Photo Extremist: Creative Photography Tutorials, Photoshop Tutorials, Instructional Videos

6Dec/092

Photoshop Flesh, Skin, and Body Parts Onto Eachother Using Photo Manipulation

One thing that I have recently been getting into is using photo manipulation to glue human body parts onto one another. I've done two pieces so far, (one is a picture of several body parts including arms, mouths, eyes, faces and flesh thrown together, and the other one is handsome hands).

Photoshop Time lapse of "Handsome Hands", 40 minutes boild down into 1:

Handsome Hands (Photoshop time lapse)
Uploaded by PhotoExtremist. - Arts and animation videos.

I would like to do an online art collaboration with several people, each adding their own body parts into a massive piece of jumbled up flesh. Leave a comment if you are up to it

Tips for this type of photo manipulation:
Use the same amount of light, white balance, exposure, and F Stop in all shots to make all the photographs the same color; use layer masks with big, soft brushes to gradually blend the arm into the finger. Another thing I did was I shot this on a white background to make it easier.

Tagged as: art, cs4, experimental art, experimental human art, flesh, human, human art, photoshop, photoshop phot manipulations, skin 2 Comments

23Nov/0917

Long Exposure Effects for the Experimental Photographer

Light Painting

Drawing with light is extremely easy and fun. Simply wait until night time, put your camera on a tripod, and set your exposure for long periods of time (these are usually 5 seconds-5minutes), your aperture, and ISO. I usually use f4 at iso 200 or 400, but these settings need to be determined differently according to each situation. Then, DRAW! There are many different light toys that create different effects. Things that have been used before include sparklers, glow sticks, flashlights, maglights, fire/torches, RGB strips, Christmas lights, illuminated cell phones, iPods, laser pens, and of course, any kind of LED.

Scribble with laser pen. In this example the laser pen was stroked up and down the models face. 1 sec. / f 3.5 / ISO 200

City lights from a far away distance. The camera slightly moved while the focus ring moved along with it so the light gradually becomes out of focus. 1.3 sec. / f 6.3 / iso20

30 second exposure of tiny LED finger ring lights. I was holding them the entire time, but because I was not illuminated, you can't see me in this picture.

7 second exposure / f22 / ISO 200. This is just a standard long exposure of a sparkler in motion. Also keep in mind that if you use a flash, the person holding the sparkler will show up in the photograph. Regular sparks from fires can also make amazing shots, especially if you go in and out of focus during the exposure.

Keep in mind that you can trace objects with sparklers (or LEDs or any kind of lightsource). This was a car traced with a sparkler. 7 minutes long, ISO 100, F/18,

You can also use flashlights (or strobes/flashes) to illuminate your scene. Simply turn on your flashlight and start drawing/painting/spraying light onto the scene to illuminate it in the dark. If you have an extremely powerful flashlight, it is very well possible to illuminate entire landscapes in the dark as well!

You can also use any kind of flashlights (or strobes/flashes) to illuminate your scene. Simply turn on your flashlight and start drawing/painting/spraying light onto the scene to illuminate it in the dark. If you have an extremely powerful flashlight, it is very well possible to illuminate entire landscapes in the dark as well!

If you have a tripod on you, and your in an amusement park or some type of fair grounds, long exposures of rides look very good if taken in long exposure mode. Ferris wheels also work very well.

If you have a tripod on you, and you're in an amusement park or some type of fair grounds, long exposures of rides look pretty sweet. Ferris wheels also work very well.

You can also make silhouettes of people by taking a long exposure while you move some sort of light behind them. Blue glow sticks were used in this example.

This was a long exposure of Christmas tree lights. It was a one second exposure. The reason why the lines look so straight is because the camera was jerked in a fast motion.

These are called physiograms. Simply attach an LED to a string and let it hand from the ceiling, turn off all the lights, take a long exposure, and give the LED a little tap, and this will be the outcome!

These are called physiograms. Simply attach Maglight to a string and let it hang from the ceiling, turn off all the lights, take a long exposure, and give the LED a little tap. When the long exposure is complete, this is what it will look like.

Again, LEDs are just great. You can trace objects with them, just like you can with sparklers! (Although, of course, use sparklers outside!)

Again, LEDs are just great. You can trace objects with them, just like you can with sparklers. I used the finger LEDs in this example

You can also make flash stencils! Put cardboard infront of your flash like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/duaneschoon/2999296569/

You can also make flash stencils! Just put cardboard in front of your flash with a design cut out in it, and you're ready to go.

If you are interested in incorporating long exposure effects and light painting into your night photography, I would highly recommend "Night Photography & Light Painting" by Brent Pearson, especially if you are light painting landscapes.

Long Exposures During Day

You can also create long exposures of landscapes during they DAY by using an extremely dark filter that attaches to the front of your lens. The filter you can use is a B+W filter, an ND400 filter (I'd recommend this one), or even an Infrared filter. Taking long exposures during the day is useful for creating foggy/ghostly seascapes, blurring clouds, blurring water and waterfalls, and even removing people from a scene (if they are constantly moving).

Long exposures are exelent for moving ocean waters splashing against rocks. The longer exposure = the more misty the scene looks.

Long exposures are excellent for moving ocean waters splashing against rocks. The longer exposure = the more misty the water will looks A lot of people use an ND400 Filter for long exposures during the day. It allows 30 second+ exposure times.

Long exposure, during the day. Silver Falls, Oregon. Taken with an IR filter.

Long exposures of waterfalls create that smooth/soothing effect. Silver Falls, Oregon. This looks blue and white because it was taken with an Infrared Filter attached to my camera lens.

Manual blend of 2 exposures. 20 seconds for the water and 5 seconds for the sky. The long exposure is made possible by the use of a ND400 filter.

Star Trails

These are a great challenge, and the best part is, you don't know what the photograph will look like until after you've taken it. You will need to have your camera on a tripod, manually focus to infinite, use the widest aperture you can and a low ISO. If you want to take 20+ minute long exposure, you will need to buy a cable release made for your specific DSLR. However, taking super long exposures can cause a lot of noise in images. An alternative wave to doing star trails is to take a bunch of 30 second exposures and then overlap all the images on your computer using a program called Startrails. There is a minor drawback to this method: for every 30 seconds of an exposed photo, there is a 1-2 second time period where the camera isn't taking an exposure. This makes it so there are little tiny spots not visible in your star trail. It is a very minor drawback, but ultimately it is a better method because there isn't as much noise.

20 minute exposure at F 3.5. ISO 200 or 400.

Other Fun Long Exposures

A creative use for the ND filter would be to take a picture of a watch or clock. In this 4 minute long exposure you can see each second hand as it moves around the clock.

These eyes were constantly moving while the camera took a 1.5 second exposure. No Photoshop

This was a one second exposure. Half of the exposure the eye was open, then after .5 seconds, the eye was shut. What you see is the eye both open and closed at the same time

This is a long exposure at night time of snow falling! The snow was illuminated with a light, and a tree is in the background. 3 seconds.

This is an example of Solargraphy. Solargraphy is the process of taking long exposures with pinhole cameras that last several MONTHS to record the light of the sun. This is a 6 month exposure taken by solarigrafia on Flickr.

There are also other things you can do with long exposure photography. Long exposures during the day allow water and clouds to blur, leafs on a tree will also blur (if there is wind). In addition, you can also take a long exposure in a very crowded city where lots of people are walking, and completely make the crowd invisible by taking a long exposure during that day.

You can also use a long exposure and then fire multiple flashes to light your subject in different ways, and/or to multiply them in number. You can also spin your camera to take perfect straight blurred out lines, or you can zoom in and out with your lens while the exposure is taking place.

Long exposures also come in handy during lightning, simply take a long exposure and wait for the lightning to show up.

The challenge: create a long exposure that has all of the above. Light painting, light spraying, star trails, and lightning; all in one photograph. (Okay, I realize it would be hard to get lightning, but try to include them all if you can

Because long exposure photography is such a large topic, there is only so much I can write in a blog post. If you want to know more information on lights, techniques and effects, check out my Trick Photography and Special Effects eBook. It has over 60 pages of content solely dedicated to light painting techniques and long exposure effects.

Tagged as: B+W, examples, experimental, ir, LED, light, light painting, lights, list, long exposure, nd400, night, photography, pictures, star trails, waterfall 17 Comments

13Nov/0947

42 Reasons Why Nikon (and Canon) Suck

Warning: If you don't have a sense of humor or an open mind, then I would suggest not reading this post and leaving.

Hey! I recently purchased a new Nikon D300s, and I am not satisfied with it. In fact, I'm absolutely disgusted with it! I paid $1800 for this camera, and it can't do any of these basic functions, most of which are just software/firmware things that could be added without any hardware tweaking. Although this list specifically applies to the D300s (because I own it and know what it can/cannot do), a lot of the things apply to almost any digital SLR camera that are produced by Canon, Sony, Fuji.... whatever.

There is no sound detection shutter triggering.
There is no motion detection shutter triggering.
There is no headphone output.
There is no sound metering/VU/Volume/Peak meter in camera.
You can't record audio files.
The only image recording options available are JPG, TIFF, or NEF. The only video formats available are .AVI.
Nikon has limited the frames per second. The camera is capable taking 8fps without an external battery pack, but in order to enable 8fps properly, the camera has to detect that there is a battery grip attached. The only reason why they did this was to make you buy their $200 MD-D10 battery grip.
You can't write your own programs for the camera because the firmware is not open source. The majority of these problems (almost all of them) would be solvable if it was!
You cannot view non-Nikon content in camera on the LCD screen. All images and videos must be taken by a Nikon camera in order to be played back in camera.
It can't meter beyond 30 seconds.
It can't blend multiple exposures in certain, useful ways.
It only can do whole number fps integers (4fps, 5fps, etc) and is unable to use more flexible values, such as 4.2 fps or4.3fps, for example.
It can't do 2 fps and then 3 fps, and then loop that pattern.
You cannot bracket images with user customized integers/values.
The exposure bracketing only allows up to a maximum of 9 stops.
The self-timer only has 2, 5, 10, or 20 seconds available for customization. What if I wanted 8.5 seconds? What if I wanted 40 seconds, or 8.2 hours?
The exposure delay mode can only be set to 1 second.
You cannot properly set the white balance in camera for infrared photography. This feature was available in some older models. Why remove it for no reason?
The file naming system is very limited. It allows only three characters, an underscore, and then the numbers 0001-9999. What if I wanted the file name to have an unlimited amount of characters at the beginning, and then the file number (say 12095356342 (as you can see, it can go past 9999 without being reset to 0001 or no reason)) and then another set of characters, and then the date (a custom variable)? Nope, sorry.
The Active folder function is limited. Yet again, it only allows three numbers to be inserted into the folder name, and then a "D300S" is stuck at the end of the folder name. What if I wanted an unlimited amount of customizable numbers AND letters?
There is no live histogram.
The live horizon only meters the x axis, not the y axis.
The BULB mode is limited. It lets the photographer take an exposure while their finger is pressed on the shutter, but if they wanted to push the shutter once to activate the exposure, and then once again to stop the exposure, they wouldn't be able to do that without buying a cable release or remote.
EV, Exp, and ISO is adjustable only in 1/3 or 1/2 increments.
Accurate exposure times are limited. For example, you cannot set it to 23 seconds. It's either 20 or 25.
It only can write files to be in horizontal orientation. It can write in the EXIF data that it needs rotating, but if you wanted to write the actual file dimensions in vertical orientation, its is impossible.
It's incapable of auto-focus bracketing.
The AF Assist lamp doesn't always turn on when it's dark, and furthermore, there is no option to turn on the AF Assist lamp at your desire. It is a waste considering how bright and useful the lamp is. It would be nice, efficient, and convenient for the user to simply assign a button that turns on the AF Lamp so you can see in the dark.
The Interval Time Shooting mode is limited. The shortest interval time is one second.
There is no way to tell how large the file size is for any of the pictures in camera.
There is no option to view the pictures in whatever orientation your camera is in. It's either "ROTATE TALL" or a not.
You cannot install different sized crystals inside of the camera body that are in front of the sensor to bend light in certain artistic ways (this one is a joke)
You cannot auto-focus the lens from Focus Point A to Focus Point B while it is taking an exposure.
The exposure compensation only goes up or down to maximum of five stops.
You cannot easily select groups of images to be deleted simultaneously.
You cannot quickly create a playlist of certain images/videos you want to play while in sideshow mode.
You cannot resize images to smaller sizes. This feature was available in older models.
The repeating flash mode is limited to 1HZ to 50HZ. It's very possible to program the camera to be .5HZ.
There is an option that allows you to trim movie clips from the beginning, and another option to trim movie clips from the end, however if you wanted to do both at the same time, there is no option available. You have to trim the beginning, which makes a new copy of the file, then trim the end of that copy, which makes another copy. In the end you have 3 copies.
You cannot create a movie file of a long exposure being recorded in real time.
You cannot set the shutter speed or ISO for movies.
You cannot set custom values for each flash burst in the flash burst mode
You can't watch videos in slideshow mode.
The AGC (Audio Gain Control) is horrible. People have been complaining all over the internet about their frustration of it not being able to switch the AGC to manual. If the firmware was just open source, engineers wouldn't have to go out of their way to build pre-amp adapters to make up for the camera manufacture's failure of a job.

A lot of the things listed above are already capable of being enabled in the camera, however Nikon decided to just disable them for the hell of it. This leaves all the photographers who want more control over there camera in the dark, with no other option but to suffer.

There is only one solution at this point, and that is The Frankencamera. The Frankencamera will allow users to write their own programs for the camera and use it as they please, however it is currently difficult to get one of these, because it is still in development and being prepared for public use... Plus it is extremely bulky.

The Nikon D300s' competitor, the Canon 7D, fixes some of the problems... but I don't own one so I can't tell you which problems it fixes and which ones it doesn't. I'm assuming that it only can fix a few. Based on a video review I saw of it, the only things better than the Nikon is that it can take longer video footage, it's 18 megapixels compared to 12, and it can meter the y axis horizon (ohhhh. big deal)

People seem to make jokes about this post and say things like "well this camera can't make me toast in the morning, so therefore it is useless!". That is because the camera wasn't designed to make toast and it would need new hardware in order to do that and would be ridiculous to begin with. Most of the items that I have listed above do not require any new hardware to be installed into the camera. I am simply trying to point out the un-met potential DSLR cameras have.

There are so many creative (and very practical/useful ) features that could be implemented into cameras that are not being taken advantage of. Take a look at this theoretical open source DSLR that implements some of the features listed above, and hopefully you will come to some conclusion on why I hate camera companies for not progressing their technology beyond the point of just adding more megapixels and a faster frame-rate each year to their cameras. If they would just make the camera open source, the technology could progress so much faster. They are ruining it for everyone.

Is there anything you would like me to add to the list? If there is, write a comment below, please

11/16/2010 UPDATE: Yes, I researched the camera before buying it, and beileve it or not, I felt that it was the best one on the market for me. However, that does not mean that I like it or am even the happy with it. At most, I am truly disappointed with the camera's available on the market today. If you gave me the most high-end, top-notch flagship camera from Nikon or Canon, I still would not be impressed because of how impractical it is. If the firmware was open source, however.... then that would be completely different story, and paying 3+ grand for a camera WOULD be worth it. I'm surprised Nikon and Canon even give us the option to change the shutter speed and ISO, considering all the other hundreds of other features they are holding back.

Please write a comment below and tell me what you think about this