Monthly Archives: June 2008

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June Pug and Shelby Shepherd ‘sneak peek’

June 17, 2008 – 5:46 pm

I have been in bed all day with salmonella food poisoning, and just barely had enough energy to pick up my laptop, log into my account and click ‘publish’ on this draft that I saved yesterday. (I couldn’t wait to post it). I haven’t felt this bad in years.

Thank god I had more energy on Saturday: I did this shoot for June, a 12-week old pug puppy, and Shelby, her 15 year old sister. Both darling girls and super sweet. I wanted to stay there with them all day.

First, I have to show you just how tiny June is. “Lookout for the roller skater June!!”

I love Shelby! How adorable is she??

June ‘walks’ Shelby on her leash. Pure comedy there at Greenlake that day. Had people stopping in their tracks on the path.

Junepug has rabbit ears!!

First time in water. I died laughing.

I was putting treats on the lion’s paw, then swapped them out for a chestnut. June was perplexed.

in case you missed it the first time around….

June has the prettiest little dog tags- a sterling silver bone and handmade, custom engraved heart. I’ll have to find out the link to the gal who makes these and post it here.

This next pair are two of my faves from the shoot.

A sleepy pug puppy is a happy pug puppy.

I have so many favorites of them this will be a 2-part post. 

If you will excuse me, I think I will go die now.

Oh wait, before I forget. Do you know how you can help me get over my food poisoning faster? Send this post to everyone you know and help me start a viral blog post! This pretty new blog isn’t getting much traffic yet and I’d love to see some new folks stop by.

Thanks so much!

Ok, now I will go die…

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Posted in Private client shoots, seattle dog photography, sneak-peek | Tagged , , | Comments (16)

darn those terms

June 16, 2008 – 7:48 pm

This afternoon I received a great photography email newsletter and in the newsletter they advertise a really cool business that allows users to upload content and create online magazines and even print and distrubute them if they like. The users can create an entire magazine themselves, or form a group with their friends and colleagues and create a magazine together. The online mags look really cool and seem like they’d be a super fun thing to do.

BUT.

Because of the Terms, I won’t be using them, as is often the case with this type of thing (and also why I very rarely enter contests):

“(reworded terms) by submitting your stuff to the website, you grant (name removed) a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, copy, display, perform, modify, transmit, make derivative works of, and distribute the stuff you submitted, including without limitation, for redistributing part or all of your stuff (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.” 

Hmmm, I think I’ll pass.

This is just a reminder that for any service (whether it be online or in person), if you are presented with a Terms of Agreement (otherwise known as a contract), please ALWAYS read the terms before agreeing to anything. 

On a related note, last week I received a different newsletter, also from the same company, which included a link to possibly the coolest (and best looking) news blog in the world. It’s the Boston Globe’s news blog and the format is very similar to my little blog’s (ProPhoto) theme, with humongous images on each post. It’s truly the most incredible photography. The kind of photos that stay with you for a long time. I now have it bookmarked in my bookmarks bar (a very exclusive place to be btw).

Go check it out here: Boston.com’s The Big Picture. 

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Posted in miscellaneous randomness | Tagged , | Comments (4)

super cool photoshop trick for better black and white digital images

June 16, 2008 – 6:35 pm

Last week I was on my way out the door to meet a friend for dinner, and I stumbled on a website while doing a search for another website to send to a photographer in an email I was composing to her about digital editing. It was so engrossing I ended up being late for dinner (and fell on the pavement on my way out in a rush- more on that later).

The ‘accidentally stumbled upon’ site had a tutorial about editing black and white images, something all digital photographers know can be challenging.

This tutorial wasn’t about how to convert a color image to a fancy black and white in one step, or create a processing action, or use filters or anything like that. It was about how to take your b/w images from good to “awesome!” using the very strange (and counterintuitive) process of selectively applying the saturate sponge to your image.

Example below of Duke:

Original, unedited file. (I prefer to say ‘SFTC’- straight from the camera, which to me is more natural than ‘SOOC’- straight out of [the] camera)

File converted to grayscale:

File after receiving the ‘magic treatment’

Let me explain. This so easy to do you won’t believe it. 

Here is what you do:

  1. Open your original, unedited image in photoshop (any version)
  2. Duplicate your background layer
  3. Convert the layer to grayscale using image-mode-grayscale
  4. When it asks you if you want to discard the color information, click yes. (be sure to save this new file as a copy!)
  5. Go to your sponge tool (it’s with the dodge and burn tools)
  6. Select a fairly large soft brush (350-500 pixels) in the preferences bar at the top
  7. Select ‘saturate’ from the drop-down ‘mode’ menu
  8. For ‘flow’ select somewhere between 40-60% depending on how dark or light your image is (lower percentage for darker images; higher for lighter images). I used 52% for Duke above, which was a fairly overexposed image. 
  9. Start applying the saturate sponge to your image and watch the magic happen.

If this works for you the way it did for me you will be saying “wow……. WOW!” and wondering how in the world it does that. Apparently the process increases the local contrast in an image, in ways I don’t really understand. Note: I didn’t do anything extra to the shot of Duke above- no sharpening or levels or anything else- just exactly the steps listed above. 

To read more about this cool trick, check out the forensic photoshop blog post where I found the tutorial. 

Also, be sure to do a google search for ‘local contrast’. You can learn a lot about how the brain processes visuals. It’s really fascinating stuff!

LOVE this trick! It even fits in with my TMOL (two minutes or less) editing philosophy. Have fun with it all of you shutterbugs!

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Posted in digital editing, for photographers | Tagged , , , , | Comments (6)

Slice of Life: South Lake Union: we have a winner!

June 16, 2008 – 4:53 pm

Remember the recent contest on my old blog: slice of life?

Well guess what? We have a winner!! Paul from Seattle was the first person to accurately guess that the image above represents the up-and-coming South Lake Union neighborhood so he wins a free mini-shoot at SLU/Cascade for his bassett hound puppy Daisy, who ironically Fergie and I met at a barbeque on Saturday! I can’t wait to do the shoot for Daisy, she is adorable. Along with his free shoot, Paul also wins a free one-year subscription to CityDog Magazine! (score!)

Let’s all congratulate Paul on having some really good super sleuthing abilities!

For those who just hopped on board, the image slice represents editorial photography I did for CityDog Magazine for the ‘Dog’s Eye View’ neighborhood feature article in the summer issue, which is on newsstands now so go check it out. BTW: South Lake Union is really an awesome place for dogs and makes for a great 1/2 day trip to explore all of the dog-friendly parks and stores and pretty hidden spots. I have already read the article all about places to go and things to do with your pooch and I have to say it’s a must-read.

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Posted in Contests, Private client shoots | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)
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