The RAW Deal: A Day In The Life Of A DSLR (A Photography Dynasty)

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

Interesting photo idea. Just me, but I probably would have kept the original, maybe worked to brighten up the sunset a bit. The treated one looks a little harsh to me. The original one seems to have the twilight look pretty well captured. You also seem to lose the perspective that you're looking at a rearview mirror, which I think adds a neat little artistic touch to the original. The "surround" of the mirror in the second shot blends too much into the mirror. Perhaps if you could combine the mirror of the second with the "surround" of the first....

Otherwise, neat photo idea.

My own personal twilight story: I remember last year we came out of a Target near our house and it was quite possibly the most wildly colorful and interesting sky I'd ever seen. I didn't have my camera (who'd think you'd need it in the middle of a Target parking lot?), but I really was wishing I had it. It was a perfect transition sky working from an orange horizon to a fairly deep blue overhead with a thick crescent moon off to the south and just the right amount of clouds floating by. It was almost otherworldly. I wonder if I'll ever get to see a sky like that and have a camera handy to capture it in the future. But, I digress.

You're absolutely right; last night right before saving for web I chose 30 quality instead of the original which takes out a lot of detail from the image. After working on the picture for about an hour and and off I might have been looking too hard and didn't notice the significant difference.

About your story, I had a similar experience. When living in Phoenix, I went shopping at a Toys r Us and looked over the parking lot at the most beautiful sunset I think I'd ever seen. Luckily, I had a camera with me and took several shots and this is what came about:



It was one of the first times I've ever taken my camera for a ride and was very thankful. After that, I started carrying it everywhere I went. You just never know

[wade moore]

That is my favorite picture that you've done...

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by wade moore

That is my favorite picture that you've done...

I really got lucky with that shot. Antmeister suggested I take my camera for a ride and I actually listened to him that day and captured that beautiful sunset.

You just never know what one can capture on any given day. On my way to work in San Diego, a fire hydrant gushed water up to 8 feet high and I cursed myself for not having a camera... it was quite a site.

Anyway, I'm rambling now, thanks for your comment wade

[Schmidty]

That sunset picture is amazing.

My wife has been a photo tech for Costco for the past 7 years, and loves do photography as well. As soon as she gets home, I'm going to have to show her this thread.

Great work!!!!!

[Lorena]

07/23/06

A week later and here's another post. I think after doing this for 2 straight weeks my brain became mush so I took a break for a little bit.

Jr. Assistant Larissa wanted to join me and off we went. I took a few good pictures but the one I enjoyed most was of her beautiful hazel eyes as she sat looking at some ants outside our apt. complex. I called her, she looked up and I snapped the pic.

Oh, before I continue, the before images on my earlier posts weren't *true* before. What I did was open the original image, adjusted the RAW settings and transferred it to Photoshop. I created an "original" layer to keep the original look. After making my adjustments, I cropped the image and when I did that, the "original" image was cropped too. From now on, I'll be keeping the *true* original image pre-crop so you can see what it looked like before anything was done.

Hope that made sense, here are the before and after pics:

BEFORE:



AFTER:



Post Processing:

Changed image to LAB to adjust A & B channels and a little Lightness.

Levels - for contrast

Healing/Patch - removed a few skin imperfections (via healing brush tool) including dark circles under the eyes (used patch tool at 50% so it looks a bit more natural).

Selected her eyes using the eliptical tool and created a hue saturation layer to change them from hazel to bluish.

Dodged the white in her eyes to make them stand out a little

Sharpened via High Pass filter.

As always, if anyone has a question with anything involving these images, feel free to shoot me a PM or ask here.

Thanks for viewing!!

[wade moore]

I just got ahold of my mothers DSLR for my trip to San Francisco/Lake Tahoe next week, so expect my dynasty to finally start while I learn how to use it this week.. Probably not as much digital dark room as you, but still...

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by wade moore

I just got ahold of my mothers DSLR for my trip to San Francisco/Lake Tahoe next week, so expect my dynasty to finally start while I learn how to use it this week.. Probably not as much digital dark room as you, but still...

How cool wade! I'll be on the lookout for your dynasty... take lots of pictures and have fun on your trip. I can hardly wait

[Lorena]

08/01/06

I'll be honest, this image wasn't taken today. I've been slacking a little...hell who am I kidding, I've been slacking a lot :o. This image was taken about a week ago (same day I posted the last image).

When I took the picture, I liked the repetition of the whateveryoucallems and it seemed like a pretty decent image. But after the post processing, I noticed there was a lot of contrast so I fixed it with a curves and levels layer.

BEFORE



AFTER



POST PROCESSING (what can I say, I got lazy ):



After I sharpened, I converted the profile to sRGB so the image doesn't lose detail after saving it to web. After that, I cropped it, and resized it to 6x4 100 pixels.

As always if anyone has any question, holla

[Wolfpack]

Interestingly, my first glance reaction was that it was too dark compared to the original. However, having looked at it more, I'd say it is a good improvement over the source. Has that gritty/industrial kind of look, even though it's only meters. The initial one looks like something shot in a back alley in Austin at dusk ( ), while the new one looks like it came from New York in the bleak shadows of early evening or something like that.

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

Interestingly, my first glance reaction was that it was too dark compared to the original. However, having looked at it more, I'd say it is a good improvement over the source. Has that gritty/industrial kind of look, even though it's only meters. The initial one looks like something shot in a back alley in Austin at dusk ( ), while the new one looks like it came from New York in the bleak shadows of early evening or something like that.

This was actually an accident: After the Burn Layer, I was going to sharpen it ( I go to the filters option, other, high pass ), but Antmeister suggested I change the blending mode to overlay so I can see what the actual picture would look like ( when sharpening through this option, I get a gray overlay and can see the outline of the image vaguely, but can't see what the picture actually looks like until I change the blending mode ). We liked the look so much we kept it.

Hope it made sense, but yeah, it does look kinda gritty huh?

Anyway, thanks for the feedback Wolfpack

[Lorena]

08/02/06

I had to run a few errands today so I grabbed my camera and out the door I went. Before opening the car door, I noticed what seemed to be a frog, but wasn't sure. I knelt down to get a closer look and low and behold, there was a dead frog right by our car! It didn't really look like one because it was really flat, but upon closer inspection, I noticed a few ants and looked at it's legs and yup, a frog. I grabbed my camera and here it is...

BEFORE:



AFTER:



POST PROCESSING:



After the sharpening layer, I cropped the image, changed the image size, and saved it as an sRGB.

[Lorena]

08/08/06

Antmeister, the kids and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Larissa brought her little camera so she can take pictures as well. I took a few, among them a worm getting eaten by ants. I'll probably post that some other time. Anyway, one thing about photography is always try taking pictures at different angles to make an image look interesting. I'm either kneeling; bringing the camera down to ground level, point it up and shoot; or lift it up over my head (which in my case makes a difference being that I'm 5' 1.5") and shoot; there's so many different angles that make an ordinary picture look interesting.

So we were walking around and I notice the lightpost and asked myself, how can I take a picture so it looks different? This is the outcome:

BEFORE:



AFTER:



Post Processing:

Shoot, I forgot to copy my layers. Same ol' stuff:

Convert to LAB
Curves
Levels

The only thing different was that I added a Glaussian blur because I forgot to change the ISO (film speed) from 1600 back down to 100, so it caused a lot of noise.

Thanks again for viewing.

[Schmidty]

I LOVE the above picture. It's got an awesome modern art/structural thing going on. Absolutely an amazing shot. Great job, and sorry I didn't notice it before.

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

I LOVE the above picture. It's got an awesome modern art/structural thing going on. Absolutely an amazing shot. Great job, and sorry I didn't notice it before.

Thanks Schmidty

I don't blame you for missing it; I haven't updated my dynasty in a while and it slowly made the second page, so it's easy to miss.

[Lorena]

08/10/06

This picture was taken on the 10th of August but kinda forgot about it and processed it tonight. I went to the library to drop off some books and took an image of these weird figures outside the library.

I started messing around with some settings and the "solarization" tool seemed a little creepy, but given how funky these wire figures were, I felt that it would be suitable.

Definitely hit or miss (before and after):

BEFORE:

AFTER:

POST PROCESSING:

[Wolfpack]

Interesting. Gives it a "Night of the Living Dead" kind of appearance.

[wade moore]

Not my style, but an interesting exercise in technique...

and I know, I know.. I'm supposed to post some pictures .

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by Dodgerchick

08/10/06

This picture was taken on the 10th of August but kinda forgot about it and processed it tonight. I went to the library to drop off some books and took an image of these weird figures outside the library.

I started messing around with some settings and the "solarization" tool seemed a little creepy, but given how funky these wire figures were, I felt that it would be suitable.

Definitely hit or miss (before and after):










POST PROCESSING:

I love these pictures. Especially the after shot.

[Lorena]

Alright wade... it's on

[wade moore]

Oh I'm ready for it!

[Lorena]

DATE/LOCATION: August 10, 2007 - outside our apt. complex

SUBJECT: This is a telephone post (?) behind our apt. complex.

CAMERA SETTINGS:

Focal Length: 28.0mm
Exposure Time: 1/30
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 100

DIGITAL ENHANCEMENTS:

LAB (Lightness, A and B channel) - aka curves
Levels - corrects tone and color balance

IMAGE:

Almost a year later and here's a picture I took on Friday. I meant to do more post processing but forgot how to do certain things so I'll just post them otherwise they never will.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I meant for them to look like meters above but oh well, I'll have to ask Antmeister for a little help in the future.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by Dodgerchick

Almost a year later and here's a picture I took on Friday. I meant to do more post processing but forgot how to do certain things so I'll just post them otherwise they never will.


I meant for them to look like meters above but oh well, I'll have to ask Antmeister for a little help in the future.

I like it a lot, including the post processing... taking something from an unusual angle like that is something that I find very appealing...

What do you mean by "meant for them to look like meters above"?

[Lorena]

I could have made the texture really stand out, but forgot how to do it. This is what I was trying to accomplish:

BEFORE



AFTER



I like the grittiness of the after shot and wanted to do something similar.

[Lorena]

dola,

I agree with taking pictures from a different angle, it makes things look interesting.

[wade moore]

Ah, gotcha.. I'm not a ton of help in the post processing unfortunately .

[Lorena]

DATE/LOCATION: 8/12/07, Ant's Work

SUBJECT: Building off of Congress in downtown

CAMERA SETTINGS:
Focal Length: 32.0 mm
Exposure Time: 1/180 sec
Aperture: f/8.0
ISO: 400

DIGITAL ENHANCEMENTS:
LAB
Curves
Levels
32% Overlay

IMAGE: We went to Ant's work on Saturday and I really liked the repetition of the bricks of the building. I cropped a little off the bottom to get rid of the light.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Hmm... after looking at the end result more closely, I might start adding a border to make it stand out more.

[wade moore]

I've thought about the border thing also and haven't decided where I stand...
Anyways.. I REALLy like the sharpness of the deep blues..

[Lorena]

Alright, I'm just gonna post a before and after... we're getting our Battlestar Galactica on

I had the camera touching the ground and pointed it up when I took this picture. Antmeister did all the post processing:

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[Lorena]

Here's another one. I'm a big fan of awkward angles so got down a little bit and pointed the camera up. Antmeister did the post processing on this as well; I wanted a sort of Caprica-kind of look. Like this:



and this was what came about:

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[wade moore]

I need someone like ant to do my post-processing ...

Not sure if you noticed this - but does your lens have some dust on it that you need to clear off? I've had way too many would be great pictures ruined by that - you just can't clean it up... (I'm seeing several spots in the sky)..

Anyway - on to the picture.. I like it overall... I personally think that maybe a little bit too much definition was taken out of the sky though in the touchups.. I'd be curious as to how it would look if it was left a little darker, but maintained some of the detail of the original clouds..

Edit: Oops, this is about the plant picture not the stop-sign picture.

[wade moore]

Stop Sign Photo:

For me, the original is perfect - I actually prefer it to the touch-up. I really like your eye for strange angles on inanimate man-made objects...

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by wade moore

Not sure if you noticed this - but does your lens have some dust on it that you need to clear off? I've had way too many would be great pictures ruined by that - you just can't clean it up... (I'm seeing several spots in the sky)..

Oh yea... I'm really bad about cleaning my lens.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by Dodgerchick

Oh yea... I'm really bad about cleaning my lens.

I used to be as well. It took one photo that I absolutely LOVED that had like the perfect composition, lighting, blah blah blah, with a big black spot right in the core of the background to convince me to be WAY more anal about cleaning them. Especially if you're changing lenses frequently and you may be getting stuff on the inside.

I know whipe down my lens each time I go out to take pictures - just make sure you have a true lens cleaning cloth or one of those things that blow air.

[Bonegavel]

Sweet photoshop work DodgerChick! I found this thread via the ABC's of Photography thread you started in the Main Forums.

I love the picutre of your little one with the white edge on the left which makes it look like he is dropping the stones off the picture itself.

[Lorena]

test

[Lorena]

This picture was taken a few months ago. I took the picture and Antmeister worked his magic:

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[Lorena]

Before:



After: