i heart this look

As I've been hanging out over in Flickr (a new habit that really does need a sabbatical already!), I keep running across these incredible-looking photos that have this terrific, vintage look and border to them. They are created using a digital camera to take a photo through a twin-reflex camera viewfinder. These images are called TTV (Through The Viewfinder) images. I'm dying to get a twin-lens reflex camera for my birthday so I can do this the real way, but for now, I used a processing trick in Photoshop by creating a mask with this free TTV border. I totally love the results on these... I don't have time to play with them as much as I would like now, but at least I can say I know how, right?

Forty-Two - Little Valentine

she went out shopping with her mommy in the rain,
dressed in hearts and pink and red,
never realizing
she would be
a photographer's valentine.

this shot was so perfect for pulling out the pink and red in black and white. we had a lovely rainy valentine's day, and i let myself edit today's shots into a vintage mood... Hope your day has been as nice as mine has!

I ♥ Faces - Fix-it

I ♥ Faces has added a new feature to the site, a Fix-it Friday. Today they asked us to edit up a photo that was really beautiful, but didn't quite make it out of the camera the way they saw it. This was my take.

Figuring Out Photoshop Secrets

Last night, in a fit of exhausted sleeplessness, I started randomly clicking links on my blog list, and then clicking links on the blogs to see where I'd wind up. Fun for me, it actually paid off when I linked out of this bio to one of her shared free resources. Ever since I started taking photos, I've been amazed by eyes, but I could never figure out how to bring them out the way I had seen so many professional photographers do.

But now I know! And working off this gal's instructions in Photoshop, I found a bunch of new buttons and figured out a WHOLE LOT of new stuff. Now, I'm feeling a bit insecure over my first attempt with this, so if you want to leave an encouraging comment, I'll take it! I think I had some issues with my lighting levels because my face was almost completely shadowed in the original.

Sunday Texture

“The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, I got enough done that I had a little time to play at the end of my productivity.

I created this image with a texture from Barb Henry. I like the vintagey look on it - antiqued love that is still new.

The florist at Peter and Sarah's wedding (coming soon!) was engaged, and she wore this lovely ring as she pinned the boutonnieres onto the groomsmen. I love how everybody loves weddings when we're at one - and I wonder at how far we grow away from them as the years pass.

Handy New Concepts

In my adventures around the photographical community I've been discovering, I have seen lots of technical terminology that I've heard but never really knew. I used to be so intimidated by *real* photographers that I would just ignore anything anyone said about the technical end of things and keep doing my thing - capturing the pictures I love, by hook or by crook. Thankfully, I own a very forgiving - I might even say benevolent - camera, that automatically seemed to know what I wanted.

Lately, however, I've been absorbing new terminology like "aperture," "exposure," "dof," "bokeh," and "lightbox" - the list goes on and on.

One of the handiest little concepts I've absorbed recently has been the "orton effect," a shooting/editing technique involving a composite of two differently-exposed images. This shot was taken with a cell phone and edited with the orton effect.

I've already been able to use this concept for my most recent wedding:



On the left image above is cropped out of a photo of the entire wedding party. The the shot on the right is the same cropped image after I applied the orton effect.

I created this by duplicating the photo layer in Photoshop Elements 4.0 and applying a blurry effect to the back layer. Then I used the cookie cutter tool to crop the front layer around the couple. I used the smudge tool to blend the cropping line, and I ended up with a photograph that was all about the bride and the groom.

I don't really know how technical it all is, but I liked the result, and the bride did too!

When Editing, Do Play

It is the editing of my RAW digital photos that has weighed me down over the last two years or so. Thanks to a wonderful bride and groom of mine, I was able to take a December break to learn my editing program, mess around with light and color, and otherwise learn how to enjoy the editing process.

Today, I'm neck deep in this couple's wedding, and I am discovering how much more fun I can have with the wedding photos I have shot. There's a lot of regular touch-ups happening, but along the way, I've bunny-trailed a bit, just to keep myself awake.

Here is one "hoppy" edit:



I made this image using a texture from ojoyous1.