July, 2009

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A quick & dirty in-home studio

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Flowers, all strobed up

Flowers, all strobed up

We have some flowers – african violets, I think? In knowledgeable hands, they bloom almost continually.  In our hands, we’re lucky if it’s once a year, in the summer.  They’re blooming right now.

To the right, you’ll see a macro shot of these blooms.  While it can be expensive to get all of the right pieces of equipment, it’s pretty simple to run if you do.  In my case, I have Nikon gear, which means that I have a few flashes, and Nikon’s excellent iTTL flash technology.

So how did I get the dead-black dropoff with the lighting on the petals?  That, after the jump:

Click to continue »

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Post production, an example

Monday, July 20th, 2009
Eklutna Lake at Dawn

Eklutna Lake at Dawn

Take the photo to the right. In its original form, it’s pretty good. Flat lighting, but that’s due to the haze and fog. For full rendering, however, it really needed to have a few things brought out.  The mountain in the background was barely visible, for example.  There was a yellow haze over the mountain, and due to exposing for that large amount of white, the grasses in the foreground had lost a lot of their saturation.  To make things worse, I had a large smudge over part of the mountain (I later found a fingerprint on the back piece of glass on my lens – dunno how that got there!).

So, for editing: I smoothed out the histogram in Adobe Raw, using minor tweaks to contrast, clarity, and exposure until I had a good base image.  Then, to Photoshop:

  • Bring in the mountains: I used the dodge and burn tools (something I rarely do) to bring in the peak in the background.  There wasn’t much detail there, but it wasn’t really needed.  In this case, it’s the idea of a mountain that’s important.
  • Remove yellows from the smudge: Burning in colors included burning in yellows.  I swapped over to the sponge tool (set to desaturate), and lightly went over the burned-in haze.  This left in the smudge, but it’s no longer a blob of smog.
  • Remove the smudge altogether: the smudge covered part of the peak, so I couldn’t get away with the easier tools (healing brush, patch tool).  This requires heavy-duty work.  Fortunately contours were visible.  I built back in the sky around the mountains using a light touch on the clone tool (set to lighten).  Then I smoothed out the smudge in the mountain, using the same settings.  This was tricky, needing to find a similar structure to not blow anything out.  Finally, minor spot touch up with the healing brush.
  • Bring back light to the grasses: this was a natural job for NIK’s Viveza tool, and that’s what I used.  Four control points spread along the grass, set very slightly up for brightness (+6%) and contrast (+8%), and saturation (+8%).
  • Brighten the water: still in Viveza, with four more control points.  In this case, contrast was moved up to 12%, brightness to 8%.  That was enough.
  • Remove noise: This was a handheld image, so I had a faster ISO going when I took it.  To get around that, my next-to-final step was to run NIK Dfine 2.  Defaults were fine.

After that, it was just a matter of resizing, sharpening, and saving.

This is possibly my favorite shot from that camping trip – very “Lord of the Rings” – or so it seems to me…

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What do you prefer in a photo?

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

I’ve been messing around with Flickr for a short while now, mostly to get a sense of what people like. I’ve come to the conclusion that Flickr isn’t the best place for that.  This isn’t to say that people on Flickr have bad taste, but rather to say that they have different tastes. If you are trying to sell (or otherwise impress) to people for prints, then Flickr is probably the wrong area.

For example, compare these two photos:

Eklutna Lake at Sunset

Eklutna Lake at Sunset (HDR)

Drops of dew

Drops of dew

First, you see them small, here on the screen.  Then look at them in their larger view (click through to Flickr & choose “all sizes”).  Compare them.

Which one do you prefer? At which size?  Based on responses on Flickr (not the “nice jorb” type of comments, but traffic, favorites, etc), the HDR of Eklutna is the superior pic. And yet, I neither prefer it nor believe it.  In the smaller size, the HDR is certainly easier to make out.  But in larger sizes?  I prefer the Drops of Dew pic.  If this were to be printed out?  I suspect anything larger than 8×10 would be better with the Drops of Dew pic, as well.

I guess my point, in the end, is this: if you’re looking to sell a print, many times the format of Flickr makes it the wrong place to market your work. You’re probably better off printing the work and hanging it at a local coffee shop – at least there you will be showing exactly what you’re selling.

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The importance of keeping a clean sensor

Saturday, July 18th, 2009
Sunset at Eklutna (HDR)

HDR of Eklutna

For a few years, a clean sensor didn’t actually matter to me. Using wide-open f/stops, most grime is completely blurred out. Then came this year, and I started to use much smaller, finer f/stops. In just a few months, I’m far more experienced at cleaning a sensor.  Have to – otherwise I’m spending huge amounts of time fixing photos in photoshop.

Take the photo to the right.  By using a small f/stop, I was able to get everything in focus.  But this includes even things on the sensor itself!  After merging into a single image, I ended up with more than 30 individual edits to remove specs.  And that was clean, compared to just a few weeks ago.

In this case, the dirt came from camping.  Dirty, messy camping.  Gets everywhere, and I sleep with the camera in my tent.  Disturbing?  Maybe.  But I’m not so disturbed that I’m carrying a sensor cleaner with me everywhere!

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Getting up early

Friday, July 17th, 2009
Fishing at Dawn

Fishing at Sunrise

When you talk to photographers, myself included, you hear people talking about “the golden hour” like some mystical time of day.

Well, in Alaska it can be mighty elusive at times. Rather, in the summer.  In the winter it is most of the day.  In the spring and fall, it’s mighty strong, and lasts longer than most areas in the south.

Generally when you hear about it, you hear about it in the sense of “right before sundown.”  There are a few reasons for that, but mostly because people are awake then.  At dawn?  Even those who are awake are bleary-eyed.

But the rewards are great, if you can pull it off.  The pic to the right is an example (click it for a larger view!).  Those yellows only exist in the morning, and usually in the higher altitudes.  By evening, they’re much more golden, and brighter.

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Dew in the morning

Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Dew in the morning

Dew in the morning

To get the photo to the right, I had to get up early. Which is to say, before the sun rose.  Dew is ephemeral, disappearing shortly after the sun touches it, so you really need to be ready.

Look at the photo closely.  See the lighting patter in the dewdrops themselves?  This is because the dewdrops are backlit.  The sun is behind them and slightly to the left (from the camera’s perspective).

So if you’re up early enough, and the light is right, you’re left with only needing to find the correct angle for the background.  This shot was aimed deliberately to blur out all of the greenery behind the subject, with the intent of hopefully creating bokeh.

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Fireweed, from two weekends ago

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

It is said in Alaska that when the blooms on the fireweed reach their top, then the summer is over.  After 20 years, I will attest that this is pretty much true.  As such, it is nice to know that summer is only half over. However, it only began a month ago.  So soon it ends…

Fireweed on the first week of July

Fireweed on the first week of July

I would note: in a mere week and a half, these blooms have already risen noticeably…

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Favorite settings?

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Brian Auer recently posted a poll on his blog, asking what his readers’ favorite f-number is. This seems like an odd question to me, at least on its face.  Perhaps, to explain: there is no such a thing as an absolute “favorite f-stop” in my book.  There are preferred f-stops for specific photographs, but that’s as far as it goes.

So as I thought about it, I came up with several favorit f/stops:

  • f/1.4: for indoor shots, intimate shots, some portraits.
  • f/2: for portraits on prime lenses.  Uncontrolled lighting, or no studio lighting.
  • f/2.8: general-purpose portraits (studio & non-studio).  Any shot where I want the subject to stand out from the background.
  • f/8: the “carry around” setting. When I’m not shooting.
  • f/16: general purpose landscapes.  f/16 is a guideline, not an absolute.
  • f/22 & higher: most of my landscapes these days.  This is because I’m trying to slow down the shutter, not for sharpness (most of my lenses are sharper at f/16)

The most used f/stop?  f/8.  As noted a while ago, leaving the camera at f/8 (and ISO 400, in my case) tends to leave me in a situation where I’m about 1/2 a second from a photo if the camera is out.  Since a lot of my photos are spur-of-the-moment of a moving object (ahem, 4-year-old), this is where most shots are taken these days.

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LensWork: The Best of EndNotes

Monday, July 13th, 2009

I received the latest edition of LensWork over the weekend.  If you haven’t read the magazine, then let me recommend it – instead of the typical junk covering the latest, most popular cameras, or whatever is “hip” (think HDR), they focus purely on art.  This usually means black and white photography, and they do a fantastic job at publishing.  In fact, I’d sooner call it a mini-art book.

Mere magazine it is not.

Back in May, you may remember that one of their authors passed away.  The current issue is completely dedicated to him – no photos, just his final thoughts, writings, memoirs from others, and the like.

I’m reading it now.  I highly recommend that you try to get yourself a copy.

And no, you can’t have mine.

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Post processing for effect

Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Clover in a sand pit

Clover in a sand pit

The photo to the right was originally a fairly decent picture, but nothing spectacular.  By that I mean that it had decent placement, a good symmetry to the petals, and something to look at in regards to sharpness.  It looks much better after processing, though.

In this case, it didn’t take much.  First, I started in Adobe RAW.  Steps were roughly:

  • Moved it to +1.3EV;
  • Slid contrast to the right until there was decent contrast (whites are blown out);
  • Moved recovery slider over to recover highlights;
  • Reduced EV back to +.4;
  • Moved up Clarity slightly, until petals jumped out again;

Then in to Photoshop:

  • Open the NIK Viveza tool;
  • Lower brightness on background areas with control points (4 points, large);
  • Slightly increase saturation on rosy areas of clover with another control point, click OK;
  • Merge layers on a new layer;
  • Sharpen (with a luminosity layer, at 60% opacity);
  • Add copyright, etc.;

Total time: 3 minutes.  Which is why I was willing to pay for NIK’s software – it saves that much time.

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