PShizzy: The Blog

Living in Arizona, we get just about the greatest amount of sunlight I’ve ever seen. It’s so good in fact, that it can be a challenge, especially when you’re shooting colors that fall all across the spectrum from bright white stripes to full black uni’s. Couple that with faces under the shadow of helmets, and the dynamic range of your camera just can’t cover it all.

Everyone has different ways of dealing with this. For some it’s a matter of exposing properly, and then bringing up the shadows in post process, either with something like the Fill Light tool in ACR, or Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop. Using these tools have their problems, as bringing up shadows also brings up image noise. It can also look unnatural if used improperly.

Another method is to expose for the face of the subject, letting the chips fall where they may on the rest of the exposure. Caveats here include nuclearizing your subject’s white uniform, or radiating the entire field if it’s a bright color. Fun fun.

Over the weekend I was shooting the Arizona USSSA Independence Day Classic, a fastpitch softball tournament held over in Pinetop, AZ. With start times of noon, though, getting the entire range of an image captured was difficult. Read on to find out what I did to combat this, from steps I took in the camera, to an action I made in Photoshop that helped with post process. Oh and it’s a downloadable action. =) [Read more →]

Tags: photography, photoshop by PShizzy
6 Comments »

The Phoenix Mercury finally won after going 0-4 to start the season. The Mercury built a 15 point lead early, but lost that lead, reminiscent of their last home game against the Storm. The Mercury fought back late to pull away for good and ended up with the victory. Diana Taurasi had 29 points, with Cappie Pondexter adding 23.

As the lead slowly dissapeared, Taurasi and the rest of the team looked frustrated. When they fought back to get the win, I expected the players to have some sort of outburst, and after a shot and a foul, I captured the image shown.

More on the game, and the full gallery, in the post. [Read more →]

Tags: photography by PShizzy
No Comments »

Yesterday, I spoke about how important proper white balance is. A well balanced image shows very good, true colors. But how do we figure out that proper white balance? There’s a lot of ways, actually, and each method has some positives and negatives to it. Let’s take a look at the image below.

I think I did a fine job with the idea of the image: An expectant bride, recently married, is waiting for her husband. The empty chair sells me on that vibe.

But look at the white balance. It’s this sickly yellow that envelops the entire image in its tint, and to me, it’s especially noticable on the dress, and on the brides skintones.

In this post, we’ll look at different ways to get a good white balance. [Read more →]

Tags: photography by PShizzy
7 Comments »

Last night, I covered the second game of the Phoenix Mercury season. Phoenix was 0-2, losing their home opener to the Sparks, and a road loss to the Silver Stars. Early on the Mercury really took the lead, going up by 21, but eventually the Storm came back and won 87-83. A link to the gallery is in the full post.

Last weekend I spoke about the key elements to covering an event. This time around, I’ll cover the bases on the technical side of an image.

What makes for a good clean image? What keeps the images looking consistent in their color, white balance, and exposure, not just from one image to another within one event, but from event to event (as an example, compare last weekends gallery to the one for last night’s game).

In this post, I’ll do an overview on things you can do to keep a consistent look and quality to your images.
[Read more →]

Tags: photography by PShizzy
4 Comments »

Processing your images is only half the battle. Once your done with the images, you need to get them in front of people. Whether it’s a client who wants proofs, an editor who wants to see your work, or just your mom wanting to see pictures of the kids, there’s a lot of good reasons to put up a web gallery.

To me a gallery is a vehicle for your images. If the images are good, and the pages are easily navigable, you don’t need to bling it out to make it work. So in this video, we create a web gallery in a matter of minutes. It’s so easy, even I was surprised at how quickly I finished the video. Click through to check it out!

[Read more →]

Tags: photoshop by PShizzy
No Comments »

This is an oldie but a goodie. It requires no plugins, just Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw. I’ve edited it to work better in the form of a blog. For now it will be a simple how to in the post, but if it’s popular, I may make a video of it. Here it is:

I’ve received quite a few comments on my black and white conversion, and I finally decided it would be best to post my own personal workflow on the process. My method by no means tries to be scientific nor accurate, only pleasing to my own eyes. I did not invent anything here, I picked up some info from various books and over time, found the following method to give me the most pleasing results. Hopefully you will find some use in the following. [Read more →]

Tags: photoshop by PShizzy
2 Comments »

You tell me. This blog’s direction should be led by the people who visit the site. Actions are great, but there’s more to the site than that. I will dive into other stuff shortly, but rather than post something of my choice, I leave it to you to tell me what you’d like to see.

Leave a comment, and if you see someone’s comment and agree, then say so. If I see 10 comments on the same subject, I’ll know that’s a great idea. But just in case you’re not sure what to consider, I’ve created a list of ideas I already have in mind. [Read more →]

Tags: general by PShizzy
9 Comments »

I have a pet peeve: I hate doing small tasks repetitively. I’ll spend an hour figuring out how to automate something rather than just sit down and do it, even if it would have only taken half an hour to do it the long way. Even knowing this, I’ll still spend the hour to figure out the most efficient way to do something. Why?

Because the very next time I have to do a similar task, I can automate it! We all do this, though in different aspects of our lives, and for different reasons. A good example of this is Bill Pay. We all have the same bills to pay each month, so rather than sit down once or twice a month to write out checks, and plan a visit to the post office, we automate it through our bank accounts, saving us time. So why not apply this thinking to Photoshop? [Read more →]

Tags: photoshop by PShizzy
8 Comments »