Photo Fix

     In this post I would now like to go into one of the most valuable and sought after skills that a photographer can possess.  The process that I am referring to is what used to be called airbrushing, or touching-up of facial features.  We’ve all seen the photos of beautiful movie stars and models like Bar Rafaeli on the covers of magazines who appear to have flawless complexions and perfectly toned bodies.  Then some sneaky paparazzi manages to catch them going out to the grocery store or gas station appearing haggard and worn down by life, in other words like the rest of us poor mortals.  For sure makeup and plastic surgery play a tremendous role in this transformation, but these fixes don’t always cover everything up and plastic surgery is a bit drastic, and that is where photographic touch up comes in.
     As I said, years ago photo enhancement and touch up was done by a process called airbrushing which actually entailed the use of a detail paint spray gun that is capable of spraying very fine amounts of photographic dye onto the photo in order to cover up human frailties. This technique was among other things slow, unforgiving of errors, and required an individual with no small amount of artistic talent to do the application.  I don’t know about you but the talent thing would have left me out right off the bat since I have trouble even spelling “artistic talent” much less possessing it.
     Today both professional and amateur shutter bugs have it much easier due to the development of photographic enhancement software.  What used to be called airbrushing is now called the “glamour effect” which sounds so much nicer than airbrushing which brings to mind images of the auto
collision repair business, not photography.  No one wants to look back at their wedding photos and remember that they had a severe attack of acne going on, or that barbeque stain on the brides wedding dress that got there when her husband’s best man spilled a plate of wings on her.  None of these small tragedies need worry you anymore due to the magic of digital imaging and photo enhancement software, too bad too, that clumsy best man might still be alive if you had known that the barbeque stain could be filtered out of the wedding photos.
    The two programs that I like to use the most are again Corel Paintshop Pro, and Adobe Photoshop Elements.  Both are capable of amazing results when you know what filter to apply, for instance Photoshop has a “Spot Healing Brush Tool” that does an amazing job on blemishes, scars, acne, or any other skin malady.  Paintshop Pro has the same kind of tool which they call “Scratch Remover” under the clone brush tool icon.  Maybe I am just not used to Photoshop, because for quick touch up and overall settings I much prefer Paintshop Pro.  For one thing it has overall control elements like skin smoothing, noise removal, fill light and clarity, vibrancy, and numerous other camera type controls that are geared more to the overall enhancement of photos.
     One more thing to consider is the price of course.  For the time being Corel is still selling its products at a fixed price, which in most cases is quite reasonable.  Adobe on the other hand has moved into the Clouds, and I mean that literally, as far as I can tell adobe products like Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, Lightroom, and Premier are moving away from retail pricing to monthly cloud fees (which like a visit from your mother-in-law) go on forever and all your work is conducted on the Adobe servers.  While this type of access appeals to some, I really don’t care for it since it requires you to be connected to the internet in order to work, and besides that not always being possible, it also opens your private computer to hacking if the host gets hacked.
     Whatever program you decide to use as always take the time to learn it to the best of your ability, you might try video servers like Youtube, and Vimeo where a wealth of tutorials can be found.    

Summit Point Raceway

     One of the great benefits of living in Western Maryland for a motorcycle enthusiast is West Virginia, well that is the great rural roads and one of my favorite places to kill an sunny afternoon, “Summit Point Raceway.”  Summit Point is really comprised of three race courses, the Summit Point Circuit, the Shenandoah Circuit, and the Jefferson Circuit.  The only two circuits that I have experience with are the Summit Point and Shenandoah courses, which are where the “Motorcycle Excitement Program” is held.  Motorcycle Excitement is a track day event held for novices, intermediates, and expert riders of sport bikes to practice at the track facilities.  It normally lasts two days and is a great way for riders of varying abilities to hone their skills or just have the fun of riding your motorcycle at high speed without the fear of losing their license.  FYI, if you intend to take part in the event remember your bike must pass a safety check, you must have the proper riding gear for racing, and it’s not exactly cheap with prices starting at around $200 and going up depending on your needs.
     For old farts like me, it’s just a great excuse to be around the racing experience without having to risk my old and slow healing bones out on the track.  Best of all admission is free for spectators and the atmosphere is relaxed.  Rider safety is the primary goal at these events and track officials who stay in constant contact with each other and the race coordinator are posted at frequent intervals along the course.  Ambulances and attendants are on hand in case of injury, which regrettably does happen from time to time, and racing is suspended if there is no ambulance available.
     The novice class is restricted to what they can and cannot do for safety’s sake and they are accompanied by one of the instructors while on the course who limits their speed and oversees their safety.  The intermediate class riders are given quite a bit more freedom with only minor restrictions placed on them, again to ensure their safety.  The expert class (where you get to see some pretty good riding) has very little restriction and many of these riders are there to practice for upcoming sanctioned races that they will be competing in.  There is also a very cool orientation lap where everyone even the non-participants are invited to be led through the course at a moderate speed (apparently the instructors consider 80 mph a moderate speed) to become familiar with the track.
     Summit point is also home to BSR incorporated which offers training for Police Forces, The US Military, United States Government Agencies, and over 40 foreign government law enforcement services.  The courses include anti-terrorism driving
techniques, accident avoidance, driver proficiency, and firearms instructions which all takes place on their 755 acre complex.  They even recently hosted the Dodge Corporation for a filming of a
commercial featuring Dodge’s new docile family sedan otherwise known as the “Hellcat.”
     Summit Point Raceway is located 7.7 miles from the heart of Charles Town, WV on Route 13 west, near the Village of Summit Point, and just 7.6 miles east of Clearbrook, Virginia which is located at exit 321 off Interstate 81.  If you like motorcycle or sports car racing then Summit Point is a great place for you to visit, they are easy to get to via  scenic rural back roads.  And who knows maybe you can learn to outdrive terrorists, avoid accidents, or fire an automatic weapon if you have the inclination.
       
         
     
   

Altering depth of field

     To most amateur photographers one of the most baffling controls found on a SLR camera is the aperture setting.  Aperture is really the camera’s way of interpreting the preferred depth of field or more simply put, the distance from 0 to infinity where you want your image to be in focus.  It always amazes me that people will buy a thousand dollar camera and never bother to set it to anything other than the automatic mode and leave it there.  Granted I set my camera on stop action while I am moving around because photographic moments happen very quickly and stop action or the sports setting allows you to snap shoot.  You don’t have time to be fiddling with a bunch of settings while the rare double breasted, red crowned, inverted Booby Nut Hatch lands on your girlfriends head.  You have to act fast because Booby Nut Hatches just don’t have a long attention span, not to mention your girlfriend is exhibiting signs of hysteria and screaming “get this thing off me you idiot!’
     But occasionally we photographers are afforded the luxury of having a subject that will stand still while we try every conceivable camera setting we can think of in search of that award winning photo.  That brings us to the aperture setting, varying the aperture will bring one point in the distance into focus while leaving the objects closer or farther away blurry.  By doing this we can draw attention to the intended
subject we want to showcase.  Warning:  In some cases this might or might not be a good thing especially when you become so intent on getting that great shot you forget to tell your fishing buddy that he might want to throw that trout he just caught over his shoulder for good luck.  Which reminds me of just how touchy some of my friends are about how long I take to get everything just right, some people have no appreciation for the artistic process.
     Now let’s say that your reputation for the time it takes you to depress the shutter button has frightened off all your prospective subjects.  Not to worry because due to the miracle of computer photo enhancement you can use one of the high speed selections on the camera and still add depth of field latter on!  If you are careful and don’t get carried away with the amount of blur you use onl
y a real professional will be able to tell the difference between natural aperture focus and computer rendered effect.  Depending on the Photo Enhancement software you have chosen the process of creating false depth of field in your image will vary.  Most will give you a choice of applying a preset shape or tracing a custom shape using a selection tool.  I have used Corel Paintshop Pro 7 to create the effects you see in the photos that I downloaded from the web.
     In the case of the fishing image we have used the depth of field feature
effect to create an unrealistic blurring of the background in order to disguise the presence of the bear.  This kind of overuse of the effect is a great example of how too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, but I included it as a weak attempt at humor, okay so it was very weak.  Now on the other hand as can be seen in the photo of the scandalously dressed bathing beauty with the rocky coastline in the background we have blurred the coastline and thereby focused the viewer’s attention on the vixen with the umbrella.  So you can see that with the help of image enhancement software you can change the focal point of a photo to steer your viewers interest in a direction of your choosing.  By the way the photo of the young lady in the swim suit was an ad for a primitive but effective sun screen product, they called it clothes.      
         
     
   

The Battle of Loudoun Heights

     You won’t find any movies made about the Battle of Loudoun Heights, and I only know of a few books that even mention it.  As far as Civil War Battles go it could really only be considered a skirmish, but its outcome proved to be pivotal in the downfall of what was called Mosby’s Confederacy.  The battle took place on January 1, 1864 on a rocky slope just south of the Potomac River about 2 miles from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia at
approximately 3 am in

the morning.  Cole’s Cavalry was led by Major Henry A. Cole who enlisted recruits from Frederick, Maryland and the surrounding area.  They were stationed at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia but rarely spent any time there.  For the most part they spent long days and nights in the saddle trying to fulfill their primary mission which was to seek out and destroy John Singleton Mosby and his irregulars.
     The official designation for Mosby’s unit was the  43rd Battalion, 1st Virginia Cavalry but they were more commonly known as Mosby’s Rangers or Mosby’s Raiders.  Historians still debate the status of Mosby and his men, those leaning towards Confederate sympathies insist that Mosby’s force was technically a ranger unit made up of local volunteers.  Unionist scholars make the argument that since his men disbanded and returned to their civilian occupations in between raids they should be classified as guerillas who operated outside the control of organized Confederate command.  In either case, it did not seem to have much bearing on the fact that Cole’s Cavalry almost without exception came out on the losing end whenever the two units met in battle.
     Ostensibly Mosby decided to attack Cole at his camp on Loudoun Heights and put an end to his pursuer in answer to a recent raid made by Cole that penetrated deep into Mosby’s Confederacy.  Mosby, aka “The Grey Ghost” interpreted this action as a personal affront and decided to take revenge.  Mosby planned to execute a rare night attack on Cole's Headquarters with the object being to capture the Union Major and shoot the soldiers in his command while they slept in their tents.  This was a poor decision on Mosby’s part since it served little purpose other than convincing the Union Command that Mosby should be dealt with more forcefully.  Fortunately for Cole'
s Cavalry neither part of the plan succeeded.  Colonel Cole awoke at the sound of someone forcing their way into his headquarters, slipped out the window and ran to the camp where he began rallying his troops.  While Cole was making his way to the camp the sleeping troopers were awoken by the sound of firing and hastily formed a makeshift defensive line.  The Union officers soon realized that all Mosby’s force were mounted on horseback and began giving the orders to fire at anyone who was mounted.
     For about forty-five minutes a firefight raged until Mosby decided that he was in a bad position.  He could hear the bugle calls of other Union Cavalry units stationed in the area who had heard the firing and were coming to Cole’s aid.  Although the casualties were about the same for both sides, Mosby had lost many of his officers including the wounding of his brother “Willie.”
     For their efforts Cole’s Cavalry won many accolades and Cole himself was promoted to Colonel.  Both the progress of the war and the effects of losing so many of his best officers left Mosby no choice but to assume a more defensive posture for the remainder of the war.  Following this fight the term “Mosby’s Confederacy” could no longer be applied to the Northern Virginia Counties.  I have a personal interest in the “Battle of Loudoun Heights” since my great, great, great, grandfather William Aschemeier was a Sergeant in Company A of Cole’s Cavalry and helped to defeat the “Grey Ghost” and his men on that dark cold night on Loudoun Heights, and it was his greatest source of pride for the rest of his life.

Profit from your photos!

     In this post I want to touch again on the ways to get your photography business off the ground.  First of all photography for profit is something that is sought by many, but found by few, that is to say “it ain’t easy.”  Many a photographer with exceptional talent has languished in obscurity due to their failure to observe one basic principal, sell the public what they want, before you try to sell them
what you think they should want.  In other words search out the preferences of the buyer and exploit those segments of the market to your benefit.  Not all of us can be lucky enough to get that once in a lifetime shot like the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on VJ Day 1945.
     Playing on people’s ego is a great way to make money with your photographs, some of the target groups that I have exploited in the past include baby photos, custom automobile photos, flowers, and sports events.  But before we get started all of this information is predicated on the fact that you have purchased a wide format (13X19) printer and learned how to correct and enhance your images, and then mat, back and shrink wrap your finished product.  Everyone takes photos now and a great many people print them, but very few know how to make them frame ready, and that is where the money can be made.
     The very first way I made money with my camera was to go to local car shows carrying my camera and a couple of examples of matted and backed car photos that I showed to potential customers.  These guys and girls take tons of photos of their cars but rarely go to the next level of having them made frame ready.  If you can show them how great their car would look hanging on the living room or den wall by showing them a good looking example the sale almost makes itself.  If they have a favorite photo they have taken of their car but don’t have it with them, you can always give them a card with your email address on it and have them send it to you electronically.  It’s always a good idea to get their email address also (if they are willing) for future marketing purposes.  A good way to convince them to give you their email address is to take a picture of their car and offer to enhance it and then send them a copy of the finished image by email.
     Another great place to offer frame ready prints is a flower show.  Flower photos can be of multi-value, they not only appeal to the owner of the flower, but also to decorators, or anyone looking for a colorful wall print to hang on their wall.  This is a great cross over market and the fee for setting up a small booth at a local flower show is usually the cheapest form of advertising that you will find anywhere.  Setting up a small booth at one of these shows can be of untold benefit to your business and don’t forget to have an example or two of things like baby photos, or a local sports scene.  I have found that you can generate instant business by attending small shows but perhaps even more important future customers that will want prints made.
     Summing things up, photography is a discipline that almost demands that you start small or at the bottom and work your way up.  Becoming a financially successful photographer is a lot like trying to become a movie star by being discovered while working as a waiter or waitress in a Hollywood restaurant, it might happen, it did for Lana Turner, but I wouldn’t bank on it.  Hard work, perseverance, and a thick skin is a much more workable approach.      
   

Where Eagles Fly

     One of my favorite rides is up old Route 17 in Washington County, Maryland to the town of Smithsburg.  From there I take Maryland Route 77 up and over the mountain to where Fort Ritchie was and the area known as Pen Mar.  The Fort was closed and its operations were moved to Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland in 1998.  Fort Ritchie was constructed in 1942 and served as a training center for military intelligence operatives, but the really interesting history of the area begins long before the Army decided to locate there.
     In 1878 the head of the Western Maryland Railway, General John Mifflin Hood decided to build a resort on property near there and connect it with a rail line.  The Generals idea was to generate tourism for his financially suffering railroad by creating a summertime retreat in the Pennsylvania-Maryland mountains, and
appropriately name it Pen Mar.  Soon an amusement park, artificial lake, and grand hotel
named the “Blue Mountain” were built.  There were also over a hundred smaller boarding houses started that served heat stricken city dwellers who flocked to the 1400 foot mountain in search of relief.  In its heyday Pen Mar boasted over one million visitors per year.
     One of the most popular attractions at Pen Mar was the wooden observation tower built atop the mountain on an outcropping known as “High Rock.”  The view from the observation tower was breathtaking not to mention the cool refreshing breezes that sweep over the mountaintop during summer evenings.  Sadly, rail travel declined sharply with the advent of the automobile and Pen Mar entered a downward spiral towards oblivion.  In 1913 tragedy was narrowly avoided when the 300 room “Blue Mountain Hotel” caught fire and bur
ned to the ground miraculously without any loss of life.  This was truly amazing since the “Blue Mountain” was built out of Georgia Pine, a wood which is known for its ability to resist rot and insect infestation, but unfortunately is only slightly less volatile than gasoline.
   
Today Washington County maintains a public park on the site of the old Pen Mar resort boasting a multipurpose pavilion that features live music and dances on most Sundays during the summer.  There is a road that still snakes its way up the mountainside to a rock outcropping called High Rock.  High Rock is still a popular destination for view seekers, motorcyclists, and last but not least, hang glider enthusiasts.  There is no written schedule but on any given weekend when the weather is clear and the wind is blowing more than fifteen miles per hour you will probably find dozens of glider pilots waiting their turn on the rock to take that great leap of faith.
     I have gone there on several occasions to watch the men and women that apparently love the feeling of soaring through the crisp mountain air on artificial wings made from aluminum and sailcloth.  Like soaring birds they float on rising air currents driven by the fields below, and to these brave souls I say, “you gotta be crazy.”  In order to fly from High Rock you have to strap into you glider, then walk up the giant man made rock to the launch point where you stand with your toes gripping the edge of the precipice and wait for the wind which is by now trying to blow your kite everywhere except in the correct direction to attain the fifteen mph required takeoff speed.  Not to worry though if you accidentally slip off the edge it’s only a mere hundred foot drop straight down to certain death on the rocks below.
     Now you would think that the glider pilots are the crazy ones, but oh contraire, you see because the wind tries to blow the pilots off the rock before they get airborne, four or five escaped inmates from the local sanatorium stand on the edges of the rock in order to help steady the glider.  No safety harness, no net except a small one directly in front of and under the pilot, and no rail to hang on to.  All this while the glider is trying to launch you over the side of the cliff in order to measure how high you will bounce when you hit the bottom!  All I can say to these brave men and women that pursue this elegant and majestic sport is, “more power to you friends.”
     

The Cloning Tool

      So what is a cloning tool and how can it help me to make money with my photographs?  The cloning tool, or cloning stamp for Photoshop users is probably the most important tool in the photo editing arsenal of weapons.  Simply put cloning is copying a portion of a photo and then overlaying it to some other location on that photo.  Everyone, even the most talented of photographers will occasionally take a photo that has an unwanted element in it, for example your son holds up the rabbit ears behind the head of someone you would rather not make mad, or vacation photos that contain a significant other that isn’t so significant anymore.  Whatever the reason with a little time and knowledge of how the clone tool works you can remove the most unwanted offenders without anyone being the wiser.  Of course we are proposing ludicrous examples in order to prove the value of the clone tool, but in the real world of photo correction it really is absolutely essential to success.
     In this Gopro photo that I took on the Potomac River just above Hancock, Maryland you will notice that the bow of my kayak and the tip of my fishing rod are showing at the bottom of the image.  Now that might be fine if the image was going into a fishing or kayak ad, but maybe not so fine for say an article on the effects of increased recreational travel on secluded rivers.
     To use the cloning tool I merely select (usually a right mouse click) the portion of the river that I want of copy and apply it over the area of the image that I want to hide.  In Corel Photopaint or Paintshop Pro you hold down the left mouse button and move it over the area to be hidden.  You will now notice that the area that you right clicked mirrors the movement of the area you have left clicked. In the example photo below you can see that the bottom circle with the crosshair denotes the area which is to be copied, while the empty circle at the top defines the area where the copied image will be placed.  In the Corel products as long as you hold down on the left mouse button it will keep copying and transferring the image, in Photoshop it is handled a little differently, more or less in the same way you would use a rubber stamp.

     Whether you use Corel, Photoshop, or any other editing or paint program you will always be given a menu in which you can choose the size, shape, pressure or density, edge blur, opacity, and in some cases thickness.  These menu choices are tremendously important, because you will not always want to transfer the area to be copied at a 1:1 rate as this will usually show up as an obviously altered area on the photo, kind of like cutting out a piece of the image with a pair of scissors and pasting it somewhere else, it would stick out like the proverbial “sore thumb.”
     With a little practice you will become proficient in the use of this tool.  And as I said previously it ca
n come in very hand when dealing with retouching images, especially portrait images.

Iron Guns, and Men of Steel

     In 1974 a board game titled “Wooden Ships and Iron Men” was introduced by Battleline Publications.  The title was an obvious reference to the fact that the men who sailed the 18th and 19th century wooden warships were made of stern stuff.  I whole heartedly agree, but I do take exception to the term “men.”   I am sure it should have read “men, women, children, and maybe even small pets.  During the Middle Ages
most of humanity was content to grovel to and serve the needs of the spoiled aristocracy, and   dictatorial church with little hope of advancement in conditions.  All that changed though with the coming of The Age of Exploration,  No sir-re Billy Bob, these were dyed in the wool independent expansionists intent on conquering anything that came within their site or reach.
     Today if a man has to mow his own lawn, or his wife has to do her own nails they feel as though life is being cruel and unjust to them.  We forget that life following the Middle Ages was a pure and simple matter of survival, you either got tough or died!  Now don’t get me wrong, these people knew that their life was a crap shoot at best but instead of going “ Oh me what will I do” they sought to create empires (granted, usually at the expense of some less developed group that they considered uncivilized) from the untamed wilderness.  They didn’t let little things like hunger, physical anguish, and death keep them from attaining their dreams and goals, they just spit in the Devil’s eye and kept going.
     I think a perfect example of this occurred during the Civil War near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, when following the Battle of Antietam General George McClellan ordered that a 30 pounder Parrott Rifle (30 pounds being the weight of the projectile) to be placed on Maryland Heights to afford protection to the town of Harpers Ferry and area around Loudoun Heights.  Later on Robert E. Lee threatened the area again on his way to Gettysburg in 1863 and another Army Official determined that a the 30 pounder Parrott Rifle should be replaced with a 100 p
ounder Parrott Rifle.
     Now for those of you unfamiliar with Civil War artillery the term 100 pounder Parrott Rifle really doesn’t sound very impressive.  Well maybe this will impress you, a 100 pounder Parrott Rifle barrel weighs almost ten thousand pounds.  Still not impressed?  How about the fact that the trail to the top of Maryland Heights ascends 1200 feet in less than two miles?  Or that the path to the top of the Heights which is made up of solid rock, had to be widened and improved in order to accommodate the guns added size. And lastly the fact that mules were in short supply by this point in the war meant that all the hauling, pulling, and lifting had to be done by soldiers.
     To put it into perspective imagine someone ordering you to haul a full grown elephant sitting on a sled to the top of a mountain over a road way that barely existed using only hand tools and determination.  That is that task that befell the 500 men of the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery.  If any of you who read this post have ever climbed the trail to the top of Maryland Heights as I have you would say that this can’t be true, but history assures us that it is.  So the next time you hear the term “Wooden Ships and Iron Men” think about the story of the 100 pounder gun and what kind of men it took move that ten-thousand pound gun to the top of a mountain with their bare hands.

P.S.  To add insult to injury at the end of the war the Army ordered the gun to be brought back down!