Great Photographers, Part II

I seldom directly link to another blog post just "like that" (simply because I like it) - I don't want my blog to me a link collection (there are other's - and more than enough - that already do this).

However, here's an exception... "The Online Photographer" just posted a follow-up to their original "Great photographers on the internet" article (I mentioned that one before here, too - it's such a classic!).

I'm not saying that I'm not one of the people who exchange thoughts and criticism with my friends on the internet (especially with all the people whom I met via Picasa Web), and one or the other statement could very well be from me. :-) But they are, like me, amateurs. We're trying to learn from each other. The problem is... how do you recognize a classic? When do technical imperfections not matter for the impact of a photo? It ain't easy. The TOP post is a good inspiration to think about one's own behaviour once in a while. :-)

PS: Happy Birthday, TOP!

Yours truthfully

Swan Study I. (FinePix S5Pro, 1/250s @ ISO 100; f/8, 80 mm DX)

The more I am working with develop presets in Lightroom, and the more I look at scanned film photos (like in Karl's album from Iceland or the Jenya session by Vera) the more I realize that digital photography is lacking something - and that's character!

I wrote about how "true" one or the other photography method may or may not in a previous article here. And while I still don't think that film (analogue) photography is more "true" than digital photography, film does most certainly have the character that is missing in digital photography.

The JPEG renditions of most camera's (even the Fuji S5pro's film simulations) are mostly plain, boring, neutral, and the camera's auto white balance add's an unwelcome unstableness to the appearance of the photos. Raw data, when first interpreted by a raw converter, is even worse most of the time because it is very flat and completely "undramatic", to say so.

Hence, what's most noticeable is that digital photos lack a consistent look. We try to mimic the look of highly saturated Velvia for this photo, the look of a grainy b/w film for another, the appearance of a strongly vignetted Holga for the third... all in the name of creativity. I'm beginning to question this approach and I start thinking in "sets" that I try to process so that a consistent look is visible (I also tried that in my "Forest Equations" album).


Swan Study II (FinePix S5Pro, 1/180s @ ISO 100; f/8, 80 mm DX)

I think it is one of the biggest challenges of post processing to get a consistent look for a series of photos from the same context. This is both an advantage and disadvantage of digital: you can make a certain set of photos from one session look this and that way, and another set of the same session differently.

There was no so choice in film (except for using filters, and then the effect was permanent). The results with film are, appearance-wise, always consistent. A film has no "auto white balance", it's either made for daylight or for artificial light (hence the need for filters), it has no saturation slider either... it's clear what I mean? And at the same time, film may be flawed - it's colors may be more or less "off", it may be too saturated, etc. - all in all those are the things that define the "character" for me.

Digital leaves the freedom to everything and anything on the computer. The difficulty is to choose a wise approach that will not result in a too messy and mixed result. I'm happy with the individual results of my snapshots from Zürich but the album as a whole... it's just not consistent.

And it can't be. Had I processed each photo with similar settings, I wouldn't be happy with some of them. Which kind of questions if I can stick to my own statement that I made in a previous post (" think it is the wrong approach to try to find something worth keeping by playing with presets and whatnot in a photo that would not be a keeper otherwise.").

Striding the digital domain of photography with all of it's choices can be heaven and hell it seems.

Weird Places, Weird Edits

Brain Auer's photo of some "famous dead oaks" near Red Hill and his edit (where he mimicks the effect of cross-processed Velvia100 film, he describes the steps in his blog) opened my eyes and mind to an idea that was new to me: apply weird edits to photos of weird places - and the Salton Sea surely is one such weird place. :-)

I tried a strong black and white edit in one of my photos when I visited the Salton Sea, but it can't compete with Brian's rendition, which is simply "far out".


Alien Shores (FinePix S5Pro, 1/35s @ ISO 200; f/16, 16 mm DX)

Recently, I found a weird place nearby - the re-naturation zone in the Schönramer Filz. It's a moor area that was drained in the early 20th century to "mine" the turf. Later, when people found out what a unique eco-system a moor really is, they blocked the channels that drained the moor, the water level rose, and the trees began to die - making place for the natural plants of the moor.

The trunks of the dead trees are a really weird appearance, especially with the perspective compression of long focal length's:


Haunted (FinePix S5Pro, 1s @ ISO 100; f/8, 300 mm DX)

The edit is mostly toning the highlights in a cold blue and the shadows in a warm brown (mildly), plus a strong boost in contrast (it was actually very hazy that day, so not much contrast).

Underexpose?

In a recent discussion about photos made during the "magic hour" (just before and just after sunrise/sunset) on PicasaWeb, a friendly friend :) sent me a link to a video tutorial on "How to take perfect sunsets" (link goes to youtube). In short, the friendly person in the videos says that, in order to get vibrant colors for sunset, you should underexpose.

Where does it come from? Jeffrey Friedl examined the problem of decreasing saturation with increasing brightness in another excellent technical article on his blog. But if you're shooting raw and use digital processing, as long as you make a proper exposure (that is: don't blow out the highlights!) and expose to the right, you will most likely get a better result if you expose your sunsets normally and correct them in post.

Just following the exposure recommendation of my camera, I get a "close to perfect" exposure in this scene:


As shot (FinePix S5Pro, 10s @ ISO 100; f/11, 24 mm DX)

As you can see - the shadows are partly blocked, OK, but the important thing is: the highlights are not clipping. The red channel goes all the way to the right. It's simply sweet what the S5pro did here in Aperture priority mode.

And we're digital... we can always make a scene darker or brighter... the problem is: if you make the shadows brighter, there will be noise. But if you make the lights darker (just remember: only as long as they're not blown out), there is no such problem, because there's more detail data in the lights (the explanation for that is in one of the links in this older post here). So, from this very good exposure, we can easily adjust the scene to match the vibrant colors so that they're more like what we actually saw that moment after sunset.

Please look at the smooth color transition in the sky. There's not the slightest hint of color banding (blocky artifacts, sometimes also called posterization), the gradient is smooth as silk even in the areas where the sky is pretty dark now (any artifacts you see are purely from downsizing and JPEG compression):


Post processed (FinePix S5Pro, 10s @ ISO 100; f/11, 24 mm DX)

All the adjustments have been made on Lightrooms "Basic" panel as you can see on the right. The most important thing to notice is that the Saturation and Vibrance have not been increased! The beautiful red glow of the post-sunset sky came back automatically with the exposure compensation that I applied after the fact in Lightroom.

I added a lot of Fill Light to compensate for the hefty -1.5 exposure compensation to bring back just the tiniest idea of some of the shadow detail in the sand. Had I dialed in that -1.5 exposure compensation on scene, there would be no shadow detail left in that area, and all I'd get would be some grainy noise. This scene is not the best example for that, I admit it... :-)

If there's one conclusion that I can draw from this it would be, once more: shoot raw! :-) But nevertheless, I believe that the same adjustments would yield in similar results when used on a properly exposed JPEG.

Time to Play

Recently, I'm using my camera in "Raw+JPEG" mode with a film simulation despite the fact that, exposure-wise, the result on the camera display might be misleading when chimping. I chose the "F1a" film simulation of my Fuji S5pro because it has good dynamic range and a nice color rendition. However - about 98% of the time, I don't keep the JPEG. I just want it as a comparison ("what would my camera do?"), and as an inspiration ("how could one possible interpretation of the raw data look like?").

How comes? After working with the LR presets by Brandon Oelling (and if you followed my recent output you surely recognized one or the other in my photos) I realized that there's more to photography than reproducing a most accurate rendition of a scene a) as we remember it or b) as it was recorded by the camera, and that is c) the creative rendition of "traditional/legacy" camera gear and film (which includes hue shifts, vignetting, overexposure, etc. etc.).

So what I am doing at the moment is a) look at the camera JPEG and see if I like it, if it fits my memory of what I saw, ie. what made me release the shutter first place, attracted my eye, and then b) optimize that with the raw file to get the most impact out of it (until I say "yes, that's it!") and then it's c) time to play - I create a virtual copy of my edit from the raw data and then I start playing... sometimes with presets, sometimes just going crazy all by myself (I also try monochrome versions in that stage often).

Time for some examples. I made the photo of this scene on my Saturday morning walk with Toni in a nearby forest (well, Burghausen is drowning in the "traditional" layer of November fog at the moment, I try to make the best out of it). This forest has many many beech trees and their turning leaves color everything in a nice and glowing orange/brown/red. Here's the in-camera JPEG with the F1a film simulation:


Foggy Forest (F1a JPEG) (FinePix S5Pro, 1/35s @ ISO 800; f/8, 62 mm DX)

Well, that's nice, but it's a bit dull and doesn't transport that ethereal quality of the fog that was hanging low amidst the trees good enough. For the most part, it's an exposure problem though: I should have overexposed this by one stop, sacrificing the few highlights that would burn out for a brighter appearance of the scene in general (which was not an option because I had no tripod with me, hence the ISO800).

I tried to correct that mistake with my own raw development in Lightroom, which looks like this:


Foggy Forest (own edit of raw data) (FinePix S5Pro, 1/35s @ ISO 800; f/8, 62 mm DX)

Yes, that's much more like it, it's definitely a keeper now!

The important part for me is to start "playing" only when I have something that already is worth keeping and a nice photo (in my very humble opinion, of course). I think it is the wrong approach to try to find something worth keeping by playing with presets and whatnot in a photo that would not be a keeper otherwise.


Foggy Forest (based on the "x=infra+ready" preset) (FinePix S5Pro, 1/35s @ ISO 800; f/8, 62 mm DX)