Be real, did you decide to read this because I put “secret” in the title? Did you!? Am I working the internet system machine!? … Well anyway, it’s a scam. These tips are not secrets, because I’m about to tell them to you. So sit back, relax, and get ready to soak up three techniques I almost always use to add the finishing touches to my images.

TIP ONE - Soften Your Edges

I often notice in composites that the subject can end up looking a bit cardboard-cut-out-ish. There are many different factors that lead to this appearance, but one of the main culprits is having the outer edge of the subject be too sharp. Humans are rounded. The edge of an arm for example is rolling away gradually. Therefore, more often than not (depending on what focal length you’re emulating), that edge is going to drop slightly out of focus. If it is too sharp all the way to the edge then it’s liable to look more like it’s all the same distance form the camera, aka completely flat across.

So, here is how I handle this: As mentioned in the title, this is a “finishing” move, so I do it very last. First I do a stamp visible. Then I blur the new layer as a whole. You can use any blur filter for this, but I prefer “Lens Blur” because I like the quality it creates and you can add noise right in the filter. After that I add a layer mask and inverse it (fill it with black) so the blurred layer visually disappears. Next, with a soft brush at a low opacity, I gradually paint in the blur on the layer mask as needed on edges and areas I want to soften.

You have to be careful not to overdo the blur or you end up with weird, sort of muddy glowing edges wherever you paint it in (especially if you don’t add noise), but when used tastefully it can be amazing for blending your subject more realistically into the scene. This tip obviously lends itself more towards composited images with a somewhat blurred background, but it can be applied to any picture. Use the same technique to slightly fuzz out and blend areas of your image where you don’t want your audience to look. Basically it’s the opposite of sharpening the areas of interest; you’re blurring the areas of .... non-interest. Below you can see just the blur layer with the areas I masked back in.

TIP TWO - “Difference” Blending Mode

One of my favorite parts of editing an image (and probably many of yours as well, I’d imagine) is messing around with the colors. I’m sure you’ve all dabbled in curves, selective color, color balance, and/or hue saturation to name a few, but I’d wager not a ton of you have done this weird little trick I’m about explain.

Here’s what you’re going to do … Make a new layer and fill it with a color. It can be any color (and since this is Photoshop you can change it later as much as you’d like). Try starting with a color from the center of the color picker (as seen below) - so it’s not overly saturated or overly bright or dark. For this image I used a teal/green tone.

Set this new color layer’s blending mode to “Difference.” I’d attempt to explain what this mode does, but I feel like even if I tried to say it I’d be like, “What did I even just say?” And you’d be like, “What did he even just say?” So basically, just know that it works in a roundabout way like a film negative ... sorta kinda? … Anyway, when you set your layer to “Difference,” it will color grade your image in a drastic way. The darker the pixels in your image are, the more strongly it will be the color you picked (note the Elk’s leg above), while the lighter the pixels are, the more it will transition to your color’s complimentary color (aka opposite on the color wheel).

Alter the opacity and fill of that layer until you deem it pleasing. I usually end up erring on the side of subtlety and have an opacity of around 5% and a fill of 100%. The opacity lowers the intensity of the effect overall, and the fill changes how (and sort of where?) the pixels are effected. The lower the fill is, the less of the highlights and shadows are effected, so it gradually introduces white back in, starting with your lightest pixels. Just play around with it, you’ll see what I mean. Also, you can pop open a hue/saturation adjustment layer and clipping mask it down onto your color layer, then experiment with the hue, saturation, and lightness sliders to try out different looks.

TIP THREE - Camera Raw

I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but to use the “Camera Raw Filter” you don’t technically have to be opening a raw file. For the longest time I only ever used it to develop a raw capture at the very beginning of a project. I eventually picked up this finishing trick from my cousin James Sterling (whom I religiously send my “finished” images to for his thoughts and feedback) - Now I am passing it on to all of you. There isn’t a whole lot to say about this tip other than … do it.

Once you are happy with your image, you’ve softened your cardboard edges and color graded with your fancy new difference blending mode technique, do a stamp visible and launch the Camera Raw Filter. (Conveniently located near the top of the “Filter” drop down menu.) Now just mess around with all the sliders! Just remember it doesn’t need to be drastic changes, but it can be that little extra punch right at the end that ties the whole look together. For most of my images I end up liking a bit of clarity, maybe some contrast, and possibly a bit of tweaking to the shadows and highlights, but you do you.

So there you have it, three tips and tricks for adding a little something-something to your image right before the finish line. I hope you found any or all of these to be helpful! Remember, if you’d like more help, feel free to pop on over to my store and book yourself a mentoring session!! ;)

Did you ever sit down to edit something and think… “What the heck am I in the mood to listen to?” Well, you’ve come to the right blog post. I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of human who is constantly soundtracking his life. I have playlists for everything and pretty much always have music on. If I were to ever go anywhere without my headphones I’m not sure I could function. When it comes to Photoshopping I’m all over the map - you know, the map of noise things to put in your ears. Anyway, below are some of the noise things I personally enjoy most while I Photoshop.

SCORES/SOUNDTRACKS

A lot of the time I tailor my listening experience to the subject matter of the image I’m working on. “What sort of music would this character be listening to?” “If this picture were a scene from a movie, what would the score sound like?” I find a movie that has the right vibe and then hope that some of the brilliant composer’s talent and auditory mood-building powers will seep their way into my creations. Here are some of the soundtracks I tap into most frequently…

How to Train Your Dragon - Holy CRAP is this good. It is so perfect for getting me in the fantasy mindset (not that I’m ever far from it). If you haven’t listened to this soundtrack while editing a fantasy image, have you ever even really edited a fantasy image before?!? I think not. Obviously I played this during the creation of both of my dragon images. Duh.

All of the movies and the sequels are top notch. I love them. Composer John Powell always knocks it out of the park with the music, but the soundtrack for the first movie is by far my favorite. You can find the whole score on Youtube, but if you just need a taste, take a big bite out of “Forbidden Friendship.” (Provided above for your clicking pleasure) It. is. everything. Side note, I did indeed play this soundtrack on loop while shooting in a cave in North Wales. NBD. (JK it’s a huge deal and was the best thing ever.)

Tron Legacy - As you might have noticed, I’ve been quite into making scifi/cyberpunk images lately and this soundtrack is at the top of my list for those sorts of edits. I had loved Daft Punk for a zillion years, so when I heard they were doing a whole movie score I knew it would be an instant favorite. I was 100% correct. The Tron soundtrack doesn’t skimp on epic driving techno beats that kick my editing into overdrive. It’s best when served extremely-obnoxiously-way-too-loud.

Tomb Raider - Yes, the 2001 movie masterpiece. This is still and will forever be one of my favorite movies and no one will ever convince me it is not cinematic perfection. #hatersbackoff … The year it came out my sister gifted me the soundtrack for Christmas. I didn’t even know I wanted it, but damn did I play that CD a time or two. (A lot more than two.) This is not the movie’s “score”, aka the composed background music, although I do enjoy that and all of its mysterious jungle-y vibes quite a bit as well. I’m referring to the soundtrack. We are talking songs from U2, Nine inch Nails, Nelly Furtado/Missy Elliott, Outkast, Moby, the Chemical Brothers and so on. It is badass, heart pounding, beat dropping action music with attitude: just what the doctor ordered when I am ready to punch my workload in the face. Also, nostalgia.

Night In The Woods - Movie’s aren’t the only entertainment that can come complete with awesome background tunes. Video games are a great recourse to tap into for some good mindless editing beats. The game Night In The Woods came out in 2017 and is apparently a single player adventure game about a college dropout returning home to re-figure out life, oh and she is a cat with an alligator best friend … or something? I’ve never played it, but for the amount of times I’ve listened to the soundtrack I think I should probably check it out. I have no idea how or why I found it, but there is just something about it that has me coming back again and again and again ... if there were any words I can assure you I’d know them all by heart. The soundtrack is quirky and fun with this odd, sometimes strange, funky sort of charm that I can’t quite put my finger on. At least right now in my life this is probably what I find myself wanting to listen to most. It is one of my particular favorites for when I’m writing the actual blog posts. I don’t like what I’m listening to while I write to have any lyrics to distract my word flow.

All of the Epic Soundtracks - Just a quick pro tip before I move on from soundtracks - You can go to just about any music streaming service and search for “Epic Movie Soundtracks” and you’ll pretty much never be disappointed. There are great playlists on Apple music, Spotify, or even YouTube, like the one above. I often enjoy the variety of composers and overall moods they bring to the table without having to stop editing to think of another movie soundtrack to search for and listen to.

PODCASTS

Sometimes music just isn’t right and I’m in the mood to shove some inspiring motivational podcasts into my head. It has to be a certain type of edit, or at least be far enough into the process that I don’t have to actually think too hard or I find my brain keeps losing track of what they are talking about. However, when the time is right and I can focus on them, there are some photography podcasts that always seem to entertain my brain while lighting a fire under my butt to push my creative editing and career further.

Pro Edu Podcast (formerly RGG EDU) - This is probably my favorite photography-based podcast - If you haven’t heard it you are in for a treat. There are currently 6 seasons of pure gold. Basically, creators Gary and Rob interview some of the top professionals in the industry. Their banter and antics are delightful and it has just the right balance of incredibly inspiring nuggets of photography business knowledge and laugh-out-loud silliness. Note that several episodes can be watched online (such as the one above), but you don’t NEED to see it to fully enjoy it; feel free to listen on iTunes or from wherever you consume your podcasts.

The Candid Frame - This is the first photography podcast that I got REALLY into. Podcaster frontman Ibarionex (yes, that is indeed his name - pretty awesome, right?) has quite the backlog of episodes, but I dove into listening somewhere around 2013. He has the most soothing voice and always asks thoughtful, interesting questions. It is by no means a gear-focused podcast and I love how the flow of conversation is always more about the process and creativity of making images - what makes the various artists tick. I couldn’t seem to find it on YouTube, so here is a link to one of my favorite episodes with guest photographer Dean West from back in the day when I first tuned in.

MUSICAL FRIENDS

I have had the sheer joy and pleasure of becoming friends with some incredibly talented musicians, who also just happen to be so much fun. Oftentimes while I’m editing I like to put one of them on shuffle and drown myself in their musical talent. When I shoot photos of them I make a point to binge their music while I photoshop their images so I can infuse their essence into the edit even more, but I’ve been known to pick one of them to listen to while editing all kinds of things. Maybe it’s just me and the fact that they are friends of mine, but something about listening to them sing I find so inspiring and motivating. As if hearing them doing what they love and following their dream pushes me further towards mine. IDK just shut up and listen to my crazy awesome friends!

Ciaran Carmichael - Ciaran is my longest-running musical friend that I adopted when I met my wife Sara. He went to high school with her and they are still very good friends. As are we now. He is about as nice of a guy as you could ever hope to know, and wildly talented. His newest single “Hear You On The Line” is my freakin jam right now, but I couldn’t stop myself from sharing my OG favorite of his, “Eskimos.” (Seen above, you’re welcome.) He was but a wee babe in the video, but even back then he was already so dang good and this song is legit just one of my favorite songs that exists. Also, I made a rather Harry Potter-esque image of him back in the day, because owls.

Mackenzie Johnson - I can’t even with Mackenzie. She is too good. It’s stupid, you guys. I love to go to karaoke with her and just watch everyone in the bar suddenly be like, ”Wait WTF is happening, who is that?” Mackenzie is indeed what you might call a “YouTuber” and has years and years and years (and years) of videos on Youtube. She can slay any cover, but I’ve included my fav of her originals. (It’s above … hopefully you understand the formula of this post by now…) She is the star of what is still probably my favorite image I’ve ever made (sorry other images).

Jeanette Lynne - I’ve yet to shoot any images with Jeanette, but that hasn’t stopped me from listening to her videos while I edit other things. I discovered her because she happens to be Mackenzie’s BFF and for a good reason - she is the sweetest, most genuine person ever. They have a ton of videos together - check out their recent version of “Bury a Friend” by Billie Eilish, you will not be disappointed. (If you are, please leave.) I love the delicate, almost raspy quality of her voice. There is something about the way she sings that seems easy and effortless, like she is just singing for herself because she loves it and we happen to be lucky enough to be there to eavesdrop.

Amanda Duncan - Amanda is sunshine in the shape of a human. I adore her. She is the fancy lady in the cape at the top of this post (and very obviously the one below), and is about to drop her first full-length album, “Big Time Superhero!” (Hence the cape.) You can actually help her out (and honestly help yourself out) by snagging a digital copy of her album RIGHT NOW!! Click this link (do it do it do it) to find out more!! The album is so much fun. Her lyrics are heartfelt and smart, the melodies are delightful and there is just the right amount of quirky vintage flare sprinkled in. Call me cliche or whatever but the title track “Big Time Superhero” is probably my favorite. The charm level on that track is set to 11, and for some reason whenever she gets to the one line in the chorus, “You should never underestimate the power of little old meeee,” the way she sings “mee” always turns me into pudding. Not sure why, but I just love it so much.

So there you have it friends, a smattering of some of my favorite things to listen to while I edit. Is that all? No definitely not, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other albums and podcasts and things that I listen to, but I’ll save those for another time. I just love creativity of all kinds and having the ability to absorb someone else’s creative passion while I’m working on mine is just the best dang thing. Now I need to know, what do YOU listen to? Tell me all of your tunes (please and thank you), so I can add them to my roster!

For all those who are reading the title of this article and thinking to themselves, “What the crap is Cyberpunk?” … Well, according to the dictionary it is, “A genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology.” Just think “Blade Runner” and you’ve got the gist of it. As much as I love (and will obviously always love) to create stereotypical fantasy art, I’ve recently been super inspired to create artwork that leans on Cyberpunk themes. What’s not to love about neon lights, shiny leather, sunglasses at night, glowing technology, and in-your-face vibrant colors popping out of the dark moodiness of a dystopian futuristic city!?

So, you want to craft some cyberpunk images of your own, do you? Well, you’ve come to the right place, my friends. Below you will discover five photography/Photoshop tips and tricks to start your gears a-turn-in. Let’s get creating!!

1 - START WITH INTERESTING LIGHTING

Due to the fact that cyberpunk stories usually take place in grungy cityscapes with bright neon accents sprinkled all over the place, you can pull off some fun lighting setups that might not normally make sense. This is the perfect time to bust out the colored gels and go a little overboard. I find the colored light looks especially awesome for edge lighting; also it’s a safe bet to have opposite colors on different sides. Thanks to Photoshop you can always change the hues later - so just by having a drastic splash of color here and there, it will be easy to alter the tones in post if need be. 

Also, remember that lights don’t always have to come from the typical directions you’d usually adhere to for a “normal” portrait. Obviously for my image I decided to have my main light source coming from below. I thought it would be cool if she were crouched in a circle of light that could be some sort of force field, or maybe she just arrived on the scene via fancy sci-fi teleportation. 

For this picture I made use of this really awesome set of “Spekular Lights” from Spiffy Gear. Guys, seriously they are my new favorite toy. They’re like LED legos … aka you can connect them together however your little heart desires. I combined 8 lights to make a large ring light, but you can piece them together in a bunch of different ways: boxes, triangles, long strands, a starburst - basically if you can think of a shape, you can make it out of these lights. I’m obsessed. Ob-sessed. (Feel free to snag your very own set here. You know, if that sounds like a thing you’d want to do.)

2 - FIND THE PERFECT FUTURISTIC BACKGROUND

As I mentioned before, the stereotypical environment for anything cyberpunk is a tech-heavy city, so your best bet is to start with some sort of urban imagery, particularly at night. Lots of colors and lights are a plus, but those can always be added in later.

Another aspect of Cyberpunk is that it usually has a hefty Asian influence. Starting with some place like Tokyo is probably a good plan. Unfortunately, I’ve not made it to any part of Asia just yet, so I ended up using a CG rendered background that was literally handmade to be a cyberpunk city. “Isn’t that cheating?” Why yes, of course it is … but it’s fine because you can cheat too!! 

The background I used is from here, so you can 100% use it as well if you’d like. There are even a handful of others with it. (I used one of the others from the set for this image if you want to see a different one.) They are pretty darn cool because, due to the fact that they are CG,  just about every light is on its own layer. This allows you to turn each light on and off to create the ideal lighting situation in order to match your shot. Or you can pop it open while you’re shooting, find a balance of layers that you like and then set up your lighting to match.

3 - NEON LIGHTS GALORE

One of my favorite parts about editing this image was adding in more and more neon lights. It helped that the background I started with was already in the cyberpunk realm, but you don’t by any means have to start with a CG cyberpunk city. If you decide to use an image of an actual city as a base, you can always edit in the vibrant colors to the existing lights in the scene and then slap on some neon signs to build up your very own cyberpunk location.

It’s super easy to Photoshop in the extra neon lights by setting them to the “screen” blending mode - this makes it so the dark pixels of that layer are transparent. You just have to decide where each one fits best into the puzzle of your image, as you’ll want to find the right balance of colors and placement so your compositions flows nicely.

A few things to watch out for: most often you’ll need to mask away the edges of the neon light images. Even though the dark pixels around the neon will be transparent when in the “screen” blending mode, you’ll usually end up with a faint box around the light since the background is almost never totally black. Also, be sure you are matching perspective - If you want to put a light on the side of a building, you’ll have to transform and skew it to match the angles of that side of the building so it looks like it’s actually on the surface. Lastly, if you blur the background like I did, be sure to give the neon signs the same blur effect so it looks believable.

4 - CHECK YOUR VALUES IN BLACK AND WHITE

This is a technique I employ at some point (or many points) in just about every edit I work on, but it’s especially pertinent for images like this with drastically different colors affecting how you perceive things. It can be easy to think the subject is standing out against the background well enough if their hue is different from that of the backdrop, but in reality the values of the image might in fact be too similar. You want to be sure the image isn’t actually super flat. Don’t get me wrong, having your subject’s face bathed in neon pink light will certainly make them stand out against a teal background, but it can only do so much. Bright pink and bright teal can actually look exactly the same in black and white if they have the same value, as in their darkness and lightness values. You need to break up the image with different areas of light and dark to make it visually dynamic. The darkness, lightness, and overall contrast of the image is what can really make it pop.

What I do to check this is to make a new layer on top of all my others and fill it with black (hit “D” on the keyboard to set your foreground color to black), then set the blending mode to “color.” This will ONLY affect the colors of the image and not mess with the brightness values so you can accurately see what you’re working with and adjust your values accordingly.

Once I switched over to black and white it became more apparent that my subject did indeed require some extra separation from the background. On a new layer behind my subject, I used a cloud/smoke brush from this set and painted with white at about 10% opacity to build up some atmosphere. I figured the city could be a bit smoggy, plus the farther away something in an image is, the lighter it will appear - because science. I also painted with white on an “overlay” layer to bring up some of the highlights on the areas and details I wanted to stand out more. Then I tweaked the overall contrast to make it slightly punchier.

It’s super fun once you’ve done some tweaking in black and white to turn the black layer off to reveal the color again and see how it looks. I always leave that solid black layer at the top and check my values several more times throughout the process. It’s a great way to sort of get fresh eyes on your image.

5 - CREATE SOME CHROMATIC ABERRATION

Chromatic aberration is when a lens doesn’t line up all of the color wave lengths to the same point, so you get color fringing on the edges of things. In other words, the color channels are ever so slightly shifted one way or the other and don’t meet perfectly at the same point for even color distribution. Normally photographers are finding different ways to eliminate this from their photos .… leave it to me to want to add it on purpose hahah.

Chromatic aberration is technically digital distortion, and that just feels so perfectly fitting for a cyberpunk image. I love the effect it gives and the fact that it can help to further blend all of the various components I’ve composited together. Since it’s an effect that a camera can produce on an actual photograph, by adding it to my finished composite it can tell the viewer that all these pieces were “actually” in front of the camera and not faked together in Photoshop ... well I want it to say that, anyway.

I’m sure there are tons of ways to get the job done, but I go about it by using the Layer Styles pop-up palette. First thing you’ll want to do is create a “stamp visible” of your finished image so you have a flat copy of everything on top of all your layers. Next, double click on this new layer to bring up the Layer Styles palette (or right click the layer and go up to “blending options”). This is where it get’s complicated … jk it’s stupid easy. Just turn off one of the color channels in the middle of the palette. (Note that you can always come back later and try turning different channels off and on to get different color variations.)

You can go about the second part of this effect a bunch of different ways. Essentially all you need to do is move that layer in some fashion so it no longer lines up with the image below and it will give you the off-kilter-colors-effect we are going for. This can be achieved by simply moving the layer one way a little, perhaps stretch it larger, or maybe even rotate it a tiny bit. You can do a warp transform and pull the corners out a bit, heck even mess around with the distortion filters - so long as you move the pixels somehow, you’ll see the effect in action.

I used the Lens Correction filter to …. un-correct the lens and get the effect how I liked it. If you click the “Custom” tab at the top of the Lens Correction filter (see above image), you can then slide the top slider to the left or right to warp the image. You don’t need to go too crazy; a tiny bit will make a big difference. I like the way using the Lens Correction makes the effect gradually more drastic the farther you get out to the edges. Once I applied the filter I then added a layer mask to take the effect off the face and a little off the body since it was a bit distracting.

Well, there you have it: my five tips for creating a badass cyberpunk masterpiece. If that just wasn’t enough for you, fear not for I’ve also recorded a speed edit video in which I talk through my whole process. If you’re sitting there thinking, “Thanks Robert, this is all fun and exciting, and I really want to try my hand at all these editing tricks, but I don’t have a model, fancy outfit, nifty gun, spiffy lights, nor the time and space to shoot my own cyberpunk pictures.” Well, I’ve got you covered friends. YOU CAN EDIT MY PHOTOS!! That’s right, for the first time ever you can now obtain images I shot and edit them yourself. If you do decide to have a go at one of my shots please tag me so I can see what you do!! I’m @robertcorneliusphotography just about everywhere (I know, longest handle ever, but all the shorter variations were taken … ) Happy Cyberpunk-ing, everyone!

I’ve been working on a couple really cool collaborations lately and this newest image, well, it’s one of those collaborations. This one was a bit different for me though - You see, normally when I collaborate with another artist I prefer to actually shoot the images with them. At the very least we combine images we shot separately to create one final piece. For this picture though, none of the pictures are mine. Here’s how it went down …

This nifty dude named Jordan Taylor Wright (aka Taylor Cut Films) discovered my Instagram and asked if I wanted to collaborate on an image. He has an incredibly awesome Instagram stream, you should definitely take a gander, but on top of that (as his handle suggests), his true passion is for motion. Be sure to hop on over to his Youtube and watch some of his stunning video work and even learn a thing or two from his tutorials. Basically Jordan is pumping out top quality content left and right and I obviously agreed to make an image with him.

So he sent me a hefty chunk of random photos he’d taken on his worldwide adventures and gave me free reign to see what sparked some inspiration. This was no easy task. The raw images he sent were already so awesome and definitely inspiring; I flip flopped back and forth between several pics trying to decide which to use and what to do with them. There was this one of him standing dramatically in some colored lights that I kept coming back to. I’ve recently been getting very inspired by cyberpunk themes (basically “Blade Runner” aesthetics for those who don’t know), and this image was just begging for some colorful futuristic flare.

I had intended to use one of my own images for the background, but just couldn’t find quite what I was looking for. I decided to tap back into Jordan’s vast library of images from his travels and asked if he had any nighttime city images, preferably Tokyo-looking. He delivered right away. This guy has been everywhere!

Once I had the background in place this image fell together so easily. I’ve always loved working with vibrant colors, but this project let me push that to a whole new level. Pinks don’t really pop up in my photography all that often, so I really went for it. I enjoyed that there was already a few different colors of lights to build upon when I was doing my digital painting and highlighting. The green from below really gave the image that certain something. Not sure what that something is, but it gave it and I liked it.

After a point, crazy colors or not, it just wasn’t look cyber-punk-y enough for me, so I decided to Photoshop in some glowing visor goggles. I created them from scratch in Photoshop, mostly using the pen tool and layer styles. I filled the pen tooled shape with white, then set it to the “Overlay” blending mode. I created another solid white copy of the shape, and then in the layer styles palette I turned the fill opacity down and added a series of outer glows, inner glows, gradients and things to get it emitting a soft light. And as per usual I made use of the sci-fi lens flares from Raw Exchange that I’m obsessed with, and duh, of course I added in some particles from them as well.

So, as weird as it seems to now have an image in my portfolio that I didn’t shoot at all, I am a Photoshop artist at heart and a heck of a lot of Photoshopping magic went in to bringing this image to life. I want to send a HUGE thank you to Jordan for appreciating my work enough to reach out about this collab, and for just being a genuinely great guy/newly found source of huge inspiration. He is a prime example of someone who had a dream, worked hard, honed his skills, and crafted an amazing life. Props man, you keep doing you!

Have you ever had a client shoot where they really wanted a picture done a certain way, and you just knew that it would look better if you did it a bit differently? Or like, entirely differently? Well, the trouble with clients is that they’re the ones signing the check at the end of the day, and if they are not pleased with what you did … you might just not get that John Hancock. Obviously, as we all know, the customer is always right … even when they are wrong. SO, I’ve learned a fancy trick (it’s not fancy) where I shoot until the client is happy, (hooray happy client!) and they feel they have the images they want, and THEN if I have the time, I’ll do it my way.

I mean, you already have the lights set up, the camera is on, and depending on the shoot, there is very often a lovely model already dressed and styled with top notch hair and makeup (feel free to go stalk my amazing friend Red who did the HMU for this shoot!), so why not just snag a couple images for yourself? If you know you’re going to be editing these images for the client and in the end always look at them and be like, “Yeah they are fine, I like them, but I just know there is this other shot that I’d really love for my portfolio,” THEN GET YOUR SHOT!!

Later you can show “your” finished shot to the client and they might finally be able to see your vision (as they couldn’t seem to in their own heads), realizing it is indeed superior. They might just end up using your idea instead - because let’s be real, you are the artist here, and you were totally right about everything. (Sorry clients.) If they can’t be swayed from their original plan, no harm no foul. You also shot it how they wanted it, so just hand that over, collect your check, and go to town editing your own image with your own ideas for your own portfolio. Huzzah!

To take this idea a little further - so long as it does not interrupt the shoot you are being paid to do, or throw off the whole schedule - it’s totally cool to squeeze in your own mini shoots that have nothing to do with the client at all. Basically, “The Falconer” (aka the image I’m sharing all over this post) exists because I was doing a shoot and my dear friend Shelby was there to model, along with one other person. While the client and the other model were in the hair and makeup room getting done up for the next look, Shelby and I were left to our own devices in the studio.

The client had brought this incredible faux-fur-hooded-poncho-thing to possibly throw over a shoulder or something for one look. Of course the item that had nothing to do with their product is the thing I was obsessed with. We didn’t even end up using it at all, BUT I WANTED TO! So I did. While the client was preoccupied in the other room I was like, “Shelby quick throw on the fur thing!”

I flipped on the wind machine (it’s just a big fan, but we call it a wind machine … because we are cool like that), I shoved some lights around, and we took a small handful of images. Right away I was SO excited about how they looked and knew I had “the shot” in only a couple of minutes. Had I not jumped on the opportunity, that cloak would have left on its merry way with the client, Shelby would have shipped off back to Georgia, and we wouldn’t have this badass image. (Am I allowed to call my own image badass? Come on it’s pretty badass, ammiright?)

So, the moral of the story is to always make sure the client is happy and gets the shots that they think they want, and then provide them with the images they actually need. So long as it doesn’t interrupt, don’t let an opportunity to cram in a mini shoot, even if it doesn’t have any of the client’s actual products in it and is totally for you. Heck if you can swing it, just wait until the clients leave and THEN take your shot. In the case of this image I knew Shelby would be leaving with the client, so it was a now or never opportunity and boy am I pleased I didn’t let it pass me by. Thanks Shelby for always being the sweetest, warmest, kindest, most fun and enthusiastic person to be around. And to everyone else, go out there and get your shot! I hope you all enjoy the little layer breakdown video I’ve provided below for your viewing pleasure.

When it comes to composites I think people (and as you know if you read this post, I too) sometimes forget that a composite image doesn’t alway have to be cutting out a subject and putting them on a background. One fun and interesting way to spice up your composite game is to include elements of the actual surroundings along with the subject. As in only replacing part of the background in order to put the subject and part of their environment somewhere totally different rather than cutting out JUST a model. This works best when you aren’t in the studio and can shoot somewhere super cool, like IDK a rusty old railroad bridge perhaps?

My grandparents live centrally located in middle-of-nowhere-Ohio. This is where I grew up, and it was magical. Back in May of 2018 I had a mini photographer gathering, and by mini I mean it was: me, my brother, my cousin James, and my good friend Loren. However, it was by no means “mini” as far as the fun and creativity were concerned.

During part of one of the days (when we weren’t shooting underwater), we took an adventure to this awesome old railroad bridge. As cool of a location as it was right off the bat - with the river going underneath and the forest all around, I decided to relocate the bridge entirely. I was thinking that it would be cool to shoot James under it and then put the bridge in some sort of a sci-fi-esque futuristic city. Aka the complete opposite of where it actually was. (Also, fun fact, if you’ve never been right under a railroad bridge while a train goes over it … be sure to add that to your bucket list. It’s pretty awesome.)

Doing a composite like this was so fun! Of course I did have to make it more difficult for myself - Even though he was staying on the background (since there was metal behind him in the photo), I still did end up cutting James out so I could alter the depth of field and edge light on him and stuff … Anyway, working on this image was so enjoyable that I decided to take another capture from the shoot that I liked and threw together a second one!

I couldn’t have asked for better lighting - the way the grates overhead made the top light slightly more directional and soft and then the light bouncing around off the water gave him a nice edge light from below. It was super hard to just pick one to edit … hence why I picked two. And if I’m being honest … which I always do here, I have a third image waiting in the wings. For that one, though, I need to either dive head first into learning 3D modeling, or find a brilliant 3D artist to collaborate with … I have plans.
(If that 3D artist is you, kindly see yourself to my contact page…)

For now, though, I hope you enjoyed these images as much as I did making them. Do yourself a favor and give one of these partial environmental composites a try. You don’t even HAVE to go somewhere spectacular. Maybe you shoot a model someplace as simple as on a bed and then photoshop them and the bed somewhere, like in the clouds or a forest perhaps. (“Oh good ideas Robert; write that down for later and don’t tell anyone about them.”) Or perhaps shoot someone in a doorway and only replace what’s behind them though the door - Heck you could even replace everything except them and the doorframe. Like they are on the other side of a doorway portal of some kind in the new location. (“Write that down too. This last paragraph is full of brainstorming gold!”)

It’s funny to me how the start of a new year is like a clean slate … not that my slate was particularly dirty …. 2018 was just fine. However, no matter what happened last year, the start of another year always feels exciting. “This is the year I’m really going to do it!” Whatever it is. January 1st is just another day; nothing is actually different other than the last number of the date that we write incorrectly for a couple of months. (Do eraser sales go up in January? Jk it’s 2019 who is writing things in pencil?) But hey, if we all get a solid boost of let’s-get-out-there-and-kick-ass-ness for no reason other than the fact that we watched a sparkly sphere lower on the top of a building while we collectively count backwards (like some kind of weird ritual happening all over at once if you think about it … just don’t think about it) … well that’s fine by me!

I’m more than happy to go charging into 2019 with a fire lit under my butt that will hopefully burn my buns into some new and exciting projects! I’ve got so many fun things planned: exciting photo shoots, trips to take, people to see, and photos to edit … like, so many you guys … I have so many images ready to edit right now, it’s ridiculous. But don’t think for a second that’s going to stop me from shooting more and more and continuing to bury myself in a glorious pile of unedited raw photos primed to be hacked, slashed, and painted to pieces in Photoshop.

This time last year I was just as stoked about life as I am right now, and was using that energy to plan for a series that I’m finally sharing!! *obnoxiously loud confetti cannons* You see, I was contacted by a talented photographer, Ginger, who wanted to hire me to create a series of heavily Photoshopped fantasy-inspired images featuring her amazing little model of a daughter. She was most certainly barking up the right tree for that.

For weeks we messaged back and forth sending ideas, inspiration photos, and hashing out every little detail for the fairytale we were going to unravel image by image. Slowly but surely it all fell into place and then we had so much fun shooting. It really was one of those perfect and effortless collaborations, and I couldn’t be more proud of the pictures that came from it.

The finished pictures are nearly a year old now and I think I love them even more than when I finished them. The first piece perfectly captures the wonder and mystery of the new year. That doorway to an unknown fantasy world is like the embodiment (or en…door-ment?) of that special moment we all screamed, “…3…2…1…Happy New Year!!” and stepped triumphantly into 2019 ready for adventure. Let’s jump through that door, and open many more doors on our journeys through this next year. Let’s all be our best selves this year. Let’s take that hefty does of free cosmic motivation and shoot for the stars. We got this. YOU GOT THIS! COME AT ME 2019!

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I miss homework? WHAT!? Well, kind of - the homework that was assigned to create something, anyway. Ok, so really I just miss high school art class. There’s something about a teacher giving you an assignment and a due date that makes you … you know, create. Not to say that I have a problem getting myself to make artwork, if anything I have trouble getting myself to do much else with my free time, haha.

I’m a competitive person. I love contests. I love a challenge. So even though it’s wasn’t a contest, and no one “wins,” when it came to art class I wanted to push myself and try my very hardest. (I want to be the best, like no one ever was….) My BFF Veronica (who is a stupidly talented artist) and I were (and probably still are) my art teacher’s favorites. NBD. I’m getting side tracked, sorry to high-school-art-class-royalty-brag all up in your faces or whatever. What I’m getting at is that when I’m faced with a challenge, especially with a contest that has rules, guidelines, subject matter, and most importantly a time constraint, it always makes me create some of my best work. That was no exception when it came to the Dungeons & Dragons “Terror of Undermountain” monster creation contest that Adobe just hosted.

Spoiler alert (in case you didn’t read the title of this post): I did not win. Or did I?!? No, I didn’t, but I also sort of did. You see, in the end I had spent hours working my very hardest to craft a incredible work of art, and if you ask me, I did win. I’m now the proud father of my very own depiction of what the “Terror of Undermountain” might look like, and let me tell you I learned a lot while making it.

This was definitely a challenge for me, because basically all of my work starts with photos of my subject. I know for the most part what I want the final image to look like and take the photos accordingly. For this image, not only did I not have the image of my subject to work from, but my subject didn’t even exist. For the contest we were given a few folders with a bunch of different body parts in them that you could use to get you started. Roughly painted arms, legs, heads, torsos and things made up this inspiration toolkit. It was kind of like doing a puzzle where you don’t have a box to look at and the pieces can all fit together in any order and you don’t have to use all of them … or any of them at all.

The first lesson I learned while making my image was that when creating a monster, you have to try and fail a lot of times before you really commit. At least that’s how it was for me. I think because I could go in so many directions, it took me a while to land on a sketch/general outline that I was ready to put some real time into. I didn’t want to spend hours detailing something out just to decide it wasn’t working and lose hours of work. Once I did finally start heading in a direction I was liking, I had to keep telling myself, “This is the one; just keep putting in the time and it will evolve into something you really like.” Spoiler alert again … it did!

The second thing I learned is that Youtube is such an amazing resource. Haha jk … I already knew it was, but it’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to soak up some new knowledge from the great depths of the internet. This contest lit a fire under my butt and it sent me down a path of new amazing knowledge … and a new obsession. I’m just going to briefly touch on it now but I could most certainly gush about this Youtube channel for hours. (And really, how many of you have actually even read this far into the post as it is!?!) But anyway, I found my new favorite fountain of knowledge: FZD School. (More on that later, like I probably need to do a whole post about why I can’t even handle how much I’m obsessed … )

The third thing I learned about creating a giant monster (or any sized monster… or anything?) Is that there’s always room for more details and it’s never too late for big changes. Aka don’t get married to your initial vision, just go with the flow. Originally my monster only had 2 eyes, 2 legs, and no ears. It was way late in the game (like I can’t even fathom how many hours deep - I couldn’t tell you the last time I put this many hours into an image) when I decided my creation had a super cool mouth, but that was about all it had going for it. For the most part the creature was just a humanoid body and a cray mouth. So I added some extra eyes, some ears, and ditched the boring people legs to go with spider legs (which I moved around and resized roughly fifteen and a half thousand times until I was happy with them).

So the moral of this story is that even though I didn’t win the contest, it pushed me to work extra hard, try new things, and learn. You can most definitely learn things all on your own, but sometimes a little healthy competition goes a long way. Honestly, if I wasn’t so far in the student debt hole (like soooooooo far *throws up in mouth a little*), I would kinda like to go back to school - at least take a class or two. I really love the classroom setting and having a group of peers all helping to push each other to make better work. Anything that forces you to learn is a win in my book. Take this as a reminder to push yourself to learn new things from time to time, and take advantage of online contests as an opportunity to advance your skills.

Sometimes even I forget exactly what the term “composite” actually means. Technically it’s just combining more than one image to make a single final picture, like when you do a family picture and Grandpa is looking confusedly off into space like he doesn’t know how to be in a picture. (He always does that. GRANDPA LOOK HERE!!) So, you take the one image where he is mostly looking at the camera and kinda smiling and replace his head in the other photo where everyone else looks good … That’s a composite. (Not to throw shade at my Grandpa, he is an 80-year old champion, whom I love.) I’m so used to shooting a subject in the studio and then clipping them off of their background to place them somewhere else, that in my brain, that process has taken the place of what it (my brain) believes is a composite. For the above image (and also below, I guess), I created the finished composited piece of art without ever cutting out the subject.

Let’s be real here friends, I definitely wanted to cut her out …. this was an epic internal war for me. Even when I shoot a subject on location (aka do not need to cut them out and put them somewhere because obviously they are already there), I still almost always end up cutting them out so I can affect them separately from the background. After all, Photoshop is a selective editing program, ammiright? (I am; it is.)

You see, this is the third image I created for my in-depth compositing tutorial. I’d already made two other images (this one and this one, also seen below if you don’t want to go check out the other blog posts) in the tutorial showing how to do things like cut out hair, or master the pen tool, paint in lighting and highlight details, and I pretty much ran you through my whole process of compositing a studio-shot subject into an environment. For the final video in the tutorial I wanted to do my entire edit from start to finish in one video clip.

So far, with the first two composites in the tutorial, everything had been broken up into sections so they could be more easily digested (you’re welcome), but I wanted to show more accurately how I work. Because in all seriousness I almost never do every step perfectly in the same order, or even stick to one task until that task is finished. I’m basically a creative A.D.D. storm randomly striking everything all at once. I just keep working on whatever seems right at that moment until I can’t find anything else I’d like to change.

To help cut down on the length of the full-edit-in-one-clip video (and also because I hadn’t done it for the other two composites), I decided I was not under any circumstances going to cut out my subject. You can create awesome composited images by building up textures to create some atmosphere. The audience doesn’t actually have to be able to discern where exactly she is - sure I could have placed her in a cave or something, but I liked her just being in a dark abyss. The main focus of the image is obviously the magic fire and her face. You don’t really need more than that. I used some fire and sparks, smoke, and some ….”inferno?” to create the final look and feel of the surroundings.

Anyway, stop reading my rambling and listen to it instead! Below is a little excerpt from the full video tutorial of yours truly editing part of the image and talking about it. If this just isn’t enough for you and you’d like to see the entire process of this image or the more in-depth broken down edits of the other two images, well you are in luck!! Because for the next week you can use code “robertpost15” at checkout to snag your copy of my tutorial for 15% off! *gasp* Or, you know, just enjoy the short clip below and be happy with that. You do you.

Sometimes you get to go to Wales to visit your awesome friend Niall …. and then he takes you on a hike up a mountain where you turn a corner and BOOM, you’re standing in front of a giant cave. You know, typical Wednesday. (Disclaimer: I have zero clue what day of the week it was, because on vacation every day is “Saturday.”) It truly was one of the most fun and inspiring days of my photography career, and also just one of my favorite days of my life, period. According to my math, roughly once an hour (or more frequently, TBH) I’d have the, “holy shit, look at where we are right now!” realization. Over and over and over again. Wales is stupid beautiful.

Naturally, being a group of artsy-fartsy types (haha farts…), we did quite a few photoshoots that day. Loren had this wonderfully shiny-ish flowy lacy-pink dress with her (the very same one from these photos taken later that day on a different mountain), so I had her throw it on and took several shots in and around the mouth of the cave. This was one of those shoots that was like, “my mind is too entirely overwhelmed by the current location to really do a whole lot of story planning/ we only have so much time here/ it’s so dang beautiful/ LOOK AT WHERE WE ARE/ I just want to start shooting/ I can take some pics and figure out what to do with them later/ let’s be real how can you take a bad photo here? …” So I just went through the motions of having Loren fling the dress and look as magical as possible and took a ton of photos.

As I sat at my computer (almost exactly a year later) staring at the photos trying to decide which one to edit, and what exactly to do with it, I got inspired by a certain capture. There was just something about Loren’s pose/face/posture/movement that looked like she was leaving the cave on a hunt. When I showed the work-in-progress to Loren she said she did seem to be “channeling her inner velociraptor.” Then I thought to myself, “hey self, why would there be a lovely lady in a pretty pink dress leaving a cave like a glorious velociraptor?” My creative gears started to churn and I cranked out an idea that I’m quite pleased with ….

What if she was a “Cave Siren?” Unlike the normal Sirens of Greek mythology that stay put on their island luring unsuspecting sailors into the rocks with their enchanting voices, the “Cave Siren” ventures from her cave in search of hikers to lead back to her lair. (I assume she then drains the life out of them or something dark and sinister of that nature.) The Cave Siren seemingly floats along with perfect grace, humming and singing a haunting melody - Her dress gently dances in the breeze of her otherworldly movements, dispersing sweet smelling spores that settle on the ground and sprout stunning pink lilies. Almost like a trail of beautiful breadcrumbs that the bemused hikers use to follow her back to their inevitable doom. Pretty cool, huh? I thought so …

And just to make her a little more creepy and a bit more mystical looking, I decided to give her eyes a glow. I love to play with lighting and glowing effects whenever possible, even if just on two tiny eyeballs. In the grand scheme of things, other that lighting up her eyes, adding in the flowers, a subtle amount of weird dress-spore-trails, and some color altering, I didn’t actually do a whole lot to the images. It really was just such a stunning location that I didn’t have to punch it up in post with 200lbs of Photoshop magic like I normally would.

Thankfully that one photo spoke to me like it did and the Cave Siren was born. I was so stoked on the idea I decided to make it a series of images. (Hence the above image and that other one further up in the post…) Loren does a ton of little photo stories like this, so it just felt right. Go and view some of her photo series now please. Most times when I do a shoot I end up just editing one final image, so it was fun to create the same character in three different but similar-feeling images. Like I said, I did shoot A LOT of images so it seemed silly to only finish one of them. Thats all for this little series, but in the (hopefully) not so distant future I’ll find the time to edit more of the other shoots from that magical day!

For those of you who don't know who Joel Robison is, kindly crawl out from under your rock and check out his work. (Is there internet under your rock? HOW ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS!?!?) ... Joel is an absolute POWERHOUSE of talent, creativity, imagination, encouragement and he is just an all around super nice guy. Joel and a couple of my other photographer friends Kristina and Anton were visiting for a weekend so obviously we did multiple photo shoots. Duh.

There is this great park near me with these weird brick ... things in it. I think they might have been the foundation for a building that has long since been destroyed, but now there are just some interesting brick structures in the middle of the woods. They are neat. I've been wanting to shoot there for YEARS, and this finally seemed like the right time to make that happen.   

I had recently picked up these nifty blue shades for 3 dollars (because I have a nose for clearance sales). I brought those and a blue sweater I have and decided to base my image around them. Normally while creating a wizard image one might not think to include sunglasses, but I was imagining him summoning some crazy bright blue magic light and he would need these spacial glasses to be able to see by the light without his eyeballs melting out of his face ... or something. My brain is weird. So anyway, here is how I created said magical blue eye melting orb...

STEP 1 - Particle backdrop

I wanted to have a lot of different textures and layers of magic built up to create the final effect, so naturally I added particles. I love particles ... too much, maybe? No, that's crazy talk. I placed in some particles from here on a "soft light" blending mode layer and a duplicated version of those particles set to "screen." 

STEP 2 - Let there be light ... bulb

If you've been following Joel's work you know he loves to use lightbulbs in his art. They are a theme that pops up quite often and I like how they can symbolize ideas, discovery, inspiration, and optimism. Joel even has one tattooed on his arm. I thought it would be cool to pull some inspiration from my subject and the magic around a light bulb. I got a badass bulb image from here, and then used the circular marquee tool (holding down shift to make it a perfect circle) and masked away the rest. Below are a couple of times Joel has included bulbs in his images ...

STEP 3 - Coloring the bulb

To get the bulb to be the color I wanted, I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with the "Colorize" box checked. I then set the adjustment later to the "color" blending mode (it's way at the bottom of the little blending modes drop-down at the top left corner of the layers panel) because when I altered the color it also messed with the brightness and contrast of the bulb coils in a way I didn't like. By setting a layer to "color," it will ONLY affect the color and nothing else.   

STEP 4 - Layer styles

First I set the newly-blued-bulb-orb to the "screen" blending mode (which makes darker pixels transparent), and then I applied some layer styles. Most people never touch layer styles unless they are doing something fancy with type, but I use them ALL the time for lots of fun effects. First I applied a blue Inner glow to make the inside of the circle a bit brighter. Then I added an outer glow, which is basically the same thing but for the outside of the edge of the circle. Lastly I added a drop shadow, which I actually didn't use as a shadow at all. If you set the "distance" to zero, the blending mode to something other than the default "Multiply," and chose a lighter color, you can use drop shadow like an extra "outer glow" layer. I used this to add a thinner white glow right around the edge of the circle where I wanted the light to be brightest.

STEP 5 - Lens Flare

Next I applied a blue lens flare from here on top of the orb and set it to the "screen" blending mode. Not that it HAD to be a blue one to begin with - I could always change the color like I did for the lightbulb - but this one just happened to be blue.

STEP 6 - Sparks

I really wanted to make this magical glowing orb look like it was sort of crackling, sparking, and sending off all kinds of different magical effects that might melt your retinas without magic sunglasses. I plopped in some sparks from this pack of sparkler images and, much like the light bulb, I made them blue with a hue/saturation layer with "colorize" checked and set to the color blending mode.

STEP 7 - A ring of fire

Again, wanting to layer up more and more different textures and effects, I added this super cool burning coil inferno texture from this awesome fiery pack, and continuing the theme of not letting color rule me back - I turned it blue to match.  

STEP 8 - MORE PARTICLES!

If you know anything about my work you know I add particles to just about everything. I've already added them to this image once in the first step as it is. The particles are from here, and I also painted in some of them right around the orb with this INCREDIBLE set of brushes. I'm seriously so obsessed with those brushes, you don't even understand. Speaking of obsessed I just learned how to make these fancy slide-back-and-forth-before-and-after-things, so expect many of them in the future of my blog ... and also in the rest of this post. 

STEP 9 - Painting

If anyone ever asks me what my favorite part of editing is, my answer is ALWAYS, "The point when all my pieces are in place and I get to start painting details and affecting my lighting!" This is done with a series of layers - For the most part I have one "normal" blending mode layer for darkening down things (and possibly for little white glows and reflections off things), one layer set to "soft light" for more general overall shadowing and highlighting, and then an "overlay" layer on which I paint the smaller, more fine-tuned details. But let's be real, it's never just three layers. There are usually quite a hefty handful of "overlay" layers building up the desired look. I rather enjoyed painting in a ton of little blue light reflections on the brick, focusing on smaller areas on the corners and edges that light might be glaring off of, almost attempting to make it appear that they were a little wet and shiny. 

STEP 10 - Color adjustments

I didn't really push the colors TOO far in any direction since right off the bat I knew pretty much how I wanted the finished image to look. I did end up making the greens/yellows considerably more bright/punchy/saturated, and I love the final look of the greens with the blues. I layered up a couple "selective color" adjustment layers, as well as a "color lookup," and a "channel mixer" adjustment layer to pop the blues a bit more and also warm up the background just a tad to give him and the orb more separation. Speaking of channels, I also made use of the blue channel while coloring so I could make a selection of just the blues in the image. If you go to the channel tab (usually under your layers tab) and command-click on one of the channels, it will load the luminosity of that channel, kind of like a selection of all the pixels of that color. I then used my blue channel selection to add a layer mask to some adjustment layers in order to apply color moves to just those pixels. 

Also, just because it looks dang cool, above is what the blue channel selection looks like all on its own. It looks pretty badass as a blue-channel black-and-white, if I don't say so myself. (I do say so ... it looks pretty badass.)

SO, there you have it. That's how I granted Joel the magical powers to summon a glowing blue orb of light. It was such a fun shoot and such a fun edit. I just love when I get an idea in my head and from start to finish everything turns out as I envisioned. It definitely doesn't always go that way, but when it does it's a real treat. 

About a zillion years ago (ok, it was February ... so same thing basically), I created a self portrait image ( ... ok, so it was several images) using ONLY lights from around my house. I wanted an exercise in something outside my current comfort zone and to challenge myself to get back to my photography roots. I did a whole post about it. I encourage you to go and enjoy that blog post before reading this one, but it's not required... or is it!? No, it's not, but do it anyway. I then challenged any takers who might have felt like taking to also create a self portrait image without any traditional photography lights.  

The particles used in this image can be found here, the smoke is from here, and the lens flare is from here. 

Below you will discover some of the awesome pictures taken by photographers from all over the place using nothing but a camera, some imagination, and whatever lights they happened to have in their homes.

Marissa McPeak used some sort of a salt lamp situation to create this warm "crystal mage" image. I love the contrast, rich deep colors, and the subtle use of double exposure. Is it just me or does this picture make you want to give hugs?

Christian Aaron was also feeling the salt-lamp-mystical-wizard-type-vibes and created this picture complete with a hooded cloak, badass headpieces, flying particles, and magical swirly circles of ... magic. Because magic. 

Laurence Boswell made this sleepy whimsical little composite that, much like Marissa's image, just makes me want to give hugs ... and also possibly take a nap? I think it was a good move making the pillow yellow so it didn't match the background too well, and it really draws you into the center of the image. Also, I love seeing the lighting setups with all the chairs and things stacked on top of each other to get lamps at the right height. Not only do you not need fancy lights for great images, you don't even need light stands! (Just ask Kristina and Anton from the next entry below.) 

Kristina Kashtanova took advantage of these incredibly cool 3D printed sun (or Mars maybe?) and moon lights she has and decided to pull inspiration from them to create an image of cosmic balance. I love the mixed light colors and how perfectly symmetrical her hands/pose looks. (She is a yoga instructor so I wouldn't expect anything less.) Also can we talk about Anton, her amazing human light stand? Nailed it. 

James Sterling is my BFF/cousin and, much like Kristina, he also made excellent use of one of those fancy 3D printed moon lights. He threw in a tiny desk lamp for some back lighting and SHAZAM, a perfect little lighting setup. I really enjoy how you can just barely see some of his surroundings and there are books and things on shelves. I'm not sure if this was his intention, but it makes my brain immediately dream up some sort of a modern day wizarding school - Like he is off in his dorm room and has just successfully cast some spell he shouldn't be meddling with. Also, he kinda looks like Quentin Coldwater, the main character from the SyFy show "Magicians," which is about that very thing. Perhaps that's why my brain went there, but either way it's a super simple shot that apparently has all kinds of story built in, whether he meant for it to or not. Oh and it looks super cool, too. 

Valerie Kasinski also had "Magicians" on the brain because she says her piece was directly inspired by the show. (If you haven't seen it, it's def worth a watch!) She had quite the top-notch home lighting set up - I really dig the flashlight bouncing off of the white surfaces for some soft fill light. Also, apparently even when a light has a tall stand of its own (as seen on the right side of her lighting setup pic), this challenge still leads to lights on stools. I'm not really sure why she bothered to take the actual picture, because the "digital rendering" of her in place for the lighting setup is perfection hahaha. But seriously though, her finished image is SO COOL! 

Roderique Arisiaman decided to make use of super nifty lights he has and included wild colors in his image using "Philips Hue lights" that let you intricately change the light colors! (Where do I sign, take my money.) He also used something called a "Nixie Clock"... ? Not sure what that's all about or what is even going on in the picture, but it looks dang cool and makes me want to figure it all out - so that's a major win in my book. 

Madeline Shayne did some serious "set building" and world-creating for her image. How adorable is this baking themed shot, including her ridiculously cute boxer Freya!? I just love all the details and props, plus she really brought me back to my early days with her lighting setup (shown below). My bedroom often looked quite like that, with several lamps from all over the house smooshed in as close as possible without being in frame so I could get enough light for a decent exposure. She actually did a whole blog post about her experience with my home lighting challenge, you should go check it out ... I'll wait.

Check find Madeline's post here. Do it. 

Chuck Eiler created some sort of an alien-like-arm-plant-mutation-situation with just a handy desk lamp and a reflector/flag as a backdrop. Really goes to show that you don't need much to make something super badass! Photoshop always helps, obviously. ;)
(Oh, also, bonus point for the cat in the set up shot. I'm not sure what the points are for ... but you get them.) 

Aleah Michele did some incredibly crafty craftsmanship with a couple chairs, weights, a work light, and a bunch of plastic leaves. She crammed herself beneath her perfectly haphazard little setup and shot down through plexiglass with plastic plants set on it creating a fancy depth-of-field-enhancing foliage-in-the-foreground look, and for this I bow down to her brilliance. Such a lovely shot, Aleah! (She did ever so slightly break one of my "rules" for the challenge and used a little daylight, but I'll let it slide this once on account of how genius of a setup she used. Plus, the whole point of the challenge was to get everyone to shoot differently than you are used to, and see what we can come up with with what we have lying around - so I think this counts.)

Joshua Pheneger was also playing for Team Plexiglass, but went in a totally different direction. He smeared Vaseline on the glass, lit the glass with a small desk lamp, and hung Christmas lights in the background to create some bokeh. Josh then made the interesting artistic choice to focus on the texture on the glass, and let his body (lit by his garage ceiling florescent light, not shown in the setup picture) fall out of focus. I feel like this is a real poem of a photograph, one that you have to read several times and still leaves you wondering what the author means by each and every line ... if that makes any sense. Oh and did I mention that he shot on 4x5 film? He was really kickin' it old school. So. Awesome.

Bethany Perron really went all out in the character-creation-department for her self portrait and brought this mysterious Djinn lady to life. I really enjoy the muted purplish color palette with the pop of the red lips. Also, can we just take a minute to appreciate how she created a beautiful soft light using a desk lamp and a plastic bag as diffusion, complete with a dresser-light-stand? Such ingenuity! *files away for next home lighting shenanigan* 

Amani Alshaali made rather excellent use of a super simple setup of a desk lamp (the real champion of this challenge is apparently the desk lamp) and a piece of cardboard for a backdrop. THEN she took a mannequin head and shot it in the same position as her portrait and edited the two pictures into one perfectly creepy masterpiece. Such a cool idea and SO well done, Amani! For being such a simple setup, the end product is so professional looking and such a powerful image.  

Loren Schmidt only used a tap light and her cellphone's flashlight. (That's what it says in the bottom right of the setup picture, "phone Here." The clamp the arrow is pointing to was holding her phone.) She shined the flashlight through a few strands of lace to get some snazzy in-camera texture and then in post made the tap light into a bouquet of glowing flowers. I love a motivated light source, especially when it's a magical one. 

I'm so very pleased that this challenge popped into my head and that so many amazing artists played along with me. I'm not sure about all of you, but I know for me this little jog down lighting-memory-lane has left me feeling all kinds of inspired and excited for future shoots. Not only did it make me super appreciative of the professional flash equipment I've grown accustomed to, but it actually made me want to do more shooting with household lights. If I've learned anything it's that all you really need are stools and, above all else, desk lamps! 

As an artist who shoots mostly composites, more often than not I'm going to be cutting out my subject and placing them in a different scene. A lot of the time I only have a rough idea of what kind of a background I'll be using, so I just shoot my subject as best as I can and figure out the backdrop later. Sometimes I have no idea what I'm going to do with my model, but a wise and incredibly good-looking man once said, "You don't always need a plan." ... HOWEVER, if I do a shoot knowing full well what my background looks like before I even pick up my camera, it makes everything a million times easier. 

I went into the shoot for this image knowing that I wanted to create something quite vibrant, colorful, and over the top science-fiction-y. I did my pre-planning based around this awesome background. It's pretty dang sweet because it gives you the ability to turn almost every light in the scene on and off individually with its own layer in Photoshop. You can alter the brightness and color of just one light, or mask it away from areas where you don't want it, and completely craft the lighting/look you want to work with. I'm in love. 

I really like playing with mixed lighting colors and decided I was going to enhance the warm light coming from the neon sign to the left, and then play up the blue light coming from the right side of the frame. Then, just for a little extra pizzaz, I decided to sprinkle in a pinch of the maroon/pink light from the windows in the top right. Because I had the opportunity to study my background before I started shooting, I was able to then set up my lighting to better integrate my subject into the scene.

In the past (and let's be real, in the future too), I've added in colored lighting effects after I shot my subject. If you don't feel like dealing with colored gels and whatnot while you're shooting, I actually have a whole post about Photoshopping in different colored lighting. However, no matter how long you edit for, it's pretty much always going to look better if the correct colors were there to begin with. Because my subject is wearing such a crazy intricate costume, the thought of fully hand painting in three different light colors coming from all different directions would have been awful. Not to say that I didn't still spend hours painting and tweaking the details and lighting anyway ... you know how I do.

If you DON'T "know how I do," you can actually "watch me do" in my new tutorial. Everything from shooting all the way through my editing process for this and two other images is at your disposal .... BUT WAIT!! What's that? You don't feel like spending the cash to have your very own copy of my shiny new tutorial? Well, fear not my friends, because right now I'm helping to host The Raw Exchange Sci-Fi Photoshop Contest and one of the prizes just happens to be my tutorial ... plus $100 to the store (as if the tutorial wasn't exciting enough for you). Go check it out, I want to see ALL of the Sci-fi awesomeness!!!!!  (EDIT: CONTEST HAS SINCE ENDED. THANKS TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED!!!)

So, if you're like me and you just love editing composites, maybe try settling on your background before you start shooting and see how much easier it is to match the lighting. OR perhaps you are disciplined and always have your background picked out first, maybe just to spice things up go into the shoot blind ... well, keep your eyes open, but shoot and then figure out the background later and see where your imagination takes you.  

I FINALLY HAVE A TUTORIAL FOR SALE!! *heavy breathing* ... I get asked pretty regularly if I have any tutorials people can get their hands on, or even if I have a "slower version" of my speed edits. Well, that day has finally arrived!!!! *More heavy breathing ... catches breath* I'm SO proud of the almost 8 hours of videos that I recorded recently in Germany with the fantastic dudes of RAWexchange. (Yes, it is the place that sells all of the textures and packs of images that I never seem to stop talking about #sorrynotsorry). So anyway, if you've ever felt the need to watch me do three different photo shoots, pose models, alter lighting, and take an image through my entire Photoshop process while simultaneously talking your ear off the whole time about what the heck goes on in my head ... well then this tutorial is for you!

Just to wet your whistle (eww, what a weird gross saying .... ), I thought I would share one of the images created for the tutorial and chat a bit about one of my greatest compositing tips. You're welcome. But if you're all, "Thanks for the great tip about compositing Robert!  ... But that's just not enough. I want to know more!" Then you can go buy my tutorial and help pay off my epic student loan debt ....

As an artist who primarily creates composite images, I find that one of my biggest challenges is hair - masking hair, to be exact. It can be nearly impossible to get all of those little individual hairs cut off their background so I can place my subject somewhere magical. NEARLY impossible ... Ok so it's actually not THAT hard, but there is one major tip that will make your life about a 1000 times easier. Shoot on the right background. 

A lot of "normal" humans (aka non-photographers) tend to ask me if I shoot my images on green screen or possibly blue screen. Sillier questions have been asked, but no I do not. In the movie industry, blue and/or green are the go-to choices. As a composite artist I'm only removing the background for one frame and can spend a good amount of time refining that mask, so I tend use one of two colors for my background: black or white.

If I were to shoot on a green screen, it would certainly be pretty easy to select the greens and remove them from the image since skin and hair usually don't have a lot of green tones in them. I might even be able to get a fairly sharp edge around the body, but when it comes to the hair, things tend to "stick to it." Meaning if I were to shoot on green, then after I cut my subject out there is basically always going to be sort of a green haze left around the edges of the hair. Sure, there are ways of dealing with that - as far as I'm concerned Photoshop can do ANYTHING if you take enough time to do it, but why make life hard on myself? Which is why I pretty much only use black or white. 

It's a simple formula, actually. If you are going to be compositing your subject onto a dark background, shoot on black. If you're going to be compositing them onto a lighter background, shoot on white. It's as easy as that. This way, if/when the hair does hold onto some of the lighter or darker pixels of the background, they will drop right over the somewhat matching background and blend in nicely. For the image in this post (from the tutorial I made ... did I mention the tutorial!?!?!), I knew she was going onto a lighter background, so I shot her on white. You'll see below what it looks like when placed on white, and then also what it looks like when placed on black. Note the weird white haze? Aka the reason you don't want to shoot on a white background if you're compositing your subject somewhere dark. 

Actually, now that I think about it ... I'm a total liar ... If I knew for sure I was going to be compositing someone onto an intense color, like perhaps they will be placed in front of a funky purple wall or something, I would in that case try to shoot on a purple background. However, thus far in my compositing career I've pretty much always shot on black or white and found that I could always make that work. There have been times when I've shot on grey, but it definitely makes for a harder masking job because there is less contrast between most hair tones and grey.

One last extra little tip: if you're shooting a model with black hair, maybe try to composite them on a lighter background. From experience I can promise black hair cuts off of a white background like (insert clever comparison with something that easily comes off of something else here). Not to say that you CAN'T shoot dark hair on a dark background for a composite, it's just more difficult. Like I said, Photoshop can do anything if you put in enough time, but I do my best to give myself enough shortcuts so I can spend more time doing my favorite parts, like painting and coloring and such.

Hopefully that little tip was helpful and has left you wanting more. More that you will find convenienctly packaged in THIS EPIC COMPOSITING TUTORIAL. Okay thanks, love you byeeeee. 

I've been daydreaming lately about that magical time in my life about ten years ago when I bought my first DSLR (crap, hold on, AM I OLD!?) and photography really began to take over my life. Back in the day my shoots began with me creeping around my parents' house, gathering up all of the lights I could find that weren't attached to the walls or ceilings. My poor mom would come home from work, go to turn some lights on, and find them all to be mysteriously missing. 

I would book someone for a photo shoot and they'd get up to my room (... erm, I mean "studio"?) and be like, "Wait, is this actually your lighting set up?" And I'd be all, "You booked me because of my pictures, right? Well, this is how I took all of them .... " You see, you don't actually need fancy expensive photography lighting to take great shots; any old lights and a little creativity will do! I've never been lacking in creativity, but professional lights were not always at my fingertips. 

These days I primarily shoot in a HUGE studio with more amazing flash equipment than I could ever hope to afford myself ... ok, so I could HOPE to afford them, but at this point in my career let's just say I'm a very lucky boy to have all these fun photography toys at my disposal.

I was thinking about how I've come so far from those long lost days of household lighting experiments. Every once in a while I like to shake things up and challenge myself, so why not go back to my roots and try to do a self portrait image using nothing but lights from my house!?!? 

It's funny how limiting yourself can spark such creativity. All I did was take away one of my go-to-tools and suddenly my brain was working in new and exciting ways ... or old ways, I guess. I fell right back into my methods of yesteryear in no time.

I'm realizing now I should have had a time-lapse set up on the stairwell in my house - as I was shooting I just kept thinking of other things I needed and would scamper up and down the stairs over and over again to grab more lights, stools, boxes, pillows, costumes, and so on. 

Turns out, to finally land on an image I was totally happy with, I needed to do three of these home lighting shoots. The first time was apparently just to grease my gears, and get rid of some of the "rust" built up from years of shooting with actual photography lights. It didn't take long before I'd crafted a lighting set up that I really loved and captured the below image (... and like 9000 other ones, of course. You know how selfies go, gotta take a zillion - we're our own worst critics.) As pleased as I am with the photo, it just didn't feel grand enough. It's nice, it's just kinda boring. I felt like I wasn't doing this challenge justice. Also, it was just super fun and I wanted to play around more lights! 

I went into my second shoot a few days later knowing full well that this also wouldn't be my "grand-finally-show-stopping-image." (Aka the image at the top of this post ... ) I was looking through old pictures from when all of these household lighting shenanigans began and realized it would be interesting to try to recreate one of those ... so, I did. Below is what 10 years of life in an orange hat looks like.

For my final shoot I actually tried way too hard. Like seriously Robert, calm down. I felt as though it needed to be some crazy Macgyver-ed lighting set up and kept involving more and more lights. After a while I realized that this challenge was not necessarily about using as many lights and crap as I possibly can in the most outlandish way, but more about using the tools my house had to offer to make an image I was proud of. So, I scrapped my crazy set up and stripped it back down to 2 lights. Apparently desk lamps are where it's at ...

I had an idea to use this round "crystal-ball-esque" Ikea light from my desk as the main light source and do a somewhat simple wizard-y type portrait. I was thinking it would be fun to give my wizard character a tiny creature/sidekick/lab assistant/talking parrot kind of buddy chilling on his shoulder. At first I was planning to just create one out of stock images of animals, but then it was going to be pretty difficult to believably match the lighting on my face, plus I'm willing to bet any stock I found wouldn't have been lit with household lights. "How about a toy?" I thought. Perhaps I could find a figurine of some kind and shoot it in the the same lighting, but I just didn't have anything - there was a pretty specific look/pose in my head. Then it dawned on me that this was supposed to be a self portrait assignment, so why not double up on that fact?  

Henceforth, I decided to don some dark underpants (so essentially I just took off all my other clothes ... ), balance awkwardly on a big black pillow on a stool, and play the part of my own tiny-wizard-creature-friend. I obviously Photoshopped the crap out of myself so it looked less like I had a small creepy me on my shoulder. A tail, big pointy ears, rearranged facial features on a larger head, lengthened fingers and legs, and lots of digitally painted fur/hair all added up to be the little critter I was imagining in my mind.

However ... I feel like even after all of the changes it still just kinda looks like a creepy little shoulder Robert haha. I've come to terms with this fact. Now my fantastical brain has just dreamed up a new story for the image where this wizard was doing some spell to copy himself so he could help himself out with some other complicated magic he couldn't do alone and the cloning spell went terribly wrong. Aka POOF a new weird tiny best friend .... Just go with it. 

So, who wants to play along!?!? If you think this challenge would be fun (SPOILER ALERT: It totally is), then don't let me stop you - in fact, let me encourage you. LET ME!! Below are the rules and guidelines to follow if (when) you wish to participate in my home-lighting-self-portrait-challenge ....

RULES AND GUIDELINES

1. You can ONLY use lights found in your home - no photography lights or modifiers whatsoever. And no natural light.

2. It must be a self portrait, but you may have help/human tripods aka someone to push the button if you really need it.

3. The photo must be taken in your home (or a home at least ... or basically anywhere that isn't a studio I guess haha).

4. Please take a photo of your lighting set-up and share it along with your finished image.

5. Editing of any kind is TOTALLY fine! (Do you know me at all? As if I'd ever rule out Photoshop hahaha).

6. Use #CorneliusLightingChallenge when you post.

7. If you tag me (@robertcorneliusphotography) in the photo or in your post somewhere that would be lovely, plus then I'll be sure to see all of your creations. 

8. You don't HAVE to, but if you'd like to link back to my blog post (this one that you are reading right now) that would also be quite lovely. Especially so others who want to participate can see these rules. 

Wanna be featured on my blog!?

I hope I've sparked some inspiration and creative thinking in some (or hopefully all) of you who read this far. I'm going to be doing a follow-up blog post in a few weeks in which I'll be sharing some of my favorite entries in the #CorneliusLightingChallenge, so if you'd like to be featured, don't forget to tag! And make sure you remember to also share a pic of your lighting set up - I want people to see that amazing pictures can be created without tons of expensive lighting.

I think it will be really interesting to see what everyone ends up using and how. It can be a simple headshot, an elaborate composite with heavy makeup, costumes, props, fun Photoshop techniques ... everything is fair game! .... Other than normal photography lighting ..... or the sun. Now go forth and let there be light ... in your house.

EDIT: Hey it's me, Robert from the future! You can head on over to this blog post to see what everyone created. K bye *gets in flying car and speed off into the sunset*

Once upon a time ... I happened to find myself in North Wales (like you do) visiting the incredibly talented Niall Scanlon (my good friend and favorite Welsh dude) and his girlfriend (also my good friend, but not Welsh), Loren Schmidt. (Yes, I did accidentally introduced them via one of my photography meet ups and they are now the most disgustingly adorable couple ever, you're welcome world.) Anyway, Niall was so gracious as to take Sara, Loren, and me to some of his favorite locations, just to experience the RIDICULOUS beauty that is Wales. (View the UNEDITED iPhone panos below, attempt not to pass out.)

We were hiking up this mountain on the coast and as we crested the top, the wind was about as powerful as the view. Either one could have knocked you over. After taking a minute to convince myself that this was indeed real life, that I was in fact actually standing where I was, and for realz seeing this incredible landscape sprawling out endlessly in all directions - I decided that there was no flippin way I was leaving this magical place without doing a proper photo shoot. Being the brilliant photographer-friend that she is, Loren had a dress on hand that of course turned out to perfectly fit Sara. Obviously. 

I'd shot Loren in the pink dress earlier in the day (AT AN EPIC CAVE ON A DIFFERENT MOUNTAIN!?!?! More on that in a future post ... Guys, Wales is just stupid with incredible photo locations, go there), so I figured I'd take the opportunity to get my hottie wife in front of the camera. As she tends to do with everything she does, she slayed it. It was COLD, and did I mention windy? There was wind. Sara legitimately almost blew away at one point when the wind caught the dress like a sail between her legs .... but she is fine, moving on. Barefoot, coatless, and in a super thin dress, Sara modeled her butt off for around 45 minutes like a total champ without one complaint. I shot kind of an insane amount of photos. It's not every day you are in such a place, so you make sure you get something good. Loren also hopped on the opportunity to snag some pics of Sara, and they are all too lovely. 

I could go on forever about what a simply perfect day we had. Don't get me started on the picture perfect "afternoon tea" we had in the library of a castle earlier that day ... what is my life? It's perhaps one of my favorite days thus far into my existence, BUT I'm sure no matter how breathtaking the location was, how smokin my wife might be, or how perfectly windblown the dress turned out, most of you are just sitting there thinking, "ROBERT! We get it, Wales is awesome ... NOW TALK ABOUT THE DAMN DRAGON ALREADY!!!!" Fine, geeez you guys, calm down, first look at some photos of sheep real quick ...

Soooo yeah, remember that other time I created a baby dragon in Photoshop? Well, in the immortal words of Britney ... Oops, I did it again. (Yeah I went there.) I was thinking about how I'd love to grow my audience (weird, right?) and get more recognition for my work ... or whatever, and one of the best things you can do to stand out of the crowd is to figure out something you can do that not everyone else can, and you know, do it! Last time that I used my wizard-y-Photoshop-powers to craft a dragon, the internet sorta lost its mind. Ok, so not the whole internet, but those who saw it seemed to be pretty into it and that blog post is still one of my most popular. I say, give the people what they want! Also, I would be lying to your face if I said I didn't love anything and everything having to do with dragons. So without further ado, I grant to you kind readers, 4 tips for creating a dragon in Photoshop!

TIP ONE - Find the Right Pieces

This can be quite a challenge, but a fun one! I wish I could say that I took all of the images of the critters used to create the dragon, but alas I did not have the time (or the ... zoo?) to go get the images myself. I do always strive to capture as many of the photos used in my edits as possible, but I have no issue tapping into stock images when needed. Especially if I'm going to be editing the living crap out of them, bending, blending, and smooshing them into something that is my own.

One of the most important things to keep an eye out for while hunting for your pieces is the lighting. As is the case with any sort of compositing, you have to be sure the lighting matches. There is some wiggle room here; you can alter the lighting somewhat in post, but you definitely don't want images that are harshly lit from different directions or something like that.

It's a lot of fun hunting lizard pics of all shapes and sizes, but it can certainly be tough to find ones in the right position. Oftentimes (more so with the first dragon I made), you have to keep an eye out for elements you like from MANY pictures. Maybe you only want the head from this one, the eye from here, the feet from there, the tail form this one and so on. Also, as was true with this new dragon, you don't have to stop at lizards - This little pink fellow has bat wings! (Or at least the used to be, now they are dragon wings obvs.) You could go the feathery route and find bird wings you like, maybe bug wings, or be more like my first dragon (seen above) and make a ground type dude.

TIP TWO - Save the Color for Later

Whenever I'm creating a dragon in Photoshop I always (all two times I've done it) start out in black and white. It's so much easier to ignore the colors to begin with and just get the pose/lighting right. You may have noticed that the head was teal, the wings were dark brown and the body was tan.

It would have been too distracting and felt like I was doing a terrible job if I had started right off the bat in color. This new one wasn't too crazy, but the first dragon I made had pieces from all over the place! It can be quite daunting and overwhelming when you're beginning to assemble your pieces, so if you can rule out one major factor, things will move forward much more smoothly.

Please note all the various colors and non-matchy-ness of the pieces in the above gif, but forgive me as it is not ever shown in black and white for comparison. If you'd like to go check out the post about that image you can watch the speed edit and see the black and white portion in action.

TIP THREE - Embrace the Warp Tools

This step may seem like a bit of a cop-out seeing as I have a whole blog post about it already (this is like the zillionth time I've linked to that post, is it annoying yet? ... It is kind of important since this post talks about that post a lot, as you may have noticed ... ), BUT, transforming and warping is such an integral part of creating one of these little dragons that I simply couldn't skip it.

Now, I'm not going to repeat myself and re-explain how things like the Puppet Warp work. Kindly hop on over to my first baby dragon post (seriously though, another link to it? Chill Robert we understand) and you can read all about upping your transform game. I will, however, just briefly reiterate that this is probably the most important step to learn. You are almost never going to find exactly all the right pieces you want in exactly the right positions, so you're going to need to warp and transform them into the shapes and sizes you need.

TIP FOUR - Endless Colors!

Creating magical creatures is super fun because really there aren't any actual rules. You get to choose everything about your little beast and be as creative as you'd like. HAZZAH! One step that I look forward to is figuring out what colors it will be. For this new dragon I decided to match him to the dress. I wanted Sara to appear to be fostering this little guy. ("Him? Guy? But Robert she's pink?" ... SCREW YOUR GENDER COLOR STEREOTYPES I'VE DECIDED HE'S A BOY! .... ) Maybe he fell out of the nest when he was teeny tiny and she took him "under her wing" (see what I did?) and is now his mother figure - so matching their colors just helped play out that little foster parent story. Oh also, the finished image 100% reminds me of the "everything the light touches" scene from The Lion King and I find that quite pleasing ... just sayin.

The first thing I do once I turn the color back on (after I'm done assembling in black and white) is to attempt to match all of my pieces. There is no formula for this - basically just pick one of the body parts you like best and start using adjustment layers (with clipping masks to only affect one part at a time) to match the other body parts to that piece. This usually takes some brightening or darkening like with a brightness/contrast, levels, or curves perhaps, and some color adding and/or altering. I tend to do this with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and slide the top slider a bit to alter the colors and then saturate or desaturate as needed. There are endless ways to edit colors so go with what you're comfortable with.

After you've used your various adjustment layers to achieve a cohesive color palette, You can start fussing with the colors overall. As I mentioned, I usually match everything to one body part, but that doesn't mean I'm going to leave it that color. I find one of the fastest and most fun ways to change the overall color is to mess around with a Hue/saturation adjustment layer and just slide the top bar around drastically. You'll be able to take a look at all kinds of wildly different colored versions of your dragon! (As seen above.)

I also love to paint in different colors on a new layer set to the "Overlay" blending mode. I ended up liking my new dragon all one color, but I could have painted in stripes of a different color down his back, or made the skin of his wings a different color, given him spots, and so on. Like I said, you are in full control of all the little details of your new little critter. (Side note ... doesn't actually have to be a baby dragon... you could use all of these tips to make a huge one should you choose.)   

I guess the moral of this story is, GO TO WALES!!! But first, do yourself this favor and check out (my beautiful dragon-fostering wife) Sara's blog post all about our trip! As if you needed any more eyeball-meltingly-stellar images of Wales to convince you that you need to go there. But just wait until you hear about the things we ate there! Oh and also, making dragons is tough - but incredibly rewarding! You get to be the monster-making wizard you've always wanted to be (Ok well I have anyway) and are in full control of bringing a new creature to life. Does it have wings, stripes, two tails, is it spiked, smooth, dark, or vibrant, it's all up to you!

As photographers (or artists in general), we're all searching for that elusive "style" phenomenon everyone talks about. We want to have our own "style" with hopes that one day people might look upon our work and say things like, "hey, I like your style...." There is no formula for finding a style; you basically just have to create, A LOT. Keep shooting the things you love to shoot and editing the way you love to edit, try different things, fail, try them again, and your style will sort of naturally grow into a thing. One day it will just be there like a stray dog that falls perfectly into your life like it was always there. You won't even realize it happened. (Disclaimer: You might, however, notice a new dog in your house ... just an observation.) You can't force it (I don't believe anyone who goes out looking for a new stray dog finds one), just work and the style will come. (Disclaimer 2: Maybe this analogy is crap? ... because unlike a "style," if you want a dog, just go to the shelter and get one.) 

However, once you DO find this mystical style thing, it doesn't mean you are locked in. It's not like, "ok this is my thing, I guess I just have to do this same thing amazingly over and over for the rest of my photographic career." Photography is an art form and no artist should be pigeon-holed if they don't want to be. Which is why I feel that once you have a solid grasp of what sort of photography you like to create, every now and then you should scrap all that and try something out of your wheelhouse. 

If you look at my portfolio you might notice that I've landed on a style of photography that often has old school photographers giving me gruff like, "This is not photography, stop calling yourself a photographer." Um, ok but these are all pictures I took and wouldn't exist without my camera ... soooo call me whatever you'd like and then kindly mind your own dang business, you old fart. Anyway, my point is that I have a definite style. I love to create HEAVILY Photoshopped (#sorrynotsorry old-schoolers), super colorful, cinematic images full of little details that tell a story. So when my awesome and crazy talented makeup artist friend, Christine Zizzamia (I'll be referring to her as "Red" from here on out. I don't think I've ever called her Christine ... like ever), asked me to do a beauty/makeup shoot to add some new professional pics to her portfolio, I jumped at the opportunity. Also, duh I would get to hang out with Red for a day, so obviously yes! 

Sure, this isn't CRAZY far off from what I normally do - basically all of my pictures are of people. It's not like I was branching way out of my comfort zone and shooting food or something. But normally (as I mentioned) I'm shooting pictures to tell a story, and let's be honest - my finished pieces tend to be showcasing my Photoshop prowess rather than the skills of a makeup artist. 

Since I wasn't sectioning off a large chunk of my creative brain power for telling a story and making sure I got all the various pieces I needed for my final edit, I was free to experiment more with different lighting set ups, work on my posing, and hone my skills for connecting with a model. One of the models was my wife, Sara (above), ... so that connection was pretty easy, but my point is that by doing a shoot that I normally wouldn't do, it helped to strengthen other skills. Since I was up close and personal capturing their faces, it was more important to get the right emotions and facial expressions from my models. I had to focus more on the angles and lighting that made them look "pretty" than I did on unraveling a story. 

Not only was the shooting different, but the editing was a bit new for me as well. Beauty retouching is not really my thing. There are SO many skills to be acquired when it comes to retouching skin alone. Am I the best at it? No, probably not. Can I do it? Damn straight I can. I'm a Photoshop wizard, there is nothing I can't do! But this was a great opportunity to focus on those less-used skills. Normally I don't pay a TON of attention to "typical" beauty retouching in my work. Oftentimes my subject is a bit smaller in the frame, so the skin retouching is less important. Also, I'm less concerned with my subjects looking "perfect" according to today's standards of what a model might look like in a magazine. 

While editing Red's images I needed to not do TOO much because these were supposed to be all about the makeup. They were taken for her to show off her skills to potential clients. (That's you, by the way. Hire Red! She is goooood). These images were not intended for me to go, "Look what I can do with Photoshop!" .... buutttttt you may be looking at the image featured at the top of this post and thinking, "Um ... Robert, what the crap are you rambling about? That image is exactly your style." Well friends, that leads me to the other great part about shooting something a little off your beaten path.

When you're doing a shoot like this (or any client shoot, really), after the client is happy and has what they hired you for, there is no rule saying you can't slap your style all over some images for your own portfolio. Absolutely take a few minutes to get some "guidance-free" pictures of your own. Also, more than half the time when I do this for clients (ones who aren't my friend Red who basically gave me full creative control as it is), they often end up loving "my photos" and wind up using them over the ones they had planned out originally. 

I actually didn't shoot the image for "The Sea Witch" intentionally for my own portfolio. It was just one of the many outtakes from the shoot. I thought it would be fun to edit one with all the restraints off, where I wasn't doing my best to leave the makeup as the focal point. I dove into the edit with very little idea where it was going. It was so refreshing to play around in Photoshop and just try different things until I started to like something - it's been a while since I went into an editing session without some direction to head in.

I noticed part way though my Photoshopping adventure how the image reminded me of Ursula from The Little Mermaid after she takes Ariel's voice and becomes a human to steal her man. The necklace we used even has a shell (... or fossil thing?) with the same spiral as the one from the movie. It was meant to be. (PS: You can actually buy any of the jewelry seen in these shots and more from Red's friend Bella's Etsy shop!) I just ran with that idea and started to play around with creating a more modern take on the character. Aka adding sa-weet tentacle tattoos as an extra detail/nod to Ursula. *humbly pats self on back*

If I hadn't taken the opportunity to try something new, I never would have ended up with this great new image for my portfolio. Also, I had lots of practice and sharpened all the little skills and tricks that go into a shoot that I might not touch on as much. Plus it was just an all around super fun day of experimenting and making art with another artist. I love any opportunity to continue to grow and evolve as a creative human. THANKS RED!! <3

Well friends, it appears we've made it through the woods, crawled out the other side, and have arrived in 2018. Last year was maybe not the best year for me, particularly not for my blog. Due to many things out of my control, my personal projects had to be shoved to the back burner for a bit. (Ok, for a lot of bits.) However, some good and exciting things did happen, and the year was certainly not a total bust by any means. My wife and I ended up having to suddenly move out of our apartment and decided to take the opportunity to buy a house! Let me just tell you that buying a home is a major time-suck. If you are thinking about doing it, it's awesome do it I LOVE MY HOUSE SO MUCH, but don't think you're going to keep up with any of your extracurricular type things. Aka last year, between the house, moving, epic trips around Europe, and countless other awesome happenings, I only did a total of 10 new images/blog posts ... unacceptable.

Anywhooo, now that we are mostly settled in our wonderful new home, I'm charging into 2018 with a fire under my ass that hurts so good! There are already some really exciting opportunities on the the horizon that I can't even believe are seriously going to happen, but before I move forward I need to do some important reflecting (get it, reflecting? Cuz of the mirror photo ... ) and hopefully bestow upon you a lesson I learned that I definitely shouldn't have needed to learn. Meaning it should just obviously be taken seriously and tended to all the time, not merely after something terrible happens. Friends, I'd like to talk to you about ... backing up your files. 

In the fall of The Year Whose Name We Do Not Speak (jk it was 2017), the hard drive in my computer decided to peace out. One minute it was working like a champ, then it got a little groggy and next it was like, "ummm ... byyyeeeee guyysss." When it started acting strange, rather than thinking, "Hmm all my artwork both new and old currently resides on this hard drive that's being super wonky, maybe I should take some time to back things up?" I was thinking, "Man, why is my computer being such a douche!? Time to Google ways to speed up performance." During the precious precious hours that I could have been frantically copying files to a safe location, I was lazily clearing caches, dumping old useless files, emptying the trash, and doing general computer clean up maintenance bull crap.

Then .... It just turned off .... It never turned on again.

*moment of silence*

followed by

*moment of hysterical screaming*  

Needless to say I flipped my lid. "But Robert, don't you ever back anything up?" ... "Why yes, of course I do. I'M NOT A TOTAL IDIOT!" Allow me to elaborate. You see, at the studio were I work we have a great archive system! Files are saved onto these crazy tape things and then a copy of the tapes go in two different locations just in case something were ever to happen to one of them. All I have to do is drag the projects I want backed up over to the archive and I'm good to go. BUT once you "write" files to a tape you can't add more things later. This is not a hard drive. That tape is as is unless you wipe it and start over - like a weird advanced new cousin to VHS, if you will. 

I've formed a habit of only backing up the jobs I'm finished with. After I've edited my final piece, made all the various gifs, before & afters, and video stuff for my blog (you're welcome), I back everything up. If I were to back up right after I shot something, then when I get around to editing an image from the shoot I would have to then back up the finished files separately from the raw images. So later on down the road, when I want to pull the image out of archive it's not all in one place. I would have to track down several tapes to get everything. Not the end of the world, but definitely not ideal file management - I like everything to live in one place. 

MEANING all of my finished work was for sure backed up, HAZAH! However, everything I had shot and not edited yet .... was gone. Let me just tell you I have a ridiculous amount of unedited shots that have accumulated over the years. I just love shooting, but don't ever have the time to keep up with editing everything so I always have quite the backlog. Full disclosure, when it came to my full attention that my hard drive was indeed never turning on again ... I cried actual tears. It was a rough day. "Dang Robert, way to start out this new year on such a shitty note." Hey shut it, this saga isn't finished yet. 

In case you were unaware, there is a magical company chillin out in California somewhere called Drive Savers. I sent my hard drive off to them and waited patiently (not actually that patiently) to hear if they thought anything was salvageable. Of course I eventually find out from them it was the worst possible kind of drive death, and most expensive to deal with. Fantastic. I don't remember all the technical mumbo jumbo about what exactly happened, but their only option was to try to take the drive apart, use the important guts to Frankenstein it together with pieces from a new drive, and then run some fancy recovery software and hope for the best. Fortunately, they have a policy where you pay nothing if they don't get anything recovered. Once they reach a point where they have checked it out and are pretty sure they can save things they give you a call and let you know what it will cost. Then you have to give them the go ahead to try, or they just ship it back as it was. You know that term "sticker shock"? Well, this was more like "sticker-lethal-execution." 

I sat on the number they gave me for over a week. I just kept remembering more and more things that were on the drive, gone for ever. Images and memories that could never be created again. Things with an unbelievable amount of meaning to me. Could I live without them? Could I let them go? HELL NO I COULD NOT! I pulled the trigger. As much as it hurt my bank account (that you may recall had just recently been slaughtered with a house purchase), as soon as I gave them the go ahead all I could think was, "who cares about the money please save my work!!!" Well, as you may have guessed ... THEY DID!! All of it. More actual tears were shed, but this time happy tears. I'm an easy cryer, and that doesn't make me any less of a man - deal with it.

I am proud to announce that EVERY LAST FILE is currently backed up. Twice. My wife pointed out the convenience of Dropbox, and we decided to upgrade to a professional account with which we have UNLIMITED space. It's a bit of a price tag per month ($60, eww), but totally worth it to know that I will never run out of space and have to go out and buy another hard drive, I can access all of my work from any computer, and it's so easy to back things up. So friends, what is the moral of this story? BACK YO SHIT UP!!!! ALWAYS ALL THE TIME FOREVER EVERYTHING ALL OF IT NOW RIGHT NOW!

So yeah, I'm looking forward to an exciting, creative, invigorating, motivated and incredibly productive 2018!! LET'S MAKE SOME ART! Also, I hope you enjoyed the art in this post .... It was literally almost lost forever. 

Layers on layers on layers on layers .... I've been working on this image for far too long, just long enough, but also not nearly as much as I'd like to? Needless to say, I put a lot of time and love into this edit and really really enjoyed the process of adding in the countless tiny details. TBH it took some major restraint on my part to finally call it "done" and move onto the next project. Seriously though, people - I feel like I could continue to zoom way in and refine/add more details for-EVAH. Which is exactly what I'd like to talk about today: taking your time and adding more details! 

There were several points thoughout the editing of this image where it easily could have been called "finished." Literally months ago I could have decided it was done, blogged about it, shared it online, and been perfectly happy with the artwork I'd created. However, I think back on those "finished" periods of the edit and am so entirely pleased I decided to stick with it and continue to evolve the story of the image. 

I took this picture of my photographer friend Loren back in July when I had the incredible opportunity to shoot underwater with an Ikelite housing setup, thanks to one of my other amazing photographer friends, Jenna Martin. (Go check out her work immediately. She is the queen of underwater photography!!) I've had this idea in my head for ages to shoot someone underwater and create a clone-incubator-testube type image. So once I knew I'd have the chance to shoot underwater, this idea immediately resurfaced. (Eh eh? see what I did?) I kept imagining a futuristic, sterile, shiny, metal sort of picture with synthetic umbilical cords and details roughly inspired by the "human power plant" scenes from the Matrix (which by the way is still one of my favorite movies ever, deal with it).

As you might have noticed, the image didn't quite turn out as it started in my noggin. It was great to shoot with a solid idea in my head, but by not being too attached to my plan I allowed the image to morph into something similar ... yet totally different. When I started editing I quickly realized that to believably create a "cloned human" image it wouldn't make much sense to have them wearing a bathing suit. They really should be nude ... last I checked people don't grow their own clothing as they develop .... and I just wasn't quite comfortable photoshopping bare boobs/nipples onto my close friend. Call me old fashioned or whatever. So I came to the conclusion that she could easily be a normally grown adult who was in some sort of a stasis chamber. A-La the "Alien" franchise or Mr. Freeze's wife from the beloved 1997 classic "Batman & Robin" (....yeah I went there).

With my updated idea blossoming in my brain, I downloaded a 3D rendered tank thing and space hanger-esque image from my main squeeze the RAWexchange Store, and they couldn't have been more perfect for what I was hoping to create. I got to work placing Loren in the tube, adding the machine onto the background, and it eventually reached a point (as I mentioned before) where I almost called it done. I was so excited about how it was looking already and just wanted to share it, plus I did think it was cool how empty and solitary it felt. 

After a day, I looked at it again and it almost seemed TOO sparse, so I thought to myself, "Hey self, I bet this machine would need a lot of wires and things to operate ... and some leading lines driving the attention to the subject wouldn't hurt." So I went about adding in some wires trailing off from the sides. (See below)

After the cords were in place, I found myself thinking more about the story behind this image. "You know self, it is pretty empty and solitary feeling ... where is everyone else on this ship? (I've decide this is on a space ship, keep up). What if everyone on board was gone? Perhaps wiped out by some alien plague or something. She would just be left like that, suspended in animation, just as she was the moment she entered her voluntary sleep ... A sci-fi sleeping beauty." Now my gears were really turning. "If she was just floating there for years, maybe some plants would start to grow around her." So as you know, I ended up painting in some dangly mossy vines. 

Here was another perfect example of a time when I thought it was finished. I was so jazzed about my newest addition and was quite antsy to share the image. However, I stuck with it and decided to add in some clusters of leaves to round out the creeping foliage. 

At this point I was sure it was done. Right? Totally solid image. Time to share it for realz this time .... well funny story, life happened and I just didn't have time to work on a post. Then I did this crazy amazing thing where I went to Europe for 2 weeks. (I'll be talking about some of those adventures at length in future posts, so stay tuned!) My newest creation had to be "shelved" for a while, so I didn't lay eyes on it for quite some time. Once I was home from my vacation and popped open my "finished" image, it turned out there were just a few more details that my brain decided to sprinkle on. Having not looked at it for so long I had all these fresh ideas! What if the plants were creating some floaty green spores? Wouldn't there also be vines taking over the background? What if there were some insects flitting around the scene? (Because dragonflies.) What if the lights I added to the tank had some lens flares? (Um, duh... because lens flares.)  

Basically what I'm getting at is that if you give yourself some time to think about what story your creation is trying to tell, your image just might not be as finished as you think. You can potentially keep adding more and more layers of details to help tell that story, even if you didn't know the whole story to begin with.  

If you'd like to learn more about how I edited the light in this image (and several others), be sure to join me this week (12-14th of October 2017) over on 500px for a three day class on "How to Enhance Light in Photoshop," including an in depth video tutorial, live chat with yours truly, and a live webinar ... also featuring me. Hope to see you all there!! 

Did you ever finish an image (or think an image was finished anyway) and it just didn't seem to sit right? You look at it and it's almost as if your eye can't decide where to go? Well, if you, the almighty creator, are having this issue, then odds are anyone looking at said image is going to suffer from this problem as well. One of the most important things you can do to an image is to "tidy up." Aka attack your image with the patch tool, clone stamp, and whatever means necessary to get rid of anything that might beckon the attention away from your subject.  

According to science (... or something), when viewing an image your eye is naturally drawn to the brightest area. ("I like this image and the way it OOOoo something shiny!") Well, partway through editing this image it became apparent that there were some very shiny areas where I did not want them. I shot my subjects in the shade so I would have nice even lighting, but it happened to be a fairly sunny day. I found a lovely patch of shade, but the pesky sun left some shining splashes of light in the foreground as well as the background. 

Obviously I wanted you all to look at my subjects, but I had these almost blown out spots pulling needily at your attention while the people almost melded into the background. It didn't help that their outfits match the surrounding colors extremely well either. So, I used all of my powers to rid the image of all the unwanted distractions, and focus your attention back onto my fantastical models.

The bottom left corner of the image was fairly easy. I just employed the patch tool to steal some darker areas from elsewhere in the image and then cleaned the edges of the "patches" with the clone stamp tool. The bottom right corner, on the other hand, was just not "patch-tooling" very well. It was too large and bright of an area - every time I tried it the patches looked super fake and weird. I ended up using the pen tool to cut out a chunk of the background and create a big rock to cover the sun-splotch.

I continued around the image, removing more of the brightest spots and little distractions, but my subjects where still getting lost in the sea of neutral greens and browns. That's when I added in the beams of light behind and around them. I took advantage of the fact that our eyeballs are like moths to the flame and drastically lightened the area where I wanted your eyeballs to land. Having the bright light behind them also gave them some nice separation from the background. Hooray!

This really was SUCH a fun shoot. I took this image at the 2016 Watkins Glen Flicker Gathering (the second of two such events that I've hosted), and I couldn't have asked for better models .... Well I could have asked, but the answer would have been, "No, sorry these two are superior to all other choices, thanks bye." The strapping blond gentleman happens to be my best friend/cousin James, and the lovely lady is his soon to be wife, Kara! Both of whom are incredibly talented in more ways than I have fingers to count. You can read more about how amazing they are here or here.