Extracts from articles I wrote at Personal View
Hi there folks =) Ready? Here we go!!!
At VK, Serge Popov from 3D LUT Creator has shared Julia Trotti, a set of 40 drag&drop curves presets.
Why I share this with you? Because even if you don’t use their program it’s quite a nice free collection (gotta love some of those names and examples) you can use to grade in Photoshop, Premiere and/or After effects along with the 32bits Curves adjustment =)
I’m not even gonna start praising some LUTs they’ve been dropping over there, just have a kid-in-the-candy-store-look
Recently I came across this tutorial, I must say this guy empowers opposite philosophy of what I think it’s healthy; do shitty photos, don’t delete anything, fix them in post. WRONG!!!
One should experiment away, specially with pussy cats and humans :P, but also should’t settle on mediocre results and expend hours fixing or sugar-coating them. Delusion is very dangerous. You took a photo of grandpa teeth in the glass, nice… most of times it’s not going to be timeless new Lartigue’s or C. Bresson’s… and maybe you don’t even want it to. NOW if one wants to improve, 97.395736% of the work it’s gonna happen inside our heads, by learning, by comparing and analysing results, by being attentive and conscious, by re-learning how to see, relate, and establish relations (being these conceptual or sensory in nature) also becoming better human being.
I imagine this may sound like clogging BS. It’s not, I try to address matters from my personal experience, that’s all.
Ok, for a more positive example, Michael Woloszynowicz is a retoucher, so he has to be very precise and to the point. It may seem same thing than the other, but it’s not. This guy starts with already good material (studio or landscape) and works very meticulously to enhance its qualities. Furthermore he gives away really useful techniques like high-pass/soft light sharpening, 50% grey noise, colour cast removing, etc. etc. These can be used in video too =)
For very advanced PS users only
For those of you interested/focusing on studio photography, great tips here.
2 fantastishe PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY tutos by Alex Koloskov
I must say, Alex may lack the glare of other show photogs but I love that there’s absolutely no bullshit =)
DIY LED Lighting for studio photography
How to create a gradient reflection with large soft box
Kai might be a dirty little fucker, but he knows what to do with lady-eyes 😛
Not even going in the IQ, DR or colour rendition wet dream; just drooling over those beauuuutifuly massive OVFs XD
Nevermind the mediocre photo examples, this is a pretty solid LR workflow explained in great detail and without what seems to be today’s hurry hurry standard. There are a couple of things though I personally find to be better practices, specially with µFT raws: 90% I heavily use negative exposure (which also helps reducing noise), lessen the contrast (but here I’ve to say I’ll apply a LUT or specific film contrast and colour responses afterwards), to leave alone the shadow adjustment slider, don’t abuse on negative highlights, take advantage of smoother changes done with CURVES, more detail and far more masking at sharpening module if image it’s going to be resized for web, it’s very rare I have to go so far up with luma NR (only when above ISO 800), USE grain, sometimes worth playing with camera calibration. Other than that a pretty solid workflow with great tips =)
FREE STUFF
Lightzone is now beta9 (4.1.0)
There’s also this Tonality new B&W raw conversion soft integrated with LR, PS (also Elements) and Aperture. Pro version’s 60$
Is it good? No, it is the best, it really is; even the 15 days trial is fully operational (mind you need net connexion). It is Silver Effex ten levels ahead, intuitive, very responsive, nice UI and just every tool one needs to make a great B&W pic. You can save not only the presets but the workflow file and export in multiple file formats. The inbuilt presets are helpful as a starting point too.
Now for a master blaster of B&W street photography,
Tatsuo Suzuki homepage
I find this technique useful, specially if you’re doing (fashion) portraits and retouching /// watch out for the dimensionality 😛
Talking portraits and studio, Phase One just launched Capture One pro 8
1_This is a free LR pluggin for adding metadata to manual lenses; VERY USEFUL
http://www.essl.de/wp/2012/05/07/adding-foreign-lens-info-in-lightroom/
there’s also the show focus points one but I really don’t find it as interesting
2_Next, CINEGRAPHS in a nutshell (PS instructions)
3_A bit more of Kai’s humorous bullshit
4_Example of someone (totally unknown) who has a fine “touch” developing an image… IMO —> http://www.kowska.blogspot.pt
4b_Example of someone (a girl,,, drullllinnngg) which style I also like —> http://temptingalice.com/wonderland/lifestyle/ and (wide spread) experiments —> http://temptingalice.com/wonderland/tinderella/
5_Related on achieving SUCCES and/within web social platforms
I have a fun story regarding the whole “go comment, make friends, and you will receive comments in return”.
So I had been using this photo community site (name not disclosed, but it’s a big one) for a couple of years, and my photos were decent, a few good ones. Whenever I posted a new one, I would get maybe 5 comments and a few upvotes/downvotes. A dozen people added me the their favorites over the years. Nothing major.
At the same time there were a few dozen posters there with absolutely shit photos and they always got a hundred comments and nearly perfect ratings on every single photo.
So I looked at what they did – and, as a programmer, I thought – I could write a bot that did all of that. And so I did. It did a very simple set of actions on every new photo posted:
• Give it 5 stars. • Write a randomly generated comment made up of chunks like "absolutely amazing", "so beautiful", "you're talented", "adding you to my favorites", "A+++", etc. • Added the author to the favorites. • Gave the author +rep or something along the linesBefore I launched it I posted a few very average photos under the bot’s account, who also had some random girl’s pic in the profile.
Then one evening I launched, watched it for a few minutes, and went to sleep.
When I woke up, HOLY SHIT.
Every single photo of mine had perfect 5 star ratings with dozens and dozens of votes, tons of comments from the happy noobs who got “discovered” by me, almost all of them added me to their favorites, I had like 50 friends overnight.
During the day when the site hit peak traffic, it went even more insane, everything quadrupled, my latest photo became the photo of the day on the front page.
By then a few people figured out wtf was going on, because I was too lazy with writing randomized comments, they didn’t have much variety. By the end of the day the bot got banned. But the damage was done. I posted on their forum explaining the whole thing. Many people were angry, because it exposed how full of shit the photo critique communities are, many were laughing and laughing. A few regulars quit. And so did I.
That’s why I only ask for the negative feedback to my work. Getting positive feedback is just too easy.
6_Some online photo mags (also contests and context) – I wonder why don’t they just cover their eyes instead…???
Strip Tease Tent, Charter Fair, Pinner, 1971 • By Homer Sykes
http://deepsleep.org.uk
https://www.lensculture.com
http://www.the37thframe.org
http://www.fstopmagazine.com/home.html
http://www.filemagazine.com
http://www.bjp-online.com
http://zonezero.com
http://www.seesawmagazine.com
http://www.socialdocumentary.net
http://www.positive-magazine.com
http://photoworks.org.uk
http://flakphoto.com
http://www.burnmagazine.org
http://digitaljournalist.org
http://www.source.ie
http://pixelsandprose.net
http://www.1000wordsmag.com
http://www.lunaticmag.com
http://www.frontroom.org
https://daylightbooks.org
http://www.ahornmagazine.com
http://www.purpose.fr
http://www.pixelpress.org
http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/
http://www.chambrenoire.com
http://lightbox.time.com
http://www.fractionmagazine.com
http://lenscratch.com
http://blog.photoeye.com
6_A list of 321 c-lenses
http://www.us.c-mount.passion.pro
To finish this long log an outstanding time-lapse by Jeff Frost, which achieves emancipating itself from the medium it uses to evoke, to provoke, to relate to something… “else”… that is the birth place and beauty of true language and art, MHO • Superb sound design too
That’s all folks, don’t do stupid things without documenting first
need shum szleep now gashôô^
✁ ......... spit straight and love the target 