Christmas Eve This Year...

When I was a kid the big Christmas Eve event was sitting on my father's lap and having him read "The Night Before Christmas." As the story neared it's conclusion (the same conclusion every year) we'd breathe a little faster because following the story, we'd be allowed to open ONE Christmas gift -- as long as it wasn't the "big one."

That was then. This year, Sheree and I packed up her brand new Canon 50D (which she loves, by the way) and my eVolt and went to a cemetary.

It was freezing outside, with temps below the -26c mark. (You guys know about shooting in cold weather, right? You simply accept that the cold will suck the life out of your battery and make your camera cranky. It's best to keep the camera inside your jacket so it can stay warm.) We did a lot of shooting, ran back to the warm car and then headed out again.

It was a memorable afternoon. I love graveyards, especially when I stop to consider that under each tombstone is something that used to be a person, and that what is on the tombstone is what the people left behind think you should know about them.

Sometimes it's just their last name (which I have always suspected is because that's the least expensive package) and sometimes there are grand displays. Like this angel.

I've seen her in summer under the blistering heat. Here she is in winter, with her fall foliage covered in the dusting of snow we got a few days ago.

I've added the bokeh to the edges to direct the eye to the subject of the shot. I increased the vibrance on the leaves inside Photoshop. Because she came off as "way too grey" -- I first used the Burn Tool to accent her lines. Then I used the nifty new CS4 Vibrance setting.

The shot from behind really worked for me as well. I loved the shell look of the wings, contrasted with the snow coating her head and her wings.

It's the same statue -- just two completely different views of it. See how changing your position can radically change the way your image is presented?

The shot at the top of this blog was something I set up. Those are my tracks heading off into the distance. I put them into the snow at that angle because I wanted them to head away from the tombstones, apparently going nowhere.

If you take a look at the largest tombstone, you will see why I did it this way...call it an end to Xmas if you like.

Cemetaries are wonderful places to shoot. Your subjects aren't going anywhere and they never ever complain about the cold.

Happy Christmas to All!

It is a quarter to three in the morning as I sit here and start on this blog.

My grandchildren are sleeping soundly as is my wife. Our old lady cat slumbers too, curled up into a contented ball of softly breathing feline.

I am sitting in my favorite chair with my computer on my lap. I've worked up some images, done a little work on my novel and now am sitting up with you in the wee hours of Christmas Eve day.

There's something very powerful about Christmas, isn't there? I hear the music I listened to as a child and I am taken back immediately to the smell of the Christmas tree and the odd scent it had when the hot bulbs had pressed against the needles for too long. I remember the most miraculous tree decoration: it was a keyhole shaped string of lights. These ornaments were lit from within and filled with a liquid and I very clearly remember watching a small bubble slowly rise to the top of the bulb and then work its way down again. There was such mystery and excitement, something breathlessly exotic about a real Christmas tree.

I am thinking about the fact I never really bought the whole Santa Claus thing. I always suspected my father ate the cookies we'd left out. My father, who grew up without a father of his own, loved Christmas more than any of us, I think.

At his insistance, usually on the most frigidly cold night of the year, the entire family would be loaded into a freezing frost encrusted car and we'd go out to a tree lot (sometimes a LOT of tree lots) to pick out our family tree.

My mother would start preparing Christmas dinner before any of us were up and the scent of cooking turkey conjures up Christmas morning memories more powerfully than anything.

Christmas mornings in our house were orderly affairs. We would have been appalled at the very notion of all of us tearing into presents all at once. They were opened one at a time, with the whole family watching. As the ripped paper rose to knee level, my internal countdown started toward the "big" present. There was always one for everyone.

My mother is gone now and my father is lonely without her. I have only the barest of relationships with my three younger brothers. We have all flown off in different directions and have lost touch with each other -- if indeed we were ever in touch.

Christmas has become a very long season of magic shows, late night road trips, setting and tearing out props and so many shows that they all blend together into one blurry memory. It is a season of missing time with my wife and sleepless nights like this one. In a single day I can be an elf, a New York gangster, a road manager, a producer and a tuxedoed magician.

Over this season, I have thought often about Christmas Eve because by Christmas Eve all of the work is done. (It's remarkable to me, by the way, that Christmas Eve never feels like I think it will. Having the work done produces more of a sigh than a triumphant pumping fist. It's not a bad feeling. Come to think of it, it's more an absence of feeling.)

But a few nights ago, I was driving by a Christmas tree lot and the scent of evergreen was in the air like fairy dust. I was listening to Bing Crosby singing White Christmas and for just a moment, I was five again, looking in wonder at a Christmas tree and the whispered promise it represented. In my mind I was wearing a bright red cowboy hat with a natty yellow whistle, my all-time favorite pajamas with brown horses and cowboys battling outlaws, smelling turkey and listening to my mother and father laughing together in the kitchen.

You can't go back, can you? And would we want to? It's been my experience that the way I choose to remember something isn't necessarily the way it was.

So I am here at a quarter after three now, and I am choosing to think about Christmas...the real Christmas...and the very best gift Anyone ever gave anyone. I am choosing to think about a squalling, crying pooping baby delivered by a teenager in a backwater town most people had never even heard of. And I am thinking about this in the truest context of wonder that the arrival of this child brought a light into a dark place -- and hope to a genuinely hopeless world. The reality of what was done on the first Christmas is so vibrant and powerful that I feel a lump form in my throat, and I have a precious and tender desire to get onto my knees and weep.

So Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to YOU. May your heart be filled with joy and hope and true love. May your spirit swell to bursting with creativity. May your imagination be a warming fire compelling you to create!

Thank you for sharing this time with me.

Good night. I think I will go to sleep now.

Everything New is Old Again!

I suppose it was inevitable: as tech gets better and better that digital artists would want, one day, to make new stuff look like old stuff.

The photo to the left is a theater somewhere in rural Montana. It's a bright and vibrant building with colorful signage.

But, like so many things (including me) it seemed out of place, like it had been lifted out of another decade by some giant with a sense of humor and plunked down here.

This image was aged in under three minutes using some plug-ins and Photoshop tech. Here, in broad strokes, is how the image was created:

1) CONVERT IT TO BLACK AND WHITE. CS4 has a fabulous Adjustment Layer for this purpose. You want the B&W image to be sharp, so don't be afraid to us the Smart Sharpen tool from the Filters Menu.

2) Put the image into Sepia using any of a number of options. The fastest way to get a pleasing sepia tone is to go with Image> Adjustments> Photo Filter> Sepia. There's a live preview so you can get the precise amount of Speia you're after.

3) The edges were burned using a great little utility called (understandably enough) "Burnt Edges" from Alien Skin's Xenoflex 2 filter set.

4) The final effect, that pleasing little acid wash, was done with OnOne's Photo Frame Pro. (Which is NOT compatible with CS4 without an upgrade, by the way.)

The great thing, the REALLY great thing, about Plug-ins, is that if you take the time to learn them, they can save you TONS of time and still give you the exact effect you were after.


This shot of the Sydney Opera House was taken from a balcony on a cruise ship. Sheree and I (and about three thousand other people) were docked beside it. Frankly, it was a little disappointing. It was dirty and tired looking and I stood there, snapping shots and wondering if I would get any kind of worthwhile image out of it.

This effect was completed in about three minutes as well.

1) Convert to Black and White with CS4's B&W Adjustment Layer.

2) Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to define a square and COPY that square onto it's own layer (PC: Control J).

3) Create a Stroke around this slightly smaller layer with the Layer Style options menu (That odd "fx" symbol at the bottom your Layers pallette) and choose a nice dark border (maybe 3 points). I like to add a Drop Shadow from the same menu as well...but that's just showing off.

4) Older Photographs had grain. I took a short cut and added the grain with Alien Skin's Exposure 2 package.

5) I manually added the Vignetting effect around the border of the image using the Burn Tool from the Toolbox.

It's always interesting to take a modern image: a race car, a space ship etc. and age the photo, so it looks like it was taken with a very old style camera. This creates a visual that makes an impact on the viewer because the visual style and the image portrayed don't match.

The effect can be very powerful. Try using in on a portrait. Add some bokeh. Use layers to create sepia and lens barrel effects. Blend the layers. Play around (oops I mean "investigate") the various blending options as you try one layer on top of another.

Have fun! If you come up with anything really cool, feel free to send it to me. I'd love to see it.

Photographing Kids: The Picture AFTER the Picture

I am blessed in many ways. I am married to a splendid woman and we travel the world together. I have a world-class cat. I love what I do for a living and...I am blessed with little people in my life who are happy to pose.

This young lady is one of those people. Here are three pictures from dozens taken during a fifteen minute session on our back porch one summer afternoon.

She has known me since birth. We are comfortable together. But she was still only five years old. In working with "little people" there are a lot of things to keep in mind.

First: you need to keep talking. Photographers have a lot to think about: settings, the subject, the light, the composition. We have a tendancy to want to concentrate on taking the shot and ignoring the subject.

This doesn't work with kids.

You need to keep communicating. You need to keep the child engaged in the process. You need to make them laugh, to look in the directions you want them to look. You need to keep your model engaged in the whole process. There has to be a powerful link to the process between the photographer and the subject.

You need to keep shooting. We (as in the royal "photographer we") have a habit of checking the LCD screen and the histograms to see what we got.

Don't do this when you are working with kids. The idea is to have nothing coming between you and the child. The camera has the potential to become one of those things: it's a big mysterious box to little eyes. Ideally, the camera becomes part of the whole adventure and doesn't represent something scary or misunderstood to the child. In order to keep shooting there are a couple of things that make the process smoother:

1) Do all your settings and camera fiddling before you start with the child. That's important because you need to concentrate on just shooting once the session starts.

2) Use a Burst or Sports Mode. Kids move very quickly and emotions flicker across their faces like vapor. You need to shoot very quickly so you can catch every nuance of what they do.

3) Keep the atmosphere positive. There should be lots of laughter and lots of positive words spoken. The child needs to feel confident and have the ability to relax in front of the camera.

Take the picture AFTER the picture. This is one of the most valuable things I have learned from watching my wife work with people. She's done a ton of portraits. One day I realized how she got such great candid looking shots.

She would take the shot they expected her to take. Just as they were leaving, she'd engage them in conversation and then she would say something funny. When they responded, she would take the shot and she'd consider that the portrait.

It's a technique I have used (okay copied) many times. It works like a charm.

You will get "real person."

And the "real person" is much more interesting than those unnatural posed shots, which are particularly awful when children are in them.

Bokeh in Black and White

When I was brand new to Photoshop, I discovered plug-ins -- also known as "filters." For those of you who are not yet privy to these marvellous things, they are software packages designed to work with Photoshop to create specific effects.

One of the first ones I discovered was by Flaming Pear. It had the unlikely name of "Melancholytron." It created a heavy blur around the bottom of the image and built in a sepia tone. I loved it. Lens blur adds such a wonderful atmosphere to an image, making it moodier. The blur also allows you to draw the viewer's eye to a specific aspect of the image. (I still use Melancholytron on occasion. It's available through Flaming Pear http://www.flamingpear.com/ for about twenty bucks.)

But since I started working with Alien Skin's Bokeh plug in (http://www.alienskin.com/ for $199.00) I haven't looked back. Read the full review a few blogs back.

I started thinking about combining the Bokeh effect with that other great conveyer of emotion and atmosphere: Black and White photography. I've been working with this idea for several days now (or at least as much spare time as a magician at Christmas can muster) and have been delighted with the results.

Have a look at the old couple at the top of this blog. I saw them one afternoon at Coney Island. It's called "A Little Off Center" because this couple seemed just a little out of step with the rest of the world. His arm is draped around his bride and the way they are sitting together watching the world go by makes me smile. But the image is about them...and the relationship they share. Everything else is a distraction.

Come to think of it, the initial image was full of distractions. (You can see the intial "finished picture" here: http://photoshopbasicsin6hours.blogspot.com/2008/11/taking-great-candid-people-shots.html -- like any image is ever finished.) Using Bokeh, I blurred them out and brought tight focus back onto the subjects. It made a better picture.

Cropping, and the whole processing of any final image, is a lot like writing a story. When you get into the fine tuning, you start cutting everything that doesn't fit smoothly with the tone or the story. There were a lot of people on the beach...and some litter as well. None of this added to my subject. So with the application of the Clone Stamp Tool and some specific blur, I was ready. The LAST step is the application of Bokeh -- so the effect is uniform.

Here's an image taken in July. It went from raw format to finished in less than five minutes. These two sisters were in a playground. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the little sister raced across the playground and ran to her big sister for a hug. Then she went back to playing. I have no idea what pushed the "I need a hug" meter into the red zone. But I find the whole idea of an urgently needed hug very charming.

The post processing was very simple: using CS4's new-and-improved Black and White Adjustment Layer, I was able to create a punchy high contrast Black and White image. I sharpened it a little with Sharpen> Smart Sharpen to bring up the highlights in the younger girl's hair. Then I added a very light Bokeh and a drop shadow frame and the image was finished.

Bokeh isn't for every image. But when it fits, it's perfect.

When Photographers go Cruising...

I like cruising. You don't have to unpack three times a week, the food you eat will not kill you and there are lots of people nearby to bring you cool drinks and herd you toward the next buffet.

I hate cruising because you just don't get very long in each port (usually about a day), sometimes your formal dinner table companions are just slightly more animated than drying spackle and all of the "extra fee" options you can pick up during those "at sea" days can really make for a nasty surprise when the bill comes due.

But on the balance -- I love cruising. Since Sheree and I will be celebrating New Year's eve by sitting on a runway to start a trip that will ultimately take us down the Amazon, cruising is on my mind. Having braved a number of cruises over the years, I have come to the conclusion that there are FIVE RULES for GETTING GREAT SHOTS ON CRUISES. Here they are:

1) Take a Power Bar. The people who design cruise ship staterooms think one plug-in for two photographers is plenty. It's not. Take a power bar with at least four additional plug-ins so you can power those batteries and laptops. This keeps you from having to make the decision of whether or not to throw your companion overboard so you can definately hit the next port with two charged batteries.

2) Do Your Research. The great thing about taking a cruise is that you know where you're going in advance. The internet is a WEALTH of great information on the places you are going. You will need to be well organized and decide IN ADVANCE where you want to shoot.

Local people can be a great resource. Don't be afraid to take a cab. The fellow in the image above is a cab driver in NZ who gave us a truly wonderful day. His name's Lance and he took us to vineyards and some of the most amazingly beautiful places only locals know about. Cabs are more expensive...but they can be truly wonderful.

3) Dilly Dally at Your Peril. You'll want to be the FIRST off the ship or the first in line for the tender boat. (Sometimes cruise ships need to ferry the passengers off the ship and to shore in tender boats. This results in LONG lines and a ton of wasted photography time.) Get there first, using elbows if necessary, to get off the ship before the aggressive people do. Those extra ten minutes of sleep can cost you BIG when the line up forms.

4) Don't Be Afraid of Excursions. These are extra cost "tours" available when you are in a port. (The image above is from one of the Great Excursions of All Time: a Lord of the Rings tour we took in New Zealand. It's written about elsewhere in this blog...seek and you may find it, Frodo.) If you buy them from the cruise ship company you can count on two things: they are going to be more expensive, and they will take good care of you. The cruise ship will wait for you if a cruise-line tour runs late. But you'll see a pile of tour operators waiting for you at each port. Some operators are wonderful...some aren't. But if they don't get you back to the ship on time, you will need to borrow a snorkel set from the guide because the ship will be gone.

5) Be Nice. Be nice to your cabin steward, the locals in the ports, the tour guides you use. Be nice to the shop-keepers and the kids selling chicklets to the tourists. Talk to them before you take their picture...and don't be cheap. Give them a couple of bucks for posing. You may even try your hand at speaking their language. Whenever I do, it provides everyone with hours of amusement.

5a) Don't Be Stupid. You are in a foreign land. In many cases you won't speak the language. It probably isn't a good idea to follow that scurvy looking guy down a dark alleyway for a shot. If your gut is telling you "no" don't go. Stay where the people are. You need to be alert and stay alert. This means it's also not a good idea to get loaded when you are in a port. Your pictures will come out blurry and crooked...and you will probably get rolled and/or lost on your way back to the ship.

5b) Don't be a Pansy. You travel to meet people and have an adventure. The idea here is simply not to get stabbed, shot, mugged or sold to white slavers. None of these makes for golden cruise ship memories. Also: don't hang around the tourist traps in ports. Diamonds International etc has all the same crap you get at home. Be reasonable. Have fun. Be smart.

5c) Check on Local Regulations. For the Amazon, Sheree and I needed Yellow Fever shots, a visa from Brazil (which took nearly three weeks) and Malarone, an anti-malaria drug. Usually the cruise ship company will let you in on this stuff, but not always. (We couldn't get into the famous Monte Carlo casino because we didn't know we needed to take our passports with us...) Check into local customs too. For example: there are some places in the mideast where women need to dress a certain way to avoid offending the locals and drawing unwanted attention.

There are a ton of sites filled with helpful advice on local sites, customs and highlights. Just go to Google and input the name of where you're going, and type words like "Customs" and "Tourism" or "Activities." You'll get more information than you could possibly use within seconds.

If you are interested in cruise info try http://www.cruisecritic.com/ for specifics on the ports and the boats. These are serious cruisers and they can provide tons of useful tips.

Follow these rules, grasshopper, and you will be happy cruisers.

How many sleeps till I go?

Eighteen. But who's counting?

Visual Creativity. Honest.

I don't know of a single writer who hasn't glared at that blinking cursor. It just sits there like an insensitive insect waiting for you to come up with the words while it does nothing except sit there blinking stupidly. It's a tyrant, really.

Visual artists have the same issues. We sit there with our hands in our laps looking at the computer screen. Sometimes we have a germ of an idea that can be developed. Sometimes (okay rarely) we know exactly what to do. But most of the time there's this tickle of a concept at the back of our brains that runs away like an arm-flapping idiot each time we try to trap it.

Peter J, from New York, wrote in to ask if I had any ideas on how to be creative. Later this morning I was on the NAPP board and the same topic came up again.

"How do you learn how to be creative?" asks the Photoshop newbie. "There must be a course somewhere."

Nope. There are courses about creative techniques. Oodles of them. And there are books about getting in touch with your imagination. I mean you could dance naked in the woods and pound on drums for a few days -- but I seriously doubt that you will find yourself with a perfectly formed notion for how to break that creative block. All you may wind up with is a nasty rash.

There are even courses on how you can take an idea and develop it into a striking visual. (Check out "Photoshop for the Creative Soul" at http://www.photoshopbasics.com for our course on this. Hint. Hint.)

But if someone tells you they can teach you how to BE creative, they're lying.

You can be taught how to copy someone else's method. There are tons of Photoshop books that teach this stuff. You can look at an artist like Ben Willmore (http://www.whereisben.com/) and see what he's been up to. I really respect the guy -- and the quality of his work is unreal.

But, personally, I don't want to be Ben Willmore. Why would I want to copy his work? I'm happy to sit and listen as he teaches me stuff -- but only so I can apply said "stuff" to my work.

Why's that?

Because true creativity isn't the result of inspired copying of someone else. You can learn stunning technique this way...but you only learn how to be creative by pouring all that knowledge through the filter of YOU.

True creativity is the direct application of 24 carat, 100% YOU to an idea. Think of it as a one of a kind Photoshop filter: There's only one you. That means there's only one person who can apply imagination and execution to an image that is the direct outgrowth of who you are.

The only way I can suggest for getting creative isn't to take a course. It's to roll up your sleeves, stick your hands into the muck and start pushing stuff around. It's going to be messy. And you are going to have disasters. You will have moments when you want to throw the computer through the window and then follow it (given that you're far enough away from the ground) because NOTHING is turning out right.

I 100% guarantee there will be dismal awful images if you do it this way. You'll delete them, you'll flush with embarassment whenever you think of them. You'll pray that no one you ever showed them to kept a copy...and you'll start putting a little money aside each week in case they DID keep a copy and want to blackmail you with it later.

Being creative and turning that "creative switch" on inside your brain and spirit would be pretty easy if you knew where it was. I often can't find mine...particularly when deadlines are looming. So I have to thrust my hand into a lot of dark holes and smelly caverns as I look for it.

And the real pain in the butt? That damn "creative switch" often disappears minutes later and you have to start looking for it all over again. That's when you think to yourself "Gee...I thought I had a great idea. Where was I going with this again?" Now you have a name for it: Switch Slip.

See the image above? I spent four hours on this one day many moons ago. I'd just discovered Photoshop and had a hankering to do..."something." I entered it in a contest and it placed in the bottom third. How come? It's not creative. It's a mess, really. What it lacks in creativity it makes up for in pseudo-artsyness. It has vague ideas about money and fighting on top of it and women.

Yup. It's one of those "I can't believe I posted it ANYWHERE" images. It's pretentious crap. There. I admit it...now I can stop paying off that guy in Germany who keeps getting those installments in small unmarked bills.

What's the upside of this whole creativity thing?

Once in a while...sometimes for a really long time...you feel your spirit soar and your heart beat faster. You feel the blending of mind, spirit and body pouring itself into the project. Your hands blur over the keys or the controls and the sensation is better than a triple fudge sundae.

And less fattening.