Chinese Cultural Center Portrait Shoot Pt. 1

It seems like this is going to be a tradition now, as my good friend and I hung out and had a portrait shoot this Winter Break while she was back home from U of A (ew). Because she brought her qipao while she was in Taiwan, we decided to go take pictures in the Chinese Cultural Center since the Chinese theme would carry over into the environment. Of course, we had to take pictures of her in her dress though, so that came first. Lighting wasn't ideal in the garden because neither of us realized that the buildings nearby blocked a lot of the sun out, and we only had around an hour before sunset to shoot. Since there was still some pretty strong sunlight towards the walkway to the lake in the garden, I decided to try to take some shots where the sunlight would naturally create a lens flare and kind of wash out the image. It.... kinda worked, some instances better than others.

With all of the imitation architecture nearby though,we shifted taking photos to here. The windows allowed for those classic window poses, including looking out the window and sitting in the window frame. I had a few more shots, but they were too overexposed for me to save without the colors looking horrendously unnatural. As you can see, we had a lot of fun.

We couldn't ignore the pond with the koi though, so we took the first picture here. However, the sunset and reflection off the water made the sunlit parts in the original picture way overexposed and everything else way underexposed; I tried my best to correct for it. And, since I had my friend sitting on the railing and the sun was still up, I tried to get those dramatic pictures where the subject's head is right in front of the light source. I think it worked well.

Going back to the bridge and pondside, I thought a "attitude" shot was in order since she was wearing boots. But also, since she was also wearing a dress and I thought it would suit the environment we were shooting in, I thought that getting shots without any footwear on would be appropriate, too, as if one is kicking off their shoes to relax in a nice place like this. 

There are still some photos left from this shoot I need to edit, so stick around for them soon!

Monochrome and Photoshop experimentation

As you can see just a few posts down, I reedited some old portrait photos of a friend. Now, for some reason, I really like the look of long hair partially covering the face/eye of people because I think it adds a dramatic, mysterious, edgy look to the person. And when I think "dramatic, mysterious, edgy" look, a lot of times I also think of black-and-white images that just look "gritty", sort of like an action comic/manga. I decided to give some of the photos a monochrome conversion, and then the handdrawn effect that I previously used with another friend's pictures. For both pictures I used the same process: I edited the picture in Lightroom, converted the picture to black and white in Lightroom, adjusted the picture some more to have more contrast between blacks and whites, loaded the picture into Photoshop, added the handdrawn effect, and messed with the curves to add more contrast. I have to say, I absolutely love the results, see for yourself:

While I love the handdrawn effect's results, I still love the original black and white conversions I made that were the base images for the handdrawn effect images. Take a look here, I think you'll see why I love them so much, too:

Also, this was from a little further back, but I played around with black and white conversions with the subject facing away. For these images, I feel that facing away provokes ideas of reflection and thinking. I added the black and white conversion and softened the image to make this reflection and thinking appear to be about the past, locked in memories but distant and untouchable.

Reediting old portrait photos

Going back to older photos, I realized that I've not only been improving in photography. but also in editing pictures in Lightroom and Photoshop. So, I went back to some portrait pictures I took of a friend way back in January of this year and reedited some of them, since I realized I could do so much better now. If you've been to this site before and checked my portrait portfolio, you may recognize some of these images. I changed them last month when I made the first few edits, but I've gone back and looked through even more. It was mainly issues like having a natural looking white balance and contrast/shadows/highlights, but I also now add more stylistic/artistic elements, such as darkening the backgrounds or having too much highlight/blacks for dramatic effect.

I also have been playing around with monochrome conversions and hand-drawn like effects, more on those in a separate post!

More photos:

South Mountain Portrait Shoot II

If you've seen some of my earlier blog posts, you'll see that a favorite location of mine for photography is South Mountain, since it offers rugged, mountainous backdrops but also a great view of the city. You'll also know that a friend and I were going to take photos at the summit, until I messed things up. But, this is summer vacation, where time is aplenty, so my friend and I went to have another photo shoot on South Mountain, this time with both of us properly prepared. This was also the inaugural photo shoot of my new 35mm f/1.8 fast lens, which I have to say I absolutely love.

After a quick 5 minute hike to the location, we began setting up and figuring out locations. There were torrential downpours of rain the previous night, and the clouds from that storm still loomed in the. So, the initial photos were taken in cloudy conditions.

However, after reviewing photos and teaching my friend a little about photography, the sun poked its head through the clouds. On her urging, we started taking some more photos in a variety of poses, which also included me lying down on rocks with half my body over a 10 foot drop.

After some more photo review, chitchat, setting up, and photography lessons, the clouds covered the sun again, which was starting to get low on the horizon. So, we took some more shots with the available light and then headed back down the mountain without getting arrested.

More pictures, thanks for modelling for me!

Messing Around with Photoshop

While I was going through photos from our hikes, to annoy my friend I took random pictures of her. Some of them actually came out pretty well, although dark and noisy. But, I thought they would look good in black and white, and after adjusting everything and converting to monochrome, I realized I wanted the pictures to have a hand-drawn effect/look. 

For the first picture, I wanted a more delicate, "angelic" photo, so I maxed out the value of Lightroom's Noise Reduction tool so the image was completely smoothed over. I then softened it before plugging it into Photoshop to create the handdrawn effect. The first image is the final product, the second image is what I started with.

For the second image, I decided to go with a more "gritty" appearance, so rather than reducing the noise in the picture, I amplified it by hardening all the lines in the image using Lightroom's clarity tool. I then plugged the photo into Photoshop to create the handdrawn effect. Again, the first image (third in the series) is the final product, and the second image (fourth in the series) is what I started with.