Light painting

Light painting is so fun. I ended up drawing many things in the cold during dark night. Hardest part is focus and to see how big to draw. Most of my pics have very small letters and I needed to draw bigger.

Focus focus focus. Many pics before were out of focus so light traces are

not sharp. How to do? Point the torch light with light on before clicking the remote control to start the shutter release. That way, it will focus on the torch light and it will track. I have to change the focus to normal AF (option 0) in Custom Functions IV so that it will autofucus. I can't pre-focus without anything in there. AF0 works perfect in this case.

Dont repeat too many rounds. It'll suffer from blurry lines. Just draw 2 rounds to get clean lines. Big torch light is already a big light brush, so one stroke is thick enough. The light in the center will define the sharp lines (if in focus) and the surrounding light will light-shadow that sharp center line.

I got YMT's name in one shot because hers is long, so I ended up doing one stroke to finish. Turned out it's the best. Just one big stroke.

Popping pics

Earth tones for this Spring season in the mall inspired me. I'm crazy about muted tones.

I have new found love for natural light during the day. Isn't it pretty? I don't have to do much with lighting.

Actions
-Boost by PW
- Masked everything else except flower to boost flower only
- Define and Sharpen by PW
- Masked everything else except flower to extra-sharpen flower only
(Note: Boost aldy has sharpen inside, but I did sharpen again because I'm crazy abt sharpness and popping now)

I'm finally happy with making the pic pop. I have to selective sharpen the image so that the sharp areas seem popping.

And what a difference I see now in sharpness. Now I know people sharpen their pics in editing to make it more focus and more pop. I gotta keep working on my editing skills and I can get there.

Day_20_RubikCube_actions

Day_20_RubikCube_actions, originally uploaded by chomonkyaw.

Built my light tent finally!

Wanna try to do individual color pop, so I picked something that has all colors.

Turned out simply Increasing the saturation turned out better than all other actions I played on color pop or boost.

I like my seamless background, but it gets boring after I took some "product-looking" shoots.

Backdrop is more greyish, so I did color replace by this instructions:

www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/2011/01/coffeeshop-backdrop-fix...

I did it manually following her instructions rather than actions cos it's simple enough.

Day_21_spoons

Day_21_spoons, originally uploaded by chomonkyaw.

Photoshop day

Spent whole day at home on photoshop. I already forgot simple things I've learned before.

Collage
I had to spend ~2 hrs to do a collage. And I still wasn't quite happy cos it's not exactly how I want, like cropping each image in big collage crops the whole thing instead. So I gotta figure out how to crop the layers or marquee select and cut and paste in a new layer? but it's too late and gotta sleep.
CoffeeShop has lots of free storyboard actions here.

http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/2010/10/coffeeshop-group-it-action.html
I don't think it's that easy to use if I just want a simple collage. Or maybe I just need to look carefully into her instructions.

Resize

Edit -> Free Transform -> shift+drag to resize with fixed aspect ratios.

Fav actions

PW's boost sharpens and brighten the colors.

CoffeeShop's color pop ?

Sharpen is good by either PW or MCP, but Boost aldy has sharpen ; same as most other actions.

After getting apple laptop from Google, it's my main computer now. It's very hard to go to Windows and work on 2 computers and keep transferring files back and forth. It's ridiculous. Plus, my Dell 710m laptop is so old with 520MB RAM that Photoshop CS4 is overloading it. I have to literally wait ~3 min after any click in CS4. It's wasting my time. I tried Gimp, not bad but no actions in Gimp as in Photoshop. So I can't abandon Photoshop, especially for fun actions like vintage or boost etc.

I even want to buy a Photoshop myself and put it on Mac.

For the first raw green beans, used Boost action and that did it. Beans look brighter, greener, and sharper. Nothing else needed.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Color Popping

several color popping methods such as channel mixers, blending modes, lab color, the sponge tool, hue/saturation adjustments, and so much more!

1)
MCP Actions
See "How to make white wedding dress to be white". Second method is how I can selective pop individual colors.

2)
Similar technique: Popping blue, yellow, green and red separately, but above mcp method seem better because we can add lightness.
Flickr


3) Tutorial 3 with free action
Coffeeshopblog

4)
Free actions
Free actions

Inspiration

I just tripped on this blog while searching for back-button focusing tutorials and I was hooked for the whole day.

http://ashleyannphotography.com/blog/

Her blog is just so cute . Pics are so cute that I could die from cuteness. I read almost all of her posts (or at least uncountable number of posts) the whole day. I just couldn't stop. Love her colors that really pop and clarity, and I really want to know how she post process them. So I keep searching on her blog for tips and tutorials , but seems like she hasn't posted anything abt post processing except that she used Totally Rad Actions mostly.

Her editing results are similar to Jodi Friedman's popped colors, contrast and composition, but Ashley's contents are cuter.

I'm so inspired by her pics that I want to take pics now in daylight and post-process. I gotta learn more post-processing now.

She said she adjusted the curves, increasing the contrast, web sharpening and color. I gotta learn how to saturate the colors separately and sharpening.

One thing I got reminded from her pics: I gotta drop down low and angles angles angles!!

Dropping low and shotting up is one of the angles I've been forgetting. Shoot from floor level or include some floor/table content to give that composition a pop.

The keys

We got the keys to the house today. We are supposed to get it tomorrow, but Bruce gave us early after the seller-buyer tour.

Back-button focus

I learned something and tried it out today. It's back button focus. I've tried a few shots of Un and stuff around the house. The fun part is we can lock AF by * button based on an AF point



How to setup
----------
Its in custom functions IV – operation/Others.
Then it’s the first screen that says – shutter button/AF-ON button. (page 181 in manual)

Day : My Nexus S in product shoot

Day 5: Heart shaped lights

Day4: Big check

This is the biggest check of my life so far. It's kinda scary and mixed feelings at the bank writing this cashier check, and knowing that all those money are gone. I feel definitely sad to see all those money gone.

Custom Bokeh Christmas tree

Tutorial with pics

Project365 started!

I've decided to start Project365 this new year. I've been planning to do that for like a year, and never did it. Now it is. I want to improve. I will commit. I have a good start. I'm taking lots of pics at Carmel trip with Un.