CLICK TO ENLARGE --- Bliss Dance, sculpture by Lloyd Taylor

Some people think of photographic post-production (especially if the word “Photoshop” is used) as synonymous with trickery—as an underhanded way of creating something fake, of “doctoring” a photo, like some supermarket tabloid cover featuring Gary Coleman partying in a hot tub with an extra-terrestrial. Sure, you can do that with Photoshop.

But for most of us photographers, post-production is not some diabolical plot to create something fake, but a useful tool to help us re-create what we saw in reality but were unable to capture in the camera.  Or sometimes what we saw in our mind’s eye as the potential shot, if not for the unfortunate accidents of poor weather, bad lighting, or fat tourists.

It’s a tool to help re-create the shot that should have been.

The photo on this page is a good example.

CLICK TO ENLARGE - Before Editing

This was an awe-inspiring metal sculpture standing alone in the vast, beautiful openness of the desert. At various times, I saw it in glorious sunset or sunrise light, sometimes with stunning clouds, sometimes in a dust storm, sometimes with people at its feet, sometimes standing all alone.

In the best of those moments it was breathtakingly beautiful. Unfortunately none of my photos managed to combine all of the best elements.  In some shots the light was good. In others the sky was good. In others, there were no people cluttering the shot. And so on.

But I want my final photo to express the way it really felt to be there, caressed by a warm desert breeze, gazing up at this marvelous work of art against the beautiful backdrop of nature.

The only way I can recreate that experience is by editing one of my unsatisfactory photos into something that looks more like the real thing and which conveys that feeling.

In this case, I chose a photo where I liked the position of the camera and the angle of the light, because those are fundamentals that can’t be altered.

From that foundation, I did the following:

1. Create a Curves Adjustment Layer to increase the contrast and saturation in the entire image.  This makes the scene look more like what I saw with my eye, which is so much more sensitive than my camera.

2. Remove the leaning ladder and the open access hatch (where the sculptor had climbed inside to work), because these were temporary obstructions in this shot, not indicative of the way the piece usually looked.

3. Remove distracting people and clutter on the ground by using the clone stamp tool to copy bits of the photo from one place to another. (Of course, I kept one human figure for scale.) This helped show the sculpture the way I often saw it, standing alone on a vast desert plain. By doing this I hoped to stir in the viewer the strange and beautiful sense of lonely drama the real scene stirred in me.

4. Finally, after selecting and masking the sculpture with a Layer Mask, I did another Curves Adjustment Layer, this time affecting only the sky, revealing color and detail that my eyes could see, but my camera could not.

The result is the “After” photo shown here.

While some may consider this kind of work to be fakery, trickery, cheating—a good argument could be made that it’s exactly the opposite, because the final result here is a much more accurate representation of the way this sculpture looked and felt to me in person.

Which is more real? The literal truth of a fleeting moment captured by a relatively insensitive and limited recording device—or my best attempt at enhancing that unsatisfactory snapshot to reveal the deeper truth of what it was like to actually be there?

Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments.

By the way, this photo is one of the case studies in my Photoshop Basics course, where over the span of a 20-minute video lesson, you can follow along as I go through the entire editing process described above, if you’re interested in seeing how that sort of thing is done.

Gotta love YouTube for always coming up with a splash screen where I have a funny expression on my face. They must have a special filter that searches for those frames.

If you’re interested, here is my course on Off-Camera Flash Photography.

For me, this feature alone was worth the $99 upgrade from Lightroom 2. And it’s just one of many improvements. If you want to buy me a beer, use one of the links below when you buy or upgrade.

Click Here for Lightroom 3 at Amazon.com

Upgrade from Lightroom 2 to 3 at Amazon.com

Here’s my breathless 10-minute rundown of all the current contenders for radio-triggering your off-camera flashes.

This is an update of the information contained in my course, “How to Shoot Professional-Looking Headshots and Portraits on a Budget with Small Flashes.”

This technology is changing fast, practically daily, so I’ll make periodic updates available as things evolve.

I hope you find it helpful, and I welcome your feedback or stories of your own experience with any of this gear.

If you own a detachable Speedlite-style flash, and you are shooting with it on your camera, you are wasting your investment in that expensive flash.

Face it, on-camera flash sucks. It drains the life out of your subject and makes everyone look like they are posing for a police line-up or a driver’s license photo.

You gotta get that flash off your camera!

The video above is my YouTube “commercial” for my off-camera flash course. Frankly I don’t know if it’s cheesy or if it’s cool, but I had fun making it, and people seem to love it on YouTube, so I thought I’d share it with you here.

By the way, if you’re a gear geek you’ll notice the difference between our lighting setups.  Brad is using his big Alien Bees studio lights, while I’m using my favorite small-flash setup, shooting Canon Speedlites through umbrellas. You’ll see me using both the Canon wireless (master/slave) system, when I need one light, and radio triggers when I need two lights.

If you’d like to know exactly how all this works, you can get the full story in my new 9-video course called “How to Shoot Professional-Looking Headshots and Portraits on a Budget Using Small Flashes.”

That’s my first video product, and I’m pretty damn excited about it, so if you think it sounds interesting, check it out, or at least hit one of the social media links below and share this video with your friends!

Click to enlarge

I just shot a headshot session with a lovely San Diego jewelry designer named Stephany.  These were done in my own living room with a combination of window light and Canon speedlite flash (off-camera, of course).

If you’d like to see larger versions, plus some additional shots from this session, click any photo.

These were shot as part of the practice sessions for my online video course “How to Shoot Headshots and Portraits on a Budget Using Small Flashes” in which I explain exactly how I do these shots with minimal equipment.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Self portrait in my living room

It’s about freakin’ time.  For years I’ve pestered family members, friends, and occasionally even strangers to stand in while I’m testing a lighting setup or indluging some photographic whim that requires a human subject in front of the lens.

Thus I’ve gradually trained all the people nearest me to duck out the back door if they see me coming with a camera in hand.  “Sorry, dude, gotta run.  I think my parking meter is about to expire.”

So what’s a photographer to do? I have a constant need to test lighting setups, particularly those involving multiple radio-triggered flashes, which require delicate adjustment to get the right balance.  I like to know how these things are going to look before I try it out in the field. When it comes time for the actual shoot, I don’t want to force the talent, or the client, to sit through this agonizing process of tweaking.

Of course, I could put myself in front of the lens, and I tried that using the camera’s self-timer.  No go, of course.  When you push the shutter button, the focus locks in on the background, and when you run around in front of the camera you end up looking like a blurry blob.

I considered a cable release, but sometimes I need to be really far away from the camera for these tests, and those cables are only a couple of feet long.  Fine for triggering the shutter on a tripod when you don’t want to shake the camera, but no good if you’re standing 25 feet away.

I don’t know why it took me so long to discover the wireless shutter release.  I guess I thought they would be expensive, but I found one made in Hong Kong that cost me all of $30.

Wireless Shutter Release

This thing is great.  Best $30 I ever spent (well except for that time….)  The tiny little transmitter is about as big as my thumb and hides easily in my hand.  When you push the button halfway, it sets the focus and exposure, just as if you were pushing the camera’s shutter button halfway.  Then snap.  It works perfectly every time.

Now I can be my own flash test dummy.  I can experiment with portrait lighting setups to my heart’s content without pissing anyone off (except myself).

The self-portrait above was shot in my living room.  I would describe the technical setup for you, but that would spoil all the surprises you can find in my course “How to Shoot Professional Looking Headshots and Portraits on a Budget with Small Flashes.”

—Phil

Epilogue (added the next day): After taking all these self-portraits and posting this blog entry I had a weird dream last night.  In the dream, I was holding my camera, looking through the viewfinder, and taking photos of a subject sitting on my sofa.  I gradually began to realize that the subject was me.  At first this seemed normal, since I had spent the afternoon taking self-portraits. But then I began to wonder—if that is me over there, then who the hell am I behind the camera?  This led to an exhilarating and somewhat terrifying feeling of metaphysical confusion. So, consider yourself warned.  The producers of this blog and of the Cactus Wireless Shutter Release disclaim all responsibility should your exercise in self-portraiture give rise to a philosophical conundrum or feelings of existential despair.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the premiere photo managment software for digital photographers.  It can handle your entire photo workflow from importing images, to organizing, editing, printing, and exporting to websites like Picasa, Flickr, or your own custom-made web galleries.

I just created a free 23-minute video tutorial illustrating the process of working in Lightroom. If you’re considering buying Lightroom, or if you’re a new Lightroom owner looking to get more out of the software, this video is for you.

In this tutorial, I walk you step-by-step through my own Lightroom workflow, narrating as I process a set of photos from camera import through organizing, renaming, editing, and exporting as a fully-functional flash web gallery.

If you’re curious about Lightroom, I invite you to check it out on my photo tutorials page.

See Lightroom at Amazon.com

You can see some of my own Burning Man pictures from nearly a decade at this event in my small gallery on this site, or in my larger site devoted entirely to Burning Man photography: Burnmonkey.com

Burning Man is also a challenge for photographers.  The environment is unforgiving, with frequent dust storms that can destroy a camera in minutes.  The relentless sun can be a threat not only to your body, but also to your photos, if you don’t learn how to use it to your advantage.  And the challenge of getting artistic shots when surrounded by a less-than-attractive tent-city of 50,000 people is one that many amateur photographers never seem to overcome.

So I created a 5-part tutorial at my Burnmonkey site called “How to Take Better Photos at Burning Man (and Beyond!)” in order to share some of my experience from many years of shooting at this event.

Whether you’re an amateur with a point-and shoot camera, or an experienced photographer thinking of going to Burning Man for the first time, I hope you will find something in there that helps you come home from Burning Man with photos that make you proud.

You can access the tutorial here.