How to Photograph Fireworks
Living in San Diego, there are times where you can see fireworks every night in the summertime since Seaport Village, Coronado and Sea World are all within view of each other. Since they are such a commonplace, I typically ignore them and go about my business, but I can’t help but feel committed to them on New Years Eve and 4th of July. The one issue with fireworks shows in general is dealing with the immense crowds so several years ago my step dad Jeff had an idea on 4th of July to do something a little different for the fireworks show in Coronado. There are the usual places to view...
read moreHow to Photograph Lightning
Capturing lightning isn’t as tricky as one would think, provided you have the right equipment. The hardest part is finding the lightning and having said equipment with you at the time. My wife and I were in Cancun with my brother and his wife last summer and were lucky enough to have quite a light show the final night of our stay. Being on vacation, my brother’s wife Tina and I both had our digital SLRs so we were prepared when a surprise tropical storm rolled through on the final night of our trip. What you’ll need is a camera you can control manually, a tripod, a cable...
read moreHow to fake a tilt-shift or PC-E lens in Photoshop
Tilt-shift or PC-E lenses work by using two types of movements: rotation of the lens plane relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt-shift lenses can be used for architectural photography in avoiding convergence of parallel lines. Some photographers also use these lenses for shooting portraits as they can isolate their subjects easily by blurring-out negative space. One of the most popular ways photographers are using these lenses is to make a scene appear as if it’s a miniature model. This is done by...
read moreGet rid of haze in your photos the lazy man way
Some people aren’t in to using twenty steps in Photoshop to acquire a look they want. Sometimes it’s due to the daunting task of learning how to use this intimidating application, other times it’s just being plain lazy. Either way, there are many times in your life where laziness is OK and this happens to be one of them. Mid-day is rarely a good time for photo taking outdoors unless you’re shooting black and white, but life doesn’t always occur during the magic hour either so there has to be some type of compromise. Everybody has photos like these in their...
read moreRemove unwanted people from your photos!
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to get rid of annoying tourists who just have to be in your photos. Come to think about it, YOU are probably an annoying tourist in someone else’s photo. I know, I’ve seen myself, or rather my backside, end up in other people’s otherwise spectacular images while traveling. So while you’re cursing the blindingly white guy with the Birkenstocks for spazzing-out and galloping in to your scene, any number of creative words could be used to describe you by the guy or girl right behind you. The point is, there’s a lot...
read moreMake an easy photo mosaic in Photoshop
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a real photo mosaic. It was a photo of Marilyn Monroe on the cover of a magazine consisting of hundreds of images. It was one of the coolest things I’d seen at the time and wondered what kind of amazing technology was used to create such an amazing piece of work. I can tell you there is really only one place to get a true mosaic like the one I saw. This is at Picture Mosaics, but you will also pay a couple hundred bucks for it. There is a poor man’s method for producing a photo mosaic. It’s nowhere near the wow factor that a true...
read moreMake a fashion shot pop
Lighting and makeup can do a lot, but there are times when it’s just not enough. In this tutorial I show one way of achieving a final photo that pops. The first thing I did was open up the Levels Dialog and give enter the properties: 12 1.00 243 to give the image a little more depth and contrast boost. The next step is to clean up all the stray hairs covering her face. For this, I used the Clone Stamp set to lighten with a feathered brush and reduced the opacity to 40% I did the same for any blemishes I found. To get rid of the dark circles under her eyes I made a feathered Clone...
read moreImage straightening the easy way
Ever take a shot and didn’t check to make sure it was straight? This is an easier fix than manually rotating the image. The trick is using the ruler tool located behind the eyedropper tool in Photoshop. Using the Ruler Tool, click and drag a line across the image going with the horizon. Next, click Image>Rotate Canvas>Arbitrary. A dialog box will come up showing you the degree of rotation necessary to straighten the image based on the line you made with the Ruler Tool. Click OK, and your image is straightened out. Now all that’s left is cropping out the white edges. That’s...
read moreHow to restore a damaged photograph (Advanced)
I’ll be posting many restoration tutorials. Some will be easy touch-ups, while others will require some serious art knowledge. A restoration project that requires re-creating a face, for instance, will be far more advanced. This tutorial involves some expert art skills. If at any point you have further questions please contact me. Last week my Grandmother asked me if I could repair an old, damaged photograph she had of my father when he was a kid. I told her I would try, but couldn’t promise anything. I knew there would be a possibility the photo would be beyond my ability, or at...
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