Spent the day compositing images.  Here is one of them.

Composite images

For several months we have been gathering individual photos of models to combine into group images.  Here is one example of people waiting in line. It is made up of ten separate images including the people, stanchions, and background, plus a few other layers to create shadow effects.

Nothing like a trip to the dentist to inspire a stock shot.  I grabbed this patient's eye view while sitting in the chair in my dentist's office -- all because I had the Sony RX100 in my pocket at the time. This photo will also make a nice background for other combining ideas I have in mind.

Lightbox Abstracts

This set of macro images of see-though objects was created on a small light box. All were taken with the Fuji X-Pro1 and Leica R 60mm macro lens. One of the nice things about the new mirrorless cameras is that there are plenty of adapters to attach other SLR lenses to them. There was a very subtle color palette in each scene. To retain the coloring, even in the highlights, I did not allow the background light to over-expose into pure white.

Plastic ink pens

AG-1 flash bulbs

Perfume bottle

Inside of a spray cleaner bottle

Passage of Time

I set out to do a series of conceptual still life images depicting  the passage of time.  I wanted the colors to have a saturated depth but be nostalgic at the same time.  To achieve this, I first enhanced the color space to deepen the colors.  Next I reduced the vibrancy with an overlay layer of a monochromatic platinum tint with its opacity reduced to around 30%.

All photos were taken with a Nikon D600 and either a 60mm macro or 85mm tilt-shift lens.

To take this photo using my own hands I had the camera mounted on an overhead tripod and connected the new Nikon WU-1b wireless transmitter to the camera, and downloaded the Nikon app allowing me to control the camera from my cell phone.  With the cell phone positioned off to the side where I could see the transmitted image and compose the shot, I had an assistant click the shutter by tapping on the phone.  I will be featuring a description of the WU-1b in a later blog post.

For this photo I wanted to have all the objects in sharp focus while maintaining a soft background.  To achieve this I took ten photos each one moving the focus point from the foreground string towards the background bottle.  I later combined all ten images using Helicon Focus.

I titled this photo "Bye-Bye Dearie" after the final line of the letter.

Here is another image where we used the same little boy from the door shot of a couple days ago.  This photo was taken in our strobe studio.  We then added the moon later. The boy's face was photographed with one main strobe light using a narrow focus reflector.  A much lower powered strobe was bounced off the studio wall to dimly light his hands.  The boy was photographed against a black seamless.  The full moon was added later in Photoshop and a graduated background from black to dark blue formed a third layer behind everything.

The sky was clear and blue last night when I took this photo of the Empire State Building framed by barren tree branches on Broadway.  Taken with the Nikon D800, 70-200mm f/4 zoom at 200mm and f/22.