I’m going to change that around and post more often with stories and pictures.

So lately I’ve gotten in the habit of shooting everything around me with my iphone.  I usually fill up my phone and I have to clean it up every month or so just so I won’t have hundreds (or 1,000+) of pictures stored in there.  I’m addicted to no end with the Hipstamatic App. I love it, I have every lens and every film they offer.  I can’t for the life of me remember what most of the lenses do or the film for that matter.  But I have favorite settings that I adore and I tend to stay with the same lens and film for the most part.

The only complaint I have about that APP is that it takes forever and a day to load.  I mean, I could be walking into a forest and a Dragon pops out of nowhere, and before I have a chance to get my phone, slide the slider to turn unlock it, find the app, open it up and load…he’s flown off at the shear boredom of watching the whole ordeal.  Then no one believes me when i say, “You’ll never believe what I just saw right now in the forest!”

If there’s no picture, it didn’t happen…right?

Well due to my picture taking left and right, I’ve posted tons of stuff on my flickr account and today one of my pictures was chosen for pic of the week for Art&Seek.  If you haven’t had a chance to check out what Art&Seek is, I suggest you stop by the site.  It’s pretty cool and keeps you updated with the latest art related stuff happening in DFW.

This is the picture that won:

I ended up ordering a print of this through Hipstamatic. Not too shabby. I ordered others as well, but some just were way too dark from how they looked on my phone.

So anyone have any favorite iPhone photography apps? Do share!

So of course, I was honored when she contacted me to take some ‘pin-up’ style pictures for her.  We toughed it out early in the morning in this Texas heat and got some great shots.

This one being my fav:

Jen, I had a blast taking your great shots! I hope you enjoy them, you look stunning!

As an adult, I still enjoy my time on the Metro even though I its something I use everyday. The novelty hasn’t worn off. I’ve still got my eyes open observing how people walk, talk, interact, and navigate the city. Sometimes I record the more noteworthy events and observations into my journal. I occasionally take pictures as well but it’s hard to stay inconspicuous with a DSLR attached to your face. I don’t like making people feel uncomfortable so I try to limit myself to taking pictures of objects, ads, graffiti, and the trains themselves.

A few weeks back I was trying to take a slow shutter spreed shot of a train as it pulled into the station when I was approached by a Metro police officer. Metro has always had a very photographer friendly policy that basically says you’re aloowed to pictures of more or less anything you want as long as you’re not using any type of lighting equipment or tripod that could cause a trip hazard for other passengers. I knew the rules well based on past experience and so I felt pretty confident when the officer approached.

He started babbling on about “national security” and even alluded to “confiscating my film,” which really amused me since I shoot digital… I responded by explaining what I was doing, why I was doing it, and my awareness of the Metro photography policy. I did so in a friendly but firm tone and that was the end of the conversation. He didn’t apologize but he didn’t throw me out or try to take my “film” either. I saw it as a victory.

But it got me thinking… how many times has this officer, or other Metro officers tried to bully a photographer? How many photographers are aware of their rights?

I’ve heard dozens of stories from other photographers who have been harassed, even threatened for taking pictures in public and it always makes my angry. When did photographers become terrorists? And why is it okay for a soccer mom with a ‘point and shoot’ to snap away without being harassed, but the minute the same woman takes out a DSLR she’s all of a sudden a threat?

It makes no sense to me.

When I took a photojournalism class in the spring semester last year, the professor made a point of passing out a piece of paper detailing the rights of the photographer for all of us to carry around in our camera bags. He said he was sure we’d all need it at various points during the semester… but personally, I thought he was nuts! I couldn’t even imagine a scenario where I might be questioned for taking pictures.

Of course, before the semester ended I wound up being tossed from Union Station on two occasions, once for using a tripod (my fault) and once for being “disrespectful” to a security guard (telling her she was wrong),  I had a seperate Metro incident which led to me becomeing fully aware of their photogrphy policy, and even had a protestor threaten to sue me for taking his picture, which was funny for three reasons: (1) because you can’t sue someone for taking your picture in public, (2) because he was of course trying to draw attention to his cause by protesting and should have glad to have his picture taken, and (3) because I hadn’t actually taken his picture yet!

So I guess my photojournalism professor wasn’t nuts after all. In fact, I’d like to pass on the same paper detailing the rights of the photographer that he gave us. If you’re going to take pictures in public, you will unfortunately need it at some point:

 http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf

And since deciding to enter the world of artificial lighting, that need to learn becomes even more necessary. Unfortunately, despite my good intentions, I’ve really struggled to find the motivation to do so. Between working full time and going to school full time, I keep finding myself searching for excuses just as often as I find myself searching for locations to shoot.

Being the last minute procrastinator that I am, what I really need is deadline… So I’ve decided to start a photo project. 52 weeks, 52 shots utilizing artificial lighting techniques. Thus far I’ve completed the first 2 weeks. As my results improve I’ll share some of my results here on the cadography blog, but you can follow my progress here.

So far this project has been exactly what I needed. If you’re looking for something to spark your creativity and enthusiasm I recommend starting a 52 Project of your own, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, a 365 Project!

We had a shoot earlier this year and it was freezing outside. At one point I was taking Edgar’s pictures and I could “see” him breathing in every shot, so I tell him, “Okay I’m going to need for you to stop breathing and then I’ll tell you when to breathe.” There was a guy smoking outside behind me and he starts cracking up and he said, “Dang!!! SHE JUST TOLD YOU TO STOP BREATHING!”

The good laugh we had warmed us up a bit. Here are some of my favorite shots from Edgar’s shoot.

It didn’t turn out that way… To be totally honest, it was a disaster!

Things started off well enough. I took the requisite shot of all suitcases and bags stuffed into the back of my vehicle… a shot of the clock as we left… a shot of the map we were using to guide us on our trip.

…and then it got dark… we left in the late afternoon/early evening and I had somehow never thought about what kind shots I could take in a dark car. Every few hours we had to stop for gas, but I’m simply not creative enough to make gas pump interesting when its 2 a.m. and I’m drowsy.

In the morning I was looking for a good spot to take a sunrise shot, but my wife was the one driving and she wasn’t as enthusiastic about cooperating as I had hoped. I saw the reason for the trip as a chance to take great pictures, and she saw it as a way to get to Houston to visit her sisters.

Once I finally got the behind the wheel in the daytime I was pretty excited. I made about a dozen attempts at a long exposure shot as my wife drifted off to sleep. The results were mixed but I didn’t care. I was excited that with her asleep it was my chance to take detours and let my camera lead the way

…and that is when I discovered my fatal error. I started thinking about battery power and where I would recharge once we arrived in Houston, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had left my battery charger at home! [gulp]

As enthusiastic as I was about documenting the road trip, I knew that I had a ton of family shots to take once we arrived in Texas, and with no charger and no spare batteries, I had to severely limit how many more shots I could take of the road trip.

So to summarize, the bulk of the trip up until that point had taken place at night, my co-pilot on the trip was uncooperative, and by the time I got the chance to take as many shots as I wanted, I had a battery crisis… not exactly the way I had planned it.

I only took a couple more shots the rest of the way.

On the brightside, a major part of improving as a photographer is learning from your mistakes, and I certainly didn’t lack for opportunity to learn! So here is the list I’ve put together of things to keep in mind for the next chance I get at documenting a road trip:

1. Make sure everyone else on the trip understands that my need to take photographer trumps their need to get to the destination in a timely fashion.

2. Plan the departure for a time that will maximize the amount of opportune time to take photographs.

3. Take a look at other people’s road trip work to steal ideas get inspired and creative.

4. Never stop for any reason in Mississippi.

5. Pack lots of batteries and a charger!

The perfect gift to show someone you love how much they mean to you. Whether it’s for you and your better half, you and your sibling, your two kids or your parents, be sure you don’t miss out on this special!  Gift certificates are also available, read more info below.

Session
$75.00 for a 2 person, 30-45 minute shoot.  Included with your session is a password protected gallery with 14 proofs for you to share with your family and friends, 2 – 5×7 prints, and 8 wallets.

Location
The location of your session is completely up to you, but must be within a 25 mile radius of Downtown Dallas ($25.00 extra if it outside of this radius).  Since Claudia is a natural light photographer, she needs good natural light to create beautiful portraits.  For outdoor sessions, open shade is very important as you don’t want you or your little ones squinting because of the bright sun.  Please remember when planning a session outdoors, early mornings or late evenings are the best time for optimal lighting. We do have a couple of locations where we like to shoot, please let us know if you need help with any ideas.

Gift Certificates
Gift Certificates can be purchased as well and have to be used by September 26, 2010.

Call us at (214) 864-4043 or email us at cad@cadography.com for more information!

This entry in particular will explain more on textures and how I personally use them in my photography.  How I use them in my portraiture is just an example, you’ll find many photog’s use it differently in their photography.

For this specific tutorial I’m using Photoshop CS4 on a Mac. The shortcuts might be different on a PC. I’m going to explain this as if you know your way around Photoshop, if you have any questions email me or leave a comment and I can explain more thoroughly.

Here is the before and after:

First thing I did was do my usual retouching and color correcting. So then I was left with this:

I didn’t want the flowers in the background so I took the Clone Stamp Tool and lowered the hardness on the brush (right click when you have the tool selected and it’ll bring up a menu to adjust the Master Diameter and Hardness) and just cloned the wall all around. After removing the flowers, my background looked like this:

I then added a vignette around the picture. I did it by using an action. Here’s a link to a Vignette action you can download for free It works really well and it has instructions on how to use it.

As you can probably tell by the layer masks on the side, i edited to have less vignette on one side and more on the other. In fact, I had two different vignette levels. Just play with it until it feels right.

The trick to layer masks is using a brush with low hardness. The button for a layer mask is at the bottom of the layers palette, it’s the icon that’s a rectangle with a circle inside.

The way it works is, everything behind the mask is not visible and everything else is visible. That’s basically how layer masks work except that you choose where the mask is and how opaque it is. That’s why it comes in really handy with photoshop. Learning layer masks will give you so much creativity! Here’s a quick tutorial on youtube on Layer Masks.

After that, I putt both of the vignette layers in a group (or a folder) so they would be together. That’s optional, I just like to keep things together and organized.

I then opened another folder and added the following texture:

Click here to download texture.

I played with different textures, and this is the one that I liked the best.

I opened my texture and selected it and copied (ctrl+c). Then I went into the PSD file I was working on and pasted the texture (ctrl+v) inside the group (folder) I created. Don’t panic if it’s not in place, just select the layer with the texture and use the transform tool (ctrl+t) to reshape it, this will allow you to make the file smaller or bigger and move it around. Make sure the texture fills up the picture.

The trick to making it blend in with the photo is changing the blend mode.

For this pictures I made the blending mode an overlay with a 33% opacity.

I added a layer mask to the folder and I filled the mask with black using a normal sized brush my subject so the texture wouldn’t be on her. You can see the layer mask beside the folder where only her silhouette shows in black. The main reason I put the texture in a folder is because sometimes you want to add more than one texture. Instead of doing a layer mask for each texture, just dump them in a folder, do one layer mask on the folder, and wallah!

For example, I want to add this texture as well to give more of an umph:

Click here to download this texture.

All I would do would be open my texture up in Photoshop, select all, copy, go to my file and paste it into the folder where the other texture is located. Then I change the blending modes and opacity. (Blending mode for this I changed to soft light and opacity to 77%.)

That is what a finished product with two textures looks like. It can definitely change a photo completely!

People ask me all the time where I get my textures. There are people that sell pictures of textures but that can get expensive. Google here is your friend. There are tons of free textures on flickr that people actually do give away. Also, remember, you own a camera as well, start taking pictures of textures and collecting them in a separate folder. That’s what I’ve been doing for a long while and I have so many textures it’s sometimes hard to pin point to one I want to use.

I hope this tutorial was helpful. The more you practice, the easier it will get, so just keep at it!

But a few weeks back I was talking with  cad about making some photography related resolutions for 2010, and it became I had 3 resolutions come to my mind immediately.

#1 Post Processing! I can already do a few basic things and I’m not a fan of the over-processed look, but I really have a lot of room for improvement in this area… I have two simple solutions for my problem though. The first is taking a photoshop class over the summer semester at a community college, and the second option (though it would involve a bit of travel) is kidnapping cad and holding her hostage in a room until she passed all her skills along to me! We’ll see how it turns out.

#2 Strobes! As someone still stuck at the beginner level, I find any artificial light techniques to be more than a little intimidating. To be perfectly honest, I still screw up ambient light on a regular basis… But, everyday I keep seeing more and more wonderful results out there from newbie photogs just like me who are using the cheapest and most basic lighting techniques available.

So its time for me to throw my hat in the ring… Between the super affordable prices on basic equipment and the ever ending sea of advice out there from the strobist community, I have simply run out of excuses!

#3 No more lenses! Santa came through and hooked me up with a brand new Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM lens for xmas. It was sad to let go of my beloved “nifty-fifty” but how could I possibly turn my nose up at Old St. Nick’s offer for such a remarkable piece of glass?

Now I’m left with is a collection of lenses that leave no excuses for me to fail… There has been too much money and not enough time on improving my craft. As much as I love being a gear head when it comes to each and every lens than can be slapped on a Canon camera body, I need to force myself to work with what I’ve already got. So no more new lenses for me in 2010!!!!!!

…okay, I might be thinking about getting a 70-200 lens, but after that, I’m seriously done!