Keep an eye out as we begin to present Project 2013 over the next few weeks. In the meantime, a few behind the scenes with the gear and some test shots.
Feb 172013
Jan 302013
A big thank you to UniGirl Canada for the opportunity to contribute to the 2013 Western Canada Calendar and BAM Marketing Solutions for organizing the event. Congratulations to SoCal Style Photography for nabbing the cover shot!
Check out some familiar faces and pick up your calendar direct from the UniGirl Website. – part of the proceeds benefit Canadian charities!
Jan 012013
Rooftops. Drinks. Panoramas. Full winter weather gear. Hello 2013. Stay tuned for some big changes coming and new projects to be announced….
May 272012
Congratulations on your graduation Morgan – best of luck as you begin your next journey!
Apr 102012
FYM Photography is excited to offer a FREE single day workshop on Sunday, April 15 2012 in Calgary Alberta focusing on cityscapes and the sunset. Calgary represents a unique skyline set against the backdrop of the prairies and rocky mountains.
Distinct buildings and features help to deliver compelling framing for your cityscapes and the majestic rocky mountains help to break up the sunset into dramatic light shows. This workshop will focus on framing, technique and best practices to get the most out of your equipment and to get you at least one memorable shot for the evening. The workshop will emphasize training on camera settings, equipment setup and best practices. A basic understanding of camera functions such as aperture, shutter speed and ISO are an asset but not required. We will be spending the majority of the evening outdoors so please dress appropriately for the worst case scenario.
- HOW MUCH | FREE FREE FREE – thank you to the readers of this site for their love and support in sharing the work on this site. This is something that I’ve been asked by a number of readers for so I would like to thank everyone by offering this session.
- WHERE | Calgary Alberta Canada – Location will be determined by the people singing up (do so by RSVP’ing me via e-mail or drop me a line at www.facebook.com/fymphoto)
- WHEN | We will be meeting working through introductions and setup approximately 7pm. Sunset is approximately 830pm and shooting to approximately 930-10pm with a review session afterwards.
Workshop Recommendations
Weather – We will be shooting outdoors so please bring a variety of environment appropriate clothing. I recommend dressing in layers for maximum versatility and be prepared with warm shoes, a wind breaking jacket, fleece sweather, touque and wind resistant pants. Comfort is paramount to get the most out of sitting outside shooting for this extended period of time. Remember – it’s Calgary 
Equipment – As we are focusing on landscapes and exploring low light photography into sunset, a sturdy tripod is a requirement. If you have access to a remote cable release, this will be invaluable as well. Bring camera, lenses, tripod, batteries and extra memory cards. Bring your camera charger as well and an inverter for your vehicle if you have access to one.
Please check out my Photographer’s Tip article on Traveling with Gear as it’s a good prep article for this workshop and check out our first Photographer’s Tip from last year for some ideas.
Updated with shots from this workshop!
Feb 202012
Today’s Photographer’s Tip focuses on a quick and simple edit of an environmental portrait shot. This is a simple portrait taken in available light with a nice bright streetlight providing our main light. The city skyline provides our bokeh (blurred light) to create the mood of the photo. For this exercise, we are using Adobe Lightroom to process and edit the image. Alternative programs are available which offer many of the same features just under potentially different headings. If you have any questions or would like further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me at francis@fymphoto.com and I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner.
Click on the images to expand to full screen (1920 x 1200)
Step 1 – Our starting image – 20mm | ISO400 | F2.8
What we want to accomplish;
- Fix color temperature to make the background less yellow but maintaining warmth on our portrait subject
- Balance exposure to better highlight our subject and bring out some shadow details
- Sharpen relevant details in our image
- Correct our vertical lines and fix any perspectives/angles which can cause distractions
Step 2 – As we did in our earlier landscape processing exercise, fiddling with the white balance and selecting the one which best suits our vision is the first step. Our camera file gives us a color temperature of 5350k which gives the yellow color cast upon both our subject and causes the downtown buildings to give off a candlelight colored glow. I settled on a color temperature of 4529k using the sliders in Adobe Lightroom. This temperature setting took a little of the yellow cast away while maintaining a healthy skin tone for our subject. Pushing this any further to the left caused undesirable blue color to be introduced to our subject giving her a zombie look.
Step 3 – We begin the bulk of processing in this step. First and foremost we want to boost the exposure a smidge (+ 0.3 is what I was happy with) in order to bring better focus to the foreground subject and separating it from our dark, but busy background. We then move into boosting our brightness and fill light sliders to best highlight our individual subject while maintaining the mood of the surrounding environment. I settled on +16 fill light (0 default) and +62 brightness (+44 default). This filled in the light on her face, emphasized the contrast of her white coat against the warm wood and gives the photo a more defined environmental portrait feel where the background serves as a frame of reference to the young lady.
In order to increase details, I boosted the black level to +6 (0 default) and clarity to +33 (0 default) in order to help make the shadows pop against the highlights we just worked on. When working in low-light situations like this, boosting the blacks and increasing the clarity slider will also help to give better definitions to subject edges and can help suppress noise in areas you’re increasing the exposure of. Our image is now looking cleaner and delivers better focus than our starting point.
Step 4 – Our last step is to correct framing and lens aberrations. As it’s winter in Canada, you can bet that it was certainly cold. Blowing gusts also didn’t help our subject nor mine’s situation. This resulted in a little hap-hazard framing as my fingers were getting too numb to fine tune some settings. As a result, it’s not perfectly level nor is it squared with our horizon. Lightroom thankfully allows latitude in this easily fixing this. First and foremost, we want to visit the Lens Correction module and select our appropriate camera and lens combination. This brings corrections for color fringing (reducing sharpness and causing some halos) as well as any distortion causing straight lines to bow due to lens design. Within the lens module, we can also go into the manual correction section and play with the Vertical sliders to correct the tilting convergence of the background buildings. The 2nd half of this step is to use our crop tool to straighten our horizon to bring a final polish to the image.
Comparison & Final Image
