Focus August 2010 by Victoria Kelly

Georgia Focus August 2010

Convention 2010 Issue

Editor’s Notes

I shot this image while on vacation in Yellowstone recently, and looking back at it now I could not help but think about how it reflects on the current economic state of our industry. In 1988, there was a devastating fire in Yellowstone. In the shot above you see some evidence of that event. You also see the new growth and the promise of what is to come in the rainbow. I see the devastation as a parallel to the havoc that the economy has wreaked on our industry as of late. The new growth, to me, is the unprecedented explosion of new photographers competing for the limited resources in a time of tightened wallets. Just like in Yellowstone, the “old growth” studios need to not only weather the storm but depend on their strong root system (the fundamentals of good photography) and at the same time, find a way to adapt to the changing environment or marketplace. To me, the rainbow holds the promise of what is waiting for those who make it. Much the same as in Yellowstone, many of the established studios will survive as will many of the newcomers. I believe that education and membership in our professional associations are two of the key factors that will help get us to the end of that rainbow.

Just be careful to stay on the right path, because what you don’t see is that at the other end of this rainbow is one of the park outhouses, and you certainly don’t want to spend your retirement there! I will be serving as the interim editor of the Georgia Focus, and this is my first run at design and layout for a magazine. Any comments are welcome, but even more, we welcome articles for publication within these pages. Whether you have an in depth how-to or just some quick tips, someone can learn from them. Even if it is an article about what you like to do in your off time - involving photography or not - send it our way. Articles may be submitted to Kevin Jiminez or to Brad Paul. Advertising questions may be submitted to Jill Stringfellow. See you at Georgia School! Kevin A. Jiminez , PPA Certified M.Photog.Cr., GFD, GSD

GPPA Past President 2008

resident’s Message

John Carney, GFD, GSD

I found this to be a very interesting article and thought I would share with GPPA friends. This was taken from book by Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith.

What Really Sells In the factories we make perfume,” Revlon founder Charles Revson once said. But in the stores we sell hope. So do we all. Everywhere ,people are buying happiness,or the hope of it. Happiness is so important in our country that its pursuit is considered an inalienable right-together with the right to life itself-in our Declaration of Independence. People want to smile. And will pay handsomely for it. Sit in on a group of magazine editors reviewing the best-selling covers of the year. The best-sellers are almost always happier and more hopeful. Sit in on a review of a test of different direct mail letters for the same service. The most upbeat letter almost always wins.(This is why one noted direct mail copywriter advises writers,”Never write when you are worried.”) My wife once recommended a typically sad

Swedish film to a co-worker. Her co-worker said,”Forget it . If I want to be unhappy ,I can just open my checkbook.” Samsonite once created a brilliant,award-winning ad showing its luggage being dropped out of an airplane. The luggage survived the fall,an incredible reminder of its durability. Unfortunately ,the commercial also reminded people of airplane crashes,Sales actually dropped too. Bumper stickers now urge people to commit random acts of kindness. Make people smile ,the stickers urge. We want to smile more. Read through everything you send to clients and prospects. How does it feel? Does it sell happiness ,or the hope of it?

Above all, sell hope.

GPPA

August 22-27

Calendar

Georgia School

September date TBD NE Area Meeting

Kevin Jiminez posing/lighting Held on the campus of North Georgia Technical College. Host hotel it the Bridal Portraits. North Georgia Technical ColHelendorf Inn. lege.

September 12

SW Area Meeting

January 16-18, 2011

Phil Scarsbrook from CCI is doing a class on Photoshop. The class will be held at Steve Mason’s studio in LaGrange. This will be a four hour class with NW area.

October 17

SEPPA Convention

The Classic Center in Athens, Georgia.

SW Area Meeting

Imaging USA San Antonio, Texas.

March 26-29, 2011

A Moment Captured by Cindy Strickland from Tallahassee, Florida, will be speaking If you know of any future events please let us on Children’s Photography at Jill Stringfellow’s know. Studio in Moultrie. We will also have a late afternoon shoot at Reed Bingham State Park. So bring your camera’s.

H&H

Don’t Text and Drive! Doing Photoshop while driving is hazardous to your health …

Command+Enter on the Mac or Ctrl+Enter on the PC, it will show up as a selection. Then

Texting?

OK, using the Text features in Photoshop may not be texting as you know it but it is a powerful feature! Departing from the usual image processing, let’s take a look at how using Photoshop’s Type Tool can help you create great you can fill with a color (Edit>Fill or the other marketing pieces or add text to an image for ef- shortcuts) or an image (using “Paste Into” … Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+V). The caveat here is that fect. the Type Mask tools do NOT make their own There are four “tools” in the Tool Bar under the layer and are NOT Type Tool (keyboard shortcut is simply the let- editable later. ter “T”). (See Figure #1) The basic and most useful tool is the Horizontal Type Tool. It “types” just like any other word processor. The Vertical Type Tool puts each letter underneath the last one. This is hard too read and not used often. You can use the Horizontal Type Tool and the Free Transform to “turn” the word to a vertical orientation but in a normal reading pattern if you want vertical type. The other two tools are “mask” tools, both horizontal and vertical versions as above. If you select one of these (usually by accident), as soon as you start “typing,” the screen will go red and freak you out. But keep typing. When you commit the type using the check mark in the Options Bar (See Figure #2) in older versions of Photoshop or

And for those of you that are really into “texting” on the phone and have forgotten how to spell, there is a great spell checker in Photoshop. Go to Edit>Check Spelling to perform this task. (See Figure #3). Now here’s the kicker … go to the Character Palette (See Figure #4) and at the bottom, notice it says “English USA.” Click on this little window and WOW … there are 37 different languages you can spell check in! (See Figure #5) No, it WON’T convert English to Spanish. But it will check it in Spanish if you type it in Spanish. Darn, huh? I wonder why word processing programs do not have this option? (Continued on pg 9)

Now let’s look at the Options Bar … located at the top of your screen when you click on any tool. Back to Figure #2, from left to right are the following options: Presets - Uses this for easy access to what you use most often; Switch - toggles between horizontal and vertical text; Type Face selection options; Typeface Style options - in some typefaces, you can choose normal, bold, italic or bold italic … and in some, you can’t; Point Size … used to select how large the type is. To the immediate left of this little window, you see an icon with a large black “T” and a smaller grey one. If you hover the cursor there, you will see it becomes a “scrubber hand.” Click and move it back and forth. The type size will change. This is a great way to make things fit. Didn’t work? You must “select” all the type first … either click-holddrag the cursor over the type or use the “Select All” keyboard shortcut of Command/ Control+A option; Anti-Aliasing method selection. Forget this one, just make sure it is NOT on “none!”; Alignment setting for

keeping the text aligned to the left (the normal way we see text), centered or aligned to the right; Text Color … clicking on this box will bring up the color picker. The Text color will be the same as the foreground color unless you change it. You can use the Eyedropper to select a color in advance. Here’s a hint: remember to change the Eyedropper option at the top to 3x3 or 5x5 average, NOT Point Sample); Warp Text - a feature to make text into various “shapes”; Character/ Paragraph Palette access; then way over to the right in versions before CS4 are the options to either not accept or commit the type layer. When you want to add text, click on the Type Tool (Keyboard Shortcut “T” remember?) and then click on your image. You will get a point and a line and now you can start typing. If you start typing and nothing happens, you may have slightly moved the cursor when you clicked and that created a text box … a box used to confine the text to a certain area. Hit “Escape” and try again. You have the options of selecting the “Type Family” such as Verdant, Edwardian Script, etc. before you start. That’s great if you know what you want to use. (A side note,

my favorite typeface/family is Verdana … an easy-to-read sans-serif face). You will learn what you like and if you don’t have it in your list (See Figure #6), you can buy new ones or download some free ones. Once you actually type, you can highlight the text (click-holddrag) then click on the down arrow in the Type Family Box, go to the top and select the first one (American Typewriter in older versions), select it, go back and click in the box again, then use the down arrow keys to go down the list and see what your options are until you find something you like. You will learn what you like pretty quickly. In the next box over, with the type selected, you can choose bold or italic or even bold italic in SOME type faces. Some do not offer that choice.

NOT have to have the type selected when you do this.

Moving on, the Color is set to the foreground color … but you can change it by clicking on the box, bringing up the color picker. Pick any color by moving the cursor around in the box or using the slider to the right of the color box to select a basic color and then move the cursor around until you’re happy. The type will become that color right before your eyes. You can also pick a color from your image if you are adding text to an image. It will become the foreground color and you can use the Option+Delete/ Alt+Backspace fill methSo you’re happy with the type face but you want od. You CANNOT use the it larger. Again, highlight the text (with the Text Edit>Fill option in this case. Tool selected) and you have a bunch of options. If you KNOW the size, highlight the numbers The next box is the Warp in the box and type something in. Or you can Text feature. This is someclick on the down arrow and select something. thing you can play with and OR … use the scrubber hand technique de- figure out easily how to use scribed above to make it larger or smaller. These … all by yourself! It is a same options are also in the Character Palette cool option when you want (See Figure #4). Plus there are two other inter- something different. Just try esting options. While you are typing, you can it! See Figure #7 for the difhold down the Command or Control key and a ferent Warp options. transform box will appear, as if by magic! You can really screw with it now! Clicking on any The last option is the Character/Paragraph Pal“handle,” you can make it larger, smaller, distort ette. The Paragraph Palette contains the three it, skew it, whatever … and by holding the Shift alignment options (what, MORE choices? LOL) Key and dragging a CORNER handle, you can but also contains four true “Justification” op“scale” it up or down. After you commit the tions. (See Figure type and then want to change it, you can use #8) The three in Free Transform (Command/Control+T) to do the middle next to the same thing the same way. each other will “justify” all lines, which The next three options are for alignment. You aligns them BOTH can “align” it to the left (the normal way we see right and left, as in type, center it or align it to the right. You do a magazine, but will

align the LAST line to the left, center or right. The final option, the next box to the right, is “Justify All,” meaning it will align text to BOTH the right and left, INCLUDING the last line, spreading it out in both directions … NOT a good option 99% of the time.

Additionally in the Paragraph Palette, you can decide if you want justified paragraphs to use hyphenated words … or not. (See Figure #9) Now let’s look at some of the other text options. Have you ever clicked and started typing and nothing happened? Very possibly, you slightly moved the mouse and instead of actually clicking and setting a starting point for type, you defined a really small box that constrains the type

… and it was too small to see! If you simply click and start typing, the copy will continue in a straight line. (See Figure #10) If you click-holddrag, you will define a box that will contain the text. (See Figure #11) Note that you can change the size and shape of the box even after you drag out the initial box … with the type already done!

In the Character Palette, you will see several boxes that define certain characteristics. In Figure #4, the top two boxes show the current “font family” and “font style.” In this case, Verdana is the font and bold is the style. The box next to the “double T’s” is the point size … how large the type is. The next box to the right is the “Leading.” This is like the “metal” lead (led), not the “follow me” lead (leed). This is the space between the lines. (See Figure #12). In this case, the “leading” is too large. With ALL the type selected, click on the icon next to the window and drag it up or down, making the leading more or less. As a rule of thumb, the setting for the leading should be very close to the same number as the point size. But this is not always true, depending on what you are trying to do. You can also change this one line at a time by selecting just that line of text. The box under the “point size” with the AV icon is the “kerning” or “space-between-the-letters” setting. Using the scrubber hand again, you can spread or condense the type from side to side. The next box to the right, with another version of the AV icon, sets the tracking, something very similar to the kerning setting … and you will normally use this to spread out the text horizontally. The text must be selected to be used however! The option with the “T” and “Down Arrow” … with the type selected! … will change the height of all letters at the same time. The next box to the

right with the “Horizontal Arrow” will increase or decrease the width of all the letters. The last box, with the large and small “A” and the little a r r o w, sets the “baseline” for selected text. So here are some examples of using these options creatively:

not use when you use these two features. The next “double T” makes all the selected type Capital Letters … “All Caps” and the one next to it with the large and small “T” keeps the original capitals as capital letters but makes all lower case letters smaller capital letters. The “T’s” with the small number near the top and bottom are Super- and In Figure #13, The text was John Doe with a dif- Sub-script options. Again, I wish word procesferent font for the first letter of each name. Se- sors were so flexible! See Figure #15 to see how lect each letter individually and change the font. these are used. Then increase the size of the letter individually with the “Vertically Scaling” option, using the The last two options are “Underlining” and Scrubber Hand on the box indicated in Figure “Strikethrough” type … so check out Figure #16 #13.

In Figure #14, the phrase “From this day forward …” needed some special effect. So the first letter was changed from the original “Verdant” font to “Bradley Hand ITC TT” … something in CS4. Then the various default settings for vertical and horizontal scaling and tracking where changed … using the Scrubber Hand … until it suited the intended use. Note the settings in Figure #14. The set of “T’s” at the bottom of the Character Palette (See Figure #4 again) will make changes to all selected type. The first “T” makes the type “bold” and the second one “italic.” These are actually “Faux Bold” and “Faux Italic” … a fancy way to say fake! While they are what they say, there are certain editing features you can-

If you have a tip or technique that night help people out or if you have an idea for an article contact either Kevin Jiminez or Brad Paul about getting it into the Georgia Focus.

GPPA Salon 2010

Illustrative “The Final Take Off ” First Place, Kodak Gallery Award Jerome Spivey

Creative and Abstract “Cascading Callas” First Place, Best of Show Fine Art Cheri MacCallum

Portraits of a Teen “La Ballerina Espanola” First Place Sundra Paul

Portraits of a Man “The Artist” First Place Steve Bracci

Portraits of Groups “Simple Abundance” First Place Tim Brown

Portraits of a Child “Homespun” First Place, Best of Show Fuji Masterpiece Award Lora Baxley

Pets and Animals “Emma’s Domain” First Place Ann Bass

General Commercial “The Color Bar” First Place, Best of Show

Portraits of a Woman “Aria” First Place, Kodak Gallery Award Jerome Spivey

Wedding Candids “Not Very Lady Like” First Place Ann Bass

Fine Art Portraiture “I Do” First Place Jerome Spivey

Brides “Bring It On” First Place, Best of Show Kodak Gallery Award Lori Grice

Fine Art Scenic “Path to Pisa” First Place Lori Grice

Albums “Jennifer and Steven” First Place Kevin Jiminez

Simple Details Equal Big Profits Gregory Daniel

creation of salable imagery. These elements when mastered through education and application will not only increase your confidence when accepting an assignment but translate in to big profits in the sales room.

Imagine

that moment in your dimly lit sales room after an emotional engaging projection presentation to music you spent hours preparing. This is the instant when all the careful preparation by you and your client pays off but for some reason the client is not responding to your artistic creation. Their response is less than favorable to what they consider a poor reflection of their own appearance. Lighting, posing, environment and choice of lenses are elements that must be considered carefully in the

Figure one represents a common posing situation resulting in our clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s upper body positioned properly but her legs are curled back so as to suggest her body is out of proportion. A simple extension of her top leg, as seen in figure 2, corrects the proportion perspective.

Current styles of photography today are free flowing and exciting images meeting the needs and desires of our clients. I suggest to be sustainable, reputable and successful in our industry we must understand the photographic elements of art and science. When properly mastered the sales room experience will be one you have always dreamed.

On t he Cover

“Bring it on”

Lori Grice, M.Photog. CPP, GFD, GSD Savanna in Savannah

When Savanna and I planned her bridal session we intended to only “start” at the architectural firm when she worked as an interior designer. When she gave me the tour, I quickly realized that the office was a mecca of photographic opportunity. With the South Georgia summer in full swing outside, staying inside was completely OK with her. Savanna is a natural beauty – both inside and out. Plus her stepmom owns an Aveda salon and made sure that every hair was in place and that her make-up was perfect. So really, with a beautiful venue, a stunning bride and an on-site hair and make-up pro the odds were stacked in my favor to create something magical that day. The decision to enter one of Savanna’s portrait comes from my personal goal of creating competition-worthy work on each session. Colossians 3:23 urges us to do that in all aspects of our life: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” The journey to achieving my Master’s degree from PPA back in 2004 was gut-wrenching but it made me a better photographer. When your work hangs in your studio there is no comparison factor, but when you hang it in print competition right beside your mentor’s work you quickly realize ways you can improve it. If you never have entered, try it twice. Once is easy… going back the second time for the critiques is what separates you from the pack.

A Digital Solution for an Old Problem Randy McNeilly, as;lghq[eoghr[obv In my thirty years as a professional photographer no assignments have given me more grief than photographing large family groups. Portraits consisting of grandparents, small children and all sizes in between are a challenge in posing, lighting, depth of field and the photographer’s patience. No matter how much preplanning or how prepared I was the results usually were short of my expectations. The lighting would be compromised, usually made too “flat” to compensate for unwanted shadows. One or more of the subjects would deviate from their poses. The adults would be constantly encouraging the children to smile and of course looking to make sure they were. The result was a headache for me and a product that was only “good enough”. While it would usually satisfy the client it did not “Wow” them and certainly did not please me. After the move to digital photography things were better. Now we had the capability of swapping heads to ensure good expressions on everyone. There were still problems. Some times the body position would change so the head and more importantly what was behind it did not match. We still had all the problems of dealing with a large number of people at once. Finally there was the matter of resolution. Even with to-

d a y ’s fabulous cameras, think of how few pixels make up a face in a group of twenty people. In the film days I had overcome this by shooting these situations with 4x5 film. I missed that quality. The final solution came to me three years ago. For years I had been compositing many photographs into one for commercial and personal applications. Why not do the same for portraits? My first efforts were painfully time consuming but the results were very rewarding both to me as a craftsman and in sales. I have now refined the process to a point where we may actually save time. The little extra time in production is balanced by less time in the sales room. This is because we are only showing the clients one image of the large group. The purpose of this article is to tell you what I have learned and here it is in six steps.

1. Pre-visualize the image. You must see the final print in your mind so you have a blueprint to start. This is how you will know how to position your subjects when you photograph them individually. Keep in mind about half your subjects will be broad lit and half short lit. Plan your group so the heaver subjects can take advantage of the short lighting. Usually I keep sub families together as much as possible but some times you “break” a sub family up for symmetry. Have this in mind when you photograph them rather than turning every member of the sub family in the same direction. With small children and babies you can photograph them being held as a unit of two.

will be different on some subjects. Very strange in the composite. I do vary hair the hair light for very light or no hair. While I am usually a proponent of shallow depth of field, in this case choose an aperture that will guarantee sharpness all the way to the back of the head. It will not work to have someone on the front row with soft ears while the person behind is razor sharp. 5. Size does mater. I start by photographing one of the larger people. Most of these groups are half -length views, so I will crop this first subject in a very tight three quarter length pose. This will let me take full advantage of the cameras resolution. Now this is very important, as you photograph the other individuals never move your camera or “zoom” the lens in or out. Even though you may be using only a fraction of the cameras pixels for a small child, this solves two very big problems. First and foremost is head size. There is no guessing should a head size be larger or smaller to “look right” because you have shot everything proportional. Secondly the resolution of all parts of the composite match.

2. Here is the key to the whole process. Photograph the individual subjects on the same background you will use in the final image. This will make the “extraction” of the individuals far less critical. This beats the heck out of using a green screen or any solid color. With these you will always get “color fringing” especially around light hair. If you are photographing the people in the studio with the intent of dropping them into an outdoor setting, choose a studio Now it is time to create our composite. I background with similar tones and brightness start by resizing the background image to the level as the final background. size I would like the client to buy. Depending 3. Photograph your background first. If you on the shape desired this will be about 40x24 to want the background out of focus, do it with the 40x16 at 300 dpi. I know this is large and hard camera. Diffusion in the computer is less pleas- to work with but the results are worth it. ing to me than when done physically with a lens. I pick my favorite image of each group If your background is a location rather than a flat studio backgrounds use approximately the member and do a full retouch on each before same focal length you will use for your people. compositing. My favorite tool for extraction of the individual photographs is a relatively inThis will maintain a realistic perspective. expensive Photoshop plug in called Topaz Re4. All individual subjects must be photo- mask. With this software I simply draw a wide graphed with the same lighting. Mark a spot on blue brush around the subject, overlapping the the floor where each subject will stand or sit. area where it meets the background. The softThe main light and fill reflector or light cannot ware will analyze the different tones and sepachange or the light pattern and contrast ratio rate the two. It takes about thirty seconds for

you are ready for the sale. By having in-house printing capability; we usually choose to make the sale from a studio sample of appropriate size. If the client questions the individual poses I have chosen we will project the others for them. Ninety percent of the time they will revert back to the one already chosen because they are seeing it retouched. If they want a different one, no problem it can be easily inserted in the saved layered image. each group member. Remember it doesn’t have to be so precise because you are pasting onto the same or a similar background.

We have seen many benefits from this technique. Photographing one person at a time is very easy. Each member of the group has great expressions. Everyone doesn’t have to be there at the same time or even the same day. The lighting is not compromised. Each person retains the resolution and quality of an individual portrait. The results make my photographer friends think the portraits were shot on 8x10 film. Most of all I now enjoy these assignments.

Once all the subjects are on the background simply move them around until you are pleased with the “puzzle”. If the background is to large or you need a larger canvas just transform the background until it pleases you. When you have finished the large composite, it is easy to produce portraits of sub-families by dragging Randy McNeilly is one of the featured them from the original to a copy of the back- speakers teaching at this year’s Georgia School, ground. Rearrange the family members, trans- August 22 - 27th in Helen Georgia. form the background to an appropriate size and

Louis Tonsmeire Receives Life Membership

In a ceremony that would be fitting

to only someone like him, Louis Tonsmeire was Awarded Life Membership at this year’s convention. Louis has given much to this association and this year the association gave it to him. A rousing history of Louis’ very early days was given by Past GPPA President Larry Patrick. Including Louis’ attempt to recreate Larry’s home engineered camera stand. Louis’ wife Jenny was there to see him honored and to try to keep him in check during the festivities. In addition to this most recent award Louis has been honored with just about any service related award that the GPPA can give out. Louis is a Past Presi-

dent of the GPPA and has served the association as the director of the Georgia School. Currently Louis has given the GPPA another feather in our cap by serving as this year’s President of the Professional Photographers of America. Louis is a constant cheerleader for our association and is a strong believer in the educational opportunities we offer. Louis has been featured at the Georgia School several times and will be there again this year teaching his class - Introduction to Professional Photography. Louis’ class is always a crowd pleaser and can teach even the accomplished photographer plenty, as well as reinforce the things we all know we are supposed to be doing in our work. Be sure to tell Louis congratulations if you see him.

2010 Awards Photos

Congratulations Award Winners

Keep up the good work!