Last Wednesday I was invited by premier and long time photographer Frank Peele to attend the Inland Empire Professional Photographers and Videographers monthly meeting as a guest. Wow, what a group! Not only are they very friendly and welcoming to visitors, they are all so supportive of each other and the professions of photography and videography!

 

Not only was I impressed with the group as a whole, but we were all privileged to get a lecture on “Standing Out from the Crowd” from internationally famous wedding photographer, Mike Colon!

Mike had a lot of good points and I will go over a few of them here, but worth mentioning is his dedication to a Cause. Supporting a Cause is a big part of his formula of success. He has picked several, one of the foremost of which is Thirst Relief International.

Mike spent the better part of two hours going over marketing, creating relationships, priorities, pricing, taking risks, and many other startling revelations about becoming successful! His insights were so very basic to life and success that they could be used to handle almost any business!

 

Mike stresses the importance of making your presence known by, surprisingly not just referrals from happy brides (short term) but by helping and referring other good photographers! (long term) He says never forget the importance of helping someone out, giving away things for free and in so doing, creating long-lasting relationships with people that you help. It will come back to you in uncountable ways.

 

One more BIG point that Mike made that turned my approach to success around 180 degrees was this:

TAKE RISKS, throw yourself out of your comfort zone, say YES for a whole week, do things just because you are afraid of them to become fearless and force yourself to do things you have never done before. Do something different than anybody else – these things are what sets someone apart from the crowd. Just DO IT! I love this philosophy and can think of times in my life when I have ventured out of my “zone” and it worked!

 

Last but not least is to get educated, volunteer, go to classes, read books, go to lectures, get trained! Get out there and immerse yourself in new things to learn about your profession. Its all part of the formula!

 

Check out Mike Colon at www.mikecolon.net. Also check out www.ieppv.com to get involved in this wonderful group!

I wrote this article for ArticlesBase in August of 2008 and it is still getting hits! It is a simple way to whiten the teeth in an image using  Photoshop. I thought it would be helpful to reproduce it here and spread the info to more people. Hope it helps!

 

There is nothing quite so disconcerting as yellowish or gray teeth in your portraits! As an example you get a really good shot of your favorite “model” and when you look at the image in Photoshop you notice her teeth are a muddy white with a yellowish cast. Even if her teeth are less than perfect in real life, you can add extra snap and sparkle to the image by giving her a bright clean smile!

 

 

Open your image in Photoshop CS or Elements. I have made this simple so am not using Layers. Just make a copy of your image to work on.

 

 

In your Toolbox on the left, choose the Lasso tool. Along the top of the page you will see “feather” – set that to about 10% as it will soften the edge between the lightened teeth and the lips or gums. Now using the Lasso tool select just the teeth. There should be a “marching ants” line around them now. Work on this selection to make sure you are satisfied with it and that it covers all of the teeth, even the ones in the back.

 

 

Now you have the teeth selected, go to the top toolbar where it says “Image”. There is a pull-down menu. Select  “Adjustments” and then “Brightness/Contrast” from that menu. Use the “Brightness” slider bar to increase the lightness of the teeth to where you think they look natural, and then press “OK”. Check out the overall effect of what you have done to see if it is satisfactory.

 

 

The next step would be to de-saturate any color cast such as a yellowish or sometimes pinkish tones on the teeth. You should still have the teeth selected. Go to the “Image” tab again, click on “Adjustments” and then “Hue/Saturation”. Take the Saturation slider and move it to the left, de-saturating the color from the teeth to a more neutral gray tone. You can also use the “Hue” slider to get a more pleasing tone to your finished product. Press “OK”

 

 

A final step would be to go to the Toolbox again on the left and click on the “Dodge” tool. Set it to a soft edged brush at about 10% exposure and click on “Highlights” in the “Range” menu on the top toolbar. Gently whiten the central area of each tooth to make a realistic roundness to each tooth. This can make the teeth look more natural. The teeth are still selected so you go up to “Select” on the top toolbar and then use the “Deselect” from that pull-down menu. This will turn off the selection leaving your adjustment to the teeth still in effect. Save your file!

 

This small touch on just the teeth of the subject can make a major difference in the appearance of the subject and she will be much happier with the result!

 

We recently took a day trip to Balboa Island here in southern California. It was near the end of the Christmas Boat Parade that I caught this sunset image of the harbor. It was too dark, but I steadied my camera on the walkway railing and managed to keep it pretty sharp. The worst part was the underexposure and darkness of the shot that did not do justice to the beautiful sunset that I witnessed!

In Photoshop I handled it to my satisfaction, giving the sunset back its brilliant colors and making the scene more like I remembered it.

First open the image in Photoshop. Here is the original image:

The next step is to go to the menu bar and click on “Layer”. In the pulldown box there is an option called “Duplicate Layer”. Click on that to add a layer to your image. Now that you have the layer to work on you will want to lighten up the exposure. So go up to the menu bar again and click on “Image” then click on “Adjustments” and in that pull-down menu click on “Exposure”. Slide the bar to the right a little making the image lighter. Don’t go too far or it will wash out the lighter parts of the image giving them a “blown out” appearance.  Now click OK.

 

Now click on “Image” and “Adjustments” again and click on the “Hue/Saturation” button. Use these sliders to brighten and saturate your colors to a more realistically lit sunset. Don’t overdo it or it looks weird and cartoonish, just work the sliders back and forth until you get the perfect colors and saturation. Now go back up to the menu bar and click on “Layers” again and scroll down to the very bottom of the menu where it says “Flatten Image” and click on it. That will flatten the image to get it ready for the next and final steps.

 

Make another new layer by going to the menu and clicking on “Layer” and then “Duplicate Layer” again. Now you are going to go to the menu bar and click on “Filters” and the “Blur” and then “Gaussian Blur” This step is to make sure the color noise and graininess of the image are minimized. (You often get color noise and extreme grain when taking in low light conditions) When you have the Gaussian blur option open, use the slider to take it up to about 20-25% and click ok. Don’t worry that the image now looks completely blurry!

 

Next go over to your layers pallette on the right side of the page and at the bottom of the pallette there is a small square icon with a round white circle in it. It is called a mask. Click on it. Adding this mask makes it possible to subtract out some of the areas that you don’t want blurred on your image.

 

Next is the fun part: Select your “paintbrush” tool from your tools bar on the left. Make sure the color swatches are black as foreground and white as background. (Black subtracts from the mask and white adds it back) Using the paintbrush tool and making sure the foreground color on the swatch is black, go into the image and paint BACK IN the parts of the image that you want to be sharp again. In my image I wanted the boats and harbors to have the sharp pinpoint lights and I put back as much detail with the brush as I needed to balance  and smooth out the image. Remember to click on the “Layer” tab on the top menu and scroll to the bottom to “Flatten Layers” and click on it. Then “save as” under a new name to leave unaltered your original version.

Below is my final version:

There is ONE way to brighten your sunsets! There are many others, but I wanted to give you a simple method for making ho hum into wow!

Let me know if you used it and if this helped you.