That thing I did last month...

Thanks to Cesar and Stephanie for a fun shoot and Congratulations on their engagement!

Click HERE to see more.

Thanks for reading!

Come on, come on, come on, come on! PHOTO RETOUCH me, baby!

Some people don't like retouched photos.  They have a photo-journalist-esque heart, and want brutally honest pictures ... fantasy and idealism be damned!   I'm not one of those people :-).  I love photoshop and retouching.  I want things to look as good as possible…  accuracy be damned!  I zap zits, paint uneven skin tones, add extra limbs … if the picture would be better served with a mystical rainbow-maned unicorn prancing along in the background, I'm all for it.

Mystic Unicorn FTW!!!

It doesn't help that more times than I'd like to admit, I'm fixing a mistake I made while shooting, but that's besides the point. :-D

There are many pitfalls with retouching, however.  Because it's really easy to overdo it.  And overdoing it does not look pretty.  A picture can turn into a cartoon real quick if you're not careful. 

Keep that doll away from the knives!

The trick is subtlety.  Early on, I fell into the overdoing it trap (I might still be in that trap) but the more you do it the better you get (at least that's how the theory goes) and so I'd like to think that I did a believable job on this happy couple I helped shoot the other day.

From drab to FAB!

After adjusting exposure, white balance and contrast, I cleaned up certain areas of the lovely Cindy's face, including evening her skin tone, zapping blemishes, and cleaning up a few dark spots under the eyes.  I also increased the color saturation on parts of their faces (like the lips). 

With this one the main adjustment was for exposure, since he was in shadow.

In the end, my goal in photo retouching is to make photos look better without it looking like I made the photos look better (if that makes any sense).  In other words, adjust the photos with enough subtlety that no one knows that I've made adjustments in the first place.  Hopefully I've done that with these photos, and double hopefully I get better at it in the future.

Thanks to Mike for letting me tag along with his shoot, and thanks to everyone else for reading.  Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments below.

Sometimes I forget how pretty this place can be...

I know more times than not, I'm complaining about being here.  But every once in a while, amongst the seemingly endless sea of dirt and brown, I'm reminded of just how pretty this place can be.

I'm just sorry it was gone before I could find a better vantage point...

Variety is spicey... or something like that...

A little while back, I was looking at my portfolio, and thought it could use a bit more variety.  Because you know what they say, "Variety is spicey " ... or something like that ;-) ... So, I took a little time to create some new more commercial-ish type work.  Here's some of the things I put together.

Riverside Arts Walk Promotional Promotional Postcard
8.5" x 5.5"
Front: Top
Back: Bottom
(Artwork by Christina Pulido)

XO Lounge Promotional Flier
6" x 10"

Tri-Fold Brochure
8.5" x 11"
(Outside)

(Inside)

Hopefully these pieces are a bit more professional than what I had before… (cause frankly, outside of the realm of "make the homes laugh" some of my work is pretty juvenile/inappropriate :-D).  

As always, you can see more Here

 and ...

If you like what you read, like me on Facebook, or comment below.

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.