Something about the look of an old, faded polaroid that is just so cool. 

This picture reminded me of another method I sometimes use to get good pics of kids who don't want to be cooperative. Tell them not to look at you. Where is it written that a portrait MUST be of someones face?  

To get that retro, faded look, I use a Photoshop action I downloaded from somewhere. There are literally tons of Photoshop actions out there you can download for free. Here is one good source.

The Polaroid frame came from PhotoFrame.

When it comes to taking pictures of my son, I'll pretty much take whatever I can get. Usually, if I point a camera in his face, he gets as far away from me as he can. When he does let me take a picture of him, his fake smile and obvious discomfort makes any picture generally unusable. The trick is catching him completely off guard.

Last week we were extremely proud to watch him receive an accomodation for making honor roll. I was feeling quite under the weather and not really in a pic taking mood, plus I figured we'd be too far away from the action to get a good shot (I STILL don't own a lens bigger than 105mm since switching to Canon). My wife was obviously annoyed at the fact that the family photog wasn't bringing a camera to this very special event, so I caved and brought it along.

The lights were fairly bright in the gymnasium where this was taking place. Since I always like trying to see how far I can push the 5D Mark II without using a flash, I left the flash off. My son was relatively nearby when I grabbed this shot. As expected, I was too far away to get a decent shot of him receiving his certificate.

The pic above was taken at 99mm 1/80 sec, f4, ISO 2000. I added the vignette in post.

The term "senior pictures" tends to bring to mind visions of a young person in their senior year of high school posing with a big "10" (their grad year) or in front of a wall filled with grafitti. Whatever makes you happy...but keep this in mind: a "senior picture" is much more than a picture of a teenager looking cool. It's a portrait of a young person on the fringe of adulthood, filled with uncertainty about leaving home, school and friends.

Of course, it's not all serious business. Everyone has several sides to their personality and it's not always easy to catch them all. The fun side may have them posed with their car, sports gear, musical instruments, or just doing what they enjoy. But, I think there's always another side to that person. A side that usually doesn't get photographed. A side that people close to them sometimes see and others might not even notice. It's the side that doesn't smile and say "cheese," and it's probably their most genuine side. Capturing that is the challenge.

Some parents look at senior pictures as the last portraits of their "child." This is them in their transitional phase, getting off one bus and getting onto another. Make it count. Make it beautiful.

North Texas really got dumped on last week. Where I live (McKinney) got 7" of snow and we were lucky to only get that much. I'm not that crazy about snow. I know, it's sooo pretty, but I hate having to put my whole life on hold until it's safe to drive and businesses and schools reopen.

Growing up in NJ, we'd get several snowfalls per year. The most I can remember getting was about three feet! But in Texas, it's quite rare. We might get one snowfall per year in this part of the state, and usually no more than two inches and it's always melted within twelve hours. So to get THIS much at once was quite unusual.

BUT...it does make for some pretty photography...if you know HOW to take pics in the snow. Many pictures I see posted look very gray. The reason? A camera will pick the brightest part of a scene and make it neutral gray. You have to over expose your shot to get the whites to look white. When I went out last week,  I over exposed by 2 stops and it still wasn't enough. Luckily, I brought my gray card along so I could easily fix it in post.

A gray card allows you to set your white balance when editing a picture. By telling the software what in the picture is neutral gray, it corrects the color in the picture.

First, take a picture of the gray card in the exact light you're shooting in:

Most photo editing software has a white balance tool (I use Lightroom). By clicking the tool on the gray card in the picture, it changes to this:

Much closer to the real color of the scene. I then sync the settings in this picture to the rest of the pictures I took in the same light. Then I can play with the other settings (exposure and temperature) until I get something I like. The b&w pic at the top was done entirely in Lightroom.

The gray card I use is made by Whibal and I use it almost every time I'm shooting, indoors or out. 

Of course, casual shooters are probably not going to bother with a gray card. So, when shooting in snow, the key to getting accurate looking pictures is to over expose. 

There's no rule that says you need to hold your camera straight. Turning it ever so slightly can add a little curiosity to the photo. Try it...you'll be surprised with the results.

Not sure? Go ahead and shoot it straight on...and then CROP the angle in post-production. I do that a lot because I never know what size print I'm going to be asked to make. That's where aspect ratios come into play. I think I already blogged about that...So crop it with an angle and if it doesn't work, just undo the crop.

Think of it like this...look at the way you see the world, and then try to see it a little differently. We take for granted what we see, and rarely take the time to study it. Art is all around us and sometimes you need to tilt your head slightly to notice it. 

After I shoot I go through the hundreds of pictures I took and pick the ones that jump out, then start the tedious process of narrowing down, editing, re-editing, re-re-editing...

Occasionally I'll go back after the job is done and find one that I overlooked the first time. Sometimes recropping and adjusting the angle can make all the difference in the world.

Such was the case of this picture I took last summer. This was taken in Adriatica at the end of a long day of shooting. Looking at this photo reminded me of another tip I like to give out: focus on the eyes. When you press the shutter half way to lock in your focus, always aim for the eyes. 

Does a portrait of a person need to give prominence to that person?

If they are holding an object, in this case a caterpillar, why not compose the picture around the caterpillar instead of the girl? The girl is still there, just out of focus. But it's still a picture of the girl.

If you're photographing a child holding a ball, try a few shots of the ball with the child's hands on it. If it's a toy, try the same thing. There's no rule that says you need to focus more on the person than the activity they're engaged in.

You can also show prominence to a part of the body other than the face. Hands and feet are common, as are gestures:

I've posted this pic before. It's a pretty good example of giving prominence to part of a person that's not their face. These girl scouts were on an outing and were obviously getting tired and a little bored. I tried to capture that part of them in this shot. In doing so, I purposely chopped off their heads so I could focus on their crossed arms. Without their faces, it paints a more detailed picture of their mood.

I've been thinking a lot about vision lately. Mostly because my favorite watering hole in Dallas, Trader Vic's, recently closed it's doors.  

Obviously, their closure was due in part to low sales. So why the low sales? My opinion is that the decision makers lacked vision. Instead of being what they were, they tried to be everything but what they really were. I'm not going to get into the specifics, but think of it like this....if you went to a Chinese restaurant, would you expect to hear disco music while watching sports on TV? Certainly not...you'd expect the food, the music and the overall ambiance to tie in together. When those things are all very separate, it shows a lack of vision.

When you apply the vision aspect to photography, sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what a photographers vision really is based on the pictures on their web site. Some try to be a million different things to show they can do all sorts of different work. Their photography may be exceptional, but it won't have a style.

In photography, having a vision leads to having a style and that's probably the hardest to obtain attribute for any photographer. To some it comes very naturally, others need to work at it. 

If you can have a clear and concise vision on the photos you want to make, a style will start to emerge. Keep taking pictures, review your work, pick the ones you like, go out and take more. After you have a few hundred, compress it down to 10 or 15. You'll start to see a style based on your vision. Do this exercise as often as you can and watch your photography improve dramatically. 

And most importantly, be what you are! 

Googie architecture (also known as populuxe) is a form of novelty architecture and a subdivision of futurist architecture, influenced by car culture and the Space and Atomic Ages. Originating in Southern California during the late 1940s and continuing approximately into the mid-1960s, the types of buildings that were most frequently designed in a Googie style were motels, coffee houses and bowling alleys. The school became widely-known as the Mid-Century modern style, and some of those more notable variations represent elements of the populuxe aesthetic, as in Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center.

Features of Googie include upswept roofs, curvaceous, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon. Googie was also characterized by Space Age designs that depict motion, such as boomerangs, flying saucers, atoms and parabolas, and free-form designs such as "soft" parallelograms and the ubiquitous artist's palette motif. These stylistic conventions represented American society's fascination with Space Age themes and marketing emphasis on futuristic designs. As with the Art Deco style of the 1930s, Googie became less valued as time passed, and many buildings built with this style have been destroyed.

Source: Wikipedia

I first became interested in Googie architecture several years ago after I read a book by Alan Hess called Googie: fifties coffee shop architecture. I bought this book around the same time I had moved to Texas and had soon spotted a magnificent old Googie cafe sign right here in McKinney. The sign belongs to Bill Smith's Cafe, a Mckinney staple for over 50 years. It's the oldest restaurant in McKinney. Back in 2003, I had taken a picture of the sign with my old Kodak DC4800 (3 whole megapixels...wow!) and had posted it on a web site called Roadside Peek. 

Flash forward to two weeks ago, I met a local artist named Charlie Rose who showed me an illustration he created titled "Bat Cafe." I immediately recognized the sign as looking very much like the one at Bill Smith's. Charlie had found the picture on line and it became the inspiration for the Bat Cafe picture. He had no idea I had posted the picture and had never heard of Bill Smith's Cafe before then. Small world.

Charlie is currently planning on creating another version of the illustration. You can see more of his work on his website.

Our conversations about Bill Smith's Cafe had reminded me about a couple of other Googie signs I had spotted in McKinney. Early one morning last week I went out to see what kind of photos I could get. I especially wanted to get a photo of the Bill Smith's Cafe sign when it was lit up. Unfortunately, two of the letters were out (pic at top of page).

A couple of miles from Bill Smith's is the McKinney Inn Motel on Hwy 5. Although not lit up, this old sign sports many of the classic attributes of an old Googie-style sign...the big arrow and the star at the top especially.

Then there is the sign at North Side Medical, just down the street from Bill Smith's. This is a great sign, and I've seen pictures of it lit up at night (the pic below was early morning). The building itself is a great example of Mid Century Modern architecture which made me wonder what the building was originally built for. 

When I first saw the sign, I saw a cocktail glass with an olive...shows the way I think. What it actually is is a mortar and pestle, the symbol used for compounding which is a service they offer. So, maybe the building was originally built as a pharmacy or medical center after all.  I'm used to seeing Googie signs at places like restaurants, bowling alleys, hotels, etc., any place that wanted to use something bold and flashy to get your attention. Just seemed a bit odd to see a space age Googie sign for a pharmacy/medical office. But there it is.

The building itself is definitely worth a second look. While I was there getting this shot I walked up to a small courtyard area that had a gate in front of it. Apparently, I set off a motion detector and an alarm went off. Oops...

I don't really market myself as a photo restorer and it's not really a service that I offer, but if a friend needs assistance I can usually provide something pretty decent. Recently, a friend presented me with a photo of her father taken in 1971. The picture had almost completely faded to nothing and she thought if I could do anything with it, it would surely be an improvement over what it was now.

First step was getting the photo into the computer. The photo was professionally framed & mounted and my friend requested that I do my best to keep everything as is and intact. So I took a razor blade and carefully cut the paper off of the back.

Here I found a piece of cardboard held in with small nails. After I pried back the nails and got down to the actual picture, I discovered the most probable reason for the fading: this was instant film. I don't know that much about what sort of instant b&w film was used in the past, but it was obvious that's what it was. The print was a very flimsy piece of laminated paper.

I did a high resolution scan of the picture. Here's what we had:

As you can see, it's almost completely gone. I told my friend that I might be able to improve it slightly and that the software can only work with the information it has. If the info isn't there, it's not going to come out. I told her the best we could hope for was giving it the appearance of a not-so-clean b&w scan out of an old newspaper.

Not much to work with, but I was hoping by scanning it at a high resolution that I could capture enough detail to get something usuable. I imported the image into Lightroom and gave it a simple grayscale treatment. Immediately the image jumped out:

This was already better than I had hoped for (gotta love Lightroom) and I knew immediately I was going to be able to pull a lot of detail out of the photo.

A few minor adjustments to the lights, darks and contrast gave me this:

Now it was time for Photoshop. I started the very much needed cleanup: removing dust and blemishes, fixing scratches and other damage, etc. The instant film had left these swirly rings all over the picture. I removed as much of it as I could, but in some spots removing the abnormalities made the image a look a little too "photoshopped" for my taste. Plus, since the image is only a 3X5, you probably wouldnt notice it in the print anyway.   

Truth be told, I could have spent several hours working on cleaning this picture up. It was more a question of if it really needed all of that work. I decided that it didn't and it wasn't worth the time fixing details no one would see unless they held a magnifying glass up to the picture. Altogether I spent about 2 hours. 

With the cleanup finished I added the finishing touch using Silver Efex Pro (a Photoshop plug-in), played with the lights, darks and contrast a little more and this was the final result.

Considering what we started with, I'm pretty pleased with the results. Now I'm inspired to go through my own old faded photos to see what kind of new prints I can create.