From 'Crappy' to 'Sappy'...

Well, what's the most important event at a wedding ceremony? The exchanging of vows? The official commitment made for a lifetime?

No!!

It's the kiss!! Really. People sit through an hour or so (well, 10 minutes in this case) of jabber and formalities, but what they really want to see is the kiss.

So, how important is it to catch that moment on camera when you're on the ground, and your secondary shooter is on the second floor running to the back of the chapel to catch the bride and groom as they make their exit? Very!

Well, I 'caught' it for this wedding...



Pretty terrible right out of the box, eh? Well, yeah. But it does not feature the other photographer's flash, too much motion, or awkward faces... So it's workable. Let's see if I can save myself.

Obviously, the picture is too dark. There's also that issue of a little blue flash on the groom's head. The colors in this picture are terrible - the groom is pretty purple-ish (he's pink normally, making editing some photos a real bother), and the veil and dress are extremely 'blah' looking. The photo is also ill-framed. Trying to catch an action shot while indoors and avoiding using flash isn't the easiest thing in the world... So, I was predicting the two to be a little more to the right, but I was wrong.

Really, besides the fact that these two are kissing, this picture is nothing to look at.

However, there is plenty I can do in post.



With extensive tweaking of curves, I got the lightness I wanted. Then a better crop (I always try to shoot wider than I need so I can adjust later), and we're on our way.

Now, this is 'the shot' to get at a wedding... The super-sappy one. So, how do you go about making a crappy pic look sappy? Well, after adjusting the picture to a recognizable one, I brought down the vibrance of the colors a lot and then just gave it a hint of saturation. Then I softened the image... And then we end up with a glowing bride, in a glowing dress with milky-white skin. It did well for the groom, too, as he no longer looks like a Chinese man after drinking one beer. The flash on his head went away by itself... Bonus! I had to be careful when adjusting the curves again - I carefully worked around the higher brightness levels so I wouldn't clip any of the whites or turn all the blacks into a bunch of mush. Pretty good so far.

Now, to 'perfect' the image - to make it poster worthy - I went in with my healing tool and clone stamp and got rid of a bunch of stuff. Just a little mole here and there, a few skin imperfections, a few color artifacts from the camera and the book that the reverend was holding. If you have a sharp eye, you'll also notice I took the lapel microphone off the groom's tux.

And finally... I like vignetting for this kind of thing b/c it puts the focus on the subject. For a shot like this, you don't need the audience or background - like I said, people at this point only care about the couple kissing. But, I actually need vignetting in this case b/c I want the bride to 'glow' like I stated earlier... So, I have to have her contrast against something. Even if it's on the edge of the photo, it is enough contrast to make my subjects 'pop.' However, if you look at the original pic, my framing is terrible. Since the subjects are not centered, I can't just alter the vignetting in post.... I've got to do it myself. I tried using a big brush with low opacity and 0 hardness, but it just wasn't working out. I ended up making a new layer, filling it in with black, then using a 250px feather on an elliptical marquee and deleting the center portion. After that, it was just an issue of adjusting the opacity to suit my tastes. I probably adjusted, thought I was good, saved, closed, then reopened, adjusted, saved, etc. five times! Never really happy with anything. :P

Anyways... I could spend all day adjusting the majority of my pictures - especially the ones I make a lot of changes to. Sometimes you just need to find that spot that is 'good enough' so you can move on and finished digging through the other 960 pictures you took... :P

I shall post more often, I hope! 'Til next time.


Final note: That blue-ish tinge to the picture is Picasa's fault. It does the blue-ish tint to pics in the program itself, which is SUPER ANNOYING, but I guess it does it to web-hosted pics, too. That makes it ULTRA ANNOYING. Maybe I should switch to Flikr for hosting. :(

Working with What You've Got

I've been working on the pictures I've taken at Brian and Gabby's wedding, and I came across this situation I've been in so many times before. I thought it'd be good material for a photo blog, so here we go!

Gabby wanted some pictures of the groomsmen out in front of one of the buildings at the University of Maryland, because this is the school that she went to, and the architecture at Maryland is very much a part of the school's identity. So, I had to have at least one good shot of the guys in front of the building, with its iconic white pillars. However, the building that we choose to shoot in front of had the sun behind it, so all of my subject matter was shot underexposed. In some of the pictures in which the sky was shown, all the color was blown out. In short: I have no good pictures... Or should I say, no 'easy pictures.' I've got to work with what I have.

So, I picked the picture I thought had the guys with the best expressions and heads all turned the right direction.



Obviously, the light is poor, the colors are 'blah,' and the palette is terribly flat. Though the building looks good from far away, this shot is close enough to see some of its 'ugly' - there are big air conditioning units sticking out of the windows, some random lamp in the way. This picture is not 'fixable' - it's time to radically change it.

The first thing I did was experiment a bit with making the photo a composite HDR to liven up the colors. The metering in the original photo, however, was flat, so things were not 'popping' like I wanted. I made the HDR, and then adjusted the tone curves even further. I still had to lighten the image without destroying much data, as the white bricks in the picture very easily became a sheet of white that almost lost itself in the columns. So here is where I made the decision to go black and white - at least partially. The only good hints of color I wanted to keep were in the pockets (and tie) of the groomsmen. So, I clipped those bits out of that layer and put them on top.

The composition of the shot was also lacking; however, luckily I shot wide, and this was easily fixed with a crop and some adjustment. I wanted to accentuate the columns and run them parallel to the guys, so I slightly rotated the picture and brought the width in a lot. It makes the building look more imposing, and the guys look taller - a little metaphorical, but you can't help but to notice subconsciously.

Lots of fiddling around later, it became time to clean the photo up. Those air-con units are hideous and that piece of lamp poking out from behind the pillar is very out of place. I did a lot of clone stamping, some blurring and even some layer clipping and grafting... The result, if I do say so myself, came out quite well... Even under zoom scrutiny. Still, I would have liked to see unbarred windows, but I did not have a good reference shot to borrow one from. :(

Anyways... The result is quite bold:


High contrast (it's an addiction), that 'hint' of color, excellent clarity, and a picture rescued from some bad light conditions.

2009 Special Edition Ninja 250R

I recently had the opportunity to take some pictures of my friend's 250R. He's quite the hyper-anal man about maintenance, and though he's already selling the bike, I wanted to get a chance to take some pics of it while it may as well be brand new. It's so much cleaner than my bike that parked next to each other, I'm sure any unknowing person would think his bike were the faster one. Anyways, here's the few I liked the most.

Finally finished the logo!

After hours and hours of thinking, staring, sketching, deciding, consulting, revising and more staring, the logo for Xu Studios is finished!

Simple, kinda clever and very appropriate for the goals I have for the group. Time to get to work on the webpage!