Color/BW Combo

I got inspired recently by a photo I saw on a fashion blog that I follow - the photo originally appeared on the Sportmax:Code site.
Here's my image:

(Model: Savannah Maria, MUA: Kristina McGaughey)
Trevis asked me how I did it - it's pretty straightforward. Savannah was tossing the fabric of her skirt into the air and this uses two photos taken at different points of that motion - each is a separate layer in the same Photoshop document. I converted one of the layers to black and white, enlarged it, and lowered the opacity to about 40%. Both layers have the background masked out. I created a third layer behind these two and filled it with a radial gradient - white to a light gray. That's it. I think it turned out pretty cool!

Here's the picture I that gave me the idea:

Diversified Lab Photo of the Day

Div Lab made this photo of Natalie, picture of the day! How cool is that?

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150742382770152&set=a.10150428542055152.418300.338758710151&type=3&theater

First Shoot at Studio 314

Well, not exactly but this was the first time that we've shot there as members.  Jaclyn was the lucky model / victim of the shoot last night.  It's going to take some time to get used to shooting in a new space.  The building has a different energy.  Everything seems to have a different look.  All in all i think that the shoot went well.  I think that we've got some good shots.

Lighting the cyc wall for the first time was new and interesting.  It didn't take light the way that I expected it to.  We shot on the bright white one and I more than half expected it to throw back light like a mirror but it didn't.  It absorbed a lot more of it than I thought it might.

I had hopped to step outside and grab some shots using the natural environment as a backdrop but we just didn't have the time.  Her dad did show me a couple of cool spots outside while she was having a makeup change so it will happen before too long.

Oh, Christie Runswithsisors did hair and makeup last night and she made Chrissy and I ghasp when we saw how amazingly accurately she recreated the look from an image.  Thanks Christie!

Oh, back to editing.

Lightroom 4 Chromatic Aberration

Ok, so the new Chromatic Aberration tool in Lightroom 4 is totally hands off.  Just check the check box and it figures it out.  Sigh.  My immediate reaction is, FAIL.

I just imported some high key shots and it's not getting it done.  Before I went off on a righteous tirade i brought the file in question into Photoshop CS5 and brought up the lens correction tool there to see what it could do and... well, i couldn't fix it there either.  For this particular image i think that i'm going to have to do something custom if i really want to fix the CA issues.

Still not loving the idea of loosing controls but of late I have rarely encountered much CA.  I guess i'll just check the damned check box for now.

Living the College Life

Whitney, one of the people who does makeup for us, recently asked for our help with a project she's undertaking to help promote a new website and magazine for college students- Living the College Life. She's always great to work with and has everything together, so we said, "Sure!"
(See some of Whitney's fabulous work here.)
So last weekend we did a shoot with three college-age women. There were a lot of people moving around - models, hair stylists, makeup artists, creative director and even a videographer. Things went together pretty smoothly and the pictures came out great.They're planning to use the photos on their website and in some promotional flyers. I'm looking forward to seeing them in use!