Flickr Update for Niels Henriksen

Just a short note to let my readers know that I have reached 10,000 plus viewers on Flickr.

So a little jump for joy.

While for many this may not be momentous, for all those who have photos on Flickr, it is a step for me in trying to get more exposure for my photographs. While I joined in 2007 I did start to add image until a couple of years ago after my first trip to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

F/24 @ 1/6 sec

I like this image because it takes a moment to figure out that this is a person on a bike jumping, flying through the air in a skateboard park.

 F/16 @ 1/250 sec

These photos are 2 examples where controlling the shutter speed is important. In the first photo a slower shutter speed is used to blur action and the other photo a faster shutter speed to freeze it. Do take the time to drop by and view some of my images and do take the time to connect on Flickr so that I can view your photos.

 You can view my photo-stream here .

Niels Henriksen

What to do When a Photo is Missing Parts

There are times when I'm walking around enjoying the scenery and occasionally taking what I think are interesting photographs around town and I forget to compose correctly. This is normally not noticed until I review them later as I tend not to look at each shot when taken.

This is a different shooting mode than when I really want something special. Then the histogram is reviewed and for images with strong contrast several exposures may be taken. And if tripod is available it will be used.

The above image is the final edited version that I wanted but failed to capture correctly.

Part of the problem is that I wear glasses and sometimes I don't remove them when looking in the camera view finder. I do when the image is critical but for shoot and grab shots I tend to place viewfinder only on the glass face and if I don't line up correctly the image is off centre to what I see.

If you have taken several photos then there may be parts in others that you can use to correct test perfect sections.

In the 3 photos combined below, the far left image is the one I wanted (#1) but as you can see, it's missing parts like the feet and sidewalk. The 2 other photos (middle #2 and right #3) are ones I used to fill in missing sections and cover parts that needed to be removed. The big problem with the other photographs is that they are from different angles and perspectives and therefore, a direct overlay to match parts will not work. You will need to stretch, twist and rotate a little to make the parts fit.

In the next composite photo below with the main image, I extracted the parts of each section that was used to reconstruct the final photograph.

Image #1 provides a good frame-work (base layer) for the whole of photo, except I wanted the lady in image #2

Image #2 was cut and placed on a separate layer and set to difference mode to make it easier to see when frame matches as it all turns black. I needed her bottom feet from another image (#3) to finish off her legs.

There was still the problem of the missing parts of the steps from part #2 which was added by image #4.

Rather than placing a whole copy of another image on top and using masking for desired parts and moving around, I recommend only cutting out the main parts from another file and copying to the working file. The reason for this is that when you zoom in on a large image to examine the fit, the handles are no longer available to use for positioning as these are at the edges of image. By only using a cropped parts, the handles for positioning are now just outside the smaller part and available for use even when zoomed in.

This is a lot of work and not for everyone. It would be easier to retake the photograph, if possible, but if you're on vacation or it's an impromptu moment, it may not be possible. This process allows you to get the photograph that you wanted but somehow missed.

I do realize that I need to be more careful when using glasses and maybe a monocle for the other eye would work. This is one advantage that EV viewfinders on back of camera work well for people with glasses.

Niels Henriksen

Improved Method of High Pass Filter Sharpening

It's those little problem areas that upon closer inspection, especially if image is to be printed large, are occurring throughout the image in less intensity. But they are still there.

I have many times used the blur tool in sharpening layers to reduce some of the inherent noise that the process of sharpening brings by its very nature of operation.

I normally don't use the High-pass method in many larger prints I make because of this increased noise, especially in soft areas like clouds or flower petals.

The leaf cluster on bottom left was added from another version to give this photograph a standard triangular view with focal points

To alleviate these noise problems I decided to first blur the high pass filter layer  and then apply a curves adjustment layer to the high pass layer only, to improve contrast with some of the softness created by blurring.

Detailed PDF Document Available

I experimented with 5 other combinations including using the luminance filter (noise reduction) in ACR

for input to High Pass Filter Sharpening.  This document contains numerous photos clearly detailing the process and results from 6 versions. One being the camera default.

It is available on Niels Henriksen Artworks site at the following link.

Improved Method of High Pass Filter Sharpening

The reason for creating it in a book format is it allows me greater control over layout and by shifting to a landscape format should filter better with our horizontal monitors.

Let me know what you think about the PDF version.

The above photo shows results for using the high pass filter only and then repeating with a curves adjustment layer applied.  You can see how the veins are crisper and if you look carefully there is less noise on the smooth stamens. The PDF article shows a close up of stamens.

A setting of 2.1 was used for both Gaussian blur and high pass filter. It's always going to be a trade-off between reducing noise when sharpening and still having good edges.

This process will make it easy to create an action in Photoshop, whether modifiable or a straight run.

This is original version. I cropped the details on the  right and also removed some of the leaf tips near flower cluster.  Leaves from another image at wider angle wear to balance the composition.

I always try and take a few extra photos at a wider angle for that just in case you need it.

Niels Henriksen

How to Approach Editing your Photographs to Create more Visual Appeal

Big title, a complex subject and almost impossible to answer correctly. The key ingredient is the photographer who took the image and not a critic commenting on his or her own vision. Even though these comments might at times produce a better result, especially if technical problems persist. If the image comes with a statement or feelings or any other human/artistic guidance then it's easier to comment on how the image achieves these goals.

The yellow green hue of main tree shifted more yellow less green. The greens shifted cooler, bluer in green, and desaturated and darkened slightly as greens are always stronger than yellows. Bench made more teal to better compliment the yellows.

Pre-Visualize

The initial step to capturing a better image is to first understand what those elements or emotions are in the scene before you that excites or intrigues you. Sounds easy this self analysis but if it truly were easy then there would not be as many self help books all saying they have the answer. The same applies to my advice. Take it with a few grains of salt, shake well and wait for the dust to settle.

I believe that the more you immerse yourself with good and bad (if there really is bad) art, the more you come to understand your own emotional drivers. Seek out not just photographs, but paintings, sculpture, drama etc. Some are born more wild and for these individuals maybe too much art exposure may limit their own wild creativity. But for the vast majority of us, exposure is a good thing.

The tree had such a glow in the morning light and with such a tranquil setting it almost seemed the perfect place to contemplate. The glow was very important and being backbit helped this effect. By going to B&W and then increasing the yellow slider to almost blow out texture helps to make these leaves glow. Once again, I darkened and slightly blurred the grasses as each blade was too strong for this scene.

It's not always possible to pre-think an image, as sometimes the scene unfolds too quickly. All we can do is react and hope our training ensures proper techniques and the correct settings.

With any subject, what is it about this object or collections of objects that you find interesting?

Is it it's novelty, color, contrast, action, humour, memories, emotions, abstractness...?

When you do understand what is driving your vision, it becomes easier to place the focus correctly. Not camera focus or rule-of-thirds etc., but your visual focus of photograph, then ensuring that other elements in scenes do not compete for focus.

It's easy to see those elements that grab you but harder initially to see other parts that don't quite fit perfectly. The best advice is for you to constantly take photographs and where practical, many more than you think you need and from way too many angles. You will learn to see differently.

If it's primarily color then what other colors around either enhance or detract. Then move around to best find enhancing elements and reduce unwanted components

The same applies with details, lines, textures, contrasting shapes, size etc.

Start to think less of the subject and focus more on the surrounding pieces and how each helps or detracts and then using compositional theory when merited, compose your scene.

Here you can see this single yellow tree sitting in an open field, sunlit with lots of dark backgrounds to help increase visual contrast. This tree is what excited me and I knew that by walking around 360 degrees I would be able to place the tree and bench with good backgrounds. This was a morning shot and I would have liked to get an evening shot with the bench in the shade.

I know that the camera photo is never able to truly render a green landscape scene in the same manner that we visually observe. Those ever so subtle movements outdoors help us to see more with all the greenery around.

Photo-Editing

One of my favourite techniques with greens is to shift greens in certain parts either warmer towards yellow or cooler towards cyan. A little tonal contrast color difference, even when slight, can help to increase visual contrast.

The same techniques that went into planning the photograph should also be employed in photo-editing.

If main interest is:

Fine Detail and Texture - blur or lighten/darken other parts or reduce contrast. Increase contrast of subject detail.

Color – desaturated other colours. Change hue to better compliment contrasts.

Eg. If you have 3 blue balls spread out on the beach, then for the closest ball, increase saturation and only 1-2 degrees warmer towards red. For the other balls or circles make them lighter and bluer as distance increases. Only subtly so you don't notice. You may also want to slightly blur with increasing amounts as you move in distance.

The top image has the blue circles all the same color, whereas the blue version on the bottom is using the editing example mentioned above. The bottom group of circles provides more visual evidence of depth. 

The Hue/Saturation settings are listed shown in the same order of changes.

Don't forget to capture other images around you even though they are not currently your main interest as later you may find them more appealing when looking in isolation for what originally captured your heart. The tall skinny trees in front were just a bit lighter in colour and I found that in B&W I could best increase contrast from remaining foliage.

With one of the channel masks I first shifted the hue to more yellow for these trees, which made it easier with Black and White slider adjuster to lighten yellows and darken greens. Greater contrast from background.

As with the first image, lime-yellow leaves shifted more towards yellow and lightened. Green more blue and darkened.

A camera is light with a paint brush and with a canvas you can change any part if you want, unless the point is to document historical accuracy.

Niels Henriksen

Why I Don't Worry About Image Theft on the Web

It doesn’t mean I don’t think about it or don’t do anything. In my situation it comes down to the potential risk and amount of harm that could incur and then doing as much as is reasonable to mitigate risks. I know there are some photographers who really should worry and don’t do enough.

Behind me is the village of Neddy Harbour Newfoundland in Grose Morne National Park. Distance 14km. The rocky dome in the very background is Grose Morne mountain.

Theft has always been a problem, even before digital images on the web, except then, it was known as 'burglaries'.  We have become good, for the most part, at securing our photographs (ie, locked houses).

The web is effectively still in its infancy and we need to understand the risk and potential harm either from lost revenue or damage to you or someone else's reputation etc.

In my case, the artistic medium of choice is large printed photographs. The web images I show are like showing a snapshot of my son as compared to you meeting him in person.  If you take the snapshot, I still have him.

Here my son is standing near the top of the table-rock formations in Newfoundland. It's late July and there is still snow at the top. The cavern in the dark is the size of those air-inflated dome stadiums.

Since my printed photographs are at a minimum 14” (4,200 pixels) and since there is no program that can create that much new information from a web image, the risk of theft here is minimal.  Also, my photographs are signed and numbered, and this creates impressions in the paper especially heavy mat. For signed images the risk is very minimal.

Goolge maps with elevation set at 2 times. The red arrow is approximately where the snow cap was and where our photographs were taken.

But even the web images have merit and I don't give them away for free. At least not free for the taking. I keep image size down to 800 pixels and use 9 of 12 compression ratio for jpeg. The images are watermarked with a small signature. At least they can say they didn’t know whose images it was. The meta data is kept within the jpeg file and this contains the copyright notice and other information.

You can never stop all theft, just look at the famous artworks in museums but you can reduce the risk.

In deciding risk you should consider:

Who:
It seems that there is theft from all walks of life but don’t forget the ones that you inadvertently give away for free like contests, web sites and the famous case on Twitter with the Haiti images. Do read the fine print and especially those sections that deal with Rights or licenses.

Size:
Images can range from either a thumbnail image on a web page to the brochure cover.
Size does matter and the smaller the better. With bigger photos there are more places it can be used. If your photos are in demand then 600 or even 400 pixels is not unreasonable. Viewers can always ask to see larger and you can decide on risk.

Genre:
If your are producing images that are in demand and this changes regularly, they take it. If it's general tourist type, then probably not a big deal. Even sometimes there is a need for nostalgia in a venue. Old and borrowing can become rediscovered and exciting.
If it's cutting edge advertising then watch out.

Harm:
Harm can come from  monetary loss of a potential sale. Someone sold an image of yours. If you don't make a living by selling your images then harm is not as drastic but still, it is money that should have been yours. They should have come to you to ask. When you post images, do make it easy for anyone to see how to contact you and whether your images are creative commons (CC) etc.

Harm can also arise from identity theft from using image of a person in another's context or even harm from image  identifying scene information that could lead to yours or someone else harm.

That is why I limit my own family and friends exposure.

If I do find any photos of mine stolen I will pursue rigorously as warranted. That is one thing you need to do in order to let courts know that theft is a legal concern for you and always has been and not just now because of large financial amount involved.

Do not forget that theft or loss can also happen if your online storage is your only source and the firm either changes entities or no longer exist.


Niels Henriksen

The Spotlight Effect

I just came across an interesting painting video that talked about the spotlight effect that is sometimes used. I liked the ring effect in the Monet painting in video.

I thought it would be fun to play around with this in some of my photographs as, in the video, that author does make an attempt with one of his images but not very subtle. I suppose it was to demonstrate the effect clearly.

 Can you spot the effect in the above image. I have made it just a little stronger so that it might show better, There is a light ring around the runner and it is just a little lighter in centre.

The first part was to make a layer that I could use in a lightened type of blending mode. I knew the lightened modes tended to work above 128 so I set the background to 130 grey. I used the elliptical marquee tool to create a circle and then stroked it with a grey setting of 230 with a 100 pixel width. With the magic wand, I selected the grey in the centre of the circle, and with paint bucket set to a grey of 165, filled it in to add a little more brightness than the background. A Gaussian blur of 28 to soften edges was used.

I can use the transform function to change size and shape.

I can always use the curve tool to move the 3 tones up and down to suit effect as in image above here. The 2 big spikes are the background and middle tone in the centre. The outer ring is the smaller spike on the right. The above image shows the curves before and after, that moves the centre tone lighter and corresponding spike to the right. This way I can control 3 parts separately.

When you can see both original and altered, the effect seems to show up more. But when you turn the final effect off and on then it becomes less noticeable and even the original now appears a little dark at focal point.

Here, the effect is more noticeable but when not viewing the original, it looks better.

This was just an hour playing around and I do like the effect for some images.

There lighting effects in Photoshop but this is an easy way to add a little focal interest to the image. While I used more of a ring  a circular spotlight would also work.  The Overlay added a little more drama as it could also darken background (move left spike more left with a curve)

Here the link to the painting video I mentioned.

Niels Henriksen

The Eye, the Brain and the Camera

The eye and the brain and the magical interconnections between them creates wonderful light recording system, or its the one we have become accustomed to. The eye only sees detail at about the size of the thumbnail on a fully extended arm. The rest of the field of vision is ever decreasing resolution (less cones) as it moves out from the centre of vision whereas the camera for the most part has perfect resolution across field of view. 

Where the eye really has it though, is when unmeasurably small refocusing speeds our eyes over the full field of view which makes it appear as one image. It's the brain that processes the eye's information, in a manner that appears to us, as infinite DOF and resolution through field of view. The brain is very complex in its processing of visual information. We really don't see all the detail that we think we do.

There is a great book 'Vision of Seeing' the biology of seeing.

Amazon Link:

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing

It's no wonder, at times, that the image captured by a camera does not quite fit in with what we remember we saw, which is different from what we actually saw. This is the great part about enhancing photos. It allows us to bring to life those parts that captured our imagination.

The soft blue/purple of the stones compliment well with the yellows/oranges in the highlights.

On one Friday evening I was heading out to the Byward Market in Ottawa to hopefully get some interesting B&W shots of dark alleys with lots of mood and mystery. At least that was my goal.

I arrived at 7:30pm in order to find a parking spot and even then it took a while, as by 9:00pm the market, which by then are the bars and bistros, start to hum with people.

At sunset, about 8:30, I started to scout out suitable alleys or courtyards for my image theme when I came across this man sleeping on a bench in a courtyard under a canopy of trees.

It wasn’t completely twilight dark at this time but even with a fast 2.8 VR lens set at ISO 640 @ f4.0, at 100mm I would still needed a tripod, as the shutter speed was 1/9 s.

The above photo is a camera RAW image and as you can see, it is a bit brighter due to large amount of dark areas going to mid-grey value with exposure readings. This turns out to be a benefit as when the image is darkened, those areas will have its noise reduced proportionally.

In my mind I had a different picture; darker surrounding areas with a light streaming on the gentleman. Darker foreground and removal of the cigarette butts.

The problem was, it was not quite dark enough when the photo was taken. When I returned in about 20 minutes later, the man was getting up so there was no opportunity to retake this shot and you have to go with what you captured.

Below is the Layers I used to achieve the effect.

I tend to use a separate layer for each effect or localized area that needs to be adjusted. This is why it is easier to fine-tune the image as a whole.

As I am examining image possibilities with design ideas I save a version (cntrl-alt-sft-E) I like. See top of stack.

This is a B&W version blended with a more contrasty colour I also enjoy.

 

Niels Henriksen

Tutorial - Extracting Image with Blurred Edges and Replacing Background

This article describes how to extract objects that have some movement on the edges and then replace background and not have the image appear as a cutout and placed on a new background.

The main feature is selecting the outline of the ducks with magic wand and then applying a white colour stroke to create a 10 pixel outline. This will be used later to re-introduce some blur around the duck wings to make this more realistic and not quite the cut-out effect.

The black winter pool cover was still on in the backyard pool and with some recent rain, two Mallard ducks thought this was an interesting place to visit and feed on some of the algae growing in the warm stagnant water.

There is a cedar hedge all around the yard so with this privacy, they have landed many times over the years. This always gives me a great opportunity to step out and photograph at close range.  They are not too afraid and normally I can get to within 15 feet of them. The problem is actually getting them to fly away for those interesting winged shots without scarring them so much that they won't come back.

I noticed that the male duck would bob its head up and down as I would approach.  I mimicked this bobbing motion and within a few moments this caused them to fly away.

A soft sky background would make the Mallards stand out nicely. Just having installed Photoshop CS5, I thought this would be a good opportunity to try the new refined edge when creating masks.
I will explain my approach by using the layers' palette, as the discussion's focal point, going from the bottom to top.

In the panel below (number 1-6 going left-right and top – bottom ) the image top right (#1) is the original capture as they flew away from the pool. The ducks are reasonably crisp but there is way too much clutter around and the female duck is almost hidden in the tree branches.

Original Duck Image – the original image captured by camera is in panel #1

Sky background – suitable sky selected from files panel #4. It was flipped horizontally so that the diagonal of cloud sky edge matched the linear motion of ducks going from bottom right to top left.

DSC6177 Smart RAW copy for color extraction – Copy of RAW file inserted as a smart layer. This version allowed me to darken the sky (more blue – panel #2) to help with refine edge to better detect change between white feathers and sky. Once mask refined, it was saved as a channel for each of the ducks

Mask for larger Duck -  The channel mask for large duck loaded and applied to copy of original duck image.

Mask for small Duck – The channel mask for small duck loaded and applied to copy of original duck image.

Mid Grey – A mid tone grey fill layer created to assist with viewing and refining edges against background. Some of the bird edges are white and with an almost white sky it is harder to detect edge.
Whenever using automated tools, I find it's always better to assist with the task by either changing contrast or colours to make the extract easier. Here I used colour changes in RAW files. Sometimes I may even go to over-saturation when dealing with earth tones.

Merge Ducks Master  -  both masked images for ducks loaded as a new layer. See panel #3 but with no grey background.

Stroke Mask for edge of Ducks -  The Merge Ducks Master Copy and Mid grey selected and magic wand used on grey background. This gives me a marching ants selection around ducks. This section was then stroked (Edit-Stroke with a 10 pixel, white, center) setting creating panel #5.

B&W Luminosity – a Copy of Merge Ducks Master copied and set to luminosity mode.
B&W Adjustment color effect - A  B&W adjustment layer was applied to this B&W Luminosity layer and adjusted for desired colour effects. The Blue, cyan and yellow  increased to lighten colour. See panel #8.

High Pass - Copy of Merge Ducks Master and a high pass filter applied and layer set to overlay mode. See panel #7.

Blurred Winged Edges – Original layer copied and Gaussian blur applied (3.5px). The Stroke Mask for edge of Ducks was applied as a mask and the main body duck edges were painted black with 50% opacity to reduce blur effect on these parts but have the most blur on the moving wings. Panel /6 is mask.

This stroke mask could also be used to reduce colour fringing around the edges by applying a Hue/Sat adjustment layer and reducing saturation of problem colour. The mask keeps the effect to just the edges and a smaller stroke pixel setting can be used to limit the width of colour changes.  Normally for photographers, the desired change is to replace skies. With desaturation, the greying will match tones of non blue skies. If blue sky is desired then use the Hue/Sat layer but instead shift the hue of the problem fringe colour.

This is a closeup of the male Mallard duck sitting in the swimming pool with some water on the black winter pool cover.

Niels Henriksen

HDR Photo with the iPhone

The new 3G iPhone is one good camera to have integrated with your cell phone.  The main feature for HDR is the ability to select different areas of the scene and at the same time bracket your exposure. Then with Photoshop or other similar photo-editing apps, combine these multiple exposures into an HDR photo.

Its often been said by many photographers that the best camera is the one you have with you and for many of us this means a simple built in camera with our cell phone. Only simple if compared to many full-featured cameras today but if you just look back some 20 to 30 years, these camera phones are just amazing.

3 exposures used for combined image

The iPhone automatically adjusts its exposure setting for the area selected within the focus box. By tapping different parts of the image, it changes its focus and it also adjusts the exposure compensation for selected area. Select a dark area to lighten and a bright area to darken. Try and select uniform tonal areas and watch how image adjusts.

The 4 different exposures taken for the pond image above. In the end I only used 3 of them.

Without a tripod or other solid support getting multiple exposures of your image with the iPhone, that overlap perfectly, is not an easy task.  There are some tips that can help you achieve better results:

Try to lean yourself or arm against a solid stationary object. If not possible, lean or squat so your elbow can rest on your leg or another part of your body.

Once you have your scene selected examine the 4 corners carefully as these memories will be the markers for ensuring that the next image is reasonably aligned. With practice you can get quite close. One problem if they are too far off is the final image area decreases to only the overlapping parts.

For complex scenes like the frozen pond above, take many images by selecting different areas of the image for focus. This will ensure wider coverage and sometimes all you need is a small area to add in and alignment is easier for smaller parts.
 

Just at sunrise with moon near treetops

In Photoshop, I use the difference setting in layers mode to align the images. Once I get the area of the image I will be using reasonably aligned I use either the Transform or Warp functions to fine-tune specific problem areas.
 

Don’t spend too long on aligning the 4 corners, as it’s easier to just copy layer and align the new area that you wish to use. Normally the change in angle distortion between images is only notable over the entire image. Small sections work fine.

I find that with the iPhone’s wide angle, that any small movement creates bigger distortions at the edges of the image.

It’s not a prefect tool but when the camera phone becomes the best camera you have then with multiple exposures you can get good photos in high contrast settings.

First Snow Fall of the Season
The other day we just received our first snowfall and nice 2” or 5 cm of the fluffy stuff.

As I was heading out for my morning walk, the sun now stays at a low angle a lot longer and the fresh tracks in the snow were being side-lit on the inside edges which gave them a luminous glow.

It’s interesting to watch the tracks that we leave.  Each track, whether they’re from boots or bikes, are different. 

 


Strange how great it seemed that day because 2 days later we had 10” or 25cm of snow. A lot harder for a walk-about.

Niels Henriksen

Painterly Effect with Photo Enhancement Techniques

While deciding on an image to work on and achieve something special, I remembered a scene while in Copenhagen this spring. It was early morning and there was this lovely textured stucco wall in the dappled light with bicycles, benches and an old oak tree (at least some majestic type).

In reviewing file archives, I found that I had only taken 4 images in the entrance square to the Frederiksberg castle grounds in Copenhagen. Of the 4, there was only one that caught my eye. I now wish I had spent at least a couple of hours, if not all day, here to watch how the sun changes the light in the courtyard and how reflected light modifies the local colours.

The scene is interesting enough with good texture and detail but I wanted something more atmospheric of this place. The approach I took was to deviate from a photograph look and experiment with more layers made up of pieces of the original image. I wasn’t sure where, exactly, I was going with the outcome but it was fun just to watch as I adjusted the modes of the new layers.

The image below is the version that I like best in trying to achieve a glowing watercolour rendition. A light cream-coloured, watercolor textured paper would even soften some of the lines a bit more.

Click to see 1024 pixel image

In working with Photoshop or other pixel-editing tools you have key choices of color, contrast and edges. The effect I was after was to soften the image and add some glow while for some essential edges, enhance contrast to give extra texture and definition.

Duplicating the base layer, increasing its size by 25 pixels on each edge and then doing a gaussian blur of 5 pixels would achieve the glowing effect (faux Orton effect). The final effect accomplished by setting the blurred adjustment layer was set to overlay mode and add a curves adjustment layer, attached directly, to fine-tune contrast adjustments within the image. Then opacity to taste.

I wanted various ranges of detail texture so, to achieve this I duplicated the base layer 3 times. Each of these 3 layers received a different gaussian amount of 5, 10 and 25. I then ran the Photoshop pencil effect on each of the different blurred images. As you blur more then fine lines start to disappear and others become stronger. This would give me possible overlays or masks from fine to strong detail to hand-tune different parts with detail.

With each of the 3 edge contrast layers I would step through the adjustments from Darken to Hue adjustment and observe the effects. If there was a section that interested me, I would mask it in and move on to the next layer and once again step through the various modes.


In the above photo image I like the pairing on the contrasting analogous colours (the orange wall, red hydrant and violet bike) being complimentary of the green foliage colours and the cool shadows and it’s these contrasts that I tried to magnify in the first enhanced version.

I now realize that there are so many more images from different angles and lighting, but it’s now so far away.

The 6 images below show the experimentations and progress towards the final version.


Do click image for a full size image or 1600 x pixels for the various versions I went through.

The changes affect the green leaves, window detail and detail and colour of shadows on sidewalk. The final image (first in this article) is made using the bottom right image on colour mode to the middle image top row.

Maybe you like one of these better.


Niels Henriksen

Need a Live Model – Use Yourself

Special Note to Readers:
A thousand plus thanks to all the subscribers and any other reader of this photography blog. The other day Feedburner showed a max count of 1,004 subscribers at least for one day. As I mentioned previously I will be giving away 2 signed prints by random selection. This will happen during the month of September as I am waiting until then to ensure that all readers have a chance incase they are on holidays.


I have never used a live model. Even when our camera club provides sessions with models and studio lighting, I still don’t venture in that direction. I am not sure why but I can only guess that since I don’t do any commercial or for-hire work then there is not a real need for this type of staged event. It’s not that I mind studio work as I have setup flower shots, etc, but these are for artistic value and not stock photography. Maybe if I had an artistic idea that used people then I definitely would pursue it.

This was the case for some staged model shots and not wanting to bother using a friend or hiring someone, I decided to use myself in a setting. I hope its not like the lawyer thing were you have a fool for a client.

The outcome was not to have a great shot of myself but to have a reference image that I could use for oil paint as part of my learning process. I seem to be somewhat ok with landscapes but scenes with people really needs improvement.

The Process

I placed my camera on a tripod and pre-focused on the leading edge of the bottom edge of bench (to match plane of eyes) and then switched off autofocus. I set the aperture at f 10.0 for extra insurance for clear depth of focus and positioned the bench in the field of view for artistic merit.

The camera was then set (interval mode) to automatically take 10 images with duration of 10 sec between each shot. Then walk or run to the bench and pretend to look cool or some other silly pose.



What I learned

For static poses in a city type environment, a set of 10 with 10 sec between shots seems about right as random things do happen around you as the above image shows. Sometimes for the good but most times not that interesting.

If it were a dynamic scene, such as shooting hoops or jumping around, then I might try durations from 0.3 to 1 sec and a sequence of 30-40 images per session. Thank goodness for digital camera since development cost is only click and view.

Towards the end of this play time I noticed that the white pages of the book were reflecting brightly when angled a certain way and I used this to light the shadows of the face as in the first image.

Notice the comparison change in luminosity of red shirt and face by using book reflection in images below.

There is no reason that you could not also use a real reflector mounted on a stand for better light control.


The next few image shows a bunch of out-takes showing me running to bench, other people in scene, adjusting my hat and cars behind and a runner which works better in the second image in this article.


The image below is the early morning view from the bench looking across the Ottawa River. A nice spot even without a camera to just sit and think.


So if you are a novice like me with using live models then this method might work to get you some familiarity with posing, lighting and other techniques. Give it a try and share your experiences with the rest of us.

A few more images from around the bench with and without people.









Niels Henriksen