Brittany

This is my niece and she came over to hang out with my oldest. She is such a pretty girl. Since I hadn’t photographed her in a little while, I asked her just to stand outside so I can test using my external flash on the D90. I hadn’t done a true session outside with my new camera and being the perfectionist that I am, I want to make sure the skin tones look good, not too bright…etc. She indulged me.

“B” also took pictures of her while she was here. I did a couple of shots in the studio of her, but the ones that you are going to see are not synched to the camera. Bri had the cord attached to the D40x. In these, I used the 50mm, ISO 800, 1.4, 1/250

In these next set, I used a couple of different actions to achieve these looks.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge (coffeeshop creamy toffee latte)

click to enlarge (coffeeshop creamy toffee latte and barista)

click to enlarge (coffeeshop vivid)

The next two were ran using mulletgod’s actions-a-plenty. Here is a link to that website: http://www.mulletgod.org/photoshopactions/

click to enlarge (vintage white)

click to enlarge (vintage gold)

Free Photoshop Action

Every once in awhile someone will share a link to some free action and those actions will just totally blow me away. A friend of mine posted a link to a site that offers free photoshop action. Thank you Cathy for posting that link…..they are awesome!!!

The website is called CoffeeShopPhotography. Here is a link to her site:

http://coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com/

You simply must check it out. Here are some examples of what I did with her actions. Of course, I’m using some images from my session from yesterday.

Levi, brother #2

Love this one. It's called Attic Vintage Click to enlarge

Danny, Brother #3

Action, coffee shop vivid.

Trying something fun with my editing

Here is my youngest. I thought I would try something a little fun with the edit tonight. You’ll see first the original copy, then one with a selective focus, and then vanilla black and white.

I have to give a big shout out to actioncentral. I LOVE this site!!! They totally rock. There are so many free actions that it’s hard to choose which ones. I found the selective focus one the other day.

Using fill flash

B. wanted me to take her pictures today. I wasn’t feeling the best, but who am I to pass on a portrait session, right? It’s more practice. So, it was a very overcast day and I thought I would try using my on board flash to practice lifting the shadows from her eyes. I wanted to diffuse the flash though so it wouldn’t be so harsh, so out came my t. paper. Yes, I used toilet paper to diffuse my flash. Hey, whatever works, right? I did find that I had to adjust the strength of the flash a bit. All in all I think they came out pretty good.

I used Pioneer woman’s free action, boost, on these.

Free Actions

This has to be the most versatile set of free actions that I’ve seen. I know that there a lot of free choices from actioncentral, but for my needs…these are the easiest and most effective actions.

My friend Jen gave me the heads up on these. They are from PioneerWoman.com and here is the link. http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/

Definetly a site to check out.

Boost action

Texture lover

I’m finding that I really love what can be done with textures. In the photographs below, it really saved the photograph. The picture of E. itself was good, but the background was distracting and blown out. At this time, what I use for backdrops are fabrics. Fabrics can be great, but a pain when there are wrinkles and three year olds are hard on fabric. What I did with the texture, (which I found on Flickr), was paste it onto my photograph, decreased the opacity of the textured layer and then erased the part of my subject. It does get a little tricky when you get to the edges of the subject. For that, I reduced the hardness and the opacity of my eraser and carefully went over the edges of E. until I got my desired result. I’m pretty satisfied with how they came out. I have never left the textured layer be at 100% opacity though. It just didn’t seem to look right that way, so I left the opacity low enough that it looks as if it is part of my background. I also used an action on her eyes that I am totally in love with. I got it from MCP Actions and here is the link. http://www.mcpactions.com/

Free Photoshop actions

I love this website because it offers so many actions…for free! I have several favorites. The site is called “Action Central” and here is the link: http://www.atncentral.com/

They offer rollover images so that you can see what the effect will do to your image. I can’t believe how many there are on this site. This is definetly a site to check out.