November 28, 2005

A dream come true

I just wanted to share these pics taken yesterday morning. I was finally able to shoot a dragonfly, it was kind of a macro dream, its the best subject to shoot

More macro here
Cheers!

November 27, 2005

Air we go Oslo

Its crappy pics, but it was fun! These kids are crayzy, i tell you!

Anyway.. i think we all have post more.. I know im gonna!
Have a nice day!

November 14, 2005

Adobe Camera RAW 3.3 Beta released

Woohoo! FINALLY Adobe released ACR 3.3 Beta!

Download it here

November 13, 2005

Norway 0 - 1 Czech Republic

The first play-off match between Norway vs. Czech Republic ended 0 - 1. Here is the goal.. Somewhat boring match, with a lot of long balls, few attacks.

Good luck on wednesday! Bring us to the World Cup!

November 12, 2005

Horses

Ok, so the local photography club finally arranged a trip to an area 25 miles away from downtown Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), where racing horses are kept.

Here are a couple of photos:

...and here is the rest of the gallery

It was fun and the horses really enjoyed posing for the camera, as you can see

November 11, 2005

David Beckham & Real Madrid came to Trondheim

Rosenborg was the better team throughout the whole match, but still ended up losing 0 - 2. Getting a snapshot of Beckham wasn't easy, there must have been 100 reporters trying to catch from lockerroom to the bus.

Starting to like the 1D MkIIn more and more!

November 10, 2005

Congratulations to VIF!!

Photos from VIF - RBK

Vålerenga won Eliteserien 2005! Congratulations!

November 06, 2005

Elgjakt - Hunting Moose

Had the chance to document a Moose hunt last week, here are the photos.

November 05, 2005

Joey's grunge photo effect

Here is a guide you can follow if you want to try out the grunge effect !

Here are some examples of the grunge effect I have done:

Okay, so I guess the best way to explain this is just to start with a ‘normal’ picture and slowly twist it into something moody using the following key tools in photoshop:

A grunge action (yeh, I’m lazy and these work like a charm… I like to use one called ‘the draganizer.’ Keep in mind, this simple action will not save you, you got to use my other tricks too) download it and load it into your photoshop actions
You can get it here:
http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm
Once you’ve d-loaded it, drag the file inside to:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Abobe-whatever-the-shit\Presets\Photoshop Actions

Lots of dodging and burning

Hue/Sat, get rid of happy colors!

Of course you can’t start with a bad image, you’ve got to find or take a picture that will actually look good dark and dirty. Lots of shadows, lack of sunlight light, and make-up tend to work well!

So here’s what I’ll start with tonight… Something I don’t share often… An original!! Ahhh!!!!!! Okay, so we’ve got the precious Emilie here looking rather glum. You can almost tell this will look good in grunge because of the look on her face and that textured concrete slab she’s got beside her. Remember, editing won’t always save you… Taking a ‘grungy’ style picture is 50% of the process.

Okay so I’m going to turn it into this image:

Okay so the first thing I’m gunna do with the original is the basics, a little bit of the ol crop, curves, and brightness/contrast. These are my very favorite tools. You have to work Joey-backwards in curves, making the picture actually pretty light at first. (Or at least light to my taste.) This is because all those hefty actions make your image quite dark. Don’t worry about too much contrast yet, just enough to keep you sane for now. Okay, so your image is hopefully lookin something like this:

Okay, now for a little something that will make you feel like a superstar… Load up that grunge Draganizer action and apply! It’s my very favorite tool. I only use to like the speckle part of it, but try out the whole thing and see how you like it. It does a pretty good job at guiding you through what to do. But I’ll give you a little bit of secret tips…

*When it asks you to paint out the highlights with the black brush at 13%, try to go over areas many times until they are almost fully exposed from the black. It just comes out better. When I did this, I focused on key areas like her closed eyes, mouth, and of course that concrete slab behind her. Be patient!! Put on some fitting music, I suggest some Doors, Post-Paul-Is-Dead Beatles, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein or maybe that Toxic song from Britney Spears.

* When it asks for the brightness/contrast, I usually like to keep the contrast up and take the brightness down. Makes it dark, obviously.

*When it asks you to paint around the edges, only do it a little bit. You don’t wanna make mistakes here that you can easily fix later, or your gunna have to do the whole action again.

Yadda yadda, go through the rest of the steps and your image should look something like this…

Amazing! It made her face look gritty and dirty… Nice. People like me dig chicks with dirt on their face.

Anywho, next up what we want to do is... Pure insaneness! Well, maybe not. It’s my very favorite tool. Just get that Hue/Sat menu up and desaturate about 30% of the color. This makes her face nice and pale and everything seem very ‘cold.’ But you also may notice her shirt is way too cyan and happy. So under ‘edit’ in the Hue/Sat menu I chose ‘Cyans’ and desaturated that about 60%. (English accent*) Here are the stunning results!

Okay, we're looking good. Now for a little trick I learned in NAM… It’s my very favorite tool. Get open that color balance window (IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>COLOR BALANCE) and you are presented with a neat little scale. You’ll notice you can change the midtones, shadows, and highlights at the bottom. This is crucial for the coloring to look right. I tend to jump back and forth between these, not really knowing exactly what I’m doing until I get something that looks right. In this case, I have adjusted the midtones, shadows, and highlights all toward a bit more yellow and a tad bit of red. You don’t need to do anything huge here, just increase and decrease by a few points in each column.
Okay, here’s what it looks like now:

Pretty good, but just like a priest in 2001, it wants some ‘touching up’. First get out my very favorite tool… The dodge tool! Set it to dodge the highlights at around 5%
So what I did was dodged a bit around the face and jewelry. I then dodged the concrete slab, bring out it’s hidden highlights.
Now for my very favorite tool, the burn tool! (If you havn’t noticed, all the tools I’ve listed are my ‘very favourite’ …Har har har har har har!!)
Set this puppy on to burn shadows at 5%. I focused on burning places that needed more grungy depth, such as the edges of the concrete slag, her shirt and a tad on her facial structure.

Now for my very favorite feature… Burning midtones! Oh why oh why is this overlooked. I don’t know. Use the burn brush set on midtones at 5% to blend in your burning at the corners. Burning midtones sort of evens out the harsh colors you brought out with just burning the shadows. You can do the same with the dodge tool, but I’m too cool for that and it’s not necessary in this photo.

Okay, here’s the end result! (After cropping a bit off the top and adding a border )

Okay so that there is very basic, most of the grunge is done for you.
What I like to do now is get my picture, and another picture of a grungy surface such as a rock. You set the rock picture on a duplicated layer overlay several times at different opacities. Once this is in, you can dodge, burn and erase elements on the rock surface. I like to use the paint brushes to scribble here and there.

The best thing is to just experiment and see what happens, e-mail me if you have any questions!