The purpose of adding graphic elements to photos is up to you. Does your client want ‘something different?’ Do you want to make art to hang on the wall? It doesn’t really matter why you do it, but the fact is you can do some amazing things to photos and make them look completely different using Photoshop or other software. Let’s take a look at a few that I’ve done. These were just for fun.

First, I used a pretty cool picture of one of my favorite guitarists, Joe Satriani, which had a lot of negative space and decided to use that area for some graphic elements and typography. Here’s the original photo:

Pretty good stuff, right? Using very simple masking, vector shapes, free brushes, and a basic sans-serif font, I added to the image a a sense of motion, impact, and excitement. I also made the image monochrome to draw out the texture of the wall and the high detail in the image. Here’s what I ended up with:

Nice. I dig it. Let’s move on to something more drastic, where the final image has only a vague resemblance to the original photo, and you may not have even guessed that the final image came from a photo at all! You can find a very large library of free stock photos and graphics at sxc.hu, which is where I found this creepy photo of a gothy looking girl screaming exaggeratedly:

I had already decided that I wanted to try to make a cool Resident Evil style zombie image, inspired by the work of illustrator Stephen Gammell, so I opened my original photo in Photoshop, and went to work. Admittedly, this one took more complex knowledge of Photoshop, but not much. I used the the selection tool exaggerate just the shape of the mouth with the warp tool, lots of textures and blend modes, brushes, masking, and layering. Bypassing an outbreak or years of bio-research, here’s the zombie I created:

Click to see the finished zombie image larger

BRAINS! Somebody call S.T.A.R.S! Ha! So you can see that with some experimentation and very, very simple Photoshop tools, you can transform and enhance your photos in amazing ways.

When faced with editing your photos, is it like once again entering the world of survival horror? Leave a comment below!

So what is bulb exposure? It’s called so because on really old cameras, the shutter was opened by squeezing an air bulb, and releasing it would close it. On a DSLR, it’s enough to know that it’s basically just a long exposure technique in which you, the photographer, can precisely control the length of the exposure. To activate the BULB setting on our camera, simply turn your shutter speed dial as far as it will go to the left, to the slowest possible setting. It will change from a number to BULB. Once you’re there, you’re ready to start shooting. To do this really well, however, you need an off camera flash that you can trigger at some point during the exposure. There are lots of ways to do this, but perhaps the easiest is to have an assistant to fire the flash when you want it fired. Multiple flashes can be awesome too.

If you have the camera set to BULB mode, and you have a way to fire a flash (don’t forget to set your camera’s white balance to the flash setting), you can now create some way cool images. It’s simple:
1. Press and hold the shutter. You can move the camera around if you want, or have the subject move; there is an element of light painting to this. Timing is pretty critical. If you hold the shutter open too long in decent lighting conditions, there will be so much light in the image that you will lose the subject. If the exposure time is too fast, the whole effect of long exposure photography is not very pronounced.

2. When you are ready to capture or freeze the motion of your subject, fire the flash(es)!

3. The finish is up to you and how artistic you want to get. If you release the shutter immediately after the flash fires, you’ll get a nice sharp image like these: (don’t forget to click each image to see it larger.)

I say sharp, because if you didn’t fire a flash it would just be a hot, blurry mess. You can see that there is a warm softness to these images, but they are nicely ‘frozen’ and in focus. The image on the left had the shutter open for quite a bit longer than the image on the right, as you can tell by the significant light decrease on the right. In both of these images, the shutter was released immediately after the flash fired. If you want to get even more artsy with things, try moving the camera around and holding the shutter a few moments longer after the flash fires. You’ll get something like this:

You can also experiment with multiple exposures; fire the flash, move the subject, fire again, and so on until you release the shutter. The best part about these images is that they have a great, totally unique look right in the camera! No post processing required! But, you know I can’t let this post end without a little Photoshop fun! Check out how you can enhance and manipulate these images with some layering, blending and textures:

Isn’t it cool? I love shooting this way for interesting and unpredictable looks. The trend for commercial photography is obviously ultra sharp, ultra slick images, but if your client or your portfolio could use something a little different, tyr shooting in BULB mode. You’ll be glad you did!

Did this lesson make a few light bulbs turn on in your head? Leave a comment below!

First, let’s start off with the before & after comparison so you can see where I started and where I ended up.

The silhouette image – which I think is quite elegant in its original form, by the way – was a lucky break because I was snapping off too many exposures too fast for the strobe to recycle in time for the next one. The dancer’s name is Oneida, and she was dancing (what else!) so I was doing the rapid fire thing on the shutter to capture her in each “stage” of her movements. At any rate, I didn’t intend to get this silhouette, but I’m glad I did. Here’s the original a little larger:

Although this image is pretty nice by itself, I felt like it could use some color and attitude. Plus, I was in an artsy mood that day. Here’s where the photo painting part comes in. To get the grungy, brushy, paint-looking textures I did not use a brush either manually or digitally. Rather, the paint look comes from photographs of real-world textures. Old walls, parking lots, graffiti, you name it. Some of these textures I had photographed myself, and some were free texture downloads that can be found all over the internet. I simply began adding photographs of textures and colors that I liked onto my original image and used layer blending modes and masking to build a painting.

There’s quite a bit of trial-and-error and and careful selection of photo textures to get the look you eventually want. Some colors won’t interact well with your original photo, or with textures you’ve already selected. One good way to get around that is convert a texture image you like from color to black and white. That way, when you blend the new texture with the ones you already have, it only blends the texture information, and not the color information. It’s a little more complicated than that (I won’t go into a blend mode tutorial here), but when working with textures and blending, it can often be quite helpful to remove the color from them. Experiment with the colors of your textures and which blend modes you use. As you can see, my image is still pretty much a dark silhouette. I needed to brighten it up and give it some life and energy like the dancing, so I added some very bright colored texture photos and set them to the ‘Screen’ blend mode (it makes things WAY brighter).

Finally, I felt like it should have some kind of a border or frame to really draw the eye onto the dancer’s form. I added one more texture, and here’s the completed image again, larger:

I hope you enjoyed this little lesson, and that it inspired you to think about how images you never intended to get or use can become really cool pieces with a little imagination.

Got a questions or comments? Leave ‘em below!

I picked up a Craigslist special on a Canon 50mm f/1.8. Yes, I love 50mm. I already have a fully manual Nikon 50mm f/1.4 that I love, especially for video, but the manual focus and shallow depth of field characteristics of the lens in still photos can be challenging and inconsistent (it’s hard). So I picked up the Canon pretty much for the sole reason of obtaining auto focus.

First of all, the details. This lens is affectionately referred to by pros and beginners alike as the “Nifty Fifty” for its low price ($109 retail) and excellent image quality. See also, “Plastic Fantastic.” The lens barrel is indeed plastic, so it’s not the most rugged lens you’ll ever meet. But, the image quality really is fantastic.

Now to the auto focus. It works. The focusing motor is pretty loud, and not too fast, but when it finally dials in, it’s great. It struggles the tiniest bit with the focus-recompose method. It tends to want to refocus once you recompose.

Like I said, I haven’t shot enough with it to say it’s accurate 80% of the time, or it never works right, or whatever. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m very pleased with what I will be able to get out of this lens, especially considering I didn’t even pay full price for it (I paid $90, if it matters.) Well worth it to me for the great bokeh, wide aperture, and auto focus. I definitely concur with those who have called this lens nifty and fantastic.

I kind of served as a co-leader; not really, but I was familiar with the route, so I led a group, and afterwards coordinated the photo sharing session. I had a great time, and I managed to get a few images out of the day that I’m quite pleased with. Lisa decided to come along too (yay!) and she ended up being a model quite a few times, which made the other photogs happy. Here’s one my best/favorites of her from the day.

The group that I led wound around a couple of streets on our route. We had hoped to get into the medical supplies surplus warehouse, but the gate was closed both times we swung by to check it. Instead, we got something perhaps even better. I was walking ahead and a gentleman stepped outside of his shop and asked what we were photographing. I told him we were participating in the 4th annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk, and that we were just a small group out of tens of thousands of people sharing the joy of photography that day. His name is Ed. Ed thought that was pretty cool, so he invited me(us) to come into his shop and make some photos. It turned out he is a pretty masterful luthier and builds custom guitars in his cozy little shop. I, of course, LOVE guitars so I had no problem soaking in the atmosphere of the place and asking all kinds of questions while I shot.

I asked him if he would play something for us, and another photographer in the group suggested he sit and play so that we could capture him inside his environment. It was so cool. This turned out be my best/favorite shot of the day.

I’ll be posting a few more as I get them processed, but this one is the image I will be submitting for my chance to win best photo of the group. If I do, I might even be in the running for one of the grand prizes! Squee!
Stay tuned for more images from my photo walk experience. If you’d like to check out some other photos from the group, visit the 2011 East Austin Photo Walk Flickr Page.

Lead singer Erica Monzon looked great with her red guitar. You know, I really hate it when people make photos of pretty girls holding guitars, and it’s obvious that the girl has never played a riff in her life. It’s stupid. So I enjoyed watching Erica look and sound great while actually playing. She has a powerful voice you wouldn’t expect that she can take from a darkly sweet melody to an angst filled wailing.

The guitar players, Jaime and David Monzon, both had a great rock star look. It was really difficult to get either of them to stand in the light long enough to get a good shot though.

Perhaps one of the easiest parts of the shoot was getting Terrill’s eyes to really stand out. He did a good job of not only being aware of his face while posing, but putting emotion into his eyes. Here, I asked him to stare me down, and it turned out be one of the best photos of the day.

Terrill was great to work with. Check out his Model Mayhem profile – linked above – and hire him for your next project. I’d be glad to work with Terrill again anytime.