Behind Blue Eyes

I think I found it. I think I know what I like photographing most. After the emotional shots of my mother last post and watching reruns of an old TV show called “Genius of Photography” on Ovation, I feel that what inspires me most is people showing emotion in front of the lens. I love how the camera can pick up what they are feeling inside and let their faces and mostly their eyes tell the story of what turmoil or thought is in their mind when the shot is taken. The fact that a two dimensional “flat” thing like a photograph can show these stories fascinates me. Maybe some of the über-religious groups have it right when they ask to not have photos taken cause they believe that a piece of your soul is imprinted on the negative.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still going to be taking landscape and architectural shots. I still love the beauty of nature and the scale of the world that surrounds us, and hell, I need something to shoot at lunch and parks are the only thing I can really think of. But when I have a chance to do some real serious people shots, that is when I am happiest.

I haven’t done this to a non family member yet, but I really want to. Here is the problem (and this may shock those that know me); I am really shy. I really want to do some street photography where I walk up to a stranger and just ask them if they mind if I take some shots of them, but loose nerve right before I do it. I will have to get over this if I want to capture some compelling images of raw emotion. Maybe I need to just start with friends.

Anyway, here are three shots of my daughter. I was playing around in Photoshop and decided to do some selective coloring. I think this post process technique is overused sometimes, and I am actually not a fan of it, but sometimes I am looking to do something different for my photography just to try some new things (for me) out. I think the process worked in this instance because they eyes are subtle enough that as soon as you open the image it doesn’t grab you and say “HEY LOOK OVER HERE!” like some of the selective coloring shots I have seen in the past.

All of these are shot at f/1.8 and with a shutter speed of 1/200 on my 50mm prime lens.

This is the first one that I was working on. I loved the sense of “Why is he looking at me with that thing again?” look on her face. I was playing with different Black and White conversion techniques and I think I have settled on using a gradient map as the top layer. I feel this gives me the most ability to manipulate the contrast and also to introduce other tones if I want to make  a duotone shot instead of a straight Black and White. At this size I do not know if you can see that her eyes are colorized, if not head on over to my Flickr page where you can see it a little better if you want to: www.flickr.com/tjtunnington

I think you can also click on the images and get bigger versions.

This one had the lowest saturation on the eyes. The blue is not very noticeable at all. I played with it at home in lightroom a bit with the hue/saturation sliders but decided to keep it as Straight out of the Camera as possible in regards to the eye color. There was quite a bit of really pain-in-the-ass cloning that took place here. First, both eyes had large strands of hair front of them. Let me tell you, you have not experienced cloning hell until you try to remove something covering the iris of an eye and try to use a mouse to do it.  I cannot wait to have the money to order my tablet. It will make procedures like this one so much easier. The other cloning that was done is over the “white” wall. The couch that Katie is on can generate quite a bit of static electricity. While fun for her to be able to shock poor ole dad, horrible for pictures because of what it causes hair to do. I cloned out as much of the stray hairs as possible.

This shot has had the least done with it. I did clone the “static” hairs on the left but luckily here there was nothing covering the eyes. I think this is my favorite of the bunch but I am interested in your thoughts, Please leave a comment here or on my flickr page about the shots and any thoughts that you might have.

One thing that I really learned from these shots is the amazing lack of depth of field that you get when you shoot at an aperture of 1.8. I had a shot that I loved and thought looked great when I chimped the viewfinder on the camera. Once imported I took a closer look and it seems my focus locked on a strand of hair in front of the eye instead of the eye itself. I was amazed to find that the 1/16th of an inch difference between the placement of the hair and the eye cause the eye to be so out of focus that I did not want to show the shot.

Thanks for viewing.

TJ

A Woman in Battle

Hi all, first off I apologize to any regular readers that it has been so long for a post. With the bleakness of winter and the lack of natural light hours after work, I have found inspiration rather hard to come by. I know… I know… Excuses… Excuses, but hey it is my site and my vision but the truth of the matter is to get better and more creative with my photography I really need to just shoot and think about things later.

The theme of this post is my Mom. For those that don’t know either from personal knowledge of me or from listening to my podcast or being my facebook friend, a couple of months ago my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mom is a amazingly important person in my life and someone I probably don’t let know enough how much I love her or how appreciative I am for the things she has done to raise me. The other thing my mother is is a person that wears her emotions on her sleeve. When people learn of things that stress them out there are different things they do to help relieve the stress in their lives, for me it is photography, for my father it is writing (he is a playwright) and for my mom it is shopping.

Last week I went down to my parents house with my daughter to spend some time (well, who am I kidding, it was for them to have fun with my daughter, I am second fiddle now). While making dinner I had a thought of doing some Portrait work for my mom and dad. I had my trusty camera in hand -as I always do- fitted with my 50 f/1.8 and set up a stool in a pretty well lit area of the kitchen and was set to get to work. This is the series I took. It shows the array of emotions that my mother is going through. Each one powerful, each Fighting all the others, Each showing themselves during sometime of the shoot.

My mom kept saying that she looked bad and had no makeup on but I think that is part of my mother’s “Mystique.” Since I have known her she has always felt the need to put on the front of makeup or worried about what others were thinking, without realizing that what she was thinking or feeling was just as important and that it was okay for her to really just be her.

This post will be a little different than other ones. I’m not going to explain the post process and will just let the images speak for themselves. Processing these images was really hard for me because in some I can see the worry and sadness and scared feelings that my mother is going through.

I Love you Mom And I know everything is going to be Okay, and no matter what please know that I will always be there for you as you have always been there for me.

Vision Vs. Background

Hey Folks, Time for my weekly post, are you psyched? Yesterday at lunch I went to this little park by my work in order to get some snow shots and possibly more. Having never been to the park, I didn’t know what was there if anything that might make an interesting shot. First problem of the shoot started when, after about 15 shots, i realized that i never lowered the ISO from 800 back to 100 or 200. Not a huge deal but the noise in the shadows is something that would take longer for me to fix in post then what i really wanted. Then I started to look around and walk on the trail that went around. Man there was nothing there that was even somewhat interesting to me. This got me thinking about Vision of the photographer compared to what is actually in front of him.

One of my favorite photographers/writers is the fantastic David duChemin. You can check out his writing and portfolio at www.pixelatedimage.com. One of David’s great sayings is, “Gear is Good, Vision is Better.” He is also the author of the amazing Within the Frame. He explains the process of telling stories through your photography, and how post work is important but first you need to capture compelling images right from the instant the shutter is pressed. So question i began to ask myself is: Does every scene have a story that needs to be told? and if so How long does one need to just sit and think about what the background is telling me in order for that story to reveal itself to me. Creativity is one of the keys to fantastic photography, Not just within your work in pixel manipulation like in Photoshop, but first and foremost at the shoot itself; Looking at a dense forest and thinking what the story is that the background can tell, and possibly most importantly what story is it that i am trying to tell other than, “This is a cool shot.” It is key to get the cool shot but i think just as important is the reason why you think it is a cool shot and whether or not someone could understand the story that a still image is telling them without you standing next to it and explaining it to them.

Whatever the case it took me a good 35 minutes of walking around to get any sort of inspiration and even that was almost null and void. I found some standing water from melted snow that was creating so rich deep reflections of the empty playground i was standing on. The lack of activity is what thrilled me most about this location. A sense of loneliness and despair over a playground that has all the amenities that people could ask for yet seemed not well kept after a storm or even well used.

This was shot at f/4.5, shutter speed of 1/250, and a focal length of 34mm. When I saw all the reflection in the water, i was inspired to try my danmedest to get my reflection in it and take a shot of me being rippled away. Not bright on the properties of reflective light, i finally realized that i think i would have to have been standing right in the middle to get that shot i desired. Having to go back to work, the thought of having my feet and part of my jeans soaked didn’t thrill me. I settled for a silhouette shadow self-portrait, and to be honest i am actually pretty happy with the way it turned out. I ACR i lowered the exposure slightly and upped the black, also decreased the luminance on the oranges and yellows to try and deepen just the sand that the puddle was on. The only think i may try and do more at home in Lightroom is add a graduated filter to help darken the top a little more. May also add a dark vignette around it to emphasize the subject, ME!

This shot was at f/6.3, shutter speed 1/160, and a focal length of 18mm. One thing that i did notice about the park at first was the great shadows and sky. To help properly expose for just the sky on this shot i pointed the lens away from the tree, locked in the exposure and recomposed the shot. In ACR i just worked the heck out of the blues in the Hue/Saturation/Luminance sliders. While the sky was gorgeous, i really wanted to emphasize the deep blue hues and show a level of doom and despair of this overlooking multi-branched tree. I think it was just me trying to express the despair of not seeing anything interesting to shoot as I stood in the cold, blustery winds.

Shot at f/4.0, Shutter speed of 1/500, and focal length of 25mm. This is one of the shots that show really what i was trying to go for in this shoot once i realized the story i wanted to tell. While the Background shows an empty handball court as well as the creeping in of an unkept basketball court. The puddle, left there due to the park not having proper drainage, Shows a deep beautiful sky in what showed be a great day to see children playing on this neighborhood playground. Sort of a through the looking glass tale, where one could feel that simply jumping through the puddle would reveal this world were things are not so empty, and just lush with blue skies and well kept grounds.

Well i started this off explaining to you that a picture should be able to tell you a story without the photographer standing next to the Frame explaining what the story he was trying to tell is, then i go on and doi just that. Oh well i guess that is what the blog is for.

Hope you enjoyed, and i want to thank you for taking a moment out of your day to accompany me on my photographic journey.

TJ

Thanksgiving

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and i am thankful to be home and from a small family. I don’t know if i could handle being part of a large family all my life like my wife’s. I spent this year with the in-laws, at my Sister-in-law’s house in Delaware and was really looking forward to take some candids as well as some posed shots. Unfortunately, one of my sister-in-laws (i have 4) didn’t understand and Would say “here comes the photographer,” every time I came close. I wish I had a longer, faster piece of glass in order to not use flash and to hide my Picture taking a little bit. Oh well took about 60 shots, of which about 8 were keepers, normal ratio for me.

Image shot at f/5.0, a shutter speed of 1/125, and at a focal length of 42mm. All of these images are at ISO 800 to help compensate for the low light of the house (and the slowness of the kit lens). Forgot to fire the flash for this one and i thought the image was lost but luckily i was able to bring it back somewhat in ACR and then do what any photographer would do in an underexposed, grainy picture –make it Black and White. I raised the exposer and the amount of fill light, then converted the image to greyscale and played around with the contrast and saturation of some of the color elements. Nothing done in Actual photoshop here, and i tried not to remove too much of the noise in order to keep an artistic level of grain. I relly like this image a lot and may 8 x 10 it. The sisters together passing my daughter i thought caught a “moment”.

This image is at f/5.6, shutter speed of 1/200, and a focal length of 55mm. Flash did fire here. This is my Sister-in law’s boyfriend’s daughter, Alexa. This girl was a pleasure to shoot. Very photogenic and really into the process, wanting to chimp each shot as it was being made, and loved hearing about it. In raw, I brightened the image a bit and played around with the white balance settings. The capture sharpened in ACR as well as selectively sharpened in photoshop to really bring some pop to the eyes and lips. Also in photoshop I brightened the whites of the eyes and cloned out the background in order to set her against bare black. Really like this for portrait work and something i am not really used to, A kid sitting still for a mere moment in order to get the shot in. Anyone with a 2 year old knows what i am talking about.

This is shot at f/4.5, shutter speed of 1/125, and a focal length of 35mm. This is my sister-in-law Danielle. I really hope she doesn’t read this, because i worked the heck out of this one. This shot was part of a much bigger picture of her with my daughter and another sister, but neither of the other two had great expression, yet Danielle did, so i decided to crop the heck out of it and make it a solo portrait. In photoshop first i patched out some crows feet that around the camera right eye, then i worked the Spot healing brish to remove some very minor skin blemishes. Next i did some skin softening by Copying the background and applying a 20pt gaussian blur. I made an inverse layer mask and just layerd out her skin, dropped the opacity. I then made a selection of just the unmasked skin and Put that on a layer, which i de saturated and put a high pass filter on. Brought this layer to the top and added a soft light blend. Next was the whitening of the eyes and the teeth. Lastly was some selective sharpening on the eyes, teeth, clothes, and jewelry.  I ma sore i am leaving out some steps but I like the end results. I really wish i could clone out the Picture coming out from her head, but the plaid background made that very hard. Oh well, as i get better maybe i can rework it.

So happy thanksgiving people, and thanks for reading, to anyone that takes the time out of their busy days to look at some of my shots, i am truly thankful.

TJ

Katie at the park

Last Saturday my wife had to work (being a librarian sometimes means real shitty hours). Too be honest though i do cherish these special Daddy Daughter days that me and Katie get to have together. Especially when it is beautiful weather like it was on the 7th when these were shot. At the park that day was a flag football game and Katie tried her damnedest to get in the game be it as a football player or one of the cheerleaders. I also was dying to take some sports shots, but really don’t know the ethics of taking shots of kids I don’t know and posting them online, Plus it is hard when you are trying to corral a 2 year old. Also got to see one of my pet peeves. Long Valley (where the team playing was from is full of money. Here was a woman in Full Fur (no that is not my peeve, i am a republican) shooting with a top of the line Nikon camera that costs thousands and she was using live view to compose. Why, if you are going to be spending this sort of coin on a camera, would you be basically using it as a point and shoot. Oh well that was just jealousy hopping in my rather large frame.

Shot at f/6.3, shutter speed 1/160, with a focal length of 34 mm. Here is one i wish i was using my fill flash. The shadows are a little overbearing but the fill flash adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw were a little overzealous. This is at the top of a slide and she was waiting more patiently then i have ever seen a 23 month old wait to go down. She loves heights and this was the highest slide at the park. Not much was done in post here except my normal workflow in raw of adjusting the exposure and sharpening. Even the shadows, highlights adjustments in Photoshop made the picture look a little to flat. Oh well i still like the shot.

 

 

 

 

 

Shot at f/5.6, shutter speed of 1/40, and a focal length of 55 mm. This one i did fire the flash to use as a fill light. This is at the Washington Library that is right across from the park. When she got a little tired of the playground she led me there by hand, her mother would be proud that she chose some reading instead of playing some more. She is standing directly in front of  a window that had sun light pouring in but i used the flash to help actually tone down some of the harshness of that. I really cannot wait to get a faster, sharper lens in order to blur more background and get more sharpness, But damn if this hobby isn’t way too expensive. Again, not to much post work other than my normal workflow. I may look into softening her face some but other than that i think this is a pretty decent shot.

 

 

 

 

Shot at f/5.0, shutter speed of 1/400, and a focal length of 45 mm. This is on top of a rick climbing wall that children twice her age were scared of climbing. My little daredevil has no fear and I love that about her. Trying my damnedest to make sure that no fears are instilled in her. A little saturation work was done on the colors but other than that not much else. Two the lower right two other children were trying to climb the rock as well, but not doing as well as she was. Katie was confused by them.

 

Three quick shots to start the week. May have some later in the week from a little turning your dSLR into an SLR challenge I was part of over at www.photocamel.com.

Please if you read this and see any adjustment you would like to make or have any opinions on the work at all, leave a comment. Greatly appreciated as i am very new to hobby and criticism is very much one of the tools that I use to learn how to make my photography better.

Thanks for looking,

TJ

Central Park … Whippany, NJ, that is

Last Thursday I was going to go out and shoot this park. Perfect day, Great Cloud cover, sun not to bright, would have been fantastic. Then my wife called and wanted to go out to lunch. Oh well, it is these request that you really cannot turn down. There was always the next day. Well, the next day came and there was about five clouds in the sky and the sun was super bright. OUt of the 60 shots I took i am surprised that I got the three you are about to see. Oh well this is life for the extremely amateur photographer.

 

This picture is at f/9.0, shutter speed of 1/100, and a focal length of 37 mm. My favorite of the shoot is this shot of the gazebo. I love wood work and wood structures and almost all the parks I go to have some sort of gazebo that feature nice wood work. Problem is, much like my flag shots, they can be relatively boring.  This was one of the few shots I took where the sky wasn’t overexposed or the sky was perfect but the rest of the image was horribly underexposed. In raw I did a bunch with this shot. First off i straightened it as it was a little crooked to the right. Next I upped the exposure and a little bit of the fill. Then I went over to the colors and increased the saturation and lowered the luminance of both the blues and greens. After that, I applied my normal sharpening with raw and fixed some of the chromatic aberration that was along the edges of the gazebo. Lastly i applied a dark vignette around the outside of the image. Still a little boring but it works for me.

 

 

 

Shot at f/5.0 speed 1/800, focal length 39 mm. Here it is. The shot you have secretly been waiting for. My infamous boring Flag shot. With the sun at my back I was able to get almost a proper exposure for my images. Problem with this was that most of the shots were facing the other direction, unless I wanted pictures of the parking lot and/or the grill area, and lets be honest not mush more boring then a flag other than an empty grilling area. Again I worked with the saturation and luminance of the blues in the sky, In hindsight i would have preferred a smaller aperture to get more in focus and the high shutter wasn’t so necessary here because the flag wasn’t moving, as it was in other shots that are too overexposed to show. I was standing on the outside of the gazebo to get the outside walls to frame the flag. I tried straightening this but it looked more crooked to my eye so i just played with the crop slightly. Nothing much done in Photoshop on this one.

Shot at f/5.6, shutter speed of 1/640, focal length of 18 mm. One of the reasons that i went to the park to shoot, other then just to shoot and get better, is that i am part of a fantastic photography forum called www.photocamel.com. Some really amazing photographers on there that are more than willing to help out the amateur that is looking to improve. They regularly post assignments and challenges that got the creative mind working and looking for shots to submit. this last week in the architectural forums the assignment was Texture. When I saw this bridge I know it was what I wanted to submit. Again the problem was the lighting of the sky. I had to sit in this spot for a good while waiting for the sun to go behind a cloud. and even then I applied a curves layer to the sky to darken it and a levels adjustment to the bridge to lighten it some.

Not the greatest day of shooting, but i am reminded of those corny bumper stickers. Any Day out with a camera at a park is better then one at my desk. Too bad this was only on my lunch and i had to go back to that desk shortly afterward.

Thanks for looking and I will have some Katie at the Park pictures probably a little later in the week.

TJ

Bee Meadow Park

Okay folks, If you checked out my Apple picking set, Thanks! Hope you enjoyed and Please if you have any tips or anything or wold like to see any of the pictures processed differently I will try to oblige.

This next set was taken on October 30th at Bee Meadow Park in Whippany, New Jersey. I was sitting in my car at lunch, as I usually do, and didn’t feel like reading so I punched the word “park” into the GPS and found the closest one to my work. When I pulled up I drove past this glorious lake and power lines and great fall foliage. I thought I hit the jackpot when it came to some lunch time shooting, then I looked at the sky. Damnit, it was so overcast and uninteresting, why didn’t I think to simply look up  before I had this genius idea to shoot at lunch before. I knew it was going to be hard to Shoot these scenes without blowing out some highlights in the sky but I tried my best and ,with the help of some post production work, felt I did okay.

This was shot at f/5.6, shutter speed 1/500, at a focal length of 44mm. I have a confession to make. I love flag shots. I love them even though after I download them I usually just look at them and think to myself, “Man is that a boring ass shot.” I tried to crop this one so that the flag pole sits on the thirds line and I think the flag motion is relatively frozen from the high shutter speed. Not a whole lot of Depth of Field play here and it still is a pretty boring shot. I put a curves adjustment on the sky to darken it and make it slightly more interesting and a little ominous. I put a levels adjustment on the Tree line and then I did a shadows and highlights adjustment layer. All in all Pretty boring but I like it and that is what is important. Maybe a high contrast Black and white conversion will look good here. I may still play around with this one.

This was shot at f/9.0, shutter speed of 1/60, and a focal length of 18mm. This was the shot I was looking for. Like i said in the previes apple picking post, Fall Foliage has been seriously lacking here in Jersey. Between Bad weather and warm weather the trees never seemed to change colors, and when they did it was either raining or wind was blowing all the leaves off the trees. The window for these fantastic Fall shots was so small. You may recognize part of this shot from my header. Again i put a curves adjustment on the sky and increase the saturation of certain colors with the tress to help bring out the beauty of the contrast of colors. I think I need to change my Auto Focus mode on the camera because i was originally trying to focus the power towers in the background but when i re composed the shot my focus shifted to the reeds. Also i think i would have been better off with a larger aperture. Oh well this is how we learn.

This was shot at the same setting as above, f/9.0, shutter speed 1/60, Focal length 18mm. This is my favorite shot of the 60 i shot that day, and it never would have happened if i didn’t decide to just take a walk. As i was shooting the lake I noticed a little walking path that had a nice curve to it. I took the shot and thought nothing of it, and to be honest prior to processing it still was rather boring. I added a dark vignette and the put a curves adjustment in the sky. I then played with the sky colors slightly and added a touch of blue. Then I decided to work on the saturation and luminance of the tree colors. The last thing i did was burn out the trail to showcase it’s curve. What i like most about this shot is the contrast of the sweeping motion of the trail with the rigid straight lines of the intesecting power lines over head. Okay after previewing it seems for some reason this shot isn’t showing up so check out my flickr if you want and it should be there.

So that was my shooting that day. If you are still reading this, again thanks! Also i have a question, Should i make the images larger or is the size that i am posting them okay? Let me know your thoughts.

TJ

Apple Picking

On October 25th, My wife and I decided to take my Daughter apple picking. Although the sky was pretty dull i decided to try and get those fall shots that have seemed to allude most photographers in the northeast this year because of the horrible weather and wind.

This Shot was taken with f/5.6 at a shutter speed of 1/400th at a 55mm focal length. I wanted the shallow depth of field to hone in on the crispness of the apples. IN post i tried to clone out the “skywriting but nothing came out that well, so i decided that it wasn’t too distracting for the viewer, and actually  added an element of interest to the sky. I think  may go back and work on the color of the apples themselves and add a curve layer in order to bring out some deeper reds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This shot was at f/9.0, Shutter Speed 1/200, and a focal length of 28mm. Sometimes it is so hard to catch my daughter doing anything. I was actually amazed that i was able to get her picking any apples because she was more interested in the rotten ones that already fell to the ground then the fresh ones that were still on the tree. In hindsight i think i should have made her the point of focus instead of the apple tree itself but when shooting candid shots of a highly active almost two year old, you have to chose very quickly. Oh how I cannot wait for the day that i will actually be able to pose her and she will stand still for a moment.  I think i could have used a smaller aperture as well to increase the depth of field so both her and the tree would have been in focus.

This shot is at f/4.5, shutter speed 1/250, and focal length 33mm. I was looking for the branches to frame her face as she looked at all the fresh fruit around her. To improve this shot i would have moved myself to the left and pulled in closer so the the frame was full of just the branches and her face. I probably should have fired the fill flash as well so that some of the shadows are not as deep. I really love the focal point and the Depth of field on this one though as it really focuses on the Branches and softens her face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This shot was at f/9.0, and amazing hand held shutter of 1/25, at a focal length of 55mm. I must not have had that much coffee this day in order to be able to hand hold 1/25 without any visible shake. This and the first one are my favorites of the group that i shot. I love the depth of field here and how the eye is drawn to the Golden delicious Frame left. I cannot wait to get a tripod so i can lower the shutter speed even more and still get unbelievable tack photos with the proper exposure as this one is underexposed a bit too much in my opinion.

 

Well thank you for viewing. I hope to at least have one post in hear a week if not more. If i don’t keep on me. For the only way to get better is to just keep shooting.

TJ

Introduction

Okay Folks,

My Name is TJ and i am a very amateur Photographer. I do mean very. I wanted to start a blog showing my photographic journey through parks and other various areas of NJ and places I visit. I shoot with a Canon Rebel XS and for now only have the kit 18-55 lens, but Christmas is around the corner (hint, hint to those that know me). What I intend to post here is Photo’s that i take and also providing you with the inspiration of the shot, what the metadata is, as well as a brief description of any post production that i have done. Please comment on photographs, even if you don’t like them. If you know photography explain what you would have done differently (hell even if you don’t know photography tell my what you find appealing or not pleasurable about the shot). Like I said I am very new to this is how I will learn. Hope you enjoy as you take this photographic journey with me.

TJ