Neil Cowley is a photoshop guru and an off camera lighting wizard. I would like to send congrats out to Neil and Liesel. They are leaving NY and headed for their new move over to Charlotte. If you are a NC photographer, please be sure to connect Neil to your social network. He has made a serious contribution to the photographer society. Neil has taught workshops throughout the US on seeing the light. He is currently shooting weddings, traveling, and teaching all at the same time. I checked out Neil's profile on the WPJA just to revisit some of his award winning stuff. Neil was an influence to me during my first seasons working as a pro wedding photog. He has some seriously nice stuff... Check out a few of his WPJA winners. How are the prospects for 2008 coming?

 

Neil Writes: Flash flavor + photoshop flava Flash flavor starts with your shaping of the subject using your photo flashes - but need not end there! Here's the original image, and you can see it's flaws from my overly quick setup.... Here's a diagram of the setup - with the positioning of the flashes in relationship to the bride. I frequently will try for a quick bridal portrait after the bride is dressed, just before the ceremony. But in the very limited time and space I generally use a TTL two flash setup. I use one Canon shoe flash on my camera as master, and a second light off camera to provide a nice shaping to the light. In this instance the only place that wasn't messy in the room where the bride was preparing was in front of the fireplace - and there was a neat mirror in the background. Neat until you have to deal with all the ramifications of having a mirror in your shot! If you want me to point out the flaws for you - I will - they're noted in the photo on Flickr. First you'll see the pool of light created by the on camera flash's foofing the ceiling. Second you'll see a bridesmaid's head in the mirror, as well as an overly bright patch of sunlight hitting the dress in the near foreground. All these minor errors add up to a mild and disinteresting shot overall - so how do we overcome them and accentuate the directionality of the light to bring the flash flavor to full fruition? Well, do you notice the intriguing patter in the marble fireplace? So did I - and I cut it out and enlarged it to cover the entire photo. I then changed the layer mode to Overlay - and poof. I have created dappled sunlight throughout, cascading into the pool-like mirror in the background. I finished with an overall contrast boost from an "S" curve to bring out the directional quality of the light and increased the contrast of the reds to boost color contrasts within the image. By bringing light spots to the overall image, I minimized all my mistakes with a dramatic and contrasty look. Oh but you say, my image doesn't have any marble in it to try this.... Texture Download So flash some more flavor on your images with photoshop and check out more at www.MakeLightReal.com/photoshop/ for more ideas, downloads and techniques.

 

Thanks for taking the time to share! Sol plays around with textures and overlays from the time to time. I too have dabbled a bit with it. I'm a little cautious to get overlay crazy, just as a nice fine art approach now and then! Neil also had a cool photoshop overlay idea in this past FF article. Cheers! matt PS, give shout outs to Neil in North Carolina!