Day 29 - Blast from the Past

Day 13 - Gauntlets

Sorry, I don't have time for a description today. Guests are arriving withing the hour and I have a lot of stuff to do. So, it will just be a quickie today.

See you tomorrow :)

/MrsHjort

Day 12 - Hear Ye

"Who is this?" You may wonder. Well, it's the announcer of the knights' duel I wrote about yesterday, clad in beautiful green and gesturing powerfully as he captivated the crowd between the clashes :)

This might possibly be the last of the portraits I'll show you from the that wonderful day at the Medieval market (which doesn't mean there isn't more to come). This shot was the one I worried most about. I was afraid that the fake bokeh would be problematic, I mean just look at all those fuzzy details of the subject's costume!

Having done so many of the fake bokeh shots lately, I've learned the ins and outs of the process. The key is to get real close and meticulous with the lasso tool when the background is busy, and looser when it is relatively monotone. My first try to get this right turned out much better than I expected it to. I usually go over it with the clone stamp to smooth the edges after blurring the background, but it required very little work this time. Maybe because I was extra careful with the lasso tool...? It was a huge relief nonetheless.

/MrsHjort

Day 11 - The Squire

It's not everyday you get to see two knights in full armor have at each other with war-hammers! In the middle of lunch there was suddenly a roar right outside the restaurant garden, Overcome by curiosity, I grabbed my camera and hurried to see what the fuss was about, and to my surprise I found this dramatic scene playing out. I didn't understand a word - I only know a couple of words in French - but the drama spoke for itself. Sadly the crowd ruined the photos from the actual fights (people got right in my way) but I did get this shot, of a squire helping out his knight, adjusting a gauntlet. I hope you like it.

/MrsHjort

Day 8 - 10 Merriment, Music and Heart

Sorry for posting so late! I've experienced some internet problems - we haven't had a connection in three days. Our household has just gotten optic fiber installed, and ironing out the odds and ends took some time. But now it's up and running, and considerably faster than before! Yey!

Day 8 - Merriment

The photo above is a "right in the moment" type of shot. I saw this group of beautifully dressed men and women greeting each other, and snapped a whole bunch of photos of them, hoping to get one that was okay. Anyone who has taken pictures of a a group of people knows how hard it is to get all of them right at the same time, and that's not even speaking about candid pictures, like this one. The lady on the right sort of makes a funny face, biting her lip like that, and the lady in blue just moved behind the lady in front of her, but I still like it. The energy of the group mirrors what is was like to be there perfectly. It was joyous, warm and very dynamic.

Day 9 - Music

This violinist played beautifully as she walked up and down the street. Thankfully, there wasn't much people there, so I could take her photo without too many distracting elements getting in the way and choose my angles without worrying about people walking into my shot. It's such a luxury to get to do that! Only too often I find myself waiting for people to move out of the picture when I'm shooting something, and when they're finally out of the way, others take their place. Shooting stuff in crowds is hard!

I really shouldn't complain though, I'm very fortunate to have gotten so many decent photos from that day. I only expected a few of them to meet my standards. My camera is getting kind of old and sluggish, you see, so I have to say that I'm very happy with the crop of pictures that I've gotten. Soon things will be different though... I'm awaiting an upgrade! I turned 30 a few days a go, and one of my presents is a brand new camera! A Nikon D7100! I can't wait until I get my hands on it, and I'm so looking forward to testing all of the new functions I'll have access to. 

Day 10 - Heart

I don't usually go for a central subject, but in this case it seemed fitting. The pose and the direction in which he is looking made me go against my usual preferences. I just couldn't crop away his arm and cropping away the "air" on the right side would leave him looking like he was moving out of the picture, and no one likes that. So, central subject is was!

If you're wondering about the pose, despite of the how things may look, it's actually a candid shot. This man was standing listening to the Scottish bagpipe music and dreamily looking into the distance as they played "Amazing Grace". You can even see a pipe in the shot in the unedited version below. So it seems, I was not the only one moved by the music :). It was truly beautiful.

/MrsHjort

Day 7 - The Blowing Scotsman

This is another of the bagpipers I wrote about yesterday. This fellow was all dressed up in the traditional Scottish manner, with all the accessories. He made for a wonderful subject!

The fake DOF in this shot was a bit of a pain. I wanted it to look real, and keep that wonderful long hair from looking slick and unnatural. It proved quite a challenge...

I used my new method as a base, which worked very well with the hair on top oh his head - there was not much going on in the background so the blur didn't change much - but the hair falling down his shoulder was an other story. I used the clone brush as best I could to create a natural looking transition from blur to hair, but it wasn't enough - the blurry background had changed color too much to look natural, and the original one was peaking out from between the hairs. I ended up using a combination of things - de-saturation, dodging and color replacement. I took me a while but I'm finally satisfied with the result.

/MrsHjort

Day 6 - The Gentleman Bagpiper

Having just been in Scotland a few days ago, I was very surprised to see Scotsmen at the French medieval market. And not just one of them, but a whole Scottish bagpipe band, all dressed up and complete with four bagpipers, two drummers and three tambourine players! And they played... oh how they played! I'm sorry to say that even on my trip to Scotland I did not hear such music! It was very powerful!

After further research, is seems it's not strange at all to find Scotsmen in Burgundy. A Scotsman settled down not far from Chateauneuf en Auxois, where the market was held, and started growing his own grapes on the slopes of Cote d'Or in 2004. Sadly, the winery was sold a few years back, but it seems the Scottish traditions remained. And oh what wonderful traditions they are. Having a dash of Scottish blood in my veins myself, the music almost brought a tear to my eye.


/MrsHjort

Day 5 - The Ladies

Yey! Things are moving forward! I've had two epiphanies since yesterday - I've figured out a new way to reduce noise selectively using the Nik Collection, and a new, much faster way to fake a narrow DOF.

Let's deal with the noise first. Sometimes, the name of a thing can blind you to the effect is has. The Nik Collection includes a filter called Dynamic Skin Softener that reduces texture in, you guessed it, skin tones. But, you have the ability to redefine what should be accounted as "skin", which means that you can soften any color you like by using the pipette tool. Neat huh? That helps a lot when changing a portion of an image drastically, like say when you use the Detail Extractor to bring out a sky and it becomes "too noisy". I wish I had figured that out sooner.

Next, lets talk about the fake DOF. Before, I used do that in a very time-consuming way. I used the lasso tools to select the portion I wanted to keep sharp, copied it and put it on a new layer. After that I  went back to the base layer, cloned the areas close to the "copied part" and painted over it to minimize the bleed effect that blurring an image creates - otherwise I would end up with a give-away fuzzy "halo" around sharp area. Today I figured, why not simply cut the subjects out instead? That way there would be nothing left on the base layer to bleed from. As you can see, it worked beautifully! Tough, I had to copy the base layer three times, blur three of layers and keep a sharp one in the back so that there wouldn't be any "sharp bleed" or transparency (am I making sense here? I hope I am).

So there you have it. My two new methods, I hope they're useful to you too.

/MrsHjort

Day 4 - L'artillerie

This was the high-point of the day at the market for Mr. They fired off several of the cannons at noon, and he loves that sort of thing. Him and every other man, teen and boy at the market. The crowd was very exited.

Unfortunately, I didn't get there in time to get a good spot, so I had to resort to holding my camera up and using my rotatable display to try and get a decent shot. I like my height, 170 cm isn't bad, but man, sometimes I wish I was a bit taller... A lot of heads got in the foreground of the shots despite my best efforts, even the perfectly timed one that showed a boom in full bloom. It would have been a slam dunk, but what can you do? It made me ground my teeth a bit, but you can't get everything I guess...

Fortunately, the knights stuck around after the show and I managed to get a few decent shots of them despite everything, I just wish I had gotten that one perfect shot...

/MrsHjort

Day 3 - The Smiths

There are many different layers of post-ed to this photo. I wanted to brighten the original, but keep the dark areas close to the fire in order to contrast the flames against it. So, the first thing I did was a Bleach Bypass to brighten things up a bit and then cut away the bottom part to keep it dark. That's how you have to work with the Nik Collection, since the adjustments are global and applied to your image as it is displayed on you monitor, regardless of what layer you're on.

Next, I enhanced the fire with Contrast Color Range to get those marvelous fiery colors, and then cut away everything but it (the rest obviously got too wild). After that I hid the fire layer (since it was perfect), and did another contrast color range layer on the rest in order get it right. Then I reordered the fire-layer to put it on top and showed it again. After that, Detail Extractor and Skylight. Then I reduced the noise, sharpened and reduced the noise again. Two additional layers with a slight dark vignette (curves) to the right and top and I was done.

/MrsHjort

Day 2 - Weavess

This photo went through more or less the same processing as the one I posted yesterday - minus the selective blurring. That made it easy in comparison. Making a fake DOF effect look good is a lot of work, so I'm glad I didn't have to today. But then this is a picture that thrives upon its many details.

This woman sat waving the whole day, and it was a treat to watch her work. It's always marvelous to watch a skilled craftsman. There were quite a lot of them at the market. Smiths (you'll get to see them an other day), glassblowers and carpenters. I really admire those who have learned to create works of art with their own hands. Nowadays we take so many little things for granted. It's so easy to pick up stuff at the local store, but there is something special about something that has been created by hand. Don't you think?

/MrsHjort

Day 1 - Ser Barristan the Bold

I know this is the costume of a temple knight, but having read all of George R.R. Martin's famous books, and seen the Game of Thrones TV-series, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite characters. He looks quite like him don't you think :).

As I wrote yesterday the goal of my challenge will be to edit the photos I took at a medieval market in France a week ago. I went there with only one lens. I chose the 18-105 mm one, since it's the most flexible and least intrusive of my lenses. I love doing candid shots and tried my very best to be discrete. I didn't quite manage with this guy though, who spotted me at the last moment. It still turned out great though.

I've done quite a lot of editing to this shot. It's not quite as zoomed in as you'd think - the DOF is faked - and I've cropped away quite a bit. Like I said, I was trying to be discrete and not zoom in on people. I figured I'd fake it in post-ed (selective blurring). Other than that I've done the usual basic stuff
(corrected the levels) and played around with the Nik Collection. I used Skylight, Bleach Bypass and Contrast Color Range. After that I sharpened the main subject and added a slight vignette.

I hope you like it

/MrsHjort