Defying Gravity using Photoshop

Hi everyone, I hope you had a fantastic Weekend!
As for me, I’ve been playing with some glasses and food colouring, not to mention Photoshop.

As you may know, if you follow me on Social Media Websites, I have been playing with some still life.Its very rewarding and interesting as I get to understand a lot more of how lights work in different surfaces and working with some reflections it takes the learning to the next level.

So, this weekend I decided to create something a bit more dynamic!
The first step was to get some Red, Green and Blue food colouring, this way I could create an RGB image.But just photograph 3 glasses with some coloured liquid felt too simple, so I decided to play with gravity…

The setup was very simple, a small black gloss table  and a Soft box just behind it with my speedlight at 1/4 of power.
I had my camera on a tripod with a 105mm macro lens as the glasses were “Port glasses”, therefore quite small.
I shot the images at 1/150th of a second as I wanted to get the least amount of ambient light as possible at ISO 100 and F/11
So here is the first shot

As you can see, it looks decent, but I knew I could make it more interesting…
So, I grabbed a small cardboard box and put it underneath one side of the legs of the table, this way the table had an inclination of around 30 degrees.Having the table ready I started taking some photos of individual glasses, like this…

Now all I had to do was to take all the images to Photoshop and bring all of those images together.
Here is the final result

In Video bellow is a tutorial on how I created the final image

 

 

All was good, but then I thought of something else.Why not create motion to the liquid?
So I got the table leveled again and asked my wife to take some shots while I was moving the glasses.
This was very tricky to get it right, but after just 2 attempts I got what I wanted, so here is the image of me moving the glasses

The way I moved was so the glasses would be on the exact same plane of focus to ensure that they would be in focus.
Here is the final image

Also, I created a video on how I created easily this image

I hope this post inspired you in any way and feel free to share this post and if you produce any images related to this blog post, feel free to share it with me.

Have a great week,

Miguel

Use your Creative Cloud as a Gallery

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great week,

Today I would like to talk about Creative Cloud.
As many of you know Creative Cloud is a subscription based way that Adobe found to allow millions of people to have their latest products in a more affordable way.
When first was introduced many users weren’t happy and some, still not happy, but Creative Cloud is great!
For less than £9 you can subscribe for the so called Photography Program, with that you get Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge and many mobile apps, for both IOS and Android that I absolute love and use very often, (but that is a chat for another day).
Also, as part of the Creative Cloud subsbriber, you get 20Gb free storage.Fair enough, these days 20Gb is not a lot, but its very useful, and when working and combining a workflow between mobile apps and desktop apps, its absolutely fantastic!
But you can do more than that, you can use it as a private gallery.All you have to do is make the link visible so the people with that link can view the images, not only that, but also comment on the images and even download.It not may seem a lot, but if you would like to share a photoshoot to a client easily and in a very professional way,I think its great.
Personally I use it for my private portfolio, the reason why is private is that I respect my clients privacy, therefore I am not publishing everything I do online, but having that as a private “Gallery” with the Creative Cloud on my phone and iPad, its easy to show future clients some of my work.
You could also use it as a link visible to all and use it as a Portfolio page, but Adobe also offers you “Adobe Portfolio”, but that, is a chat for another day 😉

Here is a video just to show you how easy it is to use Creative Cloud as I mention above.

I hope you enjoyed this Friday’s post.

Have a fantastic Weekend,

Miguel

Still Life simple setup

Hi, I hope you had a fantastic Weekend.

As for me, I have been playing a bit as you will see on this post…

Even that winter is coming to an end, its nice from time to time to stay indoors, but sometimes its the problem of what to photograph. So this weekend, I was playing with a very simple setup, a couple of glasses and after, I grabed a small bottle of Coke.

The setup was a 60cms by 60cms softbox with a Nikon Speedlight at 1/4 power at 17mm, sitting just behind a small table with a blass glass top, (great for reflections)and  a couple of black cardboard pieces

I had my camera with a 70-200mm on a tripod and had a remote to trigger the camera. The settings on the camera were 1/15 of second, f/11, ISO100 and the lens was at 150mm. As you also may see on the image above, I had the the 2 pieces of card board on both sides of the bottle, the reason for that is very simple, I wanted a white background, but also wanted the edges of the bottle to be darker, therefore have a definition and separation of the bottle from the background and the reason of such a slow shutter speed, is just to allow to have detail on the front of the bottle and the liquid.

Here is the final result

Now, lets change a bit the setup, lets get rid of one of the cards and put the remaining card behind the bottle…

As you can see, super easy!
So, lets check the camera settings. The shutter speed was increased to 1/150th of a second, so it will only capture any light from the speedlight, and in regards to settings, I didn’t change anything else.

And here is the result

As you can see, I got a black background with some hightlights on the edge to separate the bottle of the background and to enhance the shape of the bottle. It worked as I planned but I had no detail on the label as there was nothing lighting it, so I just grabed a tourch and iluminated the label 😁

As you can see with a small andcheap setup, you can achieve some cool images!

I sure hope that this post inspires you to try this out. I would love to see what you come up with, using this setup.
Have a great week,
Miguel 

Add a subject to your cityscape images

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great week.

Today I want to share with you something cool that happened to me during holidays season…

As you know I live in London and throught out the year, its a beautiful city, however during the holidays season, it becomes a lot more iluminated and beautiful, as I have a very soft spot for lights and night photography, Me and my wife and son went for a nice walk.

Of course, I was ready to capture some lights, but there was a particular image that for the first couple of seconds of shooting, I wasn’t very happy. I’ll explain!

There I was with my camera all setup on my trusty tripod, remote trigger in my hand ready to shoot until a gentleman stops in front of me playing with his phone. Well, even that I didn’t want him on my image, I started taking my set of bracketed images, so I could see if I had the right settings and if the composition was as I visualized.

All was good and he kept walking in front of me, then he stopped, maybe he was on Twitter    Talking about me, or just checking is Facebook feed, but as I saw him a bit still, I had the idea of including him on the image, so I started shooting and thinking to myself”please, don’t move”.

Well, he did move a bit but I got the sequence of brackets, and to be honest, as soon as I started processing the images, I realized that thanks to him, I had created a more compelling image.

So, here is my advice, if this happens to you, don’t give up, start taking some photos, even if someone is walking in front of you, it may help you create a rather more pleasing image 😉

I hope this post inspires you!

Have a fantastic Weekend,

Miguel

Free ebooks on Google

Good Morning everyone, I hope you had a great Weekend!

I had a quiet one with my family, wich was great.

As you have seen on the title of this blog, you can find free ebooks on Google…

Photographyand everything related keeps getting updated, so if a new camera comes out, a new book about the new camera will come out, therefore the price of the previous camera book, will come down… The same happens tome erything else in relation to photography or even Photoshop. Therefore Google has quite a nice list of free ebooks, for you to download. All you need is to follow this link https://play.google.com/store/search?q=photography%20books%20free&c=books 

Just because the books are free, doesn’t mean that they aren’t good!There are great books there, and for the price… You can’t go wrong 😉
Have a fantastic week,
Miguel 

Portrait Tip-Bring Your Subject’s Smaller Eye Closer to you

Hi everyone!

I hope you had a fantastic week!

Today’s post is a short one, yet, in my opinion very helpfull.

If you are a portrait photographer, you most likely have noticed that a lot of people have one eye smaller that other, and when they smile, or try to smile it becomes even more obvious.

As any portrait photographer would know, always focus on the eyes, and focus on the eye closer to you.

So, if you bring the person’s “lazy” eye closer to you, it wont be as obvious that, that person has a smaller eye. Fair enough, we could fix the eye in Photoshop, but if you are shooting tethered or you show the back to the camera to your subject, it wont be as obvious, and it will make them feel a lot more confortable with themselves, as there are people that they don’t feel confortable with the “lazy eye”
I hope this short blog post is helpful for you! So now, go out and photograph someone and see for yourself the great results you can achieve.
Have a fantastic Weekend,
Miguel 

Cast iPad or Iphone screen to PC or Mac

Hi everyone!
I hope you had a fantastic Weekend.

It may sound weird the title of this post, but soon, it will make sense…

When Adobe launched Lightroom Mobile, I wasn’t too keen about it, fair enough, grab my phone to capture an image, but take a photo and then import to Lightroom Mobile and process the image on my phone, so I could share on Social Media.I rather take an image using my Dslr and use my computer to process the image!
Well, I was so wrong!
Lightroom Mobile is a lot more easier than I though and now I use it all the time.As I use it all the time and its such a fantastic app, I wanted to create some video tutorials about it.

That is why I started searching online for a decent program/app that I could use either to record on my iPad, or screen cast to my computer.I came across LonelyScreen that is a FREE program that we can install on Mac or Windows  that casts the screen of any IOS on my computer, this way I can use my normal screen recorder.

LonelyScreen takes one minute to install, and its super easy to setup and it does exactly what I wanted, and as its a wireless connection, no cables on my way.
Feel free to check their website http://eu.lonelyscreen.com/ and try it
Also, last week I posted my first Lightroom Mobile Tutorial, check it out on my YouTube Channel  https://www.youtube.com/miguelcamposf

Take care,

Miguel

Wide angle vs Ultra Wide angle lens

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great week!

In todays post I would like to share, my thoughts about a question that I am asked a lot. What is the difference between ultra wide angle and wide angle lens and how they can be used?

Well, the easiest answer would be its the focal length, and to be fair, that is correct, but there is more to it.

In the example images bellow, I was using a Nikon crop sensor camera and the crop factor of it is 1.5X.

On this first image, I captured this image at 18mm, so on a full frame the equivalent of 27mm, that is the focal lenght that most of us start, including myself, its great for landscape, cityscape and even when you have all your family together, its wide enough to capture  everyone.

 

As you can see from this image, in terms of composition, it works really well, but when I shot this image a few years ago, I still thought that even that it was a cool composition, the image could be improved if I would go back to this location with better light (in my personal opinion), but also with a ultra wide angle lens.

You may think, why a ultra wide angle lens, if I already have the subject and some leading lines leading to the subject. And as you may see from the image bellow a lot changes.

6 or 7 months later I go back to this location, at a different time of the day, where I could even include the sun on my composition.

Those who know me, know that I shoot a lof of Bracketed images, so later I can process them in Hdr Pro using Photoshop, therefore I could shoot against the sun and still have a great overall exposure.I had my camera on my tripod, remote connected and a ultra wide angle lens a Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm, which is the 15mm equivalent on a full frame camera.

 

Now you can see the differences of shooting with a ultra wide angle lens… The part of the bridge closer becomes more exaggerated, therefore enhancing the foreground and the leading lines to the subject. Also, you can see that the subject looks like its further away, allowing me to capture a lot more of the river and reflections on it, not to mention that I still have plenty of sky on the image that allowed me to capture the sun in a perfect way.
I hope that this post helps you and if you are thinking of going ultra wide, I clarified any questions that you could have, but if you have any more questions,  feel free to contact me.
See you next time and have a Fantastic Weekend!
Miguel