1. Wash and style your hair as if you are going to meet your future husband or wife that day! Its best not to get a haircut the day before the shoot unless you want to look like a shaved lizard in the photo.

2. Put on/bring your makeup – even if you never wear makeup, bring it anyway! Even the guys can go minimal on the makeup (or not) because makeup DOESN”T show up much on camera! If you don’t bring your makeup, I will bring mine and you will have to bear the humility of me applying it FOR you.

3. Get some sleep the night before. Don’t lie awake wondering how the photos are going to come out and so creating a worse situation with puffs under your eyes and red lines that I have to take out with Photoshop. I can only do so much with Photoshop.

4. DON”T wear Hawaiian shirts or Macaw prints to show your flair for color. This kind of clothing fights with your face and usually wins.

5. DO wear subtle solid colors like tan or off-white, brown and sometimes black. Bring a jacket or sweater to change the hues and shadows near your face.

6. Don’t look away from the camera and frown. This makes for a kind of boring or pitiful shot of you and usually isn’t representative of the kind of image you want to project unliess you are a dog looking for a home.

7. Do smile and look at the camera. Laugh at my jokes and you will get a better picture from me. Laughing at my jokes has the secondary advantage of creating a really genuine happiness toward the camera which more likely than not will be a pleasing image of you.

8. Never face the camera flat on. It makes even a skinny person look fat. The camera does add 10 pounds but in all the wrong places, like under your chin, your belly and upper thighs.

9. Always angle yourself at the camera giving it the “cold shoulder” effect. Tilt your chin down a bit to camoflage your double chin and it has the added effect of making you look sexily up into the camera lens.

10. Last but not least, remember a good camera is SUPPOSED to take detail, so every mole, hair, wrinkle, pimple and liver spot is going to show. But thankfully, because you have me as your hot shot photographer, I can fix all of that in Photoshop!

Happy Picturing!

Diana L Guerrero

Diana L Guerrero and I have known each other since 2006 when she featured my photographs of the Pirate Faire in her local online news publication, the Fawnskin Flyer which is small town scuttlebutt for the township of Fawnskin, near Big Bear Lake, California.

Not only does she have many years of experience as a professional speaker and writer, but she is also an internet marketing whiz!

So there begins our association and her helping me with my internet presence as a digital photographer and digital photo artist.

We help each other with our respective expertise and it is a mutually beneficial relationship.

Her massive online presence and media appearances require that her photographs be updated regularly and I am privileged to be the photographer of choice!

Photographing Diana is a breeze because she is a very happy person and is always laughing.

I think she is laughing at me, but really, she just gets a kick out of life.

Now there is a more authoritative side to her which she attributes that to being an animal trainer (both wild and domestic animals).

This take charge approach and experience has given her the license to admonish accordingly.

LOL

I got her to play around and caught this “stern” look in this shot:

Authoritative!

My experiences as a digital photographer have given me the chance to get to know many good people and she is definitely an asset to all she knows and for all the good she does in the world of animals.

Check out more digital photo art of Diana in my portfolio link!

You can find out more about Diana L Guerrero or her services at Guerrero Ink.

Be sure to tell her that I sent you!

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!

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!

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.

1. a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.

2. a person who practices one of the fine arts, especially a painter or sculptor.

3. a person whose trade or profession requires a knowledge of design, drawing, painting, etc.: a commercial artist.

4. a person who works in one of the performing arts, as an actor, musician, or singer; a public performer: a mime artist; an artist of the dance.

5. a person whose work exhibits exceptional skill.

As you can see above, the word artist covers many creative folks in an array of professions. But the one concept we all have in common is CREATIVE.  We take our sense of aesthetics to heights heretofore unknown to give the world a sense of the future, of new and uncharted realities. We give the world a view of what CAN be and what, if we have our way, what WILL be. Our art is very powerful and is the leading edge of new possibilities. We step just a little out of the box or a lot out of the box, someone catches on and a wave of  new realities is born! Birth of a new civilization.

To see what like minded artists are doing as a group to forward this purpose, check out www.artistsforabetterworld.com. 

Just this morning I was notified that I am one of the featured artists on the site and this is a great privilege and honor! Come on in and join us! We are a force to be reckoned with! What future are you going to make?

1. the power of seeing; appreciative or discriminating visual perception

But this definition doesn’t cover it and doesn’t make it translatable to actions. What do you have to do to get this “eye”?

To get the “eye” you have to develop it. It is a talent, no doubt, but like any talent must be developed through practice. And this is what I did to develop that talent: I took hundreds of shots of certain subjects, then studied each one for its merits and flaws. Then I went back and took more shots and repeated the process over the years to become better and better at discerning what is g0ing to be worth taking and what is not. 

Secondly I brushed up on some photographic laws and camera basics that you must have just to begin to take good photographs. Some of these included the Rule of Thirds, depth of field and exposure values, to name a few.  As I practiced, I began to act using these basics without thinking about it. They became a part of the process every time I did a shoot.

Third and most important I create a passion in myself for the subject. I will commune with the subject in a way to permeate its essence and then try in every way I can to capture that essence using all my tools. I fall in love with the subject! It seems odd, but whenever I do a portrait session I have a great affinity for the person and they can feel it. That affinity and care comes across and it reflects in the images. It has to be real. In doing landscapes or other subjects I find that I only want to photograph those things that make me fall in love with them – a beautiful sunset, a laughing child, a stolen moment of humor. You have to take your camera with you to at all times so you don’t miss capturing that fleeting moment that will be forever gone.

Realize a good photographer does not just capture light and be damned what it looks like. A good photographer always deeply cares about his subject and will go to great lengths to get  the essence to shine through in the final image.

I hope this blog offers some help in these areas and if it does, drop me a line and let me know what you think!

Announcing!! A new portfolio website I am creating to show my work.  The link is http://sunbeams.zenfolio.com  Check it out!