Just thought i’d share with you some of the pictures i’ve taken recently =)
Enjoy =)
Slow shutter trainspotting
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Swapping faces
This tutorial will show you an easy way of swapping faces of two people in Photoshop, making them blend together into a totally new person.
So for this tutorial, I´ll start of with finding two people who I know might blend well together.
Will Smith and Barack Obama is an easy fix. They both got the same skin tone,
and there’s no need to swap ears 
It is very important that the faces you pick are shot in the same angle, otherwise it will look quite unnatural
The lighting in the images should also resemble each other, this will make the task of making your images blend much easier.
Ok, so now that you´ve found your two images, it´s time to do some cutting and pasting.
Select the “elliptical marquee tool” from the Tools bar.
Click and drag to make a selection of your subjects face.
To copy your selection to the clipboard, press cmd + c (ctrl+ c if on a pc).
Now it’s time to go on over to your second picture, the one of which you shall paste the face upon.
To paste your selection, press cmd + v (ctrl + v if on pc)
Now it’s time for some adjustments.
Go to the layers panel, and adjust the opacity of the face layer down to about 50 – 60%.
Now that your face-layer is transparent, you can align the face with the underlying image,
by matching the alignment and size of the eyes of both layers.
Now adjust the layer transparency back to 100% to see how that worked out for you.
Notice you have a lot of areas that needs to be removed to make the face blend more in to the underlying layer.
Select the eraser tool 
and choose a large soft brush.
Erase the parts of the image that does not need to be there.
Make sure you soften your edges,and avoid sharp edges like in this picture.
Sharp and choppy edges makes it very easy to point out as a sloppy Photoshop job.
To make the image blend even more with the underlying layer, it´s important to match the skin tones as accurately as you can.
Go to Image > Adjustments >Hue/Saturation .
Make sure the preview box is checked.
Now adjust your slider until you get the results you would like to see.
If your face layer needs to be brighter or darker, go to Image > Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast.
Below is my final result 
Can you do it? YES YOU CAN
Night photography – Lessons learned
It’s a long dark winter in Norway, and by the time I get home from work, there
isn’t much sunlight left to play with. So currently I’m working on developing my
night photography skills
This is my lessons learned so far :
Eliminating camera shake
- Use a tripod. If your tripod is light like mine, it might be a good idea to put some ballast on the tripod, to keep it extra steady.
- Use a remote shutter, or set your camera’s self timer to 2 seconds.
- Enable the mirror lockup function in your camera. This will leave the mirror open before exposure, and further decrease camera shake.
Adjusting focus
- Always bring a powerful flashlight. This helps your camera to focus on those really dark spots. You can also use it for “light painting”.
- Use a high f-stop, such as f9 or f10, this increases the depth of field, and ensures your image is in focus.
ISO speed
I prefer to keep my ISO settings as low as possible. An ISO of 400 is as high as I usually tend to go, the higher ISO, the more grain.
Shoot in RAW
This gives you the oppurtunity to adjust exposure, white balance,saturation, and so on in post production.
Bring a wide angle primelens or a zoom lens
I made a wrong choice and only brought my canon 50mm prime lens, and therefore had to struggle with framing my subjects.
A zoom lens gives you more options when it comes to composing the image.
Might just be that im lazy
The stock-lens that came with your DSLR should work fine (18-55mm in my case)
So, what are your experiences? Any tips?
Moonlight shadows – night photography
Took some of my first night photos this evening.
Focusing the images was a big hassle, guess I have to buy myself one big-ass flashlight
I also had to give up and go inside after a while,since my lense got covered in ice-crystals.
Most of the image-settings is ISO 1600 aperture f22 shutter 30 sec.
Check out my photos below =)
Dont forget to follow me on twitter @jenslyngstad
Experimenting with HDR photography
Spent the last couple of days in Molde taking pictures for HDR processing.
I also bought a polaroid filter, that helped me enhance the contrast between the blue sky and the white clouds.
While reading about HDR photography I noticed that there is some sort of debate going on,
arguing if HDR processing is cheating or not.
I find it to be just another useful tool, to help you make better images.
Just keep in mind that you should always focus on getting it right before you go to post processing.
I like to use a phrase I heard from a sound technician a couple of years ago – “Shit in, shit out”.
Although that’s not quite the case when dealing with photography.
Check out my pictures and my poll below =)
Meanwhile, in the garden..
Took my first insect shots today =)
Since I do not own a macro lens, I had to enlarge and crop the images, just to get closer to the bugs..
Sittin on the dock of the bay
Took some nice photos down by the sea today.
Im planning to go back there and get some more, since there were some very old and dilapidated buildings there as well =)
These images are all shot at a shutter speed of 30 seconds.
After Effects – Demon face
Found this great After Effects tutorial on youtube today. It teaches you how to use motion tracking and stabilizing to keep the warped face in place, with minimal keyframing work =)
Click here to watch the tutorial i used.
GoPro Hero timelapse
This time-lapse was shot on a GoPro Hero camera. Somehow I think the image is quite blurry at some points, I can’t really point out where the focus point is, although the camera is set to center weighted average.. (I’ve cropped away the edges, because the wide-angle lens captured the surrounding windowstills.
