Photo taking tips, editing for ads, etc.

Sorry for the long hiatus folks!

I just posted this to my Yahoo group but I figure with all the time I just invested I'd post it here to. This may or may not help some of you. This is just a guide of what works FOR ME and how I do my editing.

Ok, here we go. I'm going to go through a series of photos right quick and explain what I do.

These first two photos show how my photo tent is. It's PVC but you can use a box or whatever you have that works. The background goes up the back, CURVES downward and the model stands on top of the background. The curve of the backdrop is important is preventing a horizon line that you may not want. It also helps soften shadows. Note that my lights are pointed at an angle both inward and downward. When you have the lights with the little movable necks on them like these clip lights you can wiggle them and adjust them to both create even light AND avoid shadows. Always keep your eyes behind and below the horse when you fiddle with lights. You want those shadows soft, otherwise they are distracting. So here are pics of my setup. It looks like I have the lights in the room turned off but that's not the case, it's just the camera metering off the light bulbs themselves making everything else darker. NOTE HOW THE WHITE SHEET COMES DOWN IN FRONT OF THE LIGHTS. This diffuses the lights.

http://www.tristanbaker.net/eBay/pt3.jpg

http://www.tristanbaker.net/eBay/pt4.jpg

Ok, so you want to diffuse your lights. This will both soften the light to avoid high contrast as well as soften the shadows and glare. If you look at the previous two photos you should see my tripod sitting right in front of that table. When I shoot, the camera is on the tripod, I hold that sheet with one hand and pull it forward, towards my camera lens but ABOVE the camera lens, that way I'm shooting under it. It's not blocking the lens, it's just diffusing the lights. This first photo is just a straight shot, with that sheet pulled down in front of the lights. NOTE - Look at the shadows both underneath and behind the horse. They are fairly even, not jumping out at you. It doesn't really look like a 'shadow' with a shape, it just looks a little darker down there.

http://www.tristanbaker.net/eBay/pt1.jpg

This is the exact same set up except the sheet has been pulled up to where it is NOT in front of the lights at all. So this is direct light on the horse. Nothing else changed. NOTE - now look at the shadows behind and below the horse and how stark they are. Also notice the glare coming off the back of the horse....the white looks REALLY bright and blown out. Too contrasty. Also notice the glare/reflection coming off the glossed hooves. Another distraction.

http://www.tristanbaker.net/eBay/pt2.jpg

Now then, when you diffuse the light, you lose light. The horse will be a smidge darker. This should be a non issue and should be fixed in a photo editing program. You don't want it way too dark, but a little dark is not a big deal and easily fixable.

I shoot on a medium-high aperture of about F10-F13. Aperture of F22 and higher will typically have focus to infinity. I don't want this. I only want the horse and details in focus, not the background. My shutter speed is rarely higher than 1/30 of a second sometimes as low as 1/2 second depending on the color of the horse. If you are setting your camera on some sort of auto type setting and your shutter speed is really high (1/125-1/250 or higher) you are losing your aperture. Aperture controls your depth of field. The lower the number on the aperture the lower the depth of field. This is why a photo of the horse slightly turned will show, say, the face in super sharp focus but the backend of the horse soft or blurred. You want the horse in as much focus as possible. So try to keep your aperture at bare bones minimum of F8. A wee bit higher is better. To keep the background subtle and blurred, move the horse further away from the background and/or move the horse closer to the camera. Also, I do not use any flash in my photos when I do a tent. Just the two clip lights and that's it. Adding on camera flash into the equation can make for harsh light and shadows and dull color.

On to adjusting in photo editing software. I just spent an hour and 20 minutes editing photos. Only took 12 minutes to get them all taken. I shoot on a tripod ALWAYS and I always take 3-5 photos of EACH pose. Why? Because even my heartbeat can sometimes jar the camera when I go to press the shutter. I don't have a cable release right now (these are cheap and can avoid you directly touching your camera to take the photo) so I just take multiples. And every single time, I'll always have one or two that just aren't as tack sharp as I want them. I go through each, finding the most in focus one and then I choose that one to adjust. My particular camera shoots a wee bit warm toned regardless of the setting I have on the camera, so I know this going in. I set it on the Custom White balance setting and then, when my photo tent and lights are ready I put a white sheet of paper in my setup, where the horse would be. And I photograph that white sheet of paper and then tell the camera to use that to get the white balance. Not all cameras have a custom White balance setting but its something you can check for. Once that is done, I photograph my subject. It will get the colors closer but still not exact, that's why I have to edit them in software. I use an old version of Photoshop, but Paintshop pro will do it and I'm sure there are a ton of other programs out there for cheap or free that will do just fine. I like to be able to adjust the color balance, contrast and light value, and hue and saturation. Those, to me, are the most important ones that I generally have to fiddle with.

On these photos, because the background is not neutral and is very vibrant, it put a cast on the horse. Light bounces. So when you point lights at a horse/background that light bounces back towards you/the camera. In other words, in this case it made the white on my horse have a tealish green cast. When you start having issues knowing where to make adjustments check your whites and make sure they have no color cast to them. On other colored horses with no white markings, you just have to start learning the program you have available and making adjustments the best way you can. Do not stare at your photos on your computer screen for a long amount of time. Always have something white to look at. A wall, sheet of paper, something close by. Because your eyes will automatically begin correcting the color if you stare at the photos for too long.

For my next photo you will see before adjustments at the top and after adjustments below. The first thing I did was adjusted the curves on the photo. A 'curve' adjustment will generally allow you to adjust the photo light/dark wise without affecting the contrast as long as you keep everything in the middle. Again, these are things you can play with to see what all they do. So, first thing was to lighten the photo a bit using the curves level. Then I went into the hue/saturation settings and adjusted the hue by +2 and decreased the saturation by -15. Most cameras these days are pretty much going to shoot with too much saturation. That's what makes you say 'ooooooooooo what a pretty picture!' but it may not be very true to life. For my customs I want little to no surprises when there new owners receive them. This is why I take so many and spend so much time adjusting each one. I keep the horse right by me when I do adjustments as well so I can constantly look back and forth to get my color right.

Sometimes hue/saturation adjustments are all you need. Not for me. Each camera is different, each background, each light, the color of the horse, these are all variables that come into play on how much and what you need to adjust. I can only tell you what I do for my setups, this may or may not work for you.

My next step was to adjust the color balance to get rid of the green cast on my white. I went into something called 'Variations' on Photoshop. This is another way to adjust color balance. Most programs will simply have a 'color balance' section to adjust from. For me, I put it on the lowest adjustment setting and added one click of blue and one click of magenta. How do you figure out color balance for photos? Well for me it was 4 years of college with a degree in Photography Here is your breakdown

Photo too blue - add yellow
Photo too yellow - add blue
Photo too magenta - add green
Photo too green - add magenta
Photo too red - add cyan
Photo too cyan - add red

These are your opposites. This is not the same as color theory like in art really, since you only have these 6 colors to adjust. It's up to you to be able to distinguish the difference between magenta and red, cyan and blue and figure out where to make your adjustments. Remember, magenta is kinda like hot pink, cyan is more a greenish blue than a royal type blue.

On some of my photos the variations level adjusted a bit too much in the way of adding blue. So for that, I went into the color balance and went with -3 on the yellow (which added more yellow back into the photo that the variations level took out). It's how the program is set up, yellow is on the negative end, blue on the positive, so by doing -3 yellow it is the same as adding 3 of yellow. I'm sure it's confusing but just find a color balance option and crank it all the way one way or another and you'll see if it's adding more of one color versus the other. Just play with it! You have a bit more micro control in a 'color balance' setting versus a variations setting. None of this is really going to make much sense unless the program you use allows for these adjustments. Again, just learn your program. Most of what I do with Photoshop is self taught. If I can figure it out anybody can

Lastly, if my whites looked really blown out, I took the contrast down by about -3 or so. Again something to fiddle with. If your photos are too dull, you may want to up the contrast a hair to make them pop. Black and white horses are a bear to photograph just because the camera's meter does not see white nor does it see black. It meters off 18% gray (or thereabouts, there are arguments on the percentage). For more info on gray scale you can go here and do a Google search on how a camera meters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_card

And as I mentioned, here is an example of one of my photos before adjustment and after.

http://www.tristanbaker.net/eBay/pt5.jpg

If you were to just look at the top photo, there doesn't really look like anything is wrong with it. It's a matter of training your eye to see color casts and hues that shouldn't be there. And that just takes practice

Hopefully this helps some of you!  Feel free to ask questions!


Jaime

The Reiner is done

And he's on Ebay and ends today.  I would have posted sooner but our internet went down for 3 days.  ARRGHH!  Here's his link for anyone interested

http://www.ebay.com/itm/300616882581?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1586.l2649

Ok, so I want to go over the other ‘toughies’ that were done to the Reiner. First off was the mane. The reference horse has a very neat mane, one that went from flaxen at the forelock and front area of the mane, all the way to a deep chestnut by the time it got to the withers. The tail actually was darker overall and match the darkest part of that mane. I wasn’t worried about the tail as much as I was the mane. And for good reason. Trying to get the mane and tail to be cohesive with the rest of the horse is a trick for me. Why? Because the body color of the horse was done in pigments and pastels. The mane and tail will be done in acrylics. Otherwise the pigments would get all over my white areas and because of how I worked on this horse, I needed the mane and tail done closer to the end of the horse.

So I started with the forelock. That’s all fine and dandy but the problem was I did my basecoat mix on the forelock. Then did the basecoat on the mane a couple of days later and forgot to write down what I used. Guess what happened? Yep, I had a devil of a time matching it.

But at any rate, here’s the mane basecoated with gesso mixed with a bit of raw sienna and a hint of nutmeg. I always do my basecoat on my mane and tails with a gesso mix. I’m never sure how much I’ve touched those manes and tails and since I save them for much later, gesso gives me my ‘primer’ base to apply the acrylics evenly. If you touch them, rub them, or handle them to much the primer you sprayed on can rub off. And with white primer on a white horse, it’s darn near impossible to figure out where that happened so I play it safe and just use gesso. You could use straight white gesso and apply color on top of that, I just try to save myself one step and use a mix for the first layer.




Ok, that’s good and yellow. What I THOUGHT was a decent base…but I really needed more of a pinkish brownish base. This would probably be why it took me 5 days on the mane. So here’s where you learn what not to do (doing mane, forelock and tail in 3 separate sessions unless you remember or write down your mix).

My next step was going into some of the grooves and adding some shading with darker acrylics.




For the next step I began applying color but I used glazing medium in with my color to offer some nice variegation to the colors and to be able to create interesting layering effects. The glazing medium isn’t absolutely necessary, just telling you what I used. If you use it, a couple of things to keep in mind. DO NOT ADD TOO MUCH. If you do it won’t dry right and will remain tacky and thick. Make sure you allow it to dry and then seal. If you try to apply too much acrylics on top of it, it will lift off. HOWEVER, this makes it excellent for ‘subtractive’ painting. If you apply a color and you aren’t happy with it or you want to remove some streaks in it, you can actually just use a wet brush and go over it and it will lift the paint layer. That’s kind of a tough thing to explain. If you play with it enough you’ll see what I mean.

If it’s not completely dry when you seal it it can haze and pit (create a milky look or create little pits throughout the area).

I made sure I only used certain colors. No matter what, I never switched colors. I kept the same 5-6 colors out at all times so I at least stayed on track with my colors. I used Coffee Bean, Nutmeg, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Titan Buff and a beige ceramcoat color that I believe is called Flesh. And also some white on the lighter areas.

Here’s some of the work, still wet of course, but where you can see a bit better.




Here was when it was really getting bad. Yuck




A little more work….yum.




And here was the mane once it was finished up.



So, as you can see this takes quite a few layers but creates a really lovely variegated look. This method is fantastic for gray manes as well.

I also wanted to share photos of my hooves before they were completed. For me, these are by far my best appy hooves ever. And all thanks to the glazing medium. You can really control the transparency of the paint with it and I recommend anyone giving it a try. I use the Golden brand Glazing Medium in satin. It’s cheap enough to give a whirl






And then backtracking quite a bit you may remember I posted a photo of the flanks after I had slapped some dark gray acrylics in there. That was to be the ‘skin’ showing through. That didn’t translate or work out quite how I wanted it too but here is a photo of the flank afterwards, where you can still see some of the gray peeking through





I hope somewhere in all this somebody picked up a new technique or two

More progress on Reiner

This is going to be a few installments in one post:)

At this point, I'm still not happy. He's had more gray layers, white layers and beige layers on the cheeks. Then I did some work with a Nutmeg and Coffee Bean acrylics mix to tone that pink down on the cheeks and get some orange back. I'm getting the gray 'skin' areas a bit more to my liking but still not thrilled. I've done gray acrylics on that, along with some Coffee Bean (warm dark brown) to pull my chestnut hairs back in. It's just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I have more fleabites to add in on the cheeks and forehead as well. I was really hoping to have that face almost done by the end of today but I don't think that's going to happen. Two days on nothing but the face



Onto the legs.  The base coat was done in all pigments and pastels. I needed to go in and begin my acrylic detailing. I was using a mix of gray and beige for the back areas of these legs. Thinned as normal and with a Kolinsky liner. The problem was, it was going on too bright. If I tried to darken the mix with a darker gray, the color shifted to the wrong tone. This is where Glazing medium comes in handy. A huge thank you to my artist friend, Ramie Nunnally (gosh I hope I got that last name right!) for sending me some and introducing me to it! The brand I’m using is by Golden and is just called Glazing medium. Glazes are used to increase work time, allow more blendability of acrylics and create thin washes of color (allow you to turn opaque paint to transparent color). So I decided to add some glaze to my mix to create more transparency. This worked out well. And when used in multiple layers, I find you can create good depth with varying colors. Notice the front part of the leg.



Those subtle hairs were done with straight Ceramcoat Quaker Gray and the Glazing medium. I needed ‘silver’ hairs in there, based on the reference photos but I needed them fairly subdued. By using the glazing medium I created semi transparent gray hairs. If I want to subdue white hairs, I add the glaze to my white as well. I’m still working on the horse’s ankles. I need almost a flaxen color in there. I’m not at the right color yet, but every time I use a new mix, I do so with the glazing medium so the prior layer shows through. To me, this is giving a really nice ‘hair’ looks to those ankles.

Here is a progression to the next layer



And then I realized my legs were too red. Not enough 'chestnut' shade to them. At that point I decided to do a whole layer of a mix of Nutmeg and Quaker Gray and glazing medium and do more small hairs across the front of that leg. It's just enough of a 'wash' to shift the color. Still working on the ankles too. But this is where the leg is as of right this minute.




So, if you want to have some really nice blending capabilities or want to turn your opaque colors transparent I highly recommend a glazing medium. I generally mix my acrylics first then dip just the tip of my brush into the glaze and pull it into the mix. The more glaze you add, the more transparent the paint. Keep in mind though, if you use a glazing medium if lengthens the work time of your acrylics. Therefore you need to allow more drying time before you seal them in as I have noticed the sealer will 'pit' the glaze if you don't allow it enough dry time.


As for the face, Liz Shaw brought up that my hair direction was quite right.  In my head, it was.  I had looked at close ups, closed the photos out and then went off my 'memory'.  I should have known better!  If you're going to do detail work like this you HAVE to get the hair direction right or it's just not going to look right and you'll wind up looking like an artist that doesn't pay attention.  Thank goodness Liz brought it up and made me see the light!  I wasn't way off but off enough that it made a difference.  I've almost got the face where I want it now.  Just a little bit more work.  You can click the photos to enlarge:)

Rose Reiner, next segment!

Next installment. Ok, this is not translating quite right. Well, translation good, color wrong. That's what you get when you put Titanium white over a chestnut-y type color. picture blue (cool toned titanium) plus red = purple. This is kinda pinkish purple but you get my drift. But the effect is really friggin cool to me as far as the hair detail goes. This is with, oh, I don't know, 4 or 5 layers with a Kolinsky liner brush in varying shades of gray and light gray (with Titanium white as my base color for my mix). Tiny hairs. The next step will be to go in with acrylics and get my chestnut hairs back in there using some Coffee Brown, Nutmeg Brown and Burnt Sienna. Chestnut....not pink. But for now, here's where he stands....work has just been focused on his cheeks for now.



And then this is my attempt at 'skin' in the flank. Don't worry it's not going to look like this. This is just some gray 'skin' to apply acrylics on top off. In hindsight this would have probably been better done in gray pastels but this will do. It's just gonna look like crud until the next installment Stay tuned!

Just posted these.  Quicky videos on gray hooves that can hopefully help some folks out.  Both methods are SUPER easy:)  They aren't polished videos so I hope folks can still see enough to tell what's going on.

Here's a link to them

Method 1 - Super duper easy gray hooves :



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aU9K07nuw0

Method 2 - Easy but more detailed gray hooves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHRuN808KFc


Hope you find these helpful!

Jaime

Next installment

Added in more specks and spots and made existing ones bigger.



Then went over those with a thin white wash (only on upper neck, not on shoulder) This is exactly what I was looking for. I kept the color but I subdued it down to where it looks more natural in the coat (I think so anyway)

Rose Reiner, experimental technique

Long time no see!  I apologize for my absence but really, my time is so limited I don't have a ton left over at the end of the day to keep up with the Blog  But I wanted to start documenting a new technique I'm trying out.  This is going to be a very speckledy, fleabitten-y, tiny spotted appy when it's all said and done.  Hopefully anyway.  I'm going to go over my technique for the speckled neck on this beasty first...since this is my new technique.  Not sure if I'll succeed or fail but you'll either learn something new and learn what not to do. 

Ok, the first thing I need to tackle is the neck. I went in applied pigments with a pointed q-tip to the neck This was just to get choppy color, I wasn't trying to get the small spots/fleabites with this.




The next step was to do white hairs over all of those pigments. Note, this was not a white 'wash'. I used a Kolinsky Reservoir Liner Size 2, series 1310 and did tiny little white hairs all throughout the neck. Many, many layers of this too. This was to break up the pigments even further and put them 'under the coat' so to speak, creating more of a gray speckled look. Again, this is all experimental. This was only done on the neck, you can see the shoulder has not had acrylics done on it yet.



The next step was to go in and lay down acrylics to form the spots and fleabites. Unfortunately, I was thinking 'fleabites' and currently these hairs are too small as what the reference photo has is a smidge bigger than a typical fleabite would be (in my small experience with fleabitten horses anyway)



Now let's get to the WHY I'm doing it this way. When I looked at the many photos supplied of the reference horse I saw fleabites, tiny spots, and gray areas throughout that neck (gray as in, white hair on top of the spots OR skin, not actual gray hairs). I want all of those things to show on the neck. By going over the initial pigment 'spots' I have created the gray tones underneath the coat. Right now the fleabites are too dark and contrasting too much against the white. Once I get all of them laid down, I will go back over them with white hair detail. In theory, if I keep the acrylics thin enough this will create a subtle wash over the color and subdue it down to be closer to the reference horse. Just one layer should do...anymore will shift them gray and subdue them too much. I need color to still show. We shall see. Stay tuned...more photos coming soon.