I’ve been neglectful of everything else, which happens whenever something comes into my life that spurs creativity.

Recently I got two new film cameras.  A medium format Pentax 6×7 and a large format (4×5) Speed Graphic.

A lot is said about film vs. digital.  I like both.
I do feel like they are sometimes two different mediums.
Most of the time I feel like film is much easier ~ there’s very little post-processing to be done.

And now that I can develop my black and white film at home, it’s almost as fast as digital
(meaning I don’t have to wait days to see the results).

So, anyways, I will get back to answering questions and finalizing an action/preset set very soon, I promise!

What I want to create is a set of somewhat basic actions/presets people can use mainly on portraits.

It’s hard because I shoot a certain way and tend to do the same things over and over.

So help me!  Send me SOOC images, preferably RAW, that you would want to use an action/preset on, and if you can, link to a picture of mine (or really anyone’s) that you would like it to sort of look like, or give me an idea of what your ideal outcome for the picture would be.

Please send the images to flimmerings at gmail dot com (I don’t put the actual address because I don’t want a ton of spam).

Thank you!!

(As an incentive, those that send an image will get at least one free action in return).

I’m very excited to announce my exhibition with Soulcatcher Studio!

It’s been in the works for a while now, but was interrupted when we thought we were moving to Australia.  One positive outcome of not moving was being able to get this going again.

This is the image SOOC:

This as after ACR:

These are the settings in ACR (Grayscale conversion was auto):

In Photoshop I added a black to white Gradient Map Adjustment Layer set to softlight and took the opacity down to 65%.

And that’s it!

Another black and white someone wondered about was this:

This is SOOC:

This is after ACR:

These were the settings (I think the conversion was auto):

In Photoshop I used Leah’s “Standard Fudge” action from the Lilyblue “Chocolate” action set and cropped.

And that’s it!

For some reason I can’t find the original RAW file (I must have moved it somewhere “safe”) so I picked one that was similar and tried to recreate the steps.

This is SOOC (with a crop in ACR):

This is after I’m done in ACR:

(In ACR I changed the Temperature from 5100 to 5150 and the Tint from -6 to -13 and I took the exposure slider down to -.50)

Once in Photoshop I:

1) I ran my “Light Brown Sugar” action and turned of the “vibrance” & ” tones” layers.

a) What that leaves is a “punch” layer, which involves:

~ going to the Channel palette, clicking on the green channel, going up to Select and choosing All, and then going to Edit, Copy
~ going back to the Layer palette, making a new layer, and pasting a copy of the green channel
~ set that layer to luminosity
~ run an “unsharp mask” filter on it, high on the radius and low on the amount
~ take the opacity of the layer down, in this case it’s at 50% (on this picture I took it down to 25%)

b) and a “drama” layer, which is:

~ a hue/saturation adjustment layer, with the colorize box checked
~ set to soft light
~ opacity taken down, in this case it’s at 30%

c) and a “darken” layer, which is a levels adjustment layer with nothing done to it, set to multiply, with the opacity taken down to 20%

The punch layer desaturates and adds contrast.  The drama layer adds more contrast.  The darken layer, well, darkens it all a bit 

2) Flattened the image

3) Added a levels adjustment layer with nothing done to it, set it to softlight and took the opacity down to 10% (to add more contrast)

4) Added a gradient map adjustment layer, set black to white, and took the opacity down to 6% (to desaturate just a bit)

5) Added a curves adjustment level with the red channel bumped up a bit (clicked in the middle and took the output to 132 and the input to 126) and the blue channel with a very slight reverse S curve (pinned down the bottom and the middle and then pulled down the top half to output 171 input 177) and then took the opacity of that layer down to 35%

6) Made a duplicate copy of the background, ran a highpass filter set at 2.0, and set the layer to vivid light, to sharpen

7) Cropped a bit more

and this is the final product:

This is the original picture

1) Create a duplicate copy of the picture

2) Go to Filter, Blur, Radial Blur
Put the amount on 1 and choose “spin” as the method
Move the blur center over the area you want in focus (this takes a bit of guess work)
Choose “okay”

3) Go to Edit, Fade Radial Blur

and take the opacity down a bit (here I chose 77%)

This is the final result.  You can add a layer mask and erase bits of the blur if you want, or take the opacity of the layer down if it’s still too strong.

Here’s an example of how I do it.

Above is the image as shot.

This is the image after I crop and clone out rocks and junk that bug me

This is the texture picture I used ~ I opened it up and then dragged it onto the the beach image.

I then set the texture layer to “multiply”

This is how it looked.  I decided it was too dark so I added a curve adjustment layer and pulled
it up in the middle to lighten the whole picture.  I also added a gradient map adjustment layer
at 27% opacity to desaturate it a bit.

And this is my final product.

Trying to get back into the swing of things.

My photography seems to have ebbs and flows, and I’m just coming out of an ebb.  Things not quite flowing yet, but at least I feel like picking up the camera again.

We took the kids down to the beach, to ride bikes and run around.  Anne saw the mud and went straight for it.

Someone commented on Flickr, something about loving what I do.  And it made me think about it a bit.  I really don’t feel like I do anything.  My kid, dressed in what she wanted to wear, ran out into a giant mudflat near sunset.  And I brought my camera.  I didn’t pose her, didn’t dress her, didn’t give any direction (except I asked her to chase the birds, which she refused to do).

I happen to own a very good camera (I do think it matters) and some very good lenses (which also matters) and I have cute kids (if I do say so myself).  I know how to use my camera and how to compose a shot.   But really, there’s not a lot of thought or planning that goes into it on my end.  I think my kids deserve the credit for the pictures I take.

Sure, some days I have an idea in mind and I work to “create” something.  But 95% of the time, I’m just a quiet observer.  I don’t know if I should call it luck, or what, but most days I feel very blessed.

I also don’t mind a little mud in the car

This is from the newest issue of Nikon World ~ I love the picture they chose.