Category: Photography Blog

“We have to change the way our society views women.” –Aly Raisman, ESPN Magazine

Maroon 5 & Cardi B’s “Girls Like You” got me thinking. This masterpiece of videography includes various women who have inspired millions. These include familiar faces, such as Wonder Woman Gal Gadot, J-Lo, Ellen DeGeneres. But some faces aren’t so familiar. The video draws a curious viewer like myself to ponder “who’s that woman?” and search it up on Google; as a result, I’ve learned about a few amazing women I’ve haven’t really heard of elsewhere. 

“Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 feat. Cardi B (video directed by David Dobkin)

Ilhan Omar: the first Somali-American Muslim legislator to be elected to office in the United States.

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh: author, tech-entrepreneur and founder of MuslimGirl, an online magazine for Muslim women.

Jackie Fielder: an activist and organizer for Mazaska Talks in solidarity for Standing Rock.

Chloe Kim: just kidding, of course I know who she is already. Also, I’m so glad they included Tiffany Haddish here.

(This article from Billboard helps.)

Aly Raisman: Olympic Gold Medalist in gymnastics, and one of the heroes who spoke out in the case against sexual abuser Jeffrey Nasser. Adam Levine holds her hand in the video, and she stands tall wearing a shirt that says “Always Speak Your Truth.” My god-family LOVES watching Olympic gymnastics for some reason, so I already knew about her and the Fierce Five in the 2012 London Olympics. But this woman is a hero not only in her athletic accomplishments; she continues to be a heroic voice- “challenging the very institutions she led to glory” (Mina Kimes, ESPN). And in my humble opinion, everyone should hear her truth.

(I just received this month’s ESPN magazine in the mail, and this article. “Aly Raisman Takes the Floor,” by Mina Kimes is worth the read.) 

Maybe I sound like a broken record. Maybe I’m not the best voice regarding this because as a male, I don’t completely understand how much more difficult it is for it to be a woman in this world.

But NO. I shouldn’t shut up because it’s repetitive. I shouldn’t stay quiet because it’s uncomfortable to talk about the constant mistreatment of women throughout the history of mankind.

Women deserve to be celebrated, and they deserve equality in voice, salary, and everything else. That’s why I love what Maroon 5 did with their recent hit “Girls Like You.” With a simple video, they’ve opened the door for us viewers to learn more about a number of fantastic, inspiring women.

But it shouldn’t stop there.  To finish my typed monologue, I’m going to share about three amazing women who have inspired my life greatly.

I grew up with a strong-willed mother. My father never looked down at her; rather, they stood side-by-side and provided an amazing childhood for me and my brother. She is my hero.

My first video game was Backyard Soccer, through which Brandi Chastain became my favorite soccer player. Really. I’m serious; my dad would record her US pro soccer games. The San Jose CyberRays.

My favorite teacher in high school was Mrs. Gall, a former computer engineer who became a teacher because she loved inspiring young minds. As a kid, I was always hesitant to follow my father’s footsteps as a computer scientist, because I wanted to do something “cooler.” In short, Mrs. Gall helped inspire me and guide me throughout high school and discover my own interest in computer science.

If you’re still reading this for some reason (I don’t think many people actually read my blog), I challenge you to write down at least 3 inspiring women in your life. It doesn’t have to be a blog post- it could be in your journal, or even a note on your phone.

Because Aly is completely right: we have to change the way our society views women.”

Day 2: LAts of things to do
Our second day (still in LA) was jam-packed with exciting activities and beautiful sights. I learned that Los Angeles is no Manhattan; rather than being connected by subway lines, LA is connected by interstates.

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The Getty
 TIf you don’t like art, maybe you can enjoy the garden. If you don’t enjoy gardens, enjoy the view of the waterfall or the skyline.

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Griffith Park
My brother and I hiked the trail in the first picture below to the Griffith Observatory (next location in this post).

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Griffith Park
Lala Land was filmed here and they do science/space stuff in here; view of the Hollywood sign one side, skyline on the other.

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Grand Central Park
LA’s own little version of Chelsea Market!

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Koreatown and LA Downtown

California Trip
My brother and I embarked on a 9 day trip in California during the end of May 2017. We started in LA.

Day 1
My brother and I landed in LAX and drove to our hotel in Santa Monica. Then we took an uber to Venice downtown. We walked through the Venice canals, and then walked a few miles along the beach from “Muscle Beach” in Venice all the way to Santa Monica Pier. The sun set during the end of the walk by the pier, but my favorite part of this was how active and lively the people were along the. Along the 3 miles we walked, people were working out at muscle beach, playing beach volleyball, rugby, basketball, biking, skateboarding with their dog, rollerblading, etc. I loved the energy. Below is a map of our walk, and a group of photos taken during the day, of course.

Venice Canal Historical District

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Walk from Venice to Santa Monica

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On the Santa Monica Pier

I’m in Fort Myers, Florida for spring break vacation right now, and the great weather has given me a great chance to see and photograph animals outdoors.

I took a picture of this squirrel this past week.

Do you see the ugly neon purple/pink color that surrounds the branches? Do you see the un-natural neon green as well? This is an example of chromatic aberration.

Chromatic aberration is an optics issue that occurs because different colors of light travel at different speeds when passing through a lens. The result can be manifested in color fringing– colored edges within the image. (Source: Photography Life).

This is something you can fix quite easily in Lightroom, using its Defringing tool.

NOTE: I’d love for you to use this image to follow along this color adjustment tutorial, so here’s the RAW file for this squirrel photograph: https://www.dropbox.com/s/imhw9m87hi98q23/Squirrel_Color_Fringing_Template_Matt_Lau.ARW?dl=0

Here’s the image before after making Lightroom color corrections to remove chromatic aberration/color fringing.

 

Step 0: Crop the Image.

Step 1: Find the Lens Correction Tab on the right hand side toolbar in Lightroom.
Step 2: Select the Color section.
Step 3: Click on the “Fringe Color Selector” (the dropper icon).

Step 4: Hover over the image.
With the dropper now “equipped,” you’ll see this palette of colors when you hover your mouse over the image.

Your selection will be the center square of the palette grid. Once you click on a spot, Lightroom will do its magic and remove purple fringing from your image.

Step 5: Click on a spot in the image where there is purple fringing.

Note: If you click on a color that Lightroom doesn’t recognize as purple/magenta or green/blue, the program will give you a nice error message and you can easily try again).

Lightroom’s magic will immediately remove some of that harsh neon purplish-pink-ish color. But not always enough, as the case here. There is still very terrible fringing in man parts of the image. One that particularly “sticks” out is the branch right above the squirrel’s right ear (viewer’s left-side).  Pun intended 🙂

Step 6: Make manual adjustments.
Here’s when we want to manually mess around with the settings in the Color section of the Lens Corrections Tab.

Focus only on the first “Amount” horizontal bar and “Purple Hue” bar below it (these have to do with purple fringing. The two bars below are for green fringing).

Here are the settings I had for the squirrel image before after I manually adjusted the fringing:

Lightroom had used the color I had selected with the color picker and chosen to drastically defringe the image (Amount: 20)  over a small Purple Hue range (32/45). After messing around with the settings myself,, I extended the Purple Hue range to 32/100, which removed a good amount of the purplish/pink that was still present in the image.

Here’s a look at our progression so far. No color adjustments -> Lightroom Auto-Adjustment –> Manual Setting Adjustment

Important Note: be EXTREMELY careful when performing color corrections on Lightroom. Always check the entire image and see if the color has affected anything else incorrectly. Sometimes when removing purple fringing too much, it will start to remove pink/red/purple color from the image (for example: purple clothing, dark red lipstick, etc.).

Step 7: Remove green fringing, using similar steps as before.

Alright. On to the green fringing. I’ll be less detailed- let you figure more of it out on your own!

Choosing the color selector again, I hovered over patch of cyan color on the twig to the upper left hand side of the squirrel’s tail, then clicked on the most neon grid.

Lightroom did a great job here. But there’s still a little cyan hiding around somewhere.

Can you find it?

There’s a little bit in the fur of the tail, as well as the border of the squirrel’s left ear (your right side).

I would then adjust the Green Hue range to account for more blue (48/69 -> 48/100).

As you can see below, a good amount blue in the tail has disappeared.

Color corrections complete!

Step 8: Make image more sharper and/or more appealing.
Lastly I’m going to use the adjust the sharpness of the image and some basic light settings to make the image more vivid and appealing.

Sharpening: (+) Sharpness – 77, (+) Radius – 1.5
Noise Reduction: (+) Luminance – 11, (-) Detail (under Luminance) – 7, (-) Detail (under Color) – 3

Then I just adjusted a few Basic light settings.

And alas, the final image.

Challenge #LR1: Try making color corrections on Lightroom to remove chromatic aberration. Feel free to use my image, or perhaps your own (which leads to Challenge #LR2)!

Challenge #LR2:  Find a photograph of your own that you have taken in the past that has chromatic aberration in it, or take a new one! I’ve found that it occurs very often when a subject is in front of an overexposed (or very bright) sunlit background (for example, the squirrel’s background is the sun-lit sky). 

Please comment with any questions you may have, or if there is any part of this tutorial that is unclear or difficult to understand. I would also love to the see any results you may have achieved while trying the challenges listed above. Until next time!