So, headed out to try some time lapse tonight after spending the vast majority of my day virtually paralyzed due to a pinched nerve in my back (though my doctor says it’s a severely strained muscle. Whatever Doc.)

Anyway, I’m sitting around waiting for the shots to get captured after setting it all up. This is how photography should be! Ha ha ha. Note the two tiny sticks in the lower left just atop the hill. Yeah, those are my camera and my friend Shauna’s camera on tripods about 300 feet away from where we sit safe from all the blood sucking Mosquitos while the camera does the work!

Anyway, for the most part this really is a magical tool!  I have had it work awesome in some very tricky situations, situations I was SURE it would fail at are where it’s shone most brightly.  And yet, situations where I would think I would barely be challenged seem to cause it some real grief.  I’m hoping I’m simply doing something wrong but so far, no solution has been found that I’m aware of. 

Take this example.  Behind my subject here is a shadow from a nearby lamp.  I want to remove this shadow.  I would think that Content Aware Fill (CAF) would handle this quite nicely, but no, it’s a mess!

With Shadow.

This is with all my Photoshop settings at whatever I happened to be using at the time.

Hmmmm, yucky!

My good friend Ferd Isaac suggested that my paint brush was too big.  Considering this function is done with a selection you might think that the brush setting would be irrelevant.  Well, this is Photoshop and some functions do rely on settings of seemingly unrelated tools so this didn’t seem too far fetched to me.  I gave it a try.  I set my paint brush to 1 px and also set my healing brush to 1 px.  Well….

Brushes at 1 pixel. Not so hot!

I really don’t think it had ANY impact at all.  The theory was that the size of the brush determines how far out CAF would look for filling materials.  Doesn’t seem to be the case.

Dave Paduch theorizes that because it’s a very noisy shot (640 ISO on a Canon 40D, plus I added noise) perhaps the math is getting confused and no longer able to properly discern various elements of the image due to the heavy noise.  I tried going back to the original RAW image to see how it would fare.  The yellow line indicates the selection area.  Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have worked any better or worse.  Click it to see it full.

Not much better.

So now it’s back to old school methods.  I tried the standard healing brush and clone methods but for some reason I was always left with a smudge above his head.  I was starting to go crazy.  I’m sure I’ve done this a million times.  Why the issue all of a sudden.  So I sent the file to my friend Dave and he had a look.  Sure enough, he soon sent me a fixed version with an explanation of why I was having trouble.  The method he used is one I’ve never really tried but which makes complete sense once I heard it.  Duh!

And yet, as I type this, my mind wanders to yet another new feature of CS5.   Refine Edge.  Let’s see how that does.  Click for the larger image.

Required actual work, but hey, it was worth it! hehehe

I think maybe I’ll make my own tutorial on this.  Maybe even a video tutorial!  You tube has several, but not always very real world scenarios.   Hmmm…Always so many ideas.  Follow through needs to happen more often!  Thoughts?

Today I went and performed second shooter duties for my good friend Kelly from www.studiofourtwelve.com for the wedding of Tyson and Erin. These two are seriously wacky and a lot of fun! Here’s a few of my favorite shots. Thanks for letting me come along today guys!

I’m trying to catch up on my back log of everything.  Here’s a few shots from last week.  I’ll soon be posting stuff from as far back as last summer, may be even further back if I’m inspired enough!

So, I’ve been playing around with a new plug in called Topaz Adjust.  It’s interesting and most of it’s effects are kind of useless except for specific situations but it’s fun too.  Here’s a few shots I’ve done with it.

Hey all!  Well, here it is!  I mentioned it was coming and here we go.

Your Mom is the most amazing woman you’ve ever known.  She’s been there for you through good times.  Through bad times.  But what makes her the Best Mom in the World!?  Click the comments link up in the right of this post,  tell us why your Mom is so awesome and she could win a FREE portrait session worth $180!  Here’s what you do,

- Click the comment link in the upper right hand of this post, tell us why your Mom is the Best Mom in the World.  These stories will be visible to everyone who visits here.
- We will collect the stories until May 1st.
- On May 1st we’ll go through all the submissions and which ever one touches us the most will be declared the winner.
- If, as in my case, your mother is no longer with us, the session can be used for anyone of your choosing.
- The session will be about 1 hour long and will result in up to 5 images being fully edited, printable at 8 x 10, and burned onto a CD.
- The session will take place in the subject’s home or at a favorite location anywhere in Edmonton.

And with that, please start submitting!  Cheers!

My Mom.

This blog has been more of a monthly deal than anything lately and once again I’m aiming to change that.

For the last while I’ve been trying to get some slideshows done that feature music by local artists. Finding good music is HARD!!! I found two good songs that work well with two slideshows but have had to go through some channels to get permissions to use one and that’s taken some time. However, by this weekend the new Glamour gallery and slide show will be live and I will start on the people and pets ones.

So keep checking back to the main web site and see what’s happening in the next few weeks!

Cheers!

Inspiring photographer Scott Bourne gave Tasra Dawson a challenge in order to help her improve her photography. 

http://www.tasra365.com/

She accepted the challenge and started the above web site to chronicle her adventure.  Many others are taking the challenge as well.  I showed the site to my good friend Ralna who is also inspired to take up the challenge AND has challenged me to do the same.  I have in fact attempted a 365 project 8 times in the past.  Failure came mainly because I would miss my start date of sunrise, January 1st.  Miss that and the project is dead.

So Ralna suggested, start tomorrow, Sept 3rd, and use the next few months as a lead up to get my head in the game and get a routine going so that I’ll be ready when the time comes and will have the motivation and momentum to keep going.  Why the heck not! Maybe adding the slight competetive element of who will succeeed more often than the other is just what we both need to get out and shoot more.  We’ll see how it goes.

I will post my efforts to my blog on it’s own tab above.  Once Ralna has determined the path she’ll take for posting I will provide a link there as well.

Wish us all luck!

NOT my first entry.

Yellow Lillies

Wow, this site is so cool!  Shows off failed attempts at Photoshop work that are ACTUALLY in use in the marketplace!  People are paying for this bad stuff and I’m worried about charging too much for good work!  Wow!

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

In other news.  I’m still irate that Apple won’t allow flash to work on the iPhone.   Give it up already!

So, in a short while here my phone will be upgrading from the iPhone 3G to the 3Gs.  It’s quite moment for me, there’s never really been a phone I’ve really wanted.  I’ve gone with the cheapest cause it did what I needed.  The iPhone has totally changed that.

However, it’s certainly not without it’s problems, as any phone is (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, NO phone is perfect).  Here are most of my personal complaints.  I haven’t reviewed any other sites listing their complaints so there may actually be somethings I’mmissing simply because I don’t use those features or never even thoughts about wanting them.  Some of them I simply can’t believe were never included, ever!

• First, I wish they would stop marketing it as a phone.  Sure it has phone functions but it’s really more like a handheld computer.  They may increase their market if they start presenting it that way.  Of course, without the analytics data they’ve got I could be wrong and they could shrink their market.
• As a handheld computer one of it’s biggest missing components is Flash support in the web browser.   The only semi-valid theory I’ve heard for not including it is that itmight hurt their App Store sales.  Whatever!  Get off the pot and let it run already! 
• USB data transfer!   Seriously, it’s got gigs of space!  Let throw a few files on it to bring somewhere else.  Better yet, let me dump some .pdf files on it to read on the bus or while I’m having lunch by myself.  Oh wait, maybe Apple and Adobe just don’t get along…
• MP3 management!  This should really be a no brainer for all the touch screen iPods and iPhones.  Let me manage my MP3′s on the phone.  For example, the shuffle feature when I plug my iPod into my car is useless.  Maybe it’s the interface I have, but when I hearthe same damn song over and over, it would be nice to delete the song on the spot without having to connect to my computer.
• Photo management!  That’s awesome that you can take pictures with your phone, but why do they have to be dumped in one single folder?   Am I going to have to deal with this with Video too?  Why can’t I make new folders?  Why can’t I move photos from one folder to another?  Who didn’t that that would be useful?
• Select All.  When doing e-mail or cleaning up txt messages it is often easiest to just select all and then deselect the ones you want to keep.  But you can’t select all!  You have to scroll and select a few at a time for e-mails and can only do one at a time for txts!  What!?

Well, either that’s it or I’ve just gotten to tired to remember anything else.  Of course this little blog won’t help change things, but at least I vented!

Cheers!

Update – Newly peeved!  I started using the iPhone 3Gs headphones a while ago and they have some quite nice functionality and sound really good!  However, after decades of using headphones it’s dawned me. This is the 21st century.  Why do my headphones still have a wire?  So I went looking.  A bit.  For bluetooth headphones.  That double as a bluetooth headSET.  Yes, two different items in one package!  The headset is (oddly) inherently one sided.  Right ear or left ear.  Headphones are expected to be stereo.  Why can’t they be combined!? Moreover, why hasn’t APPLE of all companies provided this for their phone?  Did no one over there in the last few years think “Gee, I really like this but I wish I could get rid of the cord”?  Someone MUST have!  Come on Apple, enough picking your noses. Advance.  And while you’re advancing, drop the crap with Flash and let live where it needs to be please!