Panasonic GH2, 14-42mm, f/5.6, 130, iso 320
Looking through my Lightroom catalog, this image jumped me. Maybe my thing is not just for mannequins, but for inanimate human figures? Of course I love images with small tonal ranges as well. Not bad DOF for that camera & lens (since sold).
Leica M9, 50mm F/1.4, f/3.4, 1/90, iso 200
Couple of little darlings I met recently. Today's my birthday so I can put up any image I want, right? And do you know where I am right now? Shooting in NYC! That's right! I bet I'll have some nice mannequin shots today. Send me some mannequin love. Or birthday love, that's okay too!
Leica M9, 50mm F/2, f/3.4, 1/350, iso 150
I'll continue the torture with more mannequin images. Look at them. Blissfully unaware of this huge storm Sandy punishing the US east coast today. I think of all my friends in that area, and hope everyone will be okay.
Leica M9, 50mm F/1.4, f/2, 1/250, iso 160
I know my mannequin shots don't get a lot of love here on the blog, but... I just love this one!
Leica M9, 50mm F/1.4, f/1.4, 1/250, iso 160
Frequent readers will know I have a photographic "thing" for mannequins. So maybe we have some of these on Mondays, what do you think?
Leica M9
Here's Bob getting his art thing going. I actually really like this shot, it was from a museum in Scotland. Probably the best bike shot I have ever made. What do you think?
Canon 5D Mark II, 135mm F/2, f/3.2, 1/15, iso 250
I decided to troll through some of my images of the Gladding McBean factor shoot, from October of 2010. Looking for something that seemed like a good Topaz Adjust candidate. This one caught my eye, I like the subject and composition quite a bit.
Usually I'm cropping an image, and making a few adjustments in LR before going to Topaz. In this case, I made several trips, because once I applied changes in Topaz, I realized I wanted to change the crop, things like that.
I settled on the "Dramatic" preset in the "Vibrant" collection. I was going for a look which would really bring out all the textures. No other changes!
As always, the original image is displayed on the continue link below. This time I did something different though, I'm showing you the pre-cropped version. Often when I meet people in person that are visitors, they say they are intrigued by my choice of crop, rotation, that kind of thing. So showing you the entire image, and the cropped one, will give you a bit more insight into my thinking.
(Also, if you weren't reading the blog back when I posted the Gladding series, you can review it here)
Leica M9, Zeiss 25mm F/2.8, f/3.4, 1/60, iso 500
I'm always attracted to images that make me stop and think "what the heck?" Even better if I can make one myself...
Leica M9, 50mm F/2, f/4, 1/60, iso 250
While in Trinidad, Cuba, several of us made friends with a wonderful proprietress of a Casa Particulare (Cuba's version of a B&B). She was gracious enough to let us photograph her beautiful property and we got some great images. Many were simple in nature, like this one.
I selected this one for today's Topaz Tuesday for a "particular" reason. With Topaz Adjust, I mostly try not to "over do" the effects it is capable of. I don't want to render a scene too crazy or untrue. But looking at the original of this still life, I felt I had license to do whatever I want. There aren't any people or other recognizable elements that would mean I had to use restraint.
So let's play!
Into Adjust 5 we go. I tried several presets, deciding I wanted this afternoon light effect. I settled on Grunge II. Grunge II has a vignette built in, and I backed that out by 50%. The hat was not defined enough for me, so I used the local effects burn tool (hey, just like the darkroom!) to darken it up a bit and make it more defined.
Working on the image I noticed that the bottom bar was a bit off vertical, but I decided I liked that just fine. This scene can stand a bit of quikiness.
As always, the original is on the continue link below. The Topaz Labs people have done a great job with this software. It's pretty much the only third party image tool I use. Everything else I want to do, I can do in Lightroom.
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