Dwayne Tucker's Blog

Making Your Photographs Better, I wrote about what I look for in the post-production stage of my photo shoots. In this article I share small things to look for in the production stage and a little bit of post-production editing. If doing things on set (in production) saves time in post-production why not do it; time is money, keep that in mind.

The photograph is a portrait of my friend, Christian Carabias; actor for Telemundo’s show, Mas Sabe El Diablo and Sacrificio De Mujer Univision.

I finished setting up lights two hours early of my shoot. Christian was at the pool when I asked if I could use him to test the lights. His name is Christian (emphasize Christ) and he’s an actor so I asked him to act as Jesus praying to the father.

On huge photo shoots when you are a big shoot photographer hiring a team you’re going to have a MUA, Stylist, Hairstylist and one or three Assistants; depending on what the shoot is for you might even have an Art Director, Creative Director, Copywriter, Graphic Artist, Photo-Retoucher etc. breathing down your neck as you shoot. However, a good team creates great work; those people are there for reasons.

Those big shot photographers don’t hire those people because they can. I’ve assisted on photo shoots with large teams as such. They the team members have titles for reasons.

I’m not considered globally a big shot photographer as yet. But, on my smaller commissioned shoots and some of personal shoots I’m working with a MUA, Stylist, Hairstylist and maybe an assistant to help with reflectors etc. Doing so now prepares me, and makes me feel comfortable when I’m working on my larger commercial client’s projects.

I encourage you to build a great team to work with because it makes life so much easier at the end of the day.

However, there are still times, like this one when I photographed Christian, when I need a fix for my addiction to photography. When this craving occurs, once again I’m the assistant, the MUA if necessary and the stylist.

I’m going to take you through the process of this quick image and simple things to remember when you are the team of your photo shoot.

First thing as a photographer, using a DSLR camera, please, please, please shoot in RAW. Shooting in RAW gives you complete control over your images in post processing. You are able to color balance your photographs, adjust / decrease the exposure, fill light, clarity, blacks, brightness, and highlight etc.  To get the directional light I used honeycomb grid on Elincrome 500 strobe and positioned the strobe head above the model titled down about 45º.

The arrow above is pointing at those cutout-animal rubber bans that seem to be in fashion currently in Miami; everyone’s wearing them. I don’t really care much for them and I knew as soon as I saw the photographs uploaded to the computer I didn’t want them on his hand in the final image.

Stylists are a necessity. Even though the model doesn’t have a shirt on for the shot there are still minor distractions/considerations that the stylist would have to take care of. On these one on one shots you’re going to have to be your own stylist. Forgetting like I did, often results in unnecessary Photoshop time.

If I did hire a stylist for a shoot I probably would have asked them to bring the thorns of Jesus’ crown, drape a garment on him and the ask the MUA to make blood around his forehead.

If it were for a client, you’ve been your own team for so long, when a team comes along to work with you, you’ll know whether it’s good enough, or if you need to get some new team members.

For this shoot I was my own team, but now, that gave me a chance to collaborate with a really sick graphic artist if I wanted to. If I did collaborate I would have the artist put a crown of thorns on his head etc and the blood marks; making sure the artist is very professional and work is up to the industry level.

If you compare the last two screenshots you’ll notice that this one here is a bit cooler, not cool as in “duddeee” but cooler as in literally less warm. That’s called correcting your white balance. The easiest way/the proper way to correct the white balance would have been to have a gray card and take a picture with the gray card against the model. Leave your camera on a tripod with a sync cable, or a wireless remote, or putting it on self-timer, or if you have a really fancy trained chocolate-lab dog, or an assistant you call your dog (what-up dog) then have him/her/it stand in the frame with the gray card.

Next you would use the eyedropper tool in camera raw, drop it on the gray card and POW, there goes your white balance. If you have a client that’s going to be like, OMG you’re the final image is in black and white/ OMG the final image has so many gradients and photo filters on it did you forget to use a gray card?!” if so go ahead and get one.

If purchasing your digital camera and your tripod drained your pockets, $30.00 looks a lot like next months electricity bill and not a gray card. The next option to white balance the photograph is to find something as neutral (gray) as possible in the image and place the eyedropper tool on it.

The arrows in the last image were pointing to where I wanted the image to be brighter and darker. When in camera raw I like to open my photographs as an object in Photoshop, instead of just clicking the open key. The reason for opening as an object is because when you double click on the object layer you created, it will take the image back in to camera raw. (Step 1) I duplicate the image layer in Photoshop, hit (E) for the eraser tool, click on the image a message will come up asking to rasterize the image, hit yes. Now you would have an object layer below and a copy of the rasterized image above. The next thing would be is to double click on the object layer and bring it back into camera raw to fix the bright ness and darkness. Open again in Photoshop and repeat step 1.

You would now place a layer mask on your photograph then paint. The default layer mask it’s on the mask will be white. When like this you mask away the areas you don’t want. Example: I know I wanted his face to be brighter like the image but keep the other areas dark. I would have been time consuming for me to paint away the areas I don’t want.

To avoid this long process I simply invert the layer mask to white by selecting the mask then pressing command + i (control + i on a PC). When the layer mask is white, layer beneath it will be shown. Now here’s the thing to remember. When painting on a layer mask, if the mask is white you use the black paintbrush to show and the white to hide again and if the mask is black you do the opposite the white to show and the black to take the image back to its original look.

To make the image in black and white I press command + u (control + u on a PC) then the color balance window will pop up, you will see saturation use the slider and take it all the way to the left. Simple. There are other ways to make your image black and white this is the one I chose to go with.

Now we are almost close to the final image.

If you compared the screen shot to the previous one you will see I removed the rubber bands from his hands. It’s simple to do that. Get familiar with using the clone stamp tool, the patch tool and the healing brush tool. I use those tools to remove objects and work on skin etc.

The image is almost complete. I could leave it at that stage if I wanted to put I do a little something extra in the post processing of my images to give it a look I’ve locked down. It’s nothing genus like a Dave Hill effect, but it’s something I’m persistent with and here I’m now announcing it, “that, Dwayne Tucker Touch”.

Before I speak about that Dwayne Tucker Touch effect I want to point out something else I’ve adopted to my preferred style look. If you look at most of my portraits in my portfolio you will notice some of them are either in the left side of the frame or positioned in the right side of the fame. After shooting so many of them I filtered my images and noticed I like doing it and stuck that look.

The image now looks gray because I applied a high-pass filter. To access that you go to filters – other – high pass. When I apply this filter to my image then select overlay to overlay the layer it sharpens the photograph and gives some really cool highlight effects. After working with it several times moving the sliders back and forward, you’ll notice how sharp is harp enough for you. For females I like to keep the skin unsharpened because it looks nasty, but I do like to bring more highlights in the hairs and eyes etc. Play around with it and you will figure out what works for you.

Now Christian Carabias is a black and white Jesus in my photograph.

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Step away from your canvas for a few minutes after you’ve been working on it consistently for a few hours. That was one of the first things I learnt in design school. How many of us remember to do everything teachers taught us? Well good for you! This time it blew pass me. Learn from my mistakes and make your photographs better. Read more…

I’m addicted to capturing moments. Earlier this week, I got an email from MiamiSkaters.com about a free skate session at the Grove’s skate park. They were calling all skaters to take part of a petition for the Biscayne Skate Park project. I’m a skateboard photographer and a skateboarder so I headed over to show my support. Read more…

At my last photo shoot, I came into contact with, literally the most disrespectful person at one of my sessions! I’ve been photographing a lot of skateboarders in Miami, Florida recently. Wanna take a guess at who this disrespectful person may be? The title of this post kinda’ gave it away. (The Photographs Displayed are Images Made From The Session That Inspired This Post.)

A Skateboarder Cop…

…well a security guard who thinks the costume his boss gave him to wear made him the most powerful person in the world. The security guard spat at my skater.

If you are a skateboarder, if you film skateboarders or if you photographed skateboarders I’m sure you’ve been kicked out of a location before. I’m used to getting kicked out at the most annoying times, like right when all the lights are set up. I understand why securities has to kick us out at times. They’re only trying to keep their jobs. They don’t understand that we’re trying to do the same. Some of the nice ones might say, “okay I’ll give you one try to get the shot you need then you have to leave.” or “Bro, I have to feed my kids. You really have to leave the property.” Those approaches are understandable.

@RunKelly and I were unpacking our gear and I looked over at the skaters the security ran outside shouting at the skaters. When I say shouting at the skaters, I mean SHOUTING at the skaters. “You can’t f**king skate here! Get off the f**king property!” If anyone approaches anyone with that tone they are going to get a reply back. One of the skateboarders answered him back saying look you don’t need to curse and shout to tell us to leave.” And that’s when the security guard spat at him. So he spat back. I don’t agree with the entire situation. In my mind he’s no longer a security guard he’s just a big pussy in a costume, spitting at my model that happens to be under the age of 18. I immediately ran over to the guard to clear things up. The little 5′9 guard’s mouth wasn’t as big when he saw me come over. I told the skaters to leave and I told the guard to ease up before a problem really occurs. I didn’t want to make a scene, so I didn’t punch him in his face like I wanted to. Mainly because all of the money we have now is for more gear and not for bail lol. It frustrates me to even write this right now because it still pisses me off that he would do such a thing to a 13 year old!

My Quick Tips To You For Shooting Skateboarders and How To Avoid Getting Kicked Out Before The Shot

Capturing  skateboarders at the right moment of action is not easy. If you want to do this for a living as bad as I do, you should start puting work into it like I do. There are ways to get around getting kicked out of your location- example you can contact the property owner and make a deal with them. But if you’re broke on a tight budget like I am, only using: Nikon D300’s, SB-900, Pocket Wizards, umbrellas and reflectors – renting the property is not an option. You’re going to have to that risk of being kicked out as well. BTW If you’re that person thinking  it’s easy as putting the camera into continuous mode and getting a lucky shot – bullshit.

Keep A Ten Dollar Bill…

…they work 9-5 as a security guard. That means he / she probably is not making as much money as wanted. That ten dollar bill looks good for lunch. I honestly  believe they don’t have to kick us out at times; I’ve paid-off countless guards to get shots. Shots that didn’t make my portfolio or even make it to my hard-drive. — Sometimes you have to do what you have to do for what you love.

In The First Tries…

…if you are working with lights etc. tell your skater to go down the street away from the set to warm up while you set up your lights. If the skater practices around you while you are setting-up your lights, it only increases your chances of being spotted by the skateboarder cop. Set your lights up, shoot great skaters and get the image within one shot.

Settings To Use…

…I’m going to be brief on the basics. If we were painters and I gave you a canvas  I expect you to know what brush to use for the strokes you prefer mark. In photography you’re going to develop memory for the camera settings which works for certain situations.  1/500 of a second freezes action, F – 2.8 lets more light into the camera, the lower the ISO (old school ASA) the less grain = the better quality of the photograph, however, the higher the ISO = the more light into the camera. Look for the best angles. Shoot a lot, fail alot, filter your good ones to develop your style good luck now go get shooting. (Even I am still in the process of mastering – I’m just sharing what I know with the community.)

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YouTube Channel: 242dt

The work you show represents you. In your portfolio you should show the type of clients you would like to shoot and the type of work you would like to do. It only makes sense to do this. I have tons of photographs that I would like to put in my portfolio but it doesn’t show me as the photographer I would like my clients to call me for – commercial advertising, lifestyle, portraits and sports photography.

Prior to my photography portfolio being active I posted my photographs in blog post and shared articles about them. I am still going to do so. Posting to my blog allows me to share some photographs that won’t necessarily make it to my portfolio page but I would still love to share them with you.

To make a photography portfolio like this one – I purchase a template and spent a lot of time editing the photographs to fit it and personalized it. I’m not a flash designer and I didn’t see point of sitting down HOURS to create a portfolio like this from scratch. As a photographer I don’t see the point . Unless you are trying to start a flash design company :S

The point is that you want to have something what’s going to represent you and your work. If you aren’t in a position to purchase a flash template or pay a flash designer to make one for you Wix.com is an easy site with some cool shit in there to play around with. Check them out. When I launch DT.’s MERCH I will be using them to make my e-commerce part of the site to sell my photograph tee-shirts etc.

HOW TO USE?

The middle left of the screen of the portfolio page you are going to see a menu button. I’m deciding if to just have the menu stay out as seen in the snap shot above. Looking through the code to figure out how.  Over the summer you will see photographs and maybe even some video, constantly being added to my photograph portfolio. I think the zoom feature on this portfolio is cool but unsure it if to keep it if it’s gonna give me faster loading time. What do you think?

In the menu bar there are different collections of photographs for you to look at. Enjoy them and hopefully my hustle helps you keep your hustle on!

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Dwayne Tucker on YouTube: 242dt

Quick Post:

…was a great person to work along with; expect more from her here on the blog.

Being a photographer allows you to interact with great people, with great talent and great vibes. I’ll be the first to tell anyone, our job as photographers is the best. The person I speak of in particular is one of my recent models, Ashley Hewlett.

Ashley was chosen as an event model for Roxy and she was the host model for a Teen Vouge event at Dadeland Mall in Miami, Florida.

I photographed these images about three weeks ago.

I’ve been looking at Surfing Magazine’s 2010 Swimsuit Issue, shot in Malibu and Puerto Rico by photographer Lauren Ward as well as the photography for the ad I saw for Reef in Surfer magazine.

Reasons why I look at those photographs and ads are because I would like to be shooting for those magazines someday and I need to study, to know what they are expecting.

There were a lot more photographs from Ashely’s shoot; two years ago I probably would have posted all of them. I became a bit more selective of what photographs I want to show out there.

A few problems I ran into that I’m going to fix:

Every photo shoot I’ve been lucky enough to walk away with a good image. Even if the image wasn’t what I had envisioned, I had manage to add a photo to my collection. Part of that comes from shooting  A LOT for practice. If you keep shooting you will learn what your eyes like and dislike.

Likes and Dislikes:

The photograph above was from the first locations. I wanted Ashely to think as if she was walking around doing her own thing, maybe on a vacation somewhere tropical and I took her to the side to take a photograph of her wearing her swimsuit.

Ashley’s modeling nailed the idea I gave her perfectly. My main concern every time I shoot a model in a swimsuit is to keep her looking sexy and at the same time keep her from looking slutty/ trashy.

The guy from the vendor was nice enough to let us photograph at the spot for about 20 mins. He even gave Ashley a hat he made. A portrait I took of him is sitting in my print box. Next time I go to that spot I’m going to surprise him with it.

On the view finder the images were looking nice – The poses were excellent, compositions were excellent, but my concern now-a-days is, background distraction.

To help easy my mind from breaking the computer screen when I viewed the images there,  I had to thank God (and the Photoshop Guys from Photoshop User Tv ) for some of the things I know in Photoshop.

I added a layer mask of Gaussian Blur and painted Ashely back into the foreground to somewhat make that busy background less distracting.

Mistake number two of the practice day:

The day of this shoot we went to a location on the beach. I wanted Ashely relaxing, laying out and enjoying her day at the beach.

People were around us on the beach looking ,we even had some people stop and take pictures of us working etc. but Ashley remained focused and nailed every image.

On location I thought it would be an okay idea to maybe have these people blurred in the background doing whatever the want as Ashely relaxed.

It was my fault not getting the image I wanted because I didn’t choose a place with less of a crowd for a shoot like this.  I’m happy with that mistake because now it will never happen again. Her being a model, I’m sure she didn’t mind the crowd drooling over how gorgeous she is.

The problem was that the background became to busy for what I was trying to capture. Maybe if I had Ashely laying out with her friends chit chatting or something I would keep the same backgrounds as before. In this case the photograph didn’t breath enough for me as to why I didn’t keep them and post them here.

As I looked back at Lauren’s photographs and saw her backgrounds with the models…ouch..let’s just say that I love my Nikon D300’s so I didn’t throw it on the floor. Moments like those make me was really upset with myself because I’m way too passionate but I control myself.

We lost a lot of light for what I wanted so it was time to move on to the next locations.

Here are two images I managed to escaped with..Ashely will be shooting again with me very soon again for me to capture that image I have stuck in my head. That day I will only be working on that image and capturing it. I will keep you updated.

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My uncle used to tell me, “the only mistake I’ve made is when I thought I’ve made a mistake.” I’ve added to his quote – “and if that mistake was made, make the best out of the worse.”

GoldSaturn held an event at Cafeina Miami Lounge and asked me to photograph the brand’s new turbans, on location. I knew it would have been a blast because it was an opportunity for me to mix a bit of lifestyle with portraits. The turbans illustrate the look Sex and the City stylist, Patricia Field, styled Sarah Jessica Parker’s character – Carrie Bradshaw. GoldSaturn’s turbans retail for $26.00

Miami, Florida, based GoldSaturn designer David Jon Acosta is an old college buddy of mine. GoldSaturn has been featured in: teenVogue, Nylon, Miami Herald, NBC’s Around Time, Miami News Times, Daily Candy, and Ocean Drive Magazine etc.

Before the shoot I erased all scary thoughts of expectations. Erasing those thoughts allowed me to go into the shoot with faith mixed with the skills I’ve developed over the years. Doing so was enough to boost my confidence.

The only things I knew about the shoot was: it would be in a lounge, at night, low light levels, models would be moving a lot and I would have to separate them at times from the event to get head-shots portraits wearing the turbans.

When I got upstairs of the lounge I began to check my gear; something you should do before you leave for the shoot. With me was my: D300’s, SB-900, Gels, and a 35-135 lens.

I wanted to shoot an 18mm-55mm or 24mm-70mm even better if I had a 14mm-24mm lens. The 35mm-135mm was my only option but it was okay because I’ve photographed that lens so much I knew what angles I would get best from it. At that point I started to regret putting the 70mm-300mm back on the shelf because I would have had another lens option to shoot; that lens makes awesome portraits!

I give all props to those club photographers for getting that ‘POW’ light they capture. The light the club photographers achieve requires a lot practice. I kid you not, that night I’ve had the most fumbling with settings on a camera from when I first started about 8 years ago.

I went into the shoot with no expectations but when I looked on the LCD screen on the back of my camera the image I had in my mind was not there. I said to myself Dwayne you’re not a club photographer so stop trying to get that look alike light. At that point I became fed-up. The images weren’t bad but I wanted it to match the light I saw the club photographers capture. Why I wanted that is still a mystery to me! Let’s make it clear that I am happy that I stuck to just shooting and not trying to do what I see other people do.

Running through my mind were thoughts like: low light levels = lower shutter speeds, strobe will help you, pop the white card, maybe place a diffuser, use a lower F-Stop, maybe change the EV, add more power to the flash, if lower shutter speeds camera shakes can still occur, movement is alive what about shutter priority mode.

My brain wanted to explode because of a few images I took and was not pleased with. The music, people bumping into me, drinks being spilled on my hands in the lounge (way to close to my camera) cigarette smoke in my thoughts; I was loosing my cool. (Cafeina Miami Lounge is a chill place to hang out with friends and I will be back there – don’t get me wrong.)

I leaned over and told David I don’t know how I’m feeling about the outcome of these photographs his reply was, “Dwayne I trust you.”

Okay great, more pressure, thanks David!

I placed my camera back on to my favorite settings to start out with- the lowest f-stop possible and 1/60 of a second, double checked to make sure I was shooting camera raw went back in Side and said let’s make this work.

I can’t explain how much of a joy it is working with great models. I spoke to the models and said give me your best let’s make magic. From there on I was somewhat satisfied with the images. (We started to have fun – sometimes that’s all it takes.)

I uploaded the images to the computer as soon as I got home about 3 a.m. and started to produce. Keep in mind that I try to wake up 5:30 a.m. every morning and I was on my third photo shoot within that 22 hours frame. Maybe that can explain why I was becoming frustrated the entire night until I went outside to take break and return at doing what I’m best at.

I showed Greg the images on the computer and he couldn’t understand why I was tripping about the images not being good enough. I didn’t want to admit that, okay yeah I freaked a bit and the images were okay so I kept my mouth shut. I put way too much pressure on myself. I’m okay doing that though, it makes me want to keep pushing harder.

A quick shout out to Photoshop User TV for tips I’ve learned over the years of watching their weekly Photoshop Podcast. When I started to edit my images I was like okay what about a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

I shipped the images off to GoldSaturn then got a reply email from David saying one of photographs I were complaining about made it on Paper Magazine’s article by Peter Davis about GoldSaturn’s turbans.

All of that said was to express why it’s important to learn your skills to improve your talent. Remember the only mistake you’ve made is when you thought you’ve made a mistake because there’s always a way to make the best out of the worse.

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Starting out I searched for videos online to help me advance my skills within the photograph business.

The videos below are by the Photography Business success coach Beate Chelette. I am posting the videos because like you, I crave to learn more and more…and more..about what I love. Most important Beate shares some great information with these videos!