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Hurray for good weather for this weekend’s Hot Air Jubilee in Jackson, Mich.
And sure the balloons are cool, but the people are pretty fun, too.
photography
Flowerpot Island Fern
A fern soaking up the light on Flowerpot Island.
See the full series (so far). More to come!
Schweizer Family
Had a blast making family portraits for my good friends, Nate and Kelli, and their kiddos Sophie and Evan.
A lovely night in the park, a giant lollypop as an incentive, and fun family get-together.
On Processing Photos
I almost wrote “editing” instead of processing, because sometimes I still think of “editing photos” meaning: correcting, cropping, etc.
But that’s semantics. What I really mean is, I give my photos a certain look, and this is how I do it.
To illustrate, I’m going to use a senior portrait shoot from last summer.
This is Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn and I worked together on a hot summer evening around the college where I work. In all, we hit up an abandoned Catholic church, a wooded seating area, the football field, and the college’s nature center.
Let’s start with the out-of-camera raw file, and work our way toward the finished product.
Here’s a sample of a raw photo file from the shoot. It’s important to get lighting and composition down first, of course. Here, things look okay. But we’re just getting started.
To start, I play with a few VSCO film emulations I like, usually in the Kodak Portra family. In this case, it’s Portra 400 VC.
I like my photos to have lots of contrast, so I bump that in Lightroom. Nothing crazy, but usually in the 20-50 range. This deepens the shadows and make the colors stand out a bit.
Next, I tweak the highlights and shadows if I need to. I’d rather have more details in the shadows and then darken them with contrast. This photo was a little on the light side, so I dropped the highlights slider in Lightroom to bring more detail back into the face.
If it’s appropriate, I’ll boost the vibrance a bit to help the colors stand out.
I don’t always add a vignette, but in the case of strong center-point portraits like Kaitlyn’s, I think a bit of vignetting adds some focus.
To finish up a portrait, I’ll darken the hair around the face, lighten any dark spots under the eyes, and add emphasis to the contours of the face. If needed, I’ll pull the photo into Photoshop and clean up stray hairs here and there.
Here’s the finished product, before and after:
That’s basically it. Tone, contrast, and some clean-up work are the big three. There may be some cropping involved, too, or taking out distracting background elements. But I can get a lot done using these basic techniques.
Here are a few other samples from the photo shoot, with before and after images.
See the full set from Kaitlyn’s shoot. You can also hire me to do your portrait shoot.
Dark Woods
Sneak preview of a project I’m working on involving mottled light in a dark wood.
Combine that with a re-read of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and things get weird.
Local Barn
A landscape follow up to my favorite little local barn.
Honored to have it featured on Flickr’s Explore.
Real Film Border Scans
A nifty option: real film border scans, courtesy of RW Boyer. He has some other options coming down the pipeline as well, from the sounds of it, so stay tuned.
Added a bit of faux grain in Photoshop and used a probably-too-sharp-for-film image off the Fuji X-E1. Note, also, that’s using Fuji’s in-camera B&W filter and shooting a JPG out. So more Fujifilm than Kodak. But oh well.
Thanks RB!
Trains: David
They call David “The Conductor.”
He joined the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club at 16. A wunderkind who became the club’s treasurer.
He’s also a bit of a jokester.
“I still live in my childhood home,” David says. “I just kicked my parents out.”
David is the first one in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, and usually the last one to turn out the lights. The club meets in a second story loft in downtown Jackson, Mich. The hours come from the club’s old location at the local mall. It used to be they’d meet on Mondays and Fridays, but David says they started using Wednesday as a “work day.”
Though “work” is always code for “social.”
“It’s more social than anything. This is my social club,” David says.
Trains: Craig
Craig grew up across the street from the Pontiac rail yards. He’s been watching them for a lot of years.
When he was 18, he got into model trains, but never really had a place to run them. In 2002, he moved to Jackson, and found the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“Then I had a place to play with them,” Craig says.
Before then, Craig studied geography in college. He also collected stamps and license plates. “It’s an OCD thing,” he says, with all the colors, symbols, and numbers. Organizing. Categorizing.
Craig works in the travel industry in Novi.
Trains: Blair
Both sides of Blair’s family has worked on the railroad. He has five family members riding the rails.
“I love seeing my brother drive by on the train,” he says.
Blair’s been collecting train memorabilia since he was young. He has an O-gauge train set at home, and the GTs are his favorites.
He’s grateful for the Central Michigan Model Railroad Club.
“I can’t personally work on the railroad because I’m deaf, so this is the next best thing.”
Trains: Art
Art has been collecting model trains all his life.
His mom and dad got him started as a kid, and he still has the original toy train. “It still runs,” he says.
After his children left the house, he converted their bedrooms into train rooms.
“It keeps me occupied,” Art says.
After 20 years in the club, with everyone placing trains on each other’s sets, how does he know which train is his?
“We just know.”