Photo Learnings

First, quick apology, I went on unplanned hiatus. I’m not going to try and labor on about why, just know that I’m sorry about it and I will be updating regularly from here on out, though perhaps more conservatively then the previous 5 times a week plan.

Now then, over at Camera Porn they have a contest going on. I decided to participate because I thought about this entry, which I had actually started weeks ago, and could not find the appropriate impetus to finish. This project gave me just that impetus. Ryan Goodman at the aforementioned cameraporn website took a photo of a fuel depot in the Cayman Islands. He posted his recent revision of the photo at his website and challenged other people to take a stab at reprocessing the same image. You will soon be able to see everyone’s results over at his website, and I am sure there will be some similarities amongst them. They will all represent different approaches and that is what today’s entry is all about.

When you finish your shoot and download the images and sit there looking at all those glorious photos you took, it can be daunting. First thing being first, you should sort out the keepers, because post processing can be a time consuming activity, and trying to process every shot you have taken will likely not be worth your time or effort. Once you have sorted the keepers out, then play! This may sound controversial to some, but this post is not for the photo purists, I will be honest up front. If you have been hired to produce a specific look, then you don’t need to play, but if you are processing personal work, then by all means, play. Try as many different things as you can. I highly encourage you to search out lots of actions for photoshop, or presets for lightroom, etc. These give you quick snapshots of possibilities with only a trace amount of work from you. More difficult, but potentially more rewarding is trying to develop a style all your own. This is owed to what goes on before the computer as much as what goes on in it.

Now, to hammer home the point:
Ryan Goodman owns the copyrights on these lovely pieces, but has granted me leave to reproduce them for the purposes of his challenge.

I started with the following two exposures:

The first is intentionally underexposed by two stops, and the second is a correct exposure. There was a third bracketed image overexposed by two stops, but I did not feel that I needed it for what I wanted to accomplish, and thus did not include it.

To process the images I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 and a plugin by Alien Skin called Exposure 2. I ended up with two differing results that only branch from each other at the very end.

1. To begin, I loaded the two images in Photoshop CS3, doing no corrections in ACR and copied one image as a layer onto the second.
2. I then masked out all of the underexposed image save the clouds, and intentionally used the underexposure as a sort of “burn” for the tops of the towers.
3. I then copied both those layers and merged them (ensuring that you have the ability to go back without ctrl-alt-z is a good thing) because Exposure 2 only operates on a single layer at a time.
4. I then used Exposure 2 to first emulate an EPP Cross Process, and then a Fuji Sensia Cross Processing effect.
5. The Fuji sensia effect gave me what i wanted in the sky, but the EPP process gave me what i wanted below the sky except the rocky outcropping. I masked the Fuji Sensia layer to just show me the sky, and masked the EPP layer to show me everything but the rocks.
6. I ended up using the original 0EV image for the rocks, but with a curves layer to increase brightness and significantly increase contrast.
7. I then copied all those and merged them. Then used Exposure 2 to emulate Ilford Delta 3200 (sans the grain), i changed the Ilford layer to luminosity blending, thus giving me the rich and beautiful contrast of Ilford Delta 3200 and this final image:
   
8. I then changed the blending mode to normal to result in this black and white image:
   

Total processing time, 15 minutes. I hope they don’t consider this cheating!

Let’s dive into the meat of what this blog intends to teach. Taking a shot from concept to finished product. Let’s start with ingredients for this shot. Here is what I used:

• Attractive, Fit Male Model
• D200 Digital Camera
• 1 White Lighting X1600 with 50 standard reflector
• 1 Hensel Integra 500 with 7″ reflector
• 1 Hensel Integra 500 with 22″ “Beauty Dish” Reflector
• Seamless Savage Thunder Grey Background

I trigger my lights wirelessly with pocket-wizards, but it doesn’t really matter how your trigger your lights. I found my model on a free networking site named Model Mayhem. I did not use a make-up artist for this shoot, though I strongly prefer a makeup artist for all model work, it has always made a strong difference in the perceived skin quality of the model.

Concept:
This shoot originated because the model left me a positive commentary and a request that we work together in the future. After examining the model’s portfolio and seeing his look (which is fairly standard, but quite attractive), I contacted the model to discuss ideas for the shoot. I wanted to add some male fashion style images to my portfolio, as well as do a little experimentation with some fitness oriented shots. This dovetailed nicely with the model’s desires, and thus we agreed on a trade shoot.

I mentally narrowed down what kind of fashion I wanted to shoot with this model, and realized that with his impressive physique, not showing it off would be silly. I decided on jeans as a theme for the fashion images, and requested that the model bring a few pairs of nice jeans for the shoot. I work with fashion stylists and artists when I can, but being that this was a trade shoot, it would be excessive to hire a fashion artist for it.

The shoot itself was scheduled 2 weeks in advance, and scheduled for 4pm. Later than I normally like to shoot because I like to have outdoor options. My studio space is a converted one car garage, and is actually too small for what it is being used for on this shoot, at about 12′ wide by about 18′ long usable space. I use a 107″ (about 9′) seamless paper roll as a background.

The model arrived on time, and I had already establish a light setup. The first setup I had worked well for more portrait oriented work, but I did not see what I wanted for a more fashion oriented work, so I tested shots in different places, helped warm up the model, and then moved my lights. The shot I am going to break down is this one:

As it sits here now, this is a fair photo, not my best, not my worst. Because of the tight space, the top of the beauty dish got caught in the shot. I am sure that this may make some of the more cynical of my readers step back and think to themselves, “This guy screwed up, I don’t have to listen to anything he says.” This is fine, I am looking to show you a real world situation, including the fact that you may have to fix things from time to time. The lights were set up according to the following diagram:

The first thing to do when I begin working on this photo afterward is to crop to a more pleasing photo if necessary. I chose the following crop for this photo:

This crop not only eliminates the bit of beauty dish, but also brings the whole photo closer to the subject, and helps him fill the frame more, giving the photo more impact.

At this point I begin fixing the basic flaws within the photo. I fix the white balance first, giving me clean colors and I increase contrast and change saturation levels. These edits give me the following photograph:

This photo has most all the characteristics I envision for the final photograph, its highlights are strongly defined, eyes are bright and clear, skin has good texture and the colors are almost perfect on my calibrated screen.

From here, I bring the photo into Photoshop. I use Alien Skin’s Exposure 2 to give the photograph some additional depth and contrast by emulating a film stock, in this case Kodachrome 25. From there, I bring out the white highlights a bit more and result in this final photograph.

This photograph is something I am satisfied with at this particular point. The following things are what I took away from it:

• Lighting from underneath is not always bad.
• Bring the model forward from the background when possible.
• Sometimes a face does not need to reveal the overall tension of a scene when other bodyparts can do the same thing (hands).

Let’s start with a little bit of history. Film records in either color of black and white, and the myriad of different films respond in very different ways. They have different grain structures, different sensitivity to certain colors, and a variety of other parameters which help to make each film unique. Black and white film is as varied as can be, and many different films were considered optimal for different tasks. Each film was sensitive at different levels to different colors. Photographers often used filters on their lenses that worked to pass only certain colors, and those filters helped enhance the contrast in a scene for the film to capture.

Now let’s look at an original color photograph:

In modern digital photography, our cameras capture the light, and it is filtered red, green or blue for each photosensor. Our camera then combines those pixels into the final image in full color. Our cameras allow us to flip a switch that will make a photograph black and white, however you should never use this switch. Black and white conversion is an art, and your camera does a terrible job of it internally. The way your camera performs black and white conversion is the simplest manner possible, it just performs a desaturation effect on the photo, effectively removing the color as if you turned the saturation all the way down in your post processing engine of choice.

Here is that same photo with a pure desaturation:

It looks more bland, less contrasty. This is for a simple reason; when you look at a black and white photograph, you see two colors and the shades between those two colors. Those contrasts make up all the edges and information we can see in a black and white image. In a color photograph, you not only have lightness, but hue, and those two things together establish a huge amount of space for contrast to occur in. When you convert via desaturation, you remove the color information, but do not account for the difference in hue, so you flatten the image a great deal, as a red and a green of equal lightness value will look the same level of grey.

A much better approach is to convert via channel mixer. Some people will complain loudly about the annoyance involved in using the channel mixer to convert to black and white, but I honestly find it easy and the most powerful. With the channel mixer, you can find the best combination of the RGB channels to retain the contrast which makes the image really stand out. I used mixer settings of:

• Red 26
• Green 39
• Blue 35

They made this image really pop, as compared to the above image, the blacks are deeper, highlights stronger and details more evident because more contrast is maintained.

I think most people will agree with me that the second image is in fact better. Working with your channel mixer really is not hard. I suggest first examining each of the 3 channels individually; in this way you will have an idea of how each channel will affect the final product as it is mixed in. From there, play. You will find presets that really work for different kinds of work, but the channel mixer gives you a great deal of flexibility, allowing you to account for different skin tones, and any colors in your photography.

In the interest of continuing the discussion on manual mode, and helping people to continue to make the move toward it, let’s talk about exposure. Exposure control is a factor of three things:

• Aperture - the diaphragm in a lens which opens and closes to allow more or less light to pass through to the sensor (or film) plane.
• Shutter - a barrier that blocks any light from hitting the sensor (or film) plane. Stays open for a variable amount of time.
• ISO - indicative of a certain level of sensitivity from the sensor or film.

Those three things together determine the exposure level in every photograph you will ever make. Flash or no flash. Night or day. In studio or in the wilds of Africa. Let’s talk about just what you do with what each of the three things. Read more »

Do you want to improve your photography in one step? Do you want to make full use of flash? Do you want to take full artistic control of your images? Do you want to stop letting a machine select important qualities of your images for you? Do you want to be able to correct or establish over or under exposure? You can do all those things by one simple button press or dial rotation. Set YOUR camera into manual mode!

When we place our cameras into an automated mode, we do something dangerous: We relinquish control of our images to a machine. Our cameras are very intelligent. The contain very advanced meters that allow the camera to calculate the exposure levels in a scene and try to establish a correct exposure based on the 18% gray rule. Read more »

I have been reading photography forums for a good while now. It seems the most controversial thing to talk about, more than the Canon v Nikon divide or film v digital, is post-processing. Specifically, how much is too much? The two sides I have seen most often espoused are that, anything beyond small fine tunings are unacceptable, and a no holds barred, photography is art and post-processing is part of that art. Many people claim post processing is a lazy man’s way to “save” bad shots. Others claim that post processing techniques like HDR represent something not truly photography anymore.

My feelings on the matter are thus:

1. A photograph should be well composed, properly exposed, properly focused (this does not necessarily mean that things are sharp, as abstracts show us.), and interesting.
2. A photographer is an artist, and so long as their work is not to capture the truth (e.g. a photojournalist), they have every right to do whatever they want to any image they capture.
3. There is no “sacred standard” of photography that rates images whose effects were achieved naturally above those whose effects were achieved with computer assistance.
4. Lastly, what matters is the end result. If you achieved something beautiful, or an image which sells well, it does not matter how you got to it (with the proviso that copyright infringement is wrong), it matters THAT you got to it.

This information, however, is not the real point of this post. It was presented to give you some insight into my thoughts so that when I start diving in to specific post processing techniques, you aren’t surprised.

First of all, I shoot in RAW mode. I expounded on the benefits of RAW mode in Monday’s post here. So the first thing we need to address is what RAW converter to use. I have personally spent time with iPhoto and Aperture by Apple, Bibble, DxO Optics Pro, Nikon Capture NX, Lightroom, and Adobe Camera RAW. The two that I actually decided to pay for are DxO Optics Pro and Lightroom (Although I suppose I technically paid for Adobe Camera Raw by paying for Photoshop CS3). Realistically, since Lightroom came out I have barely touched DxO. DxO is a great tool for automatically adjusting your images in predictable ways, but lately I haven’t had any jobs which resulted in the massive numbers of images that make it really nice. For my personal work, I usually end up editing a small fraction of the pictures I take for stock use, portfolio use, etc. Thus I have to recommend Lightroom.

Quick List, I recommend Lightroom because:

• Non-destructive editing of RAW Images with a powerful tool set
• Great Organizational system for files
• Tight Photoshop integration
• Great Export control
• You can build presets and rapidly see how they will affect your images

For heavy lifting, black and white conversion, film effects, and a variety of improvements and fixes after the shoot, Photoshop is my favorite tool. Though I played with the Gimp, there is no substitute for Photoshop, and with every version Adobe releases, they introduce further significant improvements to an already amazing product. The thing is simple, it is just the definitive product for editing. It has a filter/plug-in system which makes its potential functionality almost endless, and it incorporates an action system which lets you automate the tasks you do often, even allowing actions to take user input. Photoshop is also VERY expensive, and for some people, the expense is emphatically not worth it. The options and flexibility presented in Lightroom are likely enough for the vast majority of people, and if you want to push past pure lightroom, Photoshop Elements offers some of the functionality of Photoshop, but my recommendation, if you are serious about your photography, is to budget Photoshop into your hobby, you won’t regret it.

So, first post under post-processing. I intend to write about post processing techniques each wednesday.

It needs to be said, RAW mode is important. Every DSLR has access to RAW mode, and a growing number of Point and Shoot cameras do as well. RAW mode is akin to a digital negative, and it gives you several benefits:

1. It retains the largest amount of color and tone information.
2. It offers the most flexibility in your post processing.

Let’s examine those two points in more detail. A jpeg image file contains 8-bits of color information per pixel. A RAW file contains the most that the sensor retains, in most cases with point and shoot or DSLR cameras, that means 12 or 14 bits. Those 4-6 extra bits represent 50-75% MORE information retained about colors, tones, etc. This results in more vivid colors, more fine details as well as leading to the second point. The second point is one about post processing. Certainly, RAW files are more complex, and require a RAW converter to transform them from meaningless data into usable images, but they provide us with a great deal more options in post-processing. RAW files are much more tolerant to exposure changes, and can be color balanced perfectly for the scene after the fact, so you can fire and forget more easily.

That’s it really. Shoot RAW, enjoy the benefits, ’nuff said. I will talk about RAW processing software in my next post, along with other information about post-processing.

Alright, let’s dive into some technique!

The polarizing filter is one of the most useful filters to retain for digital. Certainly, it is possible to fake the effects of many other filters in post processing, but the polarizing filter changes the way light enters your lens in a rather fundamental way. The polarizing filter blocks light coming in to your lens from certain angles. It is most often used outdoors in nature photography, but can also be used in a variety of studio situations to cut reflections. Its general effect is that it creates a contrast enhancement and deeper color due to less reflected light interfering with the scene. It also has secondary effects: Read more »

Ok, I know that people all want to know not only what is best, but also what I use. (Or maybe that’s just my overconfidence showing.) I feel what is needed here is some straight talk.

What is best could take up an entire post on its own should I choose to really expand on the topic. I will try to keep it short instead: The best camera is the one you are actually using. It is not the dream camera (a Leaf Aptus 75s coupled with a Mamiya 645AFD II for me) you wish you could afford, nor is it the camera you will buy and allow to collect dust on your shelf. The best camera is not about how many megapixels, features or dollar signs went into making the thing. The best camera is about what camera you will enjoy using and hence use with frequency. If you wouldn’t use an SLR because it’s too big, buy a point and shoot. Virtually any digital camera you can buy today will produce stellar quality images. Read more »

Hi everyone!

First, thanks for reading this blog’s maiden post. I started this blog because in all my reading online, I noticed a certain something lacking from the great variety of photoblogs and photography instructional blogs. These blogs tend to offer ideas, ideas about how to improve your photography, ideas about how to do something novel, even ideas about how to see (photographically) better, but they rarely offer concrete steps for anyone to look at and follow. Partly this is because photography is an art form, and partly, it is because it’s not easy to lay down steps. Photography is the sum of a great variety of techniques, tricks and steps to go from the point of thinking about something you want to photograph to actually hanging up a finished print. In this blog, I intend to use my photography as examples to talk step-by-step about the art and skill of photography and post processing. I will happily take requests for things people want to talk about, and I expect that over time, the blog will evolve. I will dive deep into specific concepts or techniques, try to explain why you might use them and when they are appropriate. I will also talk about post processing techniques. As controversial as image editing software has become, I am not an editorial photographer nor a purist and some things cannot be done outside of post processing.

I hope this to be a long and fruitful journey and this is its starting point.