Jacob Maentz’s Blog

Here are some images from a Debut (turning 18) I photographed a couple of weeks ago. Sisters, Krizia and Kirsten were the debutants celebrating their special day together. A fun event and great family!

Here are some selected photos from Robert John & Sheryllyn’s wedding last June 14th, 2009. Preparation was at the Hilton Cebu Resort and the wedding and reception was held at Amara in Liloan, Cebu.

This morning I was called out of the house to look at a rainbow. To my surprise it was a circular rainbow wrapping around the sun. This was the first time I have ever seen this and so I took some pictures and did a little research.

Apparently, this phenomenon is called a sundog. These appear when the sun is low in the sky and its rays catch the thin vapour formed of ice crystals which lies in the atmosphere six miles above the Earth’s surface.

The rays are refracted by the crystals to produce what looks like a halo round the sun.

Sometimes, as here, they display a spectrum of colours from red closest to the sun to a pale blue furthest from it, which has led to them being mistaken for full circle rainbows.

In centuries past, they were thought of as signs of ill omen. These days they are most often mistaken for UFOs.

Pretty cool for a Thursday morning.

I’m posting some pictures from a wedding I had this past Saturday. Joseph and Jean are from Cebu, but they are living in New York. My wife Oma assisted me and we had a fun time with the couple and their family and friends. Hope you enjoy the selected images.

I spent the last two weeks in Daytona, Florida for the annual Bike Week at Bruce Rossmeyer’s Destination Daytona. I believe this was my third Bike Week I’ve attended, but never to enjoy the festivities….always for work. This trip was no exception, I spend my time there working for my Dad’s company Boogey Lights installing accent lighting on Harley Davidson Motorcycles. In 2005, I learned how to install Boogey lights and traveled to a few different rallies with my Dad earning a little extra cash. I even ended up working his company for a portion of that year. Now my dads company only attends two rallies a year (Bike Week and Biketoberfest) with his dealers covering all the others. They always save a spot for me as one of the installers, so it’s worth the long trip over the Pacific to earn a little extra cash. I don’t think many photographers would pass up an opportunity to earn some extra money! For me it works out great and I get to travel and spend some time visiting people along the way.

I fly to Seoul on Sunday to spend a few days with my good friend Hassan and then its back home to see my family. I can’t wait to see Liam, Amaya and of course my wife Oma. I hope the weather will be good in Seoul. I’m planning on spending a lot of time shooting and walking the city.

At these motorcycle rallies I rarely get the time to pull out my camera and snap some shots. This year I made a bigger effort to take pictures in my down time (we had more down time this year than in the past as well). Although we are not setup at the places I would really like to shoot (biker bars, mud wrestling pits, etc.) I tried to stop interesting looking people as they walked by and take their portrait. A few good shots came of this; it’s better than not taking out the camera at all. I wont post them here, but there are some R-rated images if anyone would like to see. Some of these bikers wear some crazy outfits.

Destination Daytona Lane

Biker at Destination Daytona Bikeweek

A biker on his bike at Bikeweek, Daytona.

Daytona Bikeweek Panoramic from our Boogey Lights tent.

Biker with tattoos

Chopper with Boogey Lights. This is what we were installing.

Vinnie from the old Orange County Choppers show and me

I went to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga this past Monday with a good friend I haven’t seen in a long time. Wally Van Sickle and Sean Kelly from IDEA WILD were in town attending the Society for Conservation Biology annual conference. IDEA WILD purchased equipment for the winners who participated in the Conservation Leadership program. The Conservation Leadership winners were attending this conference and the reason why Wally and Sean came to Chattanooga. I’ve been living about an hour from Chattanooga for the past three months and this worked out great, because I haven’t seen Wally in over four years. The last time we saw each other was in El Nido, Palawan doing some diving.

We had a day to hang out and we decided to go to the Tennessee Aquarium to see all the critters there. We were all very impressed with the quality and design of the aquarium. One of the best aquariums I have been to. It was also nice to see on display many of the native species to Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau.

I thought I would share with you some images I took at the aquarium. I would recommend a visit to this aquarium if you are in the area.

This is short tutorial to show you how I make quick edits to some of my underwater photos. Most underwater pictures will have a green or cyan color cast that needs to be removed and light/detail that needs to emphasized. This process is very easy to do using Photoshop and can take less than three minutes per photo.

Original image (left) and image after quick edit in Photoshop (right) - It may be hard to see the difference in the two photos if your browser doesn’t read embedded color spaces.

First, I make a duplicate layer of my background to work with.

Next create a new blank layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Color Balance

This is where you can remove most of the color cast that underwater photos will have. Generally, I will increase my reds and decrease my blues. Just play around with the sliders until you are happy with the result. *Keep in mind - you will also be able to reduce your color cast later using Selective Color.

Next highlight your duplicated background layer. This is where I use a third party filter called Nik Filters. Open Nik Filters from your Filter menu and select Sunshine. Try selecting the four Light-Casting Algo to see which one looks the best for your picture. I generally use A or D(off). Click Ok.

Most of the time the Sunshine effect is too much for the photo and looks unnatural. Most often I will highlight my Sunshine Layer and reduce the Opacity to my liking.

Next create a new blank layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Selective Color

Here you can take more control of individual colors within your image. I find for underwater images you need to increase your magenta (within the Cyans) and also add some yellow. The best thing to do is to experiment with all the colors and all the sliders. See what works best for you.

The last thing I do to my underwater images is increase the contrast. (You will need to flatten your image before doing this or merge your background and sunshine layers together).

Highlight the flattened layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Contrast

I will generally increase the contrast of an image with the amount depending on the picture itself.

That’s it. This is one way to quickly improve the quality of an underwater image.