Touch Up - S.O.P.

     I was taught by my mentors that a good portrait have the eyes as the doorway to their soul. If anything has to be focused it must be the eyes. Spot meter and focus on the eyes.  The photo on the left is pretty much right off the memory card.  It looks like a nice photo. I just wouldn't call it a portrait, just yet.  I know where the light is falling and its quality. Adobe Lightroom is my processing tool of choice, like a million other photographers, and for very good reasons.  I rarely use Photoshop for a portrait, since Lightroom has an easy to use spot remover for blemishes, and a easy to use "clarity" tool to soften skin texture a bit. 

       I start brightening the eyes including the top of the cheeks and up to the eyebrows, first.  Then, I'll add another layer of brightness across the entire face.  Lightroom also has a very nice vignette tool, which I apply to darken the perimeter. Sometimes, the teeth need a little whitening. I use the brush and desaturate about 80%. Teeth that are too white look weird to me... Then finally, I look at the neck's light value, which often ends up looking brighter than the face because it rarely gets tanned. I adjust tonality of the neck by lowering the exposure value in Lightroom. Re-crop to an 8x10 and it is now suitable for framing !

Jim and Denise Wedding

   Once upon a time, in a land in the center of the Universe, overlooking a lake, known as, Lake Travis, a wonderful nuptial occurred. It was summer and the sun was setting quickly as if to race to kiss the hills that embraced the lake. The bride was in her room preparing, and her groom, anxious, was in position to receive and escort her to the ceremony. It was time. Her son brings her down the staircase and passes her hand to her groom with approval and love. Her best friend officiates the ceremony. Friends and family applauded as they made their promises and watched doves fly off over the lake then disappear beyond the horizons.

Let the celebrations begin !

Simplicity and Effective Lighting

I appreciate simplicity. I especially appreciate the effectiveness of properly executed practices using simplicity. Practical. Photographing for my local magazine, The Georgetown View, is a perfect opportunity to exercise simplicity in most environmental portraitures. I use only two flash speedlights for effective lighting on my subject. While I do have a Sekonic light meter, I rarely use it since I have become used to using reflective metering from my camera and "chimping" the image. Spot metering is preferred.

Both of my flashes output the same power, one
is fired through a white umbrella for soft light on
my subjects, while the other is set without any
modifier for a harder rim light fired from behind my subjects. The speedlights are on lightweight
stands most of the time. While I used to bounce
on ceilings, I find that color and details get lost
more than I'd like in a portrait.


In the next image, the flash in the rear is placed
high above her head (7 ft)  and the flash is aimed inside
the reflective silver umbrella which produces a soft glow on her hair.


Rudy Ximenez Photography
Serving Georgetown and Austin, Texas

512-589-3956

Composites and digital manipulation

Above, is a piece of art that was used as an inspiration to create a digital composite art piece for my client.

Digital manipulation, digital composite, are a few terms applied to this type of photographic art work.
I used Photoshop Elements 10, it has all the tools I need. Everything was photographed with my own gear, including the moon. The sunflowers were photographed in my backyard, the butterfly somewhere in Galveston, the sunset was from San Diego. I photographed Diane in a forest. To allow for the sunset,  the trees had to be removed (in Photoshop, of course). I then applied a final layer of soft wispy reeds to break up the horizon a bit.

From Vision to Fruition.

Recently, I purchased the revered Nikon D800. I am testing it from a "why would you do that" perspective. First of all, this is my first full frame camera. My film camera lens will work flawlessly and exceed the limits of film. Sorry film folks. Since I also have a small collection of DX lenses, I wanted to see why "they won't work" on a full frame camera. The image above is taken with a Nikon 18-55 G f3.5-5.6 DX kit lens. It is remarkably sharp for such an inexpensive glass. When I posted this image on Facebook, it got quite a few likes. The lens is set to 18mm and this is the effect of a DX lens on a FX body. However, once it is zoomed to about 35mm the hard vignette disappears. So, that being said, I bet, an 18-200DX lens will be fine once its zoomed past 35mm or so...

  The other testing I'm doing with this 36mp beast is setting the quality mode to JPEG BASIC. In this mode the files are, in comparison to most DXs, a hefty 4-5mb file. Below, an 85 f1.8G lens is used. I find that the D800 noise is almost nil at ISO 1000 in this photo. The lens is rather sharp and the details are crisp and impressive.

 PORTRAITS is one of my favorite facets of photography. I have become accustomed to using strobe lighting from my SB600 and SB700 Speedlights for portraits and food photography. A couple of weeks ago, the ROT Rally folks needed to upload several merchandise images to their website, primarily t-shirts and caps. I scouted the location while we waited for the model to show up. I set up 2 strobes and took advantage of a large open-air entrance whilst being under roof cover. The natural light spilled in nicely and I just needed to light up the model with a through-the-umbrella strobe and then light up the backdrop which was a slightly rusted metal door. PERFECT!

Nikon D5100, 85mm f1.8

On a side note:

  the model decided to enhance her picture. I asked her send me back a copy of her completed efforts.
Now, I understand personal taste, etc. , but, unless the art direction dictates this style, I would prefer to stay truer to actual skin tones as much as possible.

Shooting for View on Georgetown Magazine

I met Bill Skinner and a staff photographer, Carol Hutchison, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony and complimented the work of Carol in a recently published issue. I kept in touch with Carol through e-mail, commenting on the magazines' progression. A few months later, I was available to do any freelance work and she suggested I send a few samples. Two days later I received my first assignment. So, my own personal challenge is to try a make each image as storytelling as possible.

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