Portrait photographer Gregory Heisler has done quite a few portraits for Time Magazine covers, including a few for their Person of the Year issues. This is an informative video where he steps through how he went about photographing Rudy Giuliani at the top of Rockefeller Center with the Empire State Building in the background. If you’re interested at all in portraiture and/or lighting, you’ll find this video quite educational.
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Editor’s note: This walkthrough was originally published on Clint Decker’s Flickr account. We found it pretty informative and asked him to share it here.

Here is a little video on how I did the photography with Canon Speedlites while dropping items into a tank of water.

With a white background, I used a Canon Speedlite 580ex II on the left and right of the fish tank with water. They were set to manual 1/128sec.

I had a Canon Speedlite 430ex II on a chair behind the fish tank pointing towards the white background so it would come out pure white. This was set to manual 1/64th of a second (I would of done 1/128 but the 430ex II can only go down to 1/64). You want to go 1/128 so it freezes the splash mid air.
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The main thing with in flight hover fly photos is not to try, by that I mean if you go out to take one you will end up normally chasing a hoverfly all over the place with little chance of success. I only take them when an opportunity arises.

In this case the males of this species of hoverfly patrol the flowering bush looking for females . When they spot one they go into a stationary hover for about 10seconds whilst they decide if the female is what they think it is and if it’s a suitable mate.
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Here’s a really neat video about the making of a Speedo ad campaign that is running all across Europe right now. The video traces the production from its conceptualization to its final post-processing and illustration. The actual shoot and filming took place at the Pinewood Studios Underwater Stage in the UK, where several major films were also shot, including many 007 and Harry Potter movies. It’s pretty remarkable to see so much equipment underwater.

(via f stoppers)

Ever wonder how top photographers deal with their files? Chase Jarvis just put out an awesome blog post and behind-the-scenes video describing his entire workflow from capture to backup. You’ll probably be surprised at how much backing-up his studio does for all its data, and how much storage space they deal with. He points out at the end that all his strategies are scalable, so you don’t need to have infinitely deep pockets to achieve roughly the same amount of redundancy (albiet on a much smaller scale). I guarantee you’ll find this video interesting!

If you’re interested in seeing specific details, head over to the blog post for more images and text.

Photographer Jon Beard has a terrific set of photos called “Burning Bulbs” in which he breaks lightbulbs and photographs them with the filaments exposed.

The set includes the following photograph, titled “1UP Mushroom“:

This photograph recently became extremely popular on Flickr, amassing over 100,000 views. Beard tells us,

I’m a photographer and computer guy from the mountains of Virginia. My favorite kind of shot is one that gives a person a new perspective. Whether it’s a far away landscape, an unusual angle on something familiar, or a close-up of an everyday item, if it changes the way they see the things around them, it’s a success.

The idea for the 1UP came while going through shots from a broken bulb series I had shot with the intention of adding color. When I saw that one, the mushroom shape was undeniable and as a lifelong gamer all I could see was green with white spots.

DIYPhotography has a great tutorial on how to shoot this kind of photograph, but Beard also created a great behind-the-scenes video tutorial showing us his process:

If you decide to try out this idea, please be very careful – both electricity and glass can be hazardous to your health.

This project is similar to the Exploding Lightbulbs that Shatter Water tutorial that was posted here a while back by guest author James Davidson.

Image credits: Photographs by Jon Beard and used with permission.

Editor’s note: A few weeks ago I discovered James’ photography in PetaPixel’s Flickr pool and was completely blown away by his photos of exploding lightbulbs that shattered drops of water instead of shards of glass. The concept was so creative that I asked him to teach all of us by guest posting here on PetaPixel. I hope you all enjoy this walkthrough and his photographs as much as I did.

The Idea

The shot I had pictured was an exploding light bulb, but instead of glass, the bulb was water. I’ve seen shots of water balloons popping, where the water retains the shape of the balloon right before it splashes everywhere. Well, I wanted to take that shot a step further.

The idea of the lit bulb with exposed threads came from this post on Strobist.com.

What You’ll Need

• Light bulbs
• Water balloons: the larger “party balloons” don’t work as well, they take a lot more water before the rubber gets tight enough for a clean break
• Pellet gun: I bought the cheapest one at Wal-Mart, about $20
• Safety pin or some other means of popping the balloons
• Cut extension cord and some electrical knowledge

Camera Settings

Most of the images were shot at 1/250 and F 6.3. I was having some technical difficulties that morning but you could sync at much higher speeds although the 1/250th seemed to freeze 99% of the motion.

Shooting the Photographs

There is no safe way to break a live bulb and a water balloon at the same time, so I knew that I would do each separately and then combine the final images in Photoshop.

First I set up for the bulb breaking. I wanted to see the threads of the bulb, so I soldered a cut extension cord to the threads and the base of the bulb. Please don’t try this; it can be very dangerous (or deadly). The bulb was suspended from a stick that went through a piece of black foam core. I set up my flashes, one to camera left and one under the bulb. I believe they were both set at 1/8th power. Also, wear safety goggles due to the breaking glass and ricocheting pieces of lead.

I stood to the right of the camera with my pellet gun and shot through the bulb. I had a cardboard box on the other end to catch the pellets. I did not have a sound trigger (but it would have been nice) so I just pressed the remote when I squeezed the trigger. After about 5 bulbs, I figured I had enough to work with (and enough glass to clean up).

For the water balloon the setup was very similar. I replaced the bulb with a balloon and I placed an aquarium under the balloon to catch as much water as possible. For lighting, it wouldn’t be very economical to have a speedlight under the balloon so I cross-lit the balloon from front camera left and behind on camera right.

I tried using the pellet gun to bust the balloon – bad idea. It popped back and hit me in the forehead. So I took a stick off of a set of blinds and taped a safety pin to the end of it. Popping the balloon was the same process as earlier; I stabbed it and pressed the remote trigger at the same time.

It took about 20 balloons before I got what I wanted, and then I took the images into Photoshop.

Editing the Pictures

Editing was fairly simple because I set up the shot with the final editing in mind. The background was black, so any pieces of glass or water that was not wanted could easily be cloned out. I took a few of the bulb shots and ended up photoshopping all of the glass out and leaving the threads. In some on the final images I left the smoldering filament also.

When I had the bulb shot cleaned up, I pulled in the bursting balloon shot. I selected all of the black area and deleted it. I then matched the size of the water balloon base and the bulb base to make one seamless image. Then for a final touch, I flipped the images so that the bulb would be facing upward.

Things to Watch Out For

I had to watch out for a few things, but it will all depend on your setup.

1. I had to avoid spill light on the background to keep it as black as possible.
2. When you shoot and shatter the bulb, make sure you unplug the power cord before messing with the bulb. Just because it isn’t on, doesn’t mean the power isn’t still there.
3. Make sure to use Water Balloons – the big party balloons do not work as well and take a lot more water before they are stretched enough to burst correctly.

Tips and Tricks

Experiment, that’s all I can say. There is no right or wrong way to take a photograph. Just think through the issues, look at the results you are getting, and keep tweaking until it works like you want.

Final Thoughts

All in all, this was a fun shoot. It had its risks, but nothing went wrong and I was very pleased with creating a unique image that looked like what I had first visualized. Sometimes these “fun days” of experimenting are exactly what it takes to spark your creativity out of a slump. Keep shooting, be safe, and have fun!

About the author: James Davidson is a photographer based in Cochran, GA. Although the majority of his work revolves around rustic country settings, he also likes to test the limits of his creativity. Visit his website Edgewater Media or his Flickr page. You can also follow him on twitter @edgewatermedia.

Went to Bodega bay to do some crabbing for the first time, and took this photo while walking to the beach (it’s the untouched RAW):

Canon 40D + 24-70mm 2.8 at 24mm, f/8.0, 1/250s, and ISO 100.

What was interesting was that though the sign warned people to stay off the structure, most people there were on the rocks fishing and crabbing.

In post-processing this image, I’d like to make it pop, while bringing out the detail in the sky.

Opening up the file in Adobe Camera RAW, I made the following edits:

White Balance: Upped temperature to 5600 from 5400. Auto while balance set it at 6100, but I felt like it was way too warm, so I brought it down a bit.
Exposure: Increased by half a stop. +.50. This clips the sky, and but we’ll deal with it in recovery.
Recovery: +20 to recover some lost detail in the sky.
Fill Light: +20 to bring out some shadow details and to even out the difference between the sky and the ground. Gives the foreground a pretty unsaturated, pasty look. We’ll deal with the contrast in the next steps.
Blacks: We lost all of our true black in the previous steps, and the darkest color we were left with was a gray. Turn these darkest points into black again by upping blacks to +10 from +5.
Brightness: Unchanged.
Contrast: +70 to make it pop. Usually in photographs with textures and things like rocks, I like having more contrast rather than less.
Clarity: +20 to make the signboard stand out a little more against the bright sky.
Vibrance: +20 to make the colors pop a bit.

Sharpness: +75. What I usually like to set it at.
Luminance: Aquas -50 and Blues -50 to darken the sky a tiny bit (we’ll do the rest in Photoshop).
Lens Vignetting: -30. A little. Not too much.

This is the resulting image after this first RAW to JPEG conversion step (hover your mouse over it to compare it to the original RAW):

While the foreground has more detail and more “pop”, not much happened to the sky. As I explained earlier, I’d like to make the sky a little more dramatic in this particular photograph.

Opening up the file in Photoshop rather than ACR now, I do the following:

1. Duplicate the layer
2. Add a layer mask
3. Mask out the ground, and selectively mask the rest
4. Adjust curves for this duplicate layer (curve shown to the right):

For the mask, I decided that instead of only adjusting the sky, I also wanted to adjust the water and the hills at the horizon. I didn’t want to adjust these things separately, but I also didn’t want to adjust them as much as the sky.

Thus, I decided to use a mask in which the water and hills are 50% masked. This allows me to adjust curves for the sky, with 50% of the curve being applied to the water and hills as well.

This is what my mask ended up looking like. Notice how the sky is 0% masked, the hills and water are 50% masked, and the rest (whatever I don’t want affected) is 100% masked:

Here’s the final image (hover to compare with previous step):

You can also hover over these links to see the original RAW or layer mask.

That’s it! Hope you found this post-processing walkthrough helpful. If you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions, please leave a comment.

Crater Lake in Oregon is such a beautiful place that post-processing isn’t really even needed for photographs taken there. Here’s an unprocessed photograph I took there this past summer on a road trip with friends:

Canon 40D + 24mm 2.8 at f/8, 1/250s, and ISO 100.

Shooting landscapes with snow and water can sometimes be kind of tricky to expose, so I would recommend shooting manual to nail your exposures the way you want them. For this photograph I used partial metering and tried to properly expose the mountain. Luckily, a cloud was passing over at the moment, making it a little easier to expose the water, mountains, and sky without blowing any highlights.

I only wish I had a wider lens, since the 24mm on a crop body (the 40D) is effectively a 24 x 1.6 = 38.4mm lens. A wider lens would have helped to make the shot more dramatic.

In terms of post-processing, my goal with this photograph was to make it “pop” a little more than it does. Even though the scene is beautiful, the unprocessed photograph is a little too dull and ordinary.

Here are the initial changes I made during post processing (in the “basic” tab of Adobe Camera Raw):

White Balance: Changed to daylight, which warmed it an almost insignificant amount.
Exposure: Increased by half a stop. The original seemed a tiny bit underexposed to me.
Recovery: Boosted this up to 40 to recover some of the clipped areas in the clouds and snow.
Fill Light: Notice how in the unprocessed photo the bottom left hand corner is filled with shadows. I filled in these shadows a little by increasing fill light to 20.
Blacks: The black point seemed fine, so I left this unchanged.
Brightness: Didn’t need to increase brightness. Left unchanged.
Contrast: Increased this by 50 to recover some of the contrast lost in other steps.
Clarity: Increased to 30 to gain lost detail in the clouds.
Vibrance: Added a bit more color with +20.

This is the resulting photograph after the initial changes (hover your mouse over it to compare it to the original):

Now we move onto sharpness, color, and vignetting.

Sharpness: +80. Making the landscape nice and sharp for prints, if needed.
Saturation: Blues -10 to make the sky and water more natural.
Luminance: Yellows and Greens +50 to bring out the trees. Blues and Purples -50 to bring out the clouds by darkening the sky. Makes the photograph more dramatic.
Lens Vignetting: Amount -20 to add a little vignetting.

The resulting photograph after these changes (hover to compare with previous version):

Now can do some more detailed edits in Photoshop, after doing a lot of general changes using Adobe Camera Raw.

One of the things I like to do with clouds is burn them to make them a little more dramatic. Using the Burn Tool with Exposure set at 20%, I burned the bottom of each cloud with one pass to make them a little darker.

Next, in the bottom right hand corner of the frame, there’s a tree that’s slightly visible. Since not enough of the tree is visible to help it frame the scene, I find it a little distracting, so I removed it using the Clone Stamp tool.

Finally, notice how the island in the lake and the snowy mountains in the background are a little hazy. I’d like to increase the contrast a little specifically in these areas without affecting the sky in the background or the trees in the immediate foreground.

Using the quick selection tool, I select the lake, island, and mountains, and increase the contrast by applying a slight “s-curve” in Curves (Image->Adjustment->Curves or Ctrl+M). Screenshot of the curve to the left.

The final image that results from these two edits in Photoshop is below. Hover your mouse over the image to compare it to the previous image, before the cloud and contrast changes.

That’s it! We’re done. You can also hover over this link to compare the image to the original unprocessed photograph. Our goal was to make the photo “pop” a little more.

Today I’ll be doing a post-processing walkthrough with the following photograph I took about a week ago:

It was taken with a Canon 40D + 16-35mm at 35mm, f/2.8, 1/500s, and ISO 800.

The composition is pretty ordinary. The basketball hoop is placed along one of the rule-of-third lines, while the lines of the ground create interesting angles in the photo.

In terms of exposure, I didn’t want to properly expose the foreground and blow out the sky, nor did I want to properly expose the sky and end up with too dark of a foreground. Thus, I ended up exposing it somewhere in between, causing both the ground and sky to be a little “muddy” in appearance.

Now, opening up the RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw, here were my initial adjustments:

White Balance: I upped the temperature a bit, since the original photograph is too cool, or blue. See how the gray backboard looks bluish-gray.
Exposure: We begin tackling the “muddiness” of the photograph by increasing exposure a little. The photo begins to look more properly exposed.
Recovery: Increasing the exposure blew out certain small areas of the photograph. Increased recovery by twenty to recover the detail in these areas.
Fill Light: Added a tiny bit of fill light to brighten some of the darker areas of the foreground without affecting the sky.
Blacks: After the previous steps, we lost a lot of true black and ended up with a whole lot of gray. Increase black a little to turn the darkest of the gray points into black points.
Brightness: Increased brightness by 10 from the default of 50 to brighten the foreground a little more without affecting the sky too much.
Contrast: The photo became pretty “uncontrasty” through the previous steps. Increased contrast to +70 to regain the lost contrast.
Clarity: Increased this to +50 to make the hoop stand out a little more against the bright sky behind it.
Vibrance: Increased by 20 to give the less-saturated colors in the photo a little more color.

After making these changes, this how the resulting photograph looks (hover your mouse over it to compare it to the original version):

See how the photograph became less “muddy” in appearance?

Next, we can deal with sharpness and vignetting. In my opinion, this is a photograph that vignetting benefits a lot, as it can help draw the viewers eye to the subject (the hoop). For this photograph, I made the following changes:

Sharpness: +75.
Lens Vignetting: Amount -60, Midpoint 40.

The following photograph results (hover to compare):

That’s all the changes I made to the photograph in Adobe Camera Raw during the RAW to JPEG conversion step. I could be done with the photo at this point, but notice how there’s a distracting crack in the ground in the bottom left corner of the photograph. I used the clone stamp tool in Photoshop to get rid of this crack.

Here’s the final, post-processed photograph (hover over it to compare it to the original photograph before post-processing):

What I really liked about this photo was how it looks like a film photograph in certain ways. If I had stepped a little further back so that the hoop was smaller, I might have cropped the photograph to look more like a medium format photo.