…because life isn’t always easy.
I’m not fond of drama in real life but I do love a dramatic blended image… and high school sports.
Tried to make my own lightning at first, but decided that was too time consuming. Googled smoke and lightning brushes and downloaded some free brushes, installed them in Photoshop CC 2015. BOOM! …much easier.
Every image can use improvement and I think an action image would be a good candidate for a blend using these brushes.
Next time…
You can’t beat “free,” right? Ashe Designs had a free overlay offer that included a football with shattered glass around it. I thought the football in the overlay appeared too cheesy so dragged it over my image and erased the football out. Copied and sized the glass only results and added a zoom effect to one of the layers to show movement. Plain bleacher background is now jazzed up. Ta-dah!! Love free things…
Here’s the link: Ashe Design.com Freebies
Live simply, dream big, be grateful…
Foreground image was taken in the studio with accent lights on both sides of the face and one light to camera right. Background looked too dull and I wanted to “jazz it up” . Many hours of blood sweat and tears take place on and off the court so decided to try blending the subject with a background photo of the gym. Still too blah…
I tried a haze in the background, but not enough texture for me. What to do, what to do? Found some free smoke brushes and played around? Here is the link to the free brushes found at a site called ucreative.com. (Click on link) Made a transparency layer to apply the smoke to the background, erasing if necessary and another transparency layer on top of the image. Go Lancers!
A high school athlete will have accumulated countless hours on the bus to and from events by the time he or she is a senior in high school. Players share in the joy or pain that comes with a post-game bus ride that allows the them to absorb one of the key life lessons of sports: Appreciate and accept the moment…
As an athlete…
As a coach…
As a fan…
As a parent…
It goes by so fast.
It was getting towards dusk and the plan was to light the subject from both sides, but it was at the end of the session and the batteries were getting tired. Hence, one flash fired and the other didn’t. After looking through the images I decided this one was worth saving after all. I’m a sucker for drama.
Canon 5D Mark 3, 580 EX 2 speedlight, 3.0 at 1/125, ISO 400
While available light is easy to use, I don’t like how it blows out the sky when doing backlit portraits. This portrait setup involved strong sunlight as it lowered in the sky, football field light, and two Canon 580 EX II speedlights with Cyber-sync radio triggers. Speedlights were on both sides of the subject to outline and define his strong features at manual 1/4 and about 10 feet away from subject. Camera angle low to give the portrait a feeling of strength and size while keeping the field light in view. Canon 5D Mark 3 settings were ISO100 at 8.0 and 1/125. Post processing involved basic adjustments in Lightroom and HDR in Photoshop with a few other tweaks.
We were so fortunate to have such a beautiful evening with no wind and pleasant temps. Go Bulldogs!! Yeah, life is good…
RJMeyerArts 