Creating Dramatic Photos

I was going back to my 2009 Canada trip and working up a new blog post when I came across this picture.  I wanted to use it as part of the blog, but the lighting conditions at the time I was there didn't create any really great photos.  So I started playing with the image.

Here is the original:

My first attempt was to add a Layer>Overlay with a neutral density gray choice to brighten the whites in the lighthouse and hopefully to bring out details in the cloudy sky.  The image remained bland.

So I thought about my choices to give this image "pop" and went to my NIK Software HDR Efex Pro. Now I wasn't combining images here, I just wanted to do something to make this one shot more interesting.  When I went to the filter, I had 33 presets to choose from.  After checking all of them, I chose "Realistic (Strong)" as the look I wanted.  

I also like Topaz products so I went back and used Topaz Adjust to see what look I could get. I used the HDR Collection>Dynamic Pop II. Then I went over to Local Adjustments and used a brush to darken the sky more and to brighten up the lighthouse.

When I'm at a location, I strive to photograph photos that will stand well on their own without excessive post processing.  Sometimes, the weather and the lighting are not optimum, so I'm glad to have these tools to create an interesting image when the conditions were not optimum on location.

Lighthouses

I love lighthouses. They are usually beautiful, but I think it is their symbolism that resonates in my spirit. They were built to guide sailors either away from hazards or into harbors. I was in Michigan for fall foliage, but I was near two lighthouses near sunset.

The Manistique Light is right on the edge of the jetty that leads into the harbor. The day had been cloudy all day long, and right at sunset the sky cleared. I like to find ways to photograph lighthouses where you can see the light. There is a trick to have your camera ready and then with a long enough shutterspeed to hit the shutter right as the light comes around and a long enough shutterspeed so that the shutter is open as long as the light is on. I have also found that it has to be dark enough for the light to show up. When you can catch that light, often you get a natural lens flare that accentuates the light.




As a traveling photographer rather than a local photograher, I often only have one opportunity. Sometimes the weather and lighting cooperate, sometimes they don't. On this evening, the clouds were not conveniently behind the lighthouse, but there were some pretty clouds after the sunset. I also took cloud photographs.



To combine the two images, I first made a new layer from the background, Layer 0. Then I did a select all and copy and pasted the cloud image which created a second layer. I put the lighthouse layer above the layer and did a layer mask. Using the quick selection tool, I was able to select most of the sky, but by using a mask, I can go back in and clean up the edges with a soft brush. I also used the move tool to move the clouds up above where the lighthouse was. Using a layers adjustment I was able to match the color tones of the sky with the sky color inside the lighthouse. The finished product looks natural and is more artistically pleasing to me. If I market this image, I will market it as digitally altered.



I also had the opportunity to photograph the Eagle Harbor Light. It was overcast, but I spent some time photographing it, hoping the sun would find a slit to light up the clouds behind it. When I was doing my conversion from RAW, I added a little more red tones.



I had taken sunset photos at Manistique as the sun was turning the clouds in the distance a pretty pink.



I was able to combine these two photos. It took a little bit of trial and error, playing with it -using levels to adjust both photos so that the sky colors matched.



I am hoping to find a way to brighten this one up so the lighthouse shows up better. It is not lit at night. But somehow the water's color works with the cloud background. I like this version better. I could wish to be there again sometime when the natural surroundings - the sunset colors produce a masterpiece photograph. But it is fun to create something artistic out of the materials you have at hand.

NANPA Breakout Session- Digital Alteration and the Line of Credibility

When I was signing up for my Breakout Sessions at the NANPA Summit, I knew that I needed to go to Ernie Mastroianni's "Digital Alteration and the Line of Credibility. Ernie is the Photo Editor at Birder's World Magazine. He is coming to this subject from a journalistic background.

I've come up through the ranks of the internet online photo competitions. Digital manipulation is common and encouraged. Photos that have not been cleaned up removing distracting elements don't win Photos of the Day as a rule. When trying to make an artistically beautiful image, it makes sense to use the tools at hand to make a visually pleasing end product. My policy has been to make sure I know what the rules at the various contests are and make sure my submission follows those rules. But, I've seen images win at the contests with the tighter rules on manipulation that I KNOW have been altered because I saw the original as it went through the critique process. Most of these changes don't really change anything about the "nature" of the situation.

I am now trying to submit my images to professional photo buyers. I am submitting for commercial, artistic, and journalistic usages of my photos. I had one portfolio reviewer last year tell me that I should be very careful with photo manipulation because if I do it anywhere then I would not be "trusted," or my credibility would be gone. Later in the Summit, I heard one of the presenters at a Breakout Session talk about how he was always honest with his end users. He manipulated some photos for the artistic appeal, but he also submitted non edited photos for scientific use. Another reviewer for a children's magazine has dealt with the issue by having different categories of images: photo altered (minor adjustments) and photo illustration (where components have been rearranged, removed, or images combined.) I left the 2007 Summit thinking that as long as I am honest in my submission as to what I've done to the image and that I am submitting appropriately to the entities that I am being ethical in what I'm doing with my photography.

So I sat down to listen to Ernie's presentation with great interest. I knew before hand that journalistic photos need to be pretty much straight out of the camera. In most cases removing sensor dust is usually OK. But with RAW capture there is a lot of manipulation that can be done without changing the image. And some manipulation is really just adjusting the image to be closer to what your eye actually saw rather than what the camera's technical abilities were to capture the image.

Ernie's policy for Birder's World is very simple and based upon journalistic principals:

Allowed adjustments;
Brightness
Contrast
Color Balance
Sharpness
Saturation adjustment

Alteration:
Cropping
Cloning dust marks and digital noise such as hot pixels
Red-eye (with some caveats)

Additional Alterations - based upon maintaining the reality of the scene
Composites taken at the same scene at the same time frame without altering elements
High Dynamic Range images which allow the information from shadows and highlights to be visible and accurate
Extreme depth of field - used a lot in macro to bring all of the image (such as a flower with petals) into sharp focus
Perspective control - simulating what a tilt shift lens can do

Additional information from Ernie:

Additional Alterations - based upon maintaining the reality of the scene"
These types of alterations can have credibility, but an explanation to the
reader is needed.

For instance, if I was publishing a picture that was a 360-degree panorama,
it would require an explanation, otherwise, how would the reader know how
wide it was. They might think they were seeing a 180 degree view, rather
than a 360 degree view.

Unacceptable alterations
Removing items
Cloning other than removing sensor dust spots
Combining or adding elements of one image to another
Changing color of individual components - such as greening up brown or dying vegetation
Stretching or compressing part of an image (distortion that is not a perspective control)

The best part of the presentation was WHY these are his standards. Photographic manipulation has been around as long as cameras. In doing some research for this blog, I found an image of Abraham Lincoln which was his head and John Calhoun's body. (See links at the end.) I have to wonder in the days of glass plate photography how this was done.

The Cottingley Fairies were photographs that deceived the eye, but apparently at the time led many people to believe that they were real photographs of fairies. To our more sophisticated eyes today they seem to be obviously artistic drawings that were cut out and put into the scene at the time of the photograph. And that kind of manipulation can be done today - adding toys to battlefield images of destroyed homes, adding trash to a scene to emphasize environmental issues, posing people for a news story, etc.

The credibility of photos is probably at an all time low, because people are more aware of how images can be altered. And several publications are trying to restore believability. Even if they have previously published altered images, the standards are tightening up.

The audience discussion was also enlightening. Arthur Morris, a well known and respected photographer, one of the best bird photographers around, pointed out a different set of issues. Imagine a bird photo of a bird on the top of a tree snag with a forked trunk. There are two trunks, both broken and different lengths and one really does not add anything to the beauty of the photo. In today's world, the collective wisdom is to clone out the distraction. In some cases you could have removed the offending branch before you took the shot, but then you are altering the environment. That alteration of the environment can upset the wildlife that live in that environment. There was a case mentioned where a hummingbird was frequenting one particular branch - seeming to prefer it to the other flowering branches nearby. For some reason a photographer thought it was not a particularly photogenic branch, so he broke it off and attached another prettier branch. The hummingbird was devastated. Not fully mentioned is the "gardening" we sometimes to when we are taking flower shots - whether in our own gardens or along the roadside. It might be as simple as removing a distracting rock or a taller stalk of grass. After all, a deer comes and munches on the grass. But . . . if you are in an area where there are endangered plant species, you could be doing irreparable harm removing plant life from your photographic composition to get that perfect photo.

Another sobering aspect of this issue is the fact that a few photographer's careers have been ruined after they made a simple change to a journalistic photo, even changes that really did not change the story in the photo. Their credibility as a journalistic photographer is gone forever.

Here is a practical example of these issues from a photo I took last week. I think you can click or double click to get a larger view.

Here is the original image - taken from the jpg - the only change is resizing for the blog:



Note that the water line is not level (from the time my eye "saw" this image to getting the camera and tripod setup without my hot shoe leveler . . . I had to be incredibly fast to get the shot while there was even the tiniest amount of sun still there) and note the few stalks of marsh grass on the right hand corner. And, yes, there IS sensor dust.

Here is my initial post processing. I've enhanced the colors (similarly to what you might get if you used Fuji's Vevlia film. I've leveled the water line, cropped such that the sun is off centered and the trees and their reflection occupy a larger portion of the frame.  I chose the bottom crop to avoid some of the marsh grass. And after some deliberation cloned out some single stalks of grass in the lower right hand corner. I chose to keep the grass on the left hand side because I felt like it added to the sense of place and kept the reality in the scene.

I submitted this to the Critique Corner at Digital Image Cafe. Now, I respect the critique process. I have learned SO much from having my work critiqued. I agree with and understand the comments made in the context of online contests (and even other artistic venues).




Here is the image with the lower left corner "cleaned up." It may be slightly more appealing to the eye. Those grass stalks do pull your eye a little bit away from the bright colored sky and the silhouetted tree trunks. They do interfere with the illusion of an oval that is created from the trees and their reflection. But here is where Ernie's comments are convicting and compelling: Nature is not perfect. "Real life with all of its imperfection is more interesting." Is it the essence of nature or wildlife or the desire of the photographer?



Ernie's comments from a thread at Naturescapes.net: "A photographer in this thread wondered if the elaborate outside studios, water drips, feeders and perching props used to attract wildlife to the perfect setting are simply another way of altering an image? My answer is no, there is a big difference. As long as that bird is free to come and go, you are capturing an image of a real bird, in real space and in real time. That bird wants to be there and if it sensed a threat, it would leave. The best setups anticipate the desires of the bird, and not the photographer. But if an image is altered after it was taken, it captures the desires of the photographer, and not the bird.The bottom line is always credibility. On occasion, some photographers have sent me altered images, but if they also send me the original unaltered file, their credibility as an editorial photographer remains intact."

Since the conference, these words keep coming into my head as I am capturing my images and as I do my post processing. For myself, I prefer the middle image, because it retains most of the essence of what I saw that night - with a minimal of post processing. If I decide to submit to the online contests I will probably submit the "cleaner" version. If I submit for calendars, I'll probably submit the middle one with a note in the metadata as to the changes I made.

For those that are still interested in this topic after this long blog, here are some other links that are illuminating. Complete with compelling images that illustrate the issues here:

Reuter's Photo Examples

Dan Heller's Digital Manipulation - Responsibility of Photojournalism

Dartmouth College paper "Photo Tampering Throughout History



The Perfect Fashion Model

Extreme Photoshop Makeover

PhotoPlus Expo

For my photograhy friends, I am going to post some blogs from the PhotoPlus Expo in New York City.

I got into New York Wednesday and got settled into my hotel. I found my way to the convention center fairly easily and got my name tag. I headed off to my first eagerly awaited seminar only to find that I did not have my "ticket" nor was my name on the registered list . . . . . At the NANPA summit everything was included in the price except for the pre event and post event activities. So I went back to the main floor, found the additional line, priced it, swallowed very hard and bought my tickets! After all, the seminar topics were what made me choose to come to this event. In for a penny, in for a pound. Fortunately, I have a supportive husband who when called later in the day - confirmed that this was exactly what I should do.

I went to my first meeting - late, but really enjoyed George Lepp's presentation. While I have the Panorama Factory on my Windows laptop - it is cumbersome to transfer the files over - so most of my panorama sequence shots are still on DVD's waiting processing. He recommended Panorama Maker from www.Arcsoft.com - which runs on both Windows and Mac. I'll be looking into that program.

He also showed some of the features of Adobe Photoshop's CS2. Since I seem to be doing fine with the first CS, I had not been ready to upgrade . . . . .but the High Dynamic Range feature (HDR) that will take a minimum of three images with different exposures and combine them easily makes the new version tempting. And, of course, he also showed how to do something similar with layer masks - I did learn a new technique . . . . .

The other program that tempts me is Helicon Focus. Designed in the Ukraine, it is marketed in the United States for Windows machines. But it allows you to shoot a sequence of "macro" shots and combine them to get the entire flower in sharp focus - a much deeper depth of field than an lens setting. It can also be used on landscape shots. I was very impressed. However, it is an expensive program - and only for Windows - so it is not immediately on my buy list.

While I am not ready to buy a digital projector - I was certainly impressed with the Canon SX50 he was using. Amazing color and resolution.