As the primary snowflakes touched down right here in Ontario, Canada I snuck outdoors to snap just a few fast photographs on my again deck. The snowflakes had been huge and fluffy and shifting very gradual, and didn’t final greater than a minute or so as soon as they landed. I’ve been taking part in round with macro free lensing and only recently acquired my macro reverse ring adapter. The adapter makes the method a lot simpler (with out the adapter it’s a must to maintain your lens as much as the physique, which might grow to be difficult at instances). Utilizing my Canon Insurgent T2i, the adapter and my Canon 50mm 1.8 lens I assembled them like so:
Whereas in handbook mode, I set my shutter velocity to 400 and saved my ISO on auto (for this shot it was at 100). As soon as I discovered the snowflake that I preferred, I merely moved in till it appeared sharp by my viewfinder and snapped away. The method itself could be very easy and with such a shallow depth of area it’s really very simple to see what’s in focus, it’s only a matter of holding nonetheless sufficient (if hand holding your digicam) and utilizing the precise settings to get it proper SOOC. This was my uncooked SOOC shot (not excellent, nevertheless it was adequate):
And right here is the after picture:
To edit I opened the RAW picture in ACR and utilized fundamental changes:
- Straightened and cropped, adjusted publicity worth to +0.40, adjusted distinction worth to +75, adjusted highlights worth to -100, and adjusted blacks worth to -36
I then opened in Photoshop CS CC and utilized the next edits:
- I de-noised.
- Adjusted ranges and curves for a wealthy matte end (on blurred background solely). You should utilize one of many many matte actions from the MCP Encourage Actions Set for Photoshop and Parts to get this look rapidly.
- Utilizing the white eyedropper in ranges, sampled the snowflake after which diminished the layer opacity till the colour regarded right (to 32%).
- Utilized a gray gradient fill layer → created new fill layer → gradient → type: reflective → angle: 90° → scale: 40% → checked off “reverse” → then dragged the gradient till it was positioned over the in focus strip of wooden and snowflake appropriately (kind of like a fake tilt shift impact) → masked any of the gradient off the snow flake and adjusted the layer opacity to style (to 33%). MCP Encourage additionally has two highly effective actions to perform this: the Shallow Depth of Area motion and Customized Depth of Area motion
- Ran the FREE MCP Contact of Gentle and utilizing a big (2500 px) brush clicked on the snowflake space a pair instances then decreased the layer opacity (to 25%) till it regarded proper
The final step was including the fake sparkle that I created by hand. Wish to use this in your pictures? Use the “share field” right here. If you don’t see it, please attempt one other browser:
[socialshare-download href=”http://bit.ly/mcp-sparkle-brush”]THE FREE SPARKLE BRUSH FOR PHOTOSHOP[/socialshare-download]
Carly Benjamin is a pure mild photographer based mostly out of the Toronto space. You’ll be able to see extra of her work on her web site Carly Bee Pictures and comply with her on her Fb web page.
