I recently came across a job posting on one of the many forums I frequent that caused me to raise one of my eyebrows. The listing asked for someone who was available the week of March 13, could photograph in at least 7mp, was experienced in model photography, and could handle being around beautiful, naked women. Sounds like a dream job, right??

Here’s the kicker, the last criteria for the job was this, “…would be willing to work for FREE.” This was not your run of the mill, no budget, local business gig. The client for this job was Playboy. There were not that many details being offered up, but there was a supposed opportunity of future work if the photographer nailed it. I realized that this was an amazing opportunity for someone, but I couldn’t get over the fact that a successful organization as large as Playboy was unwilling to pay for photography. Below is my reply to that job posting:

I’ve found myself looking back at the past few years recently, wondering where photography went wrong. At what point did it become acceptable to work for free? At what point did creativity become a cheap commodity? I honestly don’t understand how it is deemed kosher for individuals to not reimburse others for the services that they perfomed.

I can’t say that I don’t have anything to do with the shift in value. I on several occasions have been lured into working for free. Seduced by the allure of increased exposure, “future” gigs, and rare perks of the job (naked chicks and fast cars), I lost my values and prostituted my services. But every time I finish one of these jobs, I am always left feeling violated. Disappointed and let down, I wonder why I let myself fall for it again. Why is it, that when a job is deemed “fun,” that the gig is in of itself payment? Isn’t the whole purpose of pursuing a passion, so that you can get paid for doing what doesn’t feel like work. I don’t mean for this post to come across as if I am seeking pity, for myself or any other photographer, but it is strange how common free work has become. I understand that the economy is hurting right now and many businesses are suffering, but I don’t see that as an acceptable excuse.

I consider photography a trade, similar to an electrician, plumber, or mechanic. It takes several years of rigorous study and countless hours of practice to really excel at your job. Would anyone ever ask their mechanic, “I have a car that needs some engine work, how about you repair it for free this time, and the next time the engine blows up, I’ll pay you for it.” Why is this not acceptable, but it is deemed perfectly reasonable when that mechanic is substituted with a photographer? It actually makes less sense to me. In this case of Playboy, the photography is absolutely vital to the success of Playboy’s business. What is Playboy without the photography? The photographer who worked for scratch is directly responsible for lining Playboy’s pocket with green. In the case of product photography, the photographer is the one who communicates the benefits of said products to the customer. How successful would Absolut Vodka be without their award winning photography and ads? What if their ads were nothing but heavy copy?

Or how about this situation, “You fix my leaky pipes, and I’ll give you a little byline on a sign in my front yard.” Let me call my utility company and see if they’ll accept bi-lines as payment. Last time I checked bi-lines and “future” gigs don’t pay the bills. Luckily, I’m still young and don’t have responsibilities like a family or a mortgage, but I feel sorry for those who have chosen photography as a career, and now can’t compete. I would lovvvveee to pursue photography as a career, but I realize now that it’s not a viable source of income.

As I said, my rant is not directed toward [name omitted]. I have no reason to doubt [name omitted] here. He probably has more credibility than me and if he says, “there is a possibility for future work,” than there probably is, pending one’s performance. This sounds like an amazing opportunity and it is not my goal to discourage others from taking advantage of the awesome situation. This is more or less, nostalgic rhetoric on how things once were and how I wish things could still be. Further dialogue would be great, but I don’t expect any of my questions to be answered. Ugh, /rant.

What are your alls thoughts on this? I’m not local enough to apply for the gig, but even if I were, I probably wouldn’t have. Am I crazy? I like to think I’m just tired of my trade being devalued to the point of nothingness.

To help with this endeavor, I’ve assemebled a list of tips and tricks that I use to remove rigs from my images.

#1 Use the pen tool initially and often. — The first thing I do when I open an image is outline the boundaries of significant areas as new paths. It may seem rudimentary, but it will most definitely speed up your workflow later in the process. Take notice of changes in color and gradation and use the natural boundaries of the car’s lines and reflections as your path’s boundaries. When needed, utilize shift+clicks and alt+clicks to add/subtract selections from each other.

There really is no such thing as overkill when it comes to paths. The more, the merrier.

#2 Make quick work of backgrounds with the clone tool. — Let’s face it; without the clone tool, many of us would be helpless to remove even the smallest of discrepancies in our images. It is by far the most powerful tool for removing rigs, but to utilize it to its full potential, one must regularly alter brush size, brush hardness, and opacity. Various textures and elements in backgrounds of rig shots blur and merge into strange shapes and gradients. Rig shots have that certain “Wow! factor,” because of this illusion of motion represented through the converging lines. Converging lines are very difficult to replicate when cloning because there is no correct source to clone from. On one side of the rig, the line may be too thick and on the other, too thin. To solve this, use a smaller brush with a medium opacity, and over several strokes blend the two sides together. It will take a little patience, but it is well worth the effort.

#3 Eliminate repetition of pattern with the healing brush. — There are some instances where the clone tool just won’t cut it. Often, the source area (the area you are cloning from) may be smaller than the area you are cloning to. In this case, the clone tool may cause a repetition of pattern that may be visible to viewers. I always find it funny when I look at an image and see the same tree branch 5 times in the background. The healing brush can be used to disrupt any accidental patterns caused by cloning. Use it just as you would the clone tool.

#4 The paint brush is the Ace in the “Hole.” — You may come across certain situations in which the clone tool and the healing brush are both insufficient. The paint brush, with a little practice, can be the most effective tool in removing rigs from images. The key is to vary brush size, brush hardness, and opacity and to use other parts of the image as reference to what you are painting. I’ve touched on this briefly in the past. Refer to Removing Reflections in Post for more detailed instruction.

Believe it or not, this whole hood was recreated with the paint brush. There wasn’t enough source area to clone from, so I was forced to create from scratch the various elements of the hood.

#5 Reduce harsh edges with the blur tool. — Paths, in combination with any of the above tools, have the tendency to create very hard edges. These edges may stick out like a sore thumb as rig shots typically have some camera shake. In many instances, the blur may increase as the relative distance of the object to the lens increases (ex. the rear wheel being more blurry than the front wheel on a front 3/4 rig shot). It is important to take this effect into consideration and use the blur tool accordingly.

Using these 5 tips (and a few more :p) I was able to successfully remove the rig from this SRT-4 image. Check out the animation below to see the whole process.

As you can see, this pictures lacks a lot of pop and could definitely benefit from some added contrast. As it is now, the image looks rather flat, although it clearly has the potential to be something more. Open the image in Photoshop and navigate to the adjustment map menu located at the bottom of the layer window. Select Curves, which I conveniently highlighted with a red box.

Once you select Curves, a window should pop up, showing the graphical display that I explained in my last blog post. We know from my last tutorial, that we are going to want to create a S-curve. A S-curve produced additional contrast by darkening the shadows and lightening the highlights. One approach to creating this S-curve is to simply select two random points on the line and manipulate the curve until the image looks appropriate. A more refined approach involves selecting two points on the line by using the actual image values as reference points. To help you understand, take a look at the image below. By command + left clicking (cntrl + left click on PC) a point on the image, we conveniently identify that pixel’s location on the line. I start by locating an area of the image that I would like to be brighter, and cmd+left clicking in that area (denoted by a red circle). I then locate an area that I would like to be darker and opt+left click within that area (denoted by the other red circle).

Once the points are identified on the line, I use them to make my adjustments. In this image, you can see where I have drug the most-right point up, effectively brightening the highlights of the image.

Next, I darken the shadows by dragging the left point downwards.

We are now left with an image that has significantly more contrast than the original.

While the main purpose of curves is to adjust contrast, it also has the ability to correct white balance. Luckily, I shot the above image in RAW and was able to make some slight tweaks in the color balance. As you can see, this image is now much too warm. Let’s use curves and another simple tool, threshold, to correct the white balance. Start, by navigating to the layer adjustment map and selecting Threshold. The Threshold command converts grayscale or color images to high-contrast, black-and-white images. You can specify a certain level as a threshold. All pixels lighter than the threshold are converted to white; all pixels darker are converted to black. This becomes important to know because the next step after the threshold command is to select a pixel in the image that we would like Photoshop to represent as a pure white pixel.

Drag the white arrow, all the way to the right side of the histogram. Now slowly drag the arrow to the left, until we start to see white pixels. I like to go a little bit further after seeing the initial white pixels, so that the change is more drastic. We will want to mark these pixels, so that we can easily select them in the later steps.

To do this, turn Caps-Lock on, and you should see that your eye dropper has turned into a crosshair. Navigate toward the white pixels and shift+click to leave a crosshair marker. We are going to use this point later in the process as a reference point. Exit out of the threshold window after leaving the marker, and create a Curves adjustment map. Click on the eyedropper tool that I have highlighted in red to select the white eyedropper tool. Make sure caps-lock is still on and match your mouse pointer (which should still be a cross hair) with the marker. Once you are directly matched up with the marker, you should see that it disappears. Click the left click to set this point as the new white point.

Here is the image with both techniques in this tutorial performed on it.

While this technique does fairly well at correcting minor inaccuracies in white balance, it struggles with images that are badly affected my improper white balance. In those instances, it is best to use the Color balance tool. Or if you are smart, you shoot in RAW and can do it in your RAW editing software.

Check back next week, for my explanation of Levels and its uses in altering contrast.

To locate curves, one must navigate towards Image>adjustments>curves or use the curves selection from the layer adjustment map list. After selecting curves you should see a menu that looks like this:

At a quick glance, it looks harmless enough, but let it be known that curves is a very powerful tool in adjusting the brightness and contrast of an image. Focus your attention on the graph and its respective axes. I find it easiest to speak of the graph in terms of a coordinate plot made up of an x and y axis. Think of the horizontal axis (or x-axis) as all those values in the image ranging from black to white. Values are of course, colors devoid of any saturation. Think of the vertical axis (or y axis) as all those values in the image, ranging from black to white, AFTER adjustments to the brightness and contrast have been made to the image. By default, the graph contains a diagonal line that bisects the graph in two. Imagine a point in the middle of that line. That point corresponds to a value that is a 50% gray. To verify that this is true, draw a vertical line down to the x axis from that point and you should see that it is the midpoint between pure black and pure white. Now, draw a horizontal line to the y axis from that same point. Again, the line should intersect the y axis at the midpoint between pure black and pure white. This make sense because we have yet to make any changes to the image. In other words, any point on that line should have an x and y value that is identical because we haven’t actually adjusted anything yet.

There are three basic shapes that one should utilize when making adjustments with curves. Refer to the image below. The first I will teach is the lighten curve. Click the midpoint of the line and drag up. To understand what we have just done, imagine the coordinates of the new point. The x axis which represents the values in the image BEFORE any changes is still at a 50% gray, but the y axis, which represents the values in the image AFTER we have altered the curve is closer to white. One can see with the coordinates that I have added below the lighten curve, that the y value is lighter than the x value. Take note though, that it is not just one x value in isolation that was affected by the change. In fact, every point on that line is now different, with those values closest to the 50% gray point having the largest incremental change. The important thing is that ALL values of the image are now lighter.

The second curve is a darken curve. It is the exact opposite of the curve explained above and is created by dragging the line downward. Again, it is important to see that every point on the new line is darker, with those values closest to our point, being most affected.

The third curve is a contrast curve. The definition of contrast is “The difference in brightness between the light and dark areas of a picture, such as a photograph or video image.” In other words, to increase contrast, one must increase the difference between the light values and the dark values. We accomplish this by making an S curve. Drag the right portion of the graph up, thereby making the light values lighter and then drag the left portion of the graph down, thereby darkening the dark values. The midpoint, 50% gray, remains unaffected. Using the two points on my curve, one can see that the y value of point 1 is darker than the x value and the y value of point 2 is lighter than the x value.

Next week, I am going to tackle correcting color balance with curves. Hope you check back.

The issue is on newstands now, so be sure to pick one up!

Modified asked that the rig be removed (obviously), that the canvas be resized to cover specfications, and here comes the tricky part, that the light streaks on the side be removed.  On most rig shots, removing reflections is the easiest part of the process.  But when you add camoflague paint and giant sponsor decals it becomes an extremely tedious job.  I think the .psd of this document had over 50 layers and 20 paths.  Check out the before and after to see the extent of the editing.

Super Street photo

In all seriousness, I guess this is a regular thing with the Super Street gang.  You’ll also notice James Evins is Mexican and Dukes is lacking his signature beard and dodger hat.  I’ve got a couple more features coming out in Super Street in these next few months.  I wonder what I will look like then.

This is what I came up with.  As you can see, I have a large bucket that is suspended several feet above ground by a boom an a few cables.  A hose is used to fill the top bucket with water.  The product is dangling below the bucket, suspended by fishing line , which is threaded through an eye screw hotglued to its base.  Below the product is another large bucket, which was used to catch the water falling to the ground.

Originally, I drilled a quarter size hole in the bottom of the top bucket.  I used a wine cork, wrapped in duct tape to plug the hole.  Again, I used an eye screw and drilled it into the cork and threaded some string through the eye screw so that I could yank the cork from a distance.

After some preliminary shots, I realized the flow of the water coming from the bucket wasn’t as I had imagined. I widened the hole with a sawzaw so that I could get a larger diameter of water to fall, however that lent the wine cork as useless.  Luckily, I had an assistant who was willing to plug the hole with his hand for a couple hours.

After more shots, I started to see that the water inside the bucket was whirlpooling inside the bucket and was not falling straight down and instead was somehow defying gravity, flying out at 45 degree angle to the ground, missing the product entirely.  To solve this, I placed a coffee container inside the bucket and hoped that this would act as a baffle, diverting the water straight down.  It seemed to work for the most part.

Lighting was a definite issue.  I found that my AB’s don’t have a fast enough flash duration to stop liquids to my liking.  I do however prefer to use them with my studio and product work because of the modeling lights and compatiblity with my softboxes.  For this reason, I took a couple hours just shooting the product with my AB’s without any water added to the system.  There was nothing preventing the bottle from spinning and I needed good source pictures of the front of the bottle.  After I got the pictures I needed, I switched out the AB’s for my speedlights and added the water to the system.  I have one backlighting the subject which is sitting on a cooler behind the product.  I also have two flanking the product on either side and then white pieces of foam core help to highlight the water.

Post processing honestly wasn’t too difficult.  I took over 250 pictures in a 4.5 hours span, so I had a lot to pull from when editing.  Here are the 3 main pictures used to create the final image.

And here is an animation I created of the process.

And here are a couple other pics from the shoot.