Before & After - Photoshop Editing - Pebblezine

Airing our the guilt 

See the full feature HERE

 For the latest issue of Pebble Zine I was privileged to get asked to photograph some shots to be published in the fashion section. My brief was to think of a creative way to display some clothes without using models. The thought of a washing line instantly came to mind. 

For this first photo I got two assistants to hold up the clothing on a washing line and then I photoshopped them out. I used the cloned tool for most of this image to get the girls out of the photo, and also the reflection in the water. I decided I didn't like the houses in the background so I found a stock image which had a nice horizon. Using the layer tools, when I erased the top layer it revealed the stock image underneath. 

For this image I did another technique to prevent having to use the clone tool over the girls. Instead I used a tripod and took one photo without anything in the composition and then another with the girls holding the clothing. This allowed me to overlay the two images in photoshop. I put the photo of the clothing on the top visible layer and the other photo below. I then used the eraser to rub away the girls leaving the empty picture below. Da darrr the clothes are floating! 

Reverse lens macro

This week I finally got round to experimenting the homemade technique of reversing a 50mm lens to create an impressive Macro effect. I was sceptical as to whether it would work so I was pleasantly surprised when I got some great shots.

So how did I do it...

There are several combinations of lenses and adapters you can use to achieve macro, and by all means I am not saying that the way I have done this is the best, as I am new to this. I decided to use my standard, 18-55mm kit lens with my 50mm prime lens

I attached my standard lens to the camera as normal and then used a coupling ring 55-50mm (£7.50 from Amazon) that allowed me to attach the reversed 50mm lens to the standard

It might take a little time to work out the best settings due to not being able to adjust the focus and aperture (unless you have an aperture ring on your lens.) When I first attached it all together I noticed that it created a large vignette (ring) around the image but after adjusting the zoom and aperture I was able to widen the vignette around the image. I do recommend you have the aperture set to around f8 due to the extreme shallow depth of field this technique creates. This does mean however that you need a lot of light. I used my external Canon Speedlite to help with this, which is something I highly recommend using as I found that I needed it even when I was outside in bright sunshine. Also as there is not much focus adjustment, it is a case of physically moving the camera backwards and forwards when pointing at the object to get the correct focus. Doing this handheld can be difficult so where possible use a tripod or a monopod like I used.

As I said this is new to me so if you are thinking about doing it I would advise you read a more detailed account on ways to do this  lens reversal technique. Here is a blog tutorial I found really useful - Reverse Lens Macro tutorial

Here are some of the photos I have taken so far... Im still getting to grips with this technique and look forward to playing with it more and even trying to film with it.