Cory Silken has just joined us!

hi Cory

Welcome aboard! so good to see you here!

For those who don't know , Cory Silken is one of the very best American yacht photographer from the East Coast.

Please Cory, do post here an introduction about you and your work, Asher (and others) will be delighted!

Again a great welcome!

Nicolas Claris said:

hi Cory

Welcome aboard! so good to see you here!

For those who don't know , Cory Silken is one of the very best American yacht photographer from the East Coast.

Please Cory, do post here an introduction about you and your work, Asher (and others) will be delighted!

Again a great welcome!

Click to expand...

Great news Nicolas!

I have gotten lost in his website for the past 30 minutes, LOL!

http://www.studio6x7.com/index2.html

His nautical photography style is so different from yours. His fine art prints of ships are all tones B&W!! He also has edgy fun fashion pictures of gorgeous woman (and I guess, ) handsome men often set in a boat, dock or shoreline setting. He obviously exploits his world with no conscience, LOL!

Imagine B&W form color? Shameful!

I love his work! The image of a girl in a magenta dress posing, below deck, in the hull of a large wooden boat. Was that actually a black dress? Hmm I wonder what camera it was?

I can see Cory is a very versatile and accomplished photographer!

Welcome Corey.

Asher

After looking at Coreys shots..I gota get me a boat! However I doubt the woman in the magenta dress will fit in the bottom of my dinghy! sigh

Welcome Corey. Looking forward to your thoughts and photo's

Jeff O'Neil

But, Jeff, do you know it is really purple and not black seen in IR?

What camera does he use?

We need to test that dress!

Asher

I really like your panoramic images! Works especially well with those long yachts.

Do you know Onne van der Wal? He's a Dutch nautical photographer from Jamestown/ Newport, RI. I'm sure you do!

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your kind words, it's a pleasure to join you. There are certainly some very talented photographers here and I hope I can contribute something useful.

Well Nicolas, I think you have already given me a very generous introduction! I enjoy assignments that get me outdoors to shoot boats and babes, but I've been too busy with the boat pictures to fully pursue the rest at this point. I also currently spend most of my time driving my desk but I'm working to change that.

My father and I race a 1926 S Class boat, Firefly, on Narragansett Bay, although sadly we just covered her up for the winter. This shot is from one of my last days on the water this season


Asher, yes it was purple...no, it was not shot with an M8 or one of those screwy older cameras! I used to shoot N but switched over to the dark side when the 1Ds came out and it became clear N had no intention of giving us a FF camera.
That shot was from a really great project I did with environmentalist/model Summer Rayne Oakes, http://www.summerrayne.net/, which features fashion styling from designers who use environmentally and socially conscious business practices.

Jan, yes I am friendly with Onne. He is a phenomenal photographer.

-Cory
studio6x7.com

Well, Cory, you're arrival was heralded and it is worth it! Maybe Onne will follow you!


Your picture surprises in its power with such a small portion of the sail showing. The framing is perfect. I really like it. Where were you?

Even without seeing the sailors, the pictures says it all.

Great person that Summner. She's bright, energetic and idealistic. Also it doesn't do her any harm that she's lovely too!

Asher

Hi Cory, I first read Asher's write up on Nicolas and was well impressed, not only with his work but also the candidness of the piece, this is what OPF is all about. Sharing experience and knowledge!

Anyhow, I then saw the link to your site and my jaw dropped. I live in Solent (UK), some say the home of yacht racing (thought i'd get that in) and I've done a far few RTIOW races and tried humbly to cover the Trafalgar 200 event last year, but man how do you get those images. The fine art prints are nothing short of superb, I'd love to know some of the pre-post techniques involved. Especially how you get those dark seas and vibrant canvas like whites.

Hi John,
That's going to become an exciting place to be for classic yacht racing next summer, with the 100th anniversary of the International Meter Rule!

Pre: Well, photographing the most incredible, beautifully maintained yachts is part of it. They're color captures exposed to the right. I shoot manual exposure, so they're consistant and not thrown off by the sails, but not always exactly precise (hey, who has time to think about that stuff when you're busy looking around...and holding on...how does that saying go, one hand for the camera and the other hand for the other camera--I mean boat!).
Post: varies a bit from image to image-- I often find some techniques work nicely on lower contrast images, but I need to do something entirely different for contrastier shots. The B&W conversions are sometimes through lab color, others times I use the chanel mixer or desaturation. I always try to make these and curves adjustments with layers, as there's a bit of going back to fine tune them after I flatten it out and bring it down to 8 bits and grayscale to preview it as a duotone. Beyond that, just some traditional "dodging and burning." Some of the newer images also have some large-radius sharpening in the shadows, a technique which I think Nicolas actually taught me some years ago on the RG forums.

Perhaps one additional aspect is figuring out which images will translate nicely into sepia, which tends to add contrast.

-Cory
studio6x7.com

Cory,

Many thanks for your prompt reply, I'll definitely be getting out and about the solent next year. I just hope my retired parents dont sell the old hardy 25, its a great boat for shooting off. Lots of foredeck space and sturdy!

I wont mention how much incidental gear I lost overboard covering the Trafalgar event, CF cards etc. I decided to invest in a Lowepro Dryzone, just have to remember to do the zip up!

Your post processing tips are interesting, I must spend a bit more time in Lab and channels. I'll have a bash at some of my tall ship images and maybe post something up for critique. Although they are all a bit static, great for postcards but little else.

Thanks again.

John,

That LAB choice again! I'd be interested in Cory's reasoning here. I struggled with 100 damaged RAW files yesterday that no RAW processors would even look at! I eventually repaired them through a circuitous route enough to recover them without profiles. Then only LAB gave me my colors intuitively. I think we underuse that option.

Asher

I use it for some B&W conversions-- convert to LAB then toss the a and b channels and convert to grayscale. I don't remember exactly where I learned that one, although I can recall that there was some technically superior reason for converting to B&W that way over other ways (maybe deleting some noise when deleting those channels?). The most compelling reason, for me, is that I like the results for certain images.

Hi All
We're close to the point to get moved to the "workflow" forum!
On my own, it's been a long time now that, after raw proceesing, I do all my adjustments, colors and sharpness under LAB with 16 bits Tiffs...
Yes I do remember the discussion we had together Cory and I about large radius sharpening!
Select dark zone from the selection menu, make that selection a layer
Under USM menu try 50/50/0 to 30/30/0
then tweak the opacity of your mask.

Crystal waters, darkes lightened-up!

enjoy

Nicolas Claris said:

Hi All
We're close to the point to get moved to the "workflow" forum!
On my own, it's been a long time now that, after raw proceesing, I do all my adjustments, colors and sharpness under LAB with 16 bits Tiffs...
Yes I do remember the discussion we had together Cory and I about large radius sharpening!
Select dark zone from the selection menu, make that selection a layer
Under USM menu try 50/50/0 to 30/30/0
then tweak the opacity of your mask.

Crystal waters, darkes lightened-up!

enjoy

Click to expand...

We have already strayed! No matter.

Are you talking CS2? What are you using to select "dark zone?"? or is this in Lightzone?

Asher

P.S. where was your original discussion on this with Cory, if you know it?

Asher Kelman said:

We have already strayed! No matter.

Are you talking CS2? What are you using to select "dark zone?"? or is this in Lightzone?

Asher

P.S. where was your original discussion on this with Cory, if you know it?

Click to expand...

Hi Asher
yes I'm talking CS2 or even any PS since version 7.
Menu "selection"/"area"/"dark zone"
My CS2 is in French, so I don't know the exact terms into the menu, but I guess you'll figure out...

Original discussion happened a while ago in RG, but you won't find me there anymore, my former post there are "anonymous".

The menus on the English PS are "Select"-->"Color range..." and then in the "Select:" drop down menu choose "Shadows." I usually then make this selection another layer so I can play with the results more precisely if needed.

Selectively sharpening the water and then going back to do the mids works particularly well for avoiding halos on lines and rigging, although for many other subjects Smart Sharpen does a very good job with somewhat fewer steps.

Thanks, Corey,

I guessed as much! Thanks for clearing that up!

Asher