photomatto

City of North Bend

The City of North Bend used a couple of my photos in the monthly City update.

Here's a link to the udpate.

Thanks to the City Manager for using the photos and giving credit in the document!

Sharing some good news this week

It's been a fun week for me on Flickr.   There's such a great community spirit on the site, despite a few trolls that seem to just like to complain. 

Active Assignment Weekly

One of my favorite groups, the Active Assignment Weekly group invited me to become an Admin this week.  Here's the invite and my reply:

To: MattNJohnson
Subject: Admin invitation

Matt old buddy old pal, we are on the prowl for fresh blood as Admins in the Active Assignment Weekly group.
You’ve been such a great and enduring contributor, you’ve been picked by popular consensus.
Have you ever had a hankering to become an Admin?. We’d love to have you if you are keen.
Regards, Richard

From: MattNJohnson
Subject: Re: Admin invitation

Hi Richard,
Sure, I would enjoy that opportunity. :-)
I doesn't seem like it would be a huge amount of work.
What's involved in getting started?
Thank you and the other Admins for the vote of confidence!

Thanks,
Matt

I was so anxious to show the other Admins that I could competently complete the duties, that I jumped in head first and closed out the weekly assignment, counted the votes, and announced the winner.  It was all very nerve wracking for a newbie, but nothing blew up and I didn't bring down the whole group or anything. 

Monthly Assignment

And then I found out, in my counting votes that I won the monthly assignment for the group.  Here's the assignment outline:

Take "your precious" and go out for a walk or enjoy the passenger's seat advantages by shooting photos from the car window...I would like you to submit photos of street life or just something special or striking that you see while going down the road.

Restrictions: no prepared scenery, just what you see around.

Dare: try to shoot good photos from a running vehicle.

Enjoy it!

Here's my winning entry...

Be sure to check out the other outstanding photos on the monthly assignment thread.

Storytellers Group

Then a good Flickr friend invited me to participate in an interesting "storyteller/role playing" group.  The idea is that you combine a short narrative fiction piece with a photo and two or more people collaborate to write a story in a discussion thread.  I enjoy writing, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I submitted an entry in a thread entitled "Deadly Valentine".   I was the fourth participant in the thread, and here's what I wrote...

"She said she loved me
In that seaside cottage
Days spent walking on the beach
Kicking up sand, holding hands
Gazing into her eyes
Pools of liquid blue
If only I'd known then
the coldness of her heart

A red rose left on a door,
Two red roses left on doorstep,
Reminding her of the passion that
burned in my heart.
I felt passion from her as well
At least I thought I did.

Was it real that feeling of anticipation?
Seeing her again, making my heart race.
How can I know what was real and what was false?
I cannot, not now, maybe never.

As phantom moves through walls
as easily as air
I walk through the streets of the city
barely aware of anyone or anything
but my own inner dialog
replaying those tender few
and precious moments
spent in the waning light of a summer's eve
on the porch of a seaside cottage
locked in passion, eyes as one, heart beating
breath heavy and hot
Those moments stretched into a far distance eternity that
might as well have been infinity

For what does my lonely heart now dwell on
Who does it pine for now in the cold rain
pounding on the hard city streets.

I saw her today. She did not see me.
And I bought a rose at the corner flower stand.
A single red rose, grown that way for a moment
just such as this very moment.

I would see her see me, today would be that day.
But that was not to be,
she was not destined for me."

City of North Bend

But that's not the end of it for the week,  I received this message from the City Clerk at the City of North Bend.

Hi Matt,
 
North Bend City Administrator Duncan Wilson emailed me a link to your photo stream and I was really impressed with your photos.
 
I manage the City website and NBTV Channel 21 and use a lot of local photos for a variety of City projects.  Just wondering if you would allow me to use some of your images for non-commercial purposes.  Another local photographer Michael McDevitt has done this for the  City and I try to give attribute to his photos when used.
 
If you would consider allowing us use of some of these spectacular pictures, please let me know."

I replied back that I would happily share my photos with the City. I live here and love it, so I'm happy to contribute to their communication efforts.  Here's the reply back...

"Hi Matt,
 
Wow, we are thrilled.  Duncan and I  were just looking through more of your photos.
 
As I said previously we would like to use the photos for non commercial use on the City’s website, NBTV, and monthly newsletter, and potentially for other City projects that would be enhanced by the use of photos.  We are happy to limit it to any use you are willing to allow and  will give attribution to you for any photos we use.  
 
I do not have a Flicker account. Please add me!
 
Thanks for your generosity and let me know if there is anything else you need from me to allow us to use some of your magnificent photos!

She got all setup on Flickr, and I've created a new set just for the City to use in looking for photos to use in their products.

What's Next?

Well, that's it for this week.  I wonder what will come along next week?!?

My new found favorite sport

I've lived in the Seattle area for over 20 years.  Most of that time was spent only 40 minutes from the mountains.  And yet, I never went skiing, even when my friends in junior high and high school were heading up every week in the winter.  Until two years ago that is.  After my first time skiing I felt like I'd found something that I'd been missing for a long time. 

Now, I love skiing. I love combining skiing with photography.  I can carry my handy Canon G7 with me on the slopes and stop anytime for a quick photo op.  I really enjoy seeing the snow and the people dressed up in their winter gear.

Here's a view at the top of the "Gallery" ski run. 

Enhanced version:

Layers used in Photoshop to brighten up the image and convert it to black and white. I also used an Unsharp filter on the background image.

Here's the original image.

And here are two snowboarders getting ready to head down the "Holiday" run. 

Enhanced version:

Layers:

Original version:

You can expect to see more ski photos in the coming weeks.  We head up at least once a week for lessons and sometimes on Friday.

Skiing By The Trees

I looked back at some photos from last month that I hadn't posted and found this gem. This is a skier whizzing by some trees and a light pole at Snoqualmie Summit on the opening day of Skiing. This is the original, which has a nice composition, but lacks some of the pop that I like in my photos.

So I loaded it up into Photoshop and worked some easier enhancements. I duplicated the original background image and set the blending mode to "Soft Light" and the opacity to "100%". Next I added a new layer and used the fill tool to create a white to black circular fill centered on the skier. I set the blending mode to "Soft Light" and the opacity to "100%" on this layer as well. Finally, I added a Curves layer and tweaked the curve to bring out the whites and darken the blacks, which also enhanced the blues in the sky.

Here's the result of these three layers.

View On Black

I really like the end result, but I wondered what a black and white version would look like, so I added a Black and White layer. The Black and White layer option in Photoshop CS4 give a nice result without much effort. Here's the result.

View On Black

I really like the upper right corner of the image. There's a nice depth to the photo after the enhancements. Here's another one that I worked on this evening. The original is nice, but I wanted to have some texture and also work on the overall contrast. Here's the original.

I used the same steps on this photo as described above, but instead of adding a black and white layer I added a new fill layer using a Pattern. The trick to using Photoshop's built in patterns is to increase the scale of the pattern to somewhere over 500%. This gives a great effect. The blending mode for a texture layer like this should be set to "Soft Light" or "Overlay". Here's the texturized version.

View On Black

Time To Keep This Blog Current!

One of my resolutions this year is to keep this blog more active and current.  I didn't really make any formal resolutions, but if I had, this would be one of them.

So here's a photo from last weekend along Lake Sammamish.  The morning was extremely foggy.  A perfect shot for a black and white treatment in Photoshop.

I'll be posting a "how I did it" at least once a week.  But for this one, I just wanted to say that I'll be back on a regular basis.

Happy New Year and I hope 2009 is going to be a great year.

Working With Layers In Photoshop

If you're anything like me, you may have an interest in enhancing your photos, but maybe you don't know where to start.  For the last year, I've been taking pictures constantly.  Only in the last two months have I really started to work with my photos beyond simple contrast and sharpness adjustments.  I was intimidated by all the options in Photoshop.  Finally, I decided to just dive in and figure out how to make some improvements to my photos beyond contrast and sharpness. 

Here's a method I've found that works pretty consistently for adding a bit of a professional touch to a photo.

This is a post to explain my process for the Active Assignment Weekly group in Flickr.

This is the starting image...

Step 1: Get a shot with decent exposure.  Try one with a sky in the background and trees or buildings in the foreground. 

Step 2:  Open the photo in Photoshop or Elements

Step 3:  Make a duplicate copy of the image.  I do this by dragging the "Background" layer to the "New Layer" button on the Layers palette.

Step 4:  On the duplicate image, change the blending method to "Screen".   This will lighten up the entire image. 

Step 5: Click the "New Mask" button on the duplicate layer. 

Step 6: Select the "Fill" tool from the tools palette.  Make sure that the foreground color is white and the background color is black.

Step 7: Click on the mask layer for the duplicate background image.  Using the "Linear" fill option, drag a fill from the top to bottom of the image, filling from black to white. You may want to decrease the opacity of the layer to about 50% to see the effect.  This will block the "screen" effect on the upper part of the image.

Step 8: Click on the background image. Drag the image to the "new layer" button on the Layers palette.  This will create another duplicate of the background image.

Step 9: Change the blending method for the 2nd duplicate to "Overlay" or "Soft Light".  Try both of them as you may like the effect of overlay more than soft light.  It's a personal taste issue.

Step 10:  Add a layer mask to the layer by clicking the "new layer" button in the Layers palette. 

Step 11:  Using the linear fill tool, drag a fill on the layer mask from black on the top to white on the bottom. 

Step 12:  Finally you may want to enhance the color of the sky. I've added a new "Solid Color" layer to the image.  I choose a bright blue for the color in the fill layer.

Step 13:  Add a new layer mask to the solid color layer, and then drag a linear fill with white on top and black on the bottom. Change the blending mode for the solid color layer to "soft light" or "overlay". 

Here's a screenshot of how my layers looked in the Layers palette.

This is just an example of how I used layers to ehance the photo above.  Here's the final result.

I did something similar with this image:

Adding A Little Pop To My Photos

I've been taking photos regularly now for just about a year.  I picked the camera back up again last Halloween on a trip to the pumpkin patch.  Lately I've been feeling like I could do even more with my photos.  Mainly I wondered how some photos looked like they just popped off the screen with vibrant colors and rich tones.  So I started doing some searching in Flickr and found this group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/photoshopsupport/

And in this group I found a couple of posts, mainly these two:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/photoshopsupport/discuss/72157601958108471/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/photoshopsupport/discuss/72157602268090265/

I combined some of the techniques in both of these tutorials into a new action in Photoshop so that I could duplicate it over again on any photo. 

Here are the steps that I've used. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

These steps create a soft glow in the image.

• Open the file in Photoshop
• Choose Layer -> Duplicate Layer
• Choose Image -> Adjustments -> Invert
• Filter -> Other -> High Pass (use a radius of about 50)
• On the Layers palette chose Soft Light as the blending method for this layer

The following steps increase the contrast and color vibrancy in the image.

• Choose the background layer again.
• Layer -> Duplicate Layer
• In the Layers Palette chose Overlay as the blending method

The next step will add a highlight to the focus of the image and a subtle vignette.

• Add a new layer as the top layer
• Choose the Fill tool
• Choose a Radial fill with white as the foreground color and black as the background color
• Start the fill over the focus area of the image and drag it out to the edge of the image
• In the Layers Palette chose Overlay as the blending method

The final step is to sharpen the background image

• Choose the background image
• Choose Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharpen
• I use these values: Amount 100%, Radius 1.8, Threshold 4

That gives a good baseline to use in further enhancement with a Levels or Curves Adjustment layer.

Here's the before shot....

Here's the after shot...

It's a subtle overall change but the small changes add up to make the image really come to life.

Another winner (yay!)

I was fortunate last week to win the weekly contest for the Active Assignment Weekly group.

The topic was Sports, so of course I took photos at my son's soccer game. I picked to photos that showed the action and competition and put them together.

It's fun to participate and learn new techniques with this Flickr group.

Going Pro?

Well, not really, but I've had an offer to buy some of my photos. So I've decided to go "semi" pro. I've opened an account with Imagekind. It's a local Seattle based company. I've added a few photos initially and I'll add some more photos as I identify the ones that I like the most. I've had some help from some Flickr friends to identify some photos that may go on sale. So, here's to a new venture!

Coffee, Dishes and Laundry

I've been thinking a lot lately about how my expectations really drive my emotions. The smallest thing like a bad cup of coffee can put a bad spin on my morning, when really, it's just a cup of coffee. Even doing dishes comes with expectations. I expect that the dishes will be put away in a certain order. If not, then I'm upset (a little, maybe more annoyed than upset). And laundry, same thing, the clothes need to be in the basket and put away. I don't do the laundry, but I know how my wife feels about it. I even have expecations about my relationships with my family and people that I work with and meet.

When my expectations are met, I'm happy about it. For instance, when I get a good cup of coffee, or the dishes are nice and neat in the dishwasher and put away in the cupboards where they belong.

In a lot of ways expectations cause stress and disappointment. Most importantly the sad or bad feelings don't last. And neither do the happy feelings. We can try our best to hang onto them, but eventually they will leave like a storm passing through our mind.

If I can just learn to let go of some of my expectations and just enjoy the moment as it happens, then perhaps I can be more happy. Doing dishes, the laundry and having a cup of coffee can be a much more enjoyable experience. Well at least, I won't be so attached to whether the experience is a good one or a bad one.