Articles – Page 6 – Galen Evans, Photographer

Digital Composite Nude

It’s not unusual for people to ask me how I got the model to cooperate with shooting on location and they’re surprised to hear that she was actually photographed in the studio.

A digital composite is the result of digitally manipulating and assembling multiple images to create a single integrated final image. One of images in my fine art nude portfolio is an example of a digital composite created in Photoshop from two separate images. It’s not unusual for people to ask me how I got the model to cooperate with shooting on location and they’re surprised to hear that she was actually photographed in the studio. To me, that means I succeeded with what I set out to do: Combine two separate photographs, taken years apart at different locations and under completely different conditions, into one believable final image.
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Headshot Photography Basics

Before you start digging through the phone book and looking at countless galleries online, take a moment and learn what a headshot is and what purpose it serves.

The need is simple: You need an acting or modeling headshot. The problem is, you’re not quite sure what a headshot is or how to go about finding a photographer who can give you what you need. Before you start digging through the phone book and looking at countless galleries online, take a moment and learn what a headshot is and what purpose it serves. Continue reading “Headshot Photography Basics”

SEO: What NOT to do.

It doesn’t take Google long to decide that something on a website is in violation of one or more of their guidelines and the website will be promptly removed from their index

Search engine optimization is an important part of web design, but how does one go about attracting the critical eye of search engine spiders without drawing their ire? The first thing to understand is that search engine optimization is one thing, while spamming is quite another, and search engines are continually working to improve their algorithms in an attempt to filter out the spammers – who are trying to manipulate the system – from the legitimate sites that are providing valuable content and just trying to improve their site rankings. Continue reading “SEO: What NOT to do.”

Portraits: Beyond the ordinary

How do you go about creating a portrait that transcends the ordinary? Start with a New York musician who’s looking for something a little bit different, add a Tucson photographer, mix in a touch of imagination and a dash of willingness to experiment, then start chipping away at the box. It may take some time; in this case, what might’ve normally been an hour-long shoot turned into nearly three hours and over two hundred shots. In the end, we had some spectacular images – not only traditional fare, but beautiful shots like these, as well:

Special Commission - Studio Portrait
Photographed in Tucson, AZ

The Google Blacklist: It does exist

I’ve since learned that Google has a whole set of rules regarding what one can and can’t do in order to try to affect page ranking, and I broke one of those rules

It all started quite simply: I just felt it was time to redesign my website. Along the way I thought it would be a good time to learn a little something about search engine optimization (SEO) and see if I could improve my search ranking. Continue reading “The Google Blacklist: It does exist”

My Favorite B&W Techniques

Photoshop offers a variety of methods for converting an image from color to black & white. Here are some of my favorite techniques, which always give me far better results than would simply converting an image to grayscale or desaturating the image. These techniques are based on the Photoshop CS3 command set, but should be fairly easy to apply using similar commands in prior versions of Photoshop as well as in CS4.

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