Tag Archive

Poor Man’s Brenizer Photoshop Technique – Video

Published on October 10, 2012 By Leica BOSS

A popular technique for getting a wide field of view but with a very shallow depth of field involves taking many photos and stitching them together – this “Brenizer Technique” is named for wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer. (He’s a bit of a strobist too!) It’s not always practical or possible to stitch many photos together [...]

Adobe Lightroom 4 Clarity Slider = FAIL (video)

Published on May 7, 2012 By Leica BOSS

So, I have been transitioning to Adobe Lightroom 4. The updated “clarity” slider is one change that can hardly be called an improvement. No, folks. The new clarity slider is a bucket of fail.

Product Photography Lighting Video

Published on April 7, 2012 By Leica BOSS

Product photography can be quite a challenge. With megabrands paying for daylong shoots and hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear to get a single shot of a beer bottle… what can the rest of us do? In this video tutorial, I will take you step-by-step through the making of a product photograph:

Mirrorless Camera vs. DSLR Image Quality Video

Published on March 12, 2012 By Leica BOSS

So, there’s always a lot of debate about the image quality of the new mirrorless interchangeable lens systems and cameras like the Sony NEX-7 and Fuji X-Pro vs. DSLRs like the Canon 5D Mark III. This video is a simple tour of what the main differences are between the traditional DSLR systems and the newer mirrorless sytems. [...]

Shot Recipe – “Aperture Stacking” VIDEO

Published on November 3, 2011 By Leica BOSS

Photography, by its nature, is an act of compromise Becoming a BOSS at photography is really the process of understanding, leveraging, and in some cases – defeating these compromises. So, here’s a shot recipe that relies on a clever and simple Photoshop trick to eliminate one of the classic compromises in photography – that surrounds [...]

Free Video Class: Film Photography

Published on October 28, 2011 By Leica BOSS

Film is not dead. It is not dying. (It’s declining) Dying implies that death is the assured outcome and to imply that photographic film will cease to exist is dumb. I recently saw the best analogy about this – HORSES.   At some point, cars started gaining popularity. If the INTERWEBS existed then, “armchair” transportation [...]

Freaky Detail – Free Sharpening Action

Published on October 24, 2011 By Leica BOSS

Ok, so here’s a great free sharpening action for Adobe Photoshop CS5. It’s based on a technique shown by Calvin Hollywood. He’s a BOSS. Many sharpening techniques can totally ruin an image by creating halos, gritty and noisy textures, killing shadow detail, and making little kittens cry (this can totally happen).  This is an example [...]

Lightroom 3 for Black & White. Part 2 – Previsualization

Published on July 26, 2011 By Leica BOSS

So, as we continue this series on using Lightroom for black and white conversions, we look back to an old concept – previsualization. This video takes one image and presents it in a number of different ways – all achieved using Adobe Lightroom 3. Did you miss part 1?  See part 1- using color contrasts- [...]

Photoshop Basics: The immense joys of local editing

Published on June 21, 2011 By Leica BOSS

I remember first having Photoshop installed. All of the tutorials online were in this crazy language that made no sense to me. “Invert a copy of the background layer and mask out the foreground”  WUT? So, here is one of the most fundamental concepts of editing photos once you get beyond the basic “mess with [...]

Photoshop Basics – What’s a layer and why should you care?

Published on June 5, 2011 By Leica BOSS

When I started with Photoshop – I remember looking at all these online video tutorials and having no idea what the instructors were saying. They were whizzing around the workspace like madpeople, taking this mysterious language about layers, masks, adjustments, curves. I seriously wanted to just give up and stay in the darkroom.  So, as [...]