Look deep into my image

Landscape photographers, as a group, generally are looking for the greatest depth of field possible in their images.  The intent is to emulate what the viewer would see were they standing right there, with everything from their toes to the horizon in focus.  Although our eyes don’t actually work that way (we scan a scene and our brain pieces it all together in a way that makes it look like everything is in focus) it’s the way we expect a landscape scene to look so photographers work to deliver that in their final work.

In the good old days of view cameras this infinite depth of field was accomplished by tilting the lens downward a bit to expand the depth of field at the film plane (which was not tilted).  From William Henry Jackson to Ansel Adams this was the way you got wide depths of field in a landscape photograph.  When medium format and 35mm cameras came along with lenses fixed parallel to the film plane this wasn’t possible until the invention of tilt-shift lenses, which act somewhat the way a lens on a view camera works.

Another method has always been possible but until the invention of digital photography wasn’t easy.  You could always photograph sections of a scene, each in focus, and paste them all together to create a final image where all parts are in focus.  This was a very time consuming effort and the results not always satisfactory, or easily reproducible.  With digital processing, though, it’s just a few clicks away.

I’ve played around with this “focus-stacking” technique a few times in macro photography as a way to bring more of a small object in focus within a single image.  While at the NANPA Summit, though, I heard George Lepp talk about it as a way to expand depth of field in landscape photography as well.  It’s essentially the same process – take several images of different parts of a scene, all in focus for that part – only instead of cutting and pasting prints you let Photoshop combine the digital images into one, picking the areas that are in focus to generate the final image.

Here is an image made up from 17 individual images, each one made using a different focal point.  I put my camera and long lens (works best with a long lens to get the detail in the final image) on my tripod and made each image, gradually moving my focal point from right in front of my feet to the distant shoreline.  I then made adjustments to the exposure for each in Lightroom and moved the whole group to Photoshop to be turned into a panoramic – a vertical one.

As you can see in the follow three crops, each part of the overall image is in focus (well, mostly – I could have made more images to make sure each section was accurately focused).

It’s true that closing down the aperture will increase depth of field but the results will most likely not be this good.  First, long lenses have a narrow depth of field simply due to physics so I would not have been able to get the snow at my feet and the distant shoreline both in focus even if I closed the aperture to f/32.  And using a shorter lens (which will have more depth of field at the same aperture) would not give me the distant detail I want.  Second, closing down the aperture smaller than the “sweet spot” in a lens (usually in the middle of the aperture range) means lost detail due to light diffraction around the edges of the aperture blades, scattering the light as it reaches the sensor.  Granted, most of this wouldn’t be noticeable unless you really zoom into the picture or print it really big, but what’s the point of capturing detail across the distance of a composition if you can’t do that!?

But what about horizontal?  You can use the same technique but instead of a single row of images you’ll need to add one or more rows in order to get enough of the scene in the final image.  Simply make several images in a row, point the camera up or down to a new focal point (with some overlap of the prior row), make several images in a row, etc. until you have enough rows to cover the scene.  I usually then make traditional panoramics of each row of images and then the final image from combining the panoramics.  Photoshop will combine either vertically or horizontally when it realizes you have overlapped enough of the scene.

Obviously this works best where nothing in your scene is moving.  It’s fun, though, to be able to create images that look like the way we expect reality to appear.

Icy contrasts

ISO 100, 71mm, 40 sec., f/3.5

ISO 100, 71mm, 1/200 sec., f/7.1

ISO 100, 24mm, 1/400 sec., f/8

When you have shadows, work with shadows.  This is the perfect time of the year for black and white.  Use low angled light (just before sunset or right after sunrise) to bring out the surface texture and details.  Work with exposure to make sure you keep details in the shadows and highlights (yes, that’s a 40 second exposure above – another moonlight image).  Traditionally you want some pure blacks and whites in an image as reference points but with ice and snow that can look too contrasty so I’ve backed down on each a bit.  For the Zone System enthusiasts out there all these images have tonal ranges between Zones 2 and 8; pushing to 1 and 9 gave me too much stark appearance.  If all that means nothing to you then read up on Ansel Adam’s exposure techniques or play around with your own exposures until you get what you want.

If you want to play around with Adam’s Zone System keep in mind the intent was to visualize tonal attributes in the final PRINT, not the intermediate negative (or RAW file for digital).  Many of Adam’s negatives were actually somewhat flat – he brought contrast to selected areas in the printing and developing process.  For digital, keep your histogram even across the center and then post-process to spread information to pixels at the ends to get the contrast you want.  Use local dodging and burning (or adjustment brush in Lightroom) to enhance selected areas.  If I do that to these images I’ll post what I get and how I worked it out.

 

Airplane doodling

I rarely use my laptop for image processing – calibration of the screen is always questionable and brightness gets changed depending on ambient lighting.  Still, what is one to do on a four hour flight when all the magazines and shopping guides in the seat back have been read and battery life on the Kindle precludes getting involved in yet another novel?  If nothing else, it’s a good time to exercise the laptop battery!

Pulled up the following random shots to see what I could do with them, trying to get some depth or detail that would make them interesting to look at for a bit.  Looking over them I’m struck by some common themes, which apparently I included by reflex while looking through the viewfinder.  That’s pleasing – that I’m seeing in the images while creating them aspects that will be interesting after they’ve been created.  For example, each has a pretty obvious subject, either due to contrasts, colors, focus or placement.  That alone is a big improvement in my photography.  Glad to know I can recognize what I’m making an image of!  Also, there are interesting features other than the subject but they complement rather than overwhelm the subject.  Balance is a great thing in images, at least in the type I like making, so it’s again good to realize I’m starting to see it.

On my laptop screen it’s good to see the exposure and processing turned out pretty good.  I’ll have to print them to see what they’ll look like but so far I’m surprised at how well working in a dark plane on a questionably calibrated screen actually turned out.

Does raise an interesting question.  Is an image only “real” once it has been printed?  Vote now and vote often.

 

Click on any image to see a larger version.

Take what you can get

Every once in a while photographs are simply the result of serendipity, some crashing together of incidents that were never intended to coincide but manage to do so.  For example:

This is famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, the only known one in the world.  Every year the town decorates the exterior of the building in corn to portray that year’s theme of the corn festival.  All the corn is grown in the area and all the work done by townspeople.  As Mitchell is right off Interstate 90 between Sioux Falls and Wall Drug (or Rapid City, or Sturgis – pick your reason for being on I-90) the Corn Palace sees quite a bit of tourist traffic even when the festival is over.  This year was touch and go – the drought seriously impacted the quantity of corn in the area, especially the unique colored corn used for the designs.  But they managed to finish it up and everyone is enjoying this year’s tribute to youth activities.

I was in Mitchell for a couple of days on business and decided to make some images as the tourist crowds were small during the week.  Some were made before sunset and some afterwards as they light up the Palace.  The building is downtown so the opportunities for different compositions are pretty limited but it wasn’t until I started looking at my files today that I realized I had two images taken at different times that were almost the same perspective.  And that’s how the above picture came about.

Here’s the daytime image:

And here’s the night version:

I dropped them both into Photoshop as Layers (images stacked on top of each other) and reduced the Opacity of the daytime version until I got the view of the lights I wanted.  Here’s my Photoshop Layers palette:

You see the Opacity of the top layer is down to 26%, which means only that much of the image’s luminosity is showing through.

After that it was just a matter of tweaking the night image a bit in order to line up the lights with the structure (it’s not a perfect job but not bad for 5 minutes of work).  And I get a final image that looks like I waited until after sunset.

Never believe what you see in a photograph……

The new software is here! NIK Color Efex Pro 4

I got my updated version of NIK’s Color Efex Pro (v.4) this past week and finally got around to loading it.  Some new filters added (particularly some film emulators), modifications to existing filters and some other new features makes the upgrade worth it.

One feature is the filter stacking, new to this version.  In prior versions to apply multiple filters in this tool you picked one, adjusted, saved, picked another, adjusted, saved, etc.  Now you just pick filter, adjust, pick another filter, adjust, etc. and the software stacks them until you save the image.  You have full control over each filter in the stack while building the stack.  I use these in Photoshop and save my images as PSD format files, which means I can go back to the image later, open it, and have full control over the filters to make adjustments.

Any time software developers add this type feature they usually send along some presets, already developed combinations of tools you can apply with a single click.  I took a look at some here and like them as a starting point although sometimes the first application looks pretty good.  Here’s an example:

RAW file, converted with "soft landscape" preset

RAW image straight out of the camera, converted to JPG

The soft landscape preset is a stacked filter set, combining the effects of a graduated neutral density filter, brilliance/warmth adjustment, tonal contrast adjustments, lens vignette, and pro contrast.  What it does for me in this image is make the subject more obvious by darkening the lower right side of the image, brightening up the road, and sharpening the details in the ground a bit.  The RAW image is pretty flat (as I’d expect right out of the camera) and the converted file pushes your eye toward the deer and warms up the overall tone.

All this from one click instead of the five separate adjustments in previous versions.

One other feature is a History stack, similar to the one in the Develop module of Lightroom or in Photoshop.  While in the tool you can see what all you’ve done to an image and edit the history if needed.  Finally, there is a Recipe group where you can save custom filter stacks you create for application to other images.  A great amount of personalized control in an already powerful editing tool.

Old Friends

Periodically I look through my image files to see if there are candidates that could benefit from what I’ve learned about processing.  It’s partly a way to see if I’m improving over time and partly a challenge to “develop” an image I’d rejected previously.

The one above is an example.  I made this one in 2009, before going off to photo school.  With all of one workshop under my belt and better reading of photo instruction guides, I started trying to compose images instead of snap pictures.  At the time, though, I still assumed “good” pictures came out of the camera that way so from my first glance at this one I tagged it unremarkable and moved on.

I found it today and realized the processing skills I’ve picked up since would benefit this image.  Realizing that what initially attracted me to this scene was the contrast between the rock-solid sign and pedestal among the dynamic, chaotic water and leaf-less trees (enhanced by the word “quiet” among all the motion), I worked on emphasizing that key element.  I sharpened the edges of the sign and concrete wall and the edges of the steps in the background.  I increased the contrast of the limbs and trees to improve their dimensionality.  I even enhanced the contrast of the water ripples to make them more obvious.  Overall I expanded the tonal range of the picture, making sure there were deep blacks and clean whites with lots of grey transitions between.  Finally, I placed a faint vignette on the image, centered on the sign with a gradient darkening toward the edges.

None of this could I do back in 2009 – I doubt I even knew what I wanted in a final image.  With education, feedback, advice and a sense of curiosity I feel there are aspects of photography making sense.  And I’m pleased that “old” work can become new again.

Now if I can only master printing such an image and preserve this look……

Softly in a scene I walk

Glacier National Park, ISO 100, 108mm, f/16, 3 image HDR

Glacier National Park, ISO 100, 100mm, 1/125 sec., f/13

I have two preferences for landscape scenes:  the acutely sharp, highly detailed ones and the soft, ephemeral ones.  Of the two I find the latter much harder to create in a way to show what I was seeing at the time.  Our eyes are so good at extracting contrast within a scene:  looking at fog winding through a grove of trees we see both the fog tendrils as well as the pine needles in almost equal detail.  A camera, be it digital or film, has a much harder time discriminating all those little aspects that make such a scene captivating.  The light has to be perfect, the amount of fog versus the background has to be just right, the details in the scene must still be visible without being too obvious – all these things to look for and you still just part way there.

Weather changes quickly in Glacier NP which makes the opportunity to capture scenes like the two above pretty good.  I was fortunate for both in that the cloud cover was thin, giving me enough light from above to light up the ground details but not so much as to wipe out the fog details.  My camera is set to capture a flat image to give me more to work with in post-processing, which I’ve found is important for these type images.  The picture on the back of the camera is usually not very great but I’ve learned to ignore that, knowing it will be better after running it through my software.

With the RAW image in Photoshop I’m interested in improving the local contrast where I want edges to be a little sharper and increasing the difference in luminance between light and dark areas to bring some depth to the image.  I’ve recently started reading George DeWolfe’s approach to this based on his research about how our eye perceives contrast and edges.  He instructs using the History Brush in PS to make local adjustments to the image, a technique that works really well for these type images where adjustments to small areas can really help deliver the look I want.  It’s pretty simple – create a duplicate layer and use the History Brush on the duplicate, painting right on the image itself rather than a mask.  He focuses his technique on B&W images to maximize the impact in the print; I’m finding it works very well on color images as well, either for screen display or printing.

For the first image, since the light is coming from the upper right of the scene, I lightened up the top of the ground cover along the bottom left while darkening the areas just below where I lightened.  This brought out the curve of that little ridge running down the hill.  Then I increased the contrast in the trees to make them stand out in the fog, but didn’t adjust the lighter fog areas at all as they already had the contrast I wanted.

In the second image I increased the contrast along the ridge lines just at the edges to make them stand out against the clouds more.  I also lightened the snow areas so they would pop out of the picture better.  Finally I lightened the areas of grass at the bottom of the image to better define the trees down there.  Again I made no changes to the clouds as they work just the way they are.

Soft, dark, brooding, ominous, ephemeral – I really like this style of image because of the mood it projects.  Once you’ve stood looking at such a scene and taken in all the aspects of what’s around you there’s a desire to capture it and share with other like-minded souls.

It’s polite to point

Photographs are more interesting when the viewer doesn’t have to take time to figure out what the photographer wants them to look at.  When looking at a scene in person we benefit from the 3D image our brain constructs, our eyes focusing on specific areas in a scene to the exclusion of other items and our attention to the larger context of the scene (where it is, why we’re there, what happened just before to make us look in that direction, etc.).  A camera doesn’t have any of those abilities – it simply records everything in the field of view as it is at that moment.  It’s up to the photographer to bring sense to the scene portrayed in the image by intentionally pointing out what’s important.

One way to achieve this is to take advantage of how our brains process a scene.  Studies have shown our attention is biased for bright areas over dark – our eyes go first to areas in a photograph (or painting) with higher luminance values.  Putting a subject in an area of higher luminance will ensure the viewer sees them first and usually decide that is the subject of the photograph.  This bias can be combined with design elements in an image:  lines, curves, shapes, negative space.  When you have little control over a scene other than lighting and composition (as in a landscape) using these techniques can help make sense out of a scene.

For example, I looked into the woods recently and saw what I felt would be an interesting image.  I composed the view to show a path into a grove of pine trees.  When I got the film back and scanned it, though, I saw this on my computer:

Pretty flat with little of the dimensionality I wanted to portray, where the path runs from the front of the camera into the background.  It seems all the details are running together and my eye has no way to make sense of where I’m supposed to look.  The overall contrast is pretty flat, almost an even grey across the whole image.

One process that has been used for almost as long as photography has existed is the vignette, a shading around the edges of an image.  By making parts of the image darker and parts lighter I can bring more structure to the image and help the viewer know where to look.  Creating a vignette is a simple matter of darkening the areas of the image I want to be of secondary interest.

There are several ways to achieve this and most digital processing software tools offer it in some form.  Most have controls that allow you to determine the size of the vignette, the shape, the color and placement.  I use a tool from NIK software to make all these adjustments and for this image I decided to darken the edges and lighten the center, which I placed toward the back of the path.  The result is not a traditional vignette (dark ring around a photograph) but a subtle darkening of the edges to move your eye to the lightest part of the image.

Mamiya 6 MF, Kodak TMax film, 50mm lens

Now your eye spends less time initially at the bottom and sides of the image by being drawn more toward the back and center.  With the path defined better, your eye hopefully sees the structure of the photograph – a path surrounded by interestingly textured trees casting a variety of shadows on the ground.  It would be hard to get this from the original photograph.

I changed no elements in the picture, merely where the light was emphasized.  Photographers using film did this in the darkroom – now we do it in computers.  Am I manipulating the photograph?  Sure.  Does the result fit better with my original intent for the image?  Of course.  Except for thrilling documentary photographs most images are pretty dull right out of the camera.  As I said earlier, the camera doesn’t “feel” what you feel – you have to add that back to the image later.

Big picture considerations – lenses and software comparisons

I recently sold a couple of large prints to a friend and went through a couple of days of testing how to get the best appearance from big enlargements.  Along with that I’ve been reading about sharpness differences in lenses and wondering about the impact on enlargements.  Being a nut for sharpness in my landscapes I decided to do a little testing on my gear and see what differences I could find along with techniques to maximize sharpness.

You may never need to worry about this issue but I’m the photographer who walks up and puts my nose right at a big photograph just to see how sharp it is.  For normal people, the “correct” viewing distance is around 2 times the diagonal dimension of the picture (where infinite sharpness is less of an issue).  Your brain is pretty good at dealing with this – watch people at an exhibition moving back and forth in front of a painting or large photo and  you’ll discover most of them land in the same spot, which is around 2 times the diagonal of the image they are examining.  Has to do with angle of view of our eyes and how much we jump around in an image to take it all in.

Anyway, to compare lens sharpness I have two lenses with a 50mm focal length – one is a fixed macro at 50mm and the other is a zoom whose range includes 50mm.  In order to learn what differences might show up in processing I have two software tools for enlarging – Photoshop CS5 (bicubic) and Perfect Resize 7 (formerly known as Genuine Fractals).  Software packages make enlargements by literally creating new pixels in your image using sophisticated algorithms that try to made the new pixels blend in with the old ones.  I can’t begin to explain how this works – it’s just magic to me.

My test is a simple one:  photograph a straight edge with the two lenses at a fixed distance and then enlarge the image with the two software tools and compare the results.

As a summary I found the two lenses have little difference in sharpness in this test – the differences were greater between the software tools than the lenses.

I set up my camera at 64 inches from my target (just a random choice), a razor blade in front of a piece of white foamboard.  Lighting was from above, a 65 watt flood light (hence the really warm color in the images).  Camera was on a tripod, manual focus using LiveView on the back of the camera and a 5 second delay between the mirror lock-up and the shutter release.

Test Setup

50mm setting on zoom, Perfect Resize enlargement

50mm setting on zoom, Photoshop enlargement

50mm macro, Perfect Resize enlargement

50mm macro, Photoshop enlargement

I took the two image files (one for each lens) and processed each through the software tools, enlarging the image to 30″ in the longest dimension, which is about 2.5 times larger than the original image at 300 dpi.  After setting my view in Photoshop to 100% I cropped each image to the same dimensions.  No further processing was performed and the final, cropped images were saved as JPEG’s at maximum quality.

What I’m seeing is little difference between the lenses for sharpness; i.e., rendering the edge of the razor blade as a crisp, distinct line.  Viewing the original files at 200% showed little difference.  As far as enlargement, though, there are definite differences between the software tools.

Photoshop’s bicubic enlarger results in a smoother look to the final image, which for me results in a less sharp edge.  Perfect Resize did a better job of retaining the sharp edge but the work of the algorithm to add extra pixels around each existing pixel gives a type of pointillist look to the image (granted, when viewed at 100%) that Photoshop’s smoother result doesn’t have.  I’m concerned the image from Perfect Resize will be more sensitive to halos during final sharpening than Photoshop’s version, these halos being what makes some digital images look artificial to the eye.  In final sharpening the software doesn’t know which pixels are original and which were created during the enlargement so it works on all of them, which can result in artifacts around edges that distract from the image.

Two conclusions.  First, using what I already know about maximizing sharpness in the camera minimizes differences between the two lenses I use – tripod, manual focus, mirror lockup, shutter release delay.  Second, at significant enlargements (greater than twice original size) I need to be careful with the software tools, perhaps choosing one over the other depending on how important fine details are to the final image.  Additionally, subsequent sharpening will have to be applied carefully so as not to hurt all the prior work getting to a pleasing, larger image.

From all this I’m less terrified about offering larger prints on my website as I now know what to watch out for as I make adjustments to the images I upload to my site.  It would be nice if one tool did everything perfectly but photography, like other crafts, has learned more specific tools applied correctly usually return the best results.  That and the craftsman knowing how to use them properly and for the right application.

 

Where’s my film!?

I’m already missing Kodachrome.

Yeah, it was temperamental, narrow in dynamic range, somewhat color biased and really slow (well, the good versions were) but when you wanted “that look” it was the only option available.  What would summer be without Kodachrome and vacations?

If you get the chance, look at a mixed group of slides made with various film types.  With just a little practice you can pick a Kodachrome image out of a group of other slides – it has some quality about it that is different and hard to describe.  Our eyes so quickly adjust to lighting and color variations we usually don’t realize when there’s a shift around us in reality but when we look at a moment in time frozen on that little piece of acetate the differences become apparent.  Perhaps more depth, or a slightly different color cast, or maybe some richness of colors.  Or maybe it’s because so many of us grew up on National Geographic photography, where Kodachrome was a staple for decades.

Digital filters and processing are magical things but a quick scan of the web doesn’t turn up any serious means to duplicate the look of Kodachrome in digital images.  Which is odd since there are other color slide emulators that seem to work pretty good when applied to images those films were best at making.

Why process digital at all?  Well, the sensors generally have no “soul” about them, electronic instruments that they are.  Some engineers somewhere decided all light falling on sensors should be faithfully recorded with the flattest response curve possible, sort of treating all electrons equally whether actually see the world that way or not.  Apparently it’s always been intended that digital images would be processed in some way, either by the camera or by the photographer.  It’s great to be able to impress my own tastes on images, although it can get out of hand sometimes.

Your basic RAW file, right out of the camera - ISO100, 108mm, 1/200 sec., f/10

Adjustments to RAW to deliver a "normal" appearance

Crank up the sliders - a Velvia "look"

Film?  Not so much.  Each film carried embedded in its nature some particular bias toward light, contrast, color.  I don’t know if it’s the nature of emulsion chemistry or some deep-seated romanticism in the engineers but look at the same scene on different films and they just look different.  Sure, I still get to control the exposure and composition, but the “look” of the final image was mostly set by the film manufacturer in their specifications on color sensitivity, film speed, contrast ratios.  Photographers got to know the “look” of each film and consciously chose to adopt that “look” for their work, and ultimately became known for what it brought to their compositions.

With digital anyone can look like anything now, I guess.  It’s just who’s the most experimental slider-dragger.

I’m not here to fan the film vs. digital flames.  I’m just missing Kodachrome.