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
