Late Afternoon Light

Thursday, September 8, 2016 These are from the daily photo project of my son--it will be complete on October 5th. :)

I'm looking for more people in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area to photograph outdoors around sunrise and sunset. If you're interested, contact me here or call 678.516.4448

Double Exposures from North Carolina Botanical Gardens

Food Photography

Friday, July 8, 2016 I've been cooking a lot since my son was born, and even more since my dad had seven-bypass surgery. This way, I can plan and make healthier, more balanced meals than we'd been having before and we don't spend as much income on eating out. Sometimes the meals are pretty and tasty, so I like to photograph them. I'm new to food photography, and I've never been so keen on cooking until this year, so we can say this is somewhat amateur work, but it documents the dishes well and maybe offers ideas for other families.

Here were the first food shots from Duck Donuts that began inspiring my food shots. Of course, those were neither healthy nor baked by me. One of my piano students brought me one and then I had to get some for Brett to try. :)

Here are the Sunday brunches I've been coming up with, they generally consist of ingredients leftover from the week as well as a few produce ingredients from the local farmer's market. One involves a berry clafoutis and lentil soup with peach tea, cream, and biscuit, another involves a cheese omelet with baked bacon and what hash browns we had leftover, and finally there is a braided savory pastry filled with what curried venison meats, onions and cheese we had leftover. I love savory pastries and my husband loves sweets, so it works out for us to have things like that once a week.

This is a venison burger made with ground venison that Brett's paw paw sent us, with sweet potato fries, and I made jalapeño cornbread and Brunswick stew for Brett since he'd never had it. The image isn't the greatest, but those are the leftovers he felt the need to take to work for one of his co-workers to sample. The final image is of squash, cabbage, a bit of leftover ham, and tomato gravy over southern biscuits. Brett hadn't had squash that tasted good before nor had he had tomato gravy and biscuits, so I felt he needed to try this. Here's the Brunswick stew recipe and the jalapeño corn bread: http://www.food.com/recipe/brunswick-stew-georgia-style-chicken-pork-32386

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/jalapeno_cornbread/

I don't remember where I got the recipes for the rest of it, so...if nothing else, there's inspiration. :)

These are Indian and Pakistani curried meals, and one peanut chicken dish. The Pakistani beef curry was fantastic, and it involved sweet potatoes. Here is the recipe for that: http://wholenewmom.com/recipes/ground-hamburger-ground-recipes-recipes-for-indian/ The Indian curry was not runny enough for our preference, but it was delicious. Those little yellowish-white squares are paneer, which is a hardened cheese made from milk. Brett likes to make homemade paneer, but it can be bought from the local Indian grocery store for convenience-sake. If you're getting Indian spices, I recommend getting them from an Indian grocery store because they are much more affordable than from another grocery store like HEB or Harris Teeter or Lowes Foods or Wal-Mart.

Speaking of Wal-Mart...

It's not good, I know, but sometimes we go to Wal-Mart...because budget.

Here is Brett's favorite-slow-cooker chicken flautas--they're super easy to make, and you can get the recipe here: http://www.lecremedelacrumb.com/2014/10/slow-cooker-creamy-chipotle-chicken-taquitos.html

And the latest creation--pan-fried plantains, black bean soup, and Cuban-inspired sammiches.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll add more later just to update the site. Otherwise, it's just been keeping up with the Silas daily photo for a year project: https://silasking.wordpress.com

Until later! <3

So many baby images

The 366 project is still going at silasking.wordpress.com and he's seven months now, cutting two super sharp little teeth through his bottom gum. Here are a few more recent photos and instagrammed posts.

Otherwise, there is a 25% off Mother's Day sale for sessions and prints purchased within the month of May, and my Saturday's are open to shoot any graduation images, newborn, family portraiture, etc.,...even architectural photography--it all applies, man. :)

My 21st/22nd is booked up and there's also the Artsplosure festival in downtown Raleigh that I'm excited to visit at some point.

Realistic Photoshopping Sample

So these are examples from a recent editing assignment to show my photoshop and Lightroom editing skills. I show the before and after of each image. The client gave me rough ideas to follow in the styles preferred.

For pricing on editing work, involving coloring and restoring old portraits, contact me at v@victoriakingphotography.com or 919-909-5441.

Grey Card

http://wp.me/p6vraS-ku An easy way to quickly calibrate color for photos in editing is to click the eye dropper onto a grey card in Lightroom, then batch edit the similar photos around it.

http://layersmagazine.com/using-a-gray-card-for-setting-white-balance-in-adobe-photoshop-camera-raw.html

If there was no grey card available but there is some other neutral grey close to it, try setting the white balance via that grey, or choose auto tone, or a specific lighting setting based upon the lighting conditions the photos were taken in.

Double exposures

I've started enjoying taking double exposures of Silas on occasion. I'll share some here and then the link to the tutorial I followed to learn how to shoot them digitally.

https://vimeo.com/106329469/description

Day 20: Träumerei

Source: Day 20: Träumerei

Wedding Photography

August 15, 2015 I shot my first wedding today in Dequincy, Louisiana. :) Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Jordan!

West Virginia HDR Stream

While sorting through old photographs yesterday in the archive and cleaning/rearranging files, I came across this set of bracketed landscape images with long exposures of water I took while checking out some of the historic and forgotten back roads of West Virginia. This one was off McKendree Road, considered McKendree, West Virginia (unincorporated). There's a bridge over it that water was spilling off of onto the other side. I used that shot for an altered landscapes composite project for a college assignment at the time, and this was just a lovely landscape behind it that I captured as a personal bonus. I hope you like it!

Low and High Key Flowers: Lighting Tutorial

This idea is based off the first project from the 52 Weekend Digital Photo Projects book.

So the first project in the book is how to capture low and high key blooms.

It's a few days after Valentine's, but I had some flowers left over, so I used them for this project. First, I attempted the low key bloom, the process of which I shall explain below.

First off, I set up the black studio background. Next, I placed a diffused light to the side, about at a 45 degree angle to where my flower would be placed. Then I set up my camera on a tripod so that I could rely on lower shutter speed without having to worry about camera shake or upping the ISO. Then I placed my flower below the camera. I've no idea where my studio clips are so I made do with clothespins to hold the single flowers. See the image below for an idea of the layout, equipment setup, and specs.

Set your camera at two-stops below center on your in-camera meter. The original bouquet image came out like this:

After touching it up in Lightroom, the image turned out as below, cropped to square to share in Instagram.

Finally, I sent the touched-up version into Photoshop to personalize it, as shown below:

So now the same process applies to the flowers below:  

Now let's move on to the high key photograph.

For the high key process, I switched the black background with a white one. Instead of using the continuous light, I used a flash and a couple of white cards around the subject. See the image below for a set-up idea. 

I used both a white flower and a white/pink flower for this part of the project. Remember to expose these two-stops higher for high key images. Now below the same process applies to these images as above:

Color Spaces for better Viewing in iPhones and other Colorblind devices

Last night I edited vacation photos and uploaded them, noticing that the colors in the photos looked fine on the iMac in Dropbox, in Wordpress, and even more so after a new color calibration on the monitor. Then I noticed they were coming up greenish on the web in other places, and greenish on my phone. After researching a bit, I'm thinking the reason is because the icc profiles I'm assigning the photos upon saving is a color profile besides sRGB when it needs to be sRGB for better color viewing in iPhone or other programs like it. I'm writing this because now in my blog, my goal is to review techniques and project instructions with you as well as share some of the issues I come across. I mean, this blog needs a new purpose now that I'm out of school, and I don't mind teaching what I learn, so...voila. 📚 So let's see if I can show what I mean with the color profile issues before I move on to the first planned project....

Ok, so here is the same image with the same edits but saved in .jpg format with two different types of Color Spaces. The first was uploaded yesterday I to Instagram with a number of others and the color space used was ProPhoto RGB rather than sRGB. The images showed up much less saturated in my Instagram and Wordpress posts yesterday due to this issue. Look at the images below.

Looking at these images, do you notice the difference? The second shows up more saturated (if viewed from iPhone or other devices that can better register sRGB than other individual color profiles). Notice the slight blue hues more visible along the banister line toward the bottom left in the lower image versus the more gray version up top. The lower of the first two also shows a rosier hue overall, in my opinion. I've also added a third to note any difference in the colors from a "colorblind device" when using an Adobe sRGB (1998) Color Space, which I don't believe there are.

Jewelry lighting progress

August 11, 2014 Also due Saturday was a work in progress submission for a personal lighting project. This involved a working artists’ statement as well as preliminary images for ideas. So far I have had a few pieces of jewellery to work with, but will be incorporating new items in the week to follow. My in-progress artists’ statement is as follows:

During the past month and a half, I’ve become fascinated with products sold here in France, and more so in Provence. More specifically, this involves local jewellery, fabrics, and other fashion and beauty products marketed toward women. Although I have very little experience with product photography, I have gained some inspiration in pursuing it over time while viewing it in advertisements online or in magazines. If I can discover a way to market each product such that the viewer covets it, then I have achieved my goal.

What Happens in Lacoste?

https://annbeaumontgoestofrance.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/what-happens-in-lacoste/  

Kassie's Magical Mystery Tour

Rediscovered images, original post here, along with tons more photographs: https://annbeaumontgoestofrance.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/kassies-magical-mystery-tour/

Ancient Amphitheatre beyond Chateau de Sade

Start from the bottom and make your way up to the amphitheater at the end where Luke is sitting.

Enchanté

"Let them eat cake!" Marie Antoinette was reported to have said that when asked about the starvation of the peasants, but that is a lie. She is recorded by Rousseau to have said, "Let them eat brioche," when she was 13 when asked about the peasants' inability to attain bread. The sentence was also attributed to a number of other young princesses, and is suspected to have been a lie propagated by Rousseau himself.

She did write this, according to a few online sources, however: "It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The King seems to understand this truth."

That being said, I couldn't find any record of actual primary sourced material for that, so it could be more lies on her account, as is bound to occur.

Nevertheless, Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV exploited the masses and they lived life in a luxurious city of their own, and then came the French Revolution, and then their heads were chopped off at guillotine. Louis XIV was 77 and Marie was 38. So it goes.

The images below offer an account of the apartments at Versailles, as well as the hall of mirrors. Versailles housed members of the French government, particularly those in the royal family, and Versailles itself contained a population of over 60,000 people at the time of the revolution in 1789.

Please follow and share my blog if you enjoyed it!

Locks and locks of Love

A few friends and I went for a night on the town in Paris with the intention of eventually finding locks to snap onto the lock bridge as tokens of love for our lovers. Haiting didn't have one, so she is scheming to either throw our locks into the river or destroy the bridge altogether. (Not really... Maybe....)

As you can tell from the images below, there is lots of love in France, lots of love in Paris. Some people get jealous from it, but it makes me feel happy and wish for my love to be with me.

It also makes me a staring creeper photographing intimate moments of complete strangers.
C'est la vie!!!

The locks above are the locks on the gate at the time just after we put them up. We clasped them onto the newest fence so that it would take longer to collapse under the pressure. I think it's a good thing the fences are replaced every now and again, because not all relationships last forever, but certainly these three will.

Here they are in the day time and the ink is faded a bit. That's ok, the love is going strong!