Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

Before

After

Here’s how to do it:

by Joe

I was trying to see if I could capture the water from the fruit splashing. Something to show the motion. For the set up I put the fruit and water bowl next to a large window to get lots of light on it. The set the camera on a tripod so that I could focus the shot and still have room to drop the fruit. Then I just kept trying it over and over. The picture is a result of water dropping from a couple of strawberries in my hand, just before being dropped. Photoshop Elements was used to adjust the colors very slightly and to crop. Taken with my Canon 30D, using a 50mm, at f4.0, ISO 400, for 1/250 sec.

by Joe

The photo was taken on a boat trip in West Cork. The lighthouse is called the Fastnet. We were looking for whales and dolphins, but unfortunately we didn’t see any so the lighthouse was the main focus for the trip.

I asked the skipper to go this side of the lighthouse as I thought I might get a good silhouette with the sun setting. I used a canon 400d with a sigma 10-20mm lens. The boat was rocking in fairly heavy waves but managed to get a fairly decent shot. I then converted to black and white in photoshop and used levels to bring out the clouds and the waves.

Again, notice how the photographer used the strong back light, in this case the sun, to produce a beautiful silhouette of the main subject, the lighthouse.

Also, I would like to add that the Sigma 10-20mm lens is my favorite lens in the whole world. I use it everywhere I go and often times when friends ask me what their next lens purchase should be I always recommend getting this lens.

by Joe

Thanks to Adobe Photoshop CS3, panoramics have never been easier to do.

Below I’ll give a step by step on how I to “stitch” together several photos to make amazing, well blended, panoramics. Of course, there are more ways then one to skin a cat and photoshop you can just about do anything in multiple ways but I’m going to show you how I do it. If you can skip a step or know of an easier way by all means post in the comments!

First, select the photos that you are going to be using and bring them into Photoshop:

Second, create a blank canvas and drop the photos onto the canvas, each photo making a new layer:

Third, this is where the magic happens, select all your layers except the background layer. Go Edit -> Auto-Align Layers. It will ask you how you want to do it align the layers, you can play around with these options on your own but I usually leave it on Auto-Align. Sit back, relax, let Photoshop do the heavy lifting.

Now the images are aligned but they look all funky because you took the photo in different spots so the camera metered them all slightly differently depending on the necessary exposure. The outcome should look like this

Fourth, keeping the layers selected, go Edit -> Auto-Blend. Sit back and let Photoshop again do all the work for you. Maybe take the time to open a notepad and begin writing a lovely, well thought out comment for the blog post.

Fifth, you’re done! Well, almost. Gotta make it look good right? Crop and save.

Congrats! All done! Here’s what mine looks like:

Post your’s if you got one… I’d love to check it out!