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How 15 different artists shot self portraits using only home lighting

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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.

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Shoot for better composites by choosing your background first

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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.

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Five simple tips for epic composites

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You know how sometimes, you build a composite and it looks ok, but not great? Something just feels a little bit off-ish? Yeah, this happens to everyone! There are actually a few easy tips that can up your compositing game significantly. Robert Cornelius just shared five of those tips and they will take your composites out of the dark dimension and into Asgard. (Yup, saw the Avengers on the weekend, it was awesome!).

We did a before/after for each of the tips so you can see the impact of using each of the techniques.
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Here is an easy tip for compositing hair like a ninja

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I wanted to share one of the images created for a tutorial I made, and chat a bit about one of my greatest compositing tips – hair extraction. 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 ….

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How I shot and edited this photo using only home lights

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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.

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It took months to make this image tell its story just the way I wanted

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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.

To be honest, 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!

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How to get the “illustrative” look in your portraits

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I can’t tell you how many times I get comments like “Wow this is so cool; it almost looks like a painting!” Not that I’m complaining about that whatsoever; I take it as a compliment. It’s one of my goals when creating a work of art – to make something that isn’t quite a photo, but isn’t quite a painting. “Yes, but how do you make it look like that!?” Well, since you asked I guess I could explain some of the process. Obviously a LOT goes into making my images look the way they do. Fancy studio lighting and a hefty amount of digital painting play large roles, but one technique that really pushes my work towards that sort of hyper-real-digital-illustration-y-type-look is the use of the “Shadows/Highlights” adjustment.

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How to use motion blur to create action

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Apparently I have a thing for making dragons. It’s not surprising, seeing as I grew up collecting them and have always been a proud fantasy-nerd. For those of you who don’t recall, I previously created a baby dragon in Photoshop from pictures of lizards, which you can check out here. I had so much fun doing it the first time, and apparently exploded a lot of brains with my creature-creating prowess.

I was thinking it was about time to attempt to cause some more mind explosions, plus I guess I just love dragons. I decided to make things a bit more interesting this time around and challenged myself to create a creature out of sticks rather than animal pieces. I feel I successfully completed my mission.

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How I work with Color Harmonies to improve my photos

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Being a full-time huge fan/buddy of the guys over at the RAWexchange store, I often get asked to check out their new material. Well friends, let me tell you that their newest endeavor to start selling in-depth tutorials is one of their best ideas yet. Stefan Kohler created a Colors & Photoshop tutorial that is two and a half hours video. And it’s jam-packed with everything you could ever hope to know about colors and how/why they work the way they do in Photoshop. Don’t be scared by the lengthy duration – it’s super-handily broken up into a bunch of smaller videos; each is about a different subject or a certain tool. That way you can absorb the info a bit at a time (because it is a lot), and then you can always jump back to reference one subject and re-watch just that video when you’re ready to give it a go.  Some of the subjects he covers in the tutorial include…

  • Gaining an understanding about what color is and how it works
  • Understanding the principles behind color work and learn to apply it to your own images
  • Learn what color harmonies and schemes are and how to apply them
  • Additive and substantive color editing using blending modes
  • Learn to use colors for complex masking (like selecting detailed lace)
  • How to ‘fix’ photos with ‘bad’ color
  • Techniques on color correcting and matching skin tones
  • How to use curves to fix color issues in ways you may never have considered

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I Frankensteined a model from all her best parts

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I had the pleasure of shooting with Amy Wilder again! It is always such a joy to shoot with someone who is so on top of their shit. This girl knows how to work it. Normally when I do a shoot I’m trying to get as much “right” in one frame as possible. Aka the face, pose, hair, dress, whatever other magical elements that I’m capturing in camera, all to my liking in one shot. Very often I can get pretty close and only end up adding a bit of extra dress here or a hair flip there. Although apparently there are those other times when your model gives you too many perfect pictures and you just cannot decide what to use … so you go nuts and just combine many shots … so. many.

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