Grand Tetons Fine Art: Nature and the Mountains

Grand Teton National Park has amazing drives and views of the mountains. I love nature, and learning how to capture it was wonderful. I love taking pictures of people in front of scenery, such as family and friends; but sometimes it’s nice to have a beautiful image of the earth just to hang on your wall, especially during the gloomy winter days. The skies were mostly gray, but the clouds parted later on, giving me a wonderful blue sky to work with.

I had to adjust my f-stop a lot in order to change my aperture for the various shots I wanted. I got some close-up shots, (see my post titled Grand Tetons Fine Art: Macro Photography), which made me need to change my f-stop. See the captions for exact specs of each photo.

I did minor editing with the levels on all of these images, and some I needed to boost the saturation a little bit as well. Here are the images of mountains that I caught on camera. Let me know what you think.

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend1; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 11:02am; f20; 1/200; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-Stream-Slowshutter; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 7:24am; f20; 1/5; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend5; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 11:06am; f22; 1/200; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MooseWilsonRoad-LakeReflection2; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 6:35am; f11; 1/200; ISO 1600

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-FallCreekFalls5; Palisades-Bonneville County, ID; 5/17/14; 7:30pm; f11; 1/6; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-JennyLakeLoop; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 1:12pm; f22; 1/200; ISO 400

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend5; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 12:16pm; f22; 1/200; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-FallCreekFalls1; Palisades-Bonneville County, ID; 5/17/14; 7:25pm; f8; 1/250; ISO 800

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend-WideAngleLens1; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 11:15am; f22; 1/200; ISO 800

Macro Photography: Water Drop Reflection

I have fallen in love with macro photography! Learning how to take pictures of a reflection in a tiny water drop was a ton of fun. I was so excited when I got crisp images. I had a lot of fun with the purple flowers, trying to get really close and crisp reflections. See my other post on Macro Photography: Close-Up Greenery for a few more pictures of the water drop reflection type of images.

For this, I realized how important it was to use an auxiliary light. That light helped the water drop get that reflection. Without it, the image didn’t turn out quite right and didn’t give it that reflection. I was also using an 18-135mm lens with one macro extension tube. It made getting really close shots possible.

AliciaBingham-WaterDropReflection2; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/40; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-WaterDropReflection12; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f8; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-WaterDropReflection9; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f8; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-WaterDropReflection8; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/25; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-WaterDropReflection5; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/40; ISO 100

Macro Photography: Close-Up Greenery

I took a lot of pictures of greenery, all of them close-up, perhaps to be considered as macro photography. I used an 18-135mm lens with a macro extension tube to help get extremely close up. I had never used one properly before, so it was fun to learn how to do it and what settings to use on my camera for it.

A lot of these shots were just fun to get because I love greenery. I love flowers, water, and things that are full of life; so this shoot was extremely fun for me. I didn’t want to stop once I learned how to get a crisp, clear shot. I used spot metering on my camera; and in order to light it properly, I used an auxiliary light for most of these shots. Lights make all the difference, which was another new thing to me.

I did minor editing on all of these, playing with the levels and the saturation a little bit. I also sharpened a few of them a little bit where needed.

AliciaBingham-Macro-LilyPad4; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/25; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-Macro-PinkleFlower6; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-Macro-OrangeFlower1; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f8; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-Macro-PinkleFlower9; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/60; ISO 200

Light Painting: Still Life Photography

This was my first time trying out light painting. I took a lot of shots of various still life set-ups and objects, painting the light on with a flashlight. It was tons of fun and surprised me at how cool it looked. It took some practice, but I’m pretty pleased with a lot of my images.

One of the most important aspects of light painting is making sure the room I’m in is completely dark. Also, I had to make sure I didn’t over-do it. I had the tendency to shine the flashlight on the subject the entire time, but those images ended up being more blown out and had less contrast. The best images were ones that I would let sit in the dark for a lot of the time and flash the light only part of the time.

I did minor editing on almost every image, bumping up the saturation and adjusting the lighting so it looked exactly how I wanted it to look. These are the results I got:

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-BlueJewel; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f16; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-Cameras; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f16; 15″; ISO 200. I used two separate photos for this and placed one over the other, using the Difference overlay to get those colors. One image had red and the other was plain silver. I liked the effect this one gave me.

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-Cowboy2; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f20; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-Fruitbowl; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f16; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-PhotoandJewels; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f20; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-DuckToy1; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f20; 15″; ISO 200

Portrait Session 1: Graduates!

Hey everyone, check out these images I captured during our in-class model shoot! We shot this as if we were shooting pictures for graduating seniors, and our models were fantastic! They didn’t need much direction and posed for the camera like naturals.

During this shoot, we were learning about speed lights and how to work our cameras with shooting in various types of lighting. It took some time, but I’m fairly pleased with the final products of this shoot.

I shot in manual mode, and I made sure my white balance was set to flash, otherwise the coloring went way off. I had to adjust the aperture and shutter priory with each new location. We used the transparent portion of our reflector to help spread the light out.

Also, I finally created a watermark. I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it, so it’s a simple one for now. I may update it later. Let me know what you think about these pictures. Enjoy!

 

Changed eye color

Enhanced

Enhanced

Before editing

After editing, brightened with levels

Simple enhancements

Lightly enhanced

Enhanced

Enhanced, brightened eyes

 

 

Photo Book: The Finished Product

Here is my final photo book spread. I spent a lot of time trying to choose the right pictures for the book, as well as choosing which images I wanted to put in what order. I decided on what I thought were my best photos, and went from there. I paid the extra money to have a full bleed cover because I thought it would look better, and I really like how it turned out. It’s a beautiful image edited as an HDR using Photomatix and Photoshop.

As for the design, I went with simple rather than anything too fancy. I had some dark images, so that’s why I chose to go with the darker theme, in order to let the images fade off into the black background better. However, I didn’t want it to be too dark, so I added the white borders on some images. Choosing fonts was a difficult thing for me, but eventually I found two that I liked, that I thought worked well together.

If you’re interested in seeing the whole thing, click the image to see a PDF of my photo book, or click the link below to see it. Enjoy!

 

AliciaBingham_PhotoBook_Final

Photoshop Tilt Shift Tutorial

Photoshop Tilt Shift Tutorial by Alicia Bingham

I’ve created a tutorial in Photoshop, showing you how to tilt shift an image, giving it an optical illusion of being a miniature world. It’s a pretty neat effect that usually can only be achieved with a super expensive lens. However, tilt shifting in Photoshop allows the user to fake it, creating that same illusion without spending all the money for the lens.

I got the idea from this website. I really loved the images they had as examples. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take as awesome of photos as this person did, but my hope is that someday I’ll be able to do so. I loved this effect since I first saw the images. It’s pretty sweet.

The image I used for this was taken March 21, 2014 from the Hinckley building at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg.

 

 

Here’s the PDF version of my tutorial, for those who just want a layout of the simple steps rather than watching the video.

Tilt Shift PDF Tutorial_Alicia Bingham

 

Photo Book – Full Book Draft

 

Here’s a link to the PDF of all the pages in my photo book. Ignore the extra bleed on the table of contents page. That no longer exists, since there won’t be a page to the left there. The back cover is simply black right now, but the first page is what my cover will look like. Enjoy!

ABingham_Full_Photo_Book

Fine Art Image

Here’s a copy of my fine art image I chose to print as a 20×30 inch poster. Someone from my class brought the jewels to Bannack, and I brought the bowl. I set them on the red chair and tried to get a good angle while composing this image. When I edited it, I simply did it in Photoshop, using masks to only take down the saturation from the background, leaving the full color in the foreground. I also used a smart sharpen and then masked it all out. Then I reduced the opacity on the brush and brought back some of the sharpening in on the jewels to make them stand out more. Finally, I adjusted the levels a little bit to increase the contrast.

After

Before

 

 

 

 

Photo Specs:
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Jewels_and_Chair_Before; 20×30 inch poster print; 2/14/14; 1:01pm; Bannack Ghost Town; f/5.0; 1/15; Canon T3i; Manual; Sharpening; Levels; Saturation.

Bannack Best – Bannack Ghost Town

Out of all the images I took, I really like many of the ones I chose for my previous posts; but here are my other favorites. I wanted to include one of each of the models as well. I did some minor editing on the first one, softening up her skin a little and adjusting the levels on the background to add more contrast. On all the rest I did absolutely no editing as of yet. They were almost all taken in manual mode, with a few exceptions.

 

 

 

 

Photo Specs:

AliciaBingham_Bannack_Portrait_3; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 1:38pm; f/5.6; 1/200; Canon T3i
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Portrait_4; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 1:57pm; f/5.6; 1/100; Canon T3i
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Portrait_5; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 1:51pm; f/5.6; 1/60; Canon T3i
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Portrait_6; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 2:25pm; f/5.6; 1/250; Canon T3i
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Portrait_7; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 2:58pm; f/5.6; 1/250; Canon T3i
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Portrait_8; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 2:09pm; f/5.6; 1/200; Canon T3i