Thanks to everyone who made this a great year!

'Tired Santa' Photographed by Jesse Seaward, Make-up by Bill Turpin

This is a photograph from my most recent event, a children’s Christmas party on the Navy base in Portsmouth. I was asked to take photographs of the children getting gifts from Santa. This is one of the organizers with Santa.

Here is the second part from the maternity shoot with Vicky which includes the rest of my absolute favourites… (always keeping a couple of super shots for the site of course) This session produced quite a bit of magic and a few very strong images! Looking forward to the baby girl coming soon so that we can plan the very first session together. Enjoy!!

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This is me with my Manny Pacquiao Jacket, obvious that I am a fan.

Had the rare opportunity a couple of weeks ago to have a maternity session with Vicky, a fantastic mother-to-be who came prepared with a specific vision of what shots she wanted to create… Combined with a couple of fresh ideas and some good old classics we created some pretty cool ‘belly-magic’; here are my favourites from the first set with the second one scheduled to follow later in the week. Enjoy!!

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Link to Slideshow

A strange fear gripped me, originally uploaded by Zardoz67.

First post of December and its going to be a short one as it’s getting late. I took this photo on the way home from work this evening in the underpass where the runway for Manchester airport crosses the main dual carriage-way as you head out of Wilmslow. As you can probably tell it was taken with the 10-20mm wide-angle lens and I think this photo really highlights what the wide angle can give you and how it can enhance even the least colourful of photographs. Apologies if the picture is a bit Morrissey but I suppose it reflects my current mood in that I’ve been busy at work and the whole driving home in the dark and getting up in the dark really gets to me. Don’t think I have full-blown SAD (seasonally adjusted disorder?) yet as I do actually quite like the Winter – I like big coats and boots and scarves.

I suppose this is also my second self portrait since starting the blog as the unidexter in the photograph is me. Anyhow, I think its turned out OK, if a little maudlin. Maybe it’s a sign of a new gritty urban direction but I doubt it, I have just been processing some Winter landscapes that I hope to share with you later in the week.

No digital manipulation here. I suppose I could have removed the cycle lane symbol (are cycle lanes gritty and urban? Especially in Wilmslow) but I like the perspective that the wide angle gives and the shadows cast by the lighting.

And in a darkened underpass I thought oh God my chance has come at last…

A refreshing pint at Rams Head, a rest stop on Main Street, and a few apples from the Sunday’s Farmers Market.  Annapolis, Maryland.

Emma Shervington is our first featured photographer. She  has a natural flair for composition and a great way with her subject. To see more of her work, visit www.emmashervington.com. If you want to be first featured photographer for 2010 the e-mail us here with a couple of shots and a bit about yourself.

Images Courtesy of J.F.Aguilar

© Willy Widjaja / Sisi Lain Photography 2009

Hello everyone,

I have not posted anything to this blog since the beginning of August.  I told you all that my husband was having surgery and he did.  But like the saying goes, “When it rains it pours” and it did.  It poured and poured!

We all have good times and bad, unfortunately, the months of August, September, and October have been horrible.  I have had three deaths in the family and my husband is still trying to recuperate from his surgery.

I must admit with all the sadness in my life my husband and I had a 25^th anniversary party which was so much fun!!  My brother-in-law flew out from New England and my step-sister flew out from Oakland, CA.  We had our family and friends (friends that are like family) share our special silver anniversary celebration with us.

I have had people individually emailing me with macro questions and I have replied to them all.  I always, always, love to talk about photography!

This post will not be about how to photograph up-close.  It will be about me, Janice Sullivan, a person that loves her family and friends.   I just wanted to thank everyone that has supported me in my photography profession, especially my husband, my children and my best friend Pam.  To others that are reading this that do not know me…thanks for stopping by.  It’s nice to share myself with all of you.  This is a business blog, so today is a rare occasion for me to express my feelings to all of you.

Below is a photo of my father-in-law with his boys in Ireland, standing in front of what is left of the O’Sullivan castle. This is one of the things he always wanted to do before he passed away and I’m happy he did it!

YOU CAN CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO SEE THEM BETTER, BUT TO GET BACK TO THE BLOG USE YOUR ARROW BACK KEY.

Below is my cousin with the family before she passed away from lung cancer.  She is still smiling, that’s Lisa!!

Lisa and our family.

I will also miss my Aunt Fern’s emails.  I am forever grateful for her wisdom and love.

Screen shot from my Aunt Kay:

The following photo’s were shot by my photographer friend Lindsey….

OUR YUMMY CHOCOLATE CAKE!!

After our vows….

Kevin and I never had a large wedding…so we decided to renew our vow with a small ceremony.  We had so much fun!  :)

SOME PARTY FUN WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS:

My best buddy and her family!! (above)

Getting ready for dinner…  Marriane did you take the kids a run from the camera, lol! (above)

My awesome lawyer  and friends that go waaaaaay back! (above)

Family from my mom’s side. (above)

Family from my dad’s side. (below)

This photo was shot by my Aunt Kay…thanks Aunt Kay !

I plan to begin my post again on Macro & Close-up photography, so if you would like me to discuss a particular area, commit on this post or you can email me at INFO@SULLIVANJPHOTOGRAPHY.COM.

Cheers,

Janice Sullivan

Owner of Sullivan J Photography

http://archive.sullivanjphotography.com

Allez oop, originally uploaded by Zardoz67.

After the spooky diversion back to some ‘proper’ photography and a picture taken a couple of weekends ago on the west beach, Llandudno, the same location as the rainbow picture from a couple of posts back. Once again, this image has not been processed or manipulated and shows a kite surfer on a cold, wet, windy (obviously) Sunday morning in October.

There were several surfers taking advantage of the (what I assume were) perfect conditions and I was amazed at the heights that they achieved; let alone the strength that must be required to keep the kite under control. As I have said before sometimes an opportunity presents itself for a picture and you don’t have the correct lens on the camera – anticipating another rainbow I had the 10-20 mm wide-angle lens on the camera and had decided not to lug the camera bag down to the beach with me as we had been there the day before. As a result, I couldn’t really get any close up shots of the surfers. However, given the wide-angle lens I was able to get a lot of shots in which the surfer and the kite appear in the same frame (which would be pretty impossible with a standard lens given the length of the strings separating the surfer from the kite).

Later on I went back to the beach with a telephoto lens can got some close ups and the rest of the images can be seen here. I have not had the opportunity to take many action shots so this was quite a good test for me and all in all I am pretty pleased with the results. Sure the background is a little over-exposed but this is actually due to a hazy mist that was clinging to the mountains and I think it actually serves to highlight the silhouette of the server (who would probably have been lost against the black of the mountains on a clear day.

Hop you like it. Comments as always are very welcome

Original Camera Settings: 1/20 sec, f/3.56, 18mm, ISO 400

Quick note – You may find the site changing frequently between visits. I’m trying out different themes in order to find one that is both aesthetically pleasing and properly formats my images in a fashion that doesn’t crop them. I apologize for any confusion.

This is for the techie side of me, and what I suspect is in most photographers out there.  Sorry to the groom for using your photo as an example:)

In my photography, the need for accurate color rendering and maintaining detail while reducing luminance noise is crucial.  Nature presents so many different colors, that when you get back to the computer and upload the RAW files, it’s sometimes hard to remember exactly what you saw.  In addition, different RAW editing programs interpret the camera’s RAW information differently.  For Canon DSLR’s, nobody does it better than Canon….duh.  However, their program, Digital Photo Professional, leaves so much to be desired as far as organizing and interface.  For this reason, most photographers choose programs such as Adobe ‘Lightroom‘, Apple’s ‘Aperture‘, and Phase One’s ‘Capture‘.  For hobbyists like me, Lightroom and Aperture are favorites….mostly due to cost.

Don’t get me wrong….Lightroom is an awesome program.  It kicks butt in every part of the importing, organizing, renaming, info-editing, and tiff exporting areas of my digital darkroom workflow.  It really is an amazing program and invaluable.  The interface with Adobe Photoshop CS4 is an added plus, with automatic Export to Layers, and Panorama abilities.  Where it fails miserably is in color rendering what I see on my camera’s LCD; in RAW sharpening; and most importantly…in noise reduction.  For noise reduction in Ligthroom, my preferred settings for ISO’s above 1600 are : Luminance-65, Chroma-25, and ALWAYS set the Sharpening to 0 in Lightroom.  Then I export the 16-bit tiff to Photoshop where I use a number of different sharpening techniques depending on the subject.

Color is a little bit tricky, and I’ve never been totally happy with it, although the Custom Color profiles you can create with Adobe’s ‘DNG Profile Editor’ have begun to help.  You can equate this to the way different types of film render color.  Color films all had characteristic shifts in hue and saturation, depending on differnt color channels.  They also affected contrast, but that isn’t as big an issue with digital editors.  Just the same, different RAW editors have quirky ways they render color.  The Profile editors allow you to adjust that, and even create your own.  In general, the Camera presets have too much vibrance in the aqua-greenish, and orange-redish tones.  I usually counter that under the Calibration Palette, and change the Hue and Saturation of the Red and Green channels in Lightroom.

This is a lot of work.  If there were  a common solution to this, I’d just save a preset….but there’s not because different lighting casts different colors.  Then you have the white balance’s effect in camera on the way the sensor captures the color information (which is why LIVE VIEW is crucial in the field).  Then you have the RAW editor’s interpretation.  After all those slight changes to different hues and shades, you can see why it’s hard to remember exactly what things should be when you get back home and import for editing.

So back to DPP.  The color just looks more natural.  Of couse it does….because it’s Canon software communicating with Canon’s in-camera software.  You can maintain much more detail without introducing too much noise as well.  However, the interface is clunky, with multiple windows opening up over each other.  It’s extremely cumbersome.  The images do have a tendency to a look a little more muted in comparison to Lightroom, but I think that’s what makes DPP’s images look more natural and ‘film-like’.

Take a look at this quick, crude example.  This is the same RAW file from a wedding I shot in April.  These are both shot with the same white balance, ‘As Shot’ settings from my in-camera work.  Shadow detail was preserved up to the point where it started looking flat, same with the highlights.

RAW edited in Digital Photo Professional

RAW edited in Adobe Lightroom

Look at how much better the DPP version looks compared to the LR version.  What’s amazing to me is the color differences in the skin tones and the suits.  Where did that Navy blue color come from?  It doesn’t look bad, but isn’t quite right.  THe real proof is in their faces.   So much more detail in the DPP version, and the LR version looks a little too pinkish.  Now, I could spend an hour tweaking this particular photo to get that right in LR, but why?  I got it right in DPP with adjustments only to sharpness and noise….which I had to do in LR anyway.

It’s hard to appreciate the differences on thes 500px images…..since I don’t have Photoshop right now, I can’t do full-size crops, but here are some closeups of the groom’s face and detail of the collar.

DPP version-500px image from 1800px crop.

Lightroom version-500px image from 1800px crop.

Don’t get me wrong, the LR image looks fine, but this color issue is particularly annoying in Landscape and Portrait work.  Also, just look how much more detail there is in the DPP version around the collar and the hair.  This is RAW sharpening done without introducing noise.  DPP allows you to go much further, which means less time in Photoshop:)

That’s my rant for the week.  I’ll do a follow up post soon to show some uses of custom color profiles using both Adobe’s DNG Profile Editor (via Lightroom), and Canon’s ‘Picture Style Editor‘.  You can get some pretty cool effect.s

I’d love to hear how any photographers out there have streamlined their importing-organizing workflow using these two programs.

TECHNICALS:

Coins?

Originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl

Street vendors, street performers, street musicians…. lively.

Irving Penn

This month we lost the masterful and brilliant photographer Irving Penn, gone at 92 -. I was fortunate, as a young man in New York, to work for a brief time in his studio. His respect for others, humility and perseverant spirit forever influenced my own approach to working. His art, always fresh, powerful, elegant and yet very real. I am grateful for having met him, and that his work will live on.

He will be missed and forever appreciated

Read more

you may be wondering who this cute couple is…we picked them off the street in Europe! no no not true we actually met Jan and Kathrin 4 years ago in Canada (they were the tourists then).

They joined us in Florence and we enjoyed Tuscany and the Italian coast with these two then scooted up to their place in Switzerland, nein they are not Swiss they are German. I must comment on the new found love love for german highways for it is not uncommon to drive at 200km.

On the way home I popped into Rheged. The amount of cars in car park suggested it was very busy, hardly a space to be found in the more rugged overflow car park further down the hill and, surprise, surprise, it was raining!

The Autumn fair at Rheged was very busy, as soon as I walked in I saw Stuart on his stand from Ivinson’s Farm Shop, Wetheriggs Farm. Stuart said, “We’ve been run off our feet and have almost sold out of everything, it’s been a terrific couple of days. For once I am thankful it rained because everyone has headed to Rheged!” Stuart, generous as always, insisted I took one of their Gingerbread Cakes away with me to try. Each time I see Stuart he gives me one of their cakes to try, I can highly recommend them all!

I also met and photographed Jon from Shepherds Walks who was selling his Capricorn Mohair Socks. I’d never met Jon in person before but had ‘met’ him on Twitter.  We chatted for a while about Twitter and how positive it’s been for our businesses.

Jon runs guided walks in Northumberland, Cumbria and Scottish Borders. Capricorn socks are also part of his business. Jon talked about the Mohair and how everything, even down to the little hook on the packaging, is made in the UK. The socks felt wonderfully soft and look very hard wearing, Jon assured me once I’d tried on a pair I’d never go back to using any others every again. When working and dog walking I live in my Berghaus walking boots, I spend an awful lot of my time on my feet with my photography so the Capricorn socks sounded ideal. I bought a pair for me and a pair for Richard also, being a Capricorn, I liked the name!   I’ll be trying mine out tomorrow. It was lovely to meet Jon and have a chat, what a nice guy.

Leica M6 camera and Leica 35mm f2 Summicron-M Aspherical lens with Kodak Ektachrome Elite 100 Extra Color film

This image was made during my second trip to Tibet in January 2000. I photographed these two kids in front of a professional photography studio where they’d just left after participating in a family portrait sitting. I made a couple of images of the kids and of the larger family group prior to being shoed away, with a broom, by the woman who ran the photography studio.

The original image was made on 35mm transparency (slide) film, prior to being scanned and processed with Adobe Camera RAW and Adobe Photoshop CS4.

I love children and very much enjoy the way they wear their heart on their sleeve. You know where you stand with kids, they either warm to you or they don’t. But if you treat them with respect and show a genuine interest in their lives you will be rewarded with honesty and raw emotions, the like so often held in check by adults dealing with each other.

The two kids in this image where a little unsure of me. And that’s fair enough, given that the entire process of meeting and photographing the family took only around 2 minutes. Add to that appearance, language and behavioral differences and I glad to have ended up with such a good image. It just proves that, as long as your motivation is pure, it’s worth grabbing opportunities when they present themselves. I’d also add that in photography, as in life, we make our own opportunities.

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Glenn Guy, Blue Sky Photography

have been working non-stop on some other projects and on the launch of the brand new gmk-photo.com site so did not have a lot of spare time to blog about recent events… I am currently going through various events, picking the shots which will get on the new site; here are a couple of new shots that made it to the ‘events: baptism’ section!

check out the site for the entire set of galleries!

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