An Intense Learning Experience

I spent last week confined to my office staring at my computer monitor, miscellaneous papers, and books. My goal was a self-inflicted intense week of learning. I have been gathering tons of information on Photoshop techniques, flash techniques, and HDR techniques over the course of the past few months, and it was time to finally educate myself and then practice what I learned.

Courthouse Towers Region, Arches National Park, Utah © Jay Goodrich

My week began learning how to use Tony Kuyper’s Luminosity Masks, Dodge/Burn techniques, Saturation Masks, and Web Sharpening actions. Tony is an extremely talented photographer residing in Arizona and his images of the desert are just breathtaking. He will send you all of his photoshop tutorials plus the actions that create them for an unbelievably small donation to his PayPal account. Once you get the hang of working with the Luminosity Masks they will quickly become part of your workflow. In a nutshell, almost all of Tony’s processes allow for self-feathering tonal selections of your images. This makes it really easy to adjust contrast, brightness, color, and saturation. It’s pretty amazing.

Tony Kuyper Masks and Photomatix Image © Jay Goodrich

Photomatix Only Image © Jay Goodrich

Kitchen of Eagle House with Portable Flash © Jay Goodrich

Once I got the hang of using Tony’s tutorials, I wanted to better learn how to use Photomatix Pro for HDR image processing. I love the imagery that fellow photographers Tony Sweet and Trey Ratcliff are producing using Photomatix, but I was looking for a less dreamy approach to my imagery. Basically, I want to incorporate this innovative software into my landscapes and commercial architecture work. I needed to figure out how to achieve that, and it took some working through. I finally came up with a solution through a combination of Photomatix and Tony Kuyper’s Saturation Masks.

As if that wasn’t enough, the next item on my list was an architecture lighting technique used by many of the photographers from Strobist. Strobist is a website/blog that is dedicated to “Learning how to use off-camera flash with your dSLR to take your photos to the next level. Or the next ten levels. Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about how to more effectively use your small speedlights…” There are many photographers on this site using portable off-camera flash to light an architectural space. The attraction here for me is the portability feature and the speed at which you can light an architectural interior. After a bunch of reading and studying, I came up with this image of my kitchen as a final exam. Currently, I only own three flashes, no wireless triggers other than the infrared built-in to the flashes, and no gels, but I figured I could make do to at least see if I liked the possibilities. As the photos here demonstrate, I do, and now I need to purchase some more gear. This is just another tool to add to my repertoire to allow me to photograph any subject that catches my eye.

Finally, I wanted to test out the new 5D Mark II that I borrowed from Canon. Although I am not sure if this camera will make it into my equipment base, I am really interested in this tool for its video capability. The photos are pretty amazing too. I am noticing a bit more contrast in the images than I am used to coming from Canon’s dSLRs, but I am glad to see it. I have always felt that digital images have lacked contrast in their initial capture. Here is a shot that I took at the Teva games in Vail and, of course, using what I have learned over the course of this past week, I have applied some of Tony’s masking techniques. I will include more images and some video from my test in an upcoming equipment post.

The moral of my story lies within the fact that you can teach an old dog new tricks, so why not refresh the skill set every so often. I am looking forward to utilizing my new-found knowledge with every upcoming project. I have already decided on some additional upcoming learning experiences for myself, and they are going to include learning Apple’s Final Cut Pro, creating really large prints- 40 by 60 inchers from 10 megapixels, and more creative speedlite imagery. Stay tuned!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 9:52 pm. It is filed under photography tips and tagged with contrast, help, how-to, imagery, inspiration, links, look, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.