This week's blog could have gone a lot of different ways for me.  There are a variety of methods to emphasizing texture in a photo.  For instance, you can use a macro lens and get close to a subject to showcase texture.  You have probably seen up close images of insects where the wings are translucent, but you can see the tiny veins.  Or maybe a dog's nose up close and personal, until it becomes impossible to miss the little patterns there.

Those of us who focus on animal photos have many textures we can highlight--fur, whiskers, ears, paw pads, etc.  I thought about showing those differences here.  But then I changed my mind.  Because I have been doing so much of that type of texture work lately (go back through some of my blog posts and you will see it), I didn't really want to repeat that type of work in this week's theme.

Instead, I've decided to provide a little bit of instruction on how to use textures you place on an image, to enhance the background or subject of the image in some way.  I am doing this because I know how many YouTube videos I have watched, not to mention trial/error hours I've spent playing around with textures.  I thought by providing some information on the things I have already learned while doing, it might be helpful to you.

So let's first start with a before and after texture photo, below, where I get to use my before and after widget again!

As you can see, a texture overlay can add an artistic look to a photo.  I like to use a neutral background for texture work, because it allows me to choose different color texture patterns (as well as neutral patterns) and I am not fighting with a colored background as well.  I often will choose black, gray, white or tan backgrounds to shoot against, with gray and tan being my favorites.

Matty is, once again, a willing subject.  I have used a gray plank background and subdued studio lighting.  The BEFORE image is converted from RAW, adjusting brightness, small temp adjustment, and a little bit of levels adjustment.

You can find textures quite simply by googling the words "photography texture overlays."  You will usually have to purchase textures, however, there are some free textures available on the internet.  As mentioned in Week 42 of last year's blogging, when Texture was also the theme, some of my favorite textures come from www.portraitpizzaz.com.

If you ask 10 different photographers how they apply textures, you will probably get 10 different answers.  So I will share my method, but just remember, there are plenty of ways to make it happen. (If some technical steps are not your idea of a party, you can skip down to the next paragraph.)

1. I make my adjustments to the RAW photo using Nikon Camera RAW, and send the photo to Photoshop Elements.
2. If I need to clean up, straighten, use the clone tool, or make minor adjustments to the photo in Elements, I make those adjustments first.  The only thing I do not do is crop the image.  I work on the image as a whole.
3. I then click on File > Place and browse my computer for the folders where I keep my textures.
4. Because I have worked with my textures quite a bit, I have a general sense of what I want to place on my photo, but it's also fun to experiment, and if you don't like what you see, you can simply back up a step (undo), or get rid of the layer with the texture.  So, once I've found the texture I want to use, I simply click on it to open and it opens over the top of my image.
5. I adjust the texture to totally cover my image and click to accept. (The image is still totally obliterated until the next step.)
6. Now I need to decide how to apply the texture.  Photoshop has a "blending mode" that allows you to choose how you'd like to blend your layers together.  I most often use Screen, Overlay or Multiply when I apply textures.  In the above image, I used Multiply, which gave me the effect I was looking for.
7. I then create a layer mask that allows me to brush the texture off of anything in the photo that I do not want it to appear on.  I can also set my brush to different opacity settings and only partially brush off the texture.  Another option is to set the overall opacity of the texture itself.  So there are many options and things to experiment with.
8. If there are any final touches I need to make to the edit, I do them after the texture has been applied, to bring the whole image together.

I personally think working with textures is fun.  And while I think this particular blog might be a little technical for some, even if you never plan to use a texture, you need to appreciate that we photographers are very serious about our trade and put quite a bit of time into learning how to use techniques, such as textures, to enhance our ability to give you a quality final product--an image that you can be proud of.  Whether it be a texture, or some other element to make a photo outstanding, we want to be sure you are happy with the result.

Matty could care less about the technical side of texture application.  He just wants the feather at the end of the stick I hold in the studio to get his attention, and a well placed cat treat.

Here is a final image of Matty using a different texture and a different blending mode. Which do you prefer?

Now to see more textures, jog around the blog circle starting with Rochelle Marshall from Dark Sapphire Photography in Nelson New Zealand, then enjoy what others have to offer by following the links at the end of every blog.  Here's hoping your weekend is everything you want it to be!

Four hundred and fifty-two photos into practicing photography back in late 2011, I began to see a pattern with regard to taking pictures in natural light.  I probably would have figured the pattern out a lot sooner, if I did not live in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where unnatural things happen so often, the weathermen have taken to throwing darts at a weather map on the wall. 

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE NATURAL LIGHT! Just the right kind of light can help to make a fantastic portrait of any subject. And it's true that the best times to take photographs is in the very early morning or just before sunset, but sometimes clients have conflicts which do not allow them to necessarily meet at these wonderfully-lit times of day.

I like to spend some time taking practice shots in all kinds of natural light conditions, but Pennsylvania winters generally are their own gray card, and sometimes we don't see the sun for 10 days. So I am learning to become proficient in dull light. 

The saving grace is SNOW!  Snow really brightens up the landscape and helps with reflection (the good).  It can also reflect too much, be too bright, and become a vast wasteland of undefined nothingness (the bad).

This past week, while digging out from our second snow and ice storm, I had a chance to photograph our new neighbor's dog, a German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) named Maverick, who was a willing participant, and enjoyed the snow way more than I enjoyed shoveling it.

The contrasts in a GSP's coat are great for setting against a blurred out snow scene, and despite the fact that this picture looks bright, it wasn't at all bright outside at the time.  I compensated with camera settings for sure, but while Maverick was doing a happy dance around me, I was analyzing the QUALITY of the light all around us, until I found this very open spot in his yard which afforded me good light, despite the overcast day.

Some tips:
1) Analyze the quality of light around you. (Look for the spots that will give you the best photo options.)
2) Look for contrasts to help you in dull lighting situations. (Generally these contrasts will come out much better on a dull, gray day, than on a bright, sunny one.)
3) Watch your white balance. (Remember, snow tends to have a blueish tone.)
4) Overexpose for snow.  Although this is counter-intuitive, the light meters in our cameras want to "fix" things for us and move in the direction of medium bright, but if you want the snow to be WHITE, you need to increase the exposure.  (In the photo above I increased my exposure by 1 and 1/2 f-stops.
5) On a sunny snow day, use a lens hood.  This helps with the massive reflections of the sun on snow effect.

A tip that a photography instructor shared with me a few years ago, is one I have never forgotten and always use: "Always try to have something other than snow in your photo to ground the subject in the image."  In the photo above, I have allowed the little rock wall, background trees, and snow hills to lend some interest to what otherwise might be an all-white scene surrounding Maverick.

And, as Maverick shows us, even when our light is right, that doesn't always mean both ears will be. (This face just makes me laugh out loud!)  I hope to take many more photos of Maverick, who is absolutely one of the friendliest dogs on the planet.

Now, because there are many more ways to use natural light, and many more people in our blog circle to give you examples, start here with Rochelle from Dark Sapphire Pet Photography in Nelson, New Zealand, then travel around the blog until you see this page again.  We are now headed into a warm up period weatherwise, but we Pennsylvanians know that more snow and cold are on the horizon through March and sometimes into April, so we are not fooled, Mother Nature!  Enjoy your weekend with whatever light you find yourself in!

As a service to readers, I want to start today's blog by giving you a 4-day heads up alert to Valentine's Day.  If you have a significant other, human or fur-skinned, that will become pouty, petulant, or otherwise out-of-sorts if you forget, please remember you were warned.  End of PSA.

In the past week (and even the week before) I have been creating some images related to "LOVE" based on the day with the heart.  Having received some new overlays, I always experiment with them on my gang before doing any client or shelter work with them.

Below is a small gallery of some of the things I have been playing with over the course of the last week or so.  I have included the two images of Matty Matt the Valentine Cat because he is becoming a real pro at sitting wherever I put him and posing, and he does not even get any treats (which the dogs demand and have come to expect for their work).  So shhhhh.....no one tell Matty that this is not an equal pay establishment.

I also retooled an image I took, some months back, of a rescue dog named Church, who is still available for adoption.  I have shared a few of these images on Facebook in the last week, here and there, so if you are a FB friend or have "liked" my business page, you may have seen a few.

I have also thought about images that essentially show a loving connection between human and animal.  Immediately one came to mind.  The story behind the image is this.  Danny, an English Setter who came to us through rescue as a very fearful dog, took baskets full of patience and love to begin to trust that we meant him no harm, and to rely on that fact on a regular basis.  For many months we could not let him outside without a leash, because we could not get him back in.  Then we just started letting him off leash and he would follow the other dogs back.  Sometimes it worked out fine, sometimes everyone else was in the house looking out the window and wondering why he was still sitting in the yard.

During the course of all of this trust transitioning, Danny could never be approached in the yard, nor would he come near the side patio at all if we were sitting there.  I would hand treats out every day on the side patio, and eventually he learned to come closer and closer and sit for a treat (still on the grass, but very near the patio).  Then one day (a day when I happened to have my camera out on the patio table), he just came right up to my husband and sat on the patio.  That photo is below.  I don't even remember how I managed to snap the picture before he exited quickly.  But this day was the start of a new trust level for Danny.  The photo is a very important one for me, because it shows what love and patience can do, and that fearful dogs (often the ones cowering in the backs of their cages at the shelter) should be given a chance.

There's loads more LOVE coming up in the blog circle, so get comfortable and jump in!  Start with Rochelle Marshall of Dark Sapphire Photography from Nelson, New Zealand, and roll your way around the circle until you are right back here where you started.  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  Have a wonderful and safe weekend!

Have you ever wondered what goes into making a photo a "final product?"  For some photographers, it can be the end of the road straight out of camera (SOOC).  For others, the photo may be edited in different ways.  It really depends on a photographer's style, their affinity to software programs (such as Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom), and what they want the final photo to say.

This week, I thought about just taking a photo in RAW, then editing it, and showing you the difference.  I am still doing that....LOL.  So let's get that over with.  Just below are two photos in a mini slideshow.  Look at the unedited version, then the edited a few times and see if you notice the differences.

This is Danny-Who-Hates-Snow-In-His-Paws.  In the photo SOOC, you can see the glimpse of another white dog in the background, some distracting grass pieces up front, and a lack of "spark."  The programs I use to edit are Nik and Photoshop.  I used to use Lightroom, but when I happened upon Nik (and took a class in editing with Nik), I switched my protocol.  I am not a huge switcheroo person, so it took me a while to get used to my new editing process, but I have to say I am now very comfortable with it.  I brightened the photo, brought up the contrast, cleaned and cleared up Danny's eyes, and added a burst of light above his head and to the left.  This was not a very long edit process.  Some are, some aren't.  It just depends on the vision you have for the end product.   This is an every day occurrence, so I wanted it to look like an every day photo.

I got kind of lucky on capturing this daily ritual of Danny's.  First, he has not liked the camera in a few months (he will run in the opposite direction if I point it at him).  Second, we do have eight dogs, and the fact that there is only a small part of ONE in this photo is quite amazing.  Third, I wasn't really ready to take this photo, but when I saw it happening and knew he wasn't paying attention to me, I just snapped, and luckily, had settings that were acceptable.  Right after this, he saw the camera and went the other way.

The above, relatively easy, quick edit would probably be enough for this week, but I really wanted to take a photo I've had stowed away that I have been meaning to try to do something with, and show you that all edits are not so easy or quick.

Most photogs would have trashed the "before" image.  But I have an attachment to it.  It's our dog, Piper.  A shy border collie who is deaf.  He does a happy dance when my husband comes back from the barn to the yard.  This dance is like something you would see in Hawaii. Piper's hip action screams grass skirt.  When he is extremely happy, he also flattens his ears.  So you have a dancing, flat-eared dog who is quite jubilant.

I managed to take the happy dance photo one afternoon after a dusting of snow.  It was relatively late in the day and gloomy.  I did not have my ISO turned up enough, and had no flash (on camera or off camera).  But I loved the connection in this photo, because you can just see my husband's hand, which will eventually reach and pet Piper.  I wanted to show and focus on that connection.  So, for this week, I edited the photo. 

The slider will allow you to see the final product and compare.  I've removed everything unwanted and distracting to the eye from this photo by using two techniques:  cropping and Gaussian blur.  I also painted on the earth and amber background colors, brightened the image, used the clone tool to clean up debris, brought up the contrast on Piper and sharpened where necessary.  For some it may not be the most perfect image, but for me, it's a wonderful moment captured.  I do think it serves to show that sometimes an image can be saved.  This edit took some time and painstakingly close work, but, in the end, it was worth it.  What do you think?

The slider tool is a new widget for the blog, and I sure hope it works.  One of my goals this year is to bring new technology to the blog experience for readers. It took me forever to figure this one out, so maybe in about three months there will be another new tool featured...LOL!

I can't wait to see the befores and afters of all the rest of today's blog circle participants!  Get comfy, because you will have a lot of reading ahead.  You will know you are done when your last link gets you right back here where you started.  There are 17 of us this week, starting with Kathie Ono of Ono Pet Photography in Fairhope, Alabama!