Category Archives: Process

Kung Fu

There is a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix in which the protagonist Neo awakens from a virtual reality training session and states, simply “I know Kung fu”. It is an important moment as it is the point where the character understands that he can control the World around him and is the catalyst for his growth.

Thanks to Emil von Maltitz, lead photographer on the recent Nature’s Light “Composing the Dunes” Namibian workshop, I too can say: I know Kung fu. At least of the photographic variety.

The review of that trip is being written so I’m not going to talk about it here in detail but my hopes for it were simple: That they show me show great photographic locations and that I could photograph them without people getting in the way. I had no expectations other than that.

It is worth mentioning that I primarily use Adobe Lightroom for cataloguing and image processing as I find it simple and it has all the features I need to post process images without having too many to be cluttered. I have used Photoshop in the past – and have it as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud package – but I’ve never really liked it due to its complexity and over-engineering for my needs. If truth be told, I knew the Photoshop could do some clever things but even with online videos and tutorials I always struggled to use it – so much so that I simply avoided it.

I’ve also never tried astrophotography before. Well, I made an attempt in Iceland earlier this year, but the results were decidedly underwhelming. I knew from the itinerary that the Nature’s Light workshop made a bit of a feature of astrophotography and was keen to try it, but didn’t have high hopes as it would be my first real attempt.

In short, the best I could have hoped for a month ago was this:

Despite the eye-catching sky in the past this image would have not made first pick as I lacked the skill to process it.

Despite the eye-catching sky in the past this image would have not made first pick as I lacked the skill to process it.

A quick glance and it all looks reasonable. As you can see the stars, well, look like stars, the Milky Way is distinct and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds look suitably like galaxies. In fact, if this image were only to be looked at on a phone display or even a tablet then the image looks perfectly fine.

The problems become apparent when you zoom in and look at the foreground. In the 100% crop of the image below we can see the graininess of the tree trunks, the dried earth ground and the sand dunes behind.

ISO 6400. The noise present in the foreground is obvious. Dropping to a lower ISO, say 3200, would improve this require a longer exposure, blurring the stars.

At ISO 6400 the noise present in the foreground is obvious. Dropping to a lower ISO, say 3200, would improve this but also require a longer exposure, blurring the stars.

In the past my only option would have been to use Imagenomic’s Noiseware plugin so let’s see if that helps.

Noise can be removed via tools, but they remove detail too leaving an unnatural smoothness.

Noise can be removed via tools, but they remove detail too leaving an unnatural smoothness.

The noise has definitely gone but so too has all the detail. Unnatural and, again, unprintable. Of course I could drop the ISO speed to something more sensible, say ISO 400, and then compensate for the lower sensitivity to light by increasing the exposure time.

Showing the shutter to 240 seconds and lowering the ISO gives us low noise detail.

Showing the shutter to 240 seconds and lowering the ISO gives us low noise detail.

That’s much better! Very little noise and lots of detail. But with a four minute exposure the stars, well, they’re not stars anymore – they’re streaks!

This image looks unusable but the foreground is low noise and detailed.

This image looks unusable but the foreground is low noise and detailed.

The answer is course simple: Take two images – one high ISO, short exposure for the stars and one low ISO, long exposure for the foreground – and merge them together using the masks feature of Photoshop. The issue is how do you create an accurate mask that separates the foreground from the sky when the trees are such an irregular shape. The lasso tool would be one option but it’d be a real pain to build a mask with additive lasso selections. You could manually create a mask using the brush tool and white and black ink, but that would take ages and never be truly accurate. And just to highlight a point I made above: I didn’t know Photoshop a month ago – I didn’t know that selections could be additive, I didn’t know how the different lasso tools worked. In other words I would have been stuck with an uninspiring image of a stunning location.

The Kung Fu

What Emil and the workshop gave me is two things. The first is an idea of how to photograph a scene for astrophotography – and the number of shots needed. The second is how to compile these individual images into the final shot.

Once you know the process it is easy to capture the individual images needed, of which there are actually four. The exact settings will vary depending upon location and the brightness of objects in the sky and foreground but as a starting point:

  1. An ISO 3200 (or ISO 6400), 20-30 second image at f/4 for the stars.
  2. An ISO 400, 240 second image at f/4 for the foreground with no light painting.
  3. An ISO 400, 240 second image at f/4 for the foreground with the trees painted by a torch.
  4. An ISO 400, 240 second image at f/4 with the lens cap on.

Of these four images, (1) and (3) appear in the final result and (2) and (4) are there to help build the final image. Image 1 is, as mentioned, taken to capture the stars as pin-pricks. Image 3 is the ‘foreground interest’ shot: low noise and good detail with some light painting to pull the eyes to aspects on the image and make it less flat. Image 2 is essentially the same as image 3 but not lit so that the foreground is dark to separate it from the sky. You could perhaps use image 2, but the light painting would bring the brightness of the foreground up to that of the stars which would hamper the next step. Image 4 – the one of the lens cap – is a dark frame. Any camera sensor running a long exposure will produce pixel glitches usually as coloured pixels. The dark frame captures just these glitches and can be used to remove them from the final result through subtractive masking.

The Kung fu that stitches these separate images together into the final result is Photoshop’s luminosity masks. Luminosity masks are difficult for me to explain simply as I don’t fully understand them, but in essence they allow you to create a mask not based on a shape (like the brush tool or lasso tool would) but on the brightness (or darkness) of the image. This is where image (2) is useful; the sky is bright due to the stars, but the foreground is dark. Here’s an example luminosity mask that is looking at the darkest parts of the image:

luminosity mask 1 1600px

It is perhaps counter-intuitive but white shows the dark bits here simply because white shows the selection we are making and the selection in this case is the dark components of the image. Because image (2) purposely had no lighting on the foreground, it is in darkness and so it is added to the mask, but so too are parts of the sky because they are dark too. The mask is too detailed but it is easy to fix; once created a combination of a curves adjustment, the paint bucket tool and the brush tool allowed me to create a simpler – and more useful mask.

luminosity mask 2 1600px

I wanted the sky from one image and the foreground from another and I now have a very accurate mask that makes a distinction between the two. It is a simple procedure to load the images (1) and (3) as layers in Photoshop and apply the mask to image (3). Voilà – pin-prick stars and low noise, detailed foreground.

Once you understand luminosity masks, everything becomes possible. Want to brighten just the stars? Create a ‘brights’ luminosity mask? Want to make the night sky cooler, more blue? Invert the foreground mask we created and apply it to a blue photo filter. The result?

The final result. almost. Despite all the apparent Photoshop trickery, this is what my eyes were seeing on the night.

The final result. almost. Despite all the apparent Photoshop trickery, this is what my eyes were seeing on the night.

What impresses me most as I write this article is that, less than a month ago, I would have had no idea about any of the steps mentioned. I avoided Photoshop as I did not understand it, barely understanding the concept of layers and masks, but certainly not enough to use them properly. Could I have learnt this online? Maybe. I have tried in the past, but I don’t learn by listening; I learn by asking and doing. Now I know how to shoot the raw images and how to merge them into a single vision.

So, like Neo I now see that I can control the (photographic) World around me. It is a new skill and one with plenty of room to improve and develop. It’ll be a long road.

But isn’t that the fun part?

 

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One Image, Two Looks

For a couple of reasons my mind has been thinking of Iceland lately and so it was only going to be a matter of time before I found myself looking at the photographs I took there last year. Rather than look at the ones I’ve already selected for the final gallery, or the ones that made it to first and second pick, I decided to go all the way back to the original ones, which is not an easy task considering that there are 3,500 of them. But I’ve often found it useful to look at images that didn’t make the cut in the hope that eventually I’ll learn to stop making those mistakes.

So I was happy to find this lurking in the pile of photographs that didn’t make even first pick.

Jokulsarlon is a popular destination for good reason.

Jokulsarlon is a popular destination for good reason. [Click to enlarge!]

Ask around about what to see when in Iceland and I’ll guarantee that Jokulsarlon will be on the shortlist. Jokulsarlon is probably the most easily accessible glacial lake (Jokulsarlon translates as ‘glacial river lagoon’) that you can see and if you’re driving along the main road, route 1, then you cannot miss it as you literally have to drive over it, or at least the bridge that crosses its narrowest point. You can even take day trips from Reykjavik by coach, although it is a four hour journey.

One of the reasons that Jokulsarlon is so popular is that the lake is full of an ever-changing collection of icebergs calving off the Breidamerkurjokull outlet glacier which gather in the lake before the tide inexorably draws them out to sea. If you’ve never seen an iceberg up close before you’re in for a treat and the combination of ice and volcanic ash found in Iceland is especially striking. And, if you can, I do recommend that you find a quiet spot along the lake’s edge away from the crowds, close your eyes and listen to the sound of hundred- and thousand-ton lumps of ice melting, shifting and cracking.

But if you have been to a polar extremity – northern Canada, Alaska, the far south of South America, the southern tip of New Zealand – where icebergs easily compete with apartment buildings in terms of size – the icebergs of Jokulsarlon seem, well, tame by comparison. I think that that is why, in my first and second pick of the Iceland photographs, none of the ones I took of the glacial lake made the cut. I didn’t see the beauty of the image, I saw the comparison to something ‘better’.

So, I’m glad I took the time to revisit images that I had already discounted as “not quite there” and it is a good reminder for me to take my own advice of performing a six-month (or in this case an eleven-month) review of images taken on a trip once the passage of time has dampened the excitement of the experience. Then you can be more objective about the images in their own right.

And that would have been the end of the story had it not been for an unrelated task I have this weekend. One of the guys in the office had asked for a copy of one of my Ethiopia images to use as a wallpaper on his PC and so I’ve been looking at that. And at some point the “I wonder what this image would look like as a wallpaper?” question popped into my head.

Modern computer monitors tend to favour the 16 by 9 format – the same format as used by HDTV televisions – which means that the crop of the image is totally different to that required by standard print paper. See for yourself:

Same image, but a different feel. [Click to enlarge!]

At 1920 by 1080, it is the same image, but a different feel. [Click to enlarge!]

Whilst the majority of interest lies from the left of the image to the centre the wider crop allows for the right hand side to be included and a lone floating lump of ice. In the ‘print’ crop I’ve excluded it as I wanted to strengthen the mirror effect of the water’s surface, but in the ‘wallpaper’ crop I’ve included it as a bit of foreground interest and I like the fact that it is aligned along the diagonal line in the water formed by the cloud’s reflection. It’s an important diagonal line too, leading from the edge of the frame right to the focal point of the image. In the print crop, the diagonal is still there, but shorter and with less impact – less visual weight.

So, where am I going with this?

I guess there are two points I’m making, perhaps more to myself than anyone else. First, I shouldn’t dismiss an image simply as I have seen something more impressive – each image should be judged on its own merits. Second, the final crop has a big effect upon overall feel of the image and when pressing the shutter I need to ask myself “What is this image for?” Print? PC display? Instagram? After all, it’s easier to recompose, move if necessary, and take another shot whilst on location than it is to spend time in post production trying to get all the elements in a different crop.

 

 

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Thinking Big

In the last post I started a mini-series of articles about home printing hoping to prove that whether you make your living from photography, have a passion for it, or simply want to capture life’s important moments, it needn’t cost the Earth to display your work. For most of us the photographs we will print will not be large – the average home usually has few big walls and they usually have windows in them – and so most people will be looking at anything up to A2 in size. But there is no denying that, if you do “go large” then the impact can be dramatic.

This fact hit me, almost literally, earlier this week when I walked into the office and the walls – which were up until recently just plain painted surfaces – had been transformed.

There's no denying that a large image or graphic make a striking statement, but you have to choose carefully. The image should be timeless and detailed enough to reward people for repeated viewing with details they've missed in the past. [Click to enlarge]

There’s no denying that a large image or graphic makes a striking statement, but you have to choose carefully. The image should be timeless and detailed enough to reward people for repeated viewing with details they’ve missed in the past. [Click to enlarge]

At a whopping 3.8 metres this is the feature piece along the longest wall and, given the size, a multi-shot panoramic image was going to be the only thing that would have enough resolution to be printed at this size.  When I was told how big the canvas would be, I did have reservations as to the final quality however I needn’t have worried – the 11,500 by 3,800 pixel panorama scales very well.

The smaller meeting rooms are basic affairs; we spend most of our time out with customers and so having lavishly appointed meeting rooms would be a bit of a waste when the rooms do not need to impress, but merely need to be functional. Still having a large canvas on the wall adds a splash of colour and interest to an otherwise cold-looking room. The 21 megapixel  Canon 5D Mk2 provided more than enough resolution for the 150cm by 100cm canvases.

 

Meeting rooms can be clinical places often decorated as an afterthought, if at all. Add a feature image (and maybe a potted plant or two) and even small rooms can feel more welcoming. [Click to enlarge]

Meeting rooms can be clinical places often decorated as an afterthought, if at all. Add a feature image (and maybe a potted plant or two) and even small rooms can feel more welcoming. [Click to enlarge]

It is a great way to encourage employees to take pride in the appearance of their place of work - by making it personal. [Click to enlarge]

It is a great way to encourage employees to take pride in the appearance of their place of work – by making it personal. [Click to enlarge]

People often get hung up on the number of megapixels and I’ve often seen this is a driving reason to upgrade the camera; after all, surely 20MP is better than 10MP? Whilst a larger pixel count, if implemented correctly, can mean higher definition images, that should not mean that that old 10.1MP camera is ready for the scrap heap. Here’s an image from the 10.1MP Canon 40D on the same 150cm by 100cm canvas. It is almost tempting to suggest that, if you’re thinking of heading out on a one-time trip of a lifetime and want to have a backup camera without a large investment, pick up one of these older camera bodies on eBay for a shadow of their original cost.

Even a 10.1MP camera like the Canon 40D can produce respectable sized images like this 150cm by 100cm canvas. [Click to enlarge]

Even a 10.1MP camera like the Canon 40D can produce respectable sized images like this 150cm by 100cm canvas. [Click to enlarge]

In my professional life I spend my time visiting clients across the UK and spend much of that time in their offices. Over the years I’ve been in upwards of six hundred different offices ranging from modern energy-efficient open plan spaces to warehouses to old national heritage buildings. I also spend a lot of time in hotels. So I think I am reasonably qualified to make the following statement: Impersonal spaces, such as offices and hotels, benefit from having artwork for the walls, even if it is an abstract of some form. They ‘feel’ lived-in and more, well, welcoming. And if you’re trying to get the best out of people, making them feel welcome is a pretty important first step…

 

 

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A Photographer’s Voldemort: The Self-Critique

In the two week period I spent travelling along the southern coast of Iceland I took 3136 photographs. This includes 200-300 individual images for stitching together in various panoramas, a number of bracketed shots for HDR images as well as the inevitable ‘click it and hope’ shots. There are also countless shots from the ice along Jokulsarlon beach – getting the sea and ice to form interesting patterns was more an exercise in patience and luck than skill. My task is to distil these 3136 down to 25 photographs for the website: More than that and the gallery would likely feel too big and any less may cause me many a sleepless night about the shots I left out.

It all starts simply enough. The photographs are loaded into Adobe’s Lightroom software and all are given a rating of three stars. As I walk through each image the out-of-focus and otherwise unsalvageable shots get reduce to one star; good images and those with promise get four stars.

Over the past few weeks, between travelling for work and, of course, going to Israel I have managed to get the first pick – the four stars – down to 180 photographs. Yesterday, after 11 hours, I have managed to get second pick to 68. Those 11 hours were also spent processing the photographs and stitching together the panorama shots, some of which have worked out well and some of which not so much. And so on to third pick. The critical analysis of those 68 images. The moment I dread.

No one talks about this aspect of the photographic workflow which is a surprise as it is arguably the hardest. I once asked wildlife photographer Daisy Gilardini about how long she spent processing photographs to which she replied between 60 and 90 seconds. It isn’t much time, but then I suspect that is the point: if an image is good, it won’t need much time to ‘tidy up’. But I feel I asked the wrong question. I should have asked “How do you select those photographs?”

Now, what makes a good image is always going to be an emotive topic and a question with no real answer. Humanitarian photographer David duChemin has long written about the importance of creative ‘vision’ and storytelling in photography and he should know – humanitarian photography has to generate a reaction in the viewer otherwise it has failed. By contrast even if a landscape shot fails to make you immediately pack your bags and get on a plane, at least it can still be pretty.

Many of the photography-related magazines include regular features that interview a notable photographer and ask the usual questions such as how they got involved in the industry. But none, that I have seen at least, ask the photographer to pick an image or two from their portfolio and explain why that selected that image and not one of the others from the same shoot. What was it that drew them to an image above all others? I once brought the idea up on a forum for a well-known UK magazine and was greeted by a wall of silence from both fellow readers and staff alike. But I can’t believe that I am the only one to struggle with self-critiquing work. Perhaps every photographer struggles with self-critique more than they would like to admit and, like Harry Potter’s nemesis, find it easier not to openly discuss the topic in the hope that it will not look their way.

Here is a classic case in point from the second pick of Iceland. Two images from one of my trips to the beach at Jokulsarlon. Can you choose which you prefer?

 

Jokulsarlon Ice #1

Jokulsarlon Ice #1

 

Jokulsarlon Ice #2

Jokulsarlon Ice #2

The problem is I cannot. What I wanted to capture was the essence of the beach: the striking black volcanic sand, the motion of the sea wrapping itself around the icebergs and the limited palette of grey, blue, black and white. Both images do just that. But what now? Where do I go from here?

I am sure that too will learn the art of self-critiquing my work. But, if anyone knows of a site, a magazine or any other resource where photographers show examples of how they self-critique, please let me know.

Oh, and I just realised that my Voldemort analogy may paint photographers as wizards and non-photographers as Muggles. But more worryingly, it implies that I’m Harry Potter. I do not believe this, of course, and I don’t want to live in Harry Potter’s world. For the time being, at least…

 

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