Unemployed Ben

Blogging is an art and I’ve never been all that artistic, I think it was all the drugs my mother did. This has been a strange week for me as I have been sleeping the exact opposite as pretty much everyone I know, people call and either get me sending them to voice mail or a groggy version of myself pretending to be sick to they will leave me alone. Luckily my circle of friends has been getting lower and lower since my retirement, so only a few calls have interrupted my ugly sleep.

Speaking of sleep, my patterns have been a little out of whack due to some tossing and turning I did for two days that left me exhausted. Ive been on some new drugs and they have left me pretty much wasted the past few days and its all 100% legal, my back still hurts but I care less about it. In relation to drugs Ive come to realize that this generation rarely has a true emotion as everyone I seem to know is on something or the other. This might be a direct correlation to our political climate, either people are really angry or seemingly comatose. This might actually describe every emotion Ive ever had, you see I am a boring person with a rage problem.

The one thing about drugs though is you tend to live month to month or as long as the prescription runs and with schedule two’s you have to get an actual paper prescription to get a refill, so you actually have to go to the dr for a so called exam. Now I am sure this law has something to do with the safety of patients but I am sure dr’s aren’t complaining with the increase in visits resulting in even more vacation homes. But the one draw back is trying to get an appt with a new doc, this is now something that takes months and months to do. My newest physiatrist took over 4 months to see and when I got there it was pretty much, take all these new drugs and see you in 60 days. The appt was about 15 min and that includes waiting for her to show up, if it wasn’t for a diagram of a spine on the door I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was a dr’s office.

What does this all mean? Pretty much that my life consists of drugs, pain, Phd’s, and some 10 am dinners. This makes me a sad figure but what the hell its now almost December so things could be worse, I could be working for a living and thus be forced to buy presents for tons of family members. However with my visit to Turkey day my family is now well aware of my broke-atude and hopefully will have pity on a man with a smaller heart than wallet. Actually it wasnt so bad as my bro brought a killer anti-pasto plate so it wasn’t all things with marshmallows on top of things, I mean haven’t we grown past the casserole phase of humanity?

On another note I had to give up my BlackBerry and move to AT&T, so I am struggling with the T-9 text for the past 6 weeks or so and to be honest it kinda sucks. I also dont dig the expensive monthly charges associated with a retail plan but hey we can’t use our friends who work at T-Mobile forever right? Actually if any of my friends still read this I would be willing to go back and then you’ll have the cache of having a T-Bone on your account, trust me when the ladies hear this you’ll be getting boy bad ass.

There is a lot of debate in the world of photography about what is the hardest picture to take, some swear that sports photography is the most difficult and its hard to challenge that theory except for the fact sports photographers have the greatest and most up to date equipment. So for my money I think the portrait is the most difficult picture to take and for one main reason, it is incredibly hard to capture that moment that defines an individual.

The uniqueness of the subject is near impossible to capture as they have their guard up and tend to be stiff. Add to this the various issues of fake smiles, closed eyes, uncooperative kids and you have a shooters nightmare. Even in the best of circumstances you can take a great photo of a subject that genuinely has a beautiful smile but has a complexion problem that detracts from the photo. Most customers don’t come to a photographer to see their acne accentuated for all to see, they want the Cosmo look but aren’t willing to pay for it.

Correcting facial blemishes issues on a close-up portrait photo can be a time consuming and frustrating process that often ends up in a plastic look and an end result that is less than ideal. There are many options out there for professional cameras but they come at professional prices that can be more expensive than PhotoShop itself. Fashion photographers don’t hesitate at purchasing such photo filters as they have become essential in the fashion industry, and yes even Giselle Bundchen and Alessandra Ambrosio get the occasional pimple.

So after trial and error and many long nights trying to speed up and improve my digital work flow, I came across a product that has become one my most trusted tools. The product is called Noise Ninja and can be had for as little as $34.95, which I believe pays for itself the first time you use it. It is a standard PhotoShop plug-in but it has something special, a vast amount of digital camera profiles that can be downloaded for free to help you get the absolute best results possible. The result is skin that looks as smooth as a baby’s bottom and amazes everyone that is lucky enough to have had their photo taken by a photographer that uses the amazing product.

Don’t think this is just for portraits either, anywhere that has a low light situation that causes you to pump up the ISO will have the benefit of this product as well. Previously unusable photos are brought back to life with a product anyone that is serious about taking good photos should have in its arsenal. Thanks for stopping by

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Today I’d like to share with you one of my favorite and easiest PhotoShop tutorials. We’ve all been in that situation where it seemed as though we have taken a pretty good photo but when we get back to check it out on our computer the photo just doesn’t pop. Take a look at example A below, this is a nice photo of a boat in near silhouette at sunset and yet they colors are pretty bland, it makes a pretty ho hum picture.

Of course there are many things you can do to the photo to give it a little more polish, like increasing the color balance in the water, sky and clouds. But after all that work it just doesn’t seem to be a very honest representation of the original photo.

My answer to these types of situations is the following:

1. Bring the original photo into PhotoShop (File - Open)
2. Create a duplicate layer (Right Click - Duplicate Layer)
3. Set Gaussian Blur to 2.0 (Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur)
4. Create Overlay (In Layers tab change Normal setting to Overlay)
5. Merge layers (Shift+Control+E) and save image

In the example image below you can see how the colors are vibrant and stunning, it also keeps the integrity of the original image. To lessen or strengthen the effect you can experiment with altering both the gaussian blur and the overlay opacity. Good luck and thanks for stopping by.