Ronny and I went to a local beach in Hampton and to Oyster Point City Center in Newport News to take her senior portrait pictures, although it was really hot and humid, we had fun and took a nice selection of photographs.
We spent a couple of hours shooting over the two locations, with a change of clothes in the middle. If you are looking for a senior photographer in Newport News, Hampton, Yorktown or surrounding area visit my website for more information: http://rachelclarephotography.com/
Hello everyone! I have been working hard at my photography, and I now have a website and online gallery available. Prints can be ordered in both US dollars and GB pounds and will be printed in the country you live in. I am available for hire for portraits, automotive and customized photo shoots (such as landscapes or buildings for example). So if you are looking for something particular let me know and I may be able to provide you with what you are looking for! Just be aware that at the moment I am in America, so I may not be able to take bookings for England, unless its for art photographs of America. I am putting together an email list of people who are interested in receiving updates when new work is available. If you would like to recieve email updates from me or know of someone who would. Use the contact function on my website to sign up for the updates! My website (which is not quite finished) is: http://rachelclarephotography.com/ and my online gallery which can be found through my website or directly at: http://rachelclarephotography.zenfolio.com/ Thanks everyone!Me and my camera!
We were on our way to the Blow Fly restaurant in Gulfport, Mississippi-which I had seen on the food network channel when we crossed a bridge and saw two boats stranded-they were most likely wash ups from Hurricane Katrina-They hadn’t moved in a loooong time!
After seeing them from the bridge we drove down some roads, that weren’t even real roads, and were not on the GPS we had in the car, until we found the boats…. The sun was getting low, there were rumbles of thunder, I had to wait about 10 minutes for my camera to de-fog and we were getting bitten by insects-my husband is good to me, as it was him who was driving and waiting around while I took a few pictures.
This print is for sale.
I recently took a trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway, The blue Ridge Parkway is a long scenic route stretching from Virginia to North Carolina, I drove about 80 miles along it, I stayed in Lexington which is in Virginia. Apple Orchard falls is at mile marker 78 and is quite a trek down a steep hill side trail. My legs were sore for two days after walking the trail, so that should give a good example of how hard it was.
This is the actual Apple Orchard Falls which is a bout 2 miles from the top of rest stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway
This is my favorite photograph from the walk, it is one of the smaller falls that were alongside the trail on the way down to the main falls. This photograph was not photoshopped, it was achived by using a long exposure to capture the smoothness of the water.
Dont forget you can click the photographs to see the larger pictures!
To see more visit my site for Rachel Clare Photography = rachelclarephotography.com
Photographs make great gifts and are something that will last forever. They work great as presents for Valentines day, Birthdays, Mothers day, Fathers day , Christmas and any other special occasion that you can think of.
If you are booking your photo session so you can give your photographs to someone as a gift I will give you a 25% discount on the total cost of your session. This offer will expire on August 1st 2009, and can not be used in conjunction with any other special pricing offers.
These three photographs self portraits and part of a set that I am giving to my husband for his birthday this year.
This was such a fun photos shoot, It was a family portrait session in Hampton. We went to Sandy Bottom Nature park which is one of my favorite places to go. The conditions were not great, it was overcast, bright and humid, which has a tendency to make everything a little bit harder. click here to see it larger.
Rachel Clare Photography-Portfolio
When I first taking pictures with a point and shoot I bought photoshop elements 4, I had no idea what I was getting my self into, I thought owning a ‘photoshop’ would make my pictures magically become great…. I thought it was awesome how I could clone things out of photos and add boarders, but that was all I could really do with it, roll on two years and add in a purchase of a DSLR and an upgrade to Elements 6, with help from online communities like this Flikr Group I am fluent in understanding how to edit a photograph.
I thought I would post a little collection of links and tips that I found invaluable and still use to help me. This should help if you use any version of Photoshop Elements
Layers-these used to annoy me and for the longest while I couldn’t understand why I needed them, of course now I realize every time I start editing a different part of the picture I duplicate the last layer and work on that, so if I mess up all I have to do is delete the layer and all my other hard work is there.
Layer mask-something that they should have put into all the photoshops not just the full version, these allow you to ‘paint’ over areas of your picture that you want to edit, kind of like the erase tool, but instead of having to delete the layer or hit the back button a million times you use the white or black brush to make your corrections. even though the layer mask does not come with elements you can down load one here: Layer Mask and a Layer Mask Tutorial (this blogger posts free actions too)
Actions-Actions are a set of instructions that you record while editing so you can apply the same instructions to multiple pictures with a press of a button. Photoshop elements can’t write actions, but it can read actions so long as they are made with tools that Elements has available. This lady has a bunch of free actions on her blog, some I like and some I don’t: Free Actions Actions can be as simple as adding color pop to a photo or as complex as changing the overall look of a photo. I rarely use actions as I like to figure stuff out on my own-its more fun for me.
Getting Pop-getting pop in the kind of photographs that I take I have found the advice on here has made my photos into something better (of course still need to improve lots) Taking photographs in Raw and understanding how to use the Adobe Camera Raw editor which opens up when you use photoshop to edit a RAW file is a huge help. The main adjustments I will make in this screen are: to raise the contrast and saturation, not to much though, just enough to keep the colours looking true and real. I pay attention to areas of my photograph that are glowing red or blue-glowing red means the highlights are to bright and I can use the recovery slider to darken them and bring back detail, and the glowing blue means I can see which areas are too dark and I can sue the fill light slider to allow more detail to be shown, as with all sliders, when used to the extreme they can produce some undesirable effects. There is also a histogram on this screen to help you judge your adjustments. The second way I get my photos to pop is to use the levels adjustments in the main editor. this can be found in the top tool bar under enhance and lighting adjustments. I just click the black eye dropper on something pure black in the photos and the white eye dropper on something white and I see the difference it makes.
I hope this has helped make a difference in your editing, I will post more tips soon.
If you are a senior looking for a photographer, maybe I can help, If you book a senior portrait session by May 30th you will receive your photo shoot for half price. ($50)
A senior photo shoot will normally last about two hours and can usually be at a location of your choice (so long as photograph restrictions don’t apply) I have taken great photos at a few different places in the Yorktown, Newport News and Hampton areas, Buckroe Beach and Newport News Park are two of my favorite locations to visit. Within a week after the shoot I will provide between 20 and 50 edited photographs in my online gallery so you can choose your favorite photographs. (editing includes: blemish removal, black and white conversions, and artistic edits as well as color photos.) The photo shoot does includes one 8×10 and four 5×7 photographs in the price, extra photographs can be ordered through the gallery.
To book your photo shoot or for more information email me at info@rachelclarephotography.com
These two photographs were taken at Buckroe Beach, you can click the picture to view it larger.
Rachel Clare Photography – Portfolio
I have seen so many great photographs where the subject of the photograph has amazing bright eyes it made me really want to find a way to reproduce the same kind of eyes that I had seen in those images. So I searched on line for some tutorials, I found alot of tutorials but they all seemed to be geared towards blue eyes and photoshop CS users. I wanted to be able to bring ‘pop’ to brown eyes using just my budget editing program-photoshop elements ($80), So after reading a mix of tutorials I came up with a method inspired by several tutorials and I thought I would make it available on line to help other people looking to make dark eyes pop.
There is nothing fancy about this photograph, I used a Canon 30d (now has two predecessor models) with one of the cheapest canon lenses on the market today, the Canon 50mm 1.8 ($70) I helped light the photograph by using two 500 watt light bulbs pointed at Ember-the subject but this method of editing would work on any well lit photograph using natural light also. click on the picture to see it full size
The great thing about this technique is you can make it as subtle or as obvious as you like, for the demonstration photo I chose to make it subtle.
I choose to do the eye pop towards the end of the editing work on the photograph, that way if my editing took a natural turn my eyes can have a more natural pop, but if I decided to do a full edit, with magazine style plastic skin then I could make the eyes more stunning.
One of the things to remember when editing a photograph is each time you start editing something different always make a new layer, that way if you realize you made a mistake early on in the process you can easily go back and delete that layer and create a new one with the corrected adjustments.
So for the eyes first of all in case you don’t know, the pupil is the small black spot in the center of the eye, and the iris is the coloured part. We will be using the dodge tool and the burn tool. To dodge something is to make it lighter in photoshop and to burn something is to make it darker.
Zoom in to the eyes of your picture, I like working at 100% or just above, depending on the size of the eye. select the dodge tool and choose a soft brush to a size that is just a little bit bigger than the pupil, change the range to highlights and the exposure to around 10%, take the brush and brush around the pupil, you will see that part of the eye got a little bit lighter.
Next change the exposure to 20% and just below the previous dodging make another circle going around the eye, again the eye will appear slightly brighter.
This part is what makes the biggest difference to the eye, change the dodge tool to the burn tool and change the range to shadows and use the exposure around 20% I use generally use a smaller brush than the previous steps. Brush around the outside of the iris, staying on the colored part so that you get a nice even ring around the area.
Sometimes I will do a few extra steps after the final ring, If the pupil is very small I will use the burn tool over the original pupil to make it slightly larger and if the whites of the eyes are too pink I will use the dodge tool at a very low exposure to whiten them slightly. I also find to get a little extra definition you can burn along the lash lines too.
Rachel Clare Photography – Portfolio
Today Ember and I finally got together to use some of my studio equipment, she allowed me to do her eye make up and was not too keen when she first saw it, but after reviewing the photographs she decided that the makeup worked out quite nicely.
We both decided that this was one of the best photographs from the set, it has a classic feel to it. click to see a larger version.
Rachel Clare Photography – Portfolio
