Fooling around with video presentations is a fun way to waste a few nights. This one focuses on lighting, posing, and post-processing of my Urban Ninja photo concept. Aside from the concept and posing, which I discussed previously, this video includes a screencast of the post-processing.

The post-processing for the Urban Ninja images was done in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS3. The processing was designed to define and enhance shadow areas of the arms and hands, while the pose of the image is the main element. The face falls off into blackness and shadows, so that the form of the Ninja is focused on by the viewer. Grunge layering techniques were used to add the dark-gritiness I seem to like. Two concrete layers were used here, one I shot in Wintethur, Switzerland, and the second came with the Joey L Photoshop Tutorial DVD. I blended the concrete layers using overlay or softlight, and a few curves and levels adjustment layers were included to better define the shadows. A final color layer was used to give the final color-cast and define the overall image feel. Anyways, to see the full process just check out the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I used black+white adjustment layers to control the shadow depth. With his technique you create a B+W layer, then blend it using Luminosity or, as I prefer Multiply. This darkens the shadows and since it’s a black and white layer, you can go in and adjust the amount of red, green, blue, etc. which is being defined in that layer. This technique can be used in many images so long as you don’t abuse it. In addition to portraits I like to use it for landscape images with a deep blue sky and a collection of clouds. This image below from the Swiss National Park was shot on film with my Fuji GA645, scanned with a Nikon LS-9000 scanner, then worked on in Photoshop, with a B+W layer used to control shadow texture.

My experiments in Lazy Art paintings and ArtCasting are continuing (the first being Lazy Art II), we’ll call this one Lazy Art III. for the ArtCast I used more music from Kevin Mcleod, an original lazy artist would have picked something besides the Danse Macabre, but to be honest it’s the type of music with those specific rythems which play in my head, and moves in perfect time with my emotions, perfectly describing the mood in my head when I start mixing paint and get ready for an episode of splattering a nice boring white canvas with color. So, from a documentary perspectives, it seeme like I should maintain that authenticity for the audience. This piece of Lazy Art has influences from Zurich Graffiti, specifically the combination of abstract flow set against bits of rectangular geometry. The geometric patterns were planned to a certain extent, I put down some tape and then removed it before the final splatter fest. Amazingly, the ceiling of my apartment is not covered with small dots of green, red, and matte gold.

As a Photoshop-trained painter, I’m still slightly annoyed at the idea that I can’t add a levels and curves adjustment layer set to my Lazy Art while painting. My eyes naturally want to start adding a bit of smart sharpening, push the overall exposure, and increase the dark tone levels to get the colors my mind wants to see. Of course, this doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. I do these manipulations on the final image take with my Minolta 7D and Sony macro lens. I do some adjustments in Photoshop, then tweak the final exposure in Adobe Lightroom before exporting to Flickr. Is the painting the final product, or simply a template? The next step is to rent a Sony A900 and photograph my Lazy Art experiments with my 50mm tack-sharp macro lens. Then I’ll have a nice 24 megapixel image with fantastic sharpness and dynamic range to work with. From there I’ll have total control over color, saturation, and sharpness, but with the basic chaos of abstract painting. Printing would naturally be done on canvas or Hahnemühle German Etching Paper. Does this kill the idea of a real painting? The type where everything is done on the canvas, you know, like in real photography where everything is done in-camera without post-processing manipulation? Fortunately, I could care less what it means. I hunt colors and abstract images in my head and on the streets I walk in the world. The process of getting the perfect abstract shape-color combination is irrelevant.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I love photography, I love Photoshop, I love the freedom to create and define a vision from my head. But there’s always that separation, that feeling of disconnection between the tool (cameras, lenses, lights, computers) and the vision (the one from my head). So it was logical step to say, screw it one day. At a shop in Zurich I found 1×1 meter square canvases and at the home improvement store I found latex paint for less than 7 CHF per 500 ml. I few more franks went to brushes and plastic to cover a room of my Winterthur apartment and protect my security deposit. I traded my Wacom tablet and Photoshop for the ability to splatter paint as I pleased without the “undo” button.

Music stopped in the background and I realized why artists go mad…because, what’s more frustrating than painting a black stroke when in your head you know it should’ve been green? NOTHING! Nothing compares to the idea that you start with a pure white nothingness and from nothing, without barely a forethought or premonition comes, something. That something is undefined and unknowable and abstract and everything that a fool can hope for when the mind is empty.

I documented the evolution of my Lazy Art with my Minolta 7D and a Sony 50mm macro lens. Lighting provided via a Sunpak 383 in a small Alzo softbox. The result is an Artcast, an experiment in communicating and showing the evolution of the vision from the first to last color addition. Music brings the madness, and this addition seemed appropriate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In Photoshop a texture is just something, an overlay, an image layer, a way to add some sort of depth to the image which wasn’t there before. There are many different reasons and motivations for using textures in Photoshop, and I’m here to quickly educate the curious reader on how to use grunge textures in Photoshop.

First off, why grunge?

I don’t know why I like the feeling of grunge textures. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to re-create the feeling I get walking through Berlin or Detroit, maybe it’s because I’m a cliche and am just following the crowd. Joey Lawrence uses grunge texturing techniques, and I bought the Joey L Photoshop DVD Tutorial, so obviously I’m just copying his style. Maybe, but some people say that everything is just a copy of a copy of a copy. I know this because Tyler knows this and because Fight Club is one of my favorite books/movies. What I do know is that sometimes I take a photo and it’s perfectly exposed and has great shadows and yet it just doesn’t have the look, the texture that I want the image to have, so I have to go about adding such elements in Photoshop.

So, what’s a texture?

A texture is a separate image which is overlayed over your original image, and through the use of different blending techniques, defines a part of the image. Textures can be used to change the mood or intended interpretation of the original concept which was in your head when you took the photo. If an image is nothing but a story and the photographer is just the author, then textures are just visual storytelling tools.
Where do textures come from?

Anywhere, any image can be used as a texture and currently I prefer to use concrete and street art textures. I use custom images, which means that I photograph walls and doors and parts of cities which I think have an interesting texture or feeling, specifically to use as textures in Photoshop. I generally like creating images where the original photo, and the texture images are all taken in the same location. So if I do a portrait shoot in Winterthur, Switzerland, I will probably use textures shot in that area as well. I like this idea because it means you’re including environmental elements of the shooting location in the processing of the image, and then the final image is a combination of the subject as well as of the environment where the original image was produced. Once you have a image to use as a texture, how is it used in Photoshop?

Click here to view the embedded video.

How Do You Add A Texture in Photoshop?

If you’re visually inclined, check out the video tutorial above, which goes through how I created the Textured Sad Clown image. To add a texture to an image in Photoshop (or any other image edition program with layers) you just open the texture image and your main image, and then you copy the texture to the image to the main image. The texture will be imported as a separate layer, and now you just need to blend the texture into the layer below it. There are a number of different blending modes and techniques, which can be used to blend your texture into the final image. The two main ways to blend texture into the original image are via the blending mode, and then via masking of the texture layer. The blending mode defines how the colors, luminosity, tones, and visual parts of the texture blend into the layer below it. So, for example, if you choose “multiply” as a blending mode, then similar tones are multiplied together, producing a darker image. If it’s not the look you want, try another one till the image starts to look good. What is “good?” Good is whatever you think it is. There’s never one blending mode which works for each image and concept. You just go through them all till you find one that you like. Once you settle on a blending mode, you’ll probably still want to modify it to bring out different aspects of the image. This is done by masking. Masking is a technique to mask out or hide parts of a layer. It’s a non-destructive editing technique which is pretty essential in Photoshop. For example, with a portrait, you probably don’t want the texture layer to block out or dramatically change the face of your subject. So after selecting the layer mask on the texture layer, I can paint over Amber’s face, so her features aren’t hidden. The overall opacity of the image can also be reduced to uniformly reduce the impact of the texture layer.

Obtaining Textures

I’m continually adding to my texture library. It currently includes textures from Zurich, New Orleans, Tokyo, Winterthur, anywhere that I find a cool surface to shoot. The more textures you have, the more story telling elements you have at your disposal. I don’t use texturing techniques on every image, sometimes I want a certain look, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it looks cool, sometimes it’s a cliche. Do what feels right to you when processing in Photoshop. If you limit yourself to a Joey L style or the Scott Kelby 7 Steps, then your images will look like those of a thousand other people. Is that what you want? Maybe every photo I take is just a copy of a copy of a copy. But so far I haven’t found that to be the case.

If you’re interested in trying out some texturing effects in Photoshop but don’t have any images to use, and you live inside a white box without a key, or it’s cold outside and you’re not in the mood to go shooting, or you just want to get started right now this second…

Here is a sample of my Texture library to download and fool around with. It includes custom images produced in the old industrial areas of Winterthur, Switzerland. These textures are free to use for non-commercial work and for educational non-profit uses.  When publishing an image, please add a credit for American Peyote, and link back to www.americanpeyote.com and please don’t hotlink to the Winterthur Textures zip file.

Winterthur Textures Library

I would be interested in seeing how you use these textures, so feel free to email me samples of your creations.

Additional Texture Library Sites:

Textura

Texture Warehouse

Photography and text-based web publishing are fantastic tools for communicating ideas across the world. However, they have their limitations. I think in a 3D moving picture mindset, and therefore, it made sense to start communicating using moving pictures and spoken words. Concept to Photo – Urban Dry Tooling is a video tutorial about starting with a concept, and then translating that inspiration into a final photo.

This isn’t a new idea, there are many photography related video tutorials on the web. However, I rarely find one I want to watch for more than 30 seconds, because they’re either boring, or filled with the least relevant information possible. Another problem is that in many ways the photography tutorial video genre has become a dumping ground for marketing videos from photographers trying to emulate Chase Jarvis – the famous commercial photographer from Seattle who is often credited with starting the photo-video marketing movement. However, he’s a unique gem in the chaotic video landscape of the internet, and his videos have yet to be matched for style or content. I’m not a photographer posting a video to show off my equipment and pretend like I have a cutting edge production studio. I’m a guy in an apartment with an old G4 Macintosh and an old Minolta 7D DSLR who likes to think up concepts and express them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The concept behind this video is simple, compress my creative and photo production process into the upper attention span limit of an average internet video viewer.

This video tutorial was created to fulfill three functions: first, as an exercise for me in producing a video I would want to watch (but I’m weird so this probably doesn’t apply to the average internet viewer). Second to help me understand my creative workflow by packaging it in a video form (teaching to others is the best way to learn). And Third to give other photographers, creatives, and anyone else interested in a new (or old) perspective on the creative process as applied to photography.

Audio was recorded using my Zoom H4, screen capture video was obtained using Snapz Pro X, music was obtained from Kevin Mcleod’s music collection, and the rest is just still images and titles. Some say that soon cameras and camcorders will be one and the same, and they’re right. But in transitioning to the video world I wanted to start simple, and that meant using primarily still images.