DiNG

Here’s the before and after shots from one of my photos from my recent trip to Cornwall.

As a photographer I’m not fastidious about ‘getting everything in camera’, and I don’t mind a bit of photoshopping for the sake of art. I’m keen to practise most aspects of photography to score something that looks good. No-one is going to stop technology, and consequently, I like to keep my eye in with different post production techniques, even if it’s more for practise than getting jaw dropping results.

To be honest I was happy with the original shot. Jamie O, one of Supersaturated’s riders from the Plymouth university surf team, getting stuck into one of his “best rides of his life!” (Quote form Jamie himself)

As normal in a UK photoshoot, the clouds look obviously flat and vibrancy of the photo is a typical 50 shades of grey! therefore It can’t harm to give it a make over, right?

I knew what I wanted whilst out on the water as i’d already taken some well exposed photos of the moody looking clouds, with a vision of doing sky replacement on some of my shots. Adding to the sense that this surf session was a event of nature. Storms brewing and all that.

The following steps form the Photoshop treatment that i took:

Add new sky. Mask with a gradient. Position over old sky. Tidy mask around wave with soft brush. Lower opacity. Alter with curves and contrast. Lower saturation of whole image. Add layer for sunbeams by isolating highlights and using radial blur. Masking unwanted sunbeams. Converting to softlight. Add guassian blur to sunbeams. Add seagul.

Photo taken from wetsuit with a Nikon D7000 with 50mm 1.8mm (in a surf waterhousing which i don’t name as it’s a shite company).

Gimmicky as it maybe, there’s much fun to be had with long exposure and wire wool.

I had a trial run a few days before this shot to hone the settings. The dark hours definitely out weigh the daylight ones so it’s always nice to experiment around with a tripod and fire.

The essence of it is that you get some wire wool from a DIY store, fluff it up a little, Stuff it into an eggwhisk, light it and take shot.

Shot exposure is between 15 and 30 seconds for maximum effect, in this shot i’ve jammed the apperture as closed as i can (f22) so that the lights in the background have that star effect. Don’t even think about doing these shots without a tripod.

Finally to get the portrait aspect of this shot I had to use a high powered flash to compensate for the high aperture. Set in front of the subject in a diffuser box and flashed once during the 30 secs exposure by manual trigger.

Post, i had to clean up some double exposure over the shirt where the spinning whisk looked like it was coming through, other than that it’s all done in camera with one shot.

Gimmicky, but fun.

See a few more from this shoot here

Had a nice little shoot yesterday with some Parkour athletes.

This is probably my pick of the pack although plenty more to see here

Based from a lighting set up mastered by Joey. L (rad as hell photographer, google him!). but basically rooted in the dutch renaissance painter’s use of lighting. Which is to light the face from the other side of where you’re shooting so as to make the shadows do the work.

This was taken in the middile of the day with a Bowen Flash light set up.

Another screen printing post.

I’m still practicing the technique i talked about last time regarding halftones and fill in colours. Whereas in my last t-shirt for Supersaturated i used the 2nd colour as just a wash effect. This time i’ve used them as fill in colour over the halftone. I’d be interested to see what people think. I’m more comfortable with halftoning now. I can comfortably reg the resolution up to 40-45dpi without screen deteriation. Will be pushing 55 dpi soon.

Anyway. This was a sample t-shirt i did for a good buddy who wears too many speedos in life and has started up a kite repair business. Just thought some sexploitation would be good for him!! Ted Naylor, we salute you sir!!

A screen-printing blog this time (with a photographic twist as it’s one of my favorite photos of last year that I wrote about in my last post.

I’ve been screen-printing for two years now. First printing very ropey one colour prints and blagging my way through it with a positive attitude. Nowadays I have the basics almost mastered and I’m moving onto experimenting with new more advanced techniques and abilities.

Currently it’s half-tone methods of artwork preparation and screen techniques that is taking my attention. Supersaturated has started a ‘signature’ t-shirt range which is taking stiking photographs and prepping them for t-shirts. My ‘Immersed’ photo was probably a good place to start and actually lended itself really well for the new range due to being high contrast and already black and white.

There is many levels of halftoning photographs from simple black and white, which i’ve been doing for a while, to adding a little colour with washes, this is the attempt here, to full on four colour process cmyk photo replication. The final one is what i’m working my way up to… not sure how possible it is with watercolours and hand printing methods but i’m gonna give it a try soon.

Choosing the right halftone size that works best for each photo is more trial and error. With the knowledge that newspapers print around 80dpi and the limits of manual screen-printing being about 55-60 dpi, then you know that there as limits to the detail you can screen. Mixing this with getting the exposure time right when making each screen,to stop light creep around the design (tech jargon for over exposing and losing detail). It can take many atttempts to get the right settings for a satisfactory consistent results.

Ink choice for this piece was a white discharge ink and an orange dye mixed with transparent base for the leak. Both waterbased and soft to touch. I find that plasticol inks that are on the majority of t-shirts sweaty and like a layer of plastic on the surface. In fact the big diffence is that plasticol stays on the surface whereas waterbased inks permiates into the fabric….. added to this is that there’s a negative inpact on the enviroment with using pasticol.

Anyway about 20hrs of labour went into the testing of this design and i’m extremely happy with the results.

check out Supersaturated for more photos of the design.

“Supersaturated”
1/1 print i’m having made up and framed for my wall. :)

99.9% of all photos never get printed out. Don’t forget to take your best shots and do them justice.

This was taken in Mauritius this year and probably wasn’t Brad’s best wave but none the less caught the moment perfectly to give a serene peace to a powerful energetic wave.

hope you like as much as me.