No one can earn a million dollars honestly...

So last week, i got tagged on Facebook to play the Photoshop Game.  For those of you who don't know the rules (which probably isn't many since I re-tagged pretty much everyone to play) are as follows:

 1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post your cover with your name/album title links

Here's what I started with,

Band Name: Shocker Toys 
Quote: "No one can earn a million dollars honestly" William Jennings Bryan 
Flicker Photo:

It's some guy playing the harmonica (or so the titled of the picture stated)

And here's what I came up with.

I basically played with an overlay of a couple Photoshop filters to get the drawn/painted effect, and then dodged the eye to make it a more prominent focal point. 

I used a radial gradient overlay for the colors, borrowing swatches from a picture of a $100.

The band logo, I took from an image off deviant art, desaturated it and livetraced it in Illustrator.  Added Text then faded the opacity it in Photoshop.  I created a block of text then used a blending mode to create a little more texture in the background.

Then I grabbed a CD guide template off google and laid it all out.

Fun times! :-D 

Thanks for reading and if anyone else wants to play or has played, I'd love to see what you come up with.  You can link me in the comments below.

Bad Dog! Bad!...

Animal photography is tough.  I have two very lazy, sedate dogs, and even getting good shot of them can be a big hassle.  One of them is so lackadaisical I'm not even sure if she's conscious half the time.  She just sleeps for hours on end then gets up and stumbles around only to find another spot to sleep in again.  The other moves the second a person enters the room. So any potential shot of her is obliterated by dog in the face. 

But every once in a while they do something or position themselves in a way that makes a decent shot possible. Like these morning shots I was able to get over the weekend.  (And yes, I realize that all the shots I ever take are of them sleeping, but that's pretty much all they do.)

I must admit, there's a bit of Photoshop magic going on in these.

Lets just say the brilliant morning sunrise coming
through the window was more seeping than bursting.

Again, you can see more shots like these on my flickr: HERE

Thanks again for reading!  Comment below if you like!

Oldies But Goodies!!!

Hello All!  It's that time again.  The first of the month, when all our files get backed up onto the external HD.  Let's all give a heartfelt sarcastic YAY! :-) ... But anyways, while cleaning out my computer, I stumbled over a shoot that I helped out on last year for a now defunct MMA sports wear company.  The shoot was fun, and the girls were cute :-),  so I thought I'd share some with you.

You can see more on my Flickr HERE

Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment below.

That thing I did last month...

Here are some photos of a wedding I helped shoot last month.  Much thanks to Kyle and Mayra for having us on their special day :-).

You can see more of the set HERE

Thanks for reading! Comment below.

I'm Blind! part 2: So I kind of like Flash now

Don't get me wrong.  I'm still a warm  orange sunset guy.  But using flash (particularly off camera flash) can really save your shots when you don't have the greatest lighting conditions outside. 

For example, yesterday I was hired to shoot a very large family reunion.  They wanted essentially portraits of each individual family plus one giant group shot of all of them (there was easily 90 plus people there).  My window to shoot was about 3 hours (from 10:30 - 1:30) and if you were outside in Riverside, you know how bright and awful the sun was.  On top of that it was a disgustingly hot 105-ish degrees. 

But anyways, under regular circumstances, those lighting conditions will not do.  The light is way too harsh and the straight down noon light just flattens everything.  Not only that but everyone is inclined to squint and not want to take off their sunglasses.

-_-  <--- squinty face emoticon!    

Your only real option is to shoot in the shade.  But there's a big dilemma here.  If you expose for the background, the shadows become super black holes of nothingness... but if you expose for the shadows, everything outside the shadow becomes bright white nuclear winter.   

For example, here's the area I chose to shoot. 

Top is exposed for background and the bottom for the shadows

Now in comes flash.  By using my two flashes, I was able to put my subjects in the shaded area (eliminating the squinties -_-) without blowing out the background, AND simulate some decent side lighting.  Thereby saving my shots and the day!!!

YAY FLASH!!! HIGH 5!!!

Example of Triumph 1

 

Example of Triumph 2

Example of Triumph3

I still almost died of heat stroke, but at least my shots came out pretty decent.  ;-)

Moral of the Story: Flash is Pretty Sweet!

Thanks for reading!  If anyone has any comments, questions or critiques, feel free to say so below.

P.S. Happy Fourth!!! :-D

I'm Blind! : My Follies with Flash Photography

I'm one of those photo guys who thinks that nothing beats the rich glow of a summer sunset.  If I had it my way, I'd probably shoot in nothing but that kind of light.  The problems with that are pretty obvious. Firstly, sunset light only lasts about a couple hours a day.  The whole thing about the sun only being outdoors all the time doesn't help matters either :-).  

So in comes flash.  I don't use it very much.  I should probably practice with it more. And my lack of experience with it is probably glaringly apparent in my photos :-D. (See what I did there? Flash. Glaring.........  If you were cool, you would of laughed at that :-P)    You can probably tell in these photos that I took for my recently concluded photo journalism class, too.

The assignment was for an environmental portrait using flash. 

My subject: cousin, Teso, who is an ex-death metal guitarist.  (Thanks again, homie!).

So back to flash, after you get a decent exposure, you really have to look out.  It's easy to adjust for blown out foreheads and eyeballs and large harsh shadows.  But you have to be careful.  Because sometimes it's easy to miss little things. Like over-exposed reflections off objects away from the subject or small-uber harsh shadows, like the one on Teso's face from his hair.

On top of that, it can be hard to notice those things off the tiny LCD monitor on the back of your camera.  

Don't get me wrong.  I don't hate flash, and I'll probably like it more practice I get with it.  It's uber-cool when it comes to adding motion blurs, por ejemplo.

THE ROOF! THE ROOF! THE ROOF IS ON FIRE!!!!!

But, to conclude.

Moral of the story:  Nikon needs to invent an affordable and portable minnie sunset sun for photographers.

Thanks for those who read this thing (Hi Mom!) and feel free to leave any comments, questions or critiques below.

A Passion for Dance...

Thanks again to Ms. Habibi for letting me shoot her and her class.

 

Performance in Hemet

The Full Set can be seen on my flickr: HERE

Thanks for reading!