Quick photo tutorial, with Gimp editing

[Bobbi Meyer]

I'm just throwing this together real quickly, but you will be able to see how I set up my lights and edit my photos of the animals I have mounted. The pictures will be uploaded to my website for all to see.
The lights are marked by red arrows, and the tripod marked by the yellow.
In the first photo, I have my usual light set up, one in front about 18" from the ground, one over head and one to each side.

In the second photo, I have moved the lights on the sides down, and the one that was in front, I have now clamped to the back of the mounting stand for backlighting.

[Bobbi Meyer]

take SEVERAL photos, this way you can choose which one looks best. Move the deer around on the mounting stand to get several different angles.
These pictures are rather yellowish, but if you mess with the different settings on your camera, you can adjust the white balance or change the light settiings and eliminate this problem.

[Bobbi Meyer]

here's a couple with the backlighting, just so you can see the difference

[Bobbi Meyer]

next, we're going to use Gimp to edit the photos.

locate and load the picture into Gimp.

Then click on view, then zoom in and this will enlarge your picture, making it easier to work on

[Bobbi Meyer]

Now comes the fun part......
Cloning and blurring.

Lets get rid of that ugly mounting stand..
go to tools...then to paint tools....then to clone

pick an area on the photo that you want to CLONE, then press CTRL and left click your mouse.
Next move over to the area that you want to COVER, and left click your mouse....WALA....mounting stand gone.

[Bobbi Meyer]

Since my garage is small and my backdrop small, I can't move the deer away from the backdrop and get that nice "fuzzy" look that you would with a normal portrait, so I have to cheat a little..
I'm going to blur the background...
bring up the gimp thats at the bottom of your screen and you can change the attributes of your blur....I like 100% on the rate and the largest circle I can use for now.....later I'll get a smaller circle to get into the detailed parts.

[Bobbi Meyer]

you can see where I've blurred the background and where it's been left exactly as it was....if it's too blurry to suit you, just cute the rate back somewhat.

[Bobbi Meyer]

here's the blurring process completed...

[Bobbi Meyer]

Now lets crop the picture
go to View and zoom back out...
the go to tools, transform tools, then crop..

[Bobbi Meyer]

I DON'T normally do this, but this deer cape is pretty crappy, he had literally THOUSANDS of ticks and had scratched himself bare in spots, so just for giggles, I'm going to "improve" his cape.
Thats it, unless you want to put your name at the bottom of the picture or something...

[Vegas Hunter]

Nicely done iBobbie, I like the look you get with the back lighting, are you using regular lite bulbs or the flouresent type? I might try my hand at a family photo with this method ,If i can get my 4 kids to keep still at the same time lol Thanks for sharing your method

[Bobbi Meyer]

regular 100w light bulbs, not sure what they are called, but they have a blue tint to them.

[Lisa M]

Thank you for taking the time to do this Bobbi.  I downloaded Gimp.  Make me growl when I was learning it...so I just forgot that it was there.  Now I'll go back & see if it makes more sense.    Good job on the tutorial too by the way.    Thanks.

[utsiishi]

hi bobbi, i take it gimp is just a photo editig program.?.  good tutorial, im gunna make me a back drop and get some lamps...

[Wildlife 1]

Thanks Bobbi
For sharing this. Have one ? about it. I use a Mac. and see there is a version for it would you have any info on it that you could share?
If not Maybe someone could add to this for us Mac. users.