You can’t beat the classic 50mm lens when it comes to making an intimate portrait. This one was taken using the 50mm 1.4 EF lens from Canon. Its quite a jump in price from the “plastic fantastic” 50mm 1.8 but worth the jump if you can afford it. The 50mm 1.8 can be used to create some pretty sweet photos considering its price-point (around $100 USD). What you will find though is that the 1.4 has a much more pleasing bokeh; the increased number of blades in the lens is probably a factor there. Attached to a APS-C type camera (like the 7D used here) can mean that you lose a bit of that intimacy and certainly you will find it a bit cramped in a café type location. In that case the 35mm might be a better bet.

When all is said done you really do need to have some kind of 50mm lens in your kit. Start with the 1.8 (Nikon have a similarly priced one too) and then work your way up. My only negative with the 50mm 1.4 is that it’s not weather-sealed; you’ll have to go all the way up to the expensive Canon 50mm 1.2 model to get that.

For this photo I processed it using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion, then blending it out to bring back some colour. I’m not a huge fan of the selective colouring, which is to my mind often over used. I guess it’s just a matter of taste at the end of the day.

By the way I tried this exact portrait with the 50mm attached to a Canon 5D and preferred this one in the end!

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS6
• Canon 7D
• Canon 50mm f1.4
• Nik Silver Efex Pro 2
• Adobe Lightroom 4

Topaz Clean is a cool Photoshop plug-in that you can use to create a kind of painterly or art effect to an image. There way I see it the plug-in alters the edges of objects by either removing detail or turning a straight line into a wiggly one. The effect is easier to see than explain! I find it works best on nature or landscapes. When you use it on an animal with feathers or fur you can create a very interesting look. On this bird (a black shag) you can see in the feathers look more pronounced. As you might guess its one of those effects that can be over-used. More advice is to push it to extremes and then use a mask to paint-in just the bits that work.

Download it from Topaz and give it a whirl; you will love it!

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS6
• Canon 7D
• Canon 70-200mm f4 (with 1.4 extender)
• Topaz Clean
• Adobe Lightroom 4

Uninvited dinner guest,
Forcing us to set another place,
Demanding to be the centre,
Overwhelming, centre of everything,
All focus drawn to magnetic personality,
You had always been there, hiding in the shadows,
The worm in our apple of life,
Who will you visit next?
Who will feel your hot sticky breath on their neck?
The yellowing stench, your odorous person,
Uninvited. Unplanned. Unwanted. Unstoppable.
Leave us to our simple familial pleasures,
Your place is empty now – why must you always take another?
The memory of your brutish presence,
Hanging about, loitering in our moments, sullying our lives,
Now we know your name,
Byword for unjust suffering and pitiless death.
The door latched fast, curtains drawn;
We wonder – will you come?
Will you break in on us?
Do not come. Do not knock.
For you are hated.

I’m trying different points of view (POV) these days; getting low on close. Here I am with my tripod and a wide-angled lens attached to my Canon 7D. I hope that this creates some drama and intensity. Shutter speed is important here, too. In the sense that I wanted the shutter slow enough to have enough motion blur on the waves to convey movement. The combination of setting sun and sea give the whole scene a nice colour feel. I took quite a few shots on this day, some of them processed as black and white.

Checkout my Flickr stream and gallery to see more

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS5
• Canon 7D
• Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4
• Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5

I’ve been experimenting with taking photos after sunset; exploring the shadows.   It is fascinating me that the clouds hold so much colour even after the sun has set.  You have to look really had to find these colours and that’s where Photoshop can help to “dig out the magic”.   Recently I’ve using Luminosity masking in Photoshop to adjust Levels in only the shadow areas.  Doing this can make those colours appear more saturated.   It does take a little more patience, as you need to paint back and forward, slowly building it up.   A Wacom tablet, though not mandatory makes the process more natural and I think results in a better-finished product.

You will get a little noise on these shadow photos but the way I see it, noise is the new grain

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS5
• Canon 7D
• Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4
• Canon EF 24-105mm f4

I will remember you.
Through jandal summers,
Meat pies heated and forgotten,
Through bare-footed wanderings,
I will remember you.

Your mail keeps coming,
cat meows for answers,
Rolling-over – you’€™re not there,
I vowed to never cease loving you, to keep it unbroken
I will remember you.

Frosted morning, clear days
Cathedral rubble and a thousand broken dreams,
Gravity tried to crush my love
I will remember you.

I tried to sing a waiata,
I tried to say a prayer,
The silly joke you told, the dish broken,
I rushed the words out; I spoke too quickly
I will remember you.

Through my heart won’€™t stop breaking,
My eyes run rivers, may hands won’€™t stop shaking,
And your seat is left unfilled
I will remember you.

Bridges fall apart, buildings to dust,
Many leaves tell of seasons gone.
I will remember, I will never forget You.

You

It’s all about capturing the moment; what else really matters when it comes to photography?  This was such a lovely moment, the first dance as husband and wife.   The wedding day can be so busy with the bridal party socializing, greeting guests and of course, getting their photograph taken!   At the end of the day, bride and groom finally get a few moments together.  Its on the dance floor with everyone watching but still you can feel quite alone as you take those few minutes to whisper words of love to each other.  Well, I’m a romantic so I assume that is what they are doing!

I took this photo with the 24-104 f4 lens; a great lens for weddings but in this case I needed to increase the ISO to get the final shot.  More and more these days, I’m throwing caution to the wind by increasing that ISO way up.  I shot quite a few images at this wedding with 6400 ISO and the final result was really nice.  Of course sometimes you need a little extra “help” in Photoshop to remove some noise but I’d rather do that and get the shot.

I’d love to capture your special moments, too.   Contact me if you’re getting married, engaged or having a baby and I’ll be there!

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS5
• Noiseware – Use the coupon “STEWARTBAIRD” at the checkout to get a 15% discount.  This coupon will work for all of Imagenomic’s great products!
• Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4
• Canon EF 24-105mm f4

I can’t believe I have not blogged for almost two weeks! I guess life has been pretty crazy but in a good way. I have been shooting a lot; don’t worry about that!
The weather is going from summer to autumn here and that means wind, rain with a few trees changing colours. Flowers are the one constant though. Here we get them even in the middle of winter. I like to find them in unusual, common places. If you look for them, you will find them. Sometimes that means peeking-over the fence…
These little beauties just appeared one day on our driveway. Pretty breathtaking I reckon and not needing any trickery to make them look perfect. I exposed for the flower only, letting the background fall into the black. The shade is the place to get these lovely flowers; the direct sunlight is just plain brutal on flowers.

I was thinking back over the last year or so and I noticed that most of my top photos (in terms of views) have all been from “random” shots. I mean those “spur of the moment” ones, where you have the camera on you and you see something interesting. I do go on a lot of planned outings and these are worthwhile too. But there is something to ne said for keeping your eyes open, ready to pounce.

These days most cell phones have great cameras as well and these can be all you need. The key I think is to be intentional and keep on looking. So, here I am a passenger on the way to the city and of course I’€™ve got my DSLR with me! The harbour looked peaceful after the storm. I only had a few seconds to get this…. My shutter speed wasn’t really fast enough; there was a little motion blur in the capture.

I learnt this technique a long time ago – take a flaw and make it a feature. In this image that meant increase the glow or blur and make it a bit more mysterious…. Did it work? I think so!

These tools helped me work the magic:

• Adobe Photoshop CS5
• Noiseware – Use the coupon “STEWARTBAIRD” at the checkout to get a 15% discount.  This coupon will work for all of Imagenomic’s great products!
• Canon 7D
• Nik Software Color Efex Pro 4
• Canon EF 24-105mm f4

I have a lot of photography and creative apps on my iPhone – over 60 at the last count.   Of these I use a core 20 or so every week.   I thought it might be helpful for people starting-out with their iPhone photography to share some of my own insights.I use Instagram as my main sharing tool for iPhone photographs, only occasional to do post to Flickr from my device.So, in this example I’ll use a few of my favourite ones:  SnapSeed, Dynamic Light, Image Blender and ToonPaint.  The ley is to blend multiple images together (you don’t really need to do this but it does make the final result much more interesting).Here is the original image:

As you can see its pretty flat and boring.   I wanted to turn it into a kind of painting and post to Instagram so the first thing to do was load it into SnapSeed and crop as square.  That’s all I did here.   Then I saved it out to the photo library.  By the way I almost always save each step in this way rather then directly sending it to another app.  I think that was is more flexible.Next I loaded the image into one of my favourite apps – Dynamic Light.  In here I used the default image effect and cranked it way-up (see the photo here):

Now the clouds have a little more contrast and expression.  This image is pretty good as is but I want a painting kind of look so I’ll  keep tweaking.   Again I save this one out.Next I opened the image into ToonPaint.  This app is used to create fun little cartoons from your photos but I use it mostly as a basic “edge finder”.    Look at my settings below and see how I increased the Edges to bring-out more cloud detail.   I save the image back; actually it looks pretty cool too:

Almost over…. Now I run the Image Blender app.  As the name suggests it blends together two images using the familiar ones you’ll find in Photoshop.  You can only blend two at a time but that’s fine on a phone!See below how I’ve loaded the colour version (from Dynamic Light) on the left and ToonPaint one on the right.  I merged these together using Overlay:

I could have stopped here instead I’ll do one more little trick; double-up the image.   This is easy as all I need to do is load the same image (the one I saved after the Blender step) in both right and left sides.  Then I blend with Overlay:

This increases contrast and therefore saturation, adding that little extra “feel” to the picture.I know this sounds like a lot of work but it only took 3 minutes on the train to create it.  A lot less than it took to write this Blog post!I hope this helps and gets you into more “fiddling” on your phone.

Here is the final result:

Tools used:

• iPhone 4S
• Snapseed
• Dynamic Light
• ToonPaint
• Image Blender