mud pies to medicine: RAW + Lighting

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

RAW + Lighting

Photoshop is a new endeavor for me which means RAW is completely foreign but today I fell in love! I got a new lighting setup on the cheap thanks to Apron of Grace. I set the whole thing up and was really upset with the white balance and my shots. Tungsten was too blue, AWB was completely off (as usual) and I should probably figure out how to use custom on the camera. So I did something different, because this challenge means I need to post a photo. I took the picture in RAW and fixed everything on photoshop and it was amazing! For anyone out there that is scared of RAW like I was, it is super simple. In your camera Menu just change Quality to L + RAW and shoot away. When you open it on the computer photoshop will know what to do and the adjustment panel will pop open. Don't have photoshop? Get a 30 day free trial! That is what I am currently working with. (Anyone looking for a birthday present for me- Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, ppppplease).

So here I have my before and after. The subject itself is not spectacular but this is all about editing and learning new things! So here is the Before and After.

#4 I purchased these little guys in an amazing mountain top town in the Indian Himalayas. The handkerchief is from an antique store in Michigan and they are all on an old coca-cola crate purchased from the same store.

2 comments:

TaraJanuary 4, 2012 at 8:10 PM
This looks *awesome.*

So, new plan. I'll become a famous food blogger, you become a famous photographer, and we'll collaborate because my pictures soooo need work. ;)
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DJanuary 4, 2012 at 9:06 PM
Thanks, Tara! The iPhone is one of the best point and shoots on the market, you can do a lot even without a dslr. You should get yourself a lighting setup like the one I linked to in this post and maybe a mini tripod. Seriously, it would work wonders!
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The inspiration you ask?

I miss making mud pies. There is this huge rock in my front yard. To call it a rock really does it a dishonor. It is a boulder, brought home by my father on a huge dump truck after he blasted it out of a work site. My mom one day told me that even though it is nearly 2.5 feet high, 6 feet long, and 2.5 feet wide, that it was, in fact, only half-showing. The scientist inside of me was disbelieving and set out to get some proof. Clad in a dress, bow in my hair, and my best accessory, a shovel, I trudged outside ready to prove my mother wrong. That is when the digging began. I dug, and dug, and dug, and nearly all 3.5 feet of Danielle fit in that hole when I had reached the bottom of the rock. That became my digging spot, my mud pie kitchen. Each day it was dug, and each evening it was filled back in. Sometimes the holes were small, sometimes they were enormous, and most days the hole was turned into my mud mixing bowl with that rock as my counter. The novelty never wore off. The ebb and flow of my childhood was, in many ways, measured by the ever-changing depth of that hole in the front yard, the hole that never really disappeared even each day after it was filled in. Even though the grass has grown back in that spot, there still remains, an indentation, the scars of a childhood well lived and the disbelieving scientists I have always been.

So, you ask me why I want to be a doctor? I do not want to be a doctor. I want to open a mud pie bakery with the cash register on that rock in my front yard. But, somehow, I doubt I would stay in business long, for the world seems to have lost its taste for mud pies. I guess being a doctor will have to do.