Robert H Clark Photography Blog

Lensbaby

Kala, Street Artist – Lensbaby Portrait

Adobe Lightroom, Black and White, Flash Photography, Hawaii, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Photograph, Lensbaby Photography, Lightroom, Photography Technique, Portrait, Sony α900 No Responses »

Sep 232010

Kala, Hawaiian street artist. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4.0 for 1/500 of a second, with off camera fill flash set to high speed sync..

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. The images today are of my friend Kala, an Hawaiian street artist who weaves coconut palm fronds into intricate baskets, hats, flowers, and whimsical animals. Born on the big Island of Hawaii, Kala has led an interesting life full of ups and downs. Not unlike most of I suppose but he has been to some depths many of us have not experienced. Today he lives a calm life, almost zen like, where he really has no worries. He is a very intelligent man and I enjoyed talking with him about everything from Hawaiian culture to football. As he talks his hands work the palm fronds, in and out, over and under, until another work of art is finished. He was taught by a master weaver and exhibits the skill and dexterity of many years of practice. You can find Kala most evenings sitting on the wall, near the Marriott in downtown Waikiki. On most nights, Von is there as well and the two carry on a lively banter. It has a calming affect. Time just seems to slow down and it invites you to do the same. To spend time with them watching the sun set over the ocean is special and every night I found myself ritually joining them on the wall. It was not long before I realized that I was not alone in this ritual. Across the street, locals and visitors alike walked out on the beach to experience the end of the day. Like clock work we all just stopped what we were doing and collectively experienced the sunset. The sound of the ocean, the cooling breeze, and the setting sun works a mysterious magic on the soul. All thoughts just seem to melt away if only for a brief moment. But the restorative benefits are exponential. As the light fades life begins again. As the street lights come on the sounds of the street resonate with activity. Night begins and we are all pulled into its reality.

Kala, Hawaiian street artist. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4.0 for 1/200 of a second, with off camera fill flash set to high speed sync.

Each of the images explores a different way of seeing. They were all shot with a Sony α900 with a Lensbaby Composer and the f4.0 insert. I have spoken before about the use of the Lensbaby and its ability to provide selective focusing. It is a lens that can blur out background noise. The effect is pronounced and varied. In two the shots the background is reduced to a kind of random bokeh pattern. In the vignette the background is simply softened. It is a lens that takes a little practice but one which can pay off with beautiful images. The f4.0 insert is my usual choice as it gives me the right amount of subject sharpness and fade. When I shot these I was looking for a different angle, another way of seeing Kala, and perhaps find a way to incorporate his work into the image. A small bucket with his woven flowers provided a starting point and I worked the subject from a low angle. I was lying on the ground and shifted in and out looking for a pleasing composition. I moved the flash around and fired a few test shots to see if it was going to work. In the first shot Kala just leaned over towards the bucket and I caught something in his face that was both serene and intense. The flash was set low and off to my left. The Lensbaby’s focus was dialed in just beyond the bucket of flowers. In the second image I readjusted the Lensbaby’s focus to the flowers which put Kala out of focus. Two images captured with the same lens providing different points of focus and interpretation. The third image shown below is a vignette. A simple isolation of a craftsman’s hands cradling his art.

Kala, Hawaiian street artist. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4.0 for 1/125 of a second, with off camera fill flash set to high speed sync.

The primary processing work was done in Adobe Lightroom 3.2. For most of my work Lightroom is a first step in optimizing the RAW files with final finishing in Photoshop. For these images I did all the primary work in Lightroom using a processing preset. Lightrooms presets provide many options for creatively developing your files. After some experimentation I settled on a preset called “Color Creative-Aged Photo”. I really like the split-tone effect of the final images. The images also received some small curve adjustments and sharpening. They were exported to Photoshop where I did a little dodging and burning and added my typical white border.

Von, Hawaiian Street Artist – Lensbaby Portrait

Flash Photography, Hawaii, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Photograph, Lensbaby Photography, People Photography, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Portrait, Sony α900, Street Portrait No Responses »

Sep 182010

Von, Hawaiian Street Artist, Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4.0 for 1/2000 of a second with off camera fill flash set to TTL mode.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. On my various trips to Hawaii I have had the good fortune to meet and spend time with some fine street artists in Waikiki. Meet Von, a carver of traditional Hawaiian weapons, ukelele player and crooner, and weaver of interesting stories. Every night Von would appear and set up his display along a wall adjacent to the Marriott. I was introduced to Von through my friend Kala, who weaves coconut palm fronds, and shares the same location near the hotel. Now I will admit to you that photographing people is something that sends me into a cold sweat. But I am trying to overcome this fear and the only way is to simply ask. My approach is to spend time with the individual first, to get to know them, and watch what they do. I am trying to build up a comfort level, and courage on my part to ask permission. When Von referred to me as “bra”, the Hawaiian term for brother, I knew I was in the fold and he consented to let me take some photos. He is one of the most heroic individuals I have met on Hawaii and I could imagine him as a warrior in the time before the arrival of Europeans to the Hawaiian Islands. His weapons are carved from Koa wood, a traditional, and scarce material that grows high on the slopes of the mountains. The shape and size of the wood blanks informs Von of what the weapon will become. Each blank is hand carved and receives hours of sanding till the wood is smooth and the iridescent sheen of the Koa shines in the sun.

The photograph was made with a Lensbaby Composer with the f4.0 insert. This is a good general insert for street photographs. I focused on Von’s face and asked him to continue to work on the spear. After several takes he looked up at the point and this was the shot. I used an off camera flash set to high speed sync and TTL mode. I shot in manual mode and under exposed by 1 stop to darken the background. The RAW file was processed in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. The black and white conversion was toned with a dark brown. The combination of the Lensbaby’s selective focus and the duotone processing of the file gives the image an old world look which I thought was appropriate for my old world friend.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Coneflowers – Lensbaby Photography

Flower Photography, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Photograph, Lensbaby Photography, Photography Technique, Photoshop Technique, Photoshop Workflow, Sony α900, Uncategorized No Responses »

Jul 192010

Image 1: Coneflowers - Final Image Processed in Photoshop. Image shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer at f4.0 at 1/250 of a second.

Hi everyone. I thought I would leave the slot canyons for awhile and post another Lensbaby image from my garden flower series. I am showing three stages in this image; the RAW capture, the Lightroom processed image, and the final composition completed in Photoshop. The image was shot in the early morning with the sun rising just off the image’s right hand side. The beautiful sidelight gave the flowers some nice illumination and added depth to the shot. The image was shot hand held with the focus on the two flowers in the center of the image. I used the f4.0 insert on my Lensbaby Composer and the camera white balance was set to 5200K. I composed the shot in a way that would give me cropping room for the final composition. The quality of light is what makes the shot beautiful but it also contributed to an exposure issue-that of balancing the white of the petals with the shadowed areas within the green leaves. Watching the histogram and the “blinkies” I had to clip the white highlights and the shadows just a fraction which pushed the majority of the mid-tones just to the left. I knew I could recover these in the RAW processor. Not optimum but pushing the histogram more to the right would have seriously clipped the highlights and I may not have been able to recover them.

Image 2, below shows the RAW file before processing. Not too bad but it can certainly be improved, especially in the shadows and mid-tones. And while I do like the hint of magenta colors in the top I thought the overall image could be improved by cropping in to eliminate some of the darker parts at the bottom of the shot. In looking at the image, right away I loved the quality of the light. The coneflowers really stood out and I liked the light striking the vertical stems which added a nice dynamic line that played against the curve of the flowers. With all that in mind my plan was to crop in on the shot and bring out the mid-tones for more depth. I also needed to recover a small bit of the highlights in the petal and add just a bit of fill recovery for the clipped shadows.

Image 2: Coneflowers, RAW capture before processing.

Image 3: below shows the image as processed in Lightroom before exporting to Photoshops. Here you can see the subtle recovery of highlights and shadows and the final crop. Additionally some small adjustments were made in the overall color with the sliders. Not a lot however as I prefer to use the selective color controls in Photoshop for final tweaking.

Image 3: Coneflowes, image after processing in Lightroom.

So lets take a look at all three images side by side: The first image is the RAW file, the second image is the Lightroom File, and the third image is the final Photoshop File. The results at first glance may appear subtle. The overall crop helped to eliminate the dark dead space at the bottom of the shot. But keep in mind that I shot this with an eye towards cropping in on the flowers. The Lensbaby Composer is not a zoom lens and though I might have moved in to the shot just a bit it would have altered the focus point. The second image also shows the slight recovery of the shadows with the Fill Slider and the highlights on the petals through the Recovery Slider. The third image is the final rendering from Photoshop. Here the shadows and mid-tones have been adjusted through a luminosity curve mask.

The shot below shows a screen capture of the layers I used in Photoshop. The Background Layer was duplicated and a Gaussian Blur at a 20 pixel radius was made. Though the Lensbaby at the f4.0 aperture insert already produces a nice selective focus blur I wanted to add just a bit more. From there, three separate luminosity curve masks were made for the mid-tones and shadows. The luminosity masks isolate certain tonal and value ranges in the image and from there I apply the curve adjustments through the mask. I won’t go into how these are made but if you are interested please visit Tony Kuyper’s website where you can download his tutorial’s on the masks. They are an excellent way to apply curve adjustments to a targeted tonal range. After the curves I applied a mid-tone contrast mask and then added my Dodge and Burn, Color Balance, and a Final Color Layer. This is a fairly typical Layer Stack for my work. I always do global curve work first followed by selective adjustments. I almost always use a Dodge and Burn Layer. This is an Overlay Layer with a 50% Grey Fill set to an opacity of 66%. You can paint on the mask using the Brush set to a large feathered radius. Painting with Black darkens and painting with white lightens. You should set the Brush to a low opacity and build up the effect.

Coneflower Photoshop Layers

Well, this was quite a bit to go through. Hopefully you followed along and got a glimpse of how I process some of my shots. If you have any questions or comments just drop me a note. Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Tree Peony – Lensbaby Composer

Flower Photography, Flowers, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Photograph, Sony α900 No Responses »

May 062010

Tree Peony. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4 for 1/60 of a second.

Hi everyone. Todays post is a continuation of my spring flower Lensbaby images. This image is of one of my tree peonies. I have been waiting for the blooms to pop for almost two weeks. The tree peony is arguably one of my favorite plants producing magnificent blooms in the first weeks of May. I counted over 60 buds on this particular plant. The image was shot with my Lensbaby Composer and the wide angle attachment. I like to do these shots in the early morning or late afternoon to avoid harsh highlights and shadows. Processing was done in Lightroom with final finishing in Photoshop.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Purple Iris No. 2 – Lensbaby Photography

Flower Photography, Flowers, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Photograph, Photography Technique, Sony α900 No Responses »

Apr 192010

Purple Iris. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Lensbaby Composer with the wide angle attachment. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4 for 1/90 of a second.

Hi everyone. Just a quick follow up post to the purple iris shots I posted yesterday. Here is another shot from the same shooting session where I used the Lensbaby Composer and wide angle attachment to focus in close to the inside of the flower. I remain amazed at the internal structure inside the iris and the incredible colors. Only in nature can we find such wonderful combinations of complementary colors.

Thanks again to all for visiting my site. May spring reveal its mysteries to you.

Bob

Purple Iris – Lensbaby Photography

Flower Photography, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Photograph, Photography Technique, Sony α900 No Responses »

Apr 182010

Purple Iris. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer with the wide angle attachment. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4 for 1/90 of a second.

Purple Iris Number 2. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4 for 1/90 of a second.

Hi everyone. The weather here in West Virginia is causing some confusion. It is actually quite chilly and we may see the temperature drop into the 40′s tonight. But despite the chill we have enjoyed some remarkable and beautiful days here in the panhandle. With this post I am continuing with the flower theme that I began when the first cherry blossums emerged several weeks ago. I am creating a series of Lensbaby photographs of the many flowers found in my garden. Several days ago my purple iris opened up with a stunning display of color. The light today was slightly subdued which made for a nice even illumination on the flowers. I had to battle a little wind today but my patience paid off.

The first image was shot with the Lensbaby and the wide angle attachment. The wide angle lens allows me to work in very close to the my main subject. In this case I am literally inches away. My focus was on the new bud. I love the way the petals of the flower seem to wrap around and frame the new bud. I also like the flower in the background which is an almost mirror opposite of the main subject. There is a beautiful 3-dimensional quality to this image. Part of this is achieved by the selective focus capabilities of the Lensbaby and the other part is due to the way I processed the image. I employed several light and dark curve adjustments in Photoshop to help separate the flower from the background.

The second image was shot with the Lensbaby Composer without the wide angle attachment. The effective focal length is equivalent to a 50mm. The focus here was just past the first petals. I really love the vertical, spikey leaves pointing up to the main flowers. And I love the intense colors. I have talked about this in past posts but I continue to sing the virtues of the Lensbaby. The power of the lens’ selective focus allows you to create images that go from sharp focus to blur. And it does so with a beautiful, natural transition. Additionally the blur and the effect changes based on where you decide to focus. Look for more images as spring continues. I am still waiting for the rhododendrons, clematis, and my tree peonies.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Dogwood Flowers – Lensbaby Photography

Flower Photography, Flowers, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lensbaby, Photography Technique, Sony α900 2 Responses »

Apr 112010

Dogwood Flower. Shote with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer with a wide angle attachment. The image was exposed at ISO 100 at f4 for 1/125 of a second

Hi everyone. Todays post continues a theme I started several weeks ago to photograph a series of flowers and blooming trees utilizing my Lensbaby Composer. Todays flower is from one of my dogwood trees. It was shot with the Lensbaby and a Lensbaby wide angle lens attachment. The wide angle lens allows me to work in very tight to the flower, in this case I was literally inches from the main bud. In fact I was so tight I was enveloped by dogwood branches. The flower was backlit by the setting sun and I used a small reflective disk to throw some light on the petals. Stay tuned as I am waiting for my peonies and rhododendrons to open.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Paperwhite Daffodils – Lensbaby Photography

Flowers, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lensbaby, Photography Technique, Sony α900, Uncategorized No Responses »

Apr 042010

Paperwhite Daffodils. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer with the wide angle attachment. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f4 for 1/60 of a second.

Hi everyone. Continuing in the spring theme, todays post is a bunch of paperwhite daffodils shot with a Lensbaby Composer with the wide angle attachment. The wide angle lens really allows you to get in close plus the dramatic field of view coupled with the selective focus creates a dynamic image full of implied motion and color. Depending on your angle of view the bokeh created by the selective focus capabilities of the lens picks up the reflected colors surrounding your subject.

Todays composition was the result of a technique I learned from my friend Craig Tanner called Digital Sketching. The idea is to use your eyes only and create compositions without looking through the viewfinder. I got in low with the flowers, brought the camera in close, and just shot a series of images. I am not worried about focus while doing this but simply looking for pleasing compositions. Once I find something I like I reframe using the viewfinder and adjust until I get the shot I was looking for. It is a great exercise that will free you from the tyranny of the viewfinder. Now some might wonder about the validity of a creative composition framed without using a viewfinder. Well of course its valid. It is no different than a painter making a series of sketches before apply paint to canvas. In this image something drew me to the composition in the first place, be it color, or the light, or even the subject. So without getting locked into one aspect or one view I used digital sketching to move around the flowers from top to bottom exploring its potential. I would encourage you to give this a try.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Yoshino Cherry Blossums

Lensbaby, Sony α900, Trees 6 Responses »

Apr 022010

Yoshino Cherry Blossums. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Lensbaby Composer with a f4 insert. Image exposed at ISO 100 for 1/200 of a second.

Hi everyone. I have hinted at the changing weather in a few recent tweets but now I have photographic proof. Quite honestly spring has seemingly pushed old man winter out of the door. The thought of all that snow that covered the ground is just a memory now. My Yoshino Cherries are in full regalia. So here is a lensbaby shot of one of the massive blooms. There was beautiful light this morning and the sky was that crystal blue that makes you want to spend all day under its cover. I shot this looking up into the tree and focused on the first set of blooms. The lensbabies unique selective focus does the rest and gave me a nice image hinting at the other blossums and the blue sky beyond. I think I may see a spring theme coming here. Can’t wait for my tree peonies to bloom. Wherever you are today I hope that spring is blooming your life.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

Lensbaby Portrait – Mike

Black and White, Lensbaby, People Photography, Photography Technique, Portrait, Sony α900 2 Responses »

Feb 262010

Mike. Shot with a Lensbaby Composer and a Lensbaby Superwide attachment at a focal length of 21mm at f2.8. Image exposed ISO 100 for 1/4 of a second.

Todays post is a Lensbaby portrait of Mike, one of my friends and work cohorts. Mike’s an IT guru who happened to stop by to take care of my computer after it decided to head south for the winter. As the computer diagnostics churned away Mike let me shoot a few images with the Lensbaby. This was shot in my office which is quite cluttered and the Lensbaby was the perfect lens to help simplify the background. The Lensbaby is a selective focus lens that uses a series of drop in apertures. The wider the aperture, in this case an f2.8 the more “out of focus” the background. The lens’ design creates beautiful transitions from in-focus to out-of -focus. This image was shot with a Lensbaby Composer and a Lensbaby Superwide attachment which converts the lens to a 21mm equivalent. The camera was set to Manual Mode with a +0.5 exposure compensation.

The classic lighting set up was very simple. To the right side of the image is a large window which provided my big, soft, main light source. Fill light was provided by a white wall to the left of the image. The RAW file was processed in Lightroom with final work done in Photoshop. The bookcase behind Mike was full of color but very chaotic so the image was converted to black and white in Photoshop to simplify the tonal values.

I want to thank Mike for allowing me to photograph him. And thanks to everyone for stopping by today.

Bob