CRDESIGNLAB

It’s been a while. 17 Days to be exact. To keep it brief, in those 17 days, I have been hard at work on the 840 Poster, a couple of video team projects, and of course exploring my iPad. Now to the important stuff.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Skocko gave me a recipe for taking pictures of the night sky that he learned from this guy. He told me a the very best settings for the camera, and so I vowed to try it out. That’s what I did early tonight. I took the 5D Mark II into my backyard and pointed the lens straight up, and got a wall of white. Total failure. I deducted that this was because I was taking photos from a heavily populated area with lots of light pollution, so I adjusted the setting a little (a lot, actually) and tried again. Total failure for a second time. Fast forward 20 minutes and 50 pictures, and I have finally found a setup that worked. I took a few shots of a house up the street before going inside to see just how granulated the images would be.

When I got to my computer, I waited to unload the pictures until the trial of the CS5 Master Collection was done installing on my main computer, so I could take full advantage of the new features when editing my new photos. I loaded them into Bridge, and………success!!!!! Of the 50 or so pictures I took (of which about 10 were good), I chose two to advance to the next stage: Camera Raw. After boosting Photoshop CS5′s performance preference to eat a MASSIVE 7.5GB of my 8GB of RAM, I took the first image, which is the one featured on this post, through Camera Raw. I proceeded straight to the new noise reduction features and threw the sliders all the way to the right. And…….the amazingness just got WAY better. Man, Photoshop has power!!!!! The image went from relatively grainy but still OK, to perfectly smooth and beautiful. The only side effect was that the house in the photo got a sort of painted texture, which I think looks fine with the image. I played with the “Contrast” and “Blacks” sliders a little, then opened the image as a Smart Object and added a contrast curve before turning to the next image. (In case you’re wondering, the lighter area in the center of the photo are clouds what didn’t render well when converted to a JPG. The whole photo didn’t convert well, and looks much better as a PSD). On this one, I again utilized the noise reduction features, but because the image was not in perfect focus, there was only so much Camera Raw could do. It didn’t turn out as good as the first one, but then again it wasn’t really meant to. I just wanted to demonstrate the possibilities of these new skills and show just how cool a picture of the sky could turn out (if it were only focused!!!!!).

I have been staring into the abyss of space for a long time, wishing to capture its beauty in a photograph, and have finally somewhat succeeded. I did not totally achieve the effect I wanted, and in all reality didn’t even come close to getting the breathtaking picture of the Milky Way that I want to get, but I am happy for now. To take pictures like the ones this guy took, you NEED to be in the middle of nowhere, ten miles from the nearest person, not in the middle of Rancho San Diego.

That’s it for now, I guess. The 840 poster is coming along good and will be my main focus until it is completed.

PS: Dang Photoshop is fast!!!!!!!