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Photography and Photoshop bio picture

Terry VanderHeiden, Photographer and Photoshop Artist

I have always been a big fan of black and white images.  I would spend hours in the darkroom attempting to produce the black and white photograph that I imagined in my head. With digital cameras, that all changed.

When camera's went digital they lost something when it came to producing black and white images. Maybe it was that technology was trying to get the color right first, who knows. However, with new software that I have been working with and some new printing capabilities, true black and white prints can be created once again. Check out some of my wedding images above to see some new (old) techniques in black and white. 

Family Portraits – Now is a good time!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Posted in Photography, Portrait

Braze family 2010

As September arrives today, we all know that Autumn is just around the corner. Fall is the perfect time to get the family together for a family portrait. The warm fall colors combined with the extended daylight still in effect, even a weekday afternoon could be a good time for a portrait to be made.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a headstart on my family portraits by photographing the Braze family out in Livermore.  This is the second portrait of this family that I have created. The first was back in 2003. In 2003 the family dressed in all the same tones – this year they decided to go with a “color pallet”,  dark, cool colors, with jeans.  This creates a casual look and one that is quite a bit more comfortable for the family during the shoot. When photographing in the Autumn season, remember that the backgrounds are going to be browns, yellows and oranges.  So dress so that you don’t blend into the background.

Getting set up.

As we started, I always try to get a shot of a gray card to help me balance the color later in Lightroom or Photoshop.  The family is never posed for this shot, so sometimes it yields an amusing look.

The oldest son is entering the military soon so Mom decided it would be a good time to get the family together once again for a family portrait. There are a some important times in a families’ life that are excellent times to get a family portrait created. The first time is when the babies can sit up on their own, next is when the youngest is about four years old. Four years old is by far the best time to photograph kids since they are rarely embarrassed by doing something silly but yet can take direction well.

The next most important time to make a family portrait is just before the kids are off to collage or military. Once the the kids leave the house it is very hard to get everyone together. The next time is when there are grandchildren. This is a great time to show all the generations and extended family. If you are thinking of getting the family together for a portrait – send me an email to make an appointment terry@imagelight.com of give me a call 510-538-6333

Here are a few from the Braze family shoot.

Here is the 2003 version of the family portrait.

Family portrait in 2003

And here is the 2010 version:

Braze family 2010

by Terry

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Watermarks In Photoshop CS5

Thursday, August 26, 2010 Posted in Photoshop, Wedding

Watermark added to exported photograph

New to Photoshop CS5 is the watermarking feature.  It’s pretty easy to use – in fact I recorded a small video on how to use it on your photographs. It is a simple way to watermark your images for use on the web or to send to a prospective client.

The one trick to using the watermarking feature is that it may not have come with your version of Photoshop CS5 – you can go here to download it.  It is called the Watermark Panel Installer. the panel installer

Once you download it, check out the read me file on how to get Photoshop to recognize it – it should only take a minute or so.  Now watch the video to see how to use it.

Watermark in Photoshop CS5 from Terry VanderHeiden on Vimeo.

by Terry

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Photographing Metal

Tuesday, August 24, 2010 Posted in Photography, Photoshop

Sometimes a challenge for photographers is photographing metal objects.  You can take as many steps as you can in the lighting of your metallic product, but and easy substitute is found right inside photoshop.

Keeping backgrounds and foreground reflections white will help render metal cleanly.

In the shot above, my client wanted an angle where depth was prominent in the photograph.  However, when you shoot a piece like this, you can have a lot of issues with the metal reflections.  Placing white cards around and setting up rim lights to add definition will help but unless you have a lot of time on the set you are going to have to leave something for post production.

Product and model stripped out of the background

The first thing to do was to strip the product out of the background.  I did this by using the pen tool in photoshop and then the refine edge tool to select out the hair and eyelashes.

Next, I had to “fix” some of the chrome areas.  I did this by selecting out the panels of chrome separately, putting them on to their own layer and filling them with a gradient of gray.  I then added some noise under the filter menu and added some motion blur to blur the noise to make tiny streaks like brushed metal.

Added color to the lights, added shadows

I added color to the lights by creating a small selection filling it with color and blurring, then pulling the opacity back on the layer. That allows you to see through the color and makes it look translucent.

Before and after Photoshop work

Some 28 layers later, all the chrome was done and the product was ready for the client.

by Terry

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Shooting Puppies

Monday, August 16, 2010 Posted in Nature, Photography

Just about every photographer knows that photographing puppies can be a blast.  You just have to be a little patient and maybe use some peanut butter or bacon grease.

Recently I was asked to photograph a Golden Retriever puppy, Kayla.  So I brought along the ceramic tub my wife bought from Pottery Barn.  I didn’t see a use for the tub in our living room but it worked great as a prop for the six-week old, very feisty, puppy.

Here are few shots from my last “Puppy Shoot”.

Here is what happens when you try to put the puppy and the big dog in same photo. This is one of my favorites.  I’ll probably take out my client’s legs in the background of the shot.  I love the energy in this one.

by Terry

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Stock Photography – Top Seller

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 Posted in Photography, Photoshop

Here is and image that has been sold several times.  A simple shot of a Martin Guitar on a white background. The internet has several stock agencies that accept work from professional photographers, the one I upload to is IStock. These agencies offer your images up for sale to designers and advertising agencies that don’t want  or can’t budget an assignment to a professional photographer. Your images sit in a library and can be searched by millions of potential buyers. So once it is uploaded you just sit back and wait for the cash to roll in.   Well, not exactly…

In theory , anyone can do this, you don’t have to be a professional photographer. The quality of the images do need to meet specifications of the stock agency that you are working with and many times those are pretty tight restrictions.

Here is how this image started:

Light from right side
Light from left side

The guitar was photographed in the same place with light coming from either side to create a smooth lit surface.  I tried using two lights, but because of reflections, I shot two images and merged them together in Photoshop. I used a simple layer mask to keep the left half of one image and the right half of the other. (see layer sample)  From the sample you can see that I only masked out one part of the guitar since I knew it would be entirely stripped out of it’s background – there was no need to do any more than just the guitar.

Layers with layer mask between

The next step was to strip the guitar out of the background.  One of the big selling features on stock sites is an image that has a path already drawn around it so the designer can easily drop it into their own advertisement. Even though I used white as a background – there was no need to spend time getting the background as white as the foreground.  Even if I did, there would still be detail in the white and in these types of images – nothing at all in the background is best.

Once the image was stripped out – I had to balance the color, enhance the color of the wood top, the neck and the head of the guitar.  I also went in and worked on the knobs to make them appear to have the same light intensity.  I enhanced the contast of the strings and deepened the wood color on the neck to create more contrast on the guitar.

Remove the Martin logo.

Lastly, the stock agency can’t sell the image as readily with the company logo, so the C.F. Martin logo had to be removed. I elected to do that in Photoshop, rather than take a sander to my new guitar.

The agency is also big on sharp photographs with no noise.  So I had to sharpen the entire image and then run a noise filter over it to remove any unwanted artifacts.  The image was finally uploaded and went through the two week approval process and now it earns money, being sold over and over. As a point of reference, I uploaded several images of the guitar from different angles and only this and one other one was excepted.  So getting an image accepted to stock is not a slam dunk.

As fun as this sounds – there are a few drawbacks. One, the images are sold as “royalty free” meaning that the buyer of the image can use it over and over without ever paying for it’s use again.  Therefore, if you decide to place your images in a stock agency – know that you will lose control of that image – so you might want to still keep your very best images for yourself.

by Terry

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Kodachrome’s Last Days

Tuesday, August 3, 2010 Posted in Photography

While I am fully entrenched in digital photography today, I still fondly remember my favorite film, Kodachrome 64.  With an ASA (todays’ term is ISO) of 64 it was quite slow but Kodachrome shooters learned to make do.  Tripods and slow shutter speeds were common place while shooting Kodachrome.

It’s the only film known be the subject of a hit song from Paul Simon back in 1973, titled Kodachrome.

Last year, Kodachrome celebrated it’s 75th birthday and Kodak announcing that it wasn’t going to make the film or support the processing of it any more. Kodak made the last rolls of Kodachrome 64 and as of last year there is only one place on earth that is still processing the film, Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons Kansas.  They will be excepting rolls of film for processing until November 30th, 201, after that – it’s over.

There is a photographer, Steve McCurry,  that was entrusted with the last roll of Kodachrome film and he is finishing up his project of photographing the last things on Kodachrome film.  Check out the story here. There is also a planned documentary of  his last shots as well as images shot on Kodachrome over the last 75 years for a National Geographic special set for early 2011. Kodachrome was the choice of film for numerous National Geographic covers and many images in magazines throughout the 70′s and 80′s.

The value in Kodachrome was that it showed vibrant colors and very low grain and was the first stable color film to supplant black and white films as the film of choice.

I myself shot thousands of rolls of Kodachrome 64 when I first started out and loved the film until it became too difficult to get processed – sending it out and waiting 30+ days for it’s return wasn’t practial for a professional photographer.  But the lyrics of the song still take me back:

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

Well it’s gone now and the mother company, Kodak – did indeed take it away.

Here are a few images I shot very early as a photographer on Kodachrome film:

Big Sur, California - Copyright - Terry VanderHeiden

Sunset over walkway over train tracks, Hayward, CA - Copyright - Terry VanderHeiden

Waterfall Northern California - Copyright - Terry VanderHeiden

If you have any memories of Kodachrome film – feel free to post them here.

by Terry

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Upgrade to Photoshop CS5 Part 5 of 5

Monday, August 2, 2010 Posted in Photoshop

The last of the top five reasons to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 is the Content Aware Fill command. This is found under the drop-down menu inside the fill dialog box.

One of my sister-in-law's photographs of my niece.

Here in this shot is good example of how easy the Content Aware Fill command is to use.  Let’s say we want to take my niece Brittany out of this photograph.

First make a tight selection around what you want to remove.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, close will do.

Go to the Edit menu, pull down and click on Fill.  This dialog will come up and from the contents pulldown menu – choose Content-Aware.  Press OK and watch Photoshop do the work.

While it doesn’t work 100% of the time with all images – it will likely do a pretty good job.  It works so fast – why not try it first.

by Terry

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Upgrade to Photoshop CS5 Part 4 of 5

Thursday, July 29, 2010 Posted in Photoshop

Fourth in a series of reasons to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 is the “Refine Edge” command.

This button is found on the upper tool detail bar when a selection tool is in use.

While the pen tool is considered the best tool for making an accurate selection it has some drawbacks.  In the above photo, I have drawn a path around the parts of the photograph that I need.  By pressing command + return – I can turn that path into a selection.

Notice that such things as arm hairs are not selected because the pen tool make a finite not a blended selection.

By clicking on the Refine Edge button (when a selection tool is in use) you have the ability to take a brush and refine the edge of the selection to keep all those arm hairs and make the selection look real.

This same technique can make selecting hair, trees and other tough to select items a snap.  Give it a try.

I used refine edge to select around the trees when replacing a sky.

by Terry

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Upgrade to Photoshop CS5 Part 3 of 5

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 Posted in Photoshop, Portrait

In this third part of “Why you should upgrade to Photoshop CS5″  I am featuring the “Mixer Brush“.

CS5 now offers the ability to make a painting inside Photoshop and use a photograph as your canvas. This tool can be used with your selection of paint or used to “paint” the colors you already have in a photograph. The new tool found under the brushes tool icon, the Mixer Brush blends color like a real painter would. Along with the Mixer Brush, artists now have a new stock of pressure sensitive brushes to choose from as well.

To see the original photograph of this flower that I started with, go here.

For this demonstration, I used a portrait image as a starting point.  I made a new layer to apply my paint on and started in. You can see in this close up of a screen shot, the new brushes are found in the brush pallet and the Mixer Brush is found under the regular brush in the tool bar. The ability to have lots of control over the paint, color, density, texture and wetness of the paint makes you feel like you are standing over an easel.

In this before and after, you can see the texture of the brush strokes turn a photograph into a stylized painting. With professional photographers all trying to separate themselves from all the newcomers to the photography industry, adding this technique to your arsenal could prove quite valuable.  Keep in mind that it can take hours to learn this technique and even more time to produce realistic painting in Photoshop but the results should be worth it.

by Terry

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Upgrade to Photoshop CS5 Part 2 of 5

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Posted in Photoshop

The second reason you should upgrade to Photoshop CS5 is 64 Bit processing for the Mac.

As a Mac user, Photoshop CS4 only allowed you to use up to four gigs of your RAM, so if you are like me, your computer has a nice amount of RAM in it – you haven’t been able to use it in Photoshop.  Now you can.

Start Photoshop CS5 and go into the Preferences and then go to the Performance tab and move the slider all the way over to the right to use all your RAM. Now your Mac can run with full power in Photoshop CS5.

To give you an example, I was in need of opening several image files at the same time.  Photoshop CS4 would only allow me to open 30 files before it crashed.  I figured if I was going to test out the power – why not give it a real power test. The first thing I did after Photoshop CS5 was loaded is open over 175 files at the same time.  No crashes!

The one downside to operating in 64 bit instead of 32 bit is that not all of my plug-ins were available.  Realizing that not all of the plug in manufactures would be up to speed right away – Photoshop added a work around.

If you have this problem, go to the Applications folder and right click on the icon for Photoshop CS5.  Click Get Info.  In the Get Info pallet – you can click on the check box that will open CS5 as a 32 bit application.  All your plug-ins should be there.  Just do the reverse of that to get back to 64 bit.

by Terry

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