Revisiting Editing

Two years ago, I took a gig that I was completely unprepared for. I knew absolutely zero about wedding photography, but when two of my friends asked me to take their wedding photographs, I accepted the challenge.

You can read more about the challenges that I faced during the event itself in my blog from the day, and you can read more about the couple in the post that I intend to write later this week, but this is not what this post is about. This post is about how I have changed in the last two years as a photographer - how my process has changed and, more importantly, how my outlook has changed.

About two months back, I decided that I needed to include more of the wedding photography from this first shoot on my website, and I started going through my photographs to try and find some more of the shots to add. And, I am not sure how it happened, but all of the edited photographs were gone with the exception of the few that I had already put up of the wedding. The originals (all 700 odd of them) still lay in a folder on my laptop, taunting me. And, after a long while, I decided that it was time to re-edit the photographs. Without any guidance in terms of how I had originally edited them, I was left to my own devices and, looking back on it now, I think that was the right way to go about the re-editing process. I didn't bother comparing the original edits with the final cuts until everything was done, and I ended up with a complete set of photographs rather than one that feels disjointed. In my mind anyway.

Some of the photographs ended up looking fairly similar with just small changes, but some looked entirely different. So I thought that I would put together some comparisons and see what other people think.

From left to right, this picture shows the original image, the first edit and the second edit. I have focussed on the bride's face throughout, though the second edit does show the full photograph.

Once again, I found that the biggest difference was with the skin tone that came out in a far more flattering manner in my second edit. The white balance was also more appropriate and the whole image felt more natural and less edited than my initial edit.

The picture above shows (going clockwise from the top left) the original photograph, the first edit, an edit with a Lightroom Aged Photo preset and the second edit without any presets. I added the Aged Photo preset to a number of the shots to form a separate collection as I felt that it worked well with the style of the wedding,

I felt that the most noticable changes in the second edit were with the colour of the dress and the skin tones which I felt ended up being more flattering.

This comparison has the same structure as above (original, initial edit, Aged Photo, second edit), and while I feel that the colour in the second edit is better in terms of the dress and the skin tones, it did lead to the sky being washed out more than I would have been happy with.

As with the first picture, this one shows a portion from the original, the first edit and the second edit. In this edit, the dress and the sky show the most significant change. For the second edit I chose to use a graduated filter which I felt brought out the storminess of the clouds providing a nice contrast to the image. But, at the same time, I'm not sure if it worked in the way that I had hoped.

Finally, we come to the images from the ceremony. I had the biggest pain with the ceremony because it was outdoors on a shady day under the cover of trees with no way to get the proper flash lighting that I would have hoped for. So, when it came to editing the ceremony photographs, I was underwhelmed with what came out of it and ended up providing the couple with few photos of the ceremony itself. With the second edit, I adjusted the clarity which I felt worked better for the situation, as did the Aged Photo look (in my mind anyway). So the above picture is a comparison of (from top left going clockwise) the original, the first edit, the second edit and the Aged Photo preset.

So these are just a couple of comparisons that I put together. All in all, though 738 photographs were taken on the day of the event itself, I ended up with 956 photographs including the preset edits, which I thought was a nice haul.

What do you think of the edits? Would you have done anything differently?

In the Mug

I have said it before and I will say it again. There is one group of people that have kept my photography alive this year, and that is the Rhodes Chamber Choir. With recitals happening at least once a term, dinners, parties and more, they are my one consistent job here in Grahamstown.

That’s why, when Elethu came to me with a challenge, I was very keen to take it up. The challenge, if I chose to accept it, was going to be an advertising campaign. The theme? Mugshots. The Choir is looking for new members to start next year and will be holding auditions in early 2013. I put together a simple photoshoot to provide flyers for the auditions.

The photoshoot itself was simple enough – five people arrived to have studio shots taken. There was no particular requirement in terms of makeup or anything along those lines and it was just the average, everyday portrait shoot in my studio that I am perfectly used to. The poses were incredibly simplistic, which made giving instructions very easy – look straight at the camera, don’t smile, act crazy, turn to the left, don’t smile, act crazy, etc.

The difficult part came in after the photos had been taken and it was time to edit them to look more like mugshots. Each person had been holding a black notebook in place of a nameboard, and I had to try and make the notebook look less notebook like and more nameboard like. I tried a few methods – from trying to create a nameboard of my own, to Googling nameboards that I could use, and ended up finding that the simplest way was just to use what I already had. With that in mind, I went about trying to make the light a little harsher, the colours pop a little more, the nameboards stand out a little more and the background look more like a height scale as they use in mugshots.

My first step in trying to process the images and make them more mugshot-like was actually to Google it, but I found no helpful resources. If anyone is interested in how it was done, I am willing to put together a short tutorial. Just let me know in the comments, and if there are enough takers, I will write one up!

The end result? I must say, I was impressed with it myself. And, from the look on Elethu’s face, he didn’t think they were too shabby either! It was my first editing intensive job, and I think I pulled it off despite a few panic attacks in the beginning.

What do you think? How did I do?

Thailand Again

I am still going through and re-editing photos from my trip to Thailand, and today's one comes from our trip to Big Buddha on Koh Samui. It was our first day on the island and it had been an exhausting 14 hour trip to get there, but we were not about to give in and go to sleep! Instead we decided to see one of the sights and do a little shopping while we were at it.

This was the original photograph. The sky was overly cloudy and did not make for a particularly appealing backdrop, drowning out the colour and leaving the image rather bland. The Big Buddha himself was dull and lifeless and not at all the Buddha that I remember him to be.

This is the first edit using Picasa. You can see that the colour was rendered rather well with the backdrop becoming white, which (to be fair) isn't necessarily a bad thing in my  opinion. It was a bad day for photo taking, but the blown out aspect does not extend to the statue itself and works to bring the Statue to the  main point of focus. I do find the two objects on the bottom right of the picture to be distracting as is the pole coming up behind Buddha's head.

And this is the final edit done in Photoshop. The colour is not quite as bright as it was in Picasa, but this is intentional. This is more the colour that the actual statue was rather than the overstated gold that came out from the Picasa image. I was also able to use Photoshop to edit out the parts of the image that I found to be distracting. This was done very simply with a clone tool to clone the white area towards the top of the screen and to the right of the pole by Buddah's head and carefully place the white over the areas that I found to be distracting, leaving a clean image of Buddha over the white background. Had I not been there myself, I  would not have known that this was the skyline. This may make the image seem overly fake or generic, but I feel that considering the circumstances of the weather, it was the best that could be done in this instance.

What do you think?

Post-Processing Fun

I came across the most awesome effect in Photoshop about two weeks ago, and I have been going crazy with it ever since. Making polaramas!

Polaramas are images that have been distorted to turn them into little worlds, as in the images above. These two  polaramas were created from the same image, one just slightly more cropped. You can see the huge difference that it makes to the image itself.

Polaramas are images that have been distorted using Photoshop's Polar Coordinates distortion which turns them in on themselves to create a little world out of  your photo. They are really fun to look at and really simple to make.

So what do you need to make a polarama?

1. First, you need Photoshop. I don't work with other photo editing programmes, so I am not sure if they would have the same option to create this or what it would be called.
2. You need to have a photo that is at least twice as long as it is wide. Panoramic images work well with this,  particularly if they have been taken at 360 degrees as it means that the ends of the photos come together well. You will see in some of the examples that are posted here, the sky was bluer on one end compared to the other or one side of the image had rocks when the other didn't. I still like the look of them, but it isn't as cool as when everything comes together perfectly.
3. You may want to choose an image that is fairly simple around the top and around the bottom. The top area is the area that gets distorted the most, so if it very busy, you will have a very busy area around the top and it won't keep much definition. I find that photos with a sky framing them work well.
4. Five minutes to spare.

Open up your Photoshop and either load your image or (if you are using a panoramic image that has yet to be pieced together) put it together. Note: If you are planning on using a panorama, you will often find that the bigger the image, the longer the polarama takes to generate and the more of your CPU space it uses - don't be scared to save the panorama somewhere and then resize it for the polarama. 

These two polaramas were made using the same panorama of my front garden. On the right is the regular polarama, on the left is the inverted one.

Once you have your picture in Photoshop, the next step is to change the dimensions. I use Photoshop CS5, so please bear with me... I only know how to use this and do not know the steps to change the image size in other versions or other programmes, but it really can't be too difficult! Select Image from the top menu and click on Image Size. You will want the height to be adjusted to the same size as the width. So copy the width and paste it into the height area. You will see that you have a big, distorted square.

Now, here you have a choice. You can either have a regular polarama with the sky on the outskirts of the image, or you can have an inverted polarama where everything else is on the outside and you are looking into the sky. I love them both to be honest and can't decide which method I prefer. You will have to decide that for yourself. If you want a regular polarama, be sure  to rotate your image 180 degrees so that it is upside down. If you want an inverted one, you can leave it as is. See the above for examples of each.

Some polaramas from tongyeong island in South Korea. Note the different colours and aspects of the photos joining in the middle where the two sides  of the image meet. Taking a 360 degree panorama will fix that, as in the cases of the panoramas taken in my garden above.

Now your image is ready. Select Filter from the top menu, mouse over Distort and select Polar Coordinates. It may take awhile to load, particularly if the photo in question is a large one. I know that I had trouble with large images that couldn't handle the distortion and it kept coming up saying that I didn't have enough RAM to complete the job. If that  happens to you, just shrink the image and you should be fine. Make sure that Rectangular to Polar is selected and then click OK. And voila! You have  yourself a polarama.

A panorama of Tongyeong and one of Grahamstown.

Have fun with it! I know I have been :)