The Vintage Look
March 15, 2010 / Tags: Kathy, Photo Outing
I see a lot of photographers post-process their digital photos to make them look "vintage", so I thought I'd experiment a bit to see how it's done. But first, I needed some photos to play with, so I dragged Kathy out this afternoon to be my model.
Once I had the photos, I looked around online for tutorials. Somewhat frustratingly, a lot of search hits took me to sites that were trying to sell Photoshop Actions, but I found this site that offered free Actions — but more importantly, breakdowns of what the actions were doing. I played around with some of the Actions on the site and settled on a modified version of Johnna's Tea Party. I basically followed steps 1-5, then jumped straight to step 10, except I used Overlay instead of Soft Light for step 10. I set all of the adjustment layers to 35% opacity except for the Saturation layer in step 1.
Here's the result:
To get a better idea of what's going on, here's a before/after comparison — before is on the left and after is on the right.
I also tried the Action on a couple of photos from the last post, just to see how they'd turn out. I think it works pretty well, but the effect is more subtle.
Engagement Photos
March 12, 2010 / Tags: Jon, Kathy, Our Wedding, Wedding Photography, Weddings
Kathy and I took engagement photos today. Update: The first few photos are up on Sean's blog -- thanks Sean, they look great! As with most things, I totally underestimated the amount of effort involved. We had to scout a location, find things to wear, Kathy had to test makeup... it's not just showing up and getting your photo taken.
We chose Laguna Beach for our engagement photo site. The first four photos in this post are from a few weeks back when we went to scout the location. We were kind of messing around when I took this one, but I liked how it came out.
The next photo was taken on our porch. Kathy was testing her makeup and wanted to see how it looked through the camera. It was raining outside, so I used the reflector to bounce some light back from the darker (inner) side of the porch.
The last two were taken today while we were waiting for our photographer to arrive. Since I got my 5D MkII, I have been using my 24-105mm almost exclusively, so today I made it a point to use my 50mm 1.4 prime. I love how this one turned out.
New Year's
January 1, 2010 / Tags: Angela, Anthony, Bertha, Christina, Daniel, Edie, Gary, Hao, Jon, Karen, Kathy, Lisa, Michael, New Year's, Sonny, Uyen, Willy
It's a new decade! And just like last year, we spent new year's with our high school friends. Thanks for arranging everything, Michael!
We spent Christmas Eve this year with my family, Christmas with Pete and Heather, and the day after Christmas with Kathy's family. I didn't really take pictures at the family events (too hectic), but I took a few at Christmas dinner.
Shaped bokeh! Kathy and I had read an article on how to do it a while ago, but these were the first pictures using the technique that turned out well.
Kathy took this one.
Thanks for having us over, guys! (And for letting us use your Christmas tree for our bokeh experiments!)
Pete & Heather's Wedding
November 29, 2009 / Tags: Bailey, Becky, Brad, Carlsbad, César, Erica, Heather, Jon, Kathy, Pannikin, Pete, Pi'i, Rachael, Wedding Photography, Weddings
Despite being Pete's Best Man at his wedding, with Kathy's help I was able to play unofficial photographer, too.
The day before the wedding, we had the rehearsal. Pi'i was supposed to blow the conch shell, but because it was cold, it came out sounding like someone who can't play the trombone. Everyone laughed (except Becky, apparently).
After the rehearsal was the rehearsal dinner. Our table got kind of... erm... loud. Let's just say that the red wine was really good. And I don't normally drink wine.
On the morning of big day, there was still a lot of stuff to do. But first things first — Pete needed coffee, so we went to Pannikin and got breakfast.
We also bought a few extra muffins for later. Then we went home, finished preparing things for the ceremony, and headed off to the wedding site. We didn't want to risk Pete seeing Heather before the ceremony, so we put a bag over his head ("It's for your own good, Pete") while he called to confirm that the coast was clear (i.e., Heather was safely in the bride's dressing room).
Meanwhile, Kathy had been following the girls around and got some nice getting-ready pictures of Heather.
While getting dressed myself, I took a couple pictures too. We convinced Pete to let us wear colorful socks instead of boring brown ones that would match our tuxes. And Pete gave us monogrammed cufflinks made out of old typewriter keys!
Right before leaving the dressing rooms, Pete and Heather reached out and held hands. Even though it may not look like it in the picture, they weren't able to see each other when they did this.
One last picture and we're off!
We didn't take too many pictures during the ceremony — actually, I didn't take any, since I was in the ceremony — Kathy took these. I really like this one of Brad and Pi'i coming in:
And this one of the crowd when Heather made her entrance:
After the ceremony, the groomsmen had to get our cameras for a photo. Brad, César and I are all into photography, so we had our picture taken with Heather as if we were photographing her. How meta. (The picture of us was taken on the photograper's camera, so it's not on this site.) While I had my camera anyway, I took a few photos.
Remember those extra muffins we bought at Pannikin? They came in handy; Heather was starving! (And the couple doesn't get to eat at dinner anyway, right?)
Kathy took some photos of the tables at the reception before I got there. They were really nicely decorated.
Here's the newlyweds acting oh-so-mature at dinner.
The rest of the evening consisted of the customary cake cutting, cake eating (mmm... red velvet cake...), photos, dancing, car decorating, and Pete carrying Heather over the threshold.
Needless to say, I was exhausted after the weekend marathon, but it was a lot of fun.
