Tell All Tuesday – Eye Pop | St. Louis Children’s Photographer

Posted on July 22, 2010

Tell All…Thursday is here! It’s a quickie but goodie. I’m going over the eye pop I do to all of my portrait shots. FIRST – realize I learned this technique from watching THIS GREAT TUTORIAL from Becoming Mom. She goes a few steps further than I do, so make sure you take a minute to watch it! When I was first starting out, I figured out I could sharpen eyes and went WAY overboard. I also only sharpened the colors of the eyes and not the whites, which turns out looking like an alien weirdo. That’s not what we want. Now I just do a subtle eye pop, and here’s how I do it:

Here’s an out take of a little cutie I had a session with recently. We’re gonna pop those gorgeous eyes!

Click on the lasso tool – mine is set to 0px feather and Non-Alias is checked. Select the eyes (including the whites of the eyes).

BEFORE

AFTER

Nothing crazy. Nothing too dramatic. But it definitely makes them pop, and that’s what I want. Make sure to watch Becoming Mom’s tutorial if you haven’t already!

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Tell All Tuesday – Color Casts | St. Louis Children’s Photographer

Posted on July 6, 2010

Today we’re going to talk about a specific type of color cast. Many times in images, clothing and accessories that are white end up having a color cast, or tint. Most commonly in my images, the cast is blue, yellow or magenta – or a combo of all three. This is a quick tutorial on how to get rid of that color cast.

*Also check out Ashley McNamara’s tutorial on this HERE – it’s a good one!*

Here’s an image SOOC. Click on the Quick Selection Tool and select the white that is tinted. Sometimes I do all the white at the same time, and sometimes I do them piece by piece because the tint is different. This time I selected the blanket and not the diaper cover.

Sorry, I adjusted the color without taking a screen shot. This next one will show it. After I adjusted the blanket, there was a shadowy area that still looked wrong to me. I selected it. Then went to Hue/Saturation in the Adjustments palette.

I lowered the magenta. Ashley McNamara’s tutorial shows you how to find out what color to decrease.

I also selected parts of the diaper cover that were magenta. Here’s the image after fixing the color casts.

Make sense? Hopefully!

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Tell All Tuesday – Straighten & Fill | St. Louis Children’s Photographer

Posted on June 8, 2010

Okay, today’s Tell All Tuesday is a quick one. Ever used the straighten tool before? I used it all the time when I had Elements 5, but when I made the switch to CS4, straightening wasn’t intuitive and I didn’t figure out how to do it for a little while.

Sometimes tilting the camera is a good idea, and sometimes it’s not. When there is a clear horizon line in my image, I typically like to make that horizon line straight if it isn’t already. Of course, occasionally I break this rule. And when I first started, I was tilting the camera like crazy. I’ve heard it said that one way to pick out a new photog is by how often they tilt their cameras! Probably true.

So – here are the quick and easy steps to fixing a tilted image. I’ll also touch on filling in the canvas. *I learned this method from Ashley McNamara’s tutorial HERE.*

Here’s the image SOOC.

Find the eyedropper tool on the left palette (6th down) and change it to the ruler tool. Then click and drag to form a line along the horizon line.

Then head to Image –> Image Rotation –> Arbitrary

Don’t change the angle. Hit okay.

Done. Your image is straight. Now you need to crop and/or fill in those spaces on the edges. With my small “studio” space, I end up cloning out pieces of my background fairly often. You can use the clone tool, or you can use THIS METHOD of “stretching the canvas” from MCP Actions. I use this a lot.

Here’s the final image after filling in the missing pieces and a little Touch of Light. Oh, and getting rid of that blue tint in the blanket and diaper cover. Don’t know how to do that? Read last week’s Tell All Tuesday post HERE!

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Tell All Tuesday – DIY Backdrop Stand | St. Louis Children’s Photographer

Posted on May 18, 2010

Ready for a fun Tell All Tuesday? All right! I finally found time to put this tutorial together for a do-it-yourself backdrop stand. This one was designed and put together by my husband’s awesome parents. I’m sure there are many ways you could do this. This one simply dissects my stand and hopefully offers enough instruction for you to build one for yourself.

Hopefully this is self-explanatory, but please let me know if you have any questions!

*Sorry this is so small – for some reason it won’t post larger! You should be able to save it and then zoom in yourself…but please don’t repost or use it without proper credit and a link. Thanks!

Here’s another look at the base, without all the writing. The reason the two shorter legs of the base are different lengths is so that they can twist and accommodate uneven ground. This has actually come in handy in some situations. Most of the joints are glued together with PVC pipe glue, but some aren’t so that they can be pulled apart for storing and changing out pieces, etc.

Good luck (and don’t forget to tell me how it goes)!

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Tell All Tuesday – Round Up | St. Louis Children’s Photographer

Posted on May 11, 2010

Today’s Tell All Tuesday is a simple round up of good photography finds I’ve been bookmarking lately (in no particular order):

- Becoming Mom – this website is awesome and has neat Photoshop tutorials that I’ve never seen anywhere else.
-Starting a Photography Business – advice from Shannon Holden that I found very helpful.
-Melissa Davis Design – lots of photography design freebies.
-Erin Cobb’s new FAQ video – so many great tips for you photogs out there.
-Ashley McNamara’s Photoshop Tutorials – she’s a great photographer, and she’s even greater in my book because she shares great Photoshop tutorials. I learn something from every single one…check them out!
-Becky Earl (BeArt) – another great photographer, and I recently found her Hints and Tips section. I’m excited to play around with her tutorials.
-Baby As Art – That masters of newborn photography share a video of them doing their chin-on-the-wrists pose…fun to watch.

That should keep you busy for a while! Have fun. It’s BEAUTIFUL here and I couldn’t be happier that’s spring’s almost here!

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Tell All Tuesday – Baby Tips | St. Louis Children’s Photographer

Posted on April 27, 2010

It’s time for another Tell All Tuesday. This time our question is from Jenny:

“So for a Tell all Tuesday idea, I’d love a list of suggestions for baby sessions…where you’ve bought some of your accessories (diaper cover, blankets) and any tips for someone about to do their first baby session!”

Well, I’m no expert on baby sessions, but I’ve done a lot of them and have a way I like to do them – so take or leave my suggestions! I’m not sure if by “baby” you mean a newborn, or an older baby, but for both I tend to keep my sessions pretty simple. I use simple props and like to focus on the child, especially capturing the details. Here is a list of the things I use the most and where I got them:

Diaper cover – I use a white knit diaper cover in nearly every baby session. I also have an off-white one. Both were bought on Etsy. I would highly suggest buying from Titchbiz’s store. The cover I use most is from her store. It’s the white Rib Leg diaper cover size S (2-5 months). It fits tiny newborns with some adjusting and also can stretch to fit some 6 month olds. Visit her store HERE. I want just about everything in it.
Doll bed – I use a basic wooden doll bed I bought from Ikea in the toy section. I painted it white. I use it for babies, and also sometimes use it as a bench for older children.
Blankets – I want more and better blankets. The best blankets are stretchy and washable. I think knits are beautiful. I wish I were a knitter!
NEWBORNS – I use a bean bag for my newborn sessions (it was $5 at a yard sale). I put a hot pad where the baby will be laying, and drape my blankets over it, pulling the blanket back tight and clipping it to my backdrop stand. I also use a sound machine with white noise or womb sounds, and also set a small space heater blowing really warm air directly on the baby. When the baby arrives (hopefully with just a diaper on), I put the diaper cover on and usually suggest Mom tops him/her off with milk. Then we may rock baby for a minute and place him/her on the bean bag right in front of the space heater. It doesn’t usually take long before the baby is out. GETTING BABY ASLEEP IS THE KEY. I don’t even bother turning on my camera until the baby is totally asleep. Once the baby is asleep, don’t be afraid to touch/move/shift/bug the baby! He/she will stay asleep, and you want to make sure you can see all the important body parts…hands, fingers, toes – pay attention to where all these are! Most importantly, you must also pay close attention to how the light is falling on the face and make sure the face is being lit well. From my own experience, when the light is coming down from the top of the head across the face of the baby, the resulting shadowing is not flattering. I like to angle the baby around 45 degrees, or sometimes closer to front-lit. Use a small f-stop (a wide open aperture) so that the background blurs into a nice bokeh. During “set changes,” have Mom or another helper hold baby in front of the space heater and make the change, then position the baby. When the baby is asleep, it’s easy to get “the shot” in only a few tries, once everything is set up. It’s allllll about setting it up right.

I hope some of these tips help! Good luck. Babies are hard, but so worth it.