Photographing Concerts

For some reason I am unable to post images to Blogger right now. Once this issue has been resolved, I will continue to post...

The Nikon D700... Simply Awesome

I always hesitate to do 'equipment reviews' because inevitably I will wind up making someone unhappy because I don't like this or that brand. So, before I get into MY PERSONAL likes and dislikes I want to offer a disclaimer. I use Nikon equipment - big deal. I have also, in years past, used Canon equipment. Before I got into digital I used Pentax and older manual-only Minoltas. I use Nikon because I want to. It does not make them the best out there, nor does it insinuate that equipment from other manufactures is rubbish. Far from it. I think that there is a wide variety of excellent gear available from a a wide variety of manufacturers, and just because I review a piece of equipment doesn't mean I endorse it. I have used sub-par equipment from virtually every manufacturer as well and all of my 'reviews' are simply personal experiences and recommendations.

One should read other reviews by far better and more knowledgeable sources than me. However, take each review for what it's worth. At the end of the day, most reviews are incredibly subjective (yes, even some of the scientific tests) and each shooter should make an informed decision on his/her personal needs. I will talk about my experiences with gear that I don't particularly like as well. The following commentary is simply that - my impressions based on my experiences. I hope you find it helpful and informative.

Whether it’s high-speed shooting in ridiculous lighting, trekking through the wilderness on an outdoor portrait shoot or kicking out RAWs in a studio setup, I’ve put the D700 through some early paces, and the results are nothing short of astounding. It’s not in the 20 megapixel range like some of the high end models available now (the new D3X), but it’s still an extraordinary camera and might just be the best “one size fits all camera” for the budding amateur on through the professional arena.

Who exactly is the D700 aimed at? Is it the avid professional who prefers a lighter body or additional bodies without sacrificing the image quality of the D3? What about the advanced amateur who simply can’t afford the D3? Could it be the shooter who wants high ISO performance and a full frame sensor? The answer is simple - all of the above.

In my experience as a photographer I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a camera for every type of shooter. It used to be that the lines dividing models were somewhat more clearly defined, but with the introduction of the D700 those barriers are becoming somewhat faint. This is actually a good thing. Why? Because the blurring of the lines actually magnifies their major differences. I’ll explain this more in a minute.

So, what does the D700 have to offer? Excellent handling, large viewfinder, high-speed shooting, FX (full frame) sensor, incredibly high ISO performance and stellar overall performance. How does it stack up with its closest neighbors, the D300 and the D3, and even the competition? Let’s take a look.

The D700 is very similar in size to the D300. It’s slightly taller and slightly heavier (a little over a third of a pound, but pick it up and you can tell) than the D300, has a new navigation toggle, no memory card door latch and a taller view-finder box, and therefore a larger viewfinder opening. Then there is of course the full frame sensor versus the 1.5x crop of the DX of the D300, and this is the primary reason to move up the ladder. Other than that they are identical. They have the same basic system layout (buttons, screens, etc.) and moving up from the D300 is a cake walk.

What about the D3? The body is shorter because there is no vertical grip/shutter release and the memory card door is located on the side and is not spring loaded. There is also no quick data LED display under the LCD (ISO setting, etc.) nor is there a speaker vent for voice notes. That’s pretty much it. Basically if you took the innards of the D3 and put them in a D300 body, you’d get the D700, well about 95 percent or so.

The great thing is that this blend merges the gap between the $5,000 super pro D3 and $1,700 sanity and size of the D300. It’s right in the middle, well actually closer in features to the D3 and closer in price to the D300 which makes it even more enticing.

Another good thing about the blend is that it does not truly eliminate either of its siblings. For example, the D300 offers the same exact shooting speeds and the DX (1.5x crop) sensor for improved image quality at longer focal lengths. Because the DX sensor makes lenses act one and a half times longer than they actually are the D300 is actually ideal for outdoor sports. Take for instance the working pro’s bread and butter lens, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR. This lens works more like a 105-300mm lens on the D300. Both FX bodies use only about 5 megapixels in DX mode, so why not just get the 12 megapixels provided by the D300 instead? Yes, resolution isn’t everything, but if you need to shoot long, just use the D300.

On the other side of the equation is the D3. Why buy a D3 if the D700 has the same sensor and processing power? Build, backup, durability. The D3 is truly a tank with an image sensor in it. It offers excellent weather sealing and dust repelling to boot. The D3 also offers dual memory card slots for extended shooting or in-camera backup and the shutter life is rated at about 300,000 clicks; double that of the D300 and D700. It’s also got a faster burst rate for action shooting.

So, if light, affordable and the DX format are needed? The D300’s for you. Want to venture into the jungle or shoot pics on the front lines in Iraq? Pick the D3. Want the best of both worlds while only giving up on a few features? The D700’s your answer. For a full list of each camera’s features visit www.nikonusa.com.

The following are the key pros and cons that I picked out to discuss. There are many others depending on what level of camera you are currently using.

PROS

Viewfinder: Wow. If you are not already shooting on a D3, 5D or 1Ds, this is a stunner. I used a 5D for a while and when I switched back over to Nikon I went back to the DX sensor and the smaller viewfinder. Why is this important? The image is larger and clearer. The DX sensor is half the size of the FX sensor. Therefore, the mirror is smaller, as is the view finder. Even with magnifying eyepieces, nothing compares to a full frame viewfinder. It makes composition faster and easier and the photographic experience as a whole is better.

LCD cover: This is a little thing, but for someone on the move it’s nice. Most cameras have a plastic LCD cover that protects it from dust and scratches. The one on the D700 seems to fit tighter at the edges making it less susceptible to junk creeping in. Nice.

Shutter: The shutter fires true. Bottom line. The full size mirror and shutter blades click with a sense of identity. It doesn’t have the hollow fire of a DX body. This has nothing to do with actual performance, it just feels confident and I like it.

Focusing: The D700 has the same focusing mechanism as the D3. It’s fast and accurate, even in low light. The 3D tracking feature is pretty cool too, though you’d really have to have some crazy, contrast-y movement to really use it. I use the 51-point AF mode for sports and it’s awesome.

ISO performance: ISO performance is the absolute best I’ve ever seen, period. I’ve used both Nikon and Canon bodies of all kinds and the closest was the Canon 5D (note, the 5D Mark II has just been released and looks promising) and this trumps the 5D in spades. I am very picky about image noise. Some people say it adds character. Good for you, but I like my images as clean as possible. The D300 is exceptionally good at ISO noise control, but it’s nothing like the D700 and that is THE main reason I switched. Indoor sports is one of the worst shooting environments, regarding light, that you can imagine - especially without fast recycling strobes. Think about it: fast, erratic motion and low light. You need high ISO performance and an accurate AF, all of which the D700 has - especially when coupled with good glass. Indoor weddings, where flash is either not permissible or undesirable, is another venue the D700 excels in.

Typically, I would never shoot my D300 higher than ISO 800 and then was only when absolutely necessary. The D700 produces images that are cleaner at ISO 3200-6400 than the D300 does at 800, in my opinion. In fact, this afternoon I was shooting indoor pictures for a promotional pamphlet at ISO 1600! I would never have done that with any other camera. High ISO performance not only comes in handy in low light, but when you want to stop down the aperture for depth of field or use flash without exhausting the batteries. It’s simply stunning.

Here are some images taken with the D700 at higher ISOs:

ISO 1600 @ 1/400th and f/2.8 - Taken in the Coleman Coliseum at the University of Alabama. No strobes. The guy shooting for the Crimson Tide was rock’n White Lightning’s (a pair in each of the catwalk’s four corners). He was juicing enough to get f/5.6 at ISO 400 - lucky him. Of course with the strobes, he was getting maybe 20-30 shots for the game (I think he has to be selective with the flash use there). Because the images are so good at 1600 (better than anything I’ve used even at 800!), I went home with a few hundred usable images. [About the image: Faulkner University played the University of Alabama in an exhibition game on Nov. 6, 2008]

ISO 6400 @ 1/200th and f/2.8 - Two of the volleyball players watching the football team’s final home game of the season. The images at these higher ISOs are incredible and totally usable! If you expect them to look as clean as ISO 200 you’re nuts, but they’re still impressive. Like I said, at 1600 it's better than older 800s. See 100% crop below.

Here is a 100% crop of the above image. Does it show noise? Yup, but it’s super controlled. The most impressive thing is the shadow levels. This is normally where the images go to crud. Not here! Look, if you DO shoot an important subject, handheld at 1/200th of a second at ISO 6400 at f/2.8 and run a 100% crop into 1/10th of the frame and blow it up, you probably need to rethink your photography practices a bit. If you’re shooting UFOs, however, this is of course acceptable. Bottom line: the ISO potential with the D700 is just SICK!

COMPARISON with the D300:

Here are two images of the same sort of action at about the same focal distance and same subject orientation within the frame. There are HUGE differences in light, however. The image on the left was taken at NCAA Division I FCS Samford University’s Seibert Stadium in Birmingham, Ala. It was much better lit than Prattville High School’s Stanely-Jenson Stadium in Prattville, Ala.

The top image is slightly sharper due to better light and a faster shutter speed (1/500th vs. 1/400th), but we’re focusing on image noise. Again, the darker the image, the WORSE the noise levels will appear. Even the out of focus portions of the lower image are cleaner then those of the upper image. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the upper image was shot with the D300 at ISO 1600, the bottom with the D700 at ISO 6400!!! We’re talking FOUR TIMES THE LIGHT SENSITIVITY!!! (This should also tell you how poorly lit the second stadium was since they were shot at nearly identical settings...) Think about how this will help your photography when shooting in lower light or when you simply need better flash performance or increased DOF.

FX Sensor: The FX sensor is excellent. It not only provides very impressive high ISO performance, but also allows for wider wides. Just like the DX allows for longer telephoto work, the FX sensor excels on the wide end. The widest DX lens (non-fisheye) is the 12-24mm f/4. On a DX sensor it is about equivalent to 18mm on the wide end. This is plenty wide, but a full stop slower than is possible with the new 14-24mm f/2.8. With this lens you get 4mm more on the wide end and an extra stop of light. The pixel density is also roomier, allowing for up-converting without major drawbacks. It’s a stunner.

New Menu Features: New menu features allow you to program four different user settings, for rapid transferring from one shooting type to another. For example I have slot “A” set to Weddings and Portrait, “B” to Sports and “C” to Studio. Each custom setting is fine tuned to the needs for that particular venue. Anything, from active AF sensors to flash mode and rate to button programing, can be unique to each shooting environment. To keep it short, I’ll give you one example of differences between settings. In custom setting “A” the Function button on the D700 is programed to suppress the flash (i.e. if I’m shooting with flash and then decide I don’t want the flash to fire for a frame, I can press and hold the function button and it will “tell” the flash not to fire and then I can release it for the next frame and it will. It is WAY faster than turning the flash off and on). Under “C” however, the function button is programed to activate the grid display in the viewfinder (used to align vertical subjects for level photographs).

Virtual Horizon Mode: The D700 and D3 have super cool virtual horizon modes that look like aviation controls. It indicates whether the camera is level both horizontally and vertically. True alignment is indicated by a green line. The D700 also uses the EV meter so you can use the virtual horizon feature “in” the viewfinder, but his is not as efficient to me, nor as cool. If I don’t use the mode on the LCD screen, I use the function in ”C” (Studio) mode to quickly activate the heads-up grid in the viewfinder.

CONS

Cost: Although a bargain for an avid shooter, especially in low light, it is nearly $1,000 more than the D300, which will keep it in the hands of the more demanding shooter or those with room on their VISA. On the flip side, it’s $2,500 or so less than the D3 (even with the grip and all the other stuff needed for 8 fps, it’s still $2,000 cheaper). One does need to consider the lens cost/upgrade, however. (See below)

CF Door: The Compact Flash door is better on both the D300 and the D3. The D3’s card door is excellent. It has a flip lock covering a push button release. The D300 has a spring loaded switch on the back of the camera. The D700 has a simple pull and release door that makes it highly susceptible to coming open in the camera bag. It makes it easier to retrieve a card from a camera in a bag, but I’d forfeit this to have a more secure latch.

Vignetting: Viewfinder and image vignetting with the 70-200mm f/2.8 VR is very evident. Edge quality is below par and this is something that everyones has issues with. The problems diminish somewhat as you stop the lens down, but I use it wide open quite a bit. Hopefully, Nikon is prepping a newer version of this lens.

Lens upgrades: Costly! If you own any DX lenses, you’ll need to upgrade. You don’t have to, but if you want to shoot DX lenses you should stick with the D300 or D90. Having DX lenses with an FX sensor defeats the purpose. So, you’ll have to list your trusty 17-55mm f/2.8 on eBay and get the new 24-70mm f/2.8 for $1,500. That’s a full $700 more than you’ll get for your 17-55mm if you’re lucky. These new optics are superb and state of the art, but you’ll need to start selling your children to pay for them.

That's my take on what I consider to be an extraordinary camera. Will there be a D700x with the newer high resolution sensor that's in the D3X? Maybe, and it would likely fall in the $4,500-$5,500 range, I would think. That would make it far more affordable for everyone, but we will have to wait and see. If I continue in my current vein, I don't know if I'd really need that resolution and the massive file sizes it brings, but it would be nice. Again, we'll just have to wait and see. For now, I'm loving my D700.

Until next time, be safe and happy shooting.

- R

'He's on fire' - Looking at a basketball project

The above image is from last year's basketball poster at Faulkner University. There were five seniors last year, all of whom were to be featured on the poster. I really wanted to try something new, so I talked with the guys about doing a fire theme. Faulkner's colors are royal blue, black, gray and white and I thought it would be cool if we went with, well, a "cool" blue theme. This was the most challenging undertaking I had last year, but it was worth the effort. Here is a bit about how I went about it.

The first thing I needed to do was shoot the athletes. The above image is of then-senior guard Richarde McCray out of Marietta, Georgia. I shot each guy doing a different move - I had Rich doing a layup.

The lighting setup is shown below and is VERY simple. I bounced an SB-800 into a silver Westcott umbrella to give harder light and moved it back a bit in order to 1.) cover him completely, 2.) to ensure that it would cover him in the zone of approach. I didn't pose them in action situations, I actually made them do the full motion so it would look natural - or as natural as possible with a guy holding a flaming ball. I gave Rich a jump marker and then tacked him with the continuous servo mode on my D200. I shot about 10-15 frames and liked this one the best.

The image below is the unprocessed RAW right out of camera (cropped to 5x6 for posting here). The main light was a diffused SB-28 shot through a translucent Westcott umbrella. This light illuminates Rich with a soft glow that gives just enough light, while the stronger rear light provides good contrast as a rim light. I shot this from a low angle to add to the drama of the image. The diffused light is shot from about my height (kneeling) and aimed upward.

I shot it at f/4 and 1/200th of a second at ISO 200. The lighting was enough to overpower the majority of the gym lights as is evident in the fixtures behind Rich.

I imported the RAW image into Aperture adding a bunch of alignment adjustments and then exported the JPEG into Photoshop. The first thing to do was remove the background completely, then to ad various effects for the final image. All of the steps were not recorded (again, then I was not planning on doing a blog :), but the general ideas are as follows.

A new layer for the ball was added and I changed it to a soft blue. I then added the 'Wind' filter and manipulated the flames with the blur tool. After achieving a hot rod effect I used the transform tool to give the flame a path that paralleled the action. I then placed a duplicate ball layer over the flame layer and added some glow to it.

I added blue filters to Rich and adjusted the saturation as needed. I dodged and burned as well to try and simulate the reflections in relation to the light source, in this case the ball. There are certainly places that catch some blue light that likely would not have, but the poster was already black and I needed as much of the athletes visible as possible.

There was a lot of trial and error on the flames and a lot of starting over. I am by no means a Photoshop wizard, but I thought it came out pretty good. I will likely try to build on this idea again in the future, but for now, I'm experimenting elsewhere. Sorry there were not more details in this post, but I hope you found it interesting and that maybe it sparked your imagination.

Until next time, be safe and happy shooting.

- R

Shooting the Coca-Cola ads for the yearbooks

As a followup to the football cover I discussed last time, I decided to introduce a few other lighting setups that are very similar in nature. Every year we run a Coca-Cola ad in the back inside cover of every yearbook. I asked Coca-Cola - the athletic department's biggest corporate sponsor - if we could use their Powerade logo for these ads. The logo is featured throughout our signage around campus and is a Coke trademark. I thought it would definitely match the theme better and the Coke logo is already featured on our inner cover as well. They declined. So the soda beverage is still used here in conjunction with these images of athletes in action- oh, well.

In years past, the designers simply used an action shot from the season for this page, but as usual, I wanted to take it a step further. Last year I started selecting a single player that would be used for the advertisement. This year, I wanted to do a mock action shot with the same gritty look that I had used on the football cover. I decided to use this look on the covers and on the Coke ads to give it a bit of an edge and to keep the books somewhat unified in design.

I've included two different shots here just for fun. The image above is for the men's soccer book and features senior goalkeeper Jeffery Preston. As with the football cover and the women's ad to follow, the subject and background were shot separately. Jeff was shot in the corner of the gym on campus. Because it was exam week and I had other deadlines that I was trying to meet, we needed the shoot to be fast and simple.

I set up a folding mat on the floor for cushioning just in case he lost his balance. For this shot I really wanted the subject to be foreshortened with the action coming toward the viewer. To accomplish this, I had him part his feet and then, on his tip-toes, lean out toward the camera. Think of a wide receiver trying to keep his feet in bounds while leaning out over the sidelines to make the catch. The shot's wide angle helps accentuate the effect. By shooting at 24mm on a full frame camera, but moving in close, the effect is a bit more pronounced. Of course shooting with a fish-eye lens would have made it even more pronounced, but I didn't really want to take it that far. An aperture of f/8 still left some depth to the image as well. I am shooting with a D700 at 1/2ooth of a second and I am doing so on a short ladder to give myself some elevation.

As you can see from the diagram below, the setup is really simple and portable. I lit Jeff with three strobes, all portable Nikon speedlights (forgive the illustrations - I did not have time to redesign the flash heads today :). The front light was actually more of a fill light. As with the football shoot, the strongest light is coming from behind and to the sides of the subject to give a harder look, creating more contrast. The fill light is an SB-800 shot through a Westcott translucent umbrella. The light that is doing most of the work here is actually behind Jeff. I set an SB-25 in a silver Westcott umbrella and let it illuminate him along the entire back side and spilling to the front. The final light is working to fill the back of the subject. This is another silver Westcott umbrella with an SB-28 aimed inside. The power levels were not recorded. I will try to log this information in the future.

The image below is the RAW image as shot in camera. Because these shots were literally setup, clicked and taken down in under 10 minutes, I did not fiddle with setting up a backdrop, though the brick wall did help out a bit. I backed the ladder up a tad for this image which was, I believe, the second or third to last taken. The foreshortening effect was working against me as the subject was just in the limits of the minimum focusing distance on the 24-70mm f/2.8 and we were having a hard time getting the whole body in frame as needed - his face and hands kept blocking out his legs and feet.

The final image is a composite just like the football cover (see previous post). The field was shot on an overcast day at an elevated height as well to match the scene. The images were treated with sharpening, contrast and saturation adjustments and more to taste.

The women's ad below was designed in the exact same way. The only difference was this was shot in the studio upstairs and I used two strobes in softboxes instead of umbrellas.

As you can see there is nothing fancy about the setup. I used a large softbox with the internal baffle only, and positioned it horizontally to fill the entire front of senior Leslie Hudgens. I feathered the light downward a bit as well. The back light is in a small softbox and is feathering her along the back. Both were Alien Bees 800s. This was shot with a D300 set at f/8 and 1/250th of a second.

The ball was photographed separately and the speed lines were added in Photoshop. Here's something you might have noticed - the same ball and blur is used in both images. Why reinvent the wheel?

Below is the RAW image as shot in camera. As you can see, I didn't even take the time to set up a seamless. Again, these were setup, shot and packed up very quickly. If I had more time and fewer projects, I would definitely love to try out some other ideas, but for now, this will work.

I hope you found this helpful. I have posted an image for tomorrow's (hopefully) post for you to look at. That one is more about Photoshop and careful planning. The shooting was the easy part really. As we progress I promise to explore different images and genres. Right now, these are the ones that people have asked about, so I'm starting there.

Until next time, be safe and happy shooting.

Making the 2008 Football Yearbook Cover

In my two years with the university, perhaps no other project has gained as much notoriety or sparked more questions than the cover of this year's Football Yearbook. Formerly referred to as media guides, the yearbooks created for each sport offer vital information about the program to potential recruits, media outlets, fans, corporate sponsors and various organizations. The books contain team and player statistics, program history, upcoming schedules and events, action shots and much more. Because we are a small school, the athletic department has always tried to ensure that the covers of these books deliver an impact. When your school's book is tossed among hundreds of others, what makes it stand out? Will it draw someone's attention?

This year I decided on more of a three dimensional concept. Typically, cover art can be flat with only a few drop shadows or various-sized text offering all sorts of layering or perspective. I was guilty of this last year. Though the book was received with much praise, it was our inaugural season and anything remotely interesting would fly. This year we'd be entering conference play for the first time and would likely be drawing more fans and media attention, and I wanted something that "popped".

I knew I wanted to focus on an odd number of players to give some symmetry to the overall image. I also knew I wanted to incorporate a stadium and I wanted it to be somewhat dark and moody, yet have highlights and contrast. The first step was narrowing down the more than 120 athletes to just three. I collaborated with the head coach on who we should feature as the cover boys for the program. There were several candidates, but we decided on sophomore quarterback Philip Moore (center), junior middle linebacker Sean Thom (left) and junior defensive end Jason Evans (right). Because we had so many other standout players on the team, we decided to feature them on other pages in the book, including the Coke advertisement that we run on the back inside cover of every book. More on this project in an upcoming post.

As you undoubtedly already know the final image is a composite of countless images and Photoshop layers. Each player was shot individually and then added to the frame and the background was a composite from a few stadium images and some Photoshop work. I will begin by discussing the lighting setup used for the player images.

The diagram below shows the basic lighting setup for Moore, the center athlete. The overall lighting concept was very similar for all three athletes, with most of the differences coming in the form of rim lighting. When I was photographing the players, I knew what I wanted the final image to look like, but I had yet to gain access to the stadium so I was not sure how the background would look exactly or what would actually be visible given the limited scope - we wanted the players to be the dominant subject. I lit the athletes the way I hoped would work and crossed my fingers on the background at least somewhat matching my idea. [Please forgive the misspelling of "subject" in the diagrams]

As you can see the lighting setup is nothing revolutionary, but it was extremely effective here. Moore is lit using three lights. The fill light, which is actually in front do to the dominant contrast light to the side, is an Alien Bees 800 in a large foldable softbox with a grid attached to the front to help control focus and spill. It's positioned about 45 degrees or so to camera left. The harder side light, really the main light here, is coming from another AB800 reflected into a silver Westcott umbrella directly on his left side (90 degrees camera right). Because I knew that he'd be flanked by two players which would actually end up behind him, I took caution not to give him too much rim light from any dominant side. So, I went with another AB800 with a 30 degree honeycomb grid about 8 feet back and focused it like a hair light with weight going slightly to his left (camera right). I used flags to control spill from the rim and side lights. I shot this project on a Nikon D300 with a 17-55mm f/2.8 lens. The power settings from the strobes were not recorded (I will make better attempts to do this in the future), but camera settings were 1/200th at f/8 in RAW mode. White balance was set with an Expo Disc, but would fall in the 5000-5600 range for these strobes.

I photographed the subjects from a lower angle to create a somewhat more menacing and dominating perspective. Posing was rather simple. I had Moore hold a ball out in front and at a lower positions and just slightly to the left (camera right) to keep the pose from becoming too symmetrical. The defensive players offered slightly more aggressive facial expressions and the folded arms further heightened the impact of the portrait. The subjects were sprayed with a water bottle to mimic sweat and lightly padded down with a towel to keep it from looking like they just came out of the shower.

For the other players, the same lighting setup was used for both, but flipped 180 degrees to highlight the different sides of the composition. The diagram below is the layout used for Thom (cover left). I wanted a stronger rim light on both him and Evans, so I moved the AB800 with silver umbrella back approximately 45 degrees to his right (camera left) to create a harder, fuller rim light. I then moved it around a bit more because I had him facing further to my left and then attached a small foldable softbox to the other AB800 with only an inner baffle attached, giving me a slightly more contrast-y light to his left (camera right) to help highlight his shoulder pads. This light was turned down to keep it from being too overwhelming and I raised it so it to about seven feet and aimed it downward.

The rim light really makes for great separation here and it provides even more contrast to the final product. The small softbox, with inner baffle only, provides nice highlights in the triceps and forearms which helps define the muscle tone and provides more contrast.

The guys were then cut out from the black background in Photoshop and were enhanced for a gritty look. Through layers and adjustment masks I increased contrast and sharpening, removed undesirable color casts, changed color saturation and applied a bit of dodging and burning where needed. I also removed any water beads that seemed out of place or too excessive. They were then transferred to the cover template where I added a slight shadow behind Moore to give a bit of separation and then used a gradient mask to blend the legs into the dark turf.

The background was shot at about 3 p.m. in full sun. I removed undesirable artifacts from the stadium like trash cans, a player's helmet, a bench and a radio tower. Because I was dealing with an 8.5x11 inch cover, I had to cut two pieces of the stadium and merge them so that two sets of lights would have room on the cover. Blending the bleachers in Photoshop was a pain and luckily the players cover most of the overlap. The lights were obviously not lit when I photographed them, so I used various brushes in Photoshop to create the almost movieposter-like lighting effects. I generally used star effect brushes and even some comets to create the corner light flares. The background was also heavily treated with contrast adjustments and was then given contrast, sharpening and saturation treatments like the players. The sky was a gradient mask that I created in Photoshop as well. The final touches were back gradient mask at the bottom of the page and then text was added to complete the cover.

It took a lot of time, luck and trial and error to get the final product, but it was well worth the effort.

Thanks,

- R

What I hope this blog will become

Thank you for taking the time to stop by. I hope that this blog will provide new ideas, information, recommendations and more to an online community of friends and visitors. I hope to discuss my views - as well as yours - on photography equipment, lighting setups, Photoshop tools, marketing insight and much more over the months and years. If this blog picks up steam, I will make every effort to update it more frequently.

I hope that you will find at least most of the discussions both interesting and insightful and that our combined effort will help make the field a more diverse and creative one. I hope you will check back often and post comments that will help others - myself included - become better artists.

I have taken most of the day setting up the basics of this blog. I hope to start posting "real" topics as early as tomorrow, but no promises.

Thanks again for stopping in,

Ryan