The vendor, Westcott, sell various lighting and light modifiers to photographers and studios. They are a constant vendor at Photoshopworld and other Photography related shows. One of the most popular features of their booth has been the model shoot where a rep will demo product using a live model and then allow photographers to try their hand at a fast shoot using the same setup and equipment.
I think they just raised the bar in a big way by having four “sets” set up where they had live models and at times a still life available to shoot using the Westcott equipment. There were simple rules, you could not touch the model or the lights but you could direct the model on how you think a pose might work. This time you can submit your final images to be a possible catalog cover.
Popular? You bet!!! They had photographers coming out of the woodwork with everything from the high end Canon/Nikons to the cell phone with any number of camera in between. it was amazing to shoot and even more so just to watch. It was pretty clever in a way since you can only really make the photograph yours by model position and post work. Since the lights were fixed, you had to move the model to change the mood and you had to use some solid techniques in post to “fix” things like lights being in the image, fashion model fixing, getting rid of backdrop seams and so on.
Here are some of my shots along with a description of what I had to do in post to get to the finished or close to the finished image. Most of what I did to these images is not much different than what I do in my wedding shoots or portrait sessions here in my studio in Orange. When I shoot, many times I know when I take the shot, that I will need to do something in post like removing something or enhancing the bride and so on. Sometimes I make a mental note that a certain picture will need something specific because I know it’s a cool shot but needs editing to make it cool.
Here is my Catwoman shot in the raw. No retouching, no post of any kind except to convert it from camera RAW to JPEG to post here on my blog.
Catwoman in Gotham City RAW
You can see from the above shot that there is quite a bit of work needed in post to make a usable image. There is a light in the upper left, the bike is on carpet, the background is too short and does not touch the carpet just to name a few things. Here is the final version or very close to my final version of Catwoman
Catwoman in Gotham Final
I edited out all the extra stuff like the lights and reflector panel. I used content aware fill and free transform to stretch and edit the background. I used the Lightroom Graduated Filter with a blue tint to darken and add mood to the background. I added a concrete texture to the carpet to make it look more like asphalt. I did a fair amount of selective burning in like the front rim of the bike which was too bright. I tweaked the intensity to get the deep reds and dark blacks. I added a dark vignette around the image to help blend in the transition between backdrop and carpet. I think it turned out pretty well 
In the next shot, we have a retro looking “Pin Up Queen” but we need some work here too. There is a red fabric that is competing for attention, we have tattoos on the model and we have some unsightly bulges on the bustline and arm.
Pin Up Queen RAW
And here is my final image after using several tools and some hand work.
Pin Up Queen Final
I used liquidify to smooth out the bustline and arm. I used Portraiture to smoothout the skin and give a glamor look to the over all image. I removed the red sash hanging down in the background and I removed the tats showing on each arm.
Here are some of the rest of my shots from the Westcott model shoot. Westcott even had a couple of still lifes for those who do not like shooting people. As you can see, many times you need good post processing to really bring out the best of a picture whether it be a still life, a fashion shoot or even a wedding. I’ve seen good images with bad post processing and they just do not work well. I’ve seen marginal images but with excellent post processing and they work pretty well. Taking the shot is just one step to having a killer image as the final result. Ansel Adams was a master of this and understood clearly that the raw image was only the first step to showing the world your vision.
Thank to Westcott for putting all of this together and letting the photographers have alot of fun over the past three days shooting gorgeous models on fun sets.
Queen of Hearts RAW
Queen of Hearts FINAL
Steam Punk RAW
Steam Punk FINAL
Natural Pair RAW
Natural Pair FINAL
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So here at Photoshopworld at the vendor Expo, Westcott did something very cool. They brought in four models (five counting the still life) and had them rotating between live demos to posing sets. Anyone with a camera could walk up and shoot the set/model from any angle you could get to. You could not change the lighting but you could have the model pose differently for you.
Here is the RAW shot from one of the posing stations. Straight from my D300 and zero adjustments.
Catwoman in Gotham City RAW
Here is the same shot after my quick and dirty postprocessing. I will write up a complete “how to” post on how I got to the final product in a few days.
Catwoman in Gotham FINAL
Why did Westcott do this? because they are having a contest going on that if your shot is picked from the Flickr feed, your shot will grace the 2011 Westcott catalog cover. Pretty cool idea and I saw quite a few taking advantage of the arrangement.
This is a short entry since I’m still in Las Vegas for the show and I’m trying to get this done before breakfast and another busy day.
Just a few words from the past few days. The show is excellent as always but I think that the crowds are definitely smaller than what I remember a few years back. But everyone is very enthusiastic about the training, the show, Photopshop and everything that goes with it.
Scott Kelby and company did a righteous cover of the band KISS and a glam rock show complete with 9″ heels and pyrotechnics/steam/radio station sponsor and EVERYTHING was built on Photoshop/Adobe riffs.
Scott Kelby as KISS at PSW 2010 Vegas
JohnnyL from Adobe did a magic show and showed the crowd the magic of CS5. There was a poke in the eye at Apple for Flash and apps being rejected by the App store but accepted by Android. The irony there was ALL the computers used in the show were Apples as the iPad for the ePub demo.
Zack Arias did an awesome class on “Thing you need to know” as a photographer getting ready to make the switch from part time to full time.
I’ll write more in depth in the coming days along with more pictures of course. Back to the salt mines
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With the popularity of all things pirate since Johnny Depp introduced us to Captain Jack Sparrow, my kids are obsessed with pirates, swords and swashbuckling. So on the day of going to visit some of their friends for a play date, I gave them each a copy of a map I had “found” in our yard. It was a real pirate map!! Complete with skull and crossbones and “X” marks the spot.
Pirate Map made from Yahoo Map
My kids were very surprised to find out that following the map took them to their friends house which was the “treasure” on the map. They were very excited about having a map to follow and never questioned that it had street names on it so they could look out the window of the van and watch for the signs.
What I had done was take a screen shot of Yahoo maps showing a reasonably large view of our neighborhood and cleaned it up of stray information in Photoshop.
Basic Map from yahoo Maps
Then I started on some basic ‘shopping of the map. I added an old paper texture to the map. The paper I got from MK Designs Little Pirates package and it worked really nice. An alternative for any of the elements in this project is to search Flickr or Google for Creative Common’s licensed elements or public domain elements. There is not any need to steal any of these, they are everywhere to be had as freebies.
I used a very simple method of just using Grab (I have OSX so use ther screen capture software of choice) to get a screen shot as a TIFF, opening that in Photoshop, then I flipped it to grey scale and added a curves layer to get nice dark blacks since I need them to show through the paper. I then opened up the paper and dragged the paper onto the map image. Then I dropped the opacity to about 60% and used a curves layer to bump up the black point.
I now have my simple textured “map” ready to add various elements to in order to make it “real”
Map with paper texture applied
So now we can get on with adding various elements. I added a skull and cross bones and faded it to better blend into the paper. I also used a ragged brush to draw a dotted line route on the map. I used a strong font to make a large letter X then free transformed it bigger and to distort it a bit. I also added a compass to add to the nautical theme but you can go as nuts as you want. You could add burn holes, cuts, blood stains, smudges and more.
Pirate map with added elements
The appeal of this map is how simple it is to make and how fast you can make it. Not to mention the points you win from your kids as being a cool parent who can make a pirate map.
