Go Shoot With Digital

Archive for the ‘Styles’ Category

Recently, actually while I was at Photoshop World, Adobe said that we were now allowed to say that we were beta testing Photoshop CS5, and we could start showing some of the images that we had processed. So, I have been going back through some of my work, and picking out some of the items that I thought were good, and showed how CS5 was able to improve your artistry. This image was shot a few hours after it had stopped raining, and the sun had come out. It was mid day, so the sun was high in the sky. The picture was taken with my e520 ƒ6.3, 1/125 sec, and ISO 200, with the lens at 14mm.  The image on the left is the original image, the one on the right is after working with it in CS5.

One of the things that I want to accomplish in the coming months/years, is to work on the skills required for “commercial” photography.  Whether that be artistic in nature, or in more of a “usable” vain.  These photos fall into the more usable category.  I recently made a pot of chili, so I thought I would use it as a subject in some photos.  Since it was kind of a last minute thought, I did not go out and buy special dishes, or nice (yet generic) place mats.  I also do not have a lot of equipment yet, so these were taken with my FL-50R on the camera with the diffuser and omni bounce in place.

The settings here were ƒ 8.0 at 1/50^th.  The angle was just a little off from straight down, and the flash was tilted one notch up so that it was not going straight into the bowl, but pointing more over the bowl edge.  Still I did get a little bit of flash glare on the back edge of the bowl, but I do think that I did still get some good shadowing and texture of the chili and cheese.

Here, I was still at ƒ 8.0, but the speed was bumped up to 1/60^th.  I was going for more of a side view of the bowl, so you just get the top of the chili and cheese as it clears the top edge of the bowl.  Again the flash was still angled just slightly up to avoid getting a big glare on the side of the bowl.  It also helped to create the shadow line from the bowl’s lip onto the side.