Rescuing that all important shot with Photoshop CS6

Hi All,

It's been a little while since my last post as work has kept me away from the PC in the evenings. However I'm finally back at the computer, for a while at least. 

Back in September I was honoured to be asked to take the photographs at my Nephews wedding. It was an afternoon wedding and thankfully we were very lucky with the weather especially as the weather leading up to the event had been dire. 

Everything was going well and I'd managed to shoot the pre-wedding shots, the shots during the service and the majority of the shots outside the registry office. I'd got most of my planned shots in the bag and was wandering around getting some impromptu shots of the guests chatting when one of the bridesmaids approached me to ask if I was going to take a shot of the confetti being thrown. Luckily it was on my list of vitally important shots and I was watching the bride and groom for signals that they were about to leave and head for the reception. 

Suddenly the bridesmaid shouted "confetti" and the guests began to cover the bride and groom. I raised my camera and pressed the shutter, When I looked at the monitor I was horrified to find that the bridesmaid's hand was right across the shot. 

Ruined image

I was gutted. It was a one off shot and it had been ruined. What to do? The day continued and I continued to shoot the reception and evening reception. 

I got the images into the computer and decided to see if I could salvage that 'confetti' shot. As I looked through the other images I realised I'd got a shot of the bride and groom a few seconds prior to the confetti being thrown and a plan began to formulate. 

I dragged the damaged image and the image taken a few seconds earlier into Photoshop and made a selection of the left hand side of my Nephews body. I dragged the selection on to the damaged image and started work.

First Stage

By dropping the opacity of the layer with the body in it I very carefully positioned the selection over the body underneath using the move tool. I created a new layer and began carefully
feathering the edge of the selection using the eraser. I also performed some careful cloning and healing until it was no longer obvious that the selection belonged to a different image. 

I used a levels adjustment to match the grey in the selection with the grey of the original jacket. I cloned out the rest of the offending hand and wrist and copied a few pieces of confetti to place around the image.

Second Stage

An additional crop brought the whole image into the correct place resulting in a very passable confetti shot. Without Photoshop it would have been almost impossible to fix this shot. 

Final Image

Above is the final image. Not too bad if I do say so myself. See you next post. 

The Old Windmill

I recently took a stroll around Staunton Harold reservoir near Melbourne in Derbyshire. Just off the main car park there is an old windmill that no longer has any sails. It stands proudly looking over the reservoir. It probably gets photographed by virtually everyone that visits the area and I was no exception.

I was a glorious sunny day and I took the image below.

When I got it home and on to the computer I really liked the look of it but for some reason it seemed to lack a bit of punch so I started to mess around with it in Photoshop. Eventually I realised that it really lent itself to a black and white conversion. I exported it into Silver EFEX Pro and started to go through the various filters, I settled on the basic setting with an orange filter. I went back into Photoshop and remove the foliage on the left and the result  is the image below which I hope you'll agree is an altogether more pleasing image.

See you next time .......

A Walk in Derbyshire

Hi All,

Last Wednesday I took the day off work to go walking in the Peak District in Derbyshire. I initially wanted to go to the Nine Ladies Stone Circle in Stanton in the Peak but when I arrived there I found the batteries in the camera were flat. Very disappointing !!

I went back home put the D300s batteries on charge and grabbed my Nikon S3100 compact camera and headed out again. I was too late to go back to Stanton so I decided to try out a walk I'd seen in a book called 'Walks around Shirland and Higham. I decided to do walk number 3 in the book. This would take from Higham through Brackenfield, up towards Wessington and the finally back down into the Amber Valley and into Higham again. It was a great day out although it was a little too hot for my liking. 

Anyway, below are a few shots take along the way. The full compliment of shots can be found on my website at www.carrington-imagery.co.uk

Creating a Retro-Film-strip effect

Hi All,

I recently had the good fortune to photograph local band Whitemoor at a place called The Venue in Abbey Street, Derby. 

After I'd posted the pictures on Facebook and my website  www.carrington-imagery.co.uk  I was trying to decide what else I could do with the pictures. 

I decided to attempt to create a retro style film-strip featuring each member of the band in a different aperture. 

The first thing I needed was a 35mm style film strip template. I looked around on Google images, found one that was suitable and opened it in Photoshop CS5.

The next job was to select five images of the band. Bring them into CS5 and then using the free transform tool Ctrl + T reduce them in size until they fitted into the appropriate aperture. I also move each image in the layer stack until it was under the film strip template. Using the eraser tool I removed any overlapping pieces of each image as below.

After placing a white block over the parts of the images that protruded below the template I added a text layer with the name of the band in their particular font.

I decided I wanted a more grungy look to the film-strip so I added a checker plate texture to the image and used a hard light blend mode plus a reduction of opacity to 30% to get the look I wanted. 

I converted the resulting image to black and white using Nik's Silver Efex Pro

Then finally I brought the converted image into Nik's Color Efex Pro to give it a vintage tint.

The final image is below and was well received by the members of the band.

Have a Banana!

Hi All,


A little bit of still life for you this week. I have to say I'm not a big fan of still life. Probably because I can never think of a subject to do a still life with. However in this particular case we just happened to have a a couple of old bananas hanging around the house so I thought I'd give it a go.


I suspended the bananas from a piece of cotton on a frame above a table. I used the black side of a reflector to create the background. I set the D300s on a tripod and used the pop-up flash in commander mode to fire my SB910 with a 20 degree grid on.


The results are below ..

A Visit to Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire

Hi All,


On the 5th of July 2012 members of Derby City Photographic Club went on a visit to Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.


As usual I took plenty of photographs. Some of my favourite images are below and the rest are on my website at www.carrington-imagery.co.uk

I can thoroughly recommend a visit to the abbey and village for all phorographers. There's so much stuff to photograph!


All images are taken with the Nikon D300s.

Another Marina Walk

During June I took another stroll around Mercia Marina near Willington. It was quite a dull day but I still managed a get a few nice shots.


This time I decided to move away from the main Marina and walk out towards the canal to the rear. 


I can heartily recommend the Marina for photographers. There's always something going on and there's a nice tea room to visit when you've done shooting.


As usual all of the shots from this little excursion can be found at www.carrington-imagery.co.uk

A walk around Staunton Harold

During May 2012 members of the Derby City Photographic Club went on a Photo Walk around Staunton Harold. The idea of the walk was to encourage members of the public to come along, enjoy a walk and perhaps gain some photography knowledge from Club members. 


The walk was about 2 miles in length and took in some of the less trodden paths in the area. About 20 members of the public cam along and had a great day out. 


Below are a few of the shots that I took on the day. The rest can be found at www.carrington-imagery.co.uk

Lonely Tree f18@1/60 ISO200

Staunton Church f11@1/250 ISO200

Swan Take Off  f11@1/250 ISO200

Door Knob f2.8 @ 1.320 ISO200

Staunton Harold in HDR

Lilly Pond in HDR

Red Rose

Hi All,


This Rose has been blooming in our garden for many years so this year I decided to photograph it.


I set it up on a small table with a black background. I used my Sigma 50mm macro lens together with my Nikon SB910 flash gun set with a 20 degree gird to stop the light bleeding on to the background. 


I also used http://www.controlmynikon.com/ to ensure that the camera was correctly controlled and focussed at all times.