kathryn and jared

Last Friday I went on a photo shoot with Kathryn and Jared - Kathryn being the sister of Brittany - in Hamilton at Church Hill Park. It was a super chill shoot as we only decided on the location last minute due to the rain and general dreariness outside. I remember seeing a photo a friend took of the park recently and decided we had to go down there. Well the park didn't disappoint as it was absolutely stunning with bright yellow leaves everywhere and the trees sheltered us from the rain.

Anytime I go out on a shoot, I always do my research to get ideas for angles and poses. I even make sketches that are so poorly drawn that I end up writing a paragraph explaining the drawing just to embed it into my brain. I was set on breaking my boundaries and pushing myself with this shoot so I can grow and learn from experience. It's so nice when you're working with great people who are willing to accommodate this, so big thanks to Jared and Kathryn!

I hope my growth as a photographer has translated into this photo set. I tried different poses, did a 180 on my editing style and visualized the end result before shooting. I'll be doing a blog post soon on my change in editing style and how I go about editing, so watch out for that. So till then, enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/killthemessenger/8137231941/

I've been having some issues with monitor calibration so I hope the colours look as good on your monitor as they do on mine. Urgh, the technicalities of photography -_-

running free

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to photograph one of my good friends, Alison. She wanted some shots of her running and I was more than happy to accept this offer. We hit up the Guelph Arboretum to capture the Autumn colours so we could have a scenic backdrop. Due to time constraints we could only scout out a few locations but they were beautiful nonetheless. The whole shoot happened on a whim but I'm extremely happy with the results and hope each image invokes a love for running. I can't wait to try out another running photo shoot as it really shows you the importance of getting creative and finding that perfect angle.

Check out a higher quality diptych over here.

editing process of "keep you sheltered from the storm that's raging on"

Woot, this is my first explanation of how I edited one of my photos. The process of how I edited this photo is basically the same for every square picture I create. I start off with 2 or 3 images, merge them together, edit the colours via curves and voila!

The first step I did was take the main picture of myself, then expanded the frame to the left and right. This resulted in the following three images:

These images were then edited in RAW, which resulted in the following:

In RAW, I bumped up the exposure by 1/3, added some fill light, and increased the brightness. These were all very minor adjustments but make a huge difference.

After editing in RAW, I placed these images together and essentially did the Brenzier method. I blended the images together in a square canvas to create the final product. I then used the patch tool, clone stamp and healing brush to remove some minor distractions such as the tiny specks of lens flares.

As my last step, I edited the colours using curves as I felt the lights were too bright and were taking away from the image. I also wanted to add more intimacy to the final product, so I added more warmth and darkened the background.

Voila! Very simple editing but it makes all of the difference. I hope you enjoyed my thought process. If you have any questions, just leave a message in the comments.

P.S I didn't realize that the before images were such terrible quality. I'll make sure to change that next time!