Category: learning

Warping swing

I usually don’t do such type of image editing, since in 99% of cases the result is somewhere between cheesy and bad, but once in a blue moon one can play.

warping swing


Ball and shadows

Just experimenting with a light source.

ball and shadows


Coloring exercise

A simple play with adding some colors to an old picture.

coloring exercise


Editing a bit of drama

Not having anything planned, I didn’t carry a tripod with me, so here is how I made it: the singe RAW (.cr2) image opened with UFRaw (the GIMP plugin version) and saved as 3 JPEGs: -1, 0 and +1 exposure. JPEGs imported in Luminance HDR and assembled as not a very obvious HDR, edit levels for more drama and export as one JPEG. Some final tweaks with GIMP and the result is this.

editing a bit of drama

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Making of Parenting: Xmas

For those who liked my Xmas picture in the Parenting series, I am breaking some of its magic with a ‘making of’: tripod, remote trigger, multiple shots, loaded as layers, masks.

making of

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My worst

I took part in a challenge: create the worst photo I am able to, is a test of creativity where you have to create a picture containing as many mistakes as you can. Even if it may appear easy, is not at all: first you have to take care, if one mistake is too big, it will overpower the others, and they won’t be noticed any more. Second, some mistakes may cancel each over. Lastly, abuse of mistakes shouldn’t get into art territory.
Now I challenge my readers: look at the picture and try to identify as many mistakes as you can (maybe you find even some which are not intentional :p)

my worst

Bonus: here’s a video making of for the picture, so you can understand the extra difficulty when the subject is moving so fast and so unstable.

PS: also an extra-difficulty was having such a cute subject, which may make some people appreciate the picture even if it is bad.

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Photo editing tutorials

Lately I wrote on my general blog a couple of photo editing tutorials, both of them are targeted at GIMP, since this is what I use on my day to day work. Of course, the principles are general and can be applied to other similar tools.

The first one is about watermark removal on photos submitted to Wikipedia, this is something perfectly legal, since those pictures are submitter under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.

watermark removal

The second tutorials refers to creating customs grids to be used on photo editing but also in graphic and layout design.

grids

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Lens uses protection. It is super effective

Saturday we had snow (if the time allows, I will post some pictures later today). Sunday it got a bit warmer and we had sleet, a lot of the snow melted. Then last night was freezing cold. As a result, today morning everything was covered with a layer of shiny, slippery ice.

It happens and it happened to me: I slipped on the ice and felt directly on my butt. No problem, it is fat enough, I got no damage, but my photo backpack was obviously on my back. With one camera and an extra lens inside. Both took a frontal hit. Net result: the protection/UV filters are broken in tiny pieces, the real glass looks intact. After a frugal testing, the lenses and camera seems to be in working condition.

All the thanks to the photographer who told me once how never is a bad idea to have a cheap class in front of your expensive glass, you don’t know when the disaster will hit, as in my case ~50€ protected ~2000€ worth of equipment.

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Kissing Howto

In the past I poster how-tos and tutorials, but none of them is like this one. Enjoy. And learn!

kissing howto

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Life in Black and White, or How To Make It Simple

Felt sometime the life is to complex, to many details and aspects making you hard to take a decision? Time me teach a lesson: let’s start with whatever photo (this particular one is about the fight of good and evil, noble Jedis and scary villains with some cutesy in between, but to each his own) and open it in your favorite image editor (I opening it with GIMP, since it is my favorite):


You know how they say the life is about shades of gray? Let’s do that, trying to simplify it:

I don’t know what you think, but for me it seems still complex:

So the next step is to apply another tool, called Thresohld:

This is a much simpler life, no shades, only black and white:

Adjusting a couple of sliders we can move it more to the lightness:

Or to the darkness, according to each one’s taste and view of life:

See now, the outlook of the life around is so much clearer so a decision making become so much easier! Do it and do not look back. Easy solution to hard problems.

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More books / Learning

These days I don’t do many photos (my main lens is still broken at the repair shop, I got shafted by some and generally feel depressed) so instead I should do something, like learning… always is a good time to learn.
The past week I was showing my photos to someone and she commented about the make-up being bad… to my defence I acknowledged my complete lack of experience in the area (which I know is a bad thing) so she suggested me to take a course. Until that opportunity arrives, I figured is a good idea to buy some books and learn from them, so there are my book, eagerly awaiting to be read:

books

BTW, thumbs up for Amazon: books ordered Friday, arrived the next Wednesday witht he simplest shipping option, this is good service.

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Enhancing her

Is arrogant to pretend you enhance the model, but after shooting you have to enhance the photos a bit, even if you just smooth the skin, sharpen the eyes and mouth and adjust the colors. Being quite a FLOSS zealot, I do that with GIMP:

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Making-of: Black versus White

My video camera is a toy, its battery lasts only a short while, so it wasn’t possible to record the entire photo session and as a result the “making of” covers only a small part of it and not necessarily the best moments. Also, the camera was all by itself, on a small tripod, without anybody controlling it.

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Exposure basics in digital photography

Another workshop, another article, this time with basics about exposure and some extra pompously called painting with light. Read, learn, enjoy.

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Light and digital photography

After the photography workshop a few days ago, I felt like not wasting the things I talked about, so I sat down for a while and put in in writing, for an introductory article about light in digital photography, covering the relation from time of the fay and outdoor photography, some words about flashes and white balance.

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