Photo Adventure Creative Flower Photography

i would like to really welcome our guest tonight colin harrison as you know i've given you also the link to his website and i know many of you have visited his site colin has kindly um agreed and offered to host to to do us this this session tonight as we know we have had to work a lot online in recent in these recent months and that seems to be keep going on for quite quite another amount of time uh at least this is you this situation has had one thing which is favorable because we have it has made us contact more people who are or photographers who are doing things abroad and thus managing to get them virtually here for you um as lectures and in sessions such as as today's um i will not spend much time talking about colin i'm sure you can all go on his site and see what he does it's very interesting so colin i would pass you one and you can kick off right away okay yeah thank you very much for those the kind intro yes my wife and i have visited mortar a couple of times so at least we've you know we've got a lie of the land but yes what kevin said was absolutely correct about um having a chance to spread my images around the world and i just had a booking tonight from panama and that makes it will be my 11th country so it's been quite a bit of a game for me to a certain extent to see how many people i can actually show my talks to but i like sharing my images anyway but this particular talk i started nearly two years ago um as a big project um and i've spent say a lot of time doing it but also i've learned a lot as as well so i've really enjoyed it so what i'm able to do tonight is is pass on to you some of my um secrets basically and telling you how easy it is to produce um quite acceptable images so okay so but go on obviously i like to put the date like to make sure i'm in the right place that's me now qualifications obviously this is within sort of the camera club world to a certain extent but you see i've been working on them uh getting qualifications since 1993 and i do it man i've worked hard you know getting to this standard to a certain extent but am i very pleased to get the last two awards if you look in the bottom right the the asda and the hsbc for services to shopping award and services to um banking award i know they're a bit tongue-in-cheek to a certain extent but uh when i give these talks i have to um sort of go online and make sure you actually have got an asda and an hsbc in in the country i've given the talk to but this really sums up the the my uh qualification takes lazy photograph but it's an absolute wizard getting letters after his name so i'll just give you an idea because this little question that came up when i first showed my talk so just to give you a very quick outline the first part will show how i photograph the flowers and the second part will deal more with the software i actually used so a statement that i came across if you truly love nature you will see beauty everywhere in the beginning it really showed my almost lack of interest in flowers uh i always sort of put my flowers in a sort of the landscape type picture so i wasn't looking at the flower in in this case it's a cliff rose at dead horse point in utah i just filled the bill to a certain extent and the same here um another national park in america arches national park with the um yucca plant harriman's yucca and another flower plant from utah and called mules here but again when i took the picture i wasn't really looking at the flower i was just looking at the the sort of the atmosphere in place called goblin valley um in northeast utah but coming much nearer to home now um you saw from the map at the beginning we live halfway between cheltenham and oxford in the sort of southern part of england and this particular flower called snake said fertility likes the soil in this area and it accounts for about i think about 80 percent of this particular flower actually in the country but also again we're not known for past flowers in this country but again we live near an area called the cotswolds and and this is just at the edge of a field of pathway but say they're not that common in this country again this is this sort of different technique looking at flower photography as i said it's just the intro really to my uh talk and again we've got a plentiful uh supply of different orchids but when i started doing my talk it was just interesting to see the comparison of the sizes of the the pictures i was taking the difference between say the clematis 150 millimeters and the forget-me-not down to four millimeters but i do admit um i'm not a gardener so i don't know what the type of flares i'm often photographing but in my notes i'll give you some information on what it's actually called forget me not and it's quite interesting but you can read that in my notes so inspiration again i looked at loads of authors did a lot of research and this is the person that really came to mind um pierre joseph it won't mean anything to you didn't mean anything to me but you will know his photographs basically um if you can understand my humor he was around at the time when they were filming les miserables in france um and he as as you see here he is probably the greatest ever botanical illustrator and this is some of his work right if you go to your wh smith i think you've got some in mortar you will see his pictures on greeting card and if you happen to have um one of his pictures in your attic they probably go for a would be sell for about three and a half million u.s dollars so worth having so what is fine art okay fine art photography is created in line with the vision of the photographer as artist union photography as a medium for creative expression the goal of fine art photography is to express an idea a message or an emotion so this is my effort of trying to almost reproduce ridotes type pictures and i try to approach it going to actually produce them and i couldn't but it worked the other way when you're working on an image you suddenly looked it and said yeah that looks fine art to me and often they're very simple this is a tulip um another seed head i always equate this almost how you sort of imagine this if you're staying in a hotel and you see paintings on the warface or tranquil type images and getting flowers they don't have to be exotic um flowers and um this highest than just taking in our front garden but again giving us a painterly type treatment and this is a very recent picture i was looking around at um obviously bits of dying flowers in our garden recently and i came across this but again i said yeah that almost sort of falls into this fine art category but this is our garden in in the summer said we're we're not great gardeners but due to lockdown we were very lucky that we had two supermarkets uh near us that sold plants all through the lockdown so every time we did our shopping we brought a plant back so we were able to put things around and it was dual purpose obviously they were nice to go in the house but also they were great to photograph but um if you look at this garden that's not where my studio is you think my studio is in the top left but it's not my studio is around the corner around here and this is my studio just outside our conservatory and the lighting is quite even here for photography but i believe in getting comfortable as you can see this so this is my studio get comfortable so just sit in an old seat to keep in the garden and just you know take your time taking the photograph but also um in this particular area the the flowers are taken in the shade so remember i call this my studio but it's not an inside studio obviously it's an outside studio but the lens i'm actually using is a sigma 105 millimeter two point lens macro it's been produced for years and it's still available um you can pick one up new from about 350 pound and you pick up a secondhand one for about 250 pounds if it was probably a cannon or nikon equivalent to that it could be around no eight or nine hundred pounds and i oh i put money on that this would not match anything you can get from any other um lens but it might you may have looked at my website and the style that i've used on on the website um it's very creative and very soft so when i started taking flowers i actually found f16 on my lens and using the tripod or monopod which i don't hardly ever use but again my normal style would be this just you know 2.8 widest aperture and you can hand hold it you know you don't need a a tripod but this is the copying stand that i told you about again it's an ikea table and it just turned upside down and i've added pieces of card around it to give me a white or a black backdrop but i mentioned about giving talks to camera clubs i do my research as i did for mortar before i i came tonight and when i did my talk in philadelphia a couple of weeks ago i actually i was talking about obviously my table in the last image i actually told them where they could actually buy them because they actually did have an ikea um in philadelphia i know um i don't if you've got a main ikea but i know you've got your um mega store on on the island that actually sells ikea i and i don't know if they actually sell this type of table or again you can order one online you can make one up yourself because it's not it's not rocket science but this is the advantage of this particular um copying table you can just sort of turn it around one minute you've got a white backdrop the next minute you've got a black backdrop so it's quite easy in that respect but also another key thing is using a a torch another mistake i made when i showed this to america they didn't know what i was talking to it's called a flashlight in america but the whole technology in the last few years has changed completely with with sort of the led lighting but the advantage in most of these led lighting they're ver i could i'll say virtually but um they're white balance and and you might want to make an adjustment in your camera which i tried at the end of the day i didn't bother because just a very very minor adjustment also um wait until you finish your um your cleaning and you've got anything left in your nothing left in your dental bottle um for cleaning surfaces then just empty what's left and put water in and use it as a spray very very useful as as well so flower pressing this is another aspect of my flower photography and a couple of ways to do it basically one um using a flower present or nearly all the information i'm talking uh given you tonight um it's i've given you links in my talk where you can actually buy these but they're all available online but this particular system for pressing flowers is um putting in the microwave i wouldn't recommend it i used it a bit but you're not allowed to or not supposed to put it in the microwave for too long because it starts to get a bit hot but so i actually um reverted back to a traditional flower press again you can make one up yourself or get them online that you know um you're probably you know 16 euros or something online so they you know not too expensive to buy or you could even mute a book if you wanted to and and stand but i mean i know this is almost sort of basics of photography but you'll see later on you can actually uh follow what i've shown for you know advertising um pictures so you know it's something different to a way to approach uh photography but also i keep things simple that's my method i'm not doing um big areas of flour and you see 148 millimeters high this is normally the size i use for my uh pictures so copy and press so you so you've pressed the flowers then what you do you copy them so this is my copy stand i do it me if you've got a studio you look you'll have all your equipment set up you could use a tripod for this but i made this up using an old tripod head which made it it much easier because everything was in a fixed position and i didn't have to sort of think you know where i'm going to move the legs etc and and this is my the bottom part where i actually hold the lights to photograph the the flower and what i've used is four bicycle lights and i mentioned about white balance um most um lights you could you can probably pick these up uh we can in england probably about you know four or five uh pounds again for six dollars sorry six euros probably in in mortar or go online and pick them up so again they're not expensive but what they do is is give us an almost white balance but a very good balance to your photography so you can see here because you're shooting in lights from uh four positions um okay you could spend thousands of pounds on studio lighting to come up with the same thing but you could probably do you know what i've shown probably make one for about some say you know 20 odd euros again it just goes on and on you've got you i've got a collection about probably about five or six hundred pressed flowers that have i've used some of them and i'll go back another time and re-photograph them but again it just gives you ideas for as i said even if you don't use them for greeting cards or other forms of advertising life in the freezer again this is my another project which again is a very personal thing to a certain extent but i've got a technique with this whereby a lot of people submerge their flower completely into the water before they put it into the freezer i don't i keep about say 20 percent of the flour at the top of the the water and again that works for me and there is again just a a selection of 100 of photograph i've got of flowers in the ice but it's very unpredictable how it's actually going to look but the advantage of of using this uh technique you can uh what when you bring it out the freezer you can tip hot water on it if you want to you can use your your fingers to melt parts of it if you want to balance the the image so there's no almost image within an image and again almost going back to the fine art type picture you know trying to actually keep the picture fairly simple and this game a different approach to the picture again this is the ices that actually came out of the freezer but i haven't gone in close but just gives you an idea what i said earlier about the top of the flower in this case is just coming out the top of the ice and again with this the pictures are endless um you can sometimes you know try almost a different technique whereby you know said you say you know 20 percent of the water you might just keep five percent so you've got less information but again it creates a very sort of painterly type picture and again i i said you know it's just choosing the right flower and not knowing um how it's going to work again i've got uh probably about 30 of these flowers because they're not sort of that big in a freezer compartment to re-photograph a game when i get time but it's okay when i put this talk together i thought um how am i gonna bore people with say you know 200 pictures of flowers taking exactly the same lighting same position probably with all the names to me i said no that's not my style i want to do different things i made a list of about 30 different ways i can show my pictures and this is another way to show your flowers okay a montage very simple montage again you've got a picture or even got your press flower and then you put it in a different setting here i thought well i've merged one of my flowers into um a rock formation almost like a an indian carving of the um the rock this idea was i had the picture and it was just missing something so again what i'll try and do is or change the theme and make the picture almost abstract and so pictorial to a certain extent so in this case i've just added a bird a red kite here when i saw the picture in in the bottom left hand corner i thought that's looks almost to it's like if it's under water so what i did was obviously added a diver here this was a fairly straight umbrella originally and i've just added one of my flowers to the pole and if you look at it quickly you think it looks almost real but a lot of my photography is luck and i do admit that and and this is a perfect example so this is um one of the photographs that's been pressed i put it into photoshop yeah i just make a point now nearly all these pictures it doesn't really matter what software you're using whether it's affinity elements whatever they've all got this providing they've got layers and they've got blending modes in there you can do i know everything that i actually did in photoshop but here as i said i put this image which was on against a white background into photoshop deleted the white so it not only deleted the edges it also delet deleted part of the flowers so that suddenly gave me an idea add in another flag of course it would come in through all the holes in the flower now above it and you add another one it goes on and this is completely random i do admit i didn't sort of plan them where they were going to go and it ended up again that's just half showing you what i did and there's the full size of of the image but when i did that i thought it looked like a mural and you know somebody sort of painted this on a wall so i thought just add it to person because it makes it look right you know if it is actually real or not so what what's plan b okay then this is the poor getty museum so you've seen my mural so i've combined the two at this po um particular museum in california so there it is just adding my pictures to uh they're sorry um two various walls in their museum this was a bit hard to do because of the the the shapes and um but again it can become a sort of almost of course or fairly uh technical exercise as well seeing better day yeah obviously taking photographs over um almost a couple of years it had the benefit of seeing flowers at their best but also flowers at their worst so again old flowers towards the end of the year and just presenting them in a frame or just to set the the the picture off and again there's like i could spend you know all night telling you how many how many different ways you can actually produce this picture but we'll talk more about the software in the second half and again just come up with different ideas different shapes different colors different frames this image um i often sometimes think a picture in color doesn't work and i actually put it back to monochrome and then i actually brought a very small amount of color back into the picture and then i looked at the color one and the color one just didn't work and i sort of ended up at this particular picture water droplets again quite simple thing to do using my spray that i showed you earlier but again there's loads of different ways to do it but i do it man i found that the the best way this is is natural rain it seemed to give a much better pattern so these are just getting some of the pictures using different techniques and and doing different framing in photoshop to present the subject again going in sort of fairly close with the lens and using sort of you know fairly good lighting on the subject as well and you can go even further and making them almost you know close and and making a pitch again even more surreal but i found it interesting and again you know just endless number of combination of what you can actually do and again i don't mind you'll probably see you might comment on the noise and grain on my pictures but i do admit i do like uh sort of um you know putting in that don't um i know it's not everybody's cup of tea they're doing it that way but i do like this sort of texture sometimes actually in my pictures so okay tip of the day a couple of hints for you um if you you know want to try this technique you can actually buy rain repellent basically it's meant to go on windscreen so the water doesn't stick to the windscreen but it also applies to flare so if you spray this over the flower then put water over top the bubbles won't stick to certain parts so you can actually control the water um much easier but also something you can try um is using this ice crystal spray if you look on the right that's the effect you get you spray it on a piece of glass and leave it just get hardened and again re-photograph it for a backdrop or whatever and again that's just an example how i've actually imported a flower over this particular ice looking spray framing sorry um can i button a second yeah certainly um i think we can when you want will split you can stop a bit for questions yeah that's perfect yeah if you want to yeah i'm easy that's good i'm happy i'm a quick drink so yeah i'm happy that's a good idea so fire away okay um those of you who'd like to ask a question just put on your mic and raise your hand please raise the hand from below here uh meantime call him very good work and very good presentation going into a lot of detail and one thing i like leaving it simple and inexpensive to to to reproduce the work yeah thank you appreciate that so any questions then any questions on on all this okay they're still thinking i guess actually i do it yeah just just because i gained my um my qualification the diamond three the fiat diamond because i'm not because i'm saying it in your face but your work is exceptional where you showed us those buildings it's ideal the ideas are out of this world yeah it's you're absolutely right in that because of my sort of you know creative eye it just lent itself to flowers and doing things with them um and it works in my in my honest opinion well well that's right i can assure you it doesn't always work but you know and and that's the the thing is i've got since i've almost finalized the talk say a couple of months ago i've got sort of updates and different things to put in but um on purpose i tried to make my talks flow and and i treat them almost like an audio visual sequence you're probably not aware of it when you're viewing but i'm very aware so going from a horizontal image to a vertical image going from a dark image to a light image and that because i'm i'm interested in audio visual as as well and to make it slow to make the show flow yes correct yeah colin can i ask you a question another one how important do you think that your chase for qualifications has improved your photography yes switch off your just a second okay okay yeah that is again a very good point yeah it's not only that but um basically i'm a great believer in judging i thought i'll lead on from that in a moment um judging that you should know what's going on and trends and and what's expected in photography because on every um part of photography i would have seen images um on that particular subject and it gives me a benchmark to a certain extent but the other thing with um judging is when i started judging at obviously an international level i was judging for example natural history and similar to your sort of flower comment i knew what a good natural history picture was but i hadn't done it myself so what i consciously did was to go out start doing natural history pictures so um to understand how how things are done and and i think that's a very important thing for judges and it is very difficult i know for them to sort of keep up to date with everything but the other thing with the qualifications um i think on my website it mentions it gives me a platform for helping other people which i really enjoy as as well so although i've got these qualifications they are a personal thing a lot of people it doesn't mean anything to but you know i'm pleased but like showing this talk to you i know i'm really you know pleased i you know um you wanted to see my talk so yeah that that's really uh help me and obviously so talking to so many different countries you know it's really interesting different approaches and the way people say things and again it's been really really interesting for me as well sorry to go on a bit but yeah sorry did that that's the question no no you answered it because i i myself think that qualifications are very important particularly because they challenge you to to scale greater heights as well yeah and also there's a um at the end of the day there's not that much difference between a professional quality and you can call these amateur qualifications if you want to because that's probably the case i'm not learning earning a living with photography i do it because i enjoy it and and the i always say that's the difference between an amateur and a professional an amateur um doesn't really have to worry whether they get it right or not it doesn't matter a professional photographer gets it right every time where they've got to because that's what they pay for so that is the main difference between the to me the quality you know a professional qualification and an amateur qualification okay so we can you can proceed with your with the rest of the talk okay lovely yeah you probably gathered um that i framed most of my pictures and presentation in a talk is going to be very important and some software that i've actually used is on one effect although i've got the 209 version i've actually updated recently to the the latest version um but the on one sort of suite of software can do quite a bit but again it's in my notes and you know you can look it up and see um you know what you might find useful to you but this is just an example of the borders um where you can choose actually in on one effect but the thing is it's not a fixed border it gives you an idea then you can change the size and how it actually uh works on a picture so you've got everything under your control and you can change the color everything to make the picture work so this is a few examples and as you can see so very simple border on on these and also you can reverse the borders sometimes they become you might call this more of a negative border but you can make it a positive border if if you want to uh and again here just give you some uh examples how you know that the border works again the different techniques something i often do is um and i talk about it quite a bit is if i've got a picture and i've made a frame going around the edge of it i would duplicate that particular layer and then drag it in in this case 80 so you've got an inner frame and it can work quite well around the picture and this and also what you can do here i've added um a bit of uh texture to the picture as well but i've almost got a frame within a frame within a frame and you can go you know do it as often as you actually like here got a fairly game just completely different technique um with a sort of a heavier frame around the picture and then an inner frame as well here again you'll try to match the frame to the the picture and and as you see i was looking for um an overlap and almost an overlay from my original picture over the frame just to almost tone it down still like i do admit uh still life is i think one of the hardest things to do and if you go online you put still life to me i wasn't finding many not very good work from people and i think because it is so difficult to get it right so this is my effort but i do something a bit different what i actually do is i take a photograph of a vars against a white backdrop the flower here is is one of my flattened flowers my pressed flowers and then i combine them in photoshop add different background layers so it's actually been made rather than just a single picture and you can come up with things completely different and i do agree this doesn't quite work but it you know you can do it so i got the press so a photograph of a flower i found some red and white blocks on some old card and i use that and another thing with this and so leading to the qualifications as well it's nice sometimes to actually make a panel up so you see this picture i could produce say you know say half a dozen pictures just on this theme so it and you might find one that you actually like the best and they just follow in exactly the same formula again something different using a gearing just to sort of bring in a pressed flower with a fairly sort of dark backdrop and again these are being put together afterwards different frames again um a frame within a frame you've got to you've got a very again ordinary solid white frame around the pitch and then you've got a broken paper frame within the image as well i mentioned about making mistakes in photography and this is a again i did this picture um again as a still life exercise and there's some software called um flood that i'll give some information on my notes and you can actually get it free from the manufacturer so it's an official copy called flood again i don't know if any of you have actually used it yet so the reflection is using this software called flood still didn't like it but then i put it to topaz studio 2 and came up with this result and to me within looking at as almost an advertisement that would work much better so i did that picture i didn't like it and this was pure experiment and and it came out like that and and you know i was happy with that and again adding heavy textures to a still life so okay i had a photograph of the vars i photograph the flowers and then i put heavy texture over the top of the picture but again another one of my trade secrets um the end of last year when i tied them i found an old box buried in our garden and i thought that'll make a very good backdrop so what i actually did with this picture was again i don't know i did use a tripod this time on this particular picture i underexposed my picture by forced up i.e it was very dark then i used my torch to illuminate it and that that was the effect i got very very simple just using a torch for uh to illuminate i do it i probably took about a dozen photographs trying different light and um probably you know different time i actually illuminated but to me that's the magic of photography flowers in insect this is my overlap to a certain extent with between flowers and insect you might call this insect on flowers and that i was aiming at but again as a professional body um you know i mean you've probably got all the equipment and i don't you've probably got all the dedicated flash gun but my cannon flash gun packed up and i bought this it's um a um ham nor 600 rt quite a powerful flash gun but my old canon flash gun took about two days to recharge so i took a picture i'd wait two days before i could take another picture with this particular flat recycles in one and a half seconds so it's a bit quicker than two days and then this the other thing i made up is the reflectors for the my flash gun i made loads of differently and funnily enough they all work and nearly everything i all these i actually made up there's another one that i'm not shooting about 400 asa about f-16 so i've got very good depth of field and very good illumination to the subject and all the pictures you can see are all taken using this uh setup very pictorial again it's not a natural history picture and it's just trying to make the image more creative and this is what the magic of learning this sort of flower photography i would never have seen insects and this is using the 105 mil macro and using my flash gun something i would never have done a couple of years ago and the magic of photography i took a photograph of the flower i thought lovely colors and when i put it on the computer the the the fly was actually there i never saw it and i call this picture the lookout and again a very traditional picture nothing nothing special but again something is new to me and and i can assure you even if you didn't have a flask on on a bright day using a you know 105 millimeter macro or any macro lens you could get a picture like this something i've never done before and trying to make my pictures a bit bit more pictorial relying on color color reflection around the bee in this case and here again the flower was bright and that was the main thing although the bee plays a major part then it was the flower that i'd like the lighting on to sort of fit into my set subject um again you're not worried because this isn't say and not a natural history picture it's just a picture for your own enjoyment so if anything gets overexposed around the picture it doesn't matter it's a personal picture which you know again i like it and i gotta bring back my tetris all right not everybody's cup of tea basically a texture is a picture it could be a picture of rust wallpaper paving slabs anything and you put it over the picture and again change the blending mode or the opacity to create again almost a grainy type of picture but this is the magic of flower photography again i mentioned earlier about heavy rain gives you the best light i was taking the photograph of the sort of the the water droplets the water droplets again the insect landed and i got a picture but just the magic of seeing the color on the wings of the insect and i do it man i did a lot of research for my talks and looking at a magazine i saw a pitch and i do admit fairly similar to this i thought well that's giving me idea i'll wait for it to you know stop raining i'll go and try and find a lady but obviously most of the time the ladybugs are always facing the wrong way and you can't get your picture but i went out again half an hour later and this ladybug just walked onto the leaf exactly in the right position and i got my picture but to me again it's a personal picture but it really sort of sums up what i'm trying to get out of my flower photography and this is the shield bug another one of my favorite uh insects and again a insect that i wouldn't have seen two years ago but you the magic of looking around in insect and just look at its feet look at they're not called boots but they look like boots to me again something i wouldn't have done a couple of years ago and you see the quality of the depth of field with with using 105 millimeter there at f16 or around that area you might even go up to f20 it doesn't really matter but you can see you know it gives that particular depth to the the picture uh i just mentioned this actually photo stacking i don't photo stack i can photostat but i'm too lazy to get around to doing it but basically you can do a two-step photo stack you could photograph the front and you can photograph the back so that you don't have to have you know a hundred different photo stacking images but photo stacking is an art in its own right but photo stacking in photoshop is very easy and in my notes it'll tell you and give you examples how easy it actually is to photo stack close-ups even closer okay then um i showed you my sort of big brother flash gun this is a smaller hammer going flashcards i thought well if i'm going on a holiday somewhere i don't want to take the bigger flash go so i bought this again again half price from a camera shop in mint condition and you know it's great to you but look at the bottom lens i'm using it it's a very specialist len and i didn't being a canon person i didn't even know it existed a canon mp 65 millimeter one to five macro lens the uh the five end the flowers virtually touching the front of the lens and again it's very difficult to lens to you and i'll finish the first half just some very quick examples that i actually need to expand on but this was um i think it's called an ornamental cabbage some close-ups of of that used in this particular lens and again i i do admit i actually hand held these because i was using my flash gun and again i i was shooting i think for again 400 sa at f16 so i didn't really need the tripod and even with the up to say two or three times macro i i found it easier just resting my arm on a table rather than setting up a tripod and as you can see all these have worked quite well but again it's another magic thing to see and do as i've got all my pictures um in the freezer that you know get ready to doing some real close-ups of them again you'll see a picture of this it it almost creates to me almost sort of filled like patterns again just close up on one color so that's end of part one um do you want a break now uh i guess you can walk right in because it's already three quarters of an hour is it what it shouldn't be so we go straight in okay yeah go straight in yes yeah no problem so part two um using software okay i mentioned about using uh photoshop but layers and blending i i know a lot of professional people sort of take this sorry okay sorry carry on okay yeah i know what's being professional photographers and a lot of people in your group will know this inside out but um using layers and using blending images this will talk about it briefly earlier but basically in photoshop and i know as i said it applies in all the other software affinity they've all got these blending mode and it's a trial and error thing to see which actually works out so this is how uh just some random pictures i i chose when i put this together to just to give you some idea so blending mode using color dodge and again you go through trying different ones different images using overlay it just brings different ideas as a a sandwich basically in photoshop and combining images again it doesn't always work this was the difference that i tried on these two pictures it didn't work so i thought well try something different tried multiply and and that seemed to work a bit better but it you know it's just a trial and error situation like a kaleidoscope this again another thing that is quite easy to do but you must start off with a squat in photoshop a square image or square area and apply your rotation to the very center of that square and again nothing mind-boggling most of these are these are taken at 60 degrees you can do it at different degrees if you like so again it's it's quite easy to do but all these are on transparent layers so it means you can combine them together merge them and then bring them in at different sizes and create any patterns again for advertising quite a useful technique and again you'll have my white background if you want to and you can try different bits of software on the particular picture and going back sorry okay okay sorry some people are coming in and putting on the mic please keep your mics off okay you can add an edge as as well but again this this technique is is endless and i call this playing people say is this photography but again you know that's something to look into but also another technique um i've probably hinted on earlier is a sort of step down technique where i copy the pitch and then reduce it say 95 90 85 and gradually make it smaller and smaller in in the screen again it's just endless number of combinations what you can actually do another bit in uh photoshop again it's this is it my instructions and then settings of this are in my notes as well so you can go through quite easily but okay these settings and what you use are in photoshop meso10 radio blur twirl and and then you use um imi flip the image horizontally and and that's the basically the effect they're quite popular at the moment these designs but they're endless but i go one step further so this is the type of picture you actually get so that's okay but then i do it i'll bring my flowers in so just to try you know sort of different techniques blending my flower in with this uh technique and it's endless so i did this picture okay so um as a next step from this but then i wanted to go one stage further with this and last night i actually added a flower on this just to gain almost to follow through with the rest of the picture um flaming pepper this is the software that i mentioned to you about this is free if you go on the website a flaming pair and go down to i can't know what they call their old software this is available free this particular software and this is what it actually does it gives reflections water looks looks you know 100 realistic and you can change the horizon line and you can change you know the um patterns in the water as as well again it's just endless you can sort of play with this particular technique and it's coming up with the right subject that actually suits the subject you see sort of the difference that you've seen in these uh few images this software was available quite popular a few years ago called redfield fractalist and it's still available online and this is some of the pictures that you can produce using this technique but recently i came across this spectral art software by company called dixie pixel so it's twenty dollars um and this is the very similar effect to fractality but again you can you can do what you want again i've actually added flood to this as as well but gain edges and working all on this particular software and you've got all these settings and you produce the picture however you want to let's just say just endless and also you can go from your still life that i started off that i wasn't very happy i'm happy with so i just game brought it in into this software and just made a different type picture again you can have like a the white line treatment in this software or you can actually have a black line as well this is some well-known software the nik software again fairly universal and i actually use it for my hdr more for sharpening than and then possibly so with the sort of original picture there's using this you know the hdr treatment but it's not obvious and you don't always have to have the um it's a 100 it could be 50 40 or whatever and also from this into a mono image um with this also worked for an hdr mono conversion that to me looks fairly real but also with it you can change your original picture using this hdr high dynamic range in nick and there it is so so just gives a bit more depth to the picture and the same applies to this the original picture and in nick hdr that it just gives a bit more depth to the picture so this is the other one i mentioned earlier to you about stove parts toka studio two um basically you select you know the shapes and the different things the picture would do so there's the original picture and within this software um you can add look uh look category and change and also you uh choose a particular subject so you've got that at hand and it is a bit of um sort of hunting for the the correct one that you like and that's again i think still think that's useful but you do have some of your favorite so this is just the the simply soft um image electricity and there's hundreds of these two and they're all named as as well that you can actually choose and you can blend these in using the blending modes in your picture um like i've done here so i brought back the original picture and blended it with the original one and you can come up with again all sort of different types of pictures and now for something completely different again knocking producing these images you always come up with bits and pieces you don't know what to do with so you put them together sometimes and just make something look fairly um surreal and this was in our garden just amazing how plant life can look almost like um i say it's almost like a a bird-like face and this uh i couldn't believe a snapdragon i don't know um what the actual name is when i saw this look like if there was a pair of hands in front of the face said no now take it away that looks bit better than me so what do i think now yeah it looks like an elephant so you know again you've gone from that snap part of the snapdragon to make it look like an elephant also come out with different this is the ornamental cabbage again i just put it in a ball and again i did a set of sort of six different images actually on this but also with these images it's up with a plan try rotation blurring them just to try something different and once you've done that you can mirror your picture again come up with a duplicate picture so again it's very abstract but again it just gives you something to work on and here again another project of this i only end up with one picture uh i wanted to use this sort of stepping down i showed you earlier with the picture and then sort of incorporate that into the backdrop and again the other ones i did didn't work by so this one works quite well for me but then you've got your pictures what you do you put them in a postage stamp easy really isn't it so trees this game this follows on exactly from the idea of trying to do something with your pressed flowers so there are some of my pressed flowers or pressed leaves or whatever so when i pressed them i saw oh they look like trees so what you do you put them in a almost a landscape environment again loads of ideas on this um and there's a forget me not put on a bit of rust this is some close-up picture of the backdrop that i mentioned earlier to me it looked like a landscape so it was a good chance to actually bring my pressed leaf into this over sudo landscape environment again trying something different i thought yeah that that looked okay that works and quite nice but i needed something to scale the picture so i added the person on a bike it still looked too bright to me so i reversed it as a and i think that works um much better copy and press flowers method two okay then um again came across this just by mistake it's a as a dual cell uh light 10 watt here mains operated and you can also buy a 20 watt one as as well but also i mentioned about color this gives a neutral white at 4 000 k so it now it's quite good for copying so this is my um small light box you see not one and a half times the the size of a banknote so there it is put together so two methods using available light with the flower on top or or using the light box on its own so this is the comparison using it so the one on on the left is just with the light and and the one on the right is using my light box you could do this on a bigger light box as well if you want to do so that is not a problem but the problem with the image on the right if you've got anything using the the light box only if you've got anything that's dense obviously it won't shine through so you know that is a flaw using this particular method but if you use your light again it will then bring in uh illumination to the sort of the denser part of the picture so there it is now um if that was taken with the light box only the middle bit being thicker would have been completely black but no the the light is just illuminated a part of it and again exactly the same you wouldn't have done that with the the light box on its own softly soft again there's another personal thing that i actually use forget the settings they don't really mean anything but i'm basically i'm using goes in blur mono noise and lowering the opacity and this is my effect and you can see sort of the softness that you can actually get with a picture like this and to me a cane is a bit different these would probably actually make much better prints and they are projected but it just gives you an idea of the the technique that i'm actually using and closer work quite well on this particular um subject and this has gained a straight shot taken locally a couple of years ago um and again the the the warmth of the top of this picture the sun was just coming through uh and shining against the cotswold stone wall so that's what gave it its color and again the last couple of pictures in this small section uh show so using the light box earlier with this uh technique and that's that one i think works probably uh particularly well and and going back full circle to a certain extent going into my um saying mentioning about fine art at the beginning okay remember we're coming to the end of the talk tonight and some images try one again i mentioned about different ideas the last few images show um how i've actually used flowers to really illustrate a theme again a very simple photograph again using the poppies the flower in the sort of fairly sort of deep moving uh picture here just gain a small poppy's a real poppy and some small poppy crosses to illustrate the picture again i i mentioned about keep on um lowering the size of the picture again you can see on the right and left hand side well sort of reduce the picture size by sort of 95 90 85 etc but if you look quickly it's not so apparent it seemed to almost bring the picture in and again i've used the flight the flood software at the the bottom of the image and again following on from a theme you know just with a spitfire flying across a graveyard and obviously the movement on the the poppies and obviously the links between obviously our country uh and your country obviously um through the wars um obviously very poignant to a certain extent so the last image you're going to see tonight is this one again coming up with this this theme of a lonely soldier just walking through a field of poppies and flanders field etc and something kevin mentioned earlier about the ideas for flowers but as i said my sort of flower talk was based on um against trying to show them in completely different ways so uh the the end i always like to mention is no insect or flares were harmed in the making of this this talk i say notes on the talk will be available at the weekend so time to stop sharing you

Channel: MIPP Malta

Views: 1,959

Keywords: Malta, Malta Institute of Professional Photography, MIPP, Tuition, Photo courses, photography, panel, submission, portrait, landscape, macro, nikon, canon, sony, fuji, creative, judge, competition, travel, covid, art, photography class, photography basics, photography series, photography tutorials, photography challenge, photography poses, nature photography, landscape photography, long exposure, dance, dancing photography, street, street photography, architecture, architecture photography, food

Id: lb1Dsjqcob4

Length: 61min 31sec (3691 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021