Blog Moved to Wordpress

I have gone to a Wordpress style blog. Please visit www.peruccophotography.com to see the new page!

Composting - Joel Grimes Style

I've been getting pretty booked up with senior portraits as summer winds down. I've been checking out some tutorials on how Joel Grimes does his work, so I decided to take a shot at it. My first problem was that I only had a softbox and umbrellas as light modifiers. So, I decided to build two strip lights out of left over rain gutters that I had. As the diffuser, I used tracing paper doubled up. Each strip light is about 3 ft long. Using the standard Joel Grimes 3 light setup (see below), I was able to get the following looks:

Marquette Lower Harbor Lighthouse

My family took a vacation this past week to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A great place to visit, but I don't miss living there too much.

I don't normally do before/after photos. But here's a couple with a bit of an explanation. I plan on posting a video tutorial later on exactly how I did the editing for the non-HDR photo.

Front View of the Lighthouse

 



It was 2:00 pm so the sun was high (and hot), but there was really nothing I could do about this. The tours only run 3 times a day (11 am, 2 pm and 3pm). This is the only way you can see the front of the lighthouse with the walkway. To make this more challenging, I was holding my 3 yr old daughter in one hand to keep her from falling off the bridge (thank God for vertical grips!).

The adjustments: This was brought into Lightroom, Geotagged, labeled, and then I got to work. First I started with the shadows and highlights slider. After playing with the blacks and whites, the contrast was pretty set. The real trick here was the colors. To get the blues correct, I decreased the luminosity in the blue and aqua sliders. I then boosted the saturation a touch in both. I proceeded to do the same with the reds and greens, and then added a bit of warmth to the photo. Some basic sharpening was then done in Photoshop, along with some dodging and burning.

View from McCarty's Cove in HDR:

Before

After

This image was done with a 3 bracketed exposure (I included the neutral exposure as the before image). I used PhotoMatix to combine and tone map the images and then brought them into Photoshop for some dodging, burning, and color adjustments. It took me a while to get the lighthouse just right, it was really coming washed out, but I'm happy with the results. I really like how the rocks turned out in this one.

Father's Day Feature

As I was reading my news feed on Facebook today, I came across a neat surprise. I saw that Photo.net announced their editor pics for top Father's Day Photos of 2012. What caught my eye was the thumbnail was my photo! I clicked it and saw that it was the second choice!Weird that they didn't notify me, but a neat surprise, especially since I haven't been on Photo.net in years.
The photo is this one, which was actually taken by Cindy, since I'm in the photo:

To see the other selections and read the blog, check it out here:http://blog.photo.net/2012/06/photo-net-editors-picks-for-june-2012-fathers-day/

Photos to appear in hockey book

I received an email the other day for a request to be published in a hockey book. This was rather exciting because the other times I've been published, they've been in digital publications. This will be the first print publication. Although I won't be paid, I will receive photo credits in the book as well as a couple of autographed copies of the book.
Here is a copy of the email:

Hello Brett,

I would like to feature two of your Flickr photos 

in my new hockey book. I’m very impressed with the quality and spirit of your photos - they would look great in print!

About me: I am an established sports writer from Toronto. This will be my eighth hockey project. My others include Double Overtime, Xtreme Hockey, The Canadian Hockey Atlas, The Best of Hockey Night in Canada, The Last Hurrah, and Slapshots. My next book, Triple Overtime, will focus on NHL team history and fan culture. It will be in stores in the fall of 2012.

In order to use your image, I will need confirmation that the photo was taken by you. In exchange for permission to use your photo, I will of course formally credit you in the book and can also recommend your work on Flickr, your blog, Linkedin, etc. Please just let me know exactly how you’d like your credit to appear (usual format: Name/Flickr).

Please let me know as soon as possible, as my deadline for your approval is in the next couple of weeks. If you are willing to grant permission and release for your photo, I would need you to please provide an original high-resolution version of the photo along with notification of your permission to reproduce and publish the image.

I am happy to provide more details, so please don’t hesitate to email me with any questions.

Great photos, keep ’em coming! All the best,

Stephen Cole

Fun in the Studio with Ellia

For this series I simply set up a backdrop in our living room. It was rather a quick shoot and I stayed simple with strobist lighting.







Here's the setup:

SB-28 inside Apollo Westcott softbox at 1/1 powerSB-600 on left through shoot through umbrella at 1/2 power.