Model – Nikki “Dominique” Smith
Make Up Artist – Theresa Britz of Studio 57

Here is a series I did in December.

Niiki and I have been dying to work together for a while. I loved her hair and did a few studio shots with her , ( under her modeling alias , Dominique ) and once that was done we head off to a nearby park and did our little conceptual story there. We had a variety of themes and when I asked her , she was a little under the weather so we decided to go with this kinda shoot.

It was also my first shoot with my new 7D and its the first outdoors shoot Ive done in a while, but mark my words, I will be doing more of them.
I learnt so much from this shoot and will be taking those lessons into account for the next shoot.

Equipment wise, I used a reflector , 1x Cactus KF36 , Aurora Softbox , Cactus v4 trigger. Shot on a 7D, with a Canon 24-85mm f/3.5 – 4.5 and a Canon 50mm f/1.8.

It has been 12 hours, 3 minutes and too many seconds since his back ran out of the door. The petals meant for our celebration where crushed under his careless footsteps and my dream… our dreams, were gone , like the smoke left behind his car.

So…
What can I say about this lovely little camera.

18MP.
ISO goes up to 6400 , expandable to 12800.
Dual Digic-4 Processors.
HD Video aspect – with adjustable frame rates . 24p,25p,50p,60p.

Now how does this translate.
I have one word.
EPIC.

This truely has to be one of the best cropped sensor cameras.

I was personally jumping back and fourth between the 5D MK II and 7D, and opted for the 7D in the end. And I have loved every moment with it. It’s grain handling is amazing, and its a lot quieter than my 30D.

The live view also has a feature which I didnt expect and LOVE dearly.
While you change your settings on the camera, such as Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed, it adjusts it in the LCD aswell, so you can see exactly how those changes are affecting the image. Even White-Balance is shown and when one goes onto “K” mode in the WB setting, you use the dial at the top of the camera to adjust the colour tempreture and it shows on the LCD aswell , meaning instead of taking 10 shots to ensure all your manual settings are correct, you can see on the LCD and get shooting.

And with a built-in Canon Speedlight transmitter, one has one less item to haul around !

I will post some images for comparison soon, but other than that if you have any questions feel free to shout !

Eye Enhancement

This tutorial will become a video tutorial in the new year but for now, ill put the image up with plain text.

Eye Enhancement via Luminosity.

1. Duplicate your image layer and lock it.
2. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black and White.
3. Name that layer, FX_Luminosity-Eyes
4. Where the settings come up, move the sliders around until you get the most detail and contrast out of your eyes. You want to focus mainly on the details in the eyes and the catch lights. If your eye is light, make it darker. And visa-versa. The key is contrast and detail. If it goes a little bit blocky, its okay, but too much and you need to reduce the intensity a little bit.
5. Set that layers Blending Mode to Luminosity.(The last on the list.)

Chances are that your image will look a little funny now, and this is where the trick comes in.

Next to that layer’s name, is the Alpha Layer Box.

The Alpha Layer Mask is the white box next to the Black and White Adjustment Layer Icon

Click on that white box and press Ctrl + i ( or on our lovely Mac’s Cmd + i ) to invert it and now it should be black and it looks unchanged.

6. Now grab the “Brush” tool, set it to a low opacity and small brush size, 0% hardness.

7.Paint in the eye. For those with Tablets, now’s your time to shine. Otherwise, just brush in with a thin brush and then a bigger one and paint over the catchlights, details and shadows of the eye. And as you do so youll be enhancing that contrast in the image.

8. After that, I added a Solid Color Layer, Blending Mode to Overlay , and painted the whole iris, except the catch-lights. Set to an orange color, to enhance the color of the eye.

9. New Solid Color layer, set to Overlay, and painted the catch-lights. Slight bluish color to bring some shine to it.

10. Finally, A new adjustment layer. This time, Hue-Saturation Layer, with Saturation set to 0. Blending mode set to Soft-Light. This “tones” the image and adds a nice dimension to it. Has a similar effect to the “Contrast” function, without burning out the colors. This effect works well on almost everything.

11. The final eye on the right is with a few more tweaks that I did to the eye. Play around that’s the only way to learn !