New Blog

We have switched to a new blog...come visit us at: http://sbeachphotographyblog.wordpress.com/

(Remember to change your bookmarks!!)

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Absent due to Major Changes

You may have noticed my absence on this blog as of late. Not only are my fiance and I very busy with our wedding preparations, I am also working on some BIG changes for this blog and in for my business overall. Some of the changes need a fair bit more research before I can announce them, but the changes for the blog should be ready sometime this weekend!! I am super excited to share it all with you and I hope you check in to see what's going on.

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Blue Fire

Blue Fire, a photo by Stephanie Beach Photography on Flickr.

I really like how this photo came out. It is one from my first attempt at smoke photography. Tricky to do in that you need a great deal of patience, which is a virtue I do not have, but the result was so worth it!

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Fireworks

I have been playing in CS5 Extended (a trial edition while I decide whether or not I want to upgrade right now) and have done some work with the stacked layers ability. Essentially it allows you to stack your photos and then one way of displaying them is to multiply them on top of each other. It works brilliantly for fireworks and I am pretty happy with how the photos from Canada Day came out.

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My Wish List

There are many items on my wish list, a few of which I am in the process of researching and purchasing, but this item is one that I don’t know when I will be able to purchase.

It is a tiny Nikon camera that is actually a USB flash drive. The little lens comes on to reveal the USB key. How awesome is this?! A friend of mine got one from a Nikon rep when they came to introduce a new line of cameras to the store he works at. He showed it to me and then told me that it can’t be purchased from Nikon yet. You can get similar things from other places but they aren’t Nikon cameras. So for now I will wait patiently until Nikon wishes to release this to the general public.

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SOOC Sunday #2

Above is the screenshot from Bridge showing the Before and After of today’s SOOC feature.

This was a shot I took of a “ferris wheel” (it is actually called the Skyview of something like that) in Niagara Falls. It is a long exposure shot done at night (f18.0, 6.0 seconds, ISO 200) that I was actually quite happy with straight of the camera. I cropped it down to 16”x20” as that is the size of print I wanted, but it wasn’t actually necessary as the original composition worked quite well. I converted the image to black and white. This was something I struggled with for a little while as I actually found the slight blue colours around the edges of the image very interesting, but the crisp whites when converted to black and white won over in the end.

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Niagara Falls

I spent the past few days in Southern Ontario for business meetings and at night took the opportunity to visit some of the tourist attractions down there and of course made a stop at Niagara Falls. It was a little cold and windy, but well worth it, in my opinion. I just love how they light the falls at night. I waited around until the lights changed to variations I really liked and I think this version is my favourite.

These are the American Falls. The Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls are normally my favourite, but this night the straight, American ones really caught my eye.

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Thanksgiving Smiles

This past Thanksgiving we did a little semi-impromptu family portrait session. It took some coaxing but we eventually got some great smiles out of little Jackson.

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SOOC Sunday #1

Above is a screenshot from Bridge showing the before (the only thing done here is some slight cropping), the initial after and then a tri-tone image (it is this last image I am going to be focusing on below).

In the initial after image I have obviously done added a vignette and performed some sharpening but I have also removed some clutter in the background, softened her skin ever so slightly and cleaned up some rough edges of her hair. If memory serves, I added a little bit of contrast to her eyes (focusing on not changing the colour) as well.

In the tri-tone image I basically took the initial after image and performed a technique called Duotone in Photoshop. To start this process here is what to do:

1. With the image open in Photoshop select Image then Mode. The current selection will most likely be RGB mode. This is the typical mode that camera’s take images in – it is how my photos start out.

2. Select Grayscale. A couple of warnings will popup. The first is asking whether or not you want to merge your layers (if you had no layers then you will not have this warning). I typically do not merge them, however, it is best if you do. The second is asking whether or not you want to discard the colour information, click discard.

3. Once this is done, you can now go back into Image then Mode and select Duotone (it was grayed out before).

4. Up pops a dialog box – this is where the fun begins. The dialog box will bring up whatever Toning you last created/worked with. If you haven’t used this feature before, it will start in a Monotone setting (one colour to be used throughout the image). To change the number of colours used change Monotone to Duotone (2 colours), Tritone (3 colours) or Quadtone (4 colours). To change the colour click on the colour box and then select the one you want. You can either browse through the ‘swatches’ that are there or you can use the normal colour picker by hitting the Picker button on the right hand side of the newest dialog box.

5. The trickiest thing about this application are those little graphs beside the colour boxes. Essentially these are just like Curves boxes and show you the distribution of the colour throughout your image. On the Left are your highlight and the Right are you shadows. As you move the curve around you change how that specific colour acts in each of the areas. You can make the colour only show up in the highlights or switch it completely around and have it only in the shadows, or anything in between. It takes some time to get used to this and I would suggest not jumping right to Quad-tone when you are starting out.

Here’s a screen shot for the Tri-tone box I used for the above image.
As you can see, I used a fairly normal curve for my black and darker pink colour and then brought in a lighter pink in the highlights. The bottom colour bar shows the distribution of colours throughout the image. In a normal image, this bar would go from white to black.

Try it out sometime and let me know how it goes for you.

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SOOC Sunday

Despite the current busy schedule that is my life, I have decided to start a new feature here called SOOC Sunday. I will show you the image as I took it (straight out of camera) and then the final image after any alterations I made to it in Photoshop. If the changes are extensive I will also do a quick how-to about the applications I used on the final product. Let me know what you think, the first one will be coming later today.

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Two

I did a pet photography session with my Chris’ new little kitten a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Two and she is adorable! She didn’t sit still for very long, but we managed to get some great shots of her anyway.

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Daguerre's Birthday

Today is Louis Daguerre's 224th birthday!
In case you don't know who he is, here is a link to his wikipedia page. Essentially he was a photographic pioneer and invented the daguerreotype process of photography. He also captured the first photograph of a person entitled Boulevard du Temple in 1838. "The image shows a street, but because of the over ten minute exposure time the moving traffic does not appear. The exceptions are the man and shoe-shine boy at the bottom left, and two people sitting at a table nearby who stood still long enough to have their images captured." I personnally find all of this very interesting.

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Perfection

Jackson Robert Beach

July 19, 2011
8lbs. 1oz.

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Canada Day Celebrations

Canada Day Fireworks shot from the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec overlooking the Ottawa River and downtown Ottawa in Ontario.

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In Progress

I have been working hard on several projects over the last few weeks that I am eager to share with all of you...I just haven't had the time to sit down and get them on here for you to look at.

I have been working on some personal projects, like testing the limits of my new D3s camera to be able to give it a proper review for you to enjoy, as well as some works for new and returning clients. Hopefully this little update and the news that I have updated the photos on the official website (http://www.stephaniebeachphotography.com/) will give you something to look at and think of in the meantime.

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Ottawa Tulip Festival 2011

Ah the Tulip Festival. You all know how much I love it (and I know how much a certain one of you hates it). It is my favourite Ottawa Festival and it is finally here. The above image was taken earlier today at the Dows Lake Pavilion location. Dave and I toured the tulip beds for a couple of hours, had some yummy food and then went home. The tulips are a little late this year (as are the ones in my backyard) so there were a great deal of un-bloomed flowers around and empty looking flower beds, but all in all it was still very pretty and i enjoyed the nice walk and photography-filled afternoon.

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Big Stuff

Bear with me folks...I will be back I promise. We are currently working on some pretty big stuff in our lives right now that is taking up most of our time and energy.

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A Pooh Update

So as you probably noticed, I didn’t complete the 100 Possibilities Project (aka Project 100) that I was working on. I had initially wanted to finish it before the end of 2010 and then gave myself another two months which would have resulted in completing it in about 1 year, but that didn’t happen either. As it is a personal project, it tends to get pushed back as other projects require my immediate attention. I have approximately 30 photos left in the series and I have ideas for the majority of them. I hope to get working on it again shortly and also to get caught up with posting them here on the blog but I believe they are up to date in the Flickr set if you want to take a look at where we are now.

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Waiting…

I have several ideas for what could be some really interesting portrait shoots. I have the gear to get the quality of shots I want. I have a repertoire of models to use. Unfortunately I do not have the weather I want. I don’t want my models to freeze to death in the coldness that is Ottawa winters so let’s all start thinking warm Spring-like thoughts so I can get moving with my ideas. Okay, we are all in agreement – Spring needs to come now!

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Stephanie Beach Photography

I have incorporated a few changes in the last couple of days and will be continuing to do so over the next little while. The biggest change is the launching of my own website: http://www.stephaniebeachphotography.com/ This blog is linked to from the new site and the home link at the top of this page now links back to the site.
I will also be launching a Facebook page and will let you all know when that is set up and finalized.
And finally, I am in the process of officially starting my photography business. There are just a few final things I need to figure out before that is complete.
So all in all, big steps for me and my photography that I am pretty freaking excited about!

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