Flying in a new direction perhaps?

As far as my landscape photography is concerned I consider myself to be something of a traditionalist. I tend to adopt a rather 'classical' approach which may produce a very pleasing image, (I hope so anyway!) but it may not cross the boundary into something which might be remotely described as artistic.

Having given this a little more thought, I remembered an image I took back in February which might lend itself to a different and arguably more artistic treatment . So here is the result of my attempt at being a bit more arty!



In Flight
The crow flies away from the gorse, which is surrounded by the dune grasses
of East Head on the West Sussex coast.

As well as using my normal processing in Photoshop I have also applied 'grain' using Silver Efex Pro2, which I think adds something to this particular shot. It wouldn't work for every image but I was keen to create a more atmospheric look, as well as having a bit of fun in the making.

I have to say that I was inspired to take a fresh look at my work by the work of the Welsh photographer, Chris Tancock, and in particular his on-going project called Beating the Bounds, where he explores 'five fields over a period of five years' and documents the changes which take place over time. Chris describes himself not as a landscape photographer but as a rural documentary photographer. I would simply call him an artist, who through his excellent work tells an intimate story about the world that surrounds him. If you have not come across his work then do click through to his website on one of the links.

Does this mark a photographic change in direction? Probably not, but I do think its very important to try new things, be willing to experiment and to challenge established techniques. At the same time it's essential to enjoy the whole process, irrespective of the end result. Is it art? I don't know, but I do know that I had a lot of fun making the image and that's what really matters as far as I am concerned.



Tweet 

Lake District 121 - pre-visualisation and post processing techniques

This is the penultimate entry about my 121 workshop with Paul Gallagher in the Lake District. There will be a final post concerned with 'black and white' printing to complete the series.

When Paul and I first met in the lounge of The Crowpark Hotel in Keswick, one of the things I said I would like to learn more about was how to pre-visualise the finished photograph before releasing the shutter. To start to think of the photographic workflow as one cohesive process, as opposed to a number of separate steps from seeing, to taking, to processing and finally to print or uploading to the web. This one step followed by another had largely been my way of doing things to date, so I wanted to try and link these stages together and change the way I thought about my approach to photography.

Common sense told me that what happens during each stage must have an impact on the next, and so on down the line. I guessed that by pre-visualising the finished image at the outset, decisions could be made at each stage, as the finished image could already be seen in the mind's eye. The skill therefore would be to know what might be possible and to take the photograph with this is mind.

For me this idea of thinking ahead was best demonstrated when Paul and I drove through Newlands Valley. I spotted a small group of trees on the horizon and although when we first arrived at this scene the clouds were universally grey, there was some movement in the sky, so we set up our cameras for the shot in the hope that the sky and light would improve.......and after about 20 minutes it did.

Straight out of the camera the RAW image looked like this; not too inspiring you might think but Paul had already talked me through his pre-visualisation of the 'finished' shot. I used a 1 or may be 2 stop graduated filter just to balance the exposure values between the sky and the foreground.

1

Back in the digital darkroom and using Lightroom I applied a 'preset' to boost the clarity, remove any chromatic aberration and apply a modest amount of sharpening. The next stage was to adjust the saturation and luminance of the blue channel, knowing that when the image was converted to black and white there would be the opportunity to increase the contrast in the sky. Having made these adjustments the RAW image now looked like this.

2

An improvement on the first image but hardly a photograph to get excited about. The next stage was to import the RAW file into photoshop and then convert the image to monochrome. Using 'Image' - 'Adjustment' - 'Black and white' a window opens which allows you to make adjustments to a range colour channels. Having boosted the saturation and luminance of the blue sky in Lightroom, I further darkened the blue channel to a value of -80. The resulting image is shown below.

3

You might be forgiven for thinking this image is now worse than the colour version and I would probably agree but the next stage really brings the photograph to life. A 'levels' adjustment layer was applied and now the image looks like this.

4

However  some further fine tuning in photoshop was required. A number of 'curves' adjustment layers were made to selected areas of the image, before finally sharpening the trees and the foreground, but not the sky. The final adjustment was to crop the photo to balance the composition. Paul is a great believer in cropping to suit the image and not be concerned whether or not the end result conforms to one of the common aspect ratios - i.e. 3x2, 4x3, 5x4 or 1x1. Why be constrained by uniformity if a more custom approach is adopted and enhances each individual image? When I went on the workshop to the Isle of Eigg with Bruce Percy he was a very keen advocate of 5x4 or 1x1, couldn't stand 3x2, but rarely I think breaks away from the first two aspect ratios. His choice of course but it was good to hear another view. For now I will keep my options open and simply show the finished image.

Three Trees - the finished photograph
OMD EM5 on a tripod with Panasonic f2.8 35-100mm lens
42mm f13 1/100sec ISO200 

Personally I really like this shot. I love it's simplicity, the shape and size of the three trees and how their alignment echoes the diagonal line of the clouds. The ability to pre-visualise this shot at the outset is a great skill and is at the very heart of the photographic process. It's a skill which I doubt is ever mastered but with practice out in the field my knowledge can only grow with time; after all Paul has been practising his art of fine black and white photography for nearly 30 years.  For me though it has opened my eyes to what is possible and that in my view is a great place from which to start.



Tweet

Lake District 121 - Post Processing

One of the things I was keen to learn from Paul Gallagher during my recent workshop in The Lake District, was the art, and it is an art, of post processing a RAW file to produce a strong black and white image.

Up until my trip away I had used a combination of Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro2. Rarely would I use Photoshop even though it's regarded as the 'daddy' of all software programs for image editing. Lightroom shares the same Raw converter as Photoshop and is a wonderful tool for your photographic workflow, from importing the images, key-wording, developing and finally to print or uploading to the web. However it does not touch Photoshop when it comes to the fine art of processing a really good black and white image. However I was daunted by the fact that the skills and knowledge to use Photoshop well, take a long time, so I was delighted when Paul demonstrated a few simple techniques which with a little practice I have now been able to apply to the shots I took on the trip.

In the following example the first image on the left is the original RAW file with no adjustments. It's just as it was when imported from the SD card into Lightroom. The reason for the blue colour cast is down to the fact that this was a 60second long exposure using the Hi-Tech 10 stop ND filter. The second image on the right has simply been converted to black and white and whilst the blue cast has been removed, the image is very flat. The third image is the finished photograph.

RAW file - straight out of the camera

RAW file with simple black and white conversion

Wastwater Rocks - the final image

So what simple steps were taken in Photoshop to arrive at this end result? 

Well, firstly in Lightroom I applied a preset which boosted the clarity to a value of 15 and which also applied some sharpening. Amount 50 - Radius 0.5 - Detail 50 and Masking 0. The preset also eliminates any chromatic aberration   created by the lens I used for this shot - the Panasonic f2.8 12 - 35mm. On this occasion CA would not have been visible given the blue colour cast.

Secondly I exported the image from Lightroom into Photoshop CS5. Using 'image - adjustment' I then converted the RAW image to black and white. This was followed by a 'levels' adjustment layer to move the black and white points on the histogram, to give a full range of tonal values. The 'mid point' can also be adjusted if required but was not changed for this particular shot. 

The next stage was to make local adjustments to certain sections or specific areas of the image using the lasso tool to select the area and then apply a curves adjustment layer. The choice of 'pixel feather' is critical to make sure that the adjustment only applies to the area required. This is really where a small but subtle change can make quite a difference. I don't consider myself to be an artist but there is no question that these small changes are the equivalent of applying the finishing brush strokes to a painting. Poor technique in both cases could ruin a good image, the only advantage of Photoshop is that you can 'step backwards' or delete a layer. With a painting it would be much more difficult if not impossible to undo. Knowing when to stop is also very important. An image can very quickly look overworked. Once all the adjustments had been made all the layers were 'flattened'.  (Layers - flatten image).

The last stage was to apply further sharpening using filters - unsharpen mask. Not all areas of an image require or should be sharpened; the sky for example, so a layer mask should used. I created a duplicate layer of the background layer and applied the sharpening to this new layer so the 'original' background layer remained unaltered. Once I was happy with the amount of sharpening (easily previewed) the  again I 'flattened' both layers. 

Finally I 'saved as' a TIFF file and gave the image a title. Once done this new image is saved in the same folder in Lightroom, so it appears alongside the original image. This is a great advantage as I can still go back and carry out another conversion should I wish.

I think there is still a place for Silver Efex Pro2 in my workflow. After all it has been my default plug in for black and white conversions until now. However my eyes have been opened to new ways of working and I am delighted to have learnt some new skills.

Paul talked about other processing techniques and choices that need to be made before post Processing even starts and I will cover some of these key points in my next entry.

Tweet

Lake District 121 - using filters

In the previous post I wrote about camera technique and in this entry I will cover the use of a variety of different filters to either control exposure or to be a little more creative. Whilst using filters does add another process to the taking of an image, my tutor Paul Gallagher is I believe right in expressing the view that the more you can 'get correct' in the camera when taking the shot, the better the RAW negative is to work with when you reach the stage of post processing. It's also true that some effects simply can't be replicated in Photoshop or for that matter any software; for example the use of a polariser.

In the case of the shot below a 2 stop ND hard grad was used to balance and control the exposure as the sky was much brighter than the foreground. Whilst the shot could have been taken without the filter, there would have been the distinct possibility of either blown highlights in the sky or no detail whatsoever in the shadows, neither of which would have been desirable or recoverable in post processing.

Trees in Newlands Valley

In the second shot below I used a polariser in order to control the amount of reflection coming off the surface of the water, so that the rocks below would be visible. Had this area of the picture just been black, which would have been possible using the polariser, then the foreground interest would have been lost. Paul reminded me that using a polariser had the same effect as a 2 stop ND filter, therefore increasing the exposure time. In this case the exposure was half a second which I think gave the right amount of movement in the water.

Waterfall study near Honister Pass

In the next shot I used a 10 stop ND filter to slow the shutter speed right down. In the case of this particular shot the exposure time was 60 seconds at f11. I found that some experimentation was required when taking this type of shot, firstly to get a balanced exposure and secondly to create the desired effect. Using a long exposure does give an ethereal appearance to the water as any ripples become merged and therefore lost, and cloud movement is also evident.

Buttermere

It is of course possible to use a combination of filters but more than two at a time can reduce the sharpness of the image as the optical quality of the filters are good but not that good! In the case of the 10 stop ND filter it also produces a strong blue colour cast which is fine if converting to black and white but may not be so easy to lose in post processing if the end result is a colour image. Another advantage of using this filter is that any people or birds entering and leaving the frame during the exposure may not always be recorded by the sensor. The image below would have suffered had the ducks swimming around at the time been part of the finished result!

Elterwater in Langdale

It perhaps goes without saying that a tripod is an essential piece of photographic equipment. for landscape work. None of these shots could have been taken without one. Adjusting the legs and indeed the tripod head can be time consuming in order to achieve the right composition but it does slow the whole process down, and makes you think about what you are doing. This can only be a good thing - as the tortoise said to the hare!



Tweet

Lake District 121 - camera technique at Wasdale Head

On the first morning of my 121 workshop with Paul Gallagher in The Lake District, Paul was keen to establish my camera technique and the typical settings I used. He was not familiar with the Olympus OMD EM5, as he used a Nikon D800E for his digital work, although his preferred system of choice is medium format 5 x 4 Ebony film camera which I was to see in all it's glory a few days later.

We decided to drive to Wastwater and Wasdale Head.

Wastwater - looking towards Great Gable

I explained that for landscape work I would use the lowest ISO setting available. In the case of the EM5 this was ISO 200. I would also use Aperture Priority. This way the shutter speed would be automatically selected by the camera. I explained that by using 'live view' on the OMD, I would preview the image by showing a 'shadow and highlights' warning; flashing blue for underexposed areas and flashing orange for overexposed areas or blown highlights. I would then use the exposure compensation dial to make any adjustments in order to balance the exposure. If the dynamic range of the shot was too great for the camera sensor, then it might require the use of a neutral density graduated filter to balance the exposure of say a bright sky with a dark foreground. I told him I would tend to rely upon the camera's auto focus, rarely resorting to manual focus.

Believing this was a tried and tested way of taking landscape photographs I was a little taken aback when Paul suggested that it would be much easier to use manual settings for the exposure and to always focus manually. He went on to explain that by setting the aperture to say f11 or f16 to maximise the depth of field, the shutter speed could be adjusted to obtain the optimum exposure setting using the histogram as a guide. He was fully in favour of exposing to the right, but suggested that the histogram should not be right on the point of clipping the highlights, as this would leave no room for finer adjustments when it came to post processing. This made perfect sense to me and the exposure compensation dial would no longer be needed. If the histogram was not acceptable, a quick change to the shutter speed would bring about the desired result.

Looking across Wastwater to the Screes

Manual focusing is very straightforward with the EM5. Again in using live view, the instant the focus ring was turned on the lens, the screen would magnify the area of view by a factor of 5x. The amount of magnification can be changed in the settings menu. Using the arrow keys on the back of the camera it was easy to select an area of the composition where pin sharp focusing was critical. This would normally be a subject in the foreground. Having preselected a small aperture opening the depth of field should ensure that the background at infinity would also be in sharp focus.

With the camera on the tripod I used the 2 second timer function so that I could press the shutter button and eliminate any camera movement which would spoil the image. Further I turned off the in camera Image Stabilisation as this can 'fight' the lack of movement of a camera mounted on a tripod and try and 'compensate' for movement when none is actually present. Don't ask me  how or why, or for a technical explanation, just turn the IS off if using a tripod.

Paul was less concerned about setting the aperture to the optimum opening for the lens, which in the case of some my lenses would be f5.6, as this would rarely give the desired depth of field. Don't worry about using a much smaller aperture he said. It's more important that all parts of the image are in focus, even if the lens was not at its very sharpest aperture setting. Again this advise made perfect sense, so I was already benefitting from his knowledge and expertise and it was still only day one.

With photography over for the day but before heading back to our hotel in Keswick, I visited one of the smallest churches in England - St Olaf in Wasdale Head. This church holds special memories for me and in particular the inscription in the glass of a leaded light window. The words are taken from Psalm 121 and the etching is of Napes Needle on Great Gable. A fitting memorial to all mountaineers and climbers who have visited this beautiful part of the world.

The etching and inscription in St Olaf Church at Wasdale Head

Tweet

Something completely different

My approach to land and seascapes is I think a fairly traditional one and it's an approach that works for me. However I do see lots of black and white images using slow shutter speeds and taking a more minimalist view of the landscape. Concentrating on a small area can often result in something which has an abstract 'feel' to the image. Accordingly there are few if any reference points and little or no sense of scale. I guess this results in the viewer trying to discern what they might be looking at, a sense of mystery perhaps, which in turn begs the question - 'what was the photographer trying to say?' when he or she took the shot.

So I thought I would have a go a this approach myself. Its good to experiment, your eyes start to see things differently. Consequently I returned to a particular location as I could pre-visualise a subject matter which might work for this 'new' approach. I also adopted a different technique using a 10 stop ND filter to slow the shutter speed right down. This of course required me to use a tripod which also slows down the photographer. No bad thing in itself as you spend more time composing the shot and getting the right camera settings. The latter was more challenging than the former, as I had never used a 10 stop ND filter before. The Hi Tec filter I was using left a horrible colour cast but this didn't matter quite so much as I knew I would be converting the image to black and white.

Shown below is the result of me trying to do something completely different. A 30 second exposure and I used Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro2 for post processing.

Remnants

For my first attempt at this style of photography I am quite pleased with the end result. Is it something I would like to do more of?.......I'm not sure but I enjoyed doing something just a little bit different, well for me anyway.

Oh and if you are wondering, the photograph is the remains of a jetty in Langstone Harbour in Hampshire.

Tweet

Landscape photography course with Paul Gallagher

Later this month I am hoping to go to The Lake District for a short course in black and white landscape photography with Paul Gallagher. The plan is to spend a couple of days in the field taking images and then have a further day back at Paul's studio post processing and printing some of the shots taken. Although Paul is principally a 5x4 large format photographer he also has intimate knowledge of digital photography and runs courses for the Epson Print Academy. Details of all his workshops are available through Aspect2i, a company he co-founded.

I have already spoken to Paul on the telephone a couple of times and his enthusiasm for his subject is very evident. I am looking forward to meeting him and I am sure I will learn a huge amount both with the camera but also in front of a computer.

Its impossible to say what the weather will be doing but I can at least confidently predict where and when the sun will rise and set on any given day. There are many 'apps' which provide this information but the most comprehensive is The Photographers Ephemeris which can be downloaded for use on a Mac or PC, iPad, iPhone or Android device. I am the first to admit that I have not mastered everything it can do, but very simply you can search for any location throughout the world, then drop a pin on the desired position using a variety of map styles. You then select a date and it will give you sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset times as well as their position in the sky at these times. This is all too important and critical information for any land, sea or cityscape photographer. It's a great way to plan ahead to make sure the light is going to be in the right place at the right time. It doesn't guarantee a successful image but at least it improves your chances. There are some excellent tutorials on the TPE website which I must spend some time looking at, so that I can make the best use of this invaluable application.

Wast Water in The Lake District courtesy of The Photographers Ephemeris

I shall report back on the course at some time in the future and it goes without saying that I shall look forward to posting some of my images taken in The Lake District. Hopefully I will get to Wast Water and Wasdale Head, one of my favourite places in this beautiful and at times dramatic part of the world. I can't wait!

Tweet

'To flip or not to flip?' that is the question

In the past couple of weeks it has been suggested by two individuals on two separate occasions that I should consider 'flipping' one of my images. Their comments applied to two different photographs so it set me thinking whether or not I should apply this post production technique, as it's not something I had ever considered doing before.

Obviously this technique could not be applied to an image with any writing or symbols, which when reversed, would no longer be legible and it would be clear to the viewer that they were in fact looking at the original image in a 'mirror'. Neither could it apply to a recognisable landmark as it would no longer be a true representation of what the viewer expected to see. However if the image did not fall into either of these categories then what would be wrong with flipping? If the result is more pleasing to the eye, even though it no longer represents reality, then what's the issue? After all the vast majority of my images are converted to monochrome because thats how I want my images to look. No one 'sees' in black and white so this change is applied for visual imapct. If I wanted my photographs to represent what people would actually see with their own eyes then frankly nearly all post production work would be a 'no go' area and even the choice of lens can distort what the eye actually sees, but thats a topic for another day.

Well, the only way to find out would be to try 'flipping' and to then compare and analyse the results.

The example I have chosen for this exercise is a shot taken at East Head in Wittering of wind swept sand dunes. The first image is the original photo followed by the flipped version. No other changes have been made.

.....and now the flipped version.

So which one works best? Well in my view the flipped version is the better photograph, it's more visually pleasing. So why should this be?

In my opinion its down to two main factors. Firstly when we look at an image our first inclination is to start from the left hand side and our eyes then move to the right hand side. Our eyes naturally follow this path as we read from left to right......it therefore feels comfortable to look at an image in this way. Our eyes are also drawn to the brightest areas of an image; in this case the sand in the lower half of the picture. So when the image is flipped, the bright area is now on the left and not on the right. The lead in lines of the sand, take our eyes to the right, the grasses are also being 'blown' from the left, and our eyes find it much easier to move around the image. In the original shot this does not happen and our eyes find it difficult to settle, with the result that we see a 'busy' image and one that really doesn't work that well, or not as well as it could when flipped. As there is nothing else in the image which would give the 'flipping' game away, the final result is in my opinion perfectly satisfactory and an acceptable form of post manipulation.


Tweet

Changing light - an exercise

One of the 'mini' tasks we were set during the 'People and Places' course at West Dean College was to photograph the same scene at different times of the day to see how the light changed and how this would affect the final image. It's a common thing to be asked to do but as I had never done it before I was keen to see the results and to try and learn something from them. I chose to photograph the River Lavant which runs through West Dean Gardens.

The first shot was taken at 4.40 pm. Keep in mind all these photos were taken at the beginning of August, so the sun was still quite high even at this time of day. Whist this a pleasant shot of the scene the quality of the light is very even and quite poor.