Here are the stock images that were used or partly used somewhere within the photo.

Below is the shot I used of Amanda from our recent shoot at the Fashion Show.
C.T. Pham and I both shot the same event.  This specific photo was from his camera, as all of my poses for Amanda just wasn't anything that sparked much interest for my vision.

Strobist:

Canon 5d2

85L f/1.2

1/160s - f/9.0 - ISO100 - 85mm

Boomed AB1600 gridded in Beauty Dish, camera left

Boomed AB1600 into 69" silver diffused PLM, camera right for key

My vision for this photo was rather simple, but I wanted her surroundings to seem vast and with a fantasy feel to it.  Right away the logical thing to do was to immerse her in a vast forest becuase of her grass dress.  After extracting her body and fixing some bare patches in her dress and other small things.  I began to work on compositing the background.  I already knew where I was going to place her in the photo so I began working around her body.  That is why you see a random spot in the middle of the photo that has not been worked on.  I started on a 16x20 print, so that if I needed to print this bigger down the road I could. I left a lot of space above her to emphasize the size of the trees. I want it to look like she was up against two big trees in this huge forest, that just reaches out over her in all directions. I am not sure about anyone else, but when I think of far off enchanted forest; it is over saturated with greens, yellows, and browns. It is warm, fun, vast, and everything is oversized. I wanted to try and convey all of that that with this piece.

Final image.

©2010 Ryan O. Hicks. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Post

Hide Sites

Josh was kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions for us to enjoy.

Have you always been interested in art or was there a transition at some point in your life that you said, this is going to be my future career?

Both of my parents are very creative and artistic people. I believe that I inherited those traits from them and I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life where that creativity was not being put to work in one way or another. There was not a moment when I decided that I was going to be a professional artist, in fact quite the contrary. When I graduated high school, I really wanted to pursue a career as a musical theatre actor, but I also knew that I had expensive tastes and didn’t want to be a starving artist, so I did the exact opposite and got a degree in Computer Science. I figured a solid career would provide me with the income I would require to do all of the fun and creative things I would invariably get myself into- such as photography.

Tell us a little about what exactly you do or whom you work for?  Do you mostly do freelance work, or do you work for a firm?

My main source of income is still my career as a software engineer. I work for a small firm in Northern California called Interbill where I develop software for the legal billing market. Outside of Interbill I work primarily as a freelance artist taking in projects as they become available and when I have time. However, for the last year I have been working with a boutique branding firm called Branditecture, on retainer for a single client. The work I do with Branditecture is all design, photography and illustration based creative work like packaging design, advertising photography, photo illustration, etc.

What is the toughest project you have taken on?  What was your favorite one?  Any others that stick out in your mind that you liked more than others?

They are one in the same. I did a 2 page photo illustration spread for the May 2009 issue of Playboy magazine. I had just 5 days to complete the illustration. It was really the first time that I worked under an art director and with a tight deadline for a major publication so that was a new and daunting experience. The first three versions of the illustration I came up with were partially rejected by the Art Director, something that was also new to me. Up to that point my art had always just been my art- I never had to go back to the drawing board to make sweeping changes. But because of this art direction, the final image was much better than any of the earlier versions. Of course the fact that I now get to say that my work has been published in Playboy contributes to making it my favorite project to date.

Where do you get your inspiration?  Do ideas just pop into your head, or do you have other artists you look to for that magical spark?   What sites do you frequent?

It comes from all over. Sometimes an idea just pops into my head. Sometimes I am inspired by the work of others. Sometimes a random doodle morphs into a creative concept. I find plenty of inspiring work on flickr, though I’ve been known to poke around DeviantArt as well. In general I don’t go looking for inspiration but I can’t help but be inspired by great work.

What type of hardware and software setup do you use for work and home?

I’ve got pretty similar setups at work and home. Windows Vista, 24” LCD monitor (dual at work), external RAID array for redundant data backup, Wacom Intuos3 tablet. Photoshop CS4 is the main program I use for photo manipulation/illustration work. Others include Illustrator, Photomatix, Hugin, PTGui, Artizen HDR and Flexify.

You seem to have a wide range of skills making you versatile for any employer.  If you had to choose one side of you that you favor the most what category would that be?

This is a difficult question because I don’t really see these things as different sides of myself. The thing about me is that when I do something, whatever it is, I put my all into it. This is often perceived by those on the outside as obsessive, and perhaps to some extent it is, but ultimately it is that to which I attribute all of the various successes I have had in my career and in my life. When I was a student, I gave it my all and was successful. When I am writing legal billing software, I give it my all and have found success there. When I got into photography, I once again was obsessed with it, and gave it my all, my whole world revolved around it. The same cycle has repeated many times in my life from job to job, hobby to hobby the obsessive drive to be as good as I can possibly be at whatever it is I am doing is the one thing that has remained constant. That being said, I also view this as one of my biggest weaknesses. For all of the various interests that I have focused so intently upon, there is not one that has raised to the top to be the one that I truly master. I consider myself a jack of many trades, but a master of none. At least not yet.

What is the one thing you most enjoy about your career?

Well, making a consistent living is certainly high on my list, but being able to earn an income doing something that I enjoy doing- which is the case for both art and software engineering, is the most enjoyable aspect of my career by far.

Is there another other side to you that not a lot of people know about?  Do you have any hidden talents that are not showcased?

It all depends upon the context of how you know me. Many people I work with in the software field have no idea that I am an artist. Most of my flickr fans have no idea that I am a software engineer. Most people from both camps have no idea that I am a classically trained vocalist and pianist. But most people in general don’t know that I am also an avid Texas Hold’em player and have a lifelong love affair with video games, from Super Mario Brothers to Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

What advice and insight can you give other individuals wanting to achieve your level of work and status in the design community?

Always believe in yourself and set high expectations of yourself. Always seek perfection in all that you do and success will find you. As cliché as it is, aim for the stars and you’ll reach the sky. I also think it is very important to remain humble, gracious and thankful when success does find you.

What is your middle name?

Paul

You can find Josh’s flickr stream at the following link.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshsommers/

©2010 Ryan O. Hicks. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Post

Hide Sites

This was shot for the Monticello (Indiana) Fire Department Calendar that I am currently finishing up.  It was originally scheduled as a 2010 calendar, but I think it might end up being their 2011 version.

Case Study

Final Image

Trevor Stinson: Monticello Fire Department

©2010 Ryan O. Hicks. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Post

Hide Sites

In this tutorial I will be walking you through how I created my digital piece, “What weather do you want?”.  This will be a simple photo manipulation tutorial that combines some adjustment layers, filter effects, and pen/lasso tool work.

What you need to get started

You will need to gather your stock images and for this piece I used the following photographs.  The main subject (which is me) is my own stock image because I took it solely for the making of this piece.  You can download it at the link provided below if you do not want to make your own.
My stock image - http://www.rohicks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/WW_meStock.jpg
Sky Stock - http://alegion-stock.deviantart.com/art/Sky3-stock-94057280

Step 1

Open the sky stock image in photoshop because we will be working directly on the sky file.  Double click the background layer and click ok on the dialog box to unlock it.  Now duplicate the background layer by pressing command+j (mac) or ctrl+j (windows).  Turn the visibility off to the original background layer to preserve it so we do not accidentally do something to it.

Step 2

Now we are going to do a quick photo fix (you can apply this fix to any photo to drastically improve it, as long as the tonal values are needing fixed).  We will be correcting some of the tonal values in the image.  Go to “Image > Adjustments > Levels” and set the 3^rd box (white point box) on the far right to “234”.  Then set the far left box, the 1^st box (black point box), to “2”.  This will allow the image to utilize the full tonal range of its histogram and not look so washed out.

Step 3

Now open my stock photo of myself if you are using it, or open your own stock photo of yourself or someone else.  Now using the pen tool or lasso tool, whatever comes easier to you outline your body.  After you are done outlining, if using the pen tool, right click and select “make selection”.

When the dialog box comes up enter “.1” as the radius and hit ok.  Now go to “Select> Inverse” and hit delete twice on your keyboard.  This will delete everything, but your subject and feather the edges of it.

Step 4

Now drag your subject onto your sky canvas or copy and paste it in, whichever you prefer.  Go to “Edit> Free Transform” and while holding down the shift key (to resize it constrained) resize your subject to your liking and move it over towards the right bottom corner.  Make a new layer and drag it underneath the sky layer so it is the bottom layer and fill this layer with black.
*Note* While using my free transform tool to resize I also leveled myself out by turning the corners of the free transform tool to line my feet up level on a ruler I had dragged out randomly on the screen.*

Step 5

With the subject layer (or me layer) selected go to “layer> New Adjustment Layer> Levels” and when the dialog box comes up make sure “Use previous layer to create clipping mask” is selected and hit ok.  This will bring up your levels adjustment and then set the far right box (the white point) to “226” and then set the middle box (the midtone box) to “1.14” (you may have to play with this if you are using your own stock subject and not mine).  This bumps up the highlights and midtones in the image to take out some of the dullness in it.

Step 6

Now go to “layer> New Adjustment Layer> Color Balance” and when the dialog box comes up make sure “Use previous layer to create clipping mask” is selected and hit ok.  When the color balance box comes up set the followings settings.

click on the shadows radio button
set the 3^rd box to -6

click on the midtones radio button
set the 1^st box to +15
2^nd box to -5
3rd box to -15

click on the highlights radio button
set the 1^st box to -5
2^nd box to -10
3^rd box to -20

Now click your subject layer (or me) to activate it, and go to “Image> Adjustments> Brightness/Contrast” and lower the brightness down by “-10”.

Step 7

Now we are going to work on the sky to get that peeled back look.  Click on your duplicated sky layer.  Create a new layer and make sure it’s filled with white (you can turn the visibility off of the “me” layer so it’s not shown for now).  Go to “filter> Render> Fibers” and set the variance to 20 and the strength to 5.

Go to “filter> Artistic> Plastic Wrap” and make sure the settings are 15 for highlight strengths, 9 detail, and 7 smoothness.

Now go to “Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur” and set it at 2 pixels.

Next go to “Filter> Blur> Motion Blur” use 90 for the angle and 800 for the pixels.

Last go to “Image> Adjustments> Levels” and set the far left box at 60, the middle box to 1.10, and the far right box at 200.  And set this layer’s blend mode to “hard light” and merge the layer down (command+e for mac / ctrl+e for windows).

Step 8

Now turn back your subject layer on (me layer).  You will need it on to adjust how you want the sky peeled back to fit your or my hands properly.  With it turned back on and the sky layer selected go to “Edit> Transform> Warp”.  Now using the different points on the grid transform the sky to look like it’s being peeled back and fitted to your hands as if you are dragging it from the left of the screen to the right (try to picture what it looks like to drag a big curtain across a stage).



With that done, we have a few more things to make this a little more realistic as if you were actually pulling it.  With the sky layer still selected go to “Filter> Liquify”.  Now select the “pucker tool” and make sure on the far right at the bottom the “show backdrop” is checked so you can see the rest of your layers.  Now with the pucker tool slowly press over the parts where your hands are to pucker the curtain to make it seem as if you were grabbing it at those two spots.

Step 9

This is our final step and now we need to add some shadows underneath our hands to look as if it’s over the top of the curtain.  Simply duplicate your subject layer (me layer).  Command+click (mac) or ctrl+click (windows) to bring up a selection of the me layer.  Fill it with a solid black and move it underneath the original me layer.  Now go to “Fliter> Blur> Gaussian Blur” and put in 5 as the pixels and hit ok.

Duplicate the shadow layer and set the opacity as 50% and merge it down with the original shadow layer.  That’s it you are done!

Step 10 (optional – sharpening)

This is a way to sharpen the full image (only sharpen images AFTER you have resized them to what you will be submitting to the web, your final print, etc.)  Select the whole image ctrl+a (windows) or command+a (mac) and go to “Edit> Copy Merged”.  Now hit ctrl+v (windows) or command+v (mac) to paste the layer in.  Move it to the very top of the layer palette.  Set this layer to overlay and 40% opacity.  Go to “Filter> Other> High Pass”  and set it as 2 pixels (this will vary depending if you resized the image – rule of thumb is set the high pass filter so the image looks just a TAD over sharpened).  And now you are done and with a sharper image!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, feel free to comment if you have any questions or feedback.
Thanks.

©2010 Ryan O. Hicks. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Post

Hide Sites

Final Image

In this tutorial I will be walking you through how I created my digital piece, “Mother Nature”.  This is a simple photo manipulation of a few stock photographs and some brush work.

What you need to get started

You will need to gather your stock images and for this piece I used the following photographs and the brush set for the bokeh.
Female - http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/art/May-Queen-S-11-117077616
Butterflies - http://Shoofly-Stock.deviantart.com/art/Butterfly-Stock-4-36155021
Leaves - http://godsmonster.deviantart.com/art/wall-eeq1-86517794
Brush Set - http://m-ajinah.deviantart.com/art/Night-Lights-Brush-Set-106015559

Step 1

Open a new document with the document’s width set to 1200 pixels and the height set to 1920 pixels.  The background color of the background layer is irrelevant, as we will be covering it up with a gradient, but I set it to white for now.

Step 2

Now go to the bottom of the layer palette and click on the little circle that is half white and black to create a new fill or adjustment layer and select gradient.  When the dialog box pops up make sure dither is checked, align with layer is checked, the scale is 100%, angle is 90, and the style is a radial type.

Now click in the gradient box to set our gradient that we will use as the main background’s colors.  On the left side the green color is #a4c456 and the far right green (the darker one) is #021a02.  Click ok on both dialog boxes.

Step 3

Now open the stock image of the female and we are going to do a quick photo fix. We will be correcting some of the tonal values in the image before we start.  Go to “Image > Adjustments > Levels” and set the 3^rd box(white point box) on the far right to 228.  This will allow the image to utilize the full tonal range of its histogram and not look so washed out.

Step 4

This will be the most tedious part of the whole process, as you will need to outline the female with the pen tool or the lasso tool.  Use whatever is easier for you, however the pen tool allows for better control and smoother lines.  Once you have outlined her as you like copy and paste her into your canvas.  Now make a new group folder and name it “woman”.  Move her into that folder so you can keep your layers organized throughout this project.  The image below is how I outlined her and what I kept and didn’t keep on her body.  I cut out a lot of the hanging leaves/grass stuff hanging off of her arms and around her hair.  I felt they were too distracting to my final image, but you are welcome to keep it how you like.  I also used some of the healing and clone brush in combination with outlining her to clean up some of that extra grass and leaves.  Once she is pasted into your canvas go to “Edit > Free Transform” and size her accordingly to fit on your canvas.

Step 5

We will now sharpen the female a little.  Now duplicate the woman layer by dragging her layer to the new layer button at the bottom of the layer palette or pressing ctrl+J (windows) or command+j (mac).  Set the layer blend mode to overlay and 40% opacity.  Go to “filter > other > high pass” and set it to 1.5 pixels and hit ok.

Step 6

Now go to the little half black/white circle again at the bottom of the layer palette and select hue/saturation.  Enter -20 for the saturation and leave the rest at 0.  Then go to “Layer > create clipping mask” to apply it directly to the just the female layer.

Step 7

Now we are going to do some brush work to make some of her stand out and pop more.  Command+click or ctrl+click on the woman layer to create the selection of the woman.  Create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray and deselect the selection.  Now using your dodge and burn tool go over the layer in spots that you want to enhance by darkening and lighting the female.  Use a lower opacity dodge/burn brush set to midtones and go over it till it looks good.  Here is how my layer looked like after I got done with it (I changed the blend mode to normal so you can see where I burned/dodged the layer).

Here is a before and after of what my dodge/burning made her look like.

Step 8

This next step is optional, but it will add a nice subtle touch to the female.  Duplicate the original woman layer.
Then go to “filter > stylize > glowing edges” and use these settings.

Edge Width as 1
Edge Brightness as 13
Smoothness as 15

Now go to “image > adjustments > levels” and use the following settings.

Set the layer to screen and drop the opacity to 50%.  Some of the lines make the female look odd and are distracting because the edges are glowing purple and blue or just some random colors we do not want.  So make a layer mask for this layer and using a soft brush with black as the foreground color brush away some of the lines that is distracting.  I brushed around the edges of the female and around her chest area on her dress.  Duplicate this same layer and change the blend mode to overlay and drop the opacity to 10%.

The next step to finish off the female is to add a curves adjustment layer.  Once again go to the little half black/white circle at the bottom of the layer palette and select curves.  We are going to up the contrast a little bit more.  So select “increase contrast” from the drop menu in the dialog box and lower the opacity of the layer to 30%.

Step 9

In the layer palette create another new folder and name it weeds.  This is where we will create the weeds in the image and will be up to you on how you want your leaves or weeds in the scene to look.  Open up the stock image of the leaves.  I used the portion of leaves in the front of the image along the wall because they were in focus and had a little bug on one of the leaves.

Using a soft eraser brush to erase away the leaves and weeds to your liking.  Place them around the image and transform them to fit your scene.  Now merge all your weed layers together so it is just one layer.

Duplicate the weed layer twice.  Using the first duplicated layer set it to overlay with an opacity of 40%.  Go to “filter > other > high pass” and set the pixels to 1.5 and hit ok.  Merge this layer down with the original weeds layer.  This will sharpen the weeds up for us.

Now click on the other duplicated layer to activate it.  Now command+click or ctrl+click on the layer to bring up a selection of that layer and fill the selection with 50% gray.  Set the layer blend mode to overlay.  Once again using your dodge and burning tools set to midtones and go to work on the weeds layer to make them stand out more.   View my image to see where I did some of the brush work.

Another thing I did was copy some of the dirt in the leaves stock image and place it underneath her feet as you see in my photos above.

Step 10

Now create a new layer and drag it above our gradient adjustment layer.  Load the brush set from the link at the top of this article.  Use the spot 007 brush (or whatever you like the best) and make your bokeh and set the layer opacity to 15%.

Step 11

Now you need to make another new folder on top of everything and call it effects.

Create a new layer and name it blue line.  To create the blue swirl I used the pen tool and wrapped the lines around her body.  After you make the lines with your pen tool select your brush tool and make sure you have your brush settings with a diameter of 5 and hardness set to 0%

Click back on your pen tool (p), right click and select “stroke path” and make sure “brush” is selected in the drop down box with “simulate pressure” unchecked.

Now use the eraser tool to erase certain parts on the blue line to make it appear as the line is wrapping around her.  I erased every other line so it looks like it is going in front and behind her.  I also used a soft brush and erased some of the end of the blue line to make it look like it was disappearing.  I could of used the simulate pressure command, but I chose not to because I didn’t want the end of the line to get smaller.  I just wanted it to look like it was vanishing towards the end.  Now go to the layer styles of the blue line layer (double click the layer icon) and go to outer glow and inner glow styles and use the following settings.

Do the same thing for making the green line and use the same layer style settings for the inner and outer glow except change the color to #00ff06. (the reason you see part of the green line erased is because that is where my butterfly will go in the next step)

Create a new layer and name it glow. Using the color #00ff06 for the green line and a soft brush, brush along certain areas of the swirl that flow across her body to make it look like the green line is glowing against her skin or dress.  Do the same with the blue line with the color #0012ff.

Now for the little wave like thing in her hand I used another brush I found on the Internet that was apart of an abstract brush set I found a while ago.  So I can’t remember the link to where it is, but search out some abstract brushes at brusheezy http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes?search=abstract and download some of them and use any that appeals to your eye.  I also applied an outer glow to this layer with the opacity of 41%, spread of 1, size of 1, mode set to screen, and color set to #12ff00, and everything else set as the program default.

Create one more layer and name it ball glow.  Using a bigger size brush with 0% hardness and the color of #99fa35 create a soft glow effect in her hand.  I also reduced the opacity of this layer to 50% so it wasn’t as strong.

Step 12

Now create a new folder on top of everything called butterflies.  Open the stock butterfly image and cut and paste each one of the butterflies into your image.  Arrange them how you want them to look around the image.

Now once again go to the little half black/white circle at the bottom of the layer palette and select hue/saturation.  Set the saturation to -19 and leave everything else at 0.  Go to “Layer > create clipping mask” to apply it directly to the just the butterflies.

Step 13

The last thing we are going to do to finish this piece off is bring the highlights up just a tad.  For the last time go to the little half black/white circle at the bottom of the layer palette and select levels.  In the far right box (the white point box) set the number to 250.

And that’s it!  Hope you enjoyed my first tutorial and if you have any questions post away.

©2010 Ryan O. Hicks. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Post

Hide Sites