Fantastic session with Eloy and Pia last night.  Nadia and I took turns shooting them.  Great times!

More from the shoot will follow once I finish processing them, for now just a teaser…  Pia as a sun Fairy

Let me know what you think, in the comments

Just finished editing my shots from the portrait session Nadia and I had with Eloy on July 19.  I spent most of the session assisting Nadia so there isn’t a lot of variety in the set.

Two thumbs up for Eloy for being a very cool guy and also for coming super-prepared!  He brought some clippings from fashion mags with some ideas, as well as quite a few items of clothing for us to choose from.  We definitelly look forward to the opportunity to shoot with him again!

A shout-out also to Renato.  He came along with Eloy on the shoot and helped us immensely.  Since we decided to go lightweight with the kit (no stands for instance) most of the shots would not have been possible without your help.  Thank you!

Here’s Eloy not taking himself too seriously

Update: See more recent post offering the two latest solutions I use.

Let’s say you read my other post on this subject, but for some reason decided that backing up and then replacing a core php file in your installation isn’t something you’d like to do.

There’s a plugin that you might want to try, called attachment-extender.

Since it’s a standard plugin you just upload it into your plugins folder then enable the plugin from the dashboard.

Here’s how you use it:

• Start writing your new post
• when you’re ready to insert images click the “Add an Image” button
• Click “Select Files” and then browse for the files on your computer
• Select the multiple files you want to insert
• Wait for the files to upload.
• Now click the last tab on the “Add an image” dialog box, which should read “Media Library”
• You will see your whole media library.  The last files you just uploaded should be at the top.
• Check off each file you want to insert in your post
• Click “Insert All Checked”
• Done.

Benefits of this solution:

• It’s not a hack, but a plugin… should survive version upgrades (until the dude at the wheel wakes up and makes this a standard feature)

Drawbacks:

• Compared to the media.php change there are a couple of extra steps, especially clicking the boxes to select the images, and possibly paging to the next page of the gallery if you’re uploading quite a few images.

Of course it’s still tons better than the default of having to go to each image, and imho much better also than the upload then point with links by hand option.

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

Update:  Here’s how I’m dealing with this currently.

There is a lot to love about WordPress.  Image uploading is NOT one of those things
One thing that is very frustrating especially for photographers, is the inability to natively import a large number of images and insert them straight into a blog post.
Yes there are gallery options, and yes you could use Microsoft’s Live Writer to insert images into your post (if you’re using Windows).

But you really should be able to do this straight inside WordPress.

I searched all over with little luck, but eventually found a gem (unfortunately I do not have a link to the place where I found it) … someone, somewhere, sometime edited the \wp-admin\includes\media.php file to provide a button that allows you to insert all the images you just uploaded.

The way it works is as follows:

• start writing your new post
• when you’re ready to insert images click the “Add an Image” button
• Click “Select Files” and then browse for the files on your computer
• Select the multiple files you want to insert
• Wait for the files to upload, they will have a checkbox next to them which is selected by default
• Click “Insert Selected”
• Done.

The only problem is that the file does not work in the latest version of WordPress (2.8.2 as of this writing).
So I took my photographer hat off and set it on the table, and put my coder hat on.  After a few hours of comparing/inspecting/searching, I was able to isolate the changes that allow for this great functionality.  Unless huge changes are made by the codex developers I think I should be able to provide an updated version when wordpress is updated.  In fact please note that anytime you upgrade wordpress you’ll probably have to reapply this.

You can download the version that works with WordPress 2.7.x here.

You can download the version that works with WordPress 2.8.x here.

Be sure to follow the very straightforward instructions included in the readme file… backup your media.php before replacing it!

Let me know if this helped you out, in the comments.

If this solution is not for you, check out this alternative.

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

Note:  This entry was actually published on October 17th, 2009.  I’m backfilling the blog with work that I had never gotten around to adding to the blog.  I dated this June 15th simply because we had taken some time off in June and most of july due to the birth of our baby Marco

Two hours of photography, countless hours of Photoshop… and Little Devil is here.

Like Little Angel before it, Little Devil is a ManyManyMoments Signature product for childen’s photography.  While we’re happy to make creative portraits of your little ones in the great outdoors, or in your home or any other special place, MostlyReal Portraits do hold a special place in our heart as they allow us to blend together the delicious gorgeousness of your little one with the fantastic world of imaginaton.

Unlike Little Angel, which did not have specific preproduction photography, but rather was based on a “found image” (shot by us of course), Little Devil was the first MostlyReal portrait that were conceived from the very beginning in most of it’s final detail and that therefore had specifically planned preproduction photography.  Of course children being the unpredictable beings that they are means both that the end result is not going to be exactly as planned, and also that it’s going to be better.

For instance in the case of Little Devil, the little Devil holding his own tail was NOT planned ahead of time, but rather the result of our fabulous model putting his left hand in that position when we simply asked him to hold up his right (for the planned flame).

Here are some shots from pre-production:

I don’t want to sit.. I want to crawl!  I love to crawl!!!

 Yet more proof that when we let the model be himself the result is much better.  Here he was essentially copying the pose I was suggesting to him.  Mouth expression and all.

But notice… seconds later… on his own… hand as I suggested, other hand ready to grab the virtual tail (all on his own)… and an expression to die for, which made the Little Devil the adorable image it is.  And yes this is the image that would eventually become Little Devil.  Shot in natural light, many thanks to the cloud cover for the fantastic shadowless wrap-around light.

Here is the image, shortly into post-production… cut away from the background, tail, wings, wing structure in place, beggining to work on the clouds behind his back but in front of his wings.

Finally some detail shots to show you just how detailed a MostlyReal portrait is (this one was printed as a 20×30 but would look awesome even at twice that size)

Delicious little feet:

Detail of the tail – and yes the texture on the tail was painstakingly copied from the scales on a snake.

The fire: special effect actually shot during post-production (one of those outdoors torches to keep away bugs), most of the smoke was added in post as a series of special effect layers.

Finally the bits I’m most proud of: the horns and the goatee.  In order to make them realistic I spent a good 15 minutes examining my own hair and facial hair.  Eventually I determined that the only way to pull this off in a way that would look totally real even if inspected much more up close than you see here… was to paint by hand every single strand of hair, constantly sampling the color of my model’s real hair.  I believe I managed to accomplish my goal.

One more time the final image:

Note: this image was not created on 6/1/2009.  I am slowly backfilling our blog with content that we had on our previous site and didn’t want this to show up as the latest work.  Plus we were off for a perior of time around June 2009 due to the birth of our baby Marco.

Introducing our very first MostlyReal portrait.

You have been able to see it in our galleries for ages, but this is the first time we show what it looked like before post-production and show some of the images along the way to the final Little Angel.

Here is the final image:

 Unlike later MostlyReal portraits, Little Angel did not have  a preproduction photography session purposely scheduled to create it.  The starting image was a “found” image (shot by us of course) taken while she was playing with her grandmother.

Here is a shot immediatelly before the shot we used in the portrait:

And here is the image that was selected, mainly due to her smile and the reltive ease (compared to the previous image anyway) to separate her from the background.

 Here you can see that I’ve separated her from the background and added catchlights in her eyes.  The funky background was just a way to see if the separation had worked.  I think it had … for those unfamiliar with masking in photoshop… few things are more daunting than masking thin strands of hair.  Yeah this one took a LONG time.

Later in post-production she already has wings and the beginning of the cloud she’s sitting on.  The sky is very flat, there’s no halo, her face hasn’t been brought-out with Post-processing and the diffused clouds are missing.

Once again, the final image, for those who might enjoy comparing it to the intermediate step above.

If you would like us to create a MostlyReal portrait for a special child in your life, don’t hesitate to contact us with your vision and we’ll discuss what would need to happen to make your vision a reality.