Crafting Today’s Digital Workflow

& Today’s Color Management

Join Eddie Tapp as he helps you create a new digital workflow! Follow the workflow from shooting portraits and headshots to finding your winning images, then using creative portrait enhancement techniques to get the most out of your pictures. Learn about processing images in Lightroom, and for your best images, when and why to use Smart Objects. Portrait artist Judy Host will also be joining us for a special session on how to incorporate graphics and textures into your work. And finally, learn to show off your work by creating an exciting slideshow!

Take a few moments to look at this image. It actually takes a few minutes to see what is there but when you see it you will find a compelling composition and “The “confusion” of the reflection is awesome!” say’s Robert R Fletcher.

Morning blue light mixed with early sun light hit the spot for this image in Grand Teton at String Lake. White balance set to 5200k allowing the soft blue light to settle on the areas not touched by sun light yet. These areas were accentuated to bring out a strong contrast and emphasize the Tetons reflecting in the water.

Canon 5DIII f/14.0 1/4 sec and ISO 320.

Image © Eddie Tapp 2012

Have you seen this image before? It’s been on the cover of several books, a billboard advertisement in Los Angeles, and published in a variety of magazines and shows up in my slide shows occasionally.

A flash mob of photographers, models, makeup artist, music, red rock and fun at Calico Basin near Las Vegas during a photographers convention. Getting to this location was about 40 minutes from the strip in Vegas as the exact location was near a private home which is now impossible to get to. But we had a blast shooting beautiful models in various settings and as the sun went down the I started shooting with an off camera flash using a Speedlite Transmitter.

The sun was setting and I wanted to find the right location for this shot… I positioned the model at the top of a little mound to compose the background for this amazing outfit, then had my assistant hold the flash at about 105 degrees to my left and started to pose the model to emphasize the features of the outfit and all of a sudden, from nowhere, the wind starts to blow flowing the dress and feathers in the perfect position…

The image is straight out of the camera with no enhancements as twilight was at it’s prime for this image right at sunset and the exposure worked out perfectly with the off camera flash.

EOS 1D Mark II – 28-135mm @56mm – 1/80 sec @ f9 – ISO 400

Model: Karie Laubhan

Image © Eddie Tapp

all rights reserved

www.eddietapp.com

When you look at this image you are suppose to only see a beautiful model because well, she is a beautiful model. What you may not see at first is how sweet the light is. If you study the light there is a nice soft but directional main light, lighting the face, body and legs. And then there is a fine taste light (back light) skimming across the edge adding an almost 3D dimension.

All of this light is natural light, no modifiers, flash or reflectors. This is a typical kind of light that I look for and like to shoot in and call this a “pocket of light”. Better described as being inside a tunnel, where the light has to be directional and in this case, in both directions.

Take a minute and study the quality of the light itself and notice the soft specular highlights on the models forehead, cheek, bridge of the noise, sparkle top, and along the legs. And also notice the specular highlights from the taste light, adding that rim of light along the edge. The diffused highlight shows the true skin tone and the ever so soft diffused shadow that shapes. The “me and my shadow” isn’t so noticeable from the main light, but the taste light is strong enough to cast a forward shadow and generates a nice balance overall.

The biggest challenge here is taking the time to actually notice this light quality when shooting. Experience being the best teacher, but at the same time converting the light we see into how the camera will see the same light, in contrast, color, and brightness.

This image was created during a class I was teaching on the last destinationphotoeducation.com cruise. The main light source was a partly cloudy sky on the shaded side of the ship. We will have the next cruise starting the end of October. If you are interested, there may be a few rooms left on the ship so check it out and join in the fun.

In the mean time, take the time and start to notice the light and light quality when you shoot, it will make a difference in your work.

© Eddie Tapp

Remember the days when you had to use the Adobe Gamma Control Panel to calibrate your monitor and conform the gamma to a lab or printing device? If you used 3 different labs, digital prepress, or in-house printer, for the most part you had to load a different Gamma Control Panel setting (unless you were an advanced color management user), and then you had to re-adjust your already adjusted image to come close to simulating what you were seeing on your monitor. Back then it was called WYSIWYG, pronounced wizzy-wig.

The term Wizzy-wig was with us until the mid 2000′s and sort of stopped being a calibration term so frequently when monitor calibration took on a new level of accuracy. Today, monitor calibration is a normal procedure for nearly half of the photographers, both pro and serious. Devices to calibrate monitors include several devices on XritePhoto.com and colorvision.com, are easy to use, and just about the least expensive piece of digital equipment you will ever own, adapts to various operating systems and cross platform, create consistency so you can finally see your images more accurately.

A properly calibrated monitor is only as good as the graphics card that feeds it data to be displayed. And the dynamic range or contrast ratio or a monitor will translate the graphics card data to give you the most accurate image color and tonal values.

In my opinion, a properly calibrated monitor is half the battle in color management. The other half is more complex and for the most part, is in place either automatically, or by equipment or services. So in effect, the best thing you can do for your workflow is at least properly calibrate your monitor using a calibration device.

The next level to conquer is learning how and when to use color space profiles and output profiles. 14 years ago you had to either be an expert in color management or hire someone who was to get great results consistently. Color science and manufactures have made it much easier today to take advantage of keeping a consistent means of obtaining predictable results.

Todays cameras are capable of capturing a wider gamut of color than can be seen on a display or even used in an image file upon export. The color space we use confines or expands the color gamut that we can process, and the output limits how much of that gamut can be used ultimately.

Happy trails to you…

First is a series of on-line training course to enhance the quality of your work in digital photography. A Smart Object Workflow is designed for the highest possible control and ability to work from the original starting point anytime allowing you to make changes to a work file for any reason, anytime.

Once you sign up for the course, you can take your time or take it all in, refer to the chapters anytime and anywhere. Updates and changes are automatic and the course will always be accessible to you.

Sign up today!

http://www.udemy.com/smartobjects/

Expression will always set the feeling of a portrait, but anytime you are photographing a person, it’s all about the eyes. The eyes get right to the person, you’ve heard the expression, the eyes are the window to the soul. There is much truth to that especially in a portrait. Once you have captured the expression in the eyes, everything else falls right into place. Think about the first time you viewed a photograph of yourself recently, you either like it, didn’t like it, or loved it, and if you go back and look at that photograph again, the two things that are going to matter unconsciously, are your expression to start, and then your eyes that tell the full story of you in that image… check it out.

So, with this portrait of Lyndsey and Jenna, who by the way are twins, the natural expressions and beautiful eyes will keep all of us captivated. The most impressive element in capturing this moment is the light itself, and the light quality. This alone makes the expression and eyes much easier to achieve great results. 

This light is created with studio strobes using a Beauty Dish (you can see that in the catch light in the eyes) with a diffusion and close underneath their face is a silver reflector, this one is named the Eye Lighter (by Larry Peters), reflecting light into the bottom of their eyes. 

This is a good but delicate example of how the light of nature makes the quality of light. Look carefully at the specular highlights that are found on the bridge of the nose, cheeks, lips and forehead. The diffused highlights are also in these areas but with no specularity such as the color of the lips and skin tone that we associate with. Diffused shadows here are very soft and minimal with the “butterfly” type of lighting setup, and then the “me and my shadow” light quality is actually out of view on this image, all comprising the 4 lights of nature: Specular, diffused specular, diffused shadow and me and my shadow.

What you see in this photograph is how the camera saw the light. And the bottom line is, it’s about seeing light, studying light quality and finding a good mix of understanding how the camera will see light differently then how the human eye will see light. Once you take a study on these qualities of light and how it reacts to the camera settings and image processing, it becomes a greater part of the imaging experience, but all in all, in a portrait, the eyes do have it…!

Image © Eddie Tapp

All Rights Reserved

Models: Jenna Lacy & Lyndsey Stewart

September 16 – 19, 2012 – A beautiful time to be in beautiful Savannah Georgia with Eddie Tapp, Joe Brady, Judy Host and Diane Bollen, designed to accommodate every level of imaging from world class instruction. Sign up today!

Download information for Savannah 2012

Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is a powerful, free* software application designed for editing, organizing, and processing Canon RAW files. This software is easily integrated into an existing workflow with other editing programs, such as Adobe^® Photoshop^®.

Learn how to use the latest version of DPP from renowned photographer and Explorer of Light Eddie Tapp. His comprehensive tutorials will give you new insights into the capabilities and potential of Canon’s RAW workflow solution.

Click here to view tutorials