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Bill Pador > "X-Ray Alien" details best viewed @ X-Large First I'd like to Thank You all for the wonderful response to yesterdays smoke art piece & step by step I did. I'm glad that so many of you enjoyed it & were interested in the instructions and possibly trying this technique out, it is after all a lot of fun and pretty simple to do once you do it once. I just wanted to clear up the concern about using 2 lights, you do NOT need to use 2 off camera lights for this, you can use a single with great results. I had done this with one flash until now without any problems & just added the 2nd to try something new, you just replace the second flash with a reflector piece opposite the flash unit pointing some light back into the set so you get the 3D effect of the light bouncing off the rear of the smoke and your golden. For Nikon users with the iTTL Creative wireless flash system you can also use 1 off camera flash and then utilize your pop up flash unit on the camera set at a low power instead of just using it as a master / trigger to fill in the front of the smoke as well. Any questions fire away and I'll assist you. I did another piece tonight using 4 different smoke shots that I duplicated, flipped, layered & blended together, using the same techniques as yesterdays. This one turned out really cool creating several ALIEN faces & 1 whole alien figure in the middle looking like he's doing jumping jacks. Look behind & under him and you'll see several more alien faces staring straight at you. View this at X-Large to see all the details in this one guys, it's really cool IMO and what you see is ALL SMOKE as shot, nothing has been manipulated besides the colors and some minor dodging & burning to bring out some of the depth in certain areas. I only spent about 30 minutes from start to finish so as you can see it's not a huge project and can be done quite quickly. "HERE'S THE BEGINING OF THIS PIECE" If you'd like to see what the raw beginings of this image look like I placed the raw images as a small collage in my Extras gallery so you have an idea of how simple this starts off as and what a little work in CS3 can do to create an artistic piece. SEE RAW IMAGES CLICK HERE "MY Nikon SB-900 SpeedLight Review is Complete & Posted" You can check it out on my blog located here: http://billpadorphoto.blogspot.com/ ~. . . Enjoy the read & the music !~ Have a Great Hump Day (Wed.) folks your half way to the weekend ! ~Bill~
Bill Pador > "Heart of Smoke" Best Viewed @ XLarge Good Monday folks, I hope all of you who celebrate Easter had a wonderful holiday with your families, ate some good food and enjoyed the company of others. Today was a very good day for me pain wise and I felt like a million bucks, so I felt like playing around with my new flash the mighty SB-900 and wanted to play with duel off camera flash. In doing so I went back to one of my favorite hobbies and that is playing with SMOKE Art. This piece was conceived almost immediately upon shooting this frame, as soon as I saw the raw shot in the LCD I knew it was going to be a HEART just by the half shape I saw emerge in the LCD. Kinda looks like one of those crystal displays that light up only in 3D don't ya think ? The last time I did one of my smoke creations I received a ton of emails asking me HOW to do it, so today I present a basic step-by-step for those interested in trying this fun project: "The Process & Layout" This shot is actually one frame that I duplicated and flipped horizontally on a separate layer using screen mode to blend it to make the final image. So imagine HALF of it down the middle and that's what the original raw shot looked like. Then I took my own technique I've developed to change the colors of the smoke and came up with this color scheme to highlight the heart in the middle with a small flame at the top as if lit like a candle, like a heart on fire. "The Set Up & Execution" The lighting setup consisted of the SB-900 in front of the camera at 5 O'clock facing 11 O'clock tilted upward at 45' using the wide angle diffuser and bounce card engaged set as a slave unit @ 1/80th power with a black background to the rear. On the other side was a SB-600 same settings pointed at 2 O'clock bunch card & wide angle diffuser @ 1/80th power. My D300 pop up flash was set as the Master TTL unit set only as a Master unit with no flash engaged to set off the SB600 & 900. 2 DIY reflectors made of tin foil on card board were placed in the far corners of the set to reflect a small amount of light back into the scene to create the 3D effect in the smoke. Smoke was generated from 2 small incense sticks directly below the lens dead center approx. 12" from the lens. When doing this technique I recommend that you MANUAL focus on the Incense STICK then adjust your lens just above it. The camera is set on a tripod along with using a wired trigger so I can concentrate on watching the smoke come up with both eyes and setting it off when I see a shape developed with the smoke and then firing, Camera settings are SS=1/80th @ f/10 ISO 640 zoomed to 75mm, be sure to use your lens hood to prevent lens flair since the flash is so close and to the side.. "Some Finishing Tips" You may have to adjust your focus after seeing how sharp or soft you want the smoke to look. I also recommend that you do this in a SMALL area that does not have any wind what so ever so the smoke rises as straight up as possible. I do this in my studio with large 3' x 2' card board slats on each side and I block the bottom of both office doors with some towels to keep any breeze from the house out because ANY breeze even the slightest will make things rough and screw your smoke up. Once you have smoke layers blended you then select an area, create HUE & SATURATION layer and adjust for the colors you want then merge the layers after each color adjustment. Then I use the Smudge tool to blend any harsh lines where the colors meet using a low opacity and many passes to make the blend natural looking. I've created a SET DIAGRAM on HOW TO Layout your set to shoot smoke art CLICK HERE TO VIEW If anyone has any questions about using this technique yourself please feel free to post or email them to me, I'd be happy to help. It's a lot of fun guys so give it a try ! ~Bill~
Bill Pador > This is a simple diagram of how I lay out the set for shooting my Smoke Art creations one of which can be SEEN BY CLICKING HERE with full instructions, settings and set lay out. Best Regards, ~Bill~
Bill Pador > "Photo of the Day" April '09 photo
Bill Pador > "Photo of the Day" April '09 photo
Bill Pador > "THE SNOWY CABIN" DESCRIPTION: A Peaceful Snow Covered Cabin sits along a tree lined river bank (*click on image to enlarge details & make pricing available)
Bill Pador > "Glowing Crystal Glass" Well I felt it time I get back to my artistic roots today instead of a plain old photo image and have a little fun. I wanted to use a simple item to create an colorful art deco abstract & have the finished piece to have some color, depth & height to it giving it a feel of being in a tunnel or black hole on acid LOL. What you are looking at is a simple macro shot of a Blue Stem wine glass which I sat on top of a multi colored light stand and shot it at 90' directly over the top looking down. The colors you see have NOT been manipulated what so ever and is as they came out of the camera, the outer edge has been blurred using FOCAL POINT to add some artistic depth and to bring the eye toward the center of the shot, leaving the center sharp & in tact. The black area between the 2 is the dead space around the glass where the light did not diffract or carry through the glass. Next step was to create an artistic frame to add more depth to the shot and create a art deco finish to the piece. This was accomplished using Photo Tools and creating a simple grey 2D box frame and then adding a slight white glow to the edges and then a slim black line to border it giving it a 3D effect and some height. Next was to add the slim red line around the frame and then a 10 pixel black border. Finishing up using 'Pro Frames 3' I went in and used a simple edge frame and blurred it almost 90% using white as the color outline which created the marbleizing effect you see. This had to be done 4 times rotating the effect 90' each application until the marble effect was all the way around the frame. There you have it, using a simple wine glass & cheap $5.00 4 Color LED light stand, a few photoshop plug ins and a little imagination & creativity I give you a pretty cool Abstract Art Deco Piece I'll call the GLOWING CRYSTAL GLASS ! LOL
Bill Pador > I wanted to do something different with a sunset tonight so I played around making this one a little different by adding an artificial fog cover and then lifting it off the page with a gradient background, drop shadow and ghost frame. I adjusted the contrast & curve, did some selective dodging & burning and a few other touch ups to finish this one off. Have a happy hump day (Wed.) everyone! ~Bill~
Bill Pador > When I went to the banks mac machine I was given all BRAND NEW Crisp 20 dollar bills that had never been used before. So I figured they were so nice and flat I would do something with them. I took a bunch of cool abstract shots of them and decided to post this one for today's POD. This image is a triple exposure of 20's that were laid out on top of each other and then the camera rotated around the stack in different angels to wind up with this cool ghost image. A black border & then ghost frame was added to complete the effect. It was shot hand held using my Tamron 90mm Di f/2.8 Macro lens, natural room light at ISO 1250 f/8 1/25 SS. PS: John Murphy (300m) wanted me to tell you all that he is in Disney World and has been trying to comment on your photos but is having trouble with the internet access because it doesn't allow cookies to be placed on his lap top and can not stay signed in. So you may have comments with GUEST appearing or just 300m, so that is John trying to make his way around your sites. I speak to him every day and he is having a wonderful time. Have a great day everyone, ~Bill~

"X-Ray Alien"


details best viewed @ X-Large

First I'd like to Thank You all for the wonderful response to yesterdays smoke art piece & step by step I did. I'm glad that so many of you enjoyed it & were interested in the instructions and possibly trying this technique out, it is after all a lot of fun and pretty simple to do once you do it once. I just wanted to clear up the concern about using 2 lights, you do NOT need to use 2 off camera lights for this, you can use a single with great results. I had done this with one flash until now without any problems & just added the 2nd to try something new, you just replace the second flash with a reflector piece opposite the flash unit pointing some light back into the set so you get the 3D effect of the light bouncing off the rear of the smoke and your golden. For Nikon users with the iTTL Creative wireless flash system you can also use 1 off camera flash and then utilize your pop up flash unit on the camera set at a low power instead of just using it as a master / trigger to fill in the front of the smoke as well. Any questions fire away and I'll assist you.

I did another piece tonight using 4 different smoke shots that I duplicated, flipped, layered & blended together, using the same techniques as yesterdays. This one turned out really cool creating several ALIEN faces & 1 whole alien figure in the middle looking like he's doing jumping jacks. Look behind & under him and you'll see several more alien faces staring straight at you. View this at X-Large to see all the details in this one guys, it's really cool IMO and what you see is ALL SMOKE as shot, nothing has been manipulated besides the colors and some minor dodging & burning to bring out some of the depth in certain areas. I only spent about 30 minutes from start to finish so as you can see it's not a huge project and can be done quite quickly.

"HERE'S THE BEGINING OF THIS PIECE"
If you'd like to see what the raw beginings of this image look like I placed the raw images as a small collage in my Extras gallery so you have an idea of how simple this starts off as and what a little work in CS3 can do to create an artistic piece.
SEE RAW IMAGES CLICK HERE

"MY Nikon SB-900 SpeedLight Review is Complete & Posted"

You can check it out on my blog located here: http://billpadorphoto.blogspot.com/ ~. . . Enjoy the read & the music !~

Have a Great Hump Day (Wed.) folks your half way to the weekend !
~Bill~
Bill Pador > "X-Ray Alien" details best viewed @ X-Large First I'd like to Thank You all for the wonderful response to yesterdays smoke art piece & step by step I did. I'm glad that so many of you enjoyed it & were interested in the instructions and possibly trying this technique out, it is after all a lot of fun and pretty simple to do once you do it once. I just wanted to clear up the concern about using 2 lights, you do NOT need to use 2 off camera lights for this, you can use a single with great results. I had done this with one flash until now without any problems & just added the 2nd to try something new, you just replace the second flash with a reflector piece opposite the flash unit pointing some light back into the set so you get the 3D effect of the light bouncing off the rear of the smoke and your golden. For Nikon users with the iTTL Creative wireless flash system you can also use 1 off camera flash and then utilize your pop up flash unit on the camera set at a low power instead of just using it as a master / trigger to fill in the front of the smoke as well. Any questions fire away and I'll assist you. I did another piece tonight using 4 different smoke shots that I duplicated, flipped, layered & blended together, using the same techniques as yesterdays. This one turned out really cool creating several ALIEN faces & 1 whole alien figure in the middle looking like he's doing jumping jacks. Look behind & under him and you'll see several more alien faces staring straight at you. View this at X-Large to see all the details in this one guys, it's really cool IMO and what you see is ALL SMOKE as shot, nothing has been manipulated besides the colors and some minor dodging & burning to bring out some of the depth in certain areas. I only spent about 30 minutes from start to finish so as you can see it's not a huge project and can be done quite quickly. "HERE'S THE BEGINING OF THIS PIECE" If you'd like to see what the raw beginings of this image look like I placed the raw images as a small collage in my Extras gallery so you have an idea of how simple this starts off as and what a little work in CS3 can do to create an artistic piece. SEE RAW IMAGES CLICK HERE "MY Nikon SB-900 SpeedLight Review is Complete & Posted" You can check it out on my blog located here: http://billpadorphoto.blogspot.com/ ~. . . Enjoy the read & the music !~ Have a Great Hump Day (Wed.) folks your half way to the weekend ! ~Bill~

"X-Ray Alien"


details best viewed @ X-Large

First I'd like to Thank You all for the wonderful response to yesterdays smoke art piece & step by step I did. I'm glad that so many of you enjoyed it & were interested in the instructions and possibly trying this technique out, it is after all a lot of fun and pretty simple to do once you do it once. I just wanted to clear up the concern about using 2 lights, you do NOT need to use 2 off camera lights for this, you can use a single with great results. I had done this with one flash until now without any problems & just added the 2nd to try something new, you just replace the second flash with a reflector piece opposite the flash unit pointing some light back into the set so you get the 3D effect of the light bouncing off the rear of the smoke and your golden. For Nikon users with the iTTL Creative wireless flash system you can also use 1 off camera flash and then utilize your pop up flash unit on the camera set at a low power instead of just using it as a master / trigger to fill in the front of the smoke as well. Any questions fire away and I'll assist you.

I did another piece tonight using 4 different smoke shots that I duplicated, flipped, layered & blended together, using the same techniques as yesterdays. This one turned out really cool creating several ALIEN faces & 1 whole alien figure in the middle looking like he's doing jumping jacks. Look behind & under him and you'll see several more alien faces staring straight at you. View this at X-Large to see all the details in this one guys, it's really cool IMO and what you see is ALL SMOKE as shot, nothing has been manipulated besides the colors and some minor dodging & burning to bring out some of the depth in certain areas. I only spent about 30 minutes from start to finish so as you can see it's not a huge project and can be done quite quickly.

"HERE'S THE BEGINING OF THIS PIECE"
If you'd like to see what the raw beginings of this image look like I placed the raw images as a small collage in my Extras gallery so you have an idea of how simple this starts off as and what a little work in CS3 can do to create an artistic piece.
SEE RAW IMAGES CLICK HERE

"MY Nikon SB-900 SpeedLight Review is Complete & Posted"

You can check it out on my blog located here: http://billpadorphoto.blogspot.com/ ~. . . Enjoy the read & the music !~

Have a Great Hump Day (Wed.) folks your half way to the weekend !
~Bill~
See photo in gallery
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Bill Pador Photography is a Member 'Professional Photographers Association of America' & 'National Association of Photoshop Professionals' Specializing in Weddings - Sweet 16 Parties - Portraits
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