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Hey Friends! I was messing around with adjustment layers and came up with a little action that’s fun to use on certain photos.

All it does is adjusts the color balance, adds a little ‘S’ curve adjustment, then desaturates and resaturates. It gives the photo that “cool contrast” look that you see on a lot of movie posters these days. And the best part is it’s totally non-destructive and fully adjustable to suit your fancy. Just open each adjustment layer and move the sliders till you like it.

The image above shows what the action does on its own when you run it without making any adjustments.

You can download your very own copy of this Photoshop action absolutely free, courtesy of Zac Fisher Photo here: ZacFisherPhoto_Cool_Contrast Photoshop Action

Enjoy!

Here are a few of the finished shots from my band promo session with Wake the Coast. These guys were a lot of fun (see the case of Busch in the bottom left corner of the last setup shot) and were super cool to work with. They’ve got a really cool sound too – sort of like a modern Gin Blossoms. I’ll post a link to their music page when they get it up.

More photos and setup shots inside! read more »

O Discordia! band promo setup shots, lighting info and more pics after the jump! read more »

Behold the beauty of blending modes!

Here’s a quick and easy way to get a little more “pop” out of your photos. When people say “I want it to pop” they mean “I want more contrast and vibrance”. Surely you could just play with the contrast and hue/saturation sliders – but here’s another way to do it (after the bump): read more »

My little nephews just got into Star Wars.  Naturally, I want to encourage this because Star Wars is awesome – so I decided to make them (and myself) some light sabers to play with! Here’s how I did it:

I got a variety of Schedule 40 3/4″ PVC pipe couplers and adapters from Lowes

and assembled them in a light sabery lookin’ fashion:

Then cut a 5′ section of 3/4″ PVC pipe down to the desired length. I tried a few different lengths and 2′ 3″ seemed to be the best hilt-to-shaft ratio. Pop that into the end of your handle and BAM, you got a light saber!

Total cost so far: $3.52 (more after the jump)

read more »

I’m a creative portrait photographer. I use off-camera lighting and a lot of post-processing in Photoshop to make my pictures look the way they do. If you’ve seen my work and you want me to photograph your wedding, it is important for you to understand what you can expect from me versus what you can expect from a traditional wedding photographer.

With a traditional wedding photographer you get good and thorough coverage of the entire event. They’re going to shoot 1000 shots, they’re going to capture as many adorable moments as possible, and they’re going to charge you $1,000+ for a limited number of prints.

With me you’re going to get dynamic, eye catching, color popping, look-like-a-rock-star portraits of you and your wedding party, video capture of all your classic wedding moments, and unlimited rights to printing and reproduction for $1000.

It really is a trade off, and it’s up to you to decide what you want. With me you’re not going to get as many of the little moments or the story-in-pictures of your wedding. But consider this: while you may only get highly stylized portraits from me, why not have your friends and family fill in the rest? Digital cameras are a dime a dozen these days. Encourage your guests to bring their own cameras. Their pictures will help you fill the album, mine will be the ones you hang on the wall =)

That said, I’m not just going to sit on my rump in between the lit portraits! I’m certainly going to give you the best event coverage that I can with the equipment that I have. I just want to be sure the correct expectations are in place. My area of expertise is creative portrait photography. And while I may “fit the bill” for standard wedding coverage, I’d prefer it if you didn’t select me as your wedding photographer on that basis. Choose me because you want stunning portraits like the ones you see on my website, and expect everything else to be a bonus =)

Now if I haven’t scared you off already, here’s a walk-through (with examples) of how I typically run things on wedding day: read more »

I’m in the process of shifting my focus to motorcycle photography – but I need more portfolio work so I’m running a killer special right now! I’m offering high-end motorcycle photography for $20 (plus travel costs if outside the Dayton area). Kaos Customs has already taken advantage of this special. Check out what they got for $20:

How can you pass that up? You need the pics, I need the motorcycle photography portfolio work – let’s make it happen!  Also, if you like this bike, WTUE is giving it away at the Dayton Cyclist Motorcycle Show and Expo. Check it out!

“Dude, what stuff should I get?” I get this question all the time. So in lieu of answering each request , I figured I’d just make a blog post about it.

When first diving into the ocean of Strobism, choosing the right gear to start with can be difficult. Even more daunting is the task of looking into the future and planning your upgrade/expansion path beyond your current budget. “Trial and error” is not a process you want to use when purchasing expensive photo gear, so here I offer you the complete wisdom from my experience in buying lighting equipment. Hopefully this will help you purchase the right items and in the right order so that the first items you buy will help you pay for the rest!

I bought my complete Alien Bees studio with the money I made from using two Nikon SB800’s and a couple of umbrellas – however if I could do it over again I would go with the Alien Bees first and skip the flashguns all together. The SB800’s are great starting strobes, and if you want to go with small portable flash guns like these first, I highly recommend this model. One of the must crucial (and annoying) parts of off camera lighting is triggering the strobes, and I had great success using the SB800’s optical triggering mode (SU-4). Using the SB800 in this mode you can manually adjust the power and trigger the strobe using your built-in on camera flash. I would advise against getting the cheaper SB600 because it doesn’t have an optical slave mode and is harder to use off camera if you don’t have an SB800 on camera to command it. The cheapest and best light modifier for a small strobe is a white shoot thru umbrella. You can get a 43” Westcott umbrella for like $20. If you look at my flickr stream, most of my early photos were taken with 1 SB800 shot into a 43” white umbrella as the main light, and 1 SB800 bare as rim light, both triggered optically by the D70’s built-in flash. Using this setup I made enough cash to buy (2) B800’s, a B1600, an ABR800 ring light, a vagabond power pack and several light modifiers.

But like I said, if I could do it all again I’d skip the SB800’s, and here’s why: read more »

Are you interested in some cheap, high-end band photos?

I’m looking to expand my band photo portfolio so I’m offering dirt cheap band promo rates for local bands: $99 – that’s for a full hour of shooting, unlimited printing and reproduction, and you get all the photos from the shoot plus 1-3 heavily Photoshopped/stylized images.

Please check out my work and let me know if you’d be interested in upgrading your image and enhancing your web presence with some hot new band promos!

Contact me directly at: zac@zacfisherphoto.com

Here are a few examples of $99 band photos: read more »

Just finished some sick new photos with my buddies Micah and Luke Sedmak. I’ve been experimenting lately with my ginormous 36×60 softbox, trying to figure out how to get the best quality of light out of it. I was looking back through old photos and I came across this family portrait that I did back in November… read more »