I have been trying to get DOF on a macro (see previous post) and have been having a little bit of a problem with it. For some reason its not clicking at all, so I decided to try to get DOF on a normal shot before I try again.

I stuck my head out of my little boys bedroom window and took a few pics from out there. I managed to get 2 photographs ..
one with DOF in front of the subject:

one with DOF behind the subject:

I know they are boring pics .. but at least I managed to get that DOF thing lolol

Stumble it!

Man I just cant seem to get this at all. I wanted to take a macro shot of a mobile phone for GoSnap and I wanted it to be the number 5 in focus and the rest of the numbers blurred.

I was given some great advice, and have tried to follow it but its just not clicking at all.

Heres the best of the few (ok loads) that I took trying to get it right!

Mobile 1: almost there .. need a bit more blurriness on the other numbers tho:

Mobile 2: now if I could get the 5 like the 8 and the rest of the numbers like the 5 I would be happy (well happier lol)

Remote: Copied Johns remote idea, to see if I could get it on there. I focused on the menu button and its kinda got it hasnt it ? .. its not quite just the menu button, its the full menu ring .. but i’m getting there lolol

ps: apologies for the mankiness of my remote :EmbarrassedSmilieHere:

Stumble it!

I took this at halloween, and obviously didn’t take any notice of lighting etc - I just grabbed my camera and quickly took it before we rushed out to a party.

I opened it in PSP, cropped it, cloned out the chair on the left and then applied a red bleach filter. Its printed out brilliantly, and my little boy loves it.

Stumble it!

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Caught my little boy in the middle of his homework .. Clever little boy he is!

ooo and looking back at it, I think I even managed to get a bit of DOF too lol

The original shows quite a bit of the room:

so I cropped it:

then cloned out the pen:

then made it mono:

Stumble it!

I was playing with my new camera and I wanted some unposed pics of my little boy. We were laid on the bed chatting, telling stories and jokes .. I told him I was just setting the camera up and wasn’t taking pics - which was obviously a lie lololol

I loved the way they turned out .. he looks so relaxed and happy.

Gorgeous or what!

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I did the high key tutorial plus the burning thing again on the carnation DOF picture. I can’t decide whether or not it goes with the photograph or whether I like it.

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I have seen photographs with this effect applied to them, but didn’t know what it was called, or how to do it lol.

I wanted an effect on a photograph I had taken, so just applied a B&W grainy filter/plugin and then messed about with the brighness and contrast in photoshop and came up with this:

I then decided to have a nose about in GoSnap’s tutorial section, and found a High Key tutorial - OMG it is fantastic. I applied the effect to the same photograph I had used above and came out with this:

I posted the result into my gallery and got some advice from Snake saying that maybe the eyes could be brought out a bit more by using the burn tool, and he very kindly wrote me a tutorial on how to do it. Here is the final result:

I have to say, I absolutely love it - thank you to everyone @ GoSnap!

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Another project on the GoSnap forum was DOF.

Before I joined that forum I vaguely knew what DOF was, but had no idea how to get it intentionally. I had taken photographs in the past and occasionally had been lucky and accidentally got DOF, but now I want to learn how to do it when I want it to happen.

I did some reading up, and decided to take the plunge with some Carnation’s. I have to admit, that I got some really bad shots before I managed to get this one, as I am still unsure about how the settings work properly, but I am getting the hang of it.

I know that the bud to the left of the photograph shouldn’t really be in focus, but the rest of it was done intentionally, without the use of the Auto setting on my camera. I used aperture priority, and changed the settings to get what I needed.

I posted it in the projects forum and SteveDM suggested I up the contrast and boost the curves .. hmmmm .. what are bloody curves I thought to myself lol
Again I went to the tutorials part to see if there was anything in there, and yes there was a tutorial on how to correct/boost your curves.
I followed the tutorial but, I wasn’t sure what curves where and what was supposed to be changing lolol
This is the result of doing it in photoshop, as per the tutorial:

I then opened it up in PSP and had a go at their curve settings. I grasped the basic drift of what PS was doing, and applied it in PSP and got this:

I have to admit I think the colours are a lot better in this photograph, and if I am honest, they are more true to the real flowers. I had originally taken the photograph late at night, in a room with just the normal ceiling light on, and thats obviously affected the colours.

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One of the projects over at GoSnap was macro - so I attempted my first ever macro shot using my mobile phone buttons, as suggested in the write up!

Unfortunately it hasn’t turned out well lol. I need more DOF on the other buttons, and the colour doesn’t seem right, but I wanted to post it as it was before I did any alterations.

This is the same picture but with the colour altered, and a spot of fake DOF lol:

Stumble it!