PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: WE ARE AWAY

Today I thought I'd create a tutorial showing the process of how I created the image above. The original image I was working with was quite bland, the sky was over exposed and overall just wasn't a very interesting photo. I thought I would create something a little more eye catching from it.

This is the original picture. As you can see the image straight out of the camera is quite bland - the sky is overexposed and nothing catches your eye when you look at it. The first step is to crop the image to a square. 

I then create a layer mask and using the brush tool, completely remove the sky and some of the mountains from the original photo. We are left with a blank canvas at the top of the image to work with.

I start by adding a sky image to the white background to start the process of layering to add some depth to the sky. As you can see it looks quite unrealistic when you just add one layer of sky to the background.

I continue adding cloud images, layering them until I am happy with how it looks. With each layer, I add a layer mask and using a large, soft brush, remove sections of the sky until they blend in more naturally with each other. I also use varying layer blending modes and opacities to blend the sky textures further.

The next step is to colour the image. I start by using some of Digital Film Action's free Photoshop Curves to set the tone for the image. I chose to make it quite dark, contrasty, with lots of greens and blues. Once I'm happy with what it looks like, I create another rgb curve to further tweak the colours to my taste.

The image still needs a main focus, so I took an image of a tree I had taken on the same day as this landscape image and added it to the end of the road. This gives the image a nice flow, giving your eyes something to fall on when looking at this image. I changed the blending mode of the tree layer to Lighten and used a large, soft brush to remove any excess background from around the tree to help it blend in naturally. I also took a moment to remove the electricity pole that I felt was distracting.

Now that all the elements of the photo are in place, I use a few more rgb curves to alter and tweak the colours and tones of the image until I am happy with what it looks like and we're finished! Below are some of the original images I used to create this final photo.

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: BETWEEN TWO LUNGS

You may have seen this image floating around in my Flickr gallery, well today I want to show you the steps I went through to create this final image.

This is the original stock image I found on sxc.hu. The moment I saw this photo, I was sparked with inspiration and knew I needed to create something. Sometimes when I creating a photo manipulation, I will have an idea beforehand which means I need to go out and find or create the perfect photographs for my idea. And other times like in this case, I will come across a photo that sparks that idea.

The first step I take is to crop the image to a square. I like the look of the town to the left and the clouds to the right, so in order to not lose them through cropping, I select both sides of the image and transform them. I pull them in closer to the centre of the image so the town and clouds are included. This also gives the hill more a rounder, cartoon like curve which I really love for the feel of this photo.

The next step is to begin the colouring process. At first I use Digital Film Action's free Photoshop Curves to give me a base of what I want the colours this image to look like. I went for a much warmer and vintage feel compared to the original image. Once I am happy with what the overall colours look like, I make a new curves adjustment layer and tweak the colours and tone further.

Last but not least, I add the final touch of the birds flying from one of my own images from my archives. I set the layer blending mode to Lighten, Opacity at 100%. I also apply a layer mask to the birds to remove any birds that aren't sitting right in the image. Once I am happy with how it looks, I copy and flip the bird image to make it seem like the birds are flocking from the tree in two groups.

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: GRAFFITI AND NOISE

Model: Madeline

We were shooting photos for the front cover of a novel, so I decided to play around with one of the outtake photos to see what I could create. I experimented in Photoshop layering textures and lights and this is what I came up with.

Below are the steps through my process of creating the final image you see above.

The original photograph was taken in portrait orientation against a white backdrop. I wanted this image to be square, so I extended the crop of the image and begin filling in the rest of the wall using the stamp and clone tool.

Once the background was finished, I edited the colours using my free Photoshop Curves. I tried going for a look that was washed out in the colours, but punchy in the tones. I then layered some long exposure lights photos I had in my stock library, setting the layer blending mode to lighten and the opacity at about 50%. Once I was happy with where the lights were in place, I created another Photoshop Curve adjustment layer to tweak the overall colour and tone in the image. And there we are left with the final photo!

CREATING AN ONLINE PORTFOLIO

Every week I will get a few emails in my inbox asking similar questions. Some of the emails I receive (which will soon turn into blog posts) are people asking me how to keep motivated as a photographer and how to always have inspiration to take photos, what equipment and settings I use to shoot particular things, how to get a large team together to shoot, where to find clients from, and the list goes on and on!

Today however, I want to answer how to create your portfolio.

First I'll start with what a portfolio is, why you need a portfolio and what you will use it for.

A portfolio is a collection of your creative work to showcase your skills, either in print or online. For the sake of this blog post though, I will just be talking about online portfolios, specifically photography portfolios. You want your portfolio to contain only your best images. Even if you only present five or ten photos, a small amount of amazing photographs will always be stronger than thirty so-so ones. It is always important to not make rash decisions about what photos to put on your website, I feel it is a common misconception that making an online portfolio is something that happens overnight.

PICKING THE PHOTOS

Before you start deciding what photographs you want to display in your portfolio, you need to decide what sort of photographer are you. Who are you trying to market to by putting your work online? Who do you want to contact you when they go on your website? Are you a fashion photographer? Music photographer, wedding, landscape, portrait photographer? Once you are clear on how you want to portray yourself to the world, then you can start putting together a collection of images.

I would start off with creating a folder on your desktop titled "Portfolio Feb 2011", or whatever month and year it is. Then go through every single folder of your photos and copy and paste any HIGHRES and FINISHED pieces of work that have potential to go on your website. At this stage you don't need to worry too much about your final ten, this is so you can compare and cull down from a large amount of photos. Once you have your folder of images with absolutely anything you could image being part of your website, open up the folder in a program where you can easily see large versions of each image such as in Adobe Bridge or Lightroom.

It is here where the culling process beings.

I would start off by going through every picture one by one imagining you are a potential client, and trying to see how they would react and think about every individual photo. Delete any that you have any slight doubt about (make sure they are the copies you are deleting - not the originals!!). Once you get down to a smaller amount of pictures (I'd say about twenty), have a look at how they look like as a whole. Bring them all up on the screen and see if any look weaker when they are put up with the others, delete any that do. If there are two or three that look too similar to each other, put them up next to each other and get rid of the weaker ones as well.

By this point you should have a very strong ten or so images that are ready to go online and represent you. Remember during this whole culling process to keep in mind how you are trying to represent yourself as a photographer. If you are marketing yourself as a portrait or fashion photographer, there is no point in putting up landscape pictures from your latest trip to the beach as pretty as they may be. Be very strict with yourself, and keep in mind that even if there are some photos you love, if they don't fit in with what you are trying to show, you can always upload them to other websites such as flickr or your blog.

ONLINE PORTFOLIOS AND DOMAIN NAMES

There are plenty of free and paid websites that host portfolios. I find this the better option than to spend hundreds of dollars on a web designer. While you may have a very unique and different website if you go with a web designer, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how flashy your website is (in fact, the more flashy sometimes the more annoying), it is the photos that your clients are interested in.

When singing up with an online portfolio hosting website, make sure that you can use them with your own domain name. When I started looking online for a place to put my photographs, I went through plenty of websites before I finally found Viewbook. At first my domain name was www.jtrottiphotography.viewbook.com. After a while of writing down my website, putting it in emails, telling it to people, I realised that the name was too long, the .viewbook was too much of a nuisance to write and to explain in person and it wasn't very searchable in Google, since the majority of people would search for my full name "Julia Trotti" rather than "jtrotti".

It was by this point I decided it would be a good idea to buy my own domain name "www.juliatrotti.com". I put it off for a little while, but as soon as I started looking around for a place to buy it, I realised it wasn't half as hard as it looks. I eventually decided to go with www.godaddy.com to host my website name.

Once I bought www.juliatrotti.com Viewbook has a very simple function to be able to change the www.jtrottiphotography.viewbook.com to www.juliatrotti.com at literally the click of a button.

PUTTING YOUR PHOTOS ONLINE

Now its time to put your photos online. Do the photos you chose need to be in separate folders, or do they all fit under the same category? Upload them and go through them a couple of times, are they in the best possible order they can be? Play around with their sequences. I like to start of with a very strong image from a strong series, then put a a few really good photos, and another strong one in between.

It is important to play around with the layout of the overall website as well, the colour scheme, do you have a logo you can upload for the header of the page? Spend some time writing a bio for the about me section, clearly stating what you photograph and what you would like to photograph. One very very important part of your online portfolio is to make it easy to contact you, put your email address very clearly, or any other means you want people to contact you as well.

Personally, I have my email address first, then my phone number (include the area code so potential clients from overseas can call as well). Always be careful when putting your phone number online though, especially if you are still a young photographer.

KEEPING IT UPDATED

If you are a regular shooter, or ever if you're not, it is important to keep your website as up to date as possible. It is important that as you grow and improve as a photographer, your website reflects that. This isn't a matter of simply uploading a couple of photos from every new shoot you do. This can often actually lower the quality of your online portfolio because you are not paying attention to how these new images look compared to the photos already uploaded.

Depending how often you take photos, make it a once a month or once every two month thing to go through this entire process.

Instead of starting a completely new folder this time though, copy the old folder "Portfolio Jan 2011" and rename it "Portfolio Mar 2011", copying the new photos you want to display into it. Then go through the entire process again, and replace all the photos you have online with the new folder of images.


Sure, it is a very lengthy process to create a stunning online portfolio, but every minute of it is worth it. It is obvious to the client (whether they know it subconsciously or not) if the photographer has gone to an arm's length effort to put together an online portfolio that will successfully let the world know who they are and what they want to do. And in the end it is this effort that pays off, that allows your clients to find you and that helps you keep working!

Hopefully by the end of this blog post you have a very strong online portfolio! Or at least a good idea how to go about creating one. Soon to come is a blog post with reviews on portfolio hosting websites - my thoughts on them and what I think are their pros and cons. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts, I always love hearing what you guys think.