Big Bend Ranch State Park - Shooting for HDR

Over the years, I have learned that discipline is a very important part of photography. Many times I have arrived at my photographic destination at the "right" time, but it feels like I am getting "nothing." I chimp at the photos I've taken and I think I've had a bust.  But then, after I get home and start doing the post processing, I find that my discipline to keep shooting, bracketing for HDR (High Dynamic Range), pays off. 

Here is the final image:

Here are the two images used to create it.

Sometimes my HDR work is intended to depict what my eyes saw and what the camera can not capture in one image.  Sometimes, using the available software, the image moves beyond what my eye saw to an artistic interpretation.  

I recently bought the NIK Software package with an updated HDR Efex Pro 2.  This version is MUCH faster and still gives a lot of choices for the final tone mapping.  I added some sharpening and additional saturation to give that beautiful sunrise glow. For some photography markets, it probably has too much post processing to qualify.  But . . .  I think it will make a good print.

Creativity and Photography

There are so many ways to be creative with photography in the digital age. I am a firm believer that it is important to capture an image as well as you can to begin with - I don't shoot with the thought "I can fix it in Photoshop." But I also enjoy exploring the creative things you can do both "in camera" and in Photoshop that take an ordinary scene and make it something beautiful.
As I work through the images I took on our fall trip, I ran across this one. Taken at the beginning of our drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway, this beautiful fall tree drew my attention, called to me.



The sun was cooperating by hiding behind a clouding, so that if I waited patiently I could get soft lighting. The rocks seemed an interesting foreground. The catch: the wind was blowing just enough to cause some motion blur of the leaves in places at my preferred ISO 100 for landscapes. I played a little in photoshop to get the rocks nicely exposed and then did a little bit of dodging and burning to make the tree look "good."

I found that it seemed pretty, but perhaps ordinary.

I purchased Topaz Adjust and Topaz Vivacity during the summer. After playing around with the Adjust filter, I went over to Vivacity and came up with this version:



I went back to the original and played around with the Photoshop artistic filters to try to find an artistic effect that would work with this shot. Then I went back to Topaz Vivacity to get the finished look I wanted.



After posting this, I added even more saturation to bring out more of the reds.



I think I like this last version the best, because it keeps the deep reds in the tree, but still gives this a more painted look.
Which one do you like best?

To get the full effect of these photos, you can click on each one and get a larger view.

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.

Manistique River

Northland Outfitters in Germfask is one of our favorite places to stay in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We've been there twice before in our RV. This year we didn't bring the RV so we stayed in one of the camper cabins. The view of the Manistique River is just gorgeous. We had a nice cloudy day, so I pulled out camera and tripod.

I was shooting with my standard lens, the 28-105mm Canon L lens. When I looked at the shots that night, I was not too happy. This was just not a good representation of what I was seeing with my eyes.



So I began to play with it . . .

The first step . . . cropping it down.



I've been playing with some programs from Topaz labs - Topaz Adjust and Topaz Vivacity. For this one I used the Simplify portion of Topaz Adjust and used the sharpen with iterations in Topaz Vivacity to create this finished piece:



Using what I learned from the crop of the photo, I went out the next day with my 100-400mm Canon lens to get the photo I wanted at full resolution:

Photoshop CS3 - edges and three dimensions

Each photoshop workshop I attend leaves me with some new skills that often help me on a project that I'm currently working on. I had seen other people who managed to add interesting edges to their photographic work, but I was not real sure how they did it.

Obviously, to make this kind of presentation - a photo on a background, you're going to be working in layers. In this case there are basically four layers (in addition to the adjustment layers - levels, curves, etc.) The background is actually two layers, the tree bark faded into a lighter background. You can create this on the same document as the finished work. You copy and paste your bark and you create a layer of fill. I chose one of the layers to reduce the opacity (depending on the project, I try fading each layer to see which effect works best). This gives me a blend and in this case softened out the bark. Then using the shift key (on Mac) select both those layers and "merge layers." I then and did a levels adjustment to add a little contrast to this blend. I wanted some texture so I played with textures and decided that craquelure provided what I wanted. This background layer needed to be larger than the portrait layer, so I used a technique I had learned in December. You take the Clone tool and select an area (in this case I started at the top corner and worked down). After you have made your initial selection, you brush in to fill the area to match the existing texture or pattern. I had always made small corrective touches with the Clone tool. Knowing that you can brush in larger areas makes things so much easier and quicker.

I had already been working on the layers of my face blended into the tree. When I got my final version of that I took those two layers and merged to give me one layer. Now, here is the trick . . . I selected that level and using the option key created a black mask. The black mask makes the layer "disappear." Now I can chose an interesting brush tool and literally brush the layer back in. By choosing one of the irregularly shaped brush tools (with the color set to white) I can carefully work the brush to the edges of the portrait layer leaving a jagged, rough edge. If I make a mistake, all I have to do is set the brush to black, erase, and try again until I have a pattern I like. You can also play with the different shaped brush tools until you find the effect you like.

Now, at the end of the project I wanted to do some finishing touches and making that portrait layer more three dimensional was high on the list. First selected that layer and went to Layer Styles and added a drop shadow. I manipulated all the options until I had the effect I wanted (yes, lots of trial and error - play -it's fun to see how many ways you can add a shadow.) Then I went to bevel and emboss and played there until the bark seemed to stand up off the background.

Self Portrait - Part 2

Well, I'm still playing with the digital art version of my self-portrait.

Here is roughly where I started:





















One of the critiques I received recommended that I do something to make it more 3 dimensional. So I started playing with filters - the one that worked was poster edges.























I had some other suggestions from that posting at the Digital Image Cafe, so I darkened my face and I decided that a border might be a good thing. I used a technique I learned this week at the photoshop training to "brush" my image back onto a solid layer leaving the brush strokes as a boundary to make it interesting.









Well, I liked the border around it, but I thought it was too plain. My online friend Alberta mentioned playing with the bark pattern. So I took my Fill layer, blended it with a new layer of the bark and added some craqueleur . . . Then I added some shadowing under the bark, but I had to do that with a brush by hand because of the way the bark and face had been "brushed" in.







I am definitely wishing I had done this with "smart filters" and "smart layers" because I now have 3-5 versions of this . . . . I've gotten another good suggestion that I need to try, plus I think my external border is too dark. The first version I tried to fix that did not quite work. So I seem to be having to go back to the originals to play.



Here is my latest effort: I suspect I'll play around a little more with this. To me this one has my face too light - so I'm not fading in and really being "one" with the tree. But it's late. Sometimes I think I am working this one to death. And then at other times, I think I'm making progress toward a final presentation.