PhotoTale

Why applying high contrast on flat photograph?

2010-08-23T11:44:00.001+12:00

Most telephoto shooting in cloudy and hazy conditions tends to result in flat expression. The above photograph provides a flat expression due to inappropriate lighting condition that day, hence creating a depth less image. Usually, most photographers will just discard the photograph and move on. But what if you can revitalise the flat photograph into life by giving a high contrast style which can look like an oil painting? This is what I have done to it below.

By applying the “Clear” picture style, I have emphasized the contrast, and expressed the subject clearly and provided a three-dimensional effect on top of it. It recreated the photograph like an oil painting, thus adding the warm feeling to captivate the viewer with a three-dimensional effect of you being actually standing there.

Of course, to all my valued readers out there, you can download the “Clear” picture style from the link here and try it out yourself. The trick is to keep on experimenting with your photograph to find the feel. Isn't it romantic to sit under a large tree on top of Mount Wellington, Auckland? ;op

How to stitch photos to create your own panorama photo using Photoshop

2010-08-13T18:13:00.005+12:00

Ever wanted to remember the view of a particular location? Well, most of us always took photograph of what we focus on and forgot the environment that we are in. That is why panorama photograph is applied to capture the environment. I have actually included some panorama photographs for everyone to have a feel of why it is good to know how to stitch photographs together for a panorama photograph.

Personally, I utilises Photoshop CS4 and took a few practise lessons by myself on how to prepare my photographs for a stitching. Beside beaches, mountains and waterfalls, you cannot possibly capture the entire volcano crater within a photograph from the top of the mountain. Enjoy the view of a volcano crater with the city in the background below from Mount Eden, Auckland.

To begin in capturing your photographs for stitching a panorama photograph, this is how you begin with,

1.) Ensure you hold your DSLR camera tightly and firmly.

2.) Make sure you are perfectly level with every photograph you take from left to right.

3.) Set your DSLR camera to manual setting so that you are getting constant lighting.

4.) Position your camera in a portrait shot position and take your first left photograph.

5.) Rotates slightly right with at least 15% of overlapping photograph image from your left photograph.

6.) Repeat doing step 4 until you decided that it is long enough.

Alright, the photograph above is the longest photograph that I have recently stitched together. Using those photographs that you have taken, you can proceed with on how to stitch the photographs using Photoshop and I have listed them below. If you need more detail help on using Photomerge, kindly follow this link to Adobe. To be honest, I love using Photoshop to do this, because it is very forgiving and easy to use.

Steps to follow on using Photoshop

1.Do one of the following:

■Choose File > Automate > Photomerge.

■In Adobe® Bridge CS4, choose Tools > Photoshop > Photomerge from the Bridge menu bar. Skip to step 5.

Note: In Bridge, choosing the Photomerge command uses all images currently displayed in Bridge. If you only want specific images used, select them before choosing the Photomerge command.

2.Under Source Files in the Photomerge dialog box, choose one of the following from the Use menu:

Files - Generates the Photomerge composition using individual files.

Folders - Uses all the images stored in a folder to create the Photomerge composition.

3.Specify which images to use by doing one of the following:

■To select image files or a folder of images, click the Browse button and navigate to the files or folder.

■To use the images currently open in Photoshop, click Add Open Files.

■To remove images from the Source File list, select the file and click the Remove button.

4.Select a Layout option:

For a video that shows the effect of each Layout option, see www.layersmagazine.com/photoshop-cs4-photomerge.html.

Auto - Photoshop analyzes the source images and applies either a Perspective, Cylindrical, and Spherical layout, depending on which produces a better photomerge.

Perspective - Creates a consistent composition by designating one of the source images (by default, the middle image) as the reference image. The other images are then transformed (repositioned, stretched or skewed as necessary) so that overlapping content across layers is matched.

Cylindrical - Reduces the “bow‑tie” distortion that can occur with the Perspective layout by displaying individual images as on an unfolded cylinder. Overlapping content across files is still matched. The reference image is placed at the center. Best suited for creating wide panoramas.

5.Select any of the following options:

Blend Images Together - Finds the optimal borders between the images and create seams based on those borders, and to color match the images. With Blend Images Together turned off, a simple rectangular blend is performed. This may be preferable if you intend to retouch the blending masks by hand.

Vignette Removal - Removes and performs exposure compensation in images that have darkened edges caused by lens flaws or improper lens shading.

Geometric Distortion Correction - Compensates for barrel, pincushion, or fisheye distortion.

6.Click OK.

Photoshop creates one multi‑layer image from the source images, adding layer masks as needed to create optimal blending where the images overlap. You can edit the layer masks or add adjustment layers to further fine tune the different areas of the panorama.

You might also want:

Omaha Beach

2010-07-27T13:32:00.001+12:00

Omaha is currently a striving town. It has an excellent beach that is catering hundreds of aucklanders each weekend. Don’t get confuse with the D-day landing zone in France, this is the southern hemisphere Omaha beach on the north island of New Zealand. It is a rural escape and a beach paradise for northern aucklanders. No wonder, everyone is invading this Omaha Beach now. Currently, it is a R-day or the Rich-day landing zone in New Zealand for the rich.

What is so fascinating about the Omaha beach? It is the calm sea, beautiful scenery and beach that everyone is so eager to build their holiday baches around. Well, believe it or not. You can click on the top image above to enlarge the panorama view of the beach to have a feel of the surrounding.

Is this a lifestyle or luxury? Most of the baches are usually over a million and the kiwis are stretching their banks to enjoy life. Of course, what’s your answer? ;o)

To find out more about Omaha in New Zealand check out the link here (http://www.omahabeach.co.nz/). As usual, I will also provide the map location of the area below.

You might also want:

Viewing the brightest star in the universe

2010-07-10T18:02:00.004+12:00

Sorry, I have been busy lately. I will always keep this blog going with photographs and some photography related articles. I just have to juggle my time between everything. Oh, oh. Do you love the sun? I do miss the sun alot during the winter season and this is the photo on my desktop to cheer my day.

The warm orange and yellow colour emitting from the sun is really a fabulous sight. Of course, I will not advise anyone to stare at the sun. Staring at the sun will cause permanent blindness and it is not worth it. The world is too beautiful for anyone to be blind, but you can certainly enjoy the beauty of the sun by taking a photograph of it.

How to take a photograph of the sun with the safety for eye?

1.) Do not view the sun through the camera view finder
2.) Switch on your camera LED monitor
3.) View the live image of the sun on the camera LED monitor
4.) Adjust your camera and snap
5.) Review the photograph on the LED monitor because occasionally you might get sun spot on the photograph due to the UV filter and wide or telephoto lenses. If you found any, try to retake them again by adjusting your angle and alignment towards the sun.

Well, if you got all the correct steps; right. You will get a star light pattern on the sun. You can also increase the ISO to get a longer star light burst.

Share your favourite scenic pictures of New Zealand and be in to win

2010-06-26T14:58:00.001+12:00

Great! There is a photography competition in New Zealand posted on NZHerald, but what is the catch for photographers? You need to either be a New Zealand resident or citizen in order to participate in it. At least that is the first criteria that I noticed before reading the rest of the terms and conditions. If anyone is more interested to read on their terms and conditions, the link is attached here (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/promotions/news/article.cfm?c_id=500848&objectid=10653870).

Hold on!!! I just noticed the second bullet of the terms and conditions. As a photographer, you own the copyrights of your work but the promoter has the rights to freely use your work in its online and print publications? It means that if I submitted my work for this competition, I am giving the promoter the publishing rights to the submitted photograph. Even if I am not selected to be the winner or runners-up to get any of the prizes, I might still see my photograph used in their advertisements for free.

Anyway, I’m going to try to submit a few photographs just for fun. Since I am not a professional photographer, I am not excluded from their competition stated in the third bullet of the terms and conditions. I have selected the two photographs below to try out, what do you think?

The Peaceful Bay

The Leafless July

I know, it is still a bit flat and uninteresting piece of photographs and I can’t really find any models that would oblige to be photographed and published for a competition. Tough! Beside that, what does July in New Zealand has to offer? Rain, rain and more rain. Oh well, let see how it goes. I will update the post when I have more. Feel free to comment. Cheers.

Reference(s):

NZHerald. (n.d.). Share your favourite scenic pictures of New Zealand and be in to win. Retrieved on June 22, 2010 from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/promotions/news/article.cfm?c_id=500848&objectid=10653649

You might also want:

Driving in Fog

2010-06-18T19:10:00.000+12:00

Driving in and through the fog is a common task for every motorists in New Zealand, especially during the winter season. Well, this is probably the main reason why I have slowed down my blogging. Getting a good photo in a foggy landscape when you can hardly see a distance away is challenging. At least it is very challenging for me to create any artistic or interesting topic for my readers.

In order to show you how devastating the fog is, I have used the monochrome picture style to cancel the colors into a black and white photograph above for better analysis of the fog. It is clear that monochrome picture style does not help much except producing a nostalgia photograph impression.

Can you see the vehicle in front of us on the photograph above? Probably, it is not very clear for you and neither to us when we are travelling along the road that day especially when there isn’t any tail light. Oh, I suppose we could have also missed some cows and sheep mating out there under a curtain of fog.

In order to be safe than sorry, this is how to drive safely in a foggy road condition?

1.) Switch on your headlight
2.) Do not switch the headlight to high beam
3.) Ensure to drive with safe following distance by using 4 seconds rule
4.) Brake carefully and slowly in wet road condition
5.) Reduce speed when necessary
6.) Switch on air condition to prevent fog up on windows

After quite a distance of driving, this is what happens after climbing up the hill and steering away from the fog. Being on the top of the hill, you can see the thick fog covering the valley for hundreds of miles away and I simply took the chance to take a photograph of it to showcase the natural wonder of a thick fog that most would not have seen it here.

Of course, you will certainly notice that the photograph above is a little flat and dull. In order to improve the landscape and produce a better 3 dimensional effects on the photograph, I have applied a Clear Landscape picture style created by Koyama on to the photograph below. Feel free to comment on what you think about the photograph below in comparison of the original photograph above.

For those who would like to download the picture style and try it on their Canon EOS, please download using the link provided below.

Download the Clear Landscape Picture Style created by Koyama

Well, follow me and be my followers for any new updates on the picture styles. That's all, folks.

You might also want:

Merging Portrait and Landscape

2010-06-13T16:26:00.000+12:00

Let’s just say that you found very beautiful scenery and you decided to take a photograph of it. How many of us have found that our scenery shot is plain and flat? Well, most of us did. Allow me to demonstrate it to you with the photograph above, taken yesterday under the usual New Zealand’s "Rain, rain, go away" scenario of extreme winter weather in Auckland region.

What do you think of the photograph above? That’s the Orewa beach in New Zealand. It is a very magnificent beach view from the hill, but the photograph turns out to flat and boring. How can we improve a landscape photograph? Well, by merging both the portrait and landscape photography technique in having a subject within the frame can creates a much depth full photograph. And this is what happens when you have a subject within a landscape photograph below.

Yes, my good buddy and his wife have done a very great contribution to improve those landscape photographs above. Look at the lovely outcome and romantic impression coming out of the photograph. Don’t you feel that the landscape scenery is no longer a flat and boring background?

Of course, we did more than staying on the hill and looking out at the beach. The photograph above is another example on how to make high contrast waterfall scenery to be more interesting. As you can see, my good buddy took off his leather jacket to pose in color because the place is dark and surrounded by thick trees. I had to open up the aperture and adjust to a high ISO to avoid using the flash for the photograph to be in their most truthful colors.

Since my buddy drove us there with his new Mitsubishi station wagon, how can I decline him with some photographs of his beloved mistress which slaved her way to get us to Orewa beach? Yup, the photograph below with your car is especially dedicated to you for giving us a road trip out of the city dwelling area.

Oh for all my valued canon photographer readers, I have also decided to apply the Japanese magazine style on the photograph above. It gives you a feeling that the photograph is taken for a car magazine in Japan. Is it the “Tokyo Drift”? Not. Probably, we should call it NZ Drift? Not. That’s all folks. Feel free to comment on what you think about the Japanese Picture Style that is created by PhotoTale.

For those who would like to download the picture style and try it on their Canon EOS, please download using the link provided below.

Download the Japanese Picture Style created by PhotoTale

Well, follow me and be my followers for any new updates on the picture styles. That's all, folks.

You might also want:

Praying Mantis Model

2010-06-07T15:54:00.001+12:00

Oh guys, if you have been following my blog, you should discovered that this is my second praying mantis blog post. Some may ask on why I do a second praying mantis blog post again. The reason is simple. This wild praying mantis came back to me for a second photo shooting session and what do all good photographers out there would usually do? We will never say no to a keen model.

Of course, the praying mantis had grown and slightly mature than the first photo shooting. Besides that, the color is greener and the sense of confident is stronger. Well, for those who do not feel that way, you can check those old photographs on my previous blog post (Mantodea, Praying Mantis (Family of Mantidae)).

Yes, it will be boring if you just view the recent praying mantis photographs. Because the photograph is already showing vivid green, I decide to apply the RVP-100F (Vivid) picture style to the photograph below for comparison purposes. I found that the picture style has improved the contrast, the edges are sharper than the original and the photograph is a little yellowish.

Neutral (Click to enlarge photograph)

RVP-100F (Vivid) (Click to enlarge photograph)

Ultimately, the good or bad of a photograph is still up to the individual artistic perception. Some may love the Mona Lisa painting and some may not. Feel free to comment on what you think about the RVP-100F (Vivid) picture style created by aR Fel.

For those who would like to download the picture style and try it on their Canon EOS, please download using the link provided below.

Download RVP-100F (Vivid) Picture Style created by aR Fel

Well, follow me and be my followers for any new updates on the picture styles. That's all, folks.

You might also want:

Bugger off, bug

2010-06-01T19:21:00.004+12:00

I was strolling in the forest until I actually discovered the skin of this insect. Interesting though, I have spent about a month to research about the insect using the photo taken. Of course, the bug has bugger off into something different after abandoning its skin and there isn’t any insect image database out there to provide an easier identification of the insect.

Most insect database came with the final stage image of the insect evolution except for the 3 evolution stages of a mosquito which is generally propagated to the public. After searching through the internet, I still didn’t find any relevant information about it. Except that I know it is an insect because it has 6 legs. If any kind soul can actually identify this insect, please kindly let me know its scientific name.

Lama or Llama?

2010-05-24T20:38:00.001+12:00

Is it a sheep? No, is it a camel? No, it is a Llama. “Llamas are very social animals and like to live with other llamas as a herd. Overall, the fiber produced by a llama is very soft and is naturally lanolin free. Llamas are intelligent and can learn simple tasks after a few repetitions. When using a pack, llamas can carry about 25% to 30% of their body weight for several miles.” I bet you will be thinking what a pack means, just imagine a porter job that is performed by donkeys.

You might love this magnificent animal, but they do have a nasty habit. Stop spitting, unless you are a Llama. Guess I was lucky that day; I was not spitted by them. Yuck, gross. Just thinking about it, I felt disgusted by their natural habits. “Llamas are very social herd animals, however, and do sometimes spit at each other as a way of disciplining lower-ranked llamas in the herd.” Probably, this is how some adopted their ugly habit. You should know which group of people that I am referring and I will let your mind do your own stereotyping. Ah!!! Probably, this is how those people communicate about their social class.

Reference(s):

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved on May 24, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llama

You might also want: