Wednesday 16 September 2009

Photograph and Photoshop a Cross Process effect - Week 70


There's a real autumn feel to the weather at the moment. It's feeling a bit colder and there's the ever present chance of rain. The temptation is just to stay inside and put photography on hold until the sun comes out.

I prefer to take the opposite view and use this weather to my advantage. The weather may look grim, but that just means the light is flat and even. Flat light is great for keeping detail in high contrast subjects like the delicate petals of a flower. Rain showers make everything wet and shiny, which makes photography a lot more tricky when the light is bright. Once again low contrast flat light, becomes your best friend and can be used to your advantage in a photo.

It was this thinking that got me into the garden to see what I could photograph. After a quick look around I found a bit of old wood, some leaves and a flower, perfect photography materials.

The plan was to try and make a cross processed style image. The end result wasn't quite the look I orginally envisaged, but I liked it all the same.

3 comments:

Mik said...

Typical British weather huh, like that in Seattle too, I move from the UK to the US and pick a state where it is wetter!

The cross processing look on the flower shot is great, hadn't thought to use a different white balance setting outside.

Aaronth said...

Love the tutorial - There are so many ways to achieve vignetting in your photos with photoshop, but using the lens correction in reverse is quite the trick!

Since you push the use of RAW photo capture you could also stress the ability to change the color temperature in post-processing (in case you aren't creative enough on the spot to think of changing the white balance around).

David Macias said...

Awesome tutorial, just love your tips.

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