Editing a bit of drama

Not having anything planned, I didn't carry a tripod with me, so here is how I made it: the singe RAW (.cr2) image opened with UFRaw (the GIMP plugin version) and saved as 3 JPEGs: -1, 0 and +1 exposure. JPEGs imported in Luminance HDR and assembled as not a very obvious HDR, edit levels for more drama and export as one JPEG. Some final tweaks with GIMP and the result is this.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Making of Parenting: Xmas

For those who liked my Xmas picture in the Parenting series, I am breaking some of its magic with a 'making of': tripod, remote trigger, multiple shots, loaded as layers, masks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

My worst

I took part in a challenge: create the worst photo I am able to, is a test of creativity where you have to create a picture containing as many mistakes as you can. Even if it may appear easy, is not at all: first you have to take care, if one mistake is too big, it will overpower the others, and they won't be noticed any more. Second, some mistakes may cancel each over. Lastly, abuse of mistakes shouldn't get into art territory.
Now I challenge my readers: look at the picture and try to identify as many mistakes as you can (maybe you find even some which are not intentional :p)

Bonus: here's a video making of for the picture, so you can understand the extra difficulty when the subject is moving so fast and so unstable.

PS: also an extra-difficulty was having such a cute subject, which may make some people appreciate the picture even if it is bad.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Photo editing tutorials

Lately I wrote on my general blog a couple of photo editing tutorials, both of them are targeted at GIMP, since this is what I use on my day to day work. Of course, the principles are general and can be applied to other similar tools.

The first one is about watermark removal on photos submitted to Wikipedia, this is something perfectly legal, since those pictures are submitter under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.

The second tutorials refers to creating customs grids to be used on photo editing but also in graphic and layout design.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Lens uses protection. It is super effective

Saturday we had snow (if the time allows, I will post some pictures later today). Sunday it got a bit warmer and we had sleet, a lot of the snow melted. Then last night was freezing cold. As a result, today morning everything was covered with a layer of shiny, slippery ice.

It happens and it happened to me: I slipped on the ice and felt directly on my butt. No problem, it is fat enough, I got no damage, but my photo backpack was obviously on my back. With one camera and an extra lens inside. Both took a frontal hit. Net result: the protection/UV filters are broken in tiny pieces, the real glass looks intact. After a frugal testing, the lenses and camera seems to be in working condition.

All the thanks to the photographer who told me once how never is a bad idea to have a cheap class in front of your expensive glass, you don't know when the disaster will hit, as in my case ~50€ protected ~2000€ worth of equipment.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Kissing Howto

In the past I poster how-tos and tutorials, but none of them is like this one. Enjoy. And learn!


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Life in Black and White, or How To Make It Simple

Felt sometime the life is to complex, to many details and aspects making you hard to take a decision? Time me teach a lesson: let's start with whatever photo (this particular one is about the fight of good and evil, noble Jedis and scary villains with some cutesy in between, but to each his own) and open it in your favorite image editor (I opening it with GIMP, since it is my favorite):

You know how they say the life is about shades of gray? Let's do that, trying to simplify it:

I don't know what you think, but for me it seems still complex:

So the next step is to apply another tool, called Thresohld:

This is a much simpler life, no shades, only black and white:

Adjusting a couple of sliders we can move it more to the lightness:

Or to the darkness, according to each one's taste and view of life:

See now, the outlook of the life around is so much clearer so a decision making become so much easier! Do it and do not look back. Easy solution to hard problems.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

More books / Learning

These days I don't do many photos (my main lens is still broken at the repair shop, I got shafted by some and generally feel depressed) so instead I should do something, like learning... always is a good time to learn.
The past week I was showing my photos to someone and she commented about the make-up being bad... to my defence I acknowledged my complete lack of experience in the area (which I know is a bad thing) so she suggested me to take a course. Until that opportunity arrives, I figured is a good idea to buy some books and learn from them, so there are my book, eagerly awaiting to be read:

BTW, thumbs up for Amazon: books ordered Friday, arrived the next Wednesday witht he simplest shipping option, this is good service.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Enhancing her

Is arrogant to pretend you enhance the model, but after shooting you have to enhance the photos a bit, even if you just smooth the skin, sharpen the eyes and mouth and adjust the colors. Being quite a FLOSS zealot, I do that with GIMP:


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Making-of: Black versus White

My video camera is a toy, its battery lasts only a short while, so it wasn't possible to record the entire photo session and as a result the "making of" covers only a small part of it and not necessarily the best moments. Also, the camera was all by itself, on a small tripod, without anybody controlling it.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Exposure basics in digital photography

Another workshop, another article, this time with basics about exposure and some extra pompously called painting with light. Read, learn, enjoy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Light and digital photography

After the photography workshop a few days ago, I felt like not wasting the things I talked about, so I sat down for a while and put in in writing, for an introductory article about light in digital photography, covering the relation from time of the fay and outdoor photography, some words about flashes and white balance.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Photography workshop

I am trying an experiment together with Ceata: a series of photography workshop which just started yesterday with a small session held in the Politehnica University of Bucharest campus.


We had a couple of cameras (for 5 people), my SLR and a 'Super Zoom', passed them from hand to hand and everybody got to take pictures. Hope we will follow with larger and more interesting session.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Watermark fixing

Following one of my graphic tutorials I got a request from one (supposedly) US girl: she say she lost the originals of some photos and need some help to recover a few who were watermarked by a hosting site.

I decided to not investigate further her identity and motivation and since the images are small and blurry anyway, I tried a bit of fixing with GIMP, nothing fancy, just a few minutes with the clone, shear and maybe the healing tool.

before	after

Not that bad with less than 5 minutes of work on each... (yeah, is possbile to work more on them for a better result)

Now being on different continents, I am a bit disappointed I cannot ask her in exchange to work for me as a model in a photo session, I am really look for models at this moment.

Steampunk photography with GIMP

Liked the comic strip tutorial from the other day? Now here is another one, about what I like to call steampunk photography, I wrote this one last year but until today it was not published properly (now is together with my other graphic tutorials:



And stop for now with the tutorials, I don't have other in the pipe for the immediate future.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Photo comic strip with GIMP and Inkscape

After taking the photos you may want to do some more than just looking at them, like, why not, create a comic strip, so here is a tutorial for doing this with GIMP and Inkscape:



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Close-ups and Depth of Field

I tried some close-ups with various parameters for the shot and found myself unable to definitely chose what I like better: a wide or shallow depth of field, for each of them I can see pluses and minuses, so I turned out to some external opinions.

Unanimously, the non-photographers (and a photographer interested mostly in portraits), opted wor a wide DOF, and I can understand why, the "more is more" doctrine, the picture shows more things, wich many people consider a good thing:


Still not convinced, I turned to past colleagues from the photography course Cursphoton, and I found voices opting for the shallow DOF, or what I like to call in this case "less is more":


I find the difference interesting and telling, but obviously the definitive question is still "who is the target for the photos?" and this may tell you which option to prefer...

And of course I tried another version of the photo: dark background and an intermediary aperture value, it tells a completely different story:


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Review: CursPhoton

In some previous posts I talked about a photography course I took, now that it ended is the time for a review (frankly, the time was a couple of weeks ago but being lazybusy, only now I managed to sit down and write something): back when I registered for it, very little information was available on the net about it beside the official site.

In very few words, I can say the course was within my expectations, but this does not tell much, it may tell something about my ability to set my expectation level or to perceive value, so there is a clear need for more words... At 6 weekends, the course is short, you will learn some stuff but also will feel the need to continue learning on your own, do not expect to walk in a total noob and walk out Cartier-Bresson.

Regarding theory, if you read a good photography book and/or a couple of websites, the course will add very little, but I found more important the opportunity the practical experience of a real studio and working in a real studio, as well as the interaction with other photographers: both the Marius and Vlad, the teachers and your fellow colleagues (about a dozen of classmates).

In a very conventional style I will try to outline what was, from my subjective point of view, the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: for me, the best part was the open atmosphere, it was pretty much like an open conversation where you didn't feel afraid to contradict the teachers at times and also felt your opinion matters. You are treated like an equal.

The bad: the "Photoshop" class was a wasted day, I could not care less about what are the shortcuts in some proprietary Adobe software or how awesome some people think are the plug-ins from Alien Skin. But I expected that, too bad that I didn't have ready a "each time you pirateillegally download an expensive proprietary graphic editor and your job would be accomplished fine with a Free alternative, God kills a kitten".

The ugly: the course has an online presence, a discussion group on Yahoo and also a very inactive and less populated flickr group, you can easily see a lack of experience about online communities. In fact the entire "community" part is lacking, most likely I won't get it touch with the colleagues.

As a conclusion, I find it a positive experience at a right price (for me it was an impulse buy, finding the news about it when I was browsing an online photo gear store, but I am odd with money spending and priorities), so if you can afford, go for it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Depht of Field

On top of being a model this week-end I also took my round as a photographer and my imposed theme was about a shallow depth of field. And a real difficulty of such a shot, beyond overcoming your own lack of technical and artistic knowledge, is to make a, relative large, group of unprofessional models to behave and pose for you. My failure was epic, as usual.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Me Model - Again!

Is not like I'm starting a new career as professional model or something like that, it was late in the night, only a few of us remained at the photography course and she was stuck with me and an imposed theme (high light contrast on two subjects). So I pretend I'm taking photos (well, I really took some photos, but with the lights laid for another photographer in the scene they are all crap and unusable).



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.