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Sunny Days

Photographer: Riley Brandt
Model: Tijana (iModel Management)

Hair/Makeup: Nyla (BENT Makeup Artists)
Photo Assistants: Andrew and Nyla

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Chasing Light

I have spent so much time learning how to take good photos under hideous fluorescent lights, I almost forgot how great it is to work with natural sunlight. I wanted to experiment with back-lit photos when the sun was low because it isn’t something I do often.

Apart from the many bug bites the model and everyone else received almost instantly, it turned out to be a beautiful summer evening. As the sun moved, we moved along with it. This provided us with lots of opportunities for great images.

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Open-Source Photography Workflow

Ever since darktable released version 1.4 which added the ability to make local adjustments using masks, I’ve been taking open-source photography a lot more seriously. All the photos in this collection were edited in Linux using only open-source software.

I used Rapid Photo Downloader to import and rename the RAW photos. I then rated, tagged, and did all my non-destructive RAW editing in darktable. Finally, the GIMP was used for touch ups and preparing the images for web.

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9 Comments

  1. Shane
    July 29, 2014

    Grait photos I am a pro photographer in the US that has ben using Darktable and gimp on arch linux for a year now. I am happy that I made the switch to linux as my main system you definetly can get pro resaults with open source.

    • rileybphoto
      July 31, 2014

      Thanks for sharing. I am glad others are having success editing their photos using OSS on Linux. I’ve been curious about Arch in the past, mostly because it is a rolling release, but never had the time to invest in learning it.

      I am stilling running Lightroom at work where I have to get a lot of images out the door on deadline. But I hope to switch to darktable in the future.

  2. ave
    July 25, 2014

    What lens did you use?

    • rileybphoto
      July 28, 2014

      I was shooting with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens.

  3. Jorge
    July 18, 2014

    Riley, fantastic images, completely loved them, specially the ones with the hammock, and you chose the right model, she is gorgeous. You are giving me a lot of hope for a serious photography workflow using open source. I really love the look on the images, is there any chance to know how you achieve that particular look in darktable? Not asking as much as a full published tutorial but it would be very helpful just to know the main tweaks you made. These are great images and I hope a lot of aspiring photographers can check them out and see what can be achieved with open source. Thanks.

    • rileybphoto
      July 20, 2014

      Thank you for the kind words Jorge. It was a fun shoot.

      I definitely feel more comfortable in darktable after this shoot. It was great practice. Since many of these images were backlit, I was mostly working with the exposure, base curve and tone curve modules to increase contrast by raising the midtones and lowering the shadows.

      • Jorge
        July 21, 2014

        Thank you for the info Riley, it is for certain that the look is really nice in those images. This proves definetely that open source is now a decent candidate for photo editing.

  4. dmanny
    July 15, 2014

    Nicely done. Always great to see others promoting how versatile and effective FOSS for photography can be.

    • rileybphoto
      July 15, 2014

      Thanks. When it comes to being able to edit photos in my favourite OS, the pleasure is all mine :)