High Key Photography ~ my lesson

Our assignment for this week was High Key photography.

So I read up on it and was rather put out to find that most of this sort of photography was done in a studio with lights and things called softboxes, lightboxes, and other things that I don't own.

Never fear.
Some things can still be achieved by using natural light.

But I had to wait for the sun to shine.  That did happen yesterday, but I couldn't do the project outside as the winds were gusting to about 35 or more mph.

So I set up my little ugly wooden chair in the living room and put an old white sheet on it.

High Key=light ...upbeat, happy, bright...

Ohhhkay...

Well here is the 'home' fancy studio.

Not very impressive right?
I mean look at Morris's crate right behind it, the heater, the brick, the wall, and all of the distractions.

But...
Here is that red horse.

Items used.
Tripod.
40mm micro Nikkor lens, Nikon D5200.
Sunlight, bright sunlight coming in the window.  This reflected off the old white sheet I tossed on the chair, or should I say.... 'Artfully tossed' on the chair.

I had the sun at my back and off to the side.  The white reflected the sun onto the subject and into the camera.
I tried a few settings.  Manual settings were ISO 100, f4, 1/20th of a second.

I also used the setting on the D5200 of High Key.  
But because I wanted to learn how to do this, I decided to use the Manual settings.  I was able to over expose by .67, I thought it was +7 on the EV but the details say .67.

I took the photo in RAW, processed it to jpeg in CorelAfterShotPro and then used Topaz BW Effects in CS2 [I also was able to process it in PaintShopPro X6 the same way].

I tried the Topaz BW setting of Hi Key I.  It was close to what I was looking for but I moved the color filter towards pink to get the details to show up on the horse.

I like how this shot turned out.  Very high key.

I  used Topaz BW Effects on this one also.

But then I used another method of how to make a photo look like a drawing.

I finally settled on this shot as my presentation for the assignment.

I'd like to redo this shot and bring out the details in the wings more, but that will require another sunny day and a different mode of focus on the camera.

I'm not sure High Key is my style but it sure is a good exercise in photography.

Some things I've learned about Adobe Photoshop ~ channels.

Heck, I never knew what a channel was before.  
Never used that aspect of PS or CS as it is now called.

I figured I was doing great using Topaz plugin filters to get what I needed.

Along with Photomatix, Dynamic Photo HDR, and anything else I could get my hands on for processing...well,
Post processing.

I read a tutorial by Christopher O'Donnell on the use of luminosity layers.  It is a hard concept to initially grasp but I decided to look up as many tuts as I could.

Obviously it has been around for quite some time.  Tony Kuper has a good tutorial also.

I'm not one that will follow a tutorial to the letter.  I usually open the program and start experimenting on my own.

Here is the original shot.  Shot with a .9 ND filter.  f22 at 8 seconds.  I shot it at 400 ISO because it was so overcast.

The water appears as I wanted it to, but what could I do to make this 'better'?

I decided to try Topaz.  This is what I always go to.  Great plugins.  

Well, more detail, more contrast, more color.  I thought it was pretty darned good.

Then I decided to try some 'luminosity work'.

The Layers look like a mess right?  But I started seeing a more true to life version of what I did shoot that day.

The whites are a bit blown in this shot and it was an overcast day.  Perhaps if I'd shot in RAW format and converted it, ...it could be better.

Lastly I tried to convert it to Black and White using Topaz BW Effects.

I decided to have a bit of fun and go with a preset I had made on my own.

So there you go.  Luminosity.  Channels.
Things I had not studied before I joined the Google+ Community called 256SOG or Shades of Grey.

Just goes to show you.
You can always learn more things to try if you want to.