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.

Portraits, Before and After look.

All these photos can be found on Flickr here.

In this post I'd like to show some before and after shots of a few portraits that I took recently. I decided to do this because the photos that I end up with after post-production are usually so drastically different to what they were originally, mainly because I like being a perfectionist.

The first photo is a self-portrait that I took in my bedroom. Originally it was supposed to be a composite photo with many hands (like the ones here), but following the negative feedback I received, I decided to just stick with the first photo. 

Here you can see the before (left) and after editing (right). For this I used Photoshop and Lightroom. Fixed some blemishes and other small annoyances in Photoshop and adjusted the colours, contrast, hues etc. in Lightroom. This photo would actually look very nice in B&W but I decided to keep the colours because I like them so much, a common B&W photo would be slightly boring. Here's the end-product:

The second photo I want to show you guys is a quick and unplanned portrait of my friend. On the same day we took a composite make-up photo, and since at the end of that shoot she had her full make-up done, we decided to have a small photo shoot. I quickly adjusted the scene as best I could and started taking some photos. Honestly, most of them didn't work at all, but this one was good enough to publish!

I thought the original (left) actually looks pretty good on its own, but I tried going for this colour scheme, it suited the surroundings. All edited in Lightroom, adjusted perspective to make the model look taller, and edited all the colours etc. Here's the after:

Follow my new Flickr account here, where you can see all my photos that I take in high quality.

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!

Surfing Session

We were blessed with a day of Summery weather in the middle of Autumn. Instinctively, Mum and I decided to go out for a session of surfing, I took my waterproof camera with me, hoping to get some nice pictures.

The following images are highly edited because the shots straight from the camera are no good and I felt like going for a vintage look would suit.

 

London (double) exposed.

A few weeks ago I visited London, and I couldn't miss this opportunity to take pictures of it! I took my Smena with me because it is very light, and as you might know, weight is an issue when you fly with Ryanair.

I bought two rolls of film, the cheapest colour and a true black and white (the B&W caused me hassle later on). I was surprised with the colours that the colour film produced, they were vivid and saturated, but they turned weird in the dark, and the photo was fairly grainy. The real black and white was such an annoyance. I had to get it developed back in Cork, but it turns out that they have to send it off to some lady in another city, and that raises the costs. In the end I finally got it for free because of a minuscule mishap on the shops side.

Anyway, I fell in love with London, its diverse culture and size, transport system and numerous shops and shopping centres made me dizzy with excitement! Even though hay fever caused me to have a headache for most of the time, I tried my best to enjoy every little bit of it while I could. I must return.

Enjoy my photos.