Having fun with the new "Oil Painting" filter in Photoshop CC.

I've been playing a lot with the "Oil Painting" filter that I discovered in Photoshop CC. I started a subscription to Photoshop when I got my new Mac Mini and I'm kind of enjoying not having to buy the software. This filter is a blast and very addictive--it allows you to apply an oil-painting look to your images very simply. But click the photos to see the full effect--you really can't see it on a phone or as a small image. I'm sure lots of people think it's tacky and it probably is, but I love it anyway. Lots of fun! Cool.

Kittens video

Just Published: Read My Benjamin Von Wong Profile on DP Review

Recently I've begun writing for the wonderful DPReview website, certainly among the biggest and best photo sites in the world. My first published piece is a profile of the amazing young Canadian photographer Benjamin Von Wong. Ben is not only an incredibly talented, creative and hardworking artist but he has quite an inspiring story to tell: he quit his day job as a mining engineer just over two years ago and in that short time has won client and fans all over the planet. His behind-the-scenes videos, showing how he creates his amazing images, have had nearly two million views on Youtube! Ben's photos are a wild mix of surrealistic vision and hyper-reality and he uses every creative device at his disposal, including walls of fire, elaborate costumes and sets and a broad range of very talented models and actors. But what will blow you away most of all is the fact that the vast majority of his images are created right in front of the lens--there is almost no Photoshop!

My DPReview profile will run in two parts and the second part will publish on Mach 15, 2014. Also, be sure to check out Ben's own site for galleries of his wild photos. By the way, the cool photo here is a self portrait by Von Wong--photographer, visual engineer, storyteller...and fire spitter! (Photo Copyright Benjamin Von Wong, courtesy of the photographer.)

Good news: jeffwignall.com is back online

After a long sleepy online nap of about a year, I finally decided to re-launch my main site jeffwignall.com. I had taken it down for several reasons. One reason was that I was extremely unhappy with the host (a horrible company whose initials are "NS"). Since then I have found a terrific hosting company called Fat Cow based on the recommendation of a friend. Fat Cow offers some great and very cheap hosting services and a great web-creation software called Weebly.

One of the other reasons that I took my site down was that it had more than 100 free tutorials posted there and I decided that, in addition to the fact that a lot of them were getting outdated, I also wanted to *sell* some of the information found in my tutorials as part of ebooks. In the next year I hope to begin a self-publishing venture where I can teach photography via ebooks and have total control over the content and appearance of my books. I don't know if a single soul will ever buy one, but it will be a fun experiment. And, better still, I'll own the company. I am also considering starting a series of online digital photography classes with critiques, etc.

Yet another (and I think important) reason that I took my site down was that I just wanted to put more space between my life and the cyberworld. Every day it seems like the Internet becomes more and more like George Orwell's Big Brother from 1984 (a book that is on my list for rereading this winter--I hope I can find my old paperback copy!) and it felt good to be less entangled for a year. In fact, I think it's a good idea for anyone that doesn't depend on their site for income to shut their site down now and then for a few weeks or a few months or, in my case, a year. Yes, I lost a lot of ground in my search-engine standings, but who cares? I know how to get it back and that is all that really matters.

So, I'm not sure how much useful information will be on the new jeffwignall.com (right now it's pretty much just a resume) but I will find interesting things to write about and ideas to share. And soon, on this blog and on my site, I'll introduce my new book that is coming out in the spring, being published by Ilex Press in Europe. I'm very excited about the book and I can't wait to see it!

Happy Christmas, War is over (if you want it) and I hope you'll join me in welcoming the return of the sun on Saturday!

Photographic Issue #20: I wrote the entire issue!

If you're headed out to the newsstand soon, keep an eye out for Petersen's Photographic, Issue 20--I wrote the entire issue from cover to cover. The issue features profiles and portfolios by eight master photographers that I interviewed about their specialties--why they chose them, how they've managed to thrive in the very competitive photo business and what they love about their work. Each of the photographers also shares a lot of inside secrets about how they do such incredible work. Really, this issue is like a master class in magazine form. The photographers included (and their specialties) are:

Janet Loughrey: Garden photography
Ron Niebrugge: Alaska wildlife
Jill Reger: Classic and antique cars
Brian Oglesbee: Fine art photography
Jon Van Gorder: Food photography
Greg Hartford: Maine landscapes
Derek Doeffinger: Wilderness waterfalls
Steven Hyatt: Architectural/church interiors

The reproduction in the magazine is superb and there are no ads so the magazine is 100% editorial content. It's a super issue and the editors and production staff did a fantastic job. I couldn't be happier with the look of the magazine. You can read two sample articles from the issue on the Photographic site. By the way, I'm about to finish a brand new book and I'm pretty excited about how it came out--so I'll post more about it soon.

Harvest Moon over the Housatonic River

This is an in-camera double exposure shot this past Wednesday, the night of the Harvest Moon. Both exposures were shot with a 70-300mm Nikkor lens on a Nikon D90 body. I first shot the moon at 300mm (450mm on my D90) and, remembering where I  had place it (in the upper left slightly), I then recomposed for the boat shack and made the second exposure using the same lens but set at a wider focal length. Both shots were made on a Manfrotto tripod.

The camera did all of the exposure work for me (halving the exposure for each of the two frames), but I did set the camera to -1 stop of exposure compensation to keep the shot somewhat on the dark side (mainly to hold detail in the moon). I shot the scene in RAW (as always) and adjusted both exposure and color balance a bit during editing.

Fun experiment: In-camera multiple exposures

I haven't post anything here in a long time largely because I've begun writing a new book and so have been spending a lot of time doing research. Also, July was so godawful hot here in New England that I couldn't work in my office (which has no a/c).  I have been shooting a little, mostly experimenting with different creative techniques. The shot here is the result of an in-camera triple exposure of several different bottles and a blue wine glass (shot in natural light on my back porch). The multiple exposures are pretty simple on my Nikon D90--you just set it to the multiple-exposure mode (in the menus) and then tell it how many exposures you're going to make. The camera automatically adjusts the exposure based on the number of exposures you're using to make one frame.

In the old days (film) you had to trick the camera into making in-camera multiples by pressing in the film rewind button so that the film didn't advance when you cocked the shutter and  you had to be bery careful to keep the tension on the film tight or it shifted slightly and  you ended up with overlapping frame. Using digital cameras to make multis is certainly world's easier! All that I did between exposures was to change the composition or zoom the lens or slightly shift my angle of view. This shot is pretty much right out of the camera--that green background color is just the green of my backyard. See if your camera has the mode, it's a blast.