The Digital Photo Guy

Fixing Critter Eyes (both 2 & 4 legged)

I was planning to produce several more Photoshop Elements videos but couldn’t come up with a topic or theme. So, I’m recycling a video that, according to my logs, was very popular when it was first uploaded.

Everyone has taken photos of Fido or Fluffy with weird green or white eyes. This is the animal form of red-eye. This technique can be used to recreate a more realistic result than that nasty old Red Eye Removal Tool in PSE. For anyone who has never tried the Red Eye Removal Tool, you’re not missing anything. It simply replaces the red with another color. Unless you’re very precise or very lucky, the new color will not match the real eye color.

Using this method, you’ll actually replace the eye with a good eye from another photo.

Video Monday Morning Tip, 3-29-10

Female Assistant Needed – Friday 7/30

I need a female assistant (read as “slave labor“) to hold reflectors, position & adjust flashes, keep track of equipment and otherwise help me during a beach shoot. The shoot will be early morning and/or late afternoon, Friday, 7/30 at Oceanside Harbor. The model is Tylor, the young lady I photographed a few weeks ago but this time we’re doing an Ava Gardner look on the rocks at Oceanside Harbor. I need a female since you might need to brush back her hair, adjust her bathing suit straps or otherwise work very close to her. Shoot me an e-mail ASAP if you can help.

The Good – San Luis Rey Pow Wow

The Mission San Luis Rey Inter-Tribal Pow Wow was a small event but I managed to get some good photos. Having attend a number of pow wows, I had a good sense of when, where and how things would unfold. That allowed me to pick out the best sight lines and backgrounds. Here are some photos:

I used my fallback lens, the Canon 28-135 with a Canon 550EX in manual mode at 1/16.

Also in the Good column, I met Dave Plunkett, the Arena Director who will also be the Arena Director at the Pechanga Pow Wow on July 3-4. Pechange is a huge event with nearly 1000 dancers so knowing Dave will help me get the inside scoop. I also met Al Footracer, the Head Gourd Dancer who allowed me to enter the arena and photograph the Gourd Dance. This is the first time I’ve seen a non-Native American allowed inside the arena so I was thrilled.
Click to read more

FREE Lens Webinar

Saturday, May 15 at 11AM CDT (noon EDT, 10A, MDT, 9AM PDT), Roger Cicala, the man who owns ~3000 lenses from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Tamron, Sigma, Tokina, Panasonic, etc will explain what makes some lenses better than others. If you’re wondering which to buy and how best to use it, Roger has the answer, backed up with years of experience. What other company have you ever seen with a Lifetime Rating of 9.98/10 on ResellerRatings.com? Click here to register for the webinar.

Macro, Wide Angle & Ultra Wide Lenses

Here are some more student photos from the Spring Desert Wildflower Workshop in March. The workshop concentrated on macro, wide angle and ultra wide angle lenses and these four photos demonstrate the concepts we learned and practiced.

The first two photo use a wide angle 28mm lens to incorporate flowers as foreground anchors in a lndscape. By getting low, the first photo makes the small patch of desert daisys appear to be much larger than it really was. In the second photo (also 28mm), careful composition hides the fact that this was taken at the visitors’ center amid a clutter of lights, sidewalks, cars and people.

Click to read more

Topaz Labs FREE Webinar

Eric Yang of Topaz Labs will demonstrate tips, tricks and techniques for their most popular plug-ins. If you have registered, please check your e-mail for log-in instructions and log in early because we open the doors to everyone once the webinar starts. To register, please click here and follow the links.

It Makes Me Happy…

I love it when readers send me samples of their work using tips & techniques they’ve learned here. Below are Before and After photos fixed by Al from New York using techniques in this MMT.

  
Click to read more

Student Photos from Anza-Borrego

Here are the first 3 student photos from the Spring Desert Wildflower workshop in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The first day covered wildflowers as elements in landscape photography. Notice how we shot from a low angle to make the flowers appear more numerous and dense than they really were. Click to read more