One Reason I “Fake It” In Photoshop
Posted on 23 July 2010
If you’re a shooter and you’ve been to any photography related trade show, you’ve seen LensBabys. They’re a very cool way to create artistic zoom blur effects in camera. Photographers love them and with good reason. More about that in a minute…
I have always been at least a bit of a shutter bug. Not crazy-obsessed. Heck, I don’t think I’d even have qualified as a “passionate” photographer, but I have always been interested and played with photography. In college I took a few photography classes as a part of my communications major because I wanted to go into the advertising business. My earliest focus was on layout and design, and since photography wasn’t digital back then, it required quite a bit more time than I could commit. I had to choose between design and photography. I chose design.
Over the years I was drawn back into photography when digital cameras hit the market. I bought the first 1 megapixel consumer digital camera. I bought the first digital SLR (it was 2.5 megapixels). And I tinkered with them, occasionally capturing images myself and incorporating them into my design work. With the progression of computer technology, just about every profession has been able to do more things more quickly, and with the advent of digital photography and the great leaps there in the past few years, lots of people who had a passing interest in photography could “gear up” and do some serious cool work!
Where I work I’ve been surrounded by some of the best photographers who are also among the best trainers in the world. My interest in photography has been juiced up to the extreme and I could almost qualify as “passionate” about it these days. I see things in composition and light that I’ve never seen before. I have a ton of gear (much of it samples from vendors) and I’m in a great place photographically. When I have any question at all, I can walk down the hall to the desk of some great trainers and ask the pros how they’d handle a particular situation.
With my solid, thorough, 17+ year background in Photoshop, I have had a mentality that if I screwed up a shot, I could just fix it later. With my exposure (no pun intended) to all these great shooters I have not only an appreciation for their camera skills, I am starting to gain the necessary experience to pull off some rather solid shots myself. As a result, these days, my Photoshop “fixes” are just minor tweaks as compared to what I used to have to do. Still, I have some old Photoshop habits that seem tough to kill off (and maybe I don’t want to).
As I mentioned earlier, LensBabys are an artistic special-effect lens you put on your camera to capture artistic images in-camera. As it turns out though, I don’t think I’m natural enough (confident enough) with my camera to be able to use a LensBaby effectively. I actually admire photographers who are so comfortable with their gear and who have shot so many images, that they can pre-visualize how and when a Lens Baby would be good to use. I’m not there yet.
For now I’ll need to shoot images like the palm trees next to the mirrored building I shot in downtown Tampa, and then apply special effects in Photoshop after the fact, to get the special effect zoom blur like the two images on the right. I’ve heard arguments that you don’t need a LensBaby and you can easily replicate the effect in Photoshop if you want, and I’ve heard that pro shooters love LensBabys because they love capturing the artistic effects in camera. While I continue to grow as a photographer, I hope I’ll get good enough to know exactly how and when to use a LensBaby effectively one day. The good news is, in the mean time, at least I know how to use Photoshop well enough to get the finished effect I’m going for.
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2 responses to One Reason I “Fake It” In Photoshop
Larry,
The Lensbaby is like a lot of my gear, I’ve got the whole product line and it usualy just sits on one of the shelves in my office. I use have used it a couple of times and I have the complete kit but I honestly (for me) would have spent my money better in other equipment.
I have seen some photogs do excellent work with a Lensbaby but even with the ease of using them I’m not sure if I will ever use them often (maybe I should try). I don’t use that particular filter much in PS (maybe a few times) but the lensbaby will give it a little bit of the Holga look compared to the filter.
Camera Skills are at the Heart of it all, without them we have no truth.