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Posts tagged Lightroom

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ISO 200, 50mm, f/1.7, 1/60sec, IS on

ISO 200, 50mm, f/1.7, 1/60sec, +2 EV, IS on

It’s quick and easy to get studio quality lighting in your home with almost no additional expense. Here’s a quick look behind the scenes of this photo:

set up

As you can see, all I did was set up a couple of white boards on the kitchen counter under a fluorescent light. I learned this trick when I was Design Director at Griffin Technology. Most of the pre-2007 product shots were done this way on a cubicle desk using the fluorescent light under the overhead storage bin. I’m happy to say that today Griffin employs a professional photographer and has a full photo studio.

For this shot I dialed in +2 EV exposure compensation to adjust for the all-white background. By shooting RAW I was able to simply click the white balance eye dropper tool in Lightroom on the white background to dial out the color cast of the fluorescent light. I pushed up the exposure an additional +0.83 to get the high key look I was going for. Other than that, all I did was tweak the Vibrance a touch and added a bit of sharpening.

Here’s another composition using the same set up:

wine shot 2

By the way, the subject of these photos is the wonderful Corbières Domaine De Fontsainte Gris de Gris 2007 rosé imported by Kermit Lynch. This is one of my absolute favorite wines. It has a unique combination of dryness and intense fruit flavors. I picked it up for less than $10 at Kroger. Real men drink rosé ;-)

Make wonderland out of this concrete jungle

ISO 100, 18mm, f/20, 30 seconds, IS off

I grew up in Mountain Brook, Alabama and these Christmas decorations always put me into the holiday spirit. I took this 30 second exposure back during Thanksgiving. I used a tripod and the 2 second self timer delay to prevent camera shake. I experimented with a few settings while in manual mode to get the right balance of ISO, aperture and shutter speed. I love all the starbursts from the small aperture and the way the wet streets reflect all the lights. I had another shot with no headlight trails but I liked they way they added some motion to this otherwise static shot.

This photo is a good illustration of where shooting RAW pays the most dividends. I know that you can get wonderful JPEGs straight out of the camera (SOOC), but I hate standing around in the rain tweaking white balance presets and hoping I got it right. Here, I just played around with my WB settings in Lightroom in the heated comfort of my living room until I got the right mix of white for the twinkle lights and blue for the sky. This is especially useful when you are shooting in mixed lighting conditions like this. I hate the orange cast sodium vapor lights give to everything. It is very difficult to remove this color cast in a JPEG but one click of the Temp slider in Lightroom and it’s all gone! (This shot = 2250 on Temp and 0 on Tint).

Here’s the original unedited shot. You can also see that I had to straighten it a bit as I didn’t realize that my tripod was a little cock-eyed on the sloping sidewalk where I was shooting.

original unedited shot

original unedited RAW shot

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About

I'm an industrial designer and an avid hobbyist photographer. People are always asking me "how'd you do that?" So, I decided to create this site as a place to share my experiences and insights about photography, the gear and what it all means to me. I'm not sure if this site will make anyone besides myself a better photographer but I figure it's worth a try. Take a look around and let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

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