week at Fort Delaware, which is on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware River off of Delaware City. It was originally built to protect the entrance to Philadelphia. As evidenced by the number of large gun emplacements. Even though the fort was used to house POWs in WW II it is most noted for it’s use to house POWs during the Civil War. This scene is a recreation of a union solder’s coat and a woman’s coat (his wife?) hagging next to the door. The scene is lit with available light through the open door.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tarpon are difficult to get good shots of. First, they are often quite skittish. I spent 3-5 minutes approaching this guy. Moving slowly closer on a diagonal, not directly at him, while trying to keep my breathing rate and volume down in order to not generate a lot of exhalation bubbles. (I guess I could invest in a rebreather to fix that problem.) Plus looking straight ahead, and not at him, occasionally catching a glance out of the corner on my eye. And during the day tarpon on not out in the open they are hanging out in the shadows of ledges. So most of the light has to come your strobes. However, their large silvery scales are VERY reflective. A lot of trapon pictures look like a picture of a mirror with the strobes facing dirctly at the mirror. The trick is the kick the strobes out so most of the light falls outside the edges of the frame and the center of the frame is lit only with the edges of the cone of light from each strobe.
I knew I would only get one shot. When the strobes fire he will slowly move 10-15 feet away–and underwater that may a well be 2 football fields away. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not big on Photoshop plug-ins. Most of the time they “simplify” things you can already do in Photoshop but at the expense of control.
When I work on an image I start by evaluating the image and deciding where it is I want to take it; that is, what do I want to “say” with the image. After I figure out where I want to take the image then I think about how best to accomplish that in Photoshop. So I’m not big on opening up a filter or a plug-in and then clicking around to see what happens. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I never click and/or drag on a setting to see what will happen–especially when learning to use a new tool. Read the rest of this entry »
