Photography Travelogues – Mournful Gentleman in Sanliurfa

July 5, 2012 by 8 Comments

Sanliurfa, Eastern Turkey

Sanliurfa, also called Edessa in the Bible, lies in south eastern Turkey and today is a mix of religions and politics. I have now made two trips there and on both occasions, I frequented a small outdoor cafe secreted away in the middle of a labyrinth of alleys and market stalls.

On this occasion, I returned with photographs taken from the first trip. It was a buzz to hand out prints to the people I had photographed a couple of years earlier, but I am sure they had completely forgotten me. It was also a great introduction for more portraiture.

I was travelling with a group of ten photographers, and our subjects, the men (there were no women playing dominoes or cards that I could see) were surprisingly accommodating for our cameras.

Of course, not everyone was keen to have his photograph taken, but I noticed that when they said no to me, they often changed their mind when the women photographers in our group approached them.

This photograph was taken after several of our group had already been given permission. I was really pleased because this gentleman’ s face had earlier caught my attention and I was disappointed after my first pass of his table had been fruitless!

I don’t think the man’s expression changed the entire time we were there. The photographs taken by the other photographers look exactly the same.

When I asked if I could take a photograph, he just nodded his head slightly. There was no rapport with me and I didn’t know if he was extremely shy or very sad.

Mindful that he had already been posing for some time, I hurriedly took four  or five shots.

My capture technique was designed to focus carefully on my subject’s wonderful eyes and throw the background out of focus as much as possible.

On the Phase One 645 DF medium format camera, I used an 80mm Schneider lens set at f2.8. Larger format cameras have shallower depth-of-field than DSLRs, so an 80mm f2.8 lens is very similar to a 50mm f1.4 lens for a DSLR camera.

And a 50mm f1.4 lens is probably the least expensive accessory lens you can buy for a DSLR, yet it is absolutely wonderful for portraiture.

Light levels were low, so I rated the P65+ back at ISO 800, allowing me to hand hold the camera and keep the shutter speeds fast enough to avoid camera shake and subject blur.

Of all the photos I took in Turkey, this portrait haunted me and was one of the first I worked on upon my return home. I think it shows that when it comes to great portraits, all the camera techniques and post-production tricks in the world don’t help unless you capture a great expression.

The photo was taken in Phase One’s Sensor Plus mode, so the 60-megapixel sensor delivers the equivalent of a 15-megapixel file in return for a faster ISO setting. And as you can see, there is absolutely no problem with the file !

In processing the image, I have darkened down the background and lightened up the gentleman’s face. This is one of the aspects of photography I really love, being able to re-light a scene after the event. For a professional shoot, you’d light it, but when you’re on the road shooting from the hip, sometimes the light isn’t perfect.

But the subject is.

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Photography Travelogues: In The Shadow of Mount Ararat

June 21, 2012 by 4 Comments

Peter Eastway

Mount Ararat in Turkey is steeped in history and tradition. Just prior to this photo being taken, we were on a mountain opposite Ararat viewing what many believe are the remains of Noah’s Ark. If not Noah’s, it’s certainly in the shape of a huge ‘boat like’ structure, but how it came to be resting several thousand feet above the valley floor, no one could tell me!

These are Kurdish women and we assumed this was their village. The main road is behind us and we had stopped to admire the view of Mount Ararat. The air was so clear that even distant objects seemed very close.

However, just below the road, our guide Mehmet spotted these women having a chat. He walked down and started talking to them. They seemed to be friendly enough, enjoying a laugh, so I wandered down too. I sat off to the side, not able to understand a word that was said. Mehmet later explained that he didn’t understand much of their dialect either, and perhaps that was why they were all laughing so much.

Mehmet spent probably 10 minutes talking to the women before he asked if he could take a photograph (our guide is also a keen photographer).

More laughter followed and the matriarch acquiesced, but the point to take away is the process Mehmet went through.

Rather than just stumbling on these people and pulling out a camera straight away, Mehmet spent time talking to them. This is far less confrontational. Imagine if you were sitting in your front yard and some Kurdish tourists walked by and started photographing you? You mightn’t be so worried if you were in a public place like a market or a showground, but in your own home, you’d probably be a little concerned about who these people were.

By spending time talking to people, you can allay their fears. Once they knew we were a bunch of photographers from Australia, just having a holiday in Turkey, suddenly we’re no longer a threat. They know something about us.

This doesn’t necessarily mean they want us to take their photograph, of course. The woman in the background didn’t want the camera pointed at her, although she changed her mind when Mehmet offered them a small monetary thank you.

Note, we didn’t offer to pay them up front. All the photos were taken first and it was only when he was leaving that Mehmet offered the matriarch some money. He did this because he knew how tough life could be in this part of the world and he just wanted to show his appreciation.

I don’t have anything against paying to take a photograph. It’s true that it can change the nature of the relationship between the photographer and the subject, but for photographs like these, it’s not really that important. I’m not working as a documentary photographer or a photojournalist; rather I want to take an environmental portrait that shows how these women live.

However, there may be times when the subjects are used to being photographed (many people in cities and at popular tourist destinations are quite savvy) and ask for a small contribution. Personally, I think this is a fair exchange.

Peter EastwayThe original exposure as processed in Capture One.

Everything about this scene is as we found it, the only difference is that instead of the women focusing on themselves, they are looking up at Mehmet and another photographer who is standing camera-left out of frame.  Yet by having the matriarch conversing with Mehmet, and the other women reacting, the image begins to tell a story.

As there were 10 of us taking photographs (Mehmet was quite amazing in organising this), we only had time for a few frames each. However, shooting with a wide-angle lens, I was able to position myself to the side and allow the matriarch to focus on the others while I quietly clicked away.

A wide-angle lens is often considered taboo for portraiture. The reason is because a wide-angle lens stretches subjects towards the edge of the frame, making them look fatter and heavier than they really are. However, if you don’t place your subjects on the edges of the frame, then the stretching doesn’t happen (well, it doesn’t happen to them).

In defence of the wide-angle for environmental portraiture, the expansive angle-of-view provides context for the subjects, and when you’re in an exotic location like Eastern Turkey, it’s definitely sensible to make the most of the landscape.

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Photography Travelogues: The golden hour at Monte Fitz Roy

April 26, 2012 by 3 Comments

Fitz Roy Sunrise

Most landscape photographers have heard of the ‘alpenglow’, ‘alpine  glow’ or the ‘golden hour’.  It’s generally meant to describe sunlight before sunrise or after sunset, the light coming from below the horizon and being reflected off airborne snow, water or ice particles in the atmosphere. Photographers like it because the light bounced back to earth is strongly coloured and looks great in photographs.

While you can get an alpenglow anywhere, it seems to have its strongest manifestation in alpine regions. Indeed, when I think of Patagonia, I recall images of towering peaks photographed in dramatic lighting with rich reds and oranges. Or perhaps it was just my diet of National Geographic magazines that gave me this impression.

I camped out in the foothills of Monte Fitz Roy in Patagonia for a few nights, hoping to see the mountains lit by the alpenglow in the early morning. I would have preferred the evening alpenglow because then I could sleep in, but sunset wasn’t going to be much use because the mountains would be backlit.

Luck didn’t seem to be on our side when I went to bed that night. It was overcast and drizzling, so unless something dramatic happened, we were in for a drab and grey morning.

The alarm woke me at an ungodly hour. I was travelling with Darren Leal and a group of photographers, and Darren had in mind a location called Duck Lake from which we could photograph Monte Fitz Roy. As I stepped out of my tent, I looked towards the sky, hoping to see stars, but there were none. In fact, the cloud seemed thicker and heavier, if anything.

Even though our viewpoint was only a kilometre or so away, you never know what the weather is going to do and dawn was still an hour away. We grabbed our cameras and tripods and headed along the trail.

From time to time I’d look skyward, hoping against hope for a miracle, but there were no stars to be seen and, after a while, I lost interest. Maybe the following morning would be better. I concentrated on the path ahead which was becoming rougher and more difficult, my torch-light leading the way.

About ten minutes later, I saw a strange light on the ground in the distance. It was a most unusual shape and it took me a little while to work out what it was: the lake. Even better, the light was the clear blue sky being reflected off its glassy surface.

The weather had changed overnight, clearing completely and so the cloud I had seen in camp was a band of rising mist or low cloud. As the light grew stronger, the mountain range began to glow above and in the lake. We had clear weather, all we needed now was the alpenglow to come.

We did get a little alpenglow that morning, but it wasn’t like the photos I had seen in National Geographic all those years ago. Interestingly, we got some great colour at sunrise, but the pre-dawn remained silvery.

Despite this, I love the soft light at this time of the day and, with a little help from Capture One, I was able to bring the colour out.

The original file (above) shows how the camera recorded the scene. I was using a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, rated at ISO 800, using a 100mm Macro lens. There are lots of lovely details in the rock faces and the rising cloud bank seems perfectly positioned – I couldn’t have asked for a better morning.

What I noticed was that there is already a good deal of red and orange in the mountain rock faces, so by increasing the colour saturation in the file, I’m able to create my own alpenglow. However, using the saturation slider alone was not the solution as you can see below.

When using the saturation slider alone, not only are the reds and yellows enhanced, so are the blues of the sky. The effect looks a little unnatural. What I want to do is increase the colour saturation in the reds and yellows without touching the blues.

This is where Capture One Pro can help. Using the Advanced Colour Editor tool, I used the Pick Color Correction tool to select the colours on the mountain face. I then increased the Smoothness to include similar colours, and then increased the Saturation slider to bring the mountain side to life.

Sometimes I will select two or three similar colours and increase the saturation of all three, but to a lesser extent individually. This produces a similar strength, but it is spread over a wider range of colours and looks a little more natural.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com/. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at http://www.betterphotography.com/.

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Photography Travelogues: Black & White at Rio Fitz Roy, Argentina

April 19, 2012 by 9 Comments

One of the best aspects of landscape photography is the opportunity to visit some amazing places and to experience nature on your own. And it’s funny that even in the most majestic and photogenic locations, what takes our eye are the little details tucked in a corner. This is a classic case of all the elements coming together in an unexpected way.

Now, admittedly I might love this photograph more than you do. After all, it comes attached with lots of emotional baggage when I look at it, whereas other people may simply see an oddly shaped rock sitting on the edge of a stream.

The Patagonian trek above El Chaltern in Argentina reveals some incredible vistas, but you’re reliant on the weather cooperating. On this particular day, the cloud was thick and low, the temperature cold. We had woken at dawn and crunched our way along a frosty dirt track, heading towards the edge of a glacial lake at the foot of Cerro Torre. We could see the near edge of the lake, but not the far shore, nor the towering peaks behind. It was a white out.

However, just being in this location was reward enough and if there weren’t big vistas, perhaps there were more localised opportunities. I started exploring the river where it left the glacial lake and began its descent to the valley floor below.

I stopped to take a few images, using a neutral density filter and a long exposure to blur the water as it flowed along. Each exposure was around two minutes, so while I was waiting for the exposure to finish, I would keep my circulation going by hopping around and clapping my hands together for warmth. And then it started to snow.

Now, for someone who lives in the snow, this was probably not a remarkable or even interesting occurrence, but for an Australian who rarely sees snow (unless travelling, of course), it was a memorable experience. Huge flakes, twice the size of a 1 Euro coin, floated gently down and at one point, it was difficult to see the rock I was photographing because the flurry was so heavy.

As the visibility reduced, I became very aware of the sounds around me – or the lack of sound. Apart from the river itself, there was nothing else. Just me.

The snow flurry lasted less than a minute, but the experience has remained for many years and every time I look at this photograph, I enjoy reliving it.

Whether your photos are visual masterpieces or happy snaps doesn’t really matter.

There were two photographs from this session which I loved, and this one I chose to turn into a black and white. As you can see from the original exposure (below), the file is relatively flat as you would expect under a low, overcast sky.

I find when creating black and whites that I get the best results when I start with a good quality colour file. Turning this original capture into black and white without also developing the tonal range would not create a satisfying result.

In fact, compare the colour photo below with the black and white image at the beginning of the article – both have the same series of local adjustments used to enhance the trees, the stream and the rock, and to darken the background and foreground.

I think both versions work quite well, but which one do you prefer? The colour or the black and white? Or, has talk of the snow flurry put you off the photograph completely?

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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Photography Travelogues: At the outskirts of Monte Fitz Roy, Argentina

March 15, 2012 by 6 Comments

Alpine Stream under Monte Fitz Roy

Above El Chaltern and well before Monte Fitz Roy, deep in Patagonia, there’s a wonderful national park with some very photogenic walking  tracks. Even better, you can hire some of the young mountaineers in the area who will carry your gear from camp to camp, just for a bit of training (and a small amount of cash).

We’d spent a couple of nights at a camp above El Chaltern, waiting and watching the weather as it crossed the ranges in the distance, and now we were walking ten kilometres across to the base of Cerro Torre and a second camp. This stream was at one of our rest stops, but a rest from walking inevitably saw us wandering around with our cameras, looking for things to photograph.

I loved this oddly shaped rock, seemingly a towering mountain on a micro scale, surrounded by a flooding stream. Well, perhaps my imagination was getting away with me, but I thought it looked interesting enough to pull out my camera.

There are two techniques used for capturing this image.

The first is the use of a tilt-shift lens, a Canon TS-E 24mm on an EOS 1Ds Mark II. Canon has since upgraded both. Generally speaking, a tilt-shift lens is used to reduce distortion. When photographing buildings, rather than pointing your lens up to include the top of the building (and creating unwanted converging vertical lines), you shift the lens upwards while keeping the camera back parallel to the building. The result is a technically correct perspective.

However, if you shift the lens and tilt the camera the opposite way, you can distort the edges of the image, effectively stretching the scene. This works well with the distant mountains, stretching them so they look a little higher than they actually appeared through a wide-angle lens.

The photo below shows the straight photo without the lens shift. Note the height of the mountains in the background.

Compare this with the following image that includes a lens shift, and a re-framing of the image as well. The two compositions are very similar, but not identical, but the main difference is that the mountains loom larger and appear more impressive. I like this!

The second technique is the use of a neutral density filter. The ND filter allowed me to lengthen my shutter speed. This exposure is 60 seconds at f8 (it’s a 10x ND filter), during which time the water is recorded as a silvery smear and the clouds have also been beautifully blurred.

Compare the result with the same angle taken at a more conventional 1/250 second (see the previous photo). The clouds are more distinct and the water has much sharper reflections. In comparison, I like the ND filter effect because it takes the photographs one step away from reality.

In the days of film, we had to deal with reciprocity failure and colour shifts because the different layers in the film had different responses to light. I think some digital sensors are similarly affected with colour shifts at very long exposures and this shows up as a colour cast. This is the original exposure from the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II before editing in Capture One.

The magenta colour cast can be quite enchanting, but not for every photograph you take. Fortunately, it’s an easy matter to correct the colour balance – simply use the White Balance Picker in Capture One and the image’s natural colours immediately appear.

To process this image, I also had to make some strong adjustments to the Brightness and Saturation. I also added in three Local Adjustments, lightening up the middle ground and adding a little sharpening to the rock.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com/. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at http://www.betterphotography.com/.

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Photography Travelogues – Papua New Guinea 3/3

January 12, 2012 by 2 Comments

Dragon Dancer, Watam Village, Papua New Guinea

There are two dozen men inside this elaborate costume, the head is a heavy and ornate dragon’s head. It shuffles and groans with a procession of minders on either side. They dance and sing as the dragon makes its bumpy way down a long grassy colonnade. When you look at the head closely, it is an incredibly detailed and sophisticated piece of work made of grasses, shells and feathers.

And it must be incredibly hot inside.

We arrived on the shore by zodiacs to a rapturous welcome – the whole village had turned up for our visit, including many honorary policemen in uniforms. However, these were just nominated members of the several clans who had made their way to Watam for the performance.

A policewoman was assigned to carry my camera backpack and another to carry my Elinchrom Ranger Quadra on the end of a boom arm. A few quick instructions and I was able to dart in and out as the dragon walked forward with my lighting assistant.

Not that I was darting too quickly. The temperature was well over 40 degrees Celsius, and the tropical humidity was enough to make your head spin. I can remember thinking this was one of the most intense shoots I had experienced, but the excitement of the dance was contagious and I quickly forgot about the heat.

There were two thoughts behind my approach. With the strong sunshine, shadows were going to be a problem, so using a flash through a softbox provided fill-in illumination. I wanted to see the wonderful detail and using flash certainly allows that.

The second thought was to get a sense of the dance associated with the costumes. Using an extreme wide-angle lens and shooting from down low, I tried to show what it was like to be among the dancers as they performed. And the way the wide-angle distorts the dancers on the edges of the frame I hope adds to the sense of movement.

As there were a lot of other people watching the performance, it was a matter of running in and taking a single shot, then backing out quickly. This worked fine as it allowed plenty of time for the flash to recycle, but as with many action subjects, there is a lot of hit and miss.

I find Capture One very useful for quickly editing my files. Using the star system, I view each image in the shoot and give photos that I think have some merit three stars. Then I sort the shoot by ‘Rating’, so all my three stars are now at the top. I then run through these images and promote the best ones to four stars, and maybe demote some of the three stars that aren’t quite so good now that I have edited the whole shoot.

One of my personal favourites is this photo with one of the young boys standing right in front of the camera, proudly wearing a European soccer jersey. It seems no matter how remote you think you are, there is always a connection to ‘civilisation’ if you look closely enough!

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine publisher based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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Photography Travelogues – Papua New Guinea 2/3

December 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

Tami Islands, Papua New Guinea

There aren’t many places in the world as remote as the Tami Islands. On a map, they aren’t that difficult to find and anyone with a ship or a yacht can get there, but in terms of interaction with the outside world, few people are lucky enough to visit a tropical island paradise like this. No hotels, no shops, no transport. Perfect!

There are just four small islands arranged around a central bay. I visited the Tami Islands with Orion Expeditions, a luxury ship that is based in Australia and travels the world. What’s great about Orion for a photographer is the access it gives you to remote locations. The ship and a number of small communities along the Papua New Guinean coast have a relationship where the locals dance for the ship’s passengers, and the passengers purchase carvings and artefacts that generate the income the locals need to send their children to school. It seems to work very well.

After watching a series of wonderful dance performances, we were free to wander around the small island and I headed down towards the beach. I love the ‘old’ canoes which still appear to be made the way they have been for hundreds of years (although I am sure the green paint on one of them is a more modern addition).

However, children being children, who also haven’t changed for hundreds of years, are incredibly curious and as soon as I pulled my camera out, I had both an audience and attentive subjects. In fact, it was hard to take a photograph with just one subject in the frame and if it did happen, I had to work quickly.

What I love about this portrait is the ‘old man’s pose’ adopted by the young boy. Using a walking stick he doesn’t need, he simply sat down as you see him.

An 80mm lens with the aperture wide open at f2.8 is like using a 50mm lens at f1.4 on a full-frame DSLR camera. It throws the background out of focus so that the lines of the canoes on the beach don’t compete too strongly with the subject. I also like the line of the overhanging tree in the background as this is one of the features I really like about the Tami Islands.

Photographically, this is quite a contrasty lighting situation. One of the disadvantages of expedition cruising is you are rarely on shore for first light or even last light, so you use what you can. To deal with the strong sunlight, in Capture One I set the Curve under Base Characteristics to Film Extra Shadow. This provides a softer starting point for my adjustments, which essentially means I have detail in the shadow areas which I can retain or remove later on as required.

The original doesn’t have perfect light, but my subject is top lit from behind and the potential is there if I can lighten the subject relative to his background. For the background layer, I darkened the exposure to ensure the sky was correctly exposed, then I added in three local adjustments. The first lightened up all of the foreground up to the horizon line, the second lightened up the boy’s face, and a final local adjustment darkened the sand back down a little.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine publisher based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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Photography Travelogues – Papua New Guinea 1/3

December 19, 2011 by 6 Comments

Young Tufi Warrior, Papua New Guinea

While we might smile at a youngster in warrior garb, a few minutes earlier his spear-wielding father appeared a lot more serious as he marched intently towards us, screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs! And as much as I’d like to tell you how we travelled for eight days along an inhospitable Papua New Guinean coast, in sweltering heat and dripping humidity, and then paddled the last two kilometres up a narrow, twisting creek under a dark jungle canopy in a local dugout, I wouldn’t be telling you the full story.

And perhaps I shouldn’t.

This image was made on a second trip to a private location where the Tufi clan hunts and harvests. In the dugout I carried my camera equipment in a backpack, a tripod in my left hand and a small Elinchrom Ranger Quadra lighting kit in the right. In front of and behind me, two of the Tufi clan were paddling quietly and purposely, the low wooden craft cutting through the shallow waters at a surprising speed.

I had asked permission to take the young Tufi warrior’s portrait on the previous trip and had already sketched out where I wanted to shoot. There was around 15 minutes to set up the lights, reassure my subject and take the photograph. Fortunately, for many of the local men and women watching me, attaching a soft box to a long support pole made me just as much a novelty to them as they were to me.

My choice of camera was perhaps unusual for a portrait: a 23mm Rodenstock Digaron on an Alpa TC with a Phase One P65+ behind. However, to me it made sense as the location was just as important as the subject, and if I left the subject in the middle of the frame, there would be very little distortion to worry about.

The exposure was 1/125 second at f8, ISO 50. I took a number of shots, many allowing the young warrior to rush at me and hurl his spear, but this is the photo I had in mind. The other exposures simply allowed me to interact with my subject so I could get what I wanted.

The straight exposure has detail in the background and the controlled light of the softbox can be clearly seen on the subject. However, the intention was always to have a very dark, moody background. Some of the fine detail may be lost on the internet, but it is certainly there in the print.

To achieve this using Capture One, I darkened down the base exposure. While this isn’t a good starting point for an exposure, when working on a raw file in Capture One it works very well and it allowed me to set exactly the amount of detail required for the background.

The next step was to lighten up the young boy. As with a lot of ‘dodging and burning-in’, you don’t have to be pixel accurate with what you’re adjusting. The masks that I paint using the Local Adjustment brush use a soft edge (usually with a hardness setting of zero) and are approximate. You also need to add in a little ‘spill’ effect to make it look natural. For instance, if the young warrior really were being illuminated by a break in the jungle canopy above, the rays of light would also lighten up the water surrounding him. For this reason, my mask (shown in red on the screen grab) spills onto the water as well.

Further layers were added to increase the exposure on the warrior’s head, to add more detail into the rocks below the water, to desaturate the background and finally to tone down highlights on the warrior’s chest, so this area didn’t compete with his head.

Oh, and the real story? I was travelling on a luxury expedition ship, Orion, and so at the end of each day, I could return to my air-conditioned stateroom and enjoy a drink at the bar each night. And while the warriors were simply re-enacting how they used to live, it did take me eight days to get there.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine publisher based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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Photography Travelogues – The Great Barrier Reef 2/2

November 9, 2011 by 8 Comments

Whitehaven, Whitsunday Island, Great Barrier Reef

They say Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island has the whitest sand in the world, although on my last trip some of the broad silica beach had been washed away by a tropical storm. Still, it looked pretty good to me and the northern end of the beach which ends at Hill Inlet appeared as it always does, an amazing pattern of water channels cut into the hard sands below.

Walking along Whitehaven Beach at the opening to Hill Inlet is a wonderful experience. The shallow waters are home to small rays which you’ll see scurrying across the sandy bottom as they feed, but despite the wonderful warm water and sheltered location, you don’t really get a sense of how beautiful Hill Inlet is without a higher vantage point.

There is a lookout on the headland behind the Inlet which offers the classical tourist viewpoint (shown here). A popular technique is to take a series of images and stitch them together for an impressive panorama. You can see the different colours of blue and aquamarine in the water, indicating different depths. At low tide, the lighter areas become exposed sand bars.

However, it’s not until you take to the air that you get to see how magnificent Hill Inlet really is. Helicopters can be hired from nearby Hamilton Island, but there are some height restrictions for flying as Whitsunday Island is a National Park. However, this simply means using a slightly longer focal length for tighter angles.

An obvious trick for getting good photographs from the air is to ask the pilot to take the door off so you’re not shooting through glass or Perspex. Next, you need to be sure your shutter speeds are high to avoid camera shake as helicopters are great sources of vibration. Some experts suggest a shutter speed of at least 1/500 second, but this depends on a number of factors and I generally prefer shutter speeds shorter than 1/1000 second. On this particular shoot, there was a strong wind blowing which came straight through the cabin, so even at 1/2000 second I found hints of camera shake in my files. Of course, this could also be because I was shooting with the new IQ180 and 80-megapixels will quickly reveal any shortcomings in technique!

I used the new Schneider Kreuznach 55mm leaf shutter lens. Although it has an f2.8 maximum aperture, my lens performs best between f5.6 and f8. And although the IQ180 has a native sensitivity of ISO 35, I would need a faster setting than this to keep my shutter speeds up. Some compromises were required! I settled on an aperture of f4 and ISO 200 which gave me shutter speeds between 1/800 and 1/3200 seconds, depending on what I was shooting.

While the overview is a crowd pleaser, my favourite shots of Hill Inlet are of the sand patterns just below the water surface. I will ask the pilot to fly up and down the inlet a couple of times, pointing my lens directly down. Every year the sand has moved, creating wonderful new shapes and lines.

The original file was taken when the sun was behind cloud. Sometimes this is better than full sunshine as it can reduce the reflections off the water, although depending on the time of day and the position of the sun, a polarising filter can be useful for this as well. However, a polarising filter reduces the light reaching the sensor and you lose a shutter speed or so.

Even starting with a flat file, there are lots of potential. The screen grab above shows Capture One open with the original file in the preview window. There isn’t a lot of colour, nor a lot of contrast, but the basic pattern and composition is pleasing to my eye.

Down the side of the Capture One screen, the thumbnails show several variations (using Capture One’s variants), and all of them have used increased contrast to bring out the sand patterns more strongly.

One of the tools I like to use for low contrast subject is the Levels tool under the Exposure tab. By grabbing the black and white point sliders and dragging them into the edge of the histogram, the image comes alive. Then it’s just a matter of fine tuning the exposure with the grey or gamma slider in the middle.

For the final edit, I refined my white balance, increased the colour saturation and used a local adjustment to lighten the top of the image.

If you’re interested in the photography workshops I present on Hamilton Island, or you just want an excuse to visit Australia’s tropical north, please visit www.hamiltonisland.com.au for more details, or visit my site at www.betterphotography.com. It’s a great excuse for a week on Hamilton Island!

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Photography Travelogues – The Great Barrier Reef 1/2

November 2, 2011 by 8 Comments

They say that daylight has a colour temperature of around 5500 K, but out to sea under a blue sky, this isn’t always the case. It’s funny how our habits as photographers change – or should I say, how my habits have changed. When shooting film, I’d usually have an ultraviolet (UV) filter on my lens ‘to take the blue out’.

While invisible to the human eye, ultraviolet radiation generally records as blue on colour film and as haze on all films. It has a similar effect on digital sensors as well, but of course, many of us don’t believe in using filters anymore.

There is an argument that states, why would you want to degrade the quality of your lenses by placing another piece of glass (or, heaven forbid, plastic) in front. If the lens designers thought a filter was a good idea, surely they would have included it as part of the design. This argument fails in several places, of course, but even so, given digital photography allows us to adjust our image files so easily, many ‘essential’ filters are no longer used. And in any event, the majority of UV filters were sold for ‘protection’ of the front lens element, and you could clean them with a dirty sock if you had to because, if scratched, they were not as expensive to replace as the front lens element.

Not that I ever cleaned my lenses with a dirty sock. Ever.

Here’s the original exposure with the white balance in Capture One Pro 6 set to ‘Shot’ mode. In other words, this is the white balance setting suggested as a starting point by my camera. Of course, capturing raw files means I can change the white balance to any setting I like when converting the file. According to Capture One Pro 6, the Kelvin is 7943 K and the Tint is set to 3.0.

Note, there are no adjustments made to this file at all – it is effectively straight out of the camera. However, you can see quite clearly that it is ‘daylight’ over Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, so what happens if I set the white balance in Capture One Pro 6 to ‘daylight’ (or if I had set the white balance to daylight on my camera)?

At a 5500 K daylight setting, the photo is considerably bluer. And this isn’t what I remember seeing, either. The human eye when coupled to the brain is an incredible imaging device, not only adjusting the ‘exposure’ but also filtering out colours. I remember very clearly how strong and vibrant the colours over the shallow reef were compared to the darker blues of the deep water outside. This colour contrast is lost due to the overpowering blue colour cast.

I’ve taken a dozen helicopter rides over the Great Barrier Reef and every time it is different. In August, I was on Hamilton Island, giving a workshop with David Oliver and Bruce Pottinger. We do this every year and one of the highlights is the helicopter ride over Whitsunday Island and then out to the reef.

On this day, there was a strong southerly wind and the air was very hazy, which means that the images are lacking in contrast. The greater the distance, the more haze you look through and we’re at around 1500 feet (from memory). So, while I didn’t have an ultraviolet filter with me, I could use Capture One Pro 6 to tweak the colour temperature (just a little warmer) and increase the contrast. I also added an adjustment layer to darken down the sky at the top.

If you’re interested in the photography workshops we present on Hamilton Island, or you just want an excuse to visit Australia’s tropical north, please visit http://hamiltonisland.com.au for more details, or visit my site at http://betterphotography.com. It’s a great excuse for a week on Hamilton Island

Filed under Photography Best Practice, Photography Travelogues Tagged with , , , , ,

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