Avon By The Sea & The Figura Sisters - Creative Edits

If you know me....you'll know that I love to put a little twist on many of my edits. I always do the classic color edit but when I really love a photo I can't help but give it some kind of twist in Photoshop.

Below are edits I did last night of the Figura Sisters from our beach shoot near Spring Lake & Avon By The Sea, NJ. To see more from their shoot click HERE.

I look at the photo and try to imagine what "emotion" I'd like to evoke with the photo. Sometimes it's a simple B&W conversion with the levels tweaked on the darker side, sometimes it's an action where I lower the opacity so it's not as intense and other times it's a texture applied - just because I like to be "different." LOL! These edits are not everyone's cup of tea but I love them. It's my way of being creative even though I'm "on the job."

In the examples below you'll see quite a few of the Pioneer Woman's Vintage action applied to quite a few of these (I didn't leave the action exactly as it finished...I lowered the opacity on it.). I felt it worked with a lot of these. Maybe it's because they reminded me a of a jean company advertisement from a magazine...and the softened antique look worked really well.

(click to view LARGER....much better that way!)

The same antiqu action as above, lowered opacity, and then B&W conversion over it.







I love a great texture. You can really do so much with them. It's not for everyone....but it's definitely for ME!



I really like the tones on this one! It's an action that I stop a 1/4 of the way through and then I undo a few more steps to get this coloring. I also burned the sky to make it more dramatic. My kind of sky.....



Sisters will be sisters. I love this conversion...I burned the sky a bit here as well.



The antique action again but this time I barely lowered the opacity.



Another texture!




Simple B&W conversion...



And another texture!

The Figura Sisters

Today I headed to Spring Lake/Avon by the Sea to photograph beach portraits of my College/sorority friend and her 2 sisters.

I arrived around 9:30am (hoping the sun wouldn't be harsh) and found an area that was almost exactly what they were looking for in terms of a dune, dune grass, the little fence, etc. It was perfect!

When the Figura sisters arrived they liked the spot I found and we got right to business. We were done in under 2 hours. I was out of the house by 8:30 and home by 12:30 (with an hour drive included in the time both ways!)

These are straight out of the camera...no editing yet. That means no cropping, or any tweaking! So...these will look quite different after they pick their favs and I'm done with them!

(Yes, I have problems narrowing down...but then I said why narrow down??? Variety never hurt anyone! Here are a bunch I liked from our various pose ideas)

(Click to view larger)

By the way....I'm so aware of the crooked horizons...I'll be fixing them in post processing! :)

More to come after processing!

Experimenting with Slow Shutter Speeds and Water

When I was at the beach on Sunday I experimented with slow shutter speeds while photographing the water lapping over the jetty rocks.

I had no idea what I was doing with the speeds (and I didn't have any information with me as to what I should set the shutter and aperature on) so I just experimented with various settings and tried to decide what I liked best on the LCD screen.

I love this effect so I think I will make sure I do some research before again I try next time and then I can bring the information with me and test it.

The water looked great in alot of them but the rock would be out of focus. It could have to do with how I had the focus set but I'm not sure.

With the camera on MANUAL I tested various speeds and got these shots which I like the effect on. Settings are listed above each photo.

(Click to view larger)

Settings:
f32 Shutter: 1/2



Settings:
f32 Shutter: 1/10



Settings:
f32 Shutter: 1/10



Settings:
f32 Shutter: 1/5



Settings:
f29 Shutter: 1/3



I didn't want to leave the beach without trying to photograph the water lapping up on to the sand with a slow shutter speed but by the time I got off the jetty I DID forget! So, I will have to go back to the beach soon and experiment more.

Jersey Shore - Part II

WOW! On January 13th my blog hit 2000 which I thought was tremendous but then in less than one month it reached over 3000 hits today (in just 23 days!)!

Thanks to all of my loyal readers!

-----------

Yesterday I posted the beginning of my series on the Jersey Shore.

Today the Jersey Shore Series continues...

I love how the color of the moss popped when it was tonemapped:





A few more tonemapped beach shots...really brings out the color:









Not tonemapped just tweaked in Photoshop for levels, shadows & highlights:



I hope you're enjoying the series. Part III will come soon...I have some experiments of "smooth water" that I attemtempted that I want to edit and share with you all (most likely in my next post). Then there are still the series of photos I took at the Abandoned Asbury Park Casino on the boardwalk that I will be working on soon.

Today's Photo Journey: The Jersey Shore

Today's Photo destination: The Jersey Shore! Wouldn't trade it for anything!

We made 3 stops today: Point Pleasant Beach, Avon by the Sea beach, and what was the The Asbury Park Casino on the boardwalk.

I bundled up but luckily it was around 51 degrees so we didn't freeze like we did last January when we went to take photos in the same area! Thank goodness!

First order of the day...a shot of the "FUN HOUSE" on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant in HDR:



I had the tripod with me all day so that was so much fun (kidding) to carry as we walked along the beach (boy we got a workout!) and we started the day with a photo of the two of us (normally we can only get a few shots of each other but today since I had the tripod I figured why not!)



And JoJo joined us in a shot:



Spotted a fishing boat:



And then we came spotted some surfers out there in this 50 degree weather and watched (photographed) them for a while!



For more surfing shots from today click HERE.

Some really cool man-made jetties (never seen anything like them) with grafitti in HDR:





I took some more shots for the "Get Low" experiment...

Driftwood in HDR:






And this is me taking the photo above! (What I won't do for a photo! LOL!)



Discovered this on the beach (in HDR):



Made a new friend:



A couple more photos my sister took of me during today's photo hunt:





part II of the series can be seen here: http://jenweaverphotography.blogspot.com/2008/02/jersey-shore-part-ii.html