Getting the Shot 7: Locks of Love

 

The Shot: This is your typical still life shot using a wide aperture to create a shallow depth of field and effectively isolate the subject. Out of all the locks I chose the one that seemed to pop out the most and that has that “heart-shaped love feel” What I also did was use the fence as a source of leading lines to show that the locks continue off into infinity.

The Set Up: For this type of shot I like to add in a number of elements to add to the interest. First, in order to get that blur in the background, you need to be shooting wide open at an aperture like f/1.2, f/1.4, f/1.8 etc. These will give the shallow depth of field needed to effectively isolate your subject. I was using my ever-trusty 50mm f/1.4 prime and I love what it can do.  The weather that day was slightly rainy it diffused the light a lot which I like for these kinds of shots.

The Post-processing: I shot this in RAW as I seriously hope most of you do as well. Once I opened Camera RAW up from Bridge, I adjusted the curves to bring out more of the contrast. I played with the vibrancy and contrast sliders to get more of a “gritty-look” (at least to me anyway). The biggest thing that I did was add a vignette to compliment the shallow depth of field and draw more attention to the subject.

In Camera RAW, this is as easy as clicking on the icon that kind of looks like this ((())). Then at the bottom you’ll see the vignette sliders. The top one does what it says adds a vignette or takes it away. The bottom one calls “post-crop vignette” give you more control and will add the effect even after you crop the image… hence the name. If you shot in jpeg, you can open your image in Camera RAW by clicking on the little icon that looks like an aperture that is usually located in the upper left side of Adobe’s Bridge.

If you don’t use Bridge, you also apply this effect in photoshop using a couple of easy methods. Once you get your photo where you want it and the size etc. Duplicate the image using command (mac) or control (PC) J. Then hit “d” to make sure that your colours are at their default settings and then hit option or alt delete which will fill the image with black. Then choose the rectangular marquee tool and draw a box about an inch or 1/2 an inch in from the sides. Then go up to the Select menu and choose refine edge. At the bottom you will see a bunch of icons, click the one on the far left to get a better view of your selection. You can adjust the settings here like Radius 1 Feather 100 (low-res) 200 (high-res) and the rest all can be set to zero. The advantage to this over the faster select>modify>feather>100 (low-res) 200 (high-res), is that in the refine edge dialogue you can actually see the amount of feathering and changes that you make.

Once you finish, hit delete and then control or control D to clear the selection. The drop the opacity to something natural. The opacity slider is located just above the layers panel on the right. I usually drop it down to around 48% but depending on the effect you may want more or less. With this technique it is easy to see that you’ve added in the vignette if you have your opacity too high, so use it sparingly.

The Final Product: What you are left with is a shot the highlights a certain portion and leaves the rest to the viewers imagination. The contrast gives a realistic view that is not too saturated. The viewer’s eye is lead directly to the area in which you want them to see.

 

Don’t forget to add your summer shots to the Korea Bridge Summer Photo Contest


Jason Teale 

Photographer, educator, podcaster

Podcast    Website    Instagram

Photographing Korea and the world beyond!