Drunkin Ramblings (thoughts typed outloud)
My name is Corey
I have OCD
What does that mean?
Well, in our culture it means someone who's a hoarder or someone who is anal retentive.
These are aspects of OCD but truly not the core of the issue.
The core of the issue is Obsessing over stupid shit and doing things to satisfy your compulsions to relieve anxiety.
It's
intrusive thoughts that interfere with your life and the seemingly
meaningless routines that are performed to relieve anxiety.
It's insightful insanity. It's controlled insanity. It's insanity on the down low.
Fuck your perceptions of OCD. They are mostly false and underestimated.
Sure, I am clinically organized but it's not for pure efficiency. It's for sanity!
Sex!
It's normal!
Masturbation. It's normal.
Being attracted to people for themselves is intellectual. It's not impure.
I
might be attracted to a woman. I'm for the most part straight BUT if I
appreciate a persons being, I might want to be intimate with it. That
doesn't make me bi. It makes me a humanitarian.
People who set limits and labels on sexuality are repressed.
Finding the balance between life and work is a struggle for me.
This is the most normal thing about me.
I want to learn.
I need input. Always! Like Johnny Five!
I'm pissed at dA for making my breastfeeding photo “mature” because of the slight impression of a FEMALE areola.
Guess what? The OO library doesn't have a preload for the word “areola”, wtf?
The
human body is not perverse. I love clothes and fashion but I hate the
suppression of the human form. I especially hate that the topless female
is hidden from the world. My tits are way more functional then a
male's.
To say a woman's tits are sexual is counter biological.
Have a back bone. Don't be a doormat.
Choose your battles but don't ignore them all.
Revolutions have to be chosen carefully but don't wait until the time for opportunity is gone.
Corey's Creative Cravings
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Thursday, January 30, 2014
My Basic Work Flow
Step 1: Levels
The first thing I do when I open up an
image is adjust levels to bring some of the dynamic range back. This
cuts out some of the flatness you get with digital photography. It's
a bit closer to a film quality. When you open the levels histogram,
you have three arrows you can drag around. At the beginning and the
end of the histogram you typically have areas that are flat (have no
information). The goal is to drag the 1st and 3rd
arrow to areas with the first bit of information. You can also move
the middle arrow around to play with the balance of exposure. In this
image I only needed to move the 1st arrow up. Notice the
flat area at the beginning of this histogram. It has been highlighted
in red.
Step 2: Lens Correction
Lens correction is my second step. I
use a middle of line Tamron lens as my all around shooter. The optics
are fairly nice and clear, however there's some issues with frame
alignment. I am also short and do not always have something to step
on when I shoot. The lens correction tool allows me to correct the
angle and perspective. The best way to master this tool is to go in
and play. As
you're making changes, the image may get fuzzy but when you click ok
to go back to the work space, the image will be clear again. Note
that I'm on the custom tab and not the auto correction tab.
Step 3: Photo Filter
My 3rd step is to chose a
photo filter to begin color correction. My corny joke is that I am a
cool girl. I always tend to correct on the cooler side. The 82
cooling filter was my favorite in film and it's my favorite in
digital. This image was very warm to begin with because of the angle
of the sunlight. I throw my digital cooling filter on and good bye
warm. Of course this causes over cooling in certain areas. I address
this in the next steps.
Step 4: Color Balance
In the next step I open up the color
balance tool. Technically I could have started from here but I feel
it's easier to work with this after a initial photo filter. The key
to this is to look for an area in the frame that you know should be white. Play with your arrows until that area is perfectly
white with out a discernible cast of another color. After this, I
still have overly cooled areas and her red tights are muted. We'll
fix that in the next step.
Step 5: Hue/Saturation
Finally, I make fine adjustments with
the hue/saturation tool. There is a drop down that allows you to play
with different color channels. In this image, to remove some of the
blue cast off the white wall, I drop the saturation of the blue and
cyan channels to -100. This also makes my blacks blacker. I also
nudged the red channel up to +17. If there are other blues or reds
you do not want affected by this changes, use the mask tool to block
them out. Luckily that wasn't an issue for this image so easy peasy
down.
Here is the before and after.
Hope this was helpful. Please feel free to ask questions in the comment section.
Corey
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Intro to Shutter Speed
Please read aperture priority before
reading this if you do not understand f/ or DOF.
Shutter speed is the 2nd
part of a 2 part equation for perfect exposure. The first is f/ or
aperture size. The lower the f/ the faster the shutter speed. The
higher the f/ the lower the shutter speed.0
Depending on your lighting source,
shutter speed determines how long your sensor/film gets light. It's
like a curtain behind your camera's pupil (aperture).
Imagine walking inside after a long
time outside on a bright and sunny day. The room is dark and cloudy.
This is because your brains shutter speed is set too fast. Your world
is underexposed. After some time, your pupils dilate to compensate
and the room is brighter and in better focus.
The shutter in your camera isn't as
sophisticated as your brain and optic nerve signals but the concept
is similar. To master shutter speed you have to master the concept of
time. Much like the time you need for your eyes to adjust to a new
lighting situation, the longer you have to expose your picture.
Lighting Situations:
If you are in low light, you'll need to
work with longer shutter speeds and bigger apertures. The
disadvantage is grainier pictures and more motion blur. If your
subject is moving and your shutter speed is longer then 1/125th
of a second, there may be blur.
(“Surreal Chicken” f/2.8, shutter
1/5th of a second)
The above image was taken in a fairly
dim barn. The chicken is moving, causing motion blur. The background
is blurry because I'm moving, causing camera blur.)
If you are taking a picture of a
landscape, this can be equated to standing outside on a bright day
squinting your eyes and shielding your eyes, with your hands, to put
everything in focus. Your pupils are constricted (small aperture,
large f/) and your brains shutter speed forces you to look longer to see focus in the distance. The fact that your aperture is so small to gain all the
focus of the image means you have to deal with a longer shutter
speed. It's time to pull out your tripod. Sure your subject (the
landscape) isn't moving but you are. This is where you'll get camera
shake. You are a breathing, heart beating, bundle of muscles. Any
shutter speed longer then 1/80th of a second can turn into
a blurry picture without a tripod.
("The Creek", f/13, shutter speed
1/80th of a second, I propped my camera on a railing in
place of a tripod.)
Aperture Priority
So, if you are like most beginner
photographers, you are afraid to steer away from one of the automatic
settings on your SLR. Here's the thing, if you have your camera set
to point and shoot, you are ignoring a world of possibilities. How do
you make the leap from point and shoot to manual mode? Use one of the
semi manual modes such as aperture priority.
To understand the concept of aperture
priority, you have to understand aperture. Much like the pupil of
your eye, the aperture is an opening that allows light to enter the
camera. The larger the aperture, the more light hits the sensor/film.
(*F/ (f stop): The setting on the
camera that designates the size of the aperture. It's numbering is
inverse to the size of the opening. The smaller the f/, the larger
the opening. The larger the f/, the smaller the opening. It's just
one of those pesky “to remember” things. Don't worry, there's not
a lot of those.)
How does more or less light translate
to the picture? The more light, the wider the aperture, the smaller
the *f/, and the blurrier the background. You may have heard the term
shallow depth of field (DOF). This technique is excellent for
portraiture photography. The subject in the foreground is in focus
and the background is blurred to bring the attention to the subject.
(“I shot my sister” f/2.8, notice
the blurred background, the face is in focus)
The smaller your aperture, the less the
light, the more DOF, and the larger the *f/. This is ideal for
landscapes where you want everything to be in focus.
(“Island of Life” f/14.0, notice
that everything is in focus. The building in the background has
defined lines)
In order to maintain somewhat perfect
exposure of an image, you have to have a balance between shutter
speed and aperture size. If you have a big hole, the shutter doesn't
have to be open as long. If you have a really small hole, you'll need
the shutter open longer. The nice thing about aperture priority is
you have the ability to play with the creative aspects of DOF without
having to really figure out a balanced shutter speed. Let the camera
do it for you. This way, you have the best of both worlds, some
creative decision with some of the ease of automation.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
White Balance
Back
in the day of color film, we used filters screwed on to the lens to
correct white balance (WB). You would use a handy color temperature meter
to find the temperature of the light. If the temp was too warm, we
screwed on a cooling filter. If it was too cool, we screwed on a
warming filter. There were varying degrees of filters with different
hues and opacities.
Thankfully,
digital photography has not only made WB easier and quicker, it's
also made it forgiving. When you shoot in RAW, you have the ability
to change the WB if the original settings were incorrect.
How
do you WB? Most digital cameras have presets for lighting situations.
For example, incandescent/tungsten light is a warm yellow orange.
Example:
Grab a piece of white paper at home and really study it. Try to
ignore the fact that the paper is SUPPOSE to be white. If you start
to notice it is really a dingy off white in your current lighting,
you're a step closer to having an eye for correcting WB
automatically.
So
we've established that indoor lighting is warm. How do we correct
this? In film we would have twisted a cooling filter on the lens. In
digital we have several options. I'll discuss the 3 basic in-camera
techniques for correcting digital WB.
Using
presets is easiest way to WB. Typical presets vary but are usually
"indoor light, fluorescent light, Flash, outdoor daylight
(sunny) , cloudy/shady outdoor". Indoor light is warm and when
we set are preset to the corresponding light source, it adds a
digital cooling filter to offset the warmth of tungsten lighting.
What the hell does that mean?..... Well,
Take
a look at this picture below. All three images were taken on a sunny
day. It was at a time were sun light is fairly neutral/optimal in
color. The first image was taken with the "Tungsten"
preset, resulting in a bluish image. The one in the center was taken
with the "Daylight/Sunny/Fine" setting resulting in a
fairly balanced image. The last image was taken with the
"Cloudy/Shade" setting resulting in a orangish cast.
If
I would have been shooting indoors (tungsten) my lighting would be
orange and the cooling filter would offset this to get closer to
neutral.
Lighting (warm/ red orange) + Offset (cool/ bluish greens) = Neutral Density/ truer color
Custom
is one of the most accurate ways to WB without a color temp meter.
This is the time to pull out your handy cameras manual (what? you
haven't read it cover to cover yet?) and read how to set custom WB.
You'll need a grey card.
"Meter/
Eyeball" Method: You remember the color temp meter I mentioned?
This is a time where you pull your sixiticolor out of storage or buy
a new fancy one with bells and whistles. If you're reading this
tutorial, you're probably not read to drop a couple $1,000 USD on
equipment. You can find a used sixticolors on ebay for next to
nothing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJu4k6Jvqo0
These
will give you a color temperature read out in Kelvin. If your camera
has a Kelvin WB option, you set it to the same temp as your reading.
Viola, you have WB. It also helps to commit temp variations to
memory. Below is a chart with light sources and their corresponding
temperature and correction needs.
2,700–3,300
K (too warm) Incandescent light bulb
3,200
K (too warm) Studio lamps, photofloods, etc.
3,350
K (too warm) Studio "CP" light
4,100–4,150
K (too warm) Moonlight
5,000
K (too warm) Horizon daylight
5,500–6,000
K (balanced) Vertical daylight, electronic flash
6,500
K (too cool with a greyish tone) Daylight, overcast
6,500–9,300
K (too cool with a greenish tone) LCD or CRT screen
What
about mixed sources? Set to your main source. You can do fine tuning
in post by masking and selecting specific areas of uneven white
balance.
WB
for creative use: If you look at my gallery, you'll notice I'm a
"cool girl". (<-----corny photography joke ). I love to
cool down the color palette of all my images for the most part. It's
a creative choice. I intentionally set my WB a bit warmer then the
actual situation to get a cooler tone . In portraiture, I tend to
shoot a WB to complement skin tone and then in post, mask out the
skin and cool everything else down. Call it my blue period.
You
can give digital photos a dated look by setting the WB to cooler then
actual lighting. You'll end up with a warm tone reminiscent of aged
photos stored improperly.
The
drawbacks
of digital white balance in digital photography, we are at
the mercy of others. With film we could select which printer we would
use or print photos ourselves. Now we display our images online on
sites that compress our images even more then we did in post
processing to jpeg formt. The viewer's monitor has a array of color
options
via software and hardware. How do we know our images are being viewed
the correct way? We don't! What we can do is try to make our colors
is post processing as accurate as possible (for printing) and cross our
fingers that
variations of others' monitors won't cause a drastic discrepancy. In my
humble opinion this is similar to the film world in that our prints were
at the mercy of the developers (if we didn't develop our own C41
process color....LOL). Difference is we could bitch and ask for a
reprint before anyone else saw that crap.
Warning
Anecdote: At a photography workshop I attended, a long time photo
journalist asked me to take his camera and get a couple shots with
him in a group. We were outside and I noticed his WB was set to fluorescent
lighting. All of his images had blue cast on them. I pointed it out
and he said "oh, I guess these will get turned into b/w". I
explained to him that he could correct the mistake in post easily
since he shot RAW. After showing him how he said "I was told I
should always shoot RAW, now I understand why. You just taught an old
dog new tricks."
If
you shoot in RAW and use a RAM image editor such as bridge for adobe
creative suite, you can adjust the shot WB setting. Freakin' awesome!
Good bye screw on filters!
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