Turning myself into a tiger.

After getting my new camera, I've taken a different turn in the photos that I take. It's less of a "look for a nice scene and click" type of thing, I now imagine more radical ideas and try to achieve them using my limited photoshop skills. But I am improving! And the following photo has put my photoshop skills to the test.

See it on Flickr

The photo turned out a lot scarier than I imagined, but I think it's pretty cool. I'm now doing less of the picture taking and more of the post-processing work, but isn't that what the current industry is all about? 

Using all the skills that I have (which isn't a lot), I've managed to create this look on myself. I used no makeup, just a blank photo with a plain background. My idea overwhelmed me and I was reluctant to start work on it, because there was so much to do at the very beginning, all these ideas ran through my head, "where do I start?", I asked myself. 

Most of the editing I do is trial and error, I don't watch many tutorials. With every photo that I take, I get better and better. I'll look back at this one in a years time and find 100 ways that I can improve it. 

I'm very tempted to do a photo series on this idea, that would take me a very long time. Editing this photo alone probably took about 6 hours. Hopefully one day!

Don't Discriminate with Tea

Do you like your tea with milk? Or without milk?
How many times have you been attacked by people for drinking your tea with or without milk? Because this happens to me on a weekly basis. "HOW can you drink tea without milk??!" I get asked.

Yes, I drink tea without milk. I'm not crazy! There are many others that do this, and this ongoing argument inspired me to create a photo.

See it on Flickr

This is a composite of two photographs, I made a composite mainly because I didn't have 2 similar cups.
The actual process of taking it was difficult. The post-processing was difficult too. It's my lack of equipment that makes it so challenging. I was forced to use the inbuilt flash, and drop the tea bag with a 2 second countdown on the camera, rather than using a shutter release cable. After maybe a hundred photos I got this, and I decided to go with it.

Lighting
I bounced the inbuilt flash with tin foil, lots of it. A large sheet on the right, large sheet in front of the cup and a small hand-held one in front of the flash to bounce it. Unfortunately this created uneven light and white balance in photos, which was a challenge to fix in post-production.

These are the two separate photos that I used, I combined them in Photoshop.













Before & After comparison
I then came up with the basic image that you can see below (top photo). I exported it to Lightroom and edited the colours, hue, white balance and added split toning etc, resulting in the bottom photo.

I was going for a "morning" look with this photo, and I hope I achieved it. This was actually taken at about 21:00, with the only light sources being the kitchen light and the inbuilt flash.
You can see this photo on my Flickr account here.

Many hands make light work

I have returned! I hope everyone had  wonderful Christmas. The new year is fast approaching and I have started taking pictures again. Santa brought be the Canon 100D which I'm very happy with. After over a year of not owning a DSLR, I managed to come up with these two images.

I also got a lens mug which you can see in the top picture. Came up with that quick idea and decided to try and achieve it. Believe it or not it wasn't easy, I didn't have a tripod, extrenal flashes or any other equipment other than my camera. Setting up the shot was very difficult. I was forced to climb kitchen surfaces to be able to pour the milk and carefully press the shutter button without moving the camera. I lit the scene using the internal flash, with a lot of kitchen foil to bounce the light. At the end of the shot the kitchen was a mess but I am extremely happy with the results. Working in Photoshop for the first time was slightly frustrating but I remebered a tutorial video I watched a few months back, so that helped me vaguely remember what to do.

The very next day I came up with this which you can see in the bottom picture, using the same principle. Took about 5 shots, blended together in Photoshop, exported to Lightroom and achieved the desired effect.
The Photoshop job is not perfect but I'm learning! Hopefully you enjoyed these photos, I am very happy with how they turned out. Have a happy new year!

Shooting in the woods.

Back in Ireland.

After two rapid months of warm and cold summer days in Lithuania, I am back. All summer I imagined to myself that the weather here will be miserable, I was counting on the worst. Luckily it isn't as bad as it could be. This summer was the warmest for Ireland in years, and it sure isn't ending this August. Not yet anyway.

My cousin Veronica is really like a traveller at this stage. She and her family have come to visit us in Ireland, from Israel, to Lithuania, to Ireland. That is a hectic way to spend your summer holidays abroad! I was over the moon about that anyway. I get to see my beloved cousin for another week, before we don't see each other for a whole year. I should start planning on visiting them in Israel sometime soon, that would be cool.

Now I believe I should say something about what exactly this post is about.

My cousin and I decided to have another photoshoot. A location I've had in my mind for a while are the woods that are right next to my house. It's a really cool place with interesting geographical features. In places, it has large emtpy spaces spanning from very low ground to very high ground. All covered by trees.

That same day we bought a shirt which was on sale in Topman and it suited the surroundings extremely well. We were so lucky with that purchase. 

Something that we were very eager to achieve was beautiful bokeh. A blurred background with unfocused circles of light looks so pretty, and it suits 'fashion' shoots like this one (even though it only featured one piece of clothing). I figured out how to get nice bokeh completely by accident. What I did was walk far away from the subject being photographed, and zoom in to achieve a blurred background.

All the photos have been edited with Photoshop Lightroom by me.

Extra photo outside of the woods that has been getting quiet a lot of credit.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures! I have more posts planned out, they will be posted soon.