P42: man-made landscape

The last project in Landscape, is essentially the subject for almost every photograph I have taken or posted during this course.  At times I have railed against the obsession of the material with the traditional pastoral British landscape, but I have to admit that the course has provided me with the freedom to pretty much do as I please, provided I remain respectful of the fact that I need to develop skills and awareness of landscape style subject matter.

My personal subject has been urban landscape and in particular the city of Munich, my home for the last 18 years.  As I write this I have already commenced on my second course, Social Documentary, once again with Munich as my subject, but this time an emphasis on the people rather than the topography.  As I progress it is this unifying theme of my home city that drives my photography.  It is there, near by, ever changing and yet constant.  The more I look the more there is to see.

Thus this project is  an apt way to close my course work.  As every photo I have taken thus far is of a man made space, rather than go out and find 3 man made landscapes, here are 3 photographs of man-made landscapes taken during the course that mean a lot to me

This is the winter image from my portfolio, showing the area in the Englischer Garten in which I photographed Assignment 3, a study of a small area of parkland as Summer turned to Autumn and then Winter.  I visited again and again, developing an afinity with a space that I never thought I could have.  It helped me to understand that good photography is not a lucky or even a brilliant press of a shutter, it is hard graft and the progressive development of an idea.

Not used in an assignment, this shot was part of the development work for Assignment 1.  It represents a geometrical view of the world, at this stage an exercise in perspective.  Whilst taking these photographs I made the decision to stick within the city for the course;  at the time I was still considering working on the edge of the city, looking at how we sprawl out into the countryside.

A development image for Assignment 2, still thinking in colour, but with an almost B&W feel to it.  This image is very representative of the aesthetic I was developing towards and that which I adopted for Assignment 5.  It is very planar, carefully constructed and crossing the line from Landscape into Social Documentary.

I think my recent photography is strongly trending towards being a series of Documentary studies, not Social Documentary as such, but linked studies of locations.  I also feel that I am now evolving an own style or "voice", still imature, but beginning to grow.  The last photo in this brief commentary is a good example of that style.

P41: grain

Grain in film is frequently referred to with the same reverence as it is in antique furniture, a property that conveys character and a sense of age.  It is the latter element that steers me away from its use in my work, working digitally I want to embrace the capabilities of my medium and not emulate an older technology.  Whilst grain is an accepted and much loved part of photography, I am sure many photographers of 50 years ago would have sold their soul for a film that could handle ISO1600 without graining, something that is rapidly becoming a standard for the very latest digital sensors.

I am happy to admit that the texture of an original print looked at close in a gallery is wonderful, but then again I also appreciate the superbly clean images that others produce.  My whole approach to photography is to reduce noise which is essentially what grain is, even if of chemical origin, it is essentially the limit of resolution of a particular technology.

Working this assignment I have taken a series of images from ISO200-6400 on my Fujifilm X100 a good low light camera.  I took the photos on a local road in fairly rainy dull conditions, ideal for looking at noise in an image:

Complete image at ISO 200

100% crop at ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

The images have been imported into Lightroom and converted to B&W, but with no other processing.  Up to ISO 800 there is little change in the texture of the image, at 1600 and 3200 I still have an image that could be rescued digitally and used up to around A4.  At 1600 the noise is very visible, but also not necessarily unpleasant.  I have then taken the ISO 200 original and introduced grain into the image using Lightroom:

100% crop of digital grain

The artificially induced grain has a more pleasant look than the very specally ISO 6400 shot and so if I wanted this look I would not shoot at ISO6400 to get the effect.  But I do ask why would I want to anyway.

P40: coloured filters with black-and-white film

Once again I am approaching this project as an exercise in Digital processing, but this time actually taking the images to B&W.  In a former course, "The Art of Photography", I actually shot B&W using coloured filters but with a Digital camera. The effects were exactly as was suggested in the text.  Of course light is modified by the filter and whether the imaging place is film or silicon the affect is the same, but only if the white balance of the camera is established first for the scene without filter and then maintained at the same value for all shots.  My blog entry for this can be found at  

TAOP - Project 37

Having experimented successfully with filters and a digital camera, I felt it was more useful to approach this exercise from a fully digital stance, i.e. take existing images and exploring the processing options within my workflow tool, Lightroom.

The first shot was a dramatic sky shot in the Northern reaches of the Englischer Garten. The starting shot has been processed in Lightroom using my usual strong colour/contrast, becoming a bit of a habit or perhaps a visual style, who knows.

My next step was a straight conversion to B&W without any adjustments to the colour channels (in fact I took the default Lightroom conversion and reset all the colour channel adjustments to 0).  This produces a rather bland but acceptable image.

Next applying the yellow filter in software, the biggest affect is that the sky darkens and gains more contrast, but at the expense of also darkening the foliage at the bottom of the screen.

The red filter has a limited affect on the image, suggesting that the software implementation is not well tuned to the process

The Blue filter lightens the sky and darkens all else.

I did not find any of the software filters particularly satisfactory, they do not really emulate the affect of a "real" filter with B&W film.  Using a filter at the time of shooting also makes no real sense as all it does it reduce the amount of information in the resulting digital file, information that can be usefully exploited later in the process.  I finish with a conversion to my own taste, an image that looks very much more like a red filtered photo.  I have heavily reduced the blue channel whilst pushing the yellow channel to preserve the tree detail.

For the second photo, one with plenty of Green vegetation I have chosen a shot taken during the development of assignment 1 at the Olympic park.

No filter

Green filter

Red Filter

Once again the affect of the software filters is rather weak and unsatisfactory.  It is so much better to manipulate each colour channel directly.  I decided that I wanted a higher contrast image and so have pulled down the Yellow and Orange channels.  I left the green channel alone, for "Green" foliage the yellow channel has a higher impact as much of the luminosity of the leaves is a reflection of sunlight.

Finally I have dug into my holiday pics for a richly coloured sunset, this is from Gangga Island of the coast of North Sulawesi in Indonesia.  It is by far the most dramatic sunset I have ever seen.

No Filter

Blue Filter

Red Filter

With such strong primary colours in play the filters are having a far more dramatic affect than before.  The blue filter has made the image very dark as red was the dominant colour.  Conversely the red filter has brightened the image substantially.  Indeed the red and blue filtered images almost appear to be negatives of each other.  Once again by directly manipulating the colour channels I can arrive at a far more satisfying balance of tones within the image.

During the past 4 projects designed to build skills and familiarity in working with B&W film and printing I have taken a distinctly digital approach and in most cases actually considered the problem in colour rather than B&W.  I do work in B&W, indeed my second assignment was such, however the advent of digital means that many techniques from processing B&W film can now be applied to colour imagery.  These were useful exercises reinforcing skills I had already partially developed, but with some of the new learning I have been able to revisit portfolio shots and make some subtle but telling improvements using selective modifications to the tonality of regions of the photograph.  I suspect that any rewrite of the course will see changes to this section, however, it was very valuable even if I did change the rules once again.

Returning to the subject of this project, B&W filters.  Whilst they can be used with a digital camera, there is limited value in doing so and their use probably removes much needed processing latitude that can be applied later in the process.  The so called filter presets provided even in software as good as Lightroom also have a limited value.  Why emulate static effect when you have an almost infinitely adjustable toolset.  Digital B&W brings with it a far greater ability to place an images tonality wherever the artist wants it to be.  This can be overdone and purists religiously adhering to the zone system would disagree with anything I write here, however, the ability to adjust colour channels individually has brought B&W alive for me and provided me with a new form of graphical expression.

Given the benefits from Digital workflow to B&W expression the introduction of a digital camera that captures no colour information at all, the new and hideously expensive Leica monochrome, makes so little sense, I wonder what the point is.  OK digital is still faster than film, but if you want to abandon the post processing benefits why even bother to shoot Digital, a second hand film Leica will probably outperform the new digital model and has the benefit of being able to shoot different film types.  These can be emulated in processing, but only if the colour channels are present as the emulation requires information about colour as different films have different sensitivities to colour.  Perhaps a toy for the wealthy experimenter.

P39: printing a backlit landscape

Once again I have completed this project in colour and not the suggested black and white.  Reflecting upon my last project, also in colour rather than B&W, I have concluded that this is better done in colour.  Colour is far less forgiving of radical processing than B&W.  A colour photo will shout out loud that the processing is badly done, B&W on the other hand frequently benefits from extreme processing, a key advantage of B&W, but a property that makes this exercise too easy in Digital.  The human eye is too familiar with the rightness of colour. We accept B&W as an artistic interpretation of reality not a literal one.

For this exercise I have gone back to a set of images originally taken for Project 18, a study of the Autobahn and a group of office buildings behind which the sun was setting.  Here are 3 of the original photos showing the progression I was attempting to capture.

The objective was to capture the changing light in the sky and study how the foreground artificial lighting becomes more prominent in the exposures as the ambient light diminished.  The price that is paid is an almost complete loss of foreground detail, even in the earliest shot.

However, what if the goal had been to portray the road and buildings against the sky, but without loss of detail in the buildings.  Looking at the histogram for this image, we have over and under exposure in the same frame with loss of detail at both ends of the scale - the exposure is actually fine, but we have run out of dynamic range in the camera

Starting with the initial shot the first thing to do is to adjust the image to optimize the background cloud and sun:

The problem this has induced is that the buildings are now even darker.  I can adjust that by increasing the shadow levels, but at the expense of adjusting my finely tuned sky tones:

Also at this stage the buildings are still too dark, but any further processing would ruin the sky.  At this stage I painted in an adjustment mask:

This now meant that I could adjust the foreground exposure independently of the background.  I lifted the exposure by 1.5eV reduced some of the highlights, added in some shadow detail and increased the clarity slider:

I may have overdone it, the image is starting to take on something of the look of an HDR image, but is I  think still acceptable.  It is surprising how much shadow detail existed in the image and how powerful a tool Adobe Lightroom is for making these types of adjustment.  I am now getting to the point where Photoshop is simply a printing engine.

Returning to the original theme of B&W, here is the straight conversion from the final colour image

I have then pushed the boundaries much further than with the colour image, again I am hitting the edge of obvious fakery, but the B&W image is still an interesting photograph, we know it is wrong, but it is wrong in an interesting way.

So, I did not do any printing for this exercise, but that was not really the goal, the objective of this and the previous exercise is to learn how to make selective changes to the exposure of a single frame.  In the days of film this needed to be done at the printing stage, digital processing now enables that to happen at the development stage.  It is not all rosy in the Digital garden, over use of these tools makes something of a dog's dinner, however, subtly done they can transform a photograph.

Often times people talk about rescuing an image with these techniques, sure that can be useful.  However, I would contend that the real value of the these techniques comes from enabling us to make images in far more marginal exposure conditions than would have formerly been the case, secure in the knowledge that a second exposure process can be applied.  This is not an excuse for sloppy exposure management in the camera but a real creative option that extends the capabilities of photography.

P38: burning in the sky

Well, once again I am going against the grain.  I can see the value in working in B&W, but having already delivered Assignment 2 in that medium I can't quite see the value in developing those skills now, especially as my final assignment will be distinctly colourful.  However, taking away the basic premise of burning in a print and reworking this project in the context of  Digital, this exercise becomes a useful skill development.  I recently upgraded my primary Digital workflow tool, Adobe Lightroom to version 4.  With this upgrade came a major change in the processing engine and in particular an improvement in the toolset for selective development.  I have thus used this exercise to explore the capabilities of these new tools and practice a little.

For the exercise I have selected one of the shots taken for my portfolio, but as yet rejected:

This image is very typical of a RAW file just after import into Lightroom, it is rather flat and dull.  The fact that I was shooting into a bright sky means that the foreground is a little darker than I want it to be.  However, the Histogram for the shot is pretty well distributed with no loss of detail.  This is a photo that with work should be capable of brushing up nicely.

My first job is to adjust the exposure and shadows to brighten the foreground, whilst trying to keep the sky under control using the Highlights and Whites sliders.  I have also added in some Contrast, Clarity, and Vibrance to add some "pop" to the image.

At this point I have an acceptable photograph with a rather nice softly pastel sky, however, what if I want to darken that sky and make the photo more dramatic.  Here is where the new tools in Lightroom 4 come into play.  I can now use the adjustment brush to paint in a mask and then effectively process the masked area separately to the rest of the photo.  Painting the mask is a fiddly job, but with the ability to add and subtract, plus a useful "Auto Mask" function this is not too onerous.  I guess I spent about 15-20 minutes on this one. Using this tool does have a pretty major effect on my computer, it very noticeably chews up processing power - my machine is 2 years old, has a Quad core i7 CPU and 8GB of RAM, so no slowcoach.

With the mask applied I then adjusted the exposure, but no other tools:

-0.5eV

-1.0eV

-1.5eV

-2.0eV

The effect is pretty strong beyond -1eV and halo'ing around the buildings is becoming an issue, although another go over with a vert delicate brush might fix that. At -1eV I think I have a good balance of colour in the sky with the foreground, beyond that (ignoring the halo'ing) the effect becomes rather surreal.  For some applications this might work, but not for this one.

BUT, this is a lot of work for a fairly simple adjustment, one that can be done pretty easily with the application of a grad filter to the image.  In the following I have placed a grad filter over the top 2/3 of the image and applied -1eV.

Frankly, I find this more convincing, the gradual application of the filter from -1eV at the top of the photo to 0 just below the tree line provides a more convincingly real image, completely avoiding any issue with halos. It also took roughly a minute to apply versus 30 for the burn tool.  I can see places where the burn tool is going to be useful, when a tall building penetrates a sky and you cannot really use a grad tool.  However, for most landscape photography the grad tool is easier and produces better results.

P37: ways of dramatising a landscape

To answer the question posed by this project I have looked back into my library of holiday photos, all taken in the tropics.  Vacations have been good opportunities for me to experiment with my visual style and I generally produce photos that are very different from my usual set, sometimes terribly cliched, sometimes oddly creative, mostly rather banal.  However, one thing I do try to achieve is drama.  The places we go to are full of visual drama, part of the reason why we go there, although technically it is the underwater drama we are seeking.

As we head off once more to Borneo in 3 weeks using those tropical images for this project is also a retrospective of some of my better images and an element of preparation for shooting the next set.  So rather than supply an imaginary example I will supply a real example:

Inherently Spectacular Subjects - What can be more spectacular than the pure form of a volcanic cone shrouded in low level cloud

Extreme Wide Angle (FF 24mm) - Used to capture the internal architecture of this Singapore Shopping Mall

Extreme telephoto (FF 480mm) - The telephoto enables compression of planes with a shallow depth of feild enabling the foreground subject to pop in the frame

Rich colours at sunset or sunrise

Unusual Composition - without a waterproof camera this shot would not be possible, ir provides a perspective on the boat from below rather than the typical above

Back Lighting

Isolation of a feature against the skyline - Usually a tree on a hill side, these trees slowly being overwhelmed by the sea made an interesting subject

Use of a strong foreground shape against a background

A one figure to emphasize the expanse of the landscape - could have been smaller

Moon Rise reflecting in a shallow lagoon

Minimalism - simple composition emphasizing the light

Weather - A downpour in a tropical rainforest

Macro - Not technically landscape, but adding to the landscape narrative

Compression of Planes - In the city shooting with a medium telephoto

 

City Skyline at Night  - the Singapore business district and Boat Key

Artificial Light - and reflections in the water

Over-Under shot - hard to do well and even harder to process after the fact.  This adds an unusual perspective and a sense of being in the photo

Under Water Landscape - With visibility not normally more than 30-40m and in this case no more than 20, convincing underwater landscapes are hard to create, this is one of few that I really think presents the mystery of a coral reef