One little monkey jumping on the bed.
He fell off and bumped his head.
Called the doctor and the doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed.”
No more monkeys jumping on the bed.

Sammy decided he was going to make a run for it when I asked him to stop jumping on the bed. The big problem: there was no more bed! Everyone keeps telling me how cute little boys are with black-eyes….the verdict is still out on that. I get a little sad every time I see that little fella with a shiner!

Rewind about *cough* 25 years…yeah, I said it, I am rapidly approaching the BIG 3-0! What do you remember about SHOW + TELL in grade school? I remember being so excited to take something that absolutely everyone was going to flip over. I was lucky enough to open a Cricket Doll one Christmas when I was younger, and that was going to be the most radtastic-super-duper SHOW + TELL item when we went back to school from Christmas Break. All the other kids were going to freak, squeal and pee their pants (not necessarily in that order) when they saw it. I carefully took my new friend Cricket to school only to find out Cricket was a multiple! She had a bazillion twins and I was not the only one with a Cricket Doll! With that said, I will need to start with a disclaimer for the first post and all SHOW + TELL posts; these tips/tricks might not work for everyone, but they are things that work for me. I am just letting you behind the curtain for a sneak peek to see how this wizard works.

I was recently asked to teach a workshop and decided in preparation for this, I would start a SHOW + TELL section to my blog posts. This section will give tips I have picked up either learning from other great photographers or things I have learned on my own along the way.  To get this started I want to show a (GASP!) SOOC (straight out of the camera) image and then show you one that is processed. I generally strive to get the shot as close to the final product as possible, but sometimes things change on the fly. There might be a bird that makes an unexpected flight into my frame (true story!), or I may have a vision for the final image and know I will need to do editing in post processing to achieve that vision.

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Body: Canon EOS 5dMarkii Lens: EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM Focal Length: 32mm ISO: 100 Exposure: 1/125 @ f / 2.8

My first image is to show how I process the skin. People have pores, freckles and sometimes a strand of hair blows in your face when I click my shutter, but guess what??? (GASP AGAIN!) If you don’t ask me to edit it out, I will probably leave your skin as is for the most part. I would share my recipe for toning, but then I am giving away the kitty! You will have to come back another post for that

BEFORE                                                                                                                                       AFTER

—————–2—————–

Body: Canon EOS 5dMarkii Lens: EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM Focal Length: 16mm ISO: 800 Exposure: 1/13 @ f / 2.8

Your exits are here, here, here and here….it is the law for exit signs to be on the walls in public places, but not the law to have them in your image! I shot this image and not only needed to lose the exit signs in post processing, but also started to lose my subject. I used a different crop and some CS3 magic to wake this image up and I was able to break-dance after I finished!

BEFORE

AFTER

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Body: Canon EOS 5dMarkii Lens: EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM Focal Length: 16mm ISO: 125 Exposure: 1/1600 @ f / 2.8

I shot this image not noticing at the time the camper in the background. It is on the bottom right of the frame. With the help of my trusty clone tool in CS3, I was able to viola — park it somewhere out of my frame.

BEFORE

AFTER

If you are still reading this,  congratulations you made it through my first installment (PILOT if you will) of SHOW + TELL. I hope you share your before and afters with me in a comment with a link to your site or a flickr page. I would love to see how your wizardry wand works!