Day 22- ZOMBIES

Sometimes I just get in the mood to create something! This time I was feeling a shoot with more than 2 people and something different other than the person in street clothes posing for me on paper backdrops. I asked my friend Jessica if she would be interested and then we shot around ideas to make the shoot more interesting. Shooting water? Been there. Throwing paint? Too messy. Light writing? Possibility. Bubbles? Kinda lame. Food fight? Waste.

In light of it almost being Halloween (whoop!) we decided on a Zombie Shoot.

Sunday 6 people (1 of which I knew) (4 girls, 2 boys) came over and we started shooting outside in my backyard.

I had out two strobes, one shooting thru a diffuser/umbrella, and the other with a softbox on it. I put the lights on either side of the group, didn't really mess with them, just hoped for the best.

For most of the shoot I used my 50mm portrait lens and shot at 100ISO and 1/60 at f5.

All the photos were edited Adobe Lightroom 2. I messed around a lot and when I finally found a combination of settings that I liked, I pasted those onto all the photos that I was going to use.

Going back there would be a couple things I would change, a few ideas I'd use, but with each shoot I learn more.

Anyways, this was a super fun shoot and I'm glad for the people that went out and got supplies and clothing and made this awesome!!

Some problems I had:

• People moving around, casting shadows on others behind them
• Strobes cycling too slow, flashes didn't always go off.
• SYNC CORD! Ah, the bane of my existence. Trying to move around while my camera is connected to one of the lights. Both lights tipped over at separate times and one umbrella broke.
• White balance. For once I did not have a single problem with it. So it shouldn't be on this list. But I just wanted to point it out!!
• Camera focusing. We were out in the dark and at times I couldn't tell if my camera was correctly focused on the subjects or not.

Day 21

Yesterday I got home and Garrett was taking a nap and I was feeling restless. So, I decided to make a skyline of Flint. It was originally for something I can't remember, but as I worked--the idea progressed quickly into what you'll see below.

First, I needed some photos of Flint. Since it's not a huge city and has claim to maybe 3 'skyscrapers' there weren't many photos as I looked on Google. I started grabbing various ones, deciding that I would piece them together to make my own skyline.

This last photo was chosen to be the basis to the final project, the photo that all the others would be placed into. See below.

Next I selected, using the Magic Wand tool, all the white space in the above photo in Photoshop, then inversed it so that all the building would be selected instead (quicker). I then clicked Edit in Quick Mask Mode (underneath the background/foreground color chooser thing). Everything that was not selected is now shown in red, and I used the Brush tool to paint in some of the windows and lines of certain buildings that I wanted to stand out. Took a few tries before I got it how I wanted it. Went back to standard mode, and with the selection still...selected, I went Edit>Fill and filled in the buildings with black paint.

I edited some here and there, adding textures or going under Filter and looking at all the choices for Artistic, Blur, Distort, etc. Kept trying till I got something I could be happy with.

I then pulled up the biggest Salvation Army shield from Google that I could find. Opening it Photoshop, I filled it in using the black paintbucket. I cropped off the uppermost shield and with very little effort, dragged in the skyline and placed it on top of the shield.

In a separate page I typed out Flint, one letter at a time/separate layers, and then since I could not for the life of me remember how to do what I wanted to correctly, settled for nudging the letters in the Liquify option, to make them more curvy. Threw them on the shield and it took me about five tries of saving the photo, uploading it to facebook, deciding I didn't like it and redoing it over and over.

The scripture was easy. My brother has part of Isaiah 61 tattooed on his arm. I couldn't remember what Bible verse it was tho, so I almost ended up putting in part of a speech by William Booth. I actually got that typed into the shield and everything before I remembered the other verses location.

So it took me maybe 4 hours to make this. I don't think it's the greatest thing ever because of how fast and sloppy I did it, but when the mood strikes me I'm gone.

Here's the final: