There are angels about – Foto Friday

During our vacation in Connecticut recently we have gotten into a tradition with our friends of lighting off fireworks and sparklers.  Minor fireworks have recently become legal in Connecticut and so they are still fresh and novel.  Unlike Tennessee, where you can buy enough at one time to rival displays put on by the Grucci family (and blow yourself up), the kind in Connecticut are wimpy. Sparklers, minor Roman candles, poppers.  Nothing like a rocket or even bottle rockets. So it was with much glee that I had my hoard of precious Tennessee illegal fireworks to bring up to our friends and really show off.

 

And I forgot them at home.

 

Grrrr…….

 

So we had to settle for sparklers.  But since I always take the lemons life throws at me and make lemonade, we did some Angel pictures with the sparklers.  It’s easy! 

• Set camera on tripod.  Oh yeah, forgot that at home too….  Used our friend’s fence post on their deck instead.
• IS0 400, f/4 or 5.6, 8 second exposure seemed to be about right.  It was long enough for the kids to draw a complete angel.
• Get sparkler lit, run into position, open shutter and let it go.
• Shoot lots and lots!

And here are some results.  I’m really happy with how they turned out:

The last was the best and my favorite!

Now what if you don’t have a camera with manual settings?  You can try the fireworks mode which should get you nice long exposure times.  You also might try the Tm or Time mode (if you have it) where you pick the exposure time and the camera picks the f/stop.  So go and try some today!   

Which one’s your favorite?

We try to teach you to be good – Foto Friday

Many of you know that I work for Advanced Photographic Solutions, one of the country’s largest (and dare I say best) school, sports and volume labs. We see tens of thousand pictures a week and while most are great, some, … not so good. Bad, Terrible, Embarrassing.

So for a little fun this week I give you www.badyearbookphotos.com. It’s a site dedicated to users posting pictures of themselves or others in the “school day worst”. Make sure to follow the link and visit but here are some of my favorites:

And to be fair – one of me:

So go visit and see the others they have. Leave a comment and let us know which one’s your favorite!

Backup, backup, backup…

I am in the process of transferring lots of files over from an older desktop computer to a shiny new laptop (isn’t it nice!) and I was reminded…

There’s nothing like a good backup!

It’s been easy because I have good backups of most of my documents and installation programs. And I know we are protected due to our double-layer backup procedure:

• Automatic backups locally on ourl network using SyncBack Free (get it free from 2BrightSprks.com)
• Automatic backups off-site via Mozy.

We’ve written about the importance of backing up before here and here and now would be great time to get or renew you subscription to Mozy. Click here or use our link to the right and use the code “AUGUST” to get 10% off your subscription. Cool deal for such a hot summer day!

I’m going to go do some backups right now! When did you do your last back-up?

(full disclosure: we are a Mozy affiliate)

End of an era – Foto Friday

I’ve written before about the ending of Kodachrome – Kodak’s flagship film that captured the truest colors and was used for a majority of the ground-breaking photography over the years. And what a fitting retirement that Kodak and National Geographic thought up. They gave the very last roll ever made to Steve McCurry – an award winning photojournalist who’s iconic picture Afghan Girl was one of National Geographic’s most recognized covers. Steve is doing a story for them about what he shot with the last roll – and think of how important every single shot of that roll will be! That’s pressure only a true professional like Steve McCurry could deliver. Here’s a link to a great article at NPR about the last roll and Steve’s project – Exposed: The Last Roll Of Kodachrome

And an important note – have any unprocessed Kodachrome hanging around? Better it it processed now as the last lab in the world is stopping their processing Dec 30, 2010. Dwayne’s Photo Service in Kansas is the only lab in the world who still processed Kodachrome and December 30 it’s done – forever!

Like all good things, it had to stop some time. I spend my early career in the commercial photography so I used mostly Kodak Ektachrome film – and that at some point will be discontinued due to the almost universal switch to digital cameras. But Kodachrome was always special and it’s kind of sad. Had you every used Kodachrome? Leave a comment and let us know!

Quick Tip Tuesday – super easy aged paper

This is a really easy and quick technique for digital scrapbookers to make aged paper using both Adobe Photoshop or Elements.  (This tutorial is done in Elements 8).  What I like best about this paper is because the various elements are on different layers, it’s really easy to quickly change them and make a wide variety of different papers.  So lets get started!

1) Go the File menu and select New – Blank File.  Use the dimensions you want or use the pull-down menu and select Scrapbook for predefined 6×6, 8×8, and 12×12 sizes.

2) Go to the Edit menu and select Fill Layer.  Use the pull-down menu to change the fill to 50% Gray.  You’ve just created a gray box – yea!

3) Go to Layers – New Adjustment Layer – Hue/Saturation.  This layer will determine the color of your paper.  As I said above, the beauty of this paper is how easy you can change this layer at a later point to make a different color paper.

For now, we want a tan color so in the Hue/Saturation dialog box click the Colorize button and set Hue to 35, Saturation to 40, and Lightness to +20.  You now have a nice tan paper.

4) Now we need some … clouds?  Yes, the cloud filter creates great texture for our paper.  So go to the Layer palette, create a New Layer, and name it “clouds”.  Press the “D” key to make sure your foreground and background colors are set to their default black and white, and then go to Filter – Render – Clouds.  You can hit Ctrl+F to make different textures.

5) Now go to Filer – Stylize – Emboss.  In the Emboss dialog box, vary to % between 150% to 500% to get more or less texture.  Now here’s a critical part – in your layer palette use the pull-down menu to set the blending mode to Soft Light.  And you have this:

 

6) Now we’ll add some additional texture.  Go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the Create Adjustment Layer and select Pattern. (The Create Adjustment Layer button looks like this: )   In the pattern dialog box, click the arrow to the right of the thumbnail to select a pattern.  I used the Gouache Light on Watercolor in the Artist Surface group.  (see the dialog box on the left if it’s not clear).  Click Ok.

7) Again, set the Layer Blending mode to Soft Light and lower the layer opacity to about 75% to lessen the texture.  Looking good!

8 ) Now we’ll add some sizzle.  Let’s add some highlights and shadowing to the paper to make it sing.  Go to Layers and select Create a new layer.  Go to Edit – Fill and again fill it with 50% gray.  Now make sure to set the Layer Blending mode to Overlay.  (the paper will reappear – that’s normal).  Again press “D” to make sure the foreground and background are set to the default.

9) Grab a fairly large, soft-edged brush, set the opacity to 20% or less, and paint around the edges – you’ll see it will darken the areas you paint.  Hit the “X” key to switch the foreground and background colors and paint with white.  Where ever you paint, it will be lighter.

So that’s it!  A simple, quick aged textured paper you can use as a base to make lots of variations for your layouts.  Now by simply altering the layers we can get endless variations:

Changing the hue under the Hue/Saturation layer to make different colors…

Or changing the cloud and dodge and burn layers to get more or less texture.

I hope you liked this quick and easy aged paper.  You can see more of our Photoshop and Elements tips here.  If you have an questions or like or hate this technique, leave a comment.

Next Page »