Omnis's Photography (11/21 Update)

[Omnis]

This will be my photography's dedicated thread. This post will contain links to all of my updates in this thread for easy navigation and browsing.

Thanks.
_____________________________

2008.Jul.4. - Maui Jim Set (Post #2)
2008.Jul.13 - Invicta Watch (Post #5)
2008.Jul.19 - More Watch Photos (Post #12)
2008.Aug.15 - Marlins v. Cubs (post #13)
2009.Nov.21 - UCPA Adult Concert

 

[Omnis]

Maui Jim Set

So my dad got me a pair of Maui Jims for my birthday. They're awesome. Basically I put them in my bedsheets, shined my lovely yellow lamp at the side, and hit the front with the on-camera flash as weak as it can get. It made cool blue-yellow tones in the sheets.







and my favorite:

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Second shot of the glasses is my favourite. To me, it's the one where you get focus, view, exposure and everything spot on.

 

[Omnis]

Yeah, but I like the composition of the last one the best. I needed to stop down, but I wasn't catching enough light and didn't feel like hooking the cam to my computer to stop camera shake.

 

[Omnis]

Shot of a watch my uncle got me. I shot it in the dark with only my spot lamp overhead. I probably should've shot at f4 to get the back of the watch face in focus, but whatever. I would've needed more light. I cropped, watermarked, and boosted saturation and contrast in photoshop. Yeah, the watermark is kind of lame, but I put it on the pic just to test how to do it.

 

[Bram Turismo]

That's one kickass watch!

I like the image, but it could've been made a little more interesting if you turned it a little so that the wach face faced the camera more, and the focus could be more towards the watch face a little more as well, as you said

Lovely colours though 👍

 

[Omnis]

Yeah, positioning the watch was definitely the biggest problem. When I put it any further forward, it would just slide down to the bottom of the box.

I have other pictures too, but that's the only one I processed like that so far. I guess I'll work on a few more and put them up too.

 

[F1GTR]

I like the lighting, however you should correct the white balance as it's way too warm (esp. for a product shot) and the obnoxious watermark really sucks.

 

[Omnis]

I like the lighting, however you should correct the white balance as it's way too warm (esp. for a product shot) and the obnoxious watermark really sucks.

It's not warm, it's yellow.

 

[F1GTR]

It's not warm, it's yellow.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm

It's warm.

 

[Omnis]

Yes, but it's yellow on purpose.

 

[Omnis]

Okay, I got bored so I shot the same watch a couple more times. This time I used the on-cam flash and also got some long-exposure shots.

Here are my three favorites:



I think this is the best I've taken of the watch. I recently bought a router from Circuit City, and they gave me this huge cloudy-clear semi-transparent bag. So, I quickly came to the conclusion that I could use it as a giant 1.5'x3' diffuser. It worked, and soft light is great. Just wish I had some tungsten gel to even out the WB. Threw the photo in photoshop to crop and resize, cool it down a bit (F1GTR ), and noise ninja'd it.

The next two are the long-exposure shots. I only used PS to reduce noise and resize both images.

This was a long exposure that I nuked with my desklamp for a split second during the exposure.

And this is the same position left ticking in complete darkness for 32 seconds. The orange-red light is the ambient light given off by my laptop's power light.

 

[Omnis]

Here are a few pics from the baseball (Cubs v. Marlins rivalry) game I went to last night. Sorry I couldn't get more interesting action shots, but my lens was far too short.

Dolphin Stadium

Our friends (Cubs fan married to a Marlins fan. I probably should have opened up the aperture a few clicks to blur out the bg more.)

The best composition I could make of all the shots I took. Cropped real tight, of course.

Billy the Marlin and The Manatees

Billy sippin' a Cubs fan's drink ALL UP IN HIS FACE.

And, finally, the new and most obvious upgrade to the stadium. At night.

 

[Omnis]

Wow, it's been a while since I updated this thread. So here are a few pics from tonight's party:

My friends from the previous post.

Birthday girl.

Birthday girl's best friend and her boyfriend.

Isn't she photogenic? 👍

Speedlights are freakin awesome and my 580EXII is the best.

 

[Omnis]

So I have somewhat of a dilemma here. I "enhanced" the last photo of the friend of a friend which I am supposed to send to her fiancee. Here it is:

Question is, do I send him the original or the enhanced one? I want to send the enhanced one but I don't know if it's appropriate since it'll be a personal photo and not published or anything like that.

What do you guys think? Oh and if you have any constructive comments in general then please let me know. For some reason, my thread here doesn't get many replies.

 

[91hondawagon]

Since she's pretty photogenic, I'd recommend sending the original. You said it's a personal photo, so I'd guess it won't be posted on Facebook or seen by a whole lot of strangers. If that's true, and since she has a good complexion, I say send off the original photo. But that doesn't mean I can't give you some comments on your editing job .

I think you did a nice job cleaning up the minor bumps on her face 👍. In this respect, her face in the enhanced photo looks very natural; if I hadn't seen the original, I wouldn't know that the enhanced had been edited. I also like how you left the shiny spots on her face, and I think this also helps the picture to remain looking natural. Overall, I think your edit was very good 👍.

The only thing I'm unsure about is your edit of the puffy spots under her eyes. When I first compared the original and enhanced, it instantly seemed like a major feature of her face has disappeared. Perhaps you could soften the puffiness a little to make it less noticeable, but getting rid of it almost entirely is too unsubtle IMO. If I, a complete stranger, noticed that change, then her friends and family certainly will.

Not to make your job harder, but I hope I've at least given you something to think about .

 

[Omnis]

Actually, that's exactly what I was concerned with. The edit was just a semi-transparent overlay to mask some of the shadow cast under her eyes by the ceiling-bounced light. I purposefully made it so you can still see some crease-- I think it's natural-looking anyway. On one hand, I want to give the guy the best-looking, touched-up-to-my-best-ability photo, yet I don't want him thinking, "Did he really need to do that?" and take it the wrong way and everything. Don't want to mess with the police, you see.

 

[Beerz]

You could ask him which one he'd like. Maybe send them both.
Probably you should ask him first if he'd want an enhanced version of the pic that you were "thinking of making".

As for the shot, it has a great DOF and is overall a pretty good image (for my standards), apart what 91hondawagon said about the things under her eyes.
It's something that appears naturally whenever we smile, and taking that away almost entirely from the image, makes it looks almost as she's forcing the smile.
If you compare both images, the original one has a much more natural look to her.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind, but I took your edited version on PS and tweaked it a bit on the parts that didn't seem "perfect" to me, which was mostly the high contrast areas.
Areas like the face itself and the skin below seemed a tad too bright (probably flash fired too close) against the rest of the image, so I toned it down a bit, while making the darker areas pop some more. To my eyes it looks more balanced, but I'd like to hear what you think:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/9008/img1072enhanced.jpg

Also, part of the glare areas on her skin were also toned down.

 

[Omnis]

The thing about that though is that I think the background and her curls take too much away from her face. I wanted her face lit for this kind of shot... I think it makes it look more dramatic. You're probably right that I could bump down the intensity of the light on her face, but I would have to kill a proportional amount of light in the background too in order to keep the balance I want. I'll play with it and see what I like. Thanks for the suggestion, Beerz. 👍

 

[Omnis]

Shot a concert at my aunt's theater last night. Flash wasn't allowed so my camera was at its absolute limits in that darkness.

 

[Watchman]

I just noticed I haven't posted here yet. Time to do it, isn't it?!

I've gone through all your shots and have to say that I'm impressed by the quality on some of them. 👍

The latest update is very nice.

 

[dougiemeats]

It looks like you handled the difficult lighting well. I much prefer available light to flash anyway. #6 is my favorite of the bunch, with the light coming straight down into the center of the group.