Rough Summer? - D700, 24-70mm
I was wondering in a friends garden yesterday and came upon this poor guy…looks like he had a “Rough Summer”. Even though things were a little rough he seems to still manage a pleasant expression.
Click to view a little larger…
Floating in Pink - D700, 70-200mm
We took a trip last week to visit my niece and see their new home. I always look forward to taking some photos of my great niece and nephew. While we were there we took a trip one afternoon to the local town beach. Hard to loose my great niece in the water with that pink float, guess what color her new room is…PINK is the word for everything. We had a great visit and got some good family shots. Here’s my great niece mugging for the camera…notice the pink polish on the nails.
Lilly Giggles - D700, 70-200
Jingles Jerr Spurs - D700, 70-200
I know, it says “Cowboy Portraits – Part 2” and the lead image is a boot…not just any boot. This is Jingles Jerr’s boot and spur, see the attachments on the spur, yes, they do jingle…you pretty much know where Jingle’s is most of the time. He was very gracious to take some time to let me get a boot and spur image.
More portraits in the complete post here…including Jingles. Continue reading
Sargent Hochbauer - D700, 70-200
I’ve been wanting to work on my portrait skills more lately and I got an opportunity to go to a local Cowboy Action Shooting group’s shoot this Saturday. Well the light was not the greatest, a good time to refine some lighting techniques to say the least… Continue reading
Dreaming in the Clouds - D700, Lensbaby Composer
Experimenting with the Totally Rad – Dirty Pictures plug-in using some of my own textures. This is a combination of a Lensbaby Composer image of my niece and a bunch of blended texture cloud layers using Dirty Pictures. Don’t ask for the exact formula, I was just going with what felt right and did NOT write it all down…radial blurs, flipped layers, soft light and screen blending modes and a few masks just to recant some of the process. Oh yeah, through in a little Nik Color Efex Pro too…
I think I’ll just float off to dreamland for a while…
Cherokee Jon Slaughter - Totally Rad, After
I was reading some good posts on Tony Sweet and John Barclay’s blogs on using the Photoshop plug-in Dirty Pictures by Totally Rad. Well I’m always looking for good plug-ins and adding textures to images really appeals to me. Sooooo of course I went out to the Totally Rad site and took a look. Liked what I saw so I sprung for the plug-in. The image is from a session I did with a local Cowboy Action Shooting group and it seemed like Dirty Pictures was just what it needed… What do you think??? I’m liking the textured image a lot more…
Cherokee Jon Slaughter - Before Totally Rad
Here’s the image of Cherokee Jon Slaughter before he got the Dirty Pictures Totally Rad treatment. Click on images to view larger.
Cherokee John Slaughter - Detailed
Just saw a really neat technique posted on Scott Kelby’s blog by his Guest Blog Wednesday person. It’s by Calvin Hollywood a Photoshop Artist located in Heidelberg, Germany. Calvin does some nice stuff and showed a technique he uses to add detail to his images, no he didn’t use any Topaz plug-ins, though you might be able to get the same or similar look using Topaz. His technique just uses PS, blend modes and the surface blur filter…I’m not going to repeat his info. Just go to the posting “It’s Guest Blog Wednesday featuring Calvin Hollywood” at Scot Kelby’s blog and view the video in the posting.
Click on the image in my posting to see it larger and check out Calvin’s neat technique…see you can do all this stuff without plug-ins or you can get some Topaz…
Sorry John, for making you look like a mean character but this image was screaming for this effect.
Letort Lawman and Lady
Some more images from the “Mid Winter’s Ball” photo-shoot, couples this time…all fine folks.
Professor Tinker and Saddie Silks
Sgt. Hochbauer and Dances With Toe Shoes
Jingles Jerr and Bonnie B Good
Some of the images work better in sepia but some of them really need color…as you can see in the “Jingles Jerr & Bonnie B Good ” image. Just wouldn’t be the same in sepia now would it.
No, that’s not their real names…it’s their alias/handle they use in the cowboy action shooting group.
Click on the smaller image to view larger.
Missy - D700, 70-200 f/2.8 @ f/11
Here’s another shot from the Mid Winter’s Ball shoot…this is Missy striking a pose. Did some post production work on this one using Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Silver Efex Pro.
Click on the image to view larger…
Cherokee Jon Slaughter - sepia
Tuscarora Slim - sepia
I’ve been wanting to do some character portrait images for a while … a friend does cowboy action shooting and they get together over the summer for the matches. Recently they had their “Mid-Winter’s Ball” at a local restaurant so I offered to shoot some photos of the group if they were interested. Everyone comes dressed in their finest cowboy outfits for the dinner and they looked great. I set up some lights and a backdrop and with a little posing assistance from Penny (one of the group) I had a good time and got some fun shots. These are a few of the images that I have processed…more to come later.
Here are the color versions of the images above…Click on the images to view larger.
Cherokee Jon Slaughter - color
Tuscarora Slim - color