alive for 365 – week 4 – cute phone box « Neil vN

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alive for 365 – week 4 – cute phone box

January 28, 2010

I am sure the designer of this phone box intended for it to have this distinctly cartoon-like face. When I saw this, it instantly drew my attention. It really looked to me like a constantly-surprised wide-eyed face. Something out of Disney’s animated movie, Beauty & The Beast. This then is my choice then for this week’s entry in the Alive for 365 project.

The photograph had some Photoshop work done to it to give it much more snap than the straight-out-of-the-camera version. Oh, and the lighting was bounce flash with available light …

The technical stuff, like the settings, aren’t really that important. 1/125 @ f5.6 @ 500 ISO … Canon 24-70mm f2.8 @ 45mm doesn’t tell us much more that we can’t already discern from the image.

The light on this cute phone box face was a mixture of flash and some available light. But mostly flash. I bounced flash off to my side. The direction of my light can be figured out from the angle of the shadow. Did I use a black foamie thing? Nope .. this was taken in 2005, well before I became that sophisticated in my lighting to use a piece of black foam on my speedlight. Here I just flagged my speedlight using my hand.

Here is the image straight from the RAW converter .. slightly bland looking.

I punched it up using mostly the Topaz filter – specifically the Spicify adjustment.

The first layer is a retouching layer where I use the Clone Tool and Healing Tool to remove any dust spots and marks on the wall that I didn’t like. I duplicated that layer and raw Imagenomic’s Portraiture on it to create a softer image. And on a copy of that layer, I ran Spicify at the default settings, and at 60% opacity. I then copied the Portraiture layer and at 15% opacity, used it in Overlay Blending mode.

(If you do order Topaz Adjust (or any Topaz product) through that affiliate link, use the discount code ‘planetneil’ for a 15% discount off any item in your shopping cart.)

All of this adds up to give this simple image more impact:

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10 Comments »

Can you expand on your use of Portriture Plug In,
Do you use it a lot? Is it part of your everyday workflow?

I have downloaded the free trail but have not have too much sucess using it on actual portraits.

Comment by CMARX — January 29, 2010 @ 7:31 am
ditto…..

Comment by xlphotog — January 29, 2010 @ 10:13 am
Regarding the use of the Portraiture Plug-In, here is an article on the editing and retouching of portraits, and how I use Portraiture and other Photoshop plug-ins.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — January 29, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
It does look like a comical face!! Your post processing definately gives the image more punch!

Comment by Kathy Marciante — January 29, 2010 @ 3:03 pm
That switch plate is distracting. I’d remove it to make the image more striking.

Comment by Christian — January 30, 2010 @ 1:25 pm
Christian .. I do agree, and I did try to edit it out. However, with the change in shading across the textured wall, it turned into a larger job than I had time or energy for. Sometimes life’s just too short for some things. : -)

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — January 30, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
Neil,
One question I have is regarding your ISO choices for your shots…
I see you use ‘in-between’ ISO’s like 500, 640, 1250, etc. on a lot of your shots.
Can you elaborate on that, please?
From my film days, my mind sticks with 200, 400, 800.
I was just wondering how those ISO’s get chosen for the exposure and why.

Thanks!
Bill

Comment by Bill W. — January 31, 2010 @ 1:35 am
Bill, in the digital world, 400 ISO has no more precedence than 320 ISO or 500 ISO.
Here’s a screengrab from an editing session of a wedding I had photographed a while back:

And as I mention there, I do indeed use the entire range of ISO settings available to me. It does appear though that I use the ‘full stop’ indents more than the inbetweenie settings.

So why 500 ISO? No real reason. Since I was using TTL flash, the exposure would’ve been the same, whether I had used 400 ISO.

That’s just where the roulette wheel stopped. 500 ISO.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — February 1, 2010 @ 5:51 am
Bill,
I think Neil basically explained it, but I wanted to add something further. Since we’re dealing with a range of sensitivity in the sensor of a digital camera and not the set definite ISO speed of film (though technically you could push and pull the film during developing) it’s a great idea to take into consideration the third of a stop increments that digital allows for proper exposure.

Sometimes this incremental change in ISO is a specific tool in getting the proper exposure when you want to use a specific f-stop and shutter speed. While we can adjust things in a RAW format, the better we are at straight out of camera (SOOC) exposure, the easier our work flow. The third of stop increments of ISO allow for this.

Comment by Stephanie Zettl — February 1, 2010 @ 7:59 am
Shoe , neem my ver terug na my ouma hulle op die plaas , hulle het ook so model gehad.

Comment by Bertie — February 5, 2010 @ 6:14 pm