Jonathan a Tad Closer, originally uploaded by TimDD.

I stumbled across this crop while working on the larger image. The full-frame has this fantastic white vignette… but the intensity yet gentleness of this close-up convinced me to produce it separately.

Please share your comments below!

Jonathan in July, originally uploaded by TimDD.

Is there any mystery what this gentleman is doing in December?

Jonathan’s site.

Flagpole near Woods Hole, originally uploaded by TimDD.

I really loved that gnarly tree, but went for the traditional flagpole shot as well.

Cold-Glory, originally uploaded by TimDD.

A good friend and former colleague recommended that I submit this photo to a boston.com photo contest. The theme is “Cold,” and the voting is open this week. Please help me win! Here’s the link: you vote for three of your favorites, out of 50 finalists.

Vote now!

Rachel at 35, originally uploaded by TimDD.

We celebrated with Rachel and her mother on Rachel’s 35th. This was a simple on-camera flash shot, bounced off the ceiling; significant surface blur and a good half-hour of brushing to bring the key details back. We’re going to gallery-wrap this one for Rachel’s mother, Susan.

First observations: A great expression, but lack of dramatic punch — and several distractions in the background. Oh and there’s that nagging eyelash over the subject’s left eye. So I got out the clone stamp tool to remove the eyelash — no problem. I wanted to get rid of that pink area over the subject’s shoulder — so I matched the color of the surrounding background as the foreground color. I used the magic wand to select the pink area — then the “refine edge” capability to improve the selection. I picked up a soft-edge brush and started painting at low opacity — 20% — and increased until I was comfortable the area would match.

I also wanted to remove the upper right area reflection — and it started out pretty ugly. Here’s an interim version:

I continued to work on that area until it was properly brushed into irrelevance. It takes some experimenting to get it just right.

Next I went to the channels palette and selected the “blue” channel — it has nice contrast and detail in the beard and skin. I copied that channel, than returned to the layers palette and pasted that selection into a new layer. I changed the blend mode to “overlay,” and then applied the Sharpen / Unsharp Mask filter. Here’s the result, after selecting the “Soft Light” blend mode:

A bit stronger than I am looking for — so I pulled out the “Lorton” trick: take a copy of the original layer, place it on top of the layer stack, apply a heavy Gaussian blur, and apply the “multiply” blend mode. Add a curves adjustment layer (but don’t make any adjustment), apply the “Screen” blend mode. Adjust the opacity of each of these layers to your liking — I also added a “Hue / Saturation” adjustment layer to address the ‘cumulative saturation’ phenomenon of the activities so far.

Again: the final:

Brother in law writes to ask what gear to buy. Excerpts from his note:
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i often shoot people in motion. i’m particularly interested in capturing expression, which is fleeting, so i like to burst shoot, for example shooting 20 or 30 frames of a laugh. i don’t use flash, because it washes out flesh tones(again, i’m not sophisticated enough to understand-or properly program- a flash to make it do its job without washing out the shot before i grab the camera and start shooting. So- what i really mean is, i need something i can essentially point and shoot, sometimes in continuous shot mode, in any existing lighting conditions, that will yield crystal clear, unblured details, even if i’m at some distance from my subject, and even if my hands are a little(or a lot) shaky- which they are; something that -ideally- autofocuses, and doesn’t need a lot of programming, that nonetheless yields crystal clear images of subjects, maybe in motion, without artificial illumination. have i explained myself adequately? does such a beast
exist?
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You should look at the Nikon D3, but my guess is the Nikon D700 will do. The D700 is lighter, but it has the same “full frame” sensor that the D3 has, which is enough detail to create an outdoor billboard. The D3 is $5k on its own, but it will last longer than you in terms of build quality.

The D3 will shoot I believe 5 frames per second, which should be more than enough. The trick to detail is the sensor (either of the above will do great) and light. If you have a big hole (an expensive, f/1.2 or f/1.4), you get lots of light. Lots of light, and you get nice details without flash. But wide open you also don’t get lots of depth of field – which of course is not to be confused with detail. If you need loads of detail across a deep field, you need a narrow whole (f/8 to f/64) and there’s no way to compensate for that except to add more light. If you are outdoors, this should never be a problem, but there are some hard core physics that have to be dealt with.

One thing that is improving is the pixel quality at high ISO or sensitivity settings. Used to be at ISO 800 or higher (Tri-X black and white is ISO 400) you got lots of “noise,” the appearance of red green and blue pixels where the subject should be black, or any other nicely blended color. With the newer sensors (like those recommended w/ D3 and D700), you get pretty high quality pixels up to ISO 1600 or 3200 or higher.

That means shooting faster – whether with faster shutter or ‘smaller hole’ – more depth of field.

As for lens, I would recommend one really really nice fixed-length lens, say a 50mm or 85mm, for shooting people from six to 12 feet away.

I took the pictures of Sarah’s performance and the family snaps around the theatre with that lens. No flash until the shots after the show. The picture at the top of this post was taken with the 85mm, but with flash… so it’s not all terrible with flash

There is no comparing the overall image quality of a fixed-length or prime lens in my opinion. f/1.2 or f/1.4 are available, are really expensive, and are totally worth it. You can shoot in very low light with no flash with these babies.

Then I would get the Nikon 18-2oo f/3.5-5.6 VR. This will solve 90+% of your requirements. VR means vibration reduction, which means it will compensate, and very well, for shaky hands or body. It will work well for outdoor, though it will be a bit ‘slow’ for indoor except under very bright (pro arena event) conditions without flash.

That’s a start. B&H photo is the place to buy when you are ready – at least that’s what my photo geek friend from Scarsdale tells me.

Photos also available to view on Flickr.