Flight Time

 Road to Lewiston.

Ransomville, NY

 

Retouching for Dummies

Sometimes during a shoot your subject may start to lose interest or just isn't quite following your directions and your portrait is ok but just a little off. Photoshop filters can help to offset those little imperfections quickly.

Here in the Neural filters section, the smart portrait app helps makes some minor adjustments. I added a better smile and adjusted his eye direction.

By adding a complimentary background the portrait is finished. Now our young man looks relaxed and handsome.

 

Heron & Stork

 

Nate the Great

Backgrounds added in Photoshop.

 

Back Roads

                                     Traveling along the back roads of central Florida.

Telephone Booth

                                  Wendy using her cell phone in a phone booth.

Lake Placid

 

More Murals from LP

 Voted, " Most Interesting City in America " by Readers Digest. Forty seven murals showing the history of the area.

Wall Paintings

A few more of the beautiful murals of Lake Placid, Florida. 

 

 

 

Red Hibiscus

 

Old Time Organ

 

Lake Placid Murals

 

Casual Ports

Good light comes in all forms. I wasn't planning on taking a picture at this moment and then I realized the lighting was perfect on Wendy's mother as she was casually talking and laughing with Wendy. An incandescent lamp lit her up from the front right and great back light coming from the left behind her. With a wider f- stop 2.8 to blur the background made this a wonderful casual portrait. 
 

Outside the Box

 This is a mural on the wall outside a bank in Lake Placid. It's probably photographed a million times a year. For a slight twist I leaned across the hood of a black SUV to get this reflection in my image.

No Swimming Allowed

 Alligator named Ben lurking in the canals of Port Charlotte, Fl. The rippled water gives the image a watercolor painting effect.  I am almost sure he's harmless.

Low Key Portraits

One light portrait with home made slotted cardboard hand held in front of light to get the desired effect.

 

Food Photography

 

Wendy baked a loaf of home made bread today. It is an oatmeal, flax seed, chia seed concoction that she made up in her mind and it tasted fantastic. Probably healthy for me too. Anyway it looked so nice I thought I'd photograph it in my studio for a little practice.  I used two LED lights with an added frosted light dome modifier mounted over each lens.  Also and over head fluorescent light from the ceiling provided a small amount of ambient light.  The counter top in the background was added later in Photoshop 2025.

B&W

 

Cheap Alternative to Photo Lights

 

I bought  this light from Walmart for $25 to use for studio photos. I liked it so much I bought another. The last twelve images in this blog have been shot with these lights. They are super powerful, light weight, rechargeable, and it has a mount for light stand. Modified with a shoot through umbrella this light gives an even smooth portrait lighting look. Or you could pay $200-$1500  for the professional kind. 

Group Lighting

 For a group shot of say four or five people I would bounce the two LED lights off the white wall behind the camera to even out the light on my subjects and let the two fluorescent lights from above act as hair and fill lighting. Imagine a group posed sitting or standing around this bench for an evenly lit portrait.

Bounce Lighting

Two lights bounced off a white wall.