If you’re trying to photograph fireworks, here are a few tips.

1. Tripod use is a must! To get the trails of light, you need to leave the shutter open for a long time.  Any camera shake will ruin the sharpness and look.
2. Along the same lines, use a cable release to trigger the shutter.  This will keep your hands off the camera and minimize camera shake.
3. Set your camera to BULB mode so you can leave the shutter open for a long time.  When you start seeing the trails of light go up, hit your cable release and don’t let go until the blasts are done.  You’ll usually have the shutter open from 4 to 20 seconds.
4. Keep your aperture in the f8-f11 range and your ISO at 100-200.  This will ensure you are getting enough light in (fireworks are bright!) and not blowing out the colors at the same time.  Experiment a bit at your location as you might have slight differences.
5. Shoot wide.  Some fireworks will go higher than others.  To ensure you don’t loose them, make sure you’re wider than where they are and you can crop in later.

I had the opportunity to shoot promo pics for a new Austin startup called Patronism (www.patronism.com).

Their business model is a very interesting one, and if it takes off, could change the music industry.  From their web site: “Patronism is a tool for musicians to augment or replace dwindling CD sales with sustaining subscriptions. Our platform allows people who love music to connect with and support the music they love.  Patronage is the oldest way to fund the arts and Patronism is the newest way to do it.”

The idea behind it is that people will support things they love and want to see succeed, such as music.  Radiohead’s last album “In Rainbows” is a good case study that this system can work. Radiohead released this album on the honor system. They gave it away for free and asked people to contribute what they felt the album was worth.  A risky move to be sure, but plenty of people donated and it was a win for Radiohead.

The website www.kickstarter.com uses a similar business model of “crowdfunding” to help small companies get initial startup money.

With Patronism, by becoming a patron of an artist, you then get access to anything they post on the site: all their tracks, behind the scenes stuff, etc.

My feeling is that the key for this to work is to get a lot of people bought off on contributing a little bit.  If so, this thing could take off as being a major source of income for artists who are struggling to make ends meet following their passion.  I also can see this site taking off as it’s own community, a way to discover new artists, and a better way for artists to interact with their fans.

All the best to Patronism and I sure hope their idea takes off.

One of my photos from this shoot was also published on wired.com.  Check out the article: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/05/patronism.

The photos were taken at Speakeasy in downtown Austin.  Initially, the client wanted to get shot with them and a band setting up in the background to really drive home the music vibe.  Unfortunately, the band canceled that day so we improvised, shooting just in front of the stage with the decorative guitars visible as a cue to the tie with the music industry.  I actually prefer this anyway as it is less distracting and still serves to tie them in with the music industry.  I’m a big fan of simplicity in my photography, so removing any distracting elements is a big plus in my book.

My goal was to capture them at their best after all their hair and makeup treatment so they could have something nice to look back on and remember this night by.  Lighting setup was a simple clamshell with a beauty dish up top for key and speedlight through a shoot-thru umbrella below to fill in some of the shadows.  A few touches in Photoshop and these beautiful mothers now have some professional fashion-style headshot photos to post on Facebook : )

All of these lovely women were a pleasure to work with and I am so happy to have had this opportunity to help make their night something to remember.  A special thank you to Maggie for inviting me.

Now, for all the women that were there wanting to see your photos, just click on the following link and it will take you to a gallery where you can save them to your computer or order prints if you’d like to have a framed photo.

http://photos.ryanmillerphoto.com/Clients/Any-Baby-Can/Mothers-Night-Out/

Here’s a few of the images for your enjoyment!

Picked up this little gem from David Ziser’s blog “Digital ProTalk.”

The idea is that you can get a real focused light right where you want it by cranking down the exposure and brightness and then painting it back in with the adjustment brush.

A great way to isolate your subject and direct the viewers attention right where you need it even if you didn’t have the lighting set up that way to begin with.

I did this technique to Jennifer to the left here to really focus the light on her face and belly and add an interesting “S Curve” to the composition.

Click the link below for David Ziser’s blog post including a video to how he did it.

http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/2009/03/wednesday-wonderfulness-technique.html

]]> http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/painting-with-light/feed/ 0 http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/photo-retouching/ http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/photo-retouching/#comments Sat, 25 Dec 2010 18:53:44 +0000 Ryan http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/?p=585 Kayla came to me with a challenge.  Her mother-in-law had a framed image of her daughter in her house and wanted a similar one of Kayla from her wedding.  Kayla snapped a photo of this framed image and sent it to me as a reference for what she wanted.  Luckily, Kayla’s photographer for her wedding took a picture of Kayla in a similar pose.  But that was where the similarities ended.  Kayla’s portrait was in front of a church altar and extremely busy.  There is no separation between her and that background.  The lighting in Kayla’s portrait also has no depth, no direction.  It is just flat.  Another issue with the image is that it is very noisy.  The noise was so bad that it added splotchiness to her skin and was very obvious at larger sizes – not suitable for framing.

If you compare that with the image Kayla’s mother-in-law had framed of her daughter, you see just the opposite.  The background is not distracting.  It is also dark so it contrasts well with her and her wedding dress, drawing your attention where it should be…toward the beautiful bride.  The lighting in this portrait is interesting and classic.  If you notice, it falls nicely on the left side of her face and arm, creating even more contrast separation from the dark background.  This “kiss” of light is so important in making this picture what it is.

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Left to right: (1) The reference image hanging on Kayla’s mother-in-law’s house, (2) Kayla’s portrait at her wedding, (3) My final result.

Removing the background

So how did I do it?  First thing was to get rid of that background.  This really was the hardest part because of these nasty reasons:

• It is so busy!  There is no constant edge I can use to isolate.
• So many of the colors are close to the skin tones and flower tones making it difficult to isolate anything by color.
• The noise in this image makes everything soft when zoomed in, so it is hard to pick apart what is what at a close level.
• You can see through her veil!  How do you cut out something when you can see through it to what is behind it?

Luckily, I had recently purchased OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite which includes a piece of software called Mask Pro that did a lot of the heavy lifting.  This masking software allows you to pick colors you want to keep and colors you want to discard and start painting away your background.  In theory it should even allow me to mask away the colors under her veil! However, due to the challenges listed above it was not all roses and there was a lot of manual masking going on to get the proper cutout.

Once she was removed from the background, there were a few tweaks that needed to be adjusted.  While Mask Pro did a decent job getting rid of the color contamination in the veil, you could still see the red and green horizontal stripes in it.  Some careful cloning in Photoshop did the trick there.

You could also tell she was cut out from a background…the edges were just too sharp.  Luckily using Photoshop CS5′s Refine Edge menu, I was able to fade in the edges of the cutout to more closely resemble what you’d see if it was real.

Creating the background

The new background was created by using Photoshops Render > Clouds feature.  I just rendered some brown clouds on a black background to mimic the way the background looked in the framed image.  To get the center to show up more than the edges and floor, I used a layer mask to gently mask away the clouds where I wanted the black background to show through.

Finishing touches

One of the key aspects of the image we are trying to look like is the direction of the lighting, coming from above and from the left to highlight the face and arm/shoulder of the bride.  The image I had to work with had no such lighting, so I had to fake it.  I used a Photoshop dodging and burning technique for this.  I created two layers with an Overlay blend mode (one for highlights and one for shadows).  You paint white on the highlight layer to add highlight detail and paint black on the shadow layer to add core shadow and shape where there was not previously.  The result is a more three-dimensional look with that beautiful light that just kisses the left side of her form, just like in the framed image.  It looks like a light is actually shining on her from that direction.

I also added some noise to the background layer to make it somewhat noisy like the source image so they didn’t look too dissimilar.  Finally, to help clear up some of the blotchiness in her skin and deal with the excessive noise, I applied some skin smoothing using Photo Tools to even everything out.  The result is a nice soft feel to the photo that removes some of the noise and gives her skin a nice glowing effect.

Although this particular retouch took about 6 hours, I am very pleased with the outcome and it is now something Kayla’s mother-in-law can frame and hang in their house next to the other photo.

]]> http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/photo-retouching/feed/ 1 http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/the-orton-effect/ http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/the-orton-effect/#comments Sat, 25 Dec 2010 05:16:22 +0000 Ryan http://www.ryanmillerphoto.com/?p=550 This is a neat effect I learned in a still life photo class at UT. The effect mimics an original film technique devloped by Michael Orton where you overlay two overexposed images of an identical scene. One is sharply focused and the other blurry. The end result is a very saturated, soft focus effect which works great for flowers.

To acheive this effect in Photoshop, do the following:

1. Open your image
2. Duplicate the background layer and name it “Sharp”
3. Duplicate the Sharp layer and change the blending mode of Sharp Copy to screen
4. With Sharp Copy selected, right click and select Merge Down
5. Duplicate the Sharp layer and rename layer “Out of Focus”
6. Apply a Gaussian Blur to this out of focus layer. The amount of Gaussian blur will change depending on the image resolution and desired effect. You want it to be blurry enough to hide all detail, but general shapes are still visible.
7. Change the blending mode of the Out of Focus layer to Multiply.
8. Adjust opacity of the Out of Focus layer to taste.

When done subtlely, it can also work well for portraits. I applied this to a picture I took of my friend Isaac and his fiance, but toned down the saturation slightly.

Check out the Orton Flickr Pool here

The photo session itself can be at any location of your choosing or in our home studio.

Your package includes

• Up to 2 hours for the photo shoot either in studio or on location.  Travel within Austin metro area included!
• Online proof gallery to view and select your favorite shots.
• 10 of your selected photographs edited and enhanced with meticulous care in post processing.  You’ll even get multiple “looks” and color treatments to each of your selected images.
• Your own personal online gallery that will remain online for at least one year.  Order prints right from your gallery at any time!
• Free downloads of lower resolution photos to save on your computer and post online (Facebook, etc.)

Prices & Add-ons

• Consult our Price List for pricing details.
• Prints of your selected images are sold separately and can be purchased from your online gallery.
• Photo CD’s with the full resolution images to print yourself are available.
• Custom announcements and wedding invitations: See our Graphic Design section and Contact us for details

Click here for a gallery of engagement/couples shots!

Your kids will never look like they do again today.  Capture these precious years with professional photography!  We can also make custom designed birth announcement cards to show off your new bundle of joy!

The photo session itself can be at any location of your choosing or in our home studio.  For infants it is often best to work in the comfort of your own home.

Your package includes

• Up to 2 hours for the photo shoot either in studio or on location.  Travel within Austin metro area included!
• Online proof gallery to view and select your favorite shots.
• 10 of your selected photographs edited and enhanced with meticulous care in post processing.  You’ll even get multiple “looks” and color treatments to each of your selected images.
• Your own personal online gallery that will remain online for at least one year.  Order prints right from your gallery at any time!
• Free downloads of lower resolution photos to save on your computer and post online (Facebook, etc.)

Prices & Add-ons

• Consult our Price List for pricing details.
• Prints of your selected images are sold separately and can be purchased from your online gallery.
• Photo CD’s with the full resolution images to print yourself are available.
• Custom birth announcements: See our Graphic Design section and Contact us for details

Click here for a gallery of children and infants!