Hi everyone-

I am rounding out the thunderstorm shoot with Savanah and Shay today with something I think they're going to like. They're big fans of the movie Twilight, which was a big influence in this shoot, so I thought I'd up the game and make their very own Twilight poster.

In today's post there are three images. The SOOC raw image, the fully edited image and then the movie poster shot. The fully edited image took me about 3 hours to complete.

Its not that hard to create just very time consuming because of all the detail work that must go into it. I have a few presets that I have created or found that I like to use in Lightroom. Basically similar to an action in Photoshop, its a quick way to make a batch of images look the same with a file that tells the program what to make it look like. Thats probably not a great explanation.

So first I crop the iamge to what I like, then I clean it up. Remove dust, dirt, objects I don't like etc. Once that is done then I retouch the main subjects. That is the easy part.

The next step is what is time consuming. I basically do a few layers (at least) of local contrast enhancement. There is a ton of detail work to be done here so it takes a while.

Once that is done I play around with color and anything else I would like to change in the image. In this case I added lightning. Once that is done then I might have to go back and revisit some of the earlier steps again to blend the added elements nicely.

Once the editing is done I'll go back and look at it again and fix anything that doesn't look right, then I might add some textures or try to create an over all look or feel to the image. That could be another big project. but in these images it was pretty simple.

I hope that racks the surface of how these images were created.

Also today is the Skywatch Friday post so be sure to click the link and visit all the blogs for more great images involving the skies! Click here:----> SKYWATCH FRIDAY

Have a great day!

This is straight out of the camera:



This is the edited version:



And finally, the movie poster:

Hi everyone-

Well I am here today patiently waiting for the snow that probably isn't going to come. Between staring out the window and going through all of my information for my tax preparations I took a break and looked through some images from the rodeo I posted last week.

There are a few more i wanted to share. I hope they aren't getting old. I am a huge rodeo fan so if it gets to be too much just let me know.

Today's image is of a clown distracting a bull so the cowboy can safely recover from being bucked off and get to safety.

It's a dangerous but very important job, one I have a lot of respect for. It takes lot to put yourself in between something that is pissed off and out weighs you by many tons and someone who is laying on the ground depending on you to by them the time to get out of Dodge.

I also wanted to address a question that Woody posed yesterday in the comments section. He asked what my thoughts were on shooting RAW vs JPG or some other form of image.

Initially I rejected RAW, as many did, out of fear. What is it, what do I do with it, etc... But once I read enough about the 'wonders of RAW' I decided to try it out. What happened next was simply amazing. Of course the first thing I thought was why haven't I been using this for 2 years!?!

Using the RAW format has revolutionized my images. I strive to get the shot right in the field but that does not always happen. In the days of JPG or film, what you got was what you got. You had to make it work, do the best you could with post processing or scrap it altogether.

Now I can essentially re expose my image in photoshop by using the RAW converter. I can do it globally or I can process the image several times and make more local corrections or changes and the blend them together in photoshop later.

The possibilities are endless. I am not an expert be any stretch of the imagination in the use of the RAW converter or even everything I can accomplish with this format and tools. But doing the few things that I do know how to do is really unbelieveable.

So to answer your question simply I think RAW is the way to go. But there are a few complicators to just making an blanket statement like that... Fisrt off is that RAW files are a lot bigger than what you are using now so they will eat up storage space quicker. And secondly the Photoshop RAW converter now supports jpg images.

This means that you can now do things to jpg's that you couldn't before, at least easily. So now you have to decide what you want to use. Keep in mind that quality wise there is no comparison, RAW is the way to go.

If I am shooting for a client, or shooting on one of my trips for the purpose of creating images I always shoot in RAW. If I am shooting a fire, I might consider shooting jpg. (most of those images are not going to be printed huge) However I don't do it that often. I normally do that to conserve space if I am running out of memory.

I do shoot in jpg mode when we're on vacation and are just taking "Hey we were here type of shots".

Like I said I am not an expert in all things RAW, but those are just my thoughts. If anyone has anything to add please feel free to do so.

Hope that was helpful. Have a great day!