Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. GSW Hour 2009 In-store Shoot – x slides

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: Overview A lways Have Your Camera: It’s about building good habits. Have your camera with you most of the time and be sure to use it often. Actual use (practice) is the only way to get better. Professional musicians practice at least 4 hours a day. How often you practice will influence how good you get Making images. Lastly, always have a gut feel about what moves you in the scene. And do your best to bring that visual energy out in the final.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: Set up G SW: Discount Shoe Outlet I am along for the ride, so I kept myself busy looking for Kodak moments… GWS had plenty of shoes and here is one of them. It was a technical challenge because of its surface characteristics. o Black shy leather o Different surface texture o Complex shape o Multiple light sources o Minimal control over lighting Camera original

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: Photoshop L ab Work: Step 1 Applying the final image crop is the first step. Sometimes I crop to eliminate technical or aesthetic problem areas… Although, in this case, I am cropping away the usual 10% image-safety-margin. Camera original /w black cropFrame layer

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: HDR – high dynamic range L ab Work: Unusual step 2 Because of the shiny black subject and the multiple lights, it created a harsh tonal range called HDR. I used a special Photoshop feature designed to deal with it. Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight… adjustment did am amazing job of controlling the high dynamic tonal range. Use the Up & Down keys to compare this with the previous image. Special Shadow/Highlight adjusted

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: Photoshop routine L ab Work: Usual steps 3 & 4 Applying the final Brightness/ Contrast and Color adjustments are back to the routine moves. Now, it will be easier to reproduce by the printer. Although it lost some of the high contrast visual impact of the camera original. Camera OriginalBrightness/Contrast and Color adjusted

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: Photoshop L ab Work: Advanced I ended up using Photoshop to help re-light the scene to gain back the wow-factor of the camera original. I used the traditional darkroom ‘burn’ technique plus the modern digital imaging mask painting to achieve the final look & feel. Heavy top and bottom ‘burns’ applied

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: More pictures E nough is Enough: There were just too many shoes to shoot. I decided that I wanted to shoot something else. But what to shoot, macro close ups? No that did not do it. Since I was already at the close up distance to the subject, I went in even closer than the Macro capability of the lens. It started to look interesting. So, I manually set the focus to infinity and shot macro close ups which gave me the results that you see now and in the following slides.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: More pictures P laying with Abstract Imagery: Lot of the women’s shoes had shiny, colorful, and sparkly stuff on them which made them perfect for the out-of-focus abstract design compositions. Remember – my focus is set to infinity.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: More abstractions M ore Abstract … Playing with Light … Fun Stuff

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: Making choices D ifferent Kind of Fun Stuff: I manually refocused to maximum macro focus and shot images of the whole store. The results are a little more identifiable. But not necessarily so without the first sentence ‘setup’…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: More about you T rust Yourself: Look deep until you really see or feel something real about the image. Without that real connection, it will be very difficult to shoot, edit, process and evolve the image into your personal vision. Camera OriginalLab: Step 1 cropFrame LayerBasic Adjustments: For PresenceAdvanced Lab: Personal Vision

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x The Blues…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I GSW Store Shoot: More about you Summary: If you want to be an artist. The only choice you have to make is to trust yourself. Naturally, you have to listen to your creative muse too… You can’t go wrong by ‘paying your dues’ and take more classes… o Art Appreciation o Art History o Basic Drawing o Basic Design o Basic Color Although, it’s all for not if you do not practice. Shoot at least dozen images per weak.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x End