Imagination To Reality; Mental Stimulation To Take Your Photos To A Higher Level Page 2
Subject & Background
Jeff's interests were varied. Of course he was interested in portraiture,
but he also wanted to break away and photograph people and places. A fun shot
of his is this picture of David photographing a tree during the class. I particularly
liked the way he placed David in the lower part of the photograph, giving an
idea of scale. Jeff did tell me that he was aware of his camera position, placing
the dark figure against a light background and the upper part of the figure
against the dark background. The effect was perfect.
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Found Still Life
Jeff also photographed the contrasting textures of a wall and pulled it all
together with the bicycle at the bottom of the picture. In Photoshop he used
a couple of Eddie's "tricks" when he toned down some of the
lighter cement blocks on the left by changing the Mode of the photograph to
Lab, going into the Brightness channel and burning in those areas. Then, he
brought the image back to RGB and darkened the sides and bottom of the photograph
by making an Adjustment Layer in Curves. Once in Curves he pulled the highlights
all the way down to darken the entire picture and painted out the center of
the photograph, effectively burning down the edges and keeping the interest
within the framework of his image.
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Panning Effect
One evening in Florence a performer was enthralling a street full of people
with his antics. As part of the fun he invited a little girl to be a part of
his show. The balloon was part of the act, as was her running around circling
inside the crowd. Jeff panned his camera, following the little girl. That blurred
the background and caught her fairly clearly. He waited for her face to appear
against a dark background. The profile was by accident, but it sure does work.
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And Landscapes, Too
Later, after the class was finished, Jeff photographed the Amalfi coastline.
To intensify the color and effectively cut through the haze he used another
of Tapp's suggestions when he duplicated the Background Layer and set
the Mode to Multiply. This intensified the color tremendously. Then, he brought
the Opacity of that secondary layer down to the pleasing colors that you see
here.
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Monte and Eddie Tapp will be touring the country in October and November, doing
a four-hour extravaganza seminar. It will include lessons on posing and lighting
for formal and casual portraiture, as well as travel and scenic photography.
Eddie will be demonstrating easily adaptable Photoshop techniques to enhance
your photographs and speed your postproduction workflow.
The name of the tour is Imagination to Reality, of course!
Cities Include:
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Fort Lauderdale - October 5th Atlanta - October 8th Houston - October 9th Dallas - October 10th S. Chicago - October 14th N. Chicago - October 15th Detroit - October 16th Cleveland - October 17th S. Los Angeles - October 22nd |
Burbank - October 23rd Boston - October 29th Washington DC - October 30th New York - November 1st Fort Lee, NJ - November 6th Philadelphia - November 7th Seattle - November 12th Oakland - November 13th Phoenix - November 15th |
(Visit www.zuckertapptour.com for details and to purchase tickets.)
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