To test, I took a recent SOOC (straight out of the camera) original image:

I used CS5 to enhance the digital file as part of my usual workflow. Then I added a layer of texture to make the grunge wall behind my subject even more interesting:

Then I called my kids over to watch what they call “Stupid Photoshop Tricks.” I do this for two reasons: 1.) because it’s fun and 2.) because I think it’s important for kids to see how much manipulation goes into the images that bombard them. It’s just a healthy dose of realism.

I selected my subject:

And to my daughter’s horror (and her brother’s delight,) I hit the “delete” key:

The dialog box that came up had “content-aware” selected as default. I hit okay. And whereas my previous version of CS3 would have left the area inside the selection a blank, erased field of white for me to painstakingly recreate, CS5 took less than a minute to process a suggested fill for me:

Granted, it isn’t perfect; the lines in the brick walkway don’t exactly add up, for example. But as I selected the clone tool to fix them, I was surprised and thrilled to find in CS5, the clone tool shows me a mirror image of what I’m about to stamp — invaluable hours saved trying to blindly line-up matching pixels!

I did a little bit more to clean up the content aware, but very quickly and without spending too much thought:

And then, of course, I hit open apple-Z to step backward and reinsert my beautiful sunshine, this time within an altered, content-aware filled format:

A trained eye could easily spot the hurried indifference, but all told the whole process took us a little over three minutes. Amazing!

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Last week, I packed up my gear and went to work at my children’s school. Their art teacher, Mrs. Boneo, is phenomenal. I’m working on two projects with her, silhouettes of 7th graders and an Andy Warholish template for 8th graders.

Just when I thought I had seen it all, an über-creative 7th grader stepped in front of me and announced, “I am a rock.”

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Sold.

But as this is a photo blog, I should put down the to-die-for chocolate cupcake and get back to the Zeiss 35mm lens I’ve been experimenting with. It’s not as sharp as I was hoping it would be wide open (and/or at higher ISOs?), but I’m still getting to know it and am very encouraged by what I’ve seen in-studio at f/4. More on that as I finish editing last week’s stuff…

Nikon D700, Zeiss 35mm lens, f2 @ 1/8000 second, ISO 800

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This is the first time an editor has used me for both the cover photos and the cover feature story! That’s my daughter in the picture, my son holding an SB 800 Strobist-style to camera left.

On the back cover (below) is Quinn (originally posted here.)  All of my clients around the time I was writing this story were photographed as potential cover candidates, but I knew Quinn was a likely winner with those big blue eyes and a shirt to match.

I didn’t realize until recently how much I miss my days as a writer. (Well, the writing part, anyhow. And the reading part; working for newspapers is the only job where you can be caught at your desk reading the paper and not get fired. And of course the off-beat social life. And the smell of ink. And the Glass House notes. And the sports desk that spoke its own language, the photo desk that could come back with a single image that said way more than all the writers and copy editors in the room combined, the art desk that lived in its own cult back there in the corner, the editorial desk that got the phones ringing and all that mail… But the 4 a.m. showtime to write for an 11 a.m. deadline, editors throwing things at me, basement quarters devoid of windows and plant life, that :ick: couch and again, the Glass House notes? Not so much.)

I could spend a whole post writing about the wonderful organization that is RIF — but that would be sort of redundant since I’ve already written a feature and a sidebar and I’m linking you to both.

So I guess the cat’s out of the bag: it’s true. I’m a writer masquerading as a photographer. But today is special because for the Summer 2009 issue, I get to be both.

Page 22-23

Page 24-25

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