A Visit to an Old Friend

This blog is about re-visiting an old friend or should I say like looking at my old high-school photos and they can seem strange today. This was one of the first images were I spent considerable time enhancing it in Photoshop to make a print of it.

I thought I would compare the approach I took then with a new version today. The first assumption even before looking at the editing processes is that I surely could do better then I did before.

This image was submitted to a B&W print competition for the theme of ‘Massive’, if I remember correctly my first print competition. Ah the innocence or is it ignorance of youth (not age but in beginning a journey to improve my photographic skills).

Updated version





When I first looked at this image, what I saw were these ‘massive’ brick walls and rock outcroppings that were, to me, made even bigger by the inclusion of the small seagull. The coarse texture of the brick walls balanced nicely with the smoother yet still jagged texture of the rock wall. The tortuous water just complemented the hardness of the walls.

The only comment I received by the judge on a well-printed B&W image (see “Orig” below) on semi gloss paper was that the seagull, which is where his eyes kept going, did not seem massive to him. Judges can be cruel. Most judges are good photographers but not all good photographers make good judges, as it’s difficult to find the right balance with regards to critiques.

I have learnt a fair amount from these types of judges, at least with interacting with the participants and in my own judging I am always careful to point out some positives about the image as well as the areas of possible improvement.

The first process was to analyse the basic Camera RAW image and identify the stronger compositional elements and use the photo-editing process to support these.

The image has many supporting horizontal curvy lines that help to create and support the perception of movement. The major lines are in yellow below.









When an image is meant to stand alone on its own merit, it is important that there are visual gaze patterns or points of interest that keep our eyes moving through the image and returning to those emotive parts.

The blue line shows a visual course through he image, which I will need to enhance with contrast separation.

In analyzing the image I found that the brick wall did not provide enough contrast separation with the rock wall, which was to provide a visual guidance downward. I worked separately on each of the blue-circled areas within the photo below. I would also try and introduce the appearance of a shaft of light striking downward towards the bird.











This is the unedited RAW image

The original image has the bird more in the center, which is not a traditional power point and in the revised version I moved it to the lower left third.

In my vision, one of the key elements is the icicles on the edge of the rock face and this is one item that I wanted to enhance the contrast to make them jump out more and help the gaze downward.

I did like the white writing on the wall and unfortunately these are on the top edge of the image and have the potential to take your visual gaze out of the image. I therefore decided to darken the top edge, to not make it such a powerful exit point.

When I looked at the approach I took to create the final image, it is easy to see that I have learned and developed my skills over the years, at least with Photoshop editing and workflow processes, but I was surprised at how close the analysis remained today.


The comparison of the original raw version and the 2 final versions are shown below.









To give you a better idea of just how wonderful this area along the Ottawa River at Deschene’s Rapids is, I have included a photo from a little further up the river and you can see the Ottawa skyline in the background.










Niels Henriksen


A Photographer’s Adage

A good photograph, like a good painting, speaks with a loud voice and demands time and attention if it is to be fully perceived. An art lover is perfectly willing to hang a painting on a wall for years on end, but ask him to study a single photograph for ten unbroken minutes and he’ll think it’s a waste of time. Staying power is difficult to build into a photograph. Mostly, it takes content. A good photograph can penetrate the subconscious – but only if it is allowed to speak for however much time it needs to get there. - Ralph Gibson - [cited in: Creative Camera December 1972, p. 401]

Camera Shake – I really meant for it to happen

Last week I discussed several methods that might help you to explore new challenges and thereby open up your creativity to new ideas. The thought is, that if you are having so much fun at what you are doing then the learning and growing possibilities might seem endless.

In some ways the Holy Grail of photography, by many, is perceived as the pin-sharpness of an image. If you’re like me, even with the almost never-fail capabilities of the modern camera, some of my images when I examine them, do not always have the sharpness exactly within the range I need.

So what about a technique that forgets sharpness and focuses on capturing images that gives great abstractness and at the same time for certain scenes still yields clarity about the subject and most importantly that does not require real sharpness. What could be more fun than this? Well a few things, but this is about photography.

All the images below have the their saturation on a per channel basis increased.










f4.5, 1/60s

While I like this image with its appearance of motion, even though it might be a little hard on the eyes, this was a failed attempt as I was moving a bit sideward than what I had planned to achieve but sometimes through mistakes an interesting image may appear.

This is the same technique (panning) also used to capture moving objects with slower shutter speeds where we still want the appearance of motion, but in this scenario we do not need any elements to be sharp and in focus. The impression left by the blurred motion is what excites us.









f22 1/5s

In photography, light or the absence of it is what defines our images. Sure there are a few images where it is all about the colours but for most images it’s the tones and shadows that gives depth and a 3 dimensional quality to the otherwise flat print.









f22 1/8s

These are extremely fun to do and since we all have different levels of fondness for abstract images I leave it to you to decide if any are worthy of merit.

I have seen several images that where taken this way with the tall fall aspen or birch trees, with almost white barks and golden colour of leaves. These scenes are difficult to find in my area, as you want open areas in front of you and these trees at the edge of clearings. While at a friends place he did have some poplars at the edge of the woods that I though would be fun to experiment with.

All images where taken within 10-25 ft from this spot.






As you can see, the normal view is not that stunning and there were only a few trees with long light trunks that lend themselves well to this technique.

This is a perfect time to experiment, as there is no right or wrong composition, just those that make you smile and maybe other people as well.





f4.5 1/60s

Some of the best effects I have seen are with dark woods set against some lighter tree trunks up front. When I see the right woods I will try again.

This is definitely a trial and error approach to finding out what lighting will work for different types of scenes.

Some suggested panning approaches
· Slower shutter speeds in the range of 1/10 to 1/60 work well. You may need to increase f-stop higher to get these shutter ranges.
· Start panning before you press the shutter.
· For tree effects try and keep camera movement in vertical (same axis as tree trunks) movement
· It’s the light areas that overwrite the dark in image as you pan.
· If shutter is long enough in duration try and vary the panning motion speed while shutter is open.


Niels Henriksen


A Photographer’s Adage

I’m always amused by the idea that certain people have about technique, which translate into an immoderate taste for the sharpness of the image. It is a passion for detail, for perfection, or do they hope to get closer to reality with this trompe I’oeil? They are, by the way, as far away from the real issues as other generations of photographers were when they obscured their subject in soft-focus effects. - Henri Cartier-Bresson - on technique. "American Photo", September/October 1997, page: 76

Are you Creative enough?

While I don’t make New Year’s resolutions as an official event Jan 1st, I do like to explore new endeavors and ways of doing things. I like to find challenges that will push me further ahead in my passion.

For most of us the road to better photography tends to follow a standard path, unless you woke up one morning and decided to become a great photographer and pursued this like a university degree or with relentless artistic passion.




Self Directed Outing to shoot early spring flowers

We get a camera, learn how to operate it, start taking some good tourist type images. We then explore basic compositional elements and creative technical modes with our camera and we now produce ‘good’ pictures. We place them on web sites and for the most part get nice comments, not really meaningful but they make us feel good. We sell a few prints. Life now seems great, but is there something missing? It could be the need for peer recognition, or to create a lasting monument with collection of photos that will stand the test of time.




Local Camera Club B&W Print competition ‘Bridge’


How to constantly renew and expand our artistic skills cannot be found through a formula but must be different for each person.

I definitely don’t have all the answers but here are some methods that have worked well for me and I am sure there are many more, which I haven’t thought of, that will help you to kick up your creative juices. The underlying thread in most of these suggestions is that there is someone else directing or pushing you.






Monthly web photo club theme ‘Windows’

This would apply to any artistic medium.

Support and Learning

Join a local Photography Club
A camera club provides communicable settings where you can have face-to-face discussions about almost anything related to photography. Through the interests of others you can share in new experiences. Most clubs, as one of their main activities, hold photo-judging nights, where members enter Themed and sometimes Open categories and winners accumulate points for future advancement and awards.

Join a photography class or school
There are many types of photography evening classes available in local high schools, colleges and sometimes weekends with photography schools.

Join an online photo critiquing community
There are many web based photography communities and forums that range from free to a marginal yearly fee. I haven’t used many as comments are hit and miss but occasionally there are some good suggestions.

Fred Miranda

Free to join, fee for monthly storage. There are weekly and monthly themes where winners receive either free storage or an FM Photoshop action. There are several critiquing forums and the comments are useful.

PhotoSig

Free to join. Fee for uploading and storage privileges. The critiquing system used by PhotoSig, gives extra points to the first 3 people commenting. This tends to cause novices to use minimal critiquing to get their comments in first. Occasionally there are some in-depth critiques by well-established members.




Photo Outing with a photo group on Facebook

Enter online photo competitions
There are many sites that have on-line photo competitions either for free or prizes.
If you are concerned about where your images may wind up, do read the fine print in the agreement. You don’t have to read it all as the agreements have standard sections and one will deal with where they can use your image.

DPChallenge

This site runs weekly competitions in several categories. Some almost no editing from original digital picture to entries with photo editing allowed. There is a voting system to rate each image. Each member gets a different set of images to vote on. Free membership but limited number of challenges you are able to enter.


Have a fellow photographer give you a project with a theme, no. of final images and a completion date. There may even be the possibility of them critiquing your images.

Use a different type of camera. Borrow or rent a different type of camera and lens.

Take up painting, drawing or any other artistic medium, as this will help you see composition ideas from a different perspective.

Find a great photographer and learn their style by trying to duplicate their techniques or approaches to composition. Do copy to learn, not to imitate.

Photo Blogging
Post your photos and the story on many of the free blogging sites.


From Photoblog shoot. The processing gives a coppery sheen (WB 6,OOO) which may look blue if you monitor is set too high.



Some Photo Projects

Alphabet Scavenger Hunt
For every letter of the alphabet a word is created for a photo subject. Find an area or location to shoot and complete within 2-5 hours. This is one of my favourite and my camera club has this as an annual event.


30 sec shoot, then move to another spot
This tends to work well in downtown areas. Walk to a new area and within 30 seconds or any time that works for you (should be short) take a photo. Move to another location and repeat. This works well for 15 min to 1-hour walk-abouts.

Photo Idea Jar
Fill a jar with themes or shooting ideas created by yourself and others. Reach in and grab an item and see where it takes you.

Personal outing
Give yourself a personal outing. Pick a date, some sort of theme, location and get out and take images.


If you are like me, we sometimes need to find new avenues for creativity and most importantly increase the fun.


Please share any ideas or comments you have, as it’s always good to learn new ways.



Niels Henriksen


A Photographer’s Adage

Photography requires growth; you learn, you grow. You stop learning, you stop growing. Those who say they know it all... are either liars, or extremely naïve. The more you know, the more you grow. - Tedric A. Garrison

Star Burst – Photo Zooming

I thought that at this celebrative time of year I would find an appropriate festive image that might capture some of the excitement with the starting of a new year.

The image below was photographed using a twist and zoom technique on your telephoto lens. You zoom in or out on the lens, while you are pressing the shutter.













Depending on the length of the shutter speed and how fast you rotate the lens, you will get different patterns. A tripod ensures that all radial lines are straight, but especially if handheld, as the images below will attest to, strange patterns can emerge.






If you are wondering what the original image looked like. Below are 2 hints from cropped areas.










When capturing zooming images such as these, there are a few simple premises that help you to influence the final outcome.

All bright objects will produce the streaking light effect. Therefore darker backgrounds and having the lights being the source of interest, produce more dramatic images.

When holding handheld, do first try and find something to lean on, and then begin the telephoto-zoom rotation before pressing the shutter to reduce camera shake.

The slower the shutter speed the greater the effect, but then more difficult to handhold.

The images where taken inside the main lobby of the Tokyo National Theatre of Japan where we had gone to see a wonderful Kabuki play.


This is from the top floor walkway.


















Niels Henriksen


A Photographers Adage

Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world. - Arnold Newman

Not Quite Steamed Christmas Pudding

First of all and most importantly, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas or whichever holiday celebration that is significant to you at this time of season and a truly great upcoming New Year. Also a thank you to the readers who drop in to read some of these articles, as this is what keeps me excited about writing more.

Not all my photographic shooting is well thought out and planned, sometimes I am just a tourist with a camera, as an example with the following image.










This image was captured outside on one of those crowded and uniquely interesting side-streets in Chinatown in Yokohama on the outskirts of Tokyo. This is such a visually rich and vibrant area with brilliant colours, great people and interesting food, which I hope you all get a chance to visit.

This photo was taken without use of flash, as I wanted the local street lighting to naturally highlight the image. I had to crank the ISO up to 800 to still be able to get a decent shutter speed of 1/30 at f4.5.

This is one of the times I am so thankful that I shoot in RAW format. The image on the left is the default RAW setting, which would be the result if I shot in jpeg mode. Terrible tungsten (red) colour cast and the red channel of the dumplings is almost completely clipped. The image on the right is corrected for White Balance but as you can see it is still a bit dark in many areas and yet the dumpling in some sections are a bit blown out.








When working on a photograph, it is easy for your own biases, from memory of when you where there, to influence how well the image appears. There are several techniques I use to examine an image for strong compositional elements to help me focus better on these areas. Below I used 2, one to apply a steep curve to drastically increase contrast and the other, ‘find edges’ on this darken version to really see what stands out.












It becomes apparent that the dominant elements are the diagonal lines created with the hand, the tilted steamer and also by the tongs. There is also the re-enforcement of circles throughout image from the steamers and dumplings.

The image below identifies the changes I decided to undertake to keep focus on those primary elements.















You can see from the image of the layers palate that there was a lot of effort that was needed to make all the changes.

This image was made a few years ago before a very useful feature, found in Photoshop CS3, was made available. This is the smart object layer. The old method was to create a separate file and reduce the exposure to get all parts of the dumplings from being blown and then copy and paste it into the working file. If there was something off with this copy, then you were required to try again. With smart layers, I just open this smart layer and then I am presented again with the camera RAW setting, which I can re-tweak over and over again, and mask out the parts I don’t want.

For some of you, this may seem like too much work however, for those images that you plan to print for yourself or plan to sell, it is important that all the details in the image are corrected.


This is an image of a great buffet where the food goes around on a 150 ft conveyor belt and you just take those items which you desire.









More food available on the street.







And now, a restful place to sit after all that eating!






















Niels Henriksen



A Photographer’s Adage

Basically, I love photography - and travel. You could say I travel to take photographs and take photographs to travel. - Rick Sammon - Vision - Lowepro 2004/2005, page 37

Oooops! Inverted and Upside Down

I few weeks ago there was B&W print competition at my local Camera Club, with a topic of ‘My Backyard’. I only had one photo that I thought might win and I was trying to find creative idea for another entry that would be of sufficient caliber. I have learned over the years entering competitions that, while judges do rate on the technical and compositional elements, they also seem give a special emphasis for not-your-everyday-image found in your locale. Visual repetition even with great images tends to not quite cut it.

I therefore decided to experiment with a colour image of ornamental grasses that I was fond off. A negative B&W version was created and was also turned upside down to give the appearances that the light was falling correctly on the subject. While this was not my favorite of the 2, it did win an ‘Award of Excellence’

I find that for fine details or subtle tones, the web version, can never quite create the same visual impact of a well-printed image.




For the strip-line version, please click on the thumbnail image below to see the larger (1500x 450) version were the details will be more visible.







I had such fun creating the examples that I may have gone overboard in showing too many in the blog, but I do hope you enjoy them and importantly can see the potential for creative ideas by experimenting. In all cases I like the inverted version the best, but you will have to decide for yourself whether it works for you.




One large benefit with creating a inverted tonal version whether in B&W or colour is that it helps you to see the compositional elements in the image separately form the normal and how they are balanced throughout. This is because with a regular image it is too easy to focus on the image itself because you understand it within it own context. When it is inverted it is harder to figure it out and the compositional elements now becomes dominant parts.

In the above image, I also used a steep tonal curve just on the curled banana leaf tip and added some darkening to give more of a 3D effect as the inverted version below I though was a little flat.









I thought the tulip version created a more dramatic, mysterious and magical version.
































Sometimes completely different image will emerge as shown below. This image for me appears almost like a star going nova with its explosion.





























As I stated earlier I almost couldn’t stop doing these and have included a few more of these progression series below and one with just the final versions.



























It can even work for colour-inverted image but becomes a bit harder due to the wonky colours you will get. In the final colour I used an inverted B&W set to darken mode to punch up the colour more and tweaked the Hue/Sat to my liking.






Do take the time to experiment with your photography, whether with your approach to the subject or through photo-editing techniques. It will help you in the future to visual new subjects that may not have caught your eye under normally .



Niels Henriksen



A photographer’s Adage


Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. - Imogen Cunningham, Interviews With Master Photographers : Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Cornell Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Yousuf Karsh, Arnold Newman, Lord Snowdon, Brett Weston by James Danziger

Lily and the Dancing Stamens

With the snow season finally settling in, it becomes harder to capture interesting shots every week. It is more physically demanding and you start to see a repetition in snow themes. Therefore this week I thought I would focus on a singular image and describe the photo-editing approach I took to enhance it to match the vision I had.

When it comes to your personal photography I find that there are no right or wrong approaches. There is your vision and what excites you. Now if you are a commercial photographer or if you want to make a living selling your images, that’s different. It’s the client that decides what works, unless of course you are such recognized brand that your work establishes the standard.

While I use Photoshop for my photo editing, I will try and keep the processes generic so that the same techniques can be used with any photo editing software.

The title for the image is the Lily and the dancing Stamens and as you can probably guess, the main focus will be the stamens with a secondary focus being the petals of the lily.









Whenever I work on an image that I will take to the print stage, I always like to mark-up the photo with the editing that I plan to undertake. I will at times use layers to keep notes as I am working through the image, which becomes a good reference tool later when re-visiting an image and figuring out why you took that approach.

The image below shows the planned changes on the original RAW version from the camera. The thinner lines are used to show less effect needed.






The anther parts (wow! some biology too) of the stamens are normally very monochromatic and uniform in tone and I needed to enhance these to make them jump out more from the very vibrant colours in the background. Pollen by nature is very soft, unless you are looking through an electron microscope. I applied a little sharpening to bring out some detail in the anthers but no other parts, as I wanted the soft focus of the background to remain.

Using a mask to just apply changes to the anthers I also increased contrast by using an ‘S’ curve. Then, on a new layer, copied only the anthers, converted it to B&W and inverted to create a negative and set the layer to colour dodge. This will make any subtle yellow tones on the sun-lit side of anthers a very strong yellow. The opacity was reduced until it appeared that the left edge was receiving a low horizon sun effect. A very steep ‘S’ curve adjustment layer to fine tune effect was added.


This image shows part of the colour dodge Layer from the B&W inverted anthers.












The second part of the stamen, the long green filament, needed to also stand out more. By using a colour saturation layer and only targeting the yellow channel I was able to make these filaments glow a bit.

This zoomed image shows in better detail the changes performed.






The diagonal petal behind the stamens was not very vibrant, which is fine, as I did not want it to detract from the stamens. The far right petal, I thought, was too light especially since it was near the edge of the image. I needed to increase the colour saturation and at the same time darken the overall colour. I used a black layer set to Overlay, which causes the colours to be very intense. A Hue/Sat layer was added to reduce a bit the strong red intensity.

I found the edge where the 2 petals joined needed to be a little darker on the right petal and I darkened this just a bit.

This is an image of all the adjustment layers. I take the time to record information in layers should I, at later date, decide to fine-tune another way.






















Here are a few more images of the lilies from the days shoot.





















If you have any questions about the processes I described, please feel free to ask me.
I can even send you a scaled down version of the Photoshop ‘.psd’ file so you can better see the effect, if you send me your email address.

Thanks for reading.

Niels Henriksen



A Photographer's Adage


It fascinates me that there is a variety of feeling about what I do. I’m not a premeditative photographer. I see a picture and I make it. If I had a chance, I’d be out shooting all the time. You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you. -Lee Friedlander, "Documentary Photography - LIFE Library of Photography" , page: 178

My Winter Snow capped Friends

As some of you may have been aware, at least from my previous blogs, is that Fall and those parts we associate with the pleasant memories is slowly ebbing away. There are those other periods when it becomes a precursor for the hardest season of all - Winter.

I truly enjoy being outside, even when the weather may not be at its best, because there are so many changing elements and other obscure things to observe around you.

During the night the temperature was just right that, when it snowed a couple of inches with large and delicate snow flakes they just hung perfectly from all the tree branches, shrubs or anything else that was outside. It was then I noticed some interesting patterns that played with the diffused light. There were a few remaining garden plants, although dead, were still standing into late fall season and providing some interesting textures in the backyard.

These plants with the large dried flower heads and snow-covered caps gave me the impression of a group of dwarfs sitting together. I was never quite able to capture that impression.

I thought that I might be able to somehow capture this on film and went inside to get my camera. In hind sight, even though being so close I should have also grabbed my snow clothing as I was not quite able to get down as low (lay flat on the ground) as I wanted to. I find once you are out shooting, it becomes harder to go back and adjust other thing.





In the image above, I embedded 2 RAW files as ‘Smart Object’ layers in Photoshop. This allows me at anytime to go back to the RAW settings and fine-tune them just for that layer. One layer was set to a cool temperature to best bring out the blue in the snow. The other smart object layer was adjusted to the correct white balance setting to permit me to give the plants a more vibrancy in their colours. I decreased the orange saturation to make the main stalks appear more woody and then increased saturation and luminance in the yellow channel to make the leaves pop more. Masks to just let through each of their own main features.


When there is a lot on snow or other broad monotones, it make it easy to quickly bring out the creative elements by being able to colour control only a few elements in the image.






This is the version I selected mainly for the contrasting greens and reds. The image below shows the other colour variations I made on the same image.







Photographing snowy objects under overcast conditions is a difficult task to be able to bring out the rich tones, at least in some parts that most of us are familiar with. The camera will, in auto mode, try and set the exposure for the snow to mid grey when snow fills most of the frame as opposed to pure whiteness.

All cameras try to set the exposure so that the majority of pixels fall around the mid grey point. This is because most of the time the useful information falls around the mid grey tonal range, except for black cats and snowy landscapes or bright white sandy beaches. The camera doesn’t know, unless you have program setting for snow and black cats, what the image is about. It just likes mid grey.

To solve this, increase the exposure about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 stops. The histogram is a very useful tool that can help overcome this auto over compensation by showing you where the lightest points fall and thereby helping you to fine-tune the compensation changes. Always try to expose to the right by keeping the lightest pixels with any information just starting at the left edge on the right side of the histogram display.

Whenever you have a chance, change the colour in some parts or all of your images. It helps to increase the creative mind by just playing around. Who knows what will turn up.



Niels Henriksen


A Photographer's Adage

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others. Perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also, it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph. -Robert Frank, Page 115 of U.S. Camera 1958. Published by the U.S. Camera Publishing Corp. in 1957.