Photogeddon - Day 22: Photographer Animation and much More

In an effort to experiment with DSLR animation, my good friend Chris David requested me to shoot a sequence shot of him. I wasn't sure exactly why he was asking for it or what he would do once the camera was snapping, but I am always game for a little experimentation, so I shot about 11 frames of him doing exactly what you see below. Because of the size of the file, 3.05MB, it may take a few seconds to load, but it is a cool result... so wait for it. 

Wait for it....

I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to generate the animated gif. In addition to the above animation I present the below photos for today's Photogeddon. The photos are from yesterday, as I have way too much going on today to be able to take new photos... I have about 1000 portraits to process from yesterday as well as I am going back to collect my personal affects from my employer at 5:30 PM and I have to make some time for my wife who I know if feeling a bit like a widow. After all of the that I still have a new website to finish putting together... all in a day's work, right? I love being this busy. :)

Kevin Kubota

Curves



Moon



55 Chevy

Cherry 375hp 55 Chevy

Lightroom Preset: CMS - BW Face

Before the B&W Face Preset

Yes this is a scary image of me. But that was the intent. Once day I did a series of shots based on movie characters. I posed for shots of the likes of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Hannibal of Silence of the Lambs and this one, my favorite from the series, is my King Leonidas from the movie 300. Imagine the words "This is Sparta" being bellowed out.



See this image as a reference to what I was trying to accomplish:

So while the color image has its own power and impact, I was actually envisioning something a little more powerful... something a little more shocking. Something that would make people say OGM! 

So I began playing with a black and white version of the image in Lightroom and wouldn't you know it, I was able to create the image I envisioned.



 

In the image on the right, yes it is the same image, I developed a setting that I was able to use on all of the series images. I made the following adjustments once I converted the image to black and white:

Blacks is set to 25, Clarity set to 100, Contrast set to 91, Aqua gray value set to -12, Blue gray value set to 29, Green gray value set to -24, Magenta gray value set to 10, Orange gray value set to -11, Purple gray value set to 15, Red gray value set to -10, Yellow gray value set to -16, Recovery set to 33 and in the tone curve my settings were Highlights 0, Lights 23, darks -20 Shadows 0; which creates a slight S-Curve. A fun way to add some serious intensity to an already tense image.

Download Here

To install the preset, copy the file in the zip (xxx.lrtemplate) to your Develop Presets folder on your computer. If you don't know where to find this folder, open Lightroom. Click on Edit menu and select Preferences. Click on the Presets tab and click the Show Lightroom Presets Folder... button.