Photoshop Disappearing Act At Boldt Castle

I have been having a busy Summer which includes photographing numerous weddings. The following photo came from a wedding two weeks ago at Boldt Castle on Heart Island in the St. Lawrence River at Alexandria Bay, NY. The castle is an interesting place to have a wedding, however, it is still open to the public while one's wedding is in progress. So passersby can appear in the background of your photos. In the old days of film it was a lot of trouble trying to get unwanted folks removed from your photos. Today it is no surprise that we can do it with the magic of Photoshop. It's still preferable to make a photo the way you want it as opposed to tinkering with it afterward in Photoshop. In this photo I simply used the clone tool to copy stones and flowers over the offending pedestrians.

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On Wednesday I'll be doing a guitar recital at the Depauville library. The following is a promo piece I created for the event.

Romance: Couple In Dance

These are two photos I snapped of a couple dancing at a wedding I photographed this evening. The camera was a Nikon D300 with a Nikon 17-55 f2.8 lens. The light was dim. I jacked up the iso setting on the camera. Underexposed a bit. Then I cropped a small section from the overall image to enhance the pixelation. I used a sharpen filter to add to the effect. I desaturated the color. I added a film grain filter to the lower photo. What do you think? There is a place you can click on this blog to comment.




OK. So now that I have been inspired to tinker with the above photos and make a blog entry, I am now going to take a beer and my guitar out to the front porch and play some romantic music. Anyone fortunate enough to go walking by at this hour will hear it. Good night everyone.

Wedding Today

The day started out rainy here in Chaumont, NY. I have an unusaul situation in that I have the home to myself. The Better Half is off to Cleveland visiting her family.
It is now Sunny here. I leave in an hour or so to photograph a wedding at Fort Drum.
The two photos posted here are from a wedding I photographed two weeks ago at Boldt Castle in Alexandria Bay, NY.

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This is a photo of me snapped at brother B's home in Winter Haven Florida just before going to Niece L's wedding. My niece B has added an interesting element by appearing next to me in this photo.

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Here is a great quote I recently came across from the singer Julie Andrews, “The amateur works until he can get it right. The professional works until he cannot go wrong.”

Terrific advice that I am going to take to heart.

Stressfull Wedding Edit

Spent most of yesterday and part of today editing a wedding job. All went well until I went to select a cover photo and discovered that the photos were out of sequence. There were about a dozen images from the start of the day and group shots taken after the ceremony that somehow got sprinkled among the reception and ceremony photos. Using Photo Mechanic i tried to reorganize them and things got worse. It became like a shuffled deck of cards. What a nightmare! I finally returned to my original backup folder that had just the dozen or so shots out of order. I'm simply going to have to deliver them as they are. All of the photos are there, and they are all good, it just would be nicer if the sequence was perfect. The only other option is to go back to my original, complete take and weed through it all, start fresh at the beginning. That really sucks because there are 800 images. I open every one of them in Photo Shop, crop, adjust the levels, and sometimes the color balance. I also trash the obvious bad ones and weed out the redundent ones. That's a lot of work. It's also a mystery to me how this all started too. It's after 10:00pm and I was supposed to ship the photos out tomorrow.
About tomorrow: I have a freelance job in Syracuse that's going to use up a good portion of the day. Then I need to find time to cut some mats and fram some photos for the Fall Art Show in Watertown. The need to be delivered on Sunday. Saturday I have a full day of guitar lessons. Sunday I am working in Syracuse for the post-Standard. This is getting to be a bit much.

Wedding Today

I awoke this morning to blue sky and bright sunshine pouring through the Maple trees in my neighbors yard. It's Friday and I am photographing a wedding this afternoon at the the Tug Hill Winery in Lowville, NY. But now the day has gone overcast and downright dark. The weather man calls for heavy rain. That's a shame because it will move the wedding indoors.

The photo here was made at a wedding in Mexico NY in May of 2009. Notice the relationship of the foreground and background. This was not an accidental photo. As I was photographing the bridal couple dancing I was keenly aware of what was happening in the background. This photo is just what I hoped to show. The foreground / background relationship is one of the things I try to convey to make a photo interesting.

Day 264: Wedding Pix

Chilly this morning, about 20 degrees at 7:00am. Two days since a blog entry. I don't like that but what is one to do? There is sooooo... much. Anyhow, these two photos were made at a wedding I photographed yesterday in Syracuse, NY. It was a real nice affair, the people were great and so were the photo ops. But it proved to be a long day and it was midnight befor I got to bed. I spent a good part of today editing the photos.

There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill (1867–1954), theologian and hymn-writer

Day 259: Wedding Photos

It was 35 degrees in Chaumont NY this morning at 7:00. It has been twentythree months since my job hours as a staff photographer at the Post-Standard were reduced. That was an alarming time. I can only say the God has been looking out for me. Ever since that day I have had freelance work come my way to compensate for the reduced pay from my job. This month of November has been quite tense for several reasons. One of them is that I have had a vacant apartment for three months so I have had to absorb that reduction on cash flow. A couple of other things on top of that as well as auto insurance and property taxes coming due. Well, I had no freelance jobs on the books, no weddings, no guitar gigs. Nothing for this month. Yikes. So just as i am getting good and worried the phone rings. The man on the other end of the line says he is getting married this Saturday (nOv.20th) and his photographer cancelled. Was there anyway I could photograph his wedding on such short notice? Well, you bet I can. And so, I thank God for this unexpected turn of events. Once again something has come in to help me through the month with meeting my obligations. But next is December. What will that bring?

You can view more of Gary Walts Wedding Photographs at Gary Walts' FaceBook Wedding Album