CAREER MONDAY

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER

Do you love animals? Do you love nature? Do you love to travel? Then maybe a career in wildlife photography is for you!

Wildlife Photography

TIPS AND TRICKS TUESDAY

The Golden Hour

There is a magical hour, a time when the light from the sun shines on the Earth from the side. During this hour, light is warm, soft, and perfect for taking pictures. If the light hits the clouds in the sky at just the right angle, they give off a purplish color that accents a scene in ways nothing else can. To start taking better pictures now, you need to get the most out of the Golden Hour. Here are a few ideas.

The Golden Hour

PHOTOSHOP WEDNESDAY

Fixing Foliage

From NY Falls

Click on the image Fixing-Foliage.jpg, right click and Save Image As, and then open it in Photoshop.

Let’s try two quick adjustments that work great on green foliage. Open the photo. Add a new Curves adjustment layer (1).	The original photo has decent exposure and the colors aren’t bad, but the foliage could use more definition and richer color.	Your Layers Palette:

In the preset dropdown menu, chooseIncrease Contrast (2). This will drastically increase the contrast of the whole photo.	The effect is a little strong, but we will fix it.	Curves Adjustment panel:

Back on the Layers Palette, change theOpacity of the Curves adjustment layer to a number that adds just the right amount of definition to the foliage. I went with 30%(3). Ignore the rock and water; we will mask that out of this adjustment next.		Back to the Layers Palette:

We only want the contrast to apply to the foliage, so we want to mask it from the rock and water. Click on the mask canvas for the Curvesadjustment layer (4). Choose the Paintbrush Tool and set the foreground color to pure black. Paint over the rock and water to mask (exclude) it from the effects of the adjustment layer (5). When painting black on a mask canvas, you won’t see black appear on your image. You will just see the removal of the effect in the places that you paint. You WILL see black being painted on the canvas icon in the layers palette (6).

The foliage now has a bit more “pop” to it, but I also want to make the color a bit more lush green. We have already created a mask that isolates our green foliage, so let’s start by using that. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the Mask Canvas (7) on the Curves adjustment layer. This will draw a selection around the foliage. If you have something on your canvas selected when you create an adjustment layer, it automatically creates a mask for that adjustment layer so only your selection is affected by the adjustment. Very convenient!	Ctrl-clicking a mask creates a selection from that mask.

Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer. In the Hue/Saturation controls, adjust theHue, Saturation, and Brightness to increase the color and get a deeper green. I went with a Hue of 4, Saturation of 6, and a Brightness of -2 (8). You can play with more dramatic settings to get different effects. Try adjusting the Hue to get more fall colors.