Desert Oak, Curtin Springs Station

March 1, 2013 by 1 Comment

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It’s off on an adventure, down an unmarked dirt road through the Kings Creek Station and into Curtin Springs Station. It’s hundreds of square kilometres of remote outback Australia and only a handful of people have access to the track, so we see no one else for the next day until we reach the Lasseter Highway several hundred kilometres south.

Our vehicle is purpose designed for this sort of travel, yet even so we find ourselves bogged at the top of a particularly soft sand dune. No trouble! We bundle off the vehicle, grab the metal boards from the trailer and dig them under the wheels. It doesn’t take us too long to sort it out, but we do unload a few suitcases to make the vehicle lighter. Was that a good idea? Possibly not as we found ourselves carrying our suitcases along the sandy track to the rescued vehicle – it certainly made a comical picture.

Photo2_CR_sharpenedFuture sand dunes were approached at higher speed and we only had one more situation to deal with. It certainly made it exciting for a bunch of people used to life in the city, although I dare say our driver Dave was a little unhappy with himself getting bogged the second time!

It’s amazing how much the landscape changes and we soon found ourselves in some beautiful parklands. We sheltered in the shade of desert oaks and set up camp well before sunset, giving us time to prepare our meals and take photographs as the light improved. We all went our separate ways, investigating the surroundings and struggling a little with the complex landscape.

However, once the sun was gone and the stars were out, we discovered a fantasy land right next to our campsite. The red embers from the fire were throwing a warm light on the surrounding trees, contrasting beautifully with the Milky Way above. We tried different exposures from 10 seconds to a couple of minutes, hoping there was not too much breeze moving the delicate leaves.

Screenshot1_630x420_sharpenedPost-Production

Between the shoot and preparing this blog post, Capture One Pro 7 has been released and it was an interesting insight to see just how much better the new version is. Look at the comparison pics below.

Comparison_CR_sharpenedI have done my best to ensure the settings in Capture One for both versions were identical so we have a fair comparison. However, there is some folly in this argument because maybe Capture One 6 (on the left) needs different settings to look its best. Even so, to my eye there was a clear improvement the moment I pressed the ‘Upgrade’ button to change to the new processing engine.

The noise reduction has been handled automatically – I haven’t knowingly tweaked the settings. I mean, this is a pretty tough image to process. Taken on an EOS 60D, I think even Canon would agree that ISO 3200 is towards the limits of the camera’s capability (technically, it can be pushed to ISO 12,800). Give your subject lots of light and the camera will perform miracles, but here the foreground and the tree are either in darkness or lit by the dying embers in a fire some 50 metres away.

Can you see noise and grain? Yep! Do I like it? Yep – I think the image has a really great painterly feeling to it. Is it technically perfect? Who cares! In terms of communicating the amazing stars you see in Australia’s Red Centre, and the enjoyment of camping out in a swag, I think the resulting image does an admirable job. So I’m happy!

Step1_CR_sharpenedThere was a colour difference between the top of the tree and the bottom of the tree (see photo above), so I added in a Local Adjustment and adjusted the colour of the top of the tree to match the bottom. Not exactly sure why there was a colour difference in the first place (possibly tall grasses filtering the light from the fire), but it was easy to fix.

Step2_CR_sharpenedNext, I added a second Local Adjustment to lighten the foreground, putting in some detail that doesn’t deserve to be there. It was a 76 second exposure, so the grasses have moved in the evening breeze, but as a descriptive image, I am happy with this.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. If you would like to accompany Peter and Tony Hewitt on a seven day Central Australia ‘Adventures in Oz’ workshop in August 2013, click here for more information.

And if you’d like to see a short movie explaining in more detail how Peter processed this file in Capture One, click here.

To see more of Peter’s photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. It contains articles and videos, outlining his camera and post-production techniques. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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Masking In Rainbow Valley, Central Australia

February 21, 2013 by 3 Comments

Final

Admittedly it is hot. We’ve just stepped off a plane in Alice Springs, out of a safe, air conditioned environment and into the midday heat of Central Australia. The hot air hits you like a wall and, considering it is winter back home, we enjoy the difference just long enough before stepping back into an air conditioned vehicle.

The vehicle is not a bus, nor is it a truck, but a four-wheel drive hybrid with a trailer, designed to carry passengers along rough and remote outback tracks. You don’t want to get stuck in the Outback without being prepared and our vehicle has food and water supplies to last us a week, plus a satellite phone to ensure we have contact with the outside world. Later in the trip, we would be leaving the marked roads and following a pencil sketch on a torn piece of paper through some of Australia’s most inaccessible terrain.

Tonight, however, would be relatively civilized. We were heading to Rainbow Valley just 75 kilometres south of Alice Springs. Rainbow Valley is a part of the James Range, but the ranges in the relatively flat Red Centre are more like hills than mountains. The main feature to photograph is a salt pan sitting in front of a multi-coloured bluff. Some of the most interesting photos have the bluff reflected in water, but today the salt pan is bone dry with a few tumbleweeds scattered along its edges. There hasn’t been significant rain here for many months.

Sunrise is interesting, but you’ll probably find that the bluff is in shadow, whereas at sunset we have the escarpment in full light. And our shadows in the foreground, so we skirt around the edge of the salt pan, looking for some existing shadows to hide in, so our presence isn’t obvious. The other option is to wait for the sun to set and then shoot in the twilight. Central Australia is simply magnificent to shoot at this time of the day and by now, the temperature is very comfortable.

Tonight we will sleep under the stars in a swag. A swag is a large canvas bag with a comfortable mattress, sheets and blankets inside. You can be sure it won’t be raining! You simply pull it off the top of the truck, unroll it and climb inside. It’s like a big sleeping bag and there really is nothing better than lying on your back and looking up at the stars, the camp fire crackling in the background as you drop off to sleep…

However, sleep takes a little longer as we can hear the howls of dingoes in the distance. Our guide is unperturbed, so we take our lead from him and cover up our heads with the flap on the end of the swag. Later that night I wake to the sound of scratching near the fire. The embers are now just a glow and I can see the silhouetted legs of a couple of dingoes, scavenging for an easy meal.

Good thing they don’t eat humans. Often.

Post-Production

Photo1

My image of Rainbow Valley (above) was taken with an Alpa TC, a 23mm Rodenstock Digaron lens and a Phase One IQ180 digital back. I positioned the camera very low and very close to the tumbleweed and took several frames at different focus points, so I can focus stack an image if necessary. However, I quite like the softness on the bluff in the background.

Photo2

After applying some global adjustments to the colour, saturation and cropping, there were two main challenges to deal with and the first was easily solved. The bright sky needed to be balanced with the darker foreground, so I used a Local Adjustment in Capture One Pro 7 with the new Gradient Mask. This allowed me to darken the top of the frame and gradually reduce the effect towards the horizon line (see above).

The second challenge was to allow the tumbleweed to stand out from the cracking mud below. Although the wood in the tumbleweed is partially bleached, it is nevertheless coated with dust and sand, much the same colour as the mud behind. It is well camouflaged.

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I would like to avoid creating a very fine mask for the tumbleweed itself, so I begin by increasing the colour in the foreground mud (above). I add a Local Adjustment layer and open the Advanced Color Editor. Using the Pick Color Correction eyedropper tool, I click on the mud to select the colour range and then I use the Saturation slider to increase the colour. It helps, but still the tumbleweed blends into the background.

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I then added a four more Local Adjustments, lightening and darkening the areas surrounding the tumbleweed, but with no real success. It seemed that the only option was to create a fine and complicated mask for the tumbleweed’s branches.

Screen02

This is what I had tried to avoid because creating precise masks can be time consuming, especially if your subject has lots of edges. Like a tumbleweed! I have cheated a little because this version of the image is only going to be 2000 pixels in size, so slight errors in my masking technique won’t be too obvious I hope! However, if you’re wanting to keep your workflow within Capture One, the masking tools are here. In addition to size and hardness, Capture One Pro 7 also has an opacity slider to adjust, so there is very little lacking in the application’s masking capabilities.

With the mask completed, the tumbleweed is lightened to ensure it stands out from the mud. I then went back and refined the other settings to produce the result seen at the beginning of this post.

Cheers,

Peter

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. If you would like to accompany Peter and Tony Hewitt on a seven day Central Australia ‘Adventures in Oz’ workshop in August 2013, click here for more information.

And if you’d like to see a short movie explaining in more detail how Peter processed this file in Capture One,
click here.

To see more of Peter’s photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. It contains articles and videos, outlining his camera and post-production techniques. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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High-contrast scenes at Ormiston Gorge, Central Australia

February 14, 2013 by 22 Comments

Hero_630_CROrmiston Gorge isn’t as big as the Grand Canyon, nor as deep or as wide, but it does have a spiritual presence. The age of the rocks, the ruggedness of the terrain, the light spinifex grasses and the white trunked gum trees create an enchanting landscape. Around two hours west of Alice Springs, it’s not far from Glen Helen Gorge where we were staying for the night and we planned to be there for the morning shoot.

We awoke at a reasonable time, 5.00 a.m. which was an hour or so before sunrise. A short trip in our vehicle and we found ourselves at the mouth of the Gorge. From the car park, you can take a level stroll around a dry river bed and into the gorge itself. There are several deep pools locked by towering rock walls, but to walk further requires a more agile state of mind and some rock hopping. We went this way on a PODAS a couple of years ago with Kevin Raber, Ken Duncan and Jeff Schewe.

Tree_630_CR The other option is to climb up a path. There’s a great gum tree up the top of the rise and it can be photographed from a point half way up, or up at the tree itself. I went all the way to the top and spent a magical hour watching the light intensify, the sun rise and the light snake its way from the top of the gum tree down to the bottom of its trunk.

Just being up and out at this time of the day is wonderful enough, taking a few great landscape shots even better!

Across from the tree, a finger of land pushes into the Gorge, requiring it to dog-leg around. As the sun rises, its rays skim across the top of this land, lighting up the trees and grasses, but I’m also seeing the strong reds come through in the rock faces below and behind. To my eye, it’s a strong composition, but it requires a telephoto to make it happen. Although many people think landscape photography is best approached with a wide-angle or a panorama camera, I find a lot of my shots work better by simplifying the scene with a telephoto.

The accompanying image is photographed with a 110mm Schneider Kreuznach, so it’s only a mid-telephoto, but long enough to crop the scene and eliminate the sky behind. By removing the sky, the image has the feeling that the rock face behind goes upwards forever, plus it reduces the number of compositional elements to deal with.

And while I might be teaching most readers to suck eggs, when shooting into the light, it’s important to not only use a lens hood, but perhaps shade the lens hood with a cutter or your hand as well. It’s essential to keep any unwanted flare under control.

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Post Production

In Capture One, the processing was relatively simple, especially with the new High Dynamic Range algorithms running around inside.

However, to start I struggled with the colour balance a little. The natural or ‘correct’ colour was a little yellow to my eye and I wanted there to be more contrast between the colour in the sunlight and the colour in the shade. The camera had set the Kelvin at around daylight, which was very sensible, but I found by dragging the Kelvin slider down to 4600-4700 that I was able to produce a little coolness in the shadows, and this contrasted well with the warmth of the sunlight on the yellow grasses.

Screenshot1_630The exposure was pretty right, so next step was to increase the contrast and give the image some guts. This worked well, except in two places. The highlights on the grasses lost detail and appeared too light, while the shadow areas in the bottom left became a little muddy. No trouble, the High Dynamic Range tool is the answer.

Using the Shadow slider, I lightened up the shadows without going overboard. I still want this to be a dark part of the image, but I want you to be able to see what’s in it. Similarly, the Highlight slider allowed me to return detail and colour in the grasses up the top.

I find when using the High Dynamic Range tool that I have to return to the Contrast slider in the Exposure tool and, usually, add in a little more contrast. Not always, of course, but if you’ve been using the High Dynamic Range tool and struggling a bit, try using it in combination with the Contrast slider and between the three controls, Capture One Pro 7 is remarkably powerful.

Photo2_630_CRSitting back and looking at the image, I then increased the colour saturation (I like colour), cropped the top of the sky out of the image completely, added in a vignette to darken the edges and, finally, added a Local Adjustment to darken down the rock wall in the distance. This helps to emphasise the separation between it and the finger of land in sunlight.

Cheers,

Peter

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. If you would like to accompany Peter and Tony Hewitt on a seven day Central Australia ‘Adventures in Oz’ workshop in August 2013, click here for more information.

And if you’d like to see a short movie explaining in more detail how Peter processed this file in Capture One, click here.

To see more of Peter’s photography, visit www.petereastway.com. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. It contains articles and videos, outlining his camera and post-production techniques. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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The shot I almost didn’t take, Elgol, Scotland

October 4, 2012 by 6 Comments

Persistence pays.

Travelling with fellow photographer David Oliver, he wanted to find a stretch of stony beach at Elgol because the surrounding cliffs looked pretty interesting. I was working on a calendar project, so I was also keen, but I wasn’t convinced the weather would be dramatic enough for what I had in mind.

As it turns out, the shot I had in mind wasn’t the photo that I loved. Even more remarkable, I almost didn’t take it!

Elgol is on the Isle of Skye and, being mid-winter, there were very few people around – just the locals and some road workers. As we came into tiny Elgol, the road down to the beach and harbour was blocked by a couple of large trucks effecting maintenance works. There was no way to get around the truck and the workers didn’t seem to be moving anytime soon.

We did what all experienced photographers do and retired to a local café a few hundred metres up the hill. I can remember the wonderful pumpkin soup and the steaming scones and jam, polished off with a cup of tea. It was hard to move back out into the Scottish cold and the weather looked like it was closing in. We wondered if we would even bother going down to the beach.

But something inside us said we should, just in case. After all, we’d come all this way, the food was good, so who knows what we might find!

The photo we had in mind was good, but the breakwater creating a tiny harbour looked more interesting. Walking out to the end of it, I had a great view looking back onto the beach with its small school (it’s not visible in my image). What a great place to be educated!

The breakwater also revealed some grassy fields above the cliffs and movement in the distant clouds was creating some interesting light. This seemed to be the better photograph!

To get the milky water, I used a 4.0 Neutral Density with the 28mm Phase One lens, allowing a 30 second exposure. The 28mm has a very large front element, so it’s not easy to put a filter in front. Instead, there’s a small holder in the back of the lens which takes gelatine filters. Now, gelatine filters are okay, but the 4.0 ND has a slight colour cast to it as you can see in the original file.

I took the file into Capture One and with a couple of clicks using the White Balance picker tool, I had the colour looking pretty natural. I also cropped the image down and lightened it a little.

From here I used the Local Adjustment layers – I love this aspect of Capture One. The first step was to darken down the sky because it is a little bright in the original. Our eyes tend to go to the light parts of the image first, but I didn’t want them to go straight to the sky. Solution: darken it down a tad.

Next I added another Local Adjustment and this time used the Advanced Color Editor to add some blue into the sea. Never mind the sky is still grey, I wanted a blue sea. I know this doesn’t look completely real and I am happy with that.

To take the eye towards the cliffs, I used another Local Adjustment and, again using the Advanced Color Editor, tweaked the grasses. I gave them additional color saturation and contrast. Now the photo looks a little closer to the holiday brochures we had seen!

And for the final image (shown at the beginning of the blog), I added a fourth Local Adjustment, and with a quite large brush dragged it through the middle of the image and lightened this area. It gives the image a little more life by lightening up the middle – where I want the eye to travel.

So, for someone who had eaten too much for lunch, it turned out to be a productive afternoon. No, the photo didn’t run in the calendar, but it was one provided to the client for their short list. No accounting for taste, of course!

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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Highlights and shadows at Loch Harport

August 30, 2012 by 2 Comments

I am not sure if I have the correct workflow, but it seems to work well for me. My approach is to expose for the highlights and let Capture One bring out the shadows.

Now, up front I have to emphasise that there is a problem with this technique, and that problem lies in the shadow areas. If I am underexposing my image to ensure the sky doesn’t clip (isn’t overexposed), then darker areas in the image might be receiving very little exposure. This isn’t necessarily a problem if I want to leave these areas dark in the final rendition, but if I want to lighten them, then the really dark areas may lack the quality I desire if I lighten them too much.

However, when using a medium format digital back with a wide dynamic range, I find that I can comfortably lighten up the shadows without too many problems, most of the time.

This would not necessarily be the case with a DSLR camera which has a narrower dynamic range. If using a DSLR, I would be better off bracketing my exposures and using a better exposure to lighten up the dark areas. I also bracket with my medium format back as well, as insurance, but I find I don’t need the lighter file very often.

This photograph of a dingy in Loch Harport on the Isle of Skye is a case in point. The original exposure is very dark in the foreground, but the sky is just about right. The camera wanted to give the image a little more exposure, but I used the exposure override to keep the histogram under control. I am always looking at my histogram for this type of work.

Using a Local Adjustment, I brushed in the foreground and lightened it. At this size and looking at a low resolution file, it shouldn’t look too bad. There’s lots of detail to be found and, as I still want to keep some blacks in this area, I’m comfortable with the result. However, as noted above, I could possibly improve the quality of this area by using another exposure which better accommodated the shadow areas, and stripping it in. But that’s a lot of work unless I plan to turn the image into an exhibition print. For book reproduction (where this image was used), the current workflow approach is more than adequate.

The late afternoon light was relatively colourless, so I added in a second Local Adjustment and helped the dingy out with a little more colour. I generally don’t change the colours that are already there, finding that an increase in colour saturation is often enough, but for the dingy I preferred the result when I also warmed up the hue. Bringing out the yellows and reds helps.

Warm colours come forward, cool colours recede, so I added in a third Local Adjustment and made the water and clouds a little blue. This adds to the mood a little and removes a little bit of the murkiness, plus creates more of a separation between the dingy and its background.

And the final step, as shown in the opening photo, was to add one more Local Adjustment and lighten up the dingy itself, giving it a subtle ‘spot light’.

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. It contains articles and videos, outlining his camera and post-production techniques. Details can be found at http://www.betterphotography.com.

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Murky weather at the Isle of Skye

August 16, 2012 by 12 Comments

I love murky weather!

In many ways, it is so much more photographic than the beautiful blue sky with strong overhead sunshine. I much prefer the mood and atmosphere of low cloud or a storm, but a drab grey sky with light drizzle is certainly challenging.

This is exactly the weather I was presented with one morning on the Isle of Skye. Travelling with friend and photographer David Oliver, we had established our base at Saucy Mary’s Lodge which, despite its name, was very comfortable and the food simply excellent. In fact, the lodgings were so good we didn’t mind getting up late and returning early.

Not that we had much choice since it was mid-winter and the days were very short. We weren’t exactly sure where we wanted to go, but David had found this road on Google Maps and felt it showed promise, in spite of the weather.

When we passed these reeds and I asked David if we could stop to take a few frames, he was less than enthusiastic. I guess I can understand why because looking at the raw file, the image is very flat and quite colourless. However, a lack of colour isn’t necessarily a problem if you’re processing your files in Capture One.

In Capture One Pro, the Advanced Color Editor allows you to pick colours and adjust their hue, saturation and lightness. And combined with Local Adjustments, you have a lot of control over how your image looks. Let’s take a look at how Capture One transformed this scene and, before you write your objections about the strong colour, I agree this particular rendition is a little over cooked.

Using the Color Editor’s ‘Pick Basic Color Correction’ tool (you’ll find it in the Color Tool Tab, under Color Editor and its Advanced tab), I selected the pale yellow of the reeds. This selected a range of yellows. I used the Smoothness slider to widen the selection of colours, then tweaked the saturation to make the colour much stronger. I repeated this on another section of the reeds with a slightly different yellow hue, and increased this as well. Often I find you need to make two or more adjustments to get the effect you want. Notice also that by increasing the yellow in the reeds, the greens have also improved.

I then used the same Pick Basic Color Correction tool to select the blue of the water and ramped up the saturation again and suddenly my drab overcast day doesn’t look so drab anymore.

Note, these adjustments could be made without using Local Adjustments because it is a simple composition with discrete areas of colour. If there were some yellow rocks in the hills behind, they would also increase in colour saturation when I adjusted the reeds. This is because the Color Editor adjusts all the areas in an image containing the selected color, so if you only want to adjust a particular area, you may need to combine this tool with a Local Adjustment.

Local adjustments were then used to darken down the hills in the background. Using the Local Adjustments tool tab, I clicked on the ‘+’ icon to add an adjustment layer, then used the Draw Local Adjustment brush to select the hills. The image was then darkened using the Exposure slider.

I darkened the hills in two steps, allowing me to darken the higher hills a little more than the hillside lower down. Once again, several small steps work better than one single adjustment.

A third Local Adjustment was added and this time the trees were lightened and given a touch more contrast, brightening the middle of the composition and drawing the eye in. However, I noticed that the area of reeds just below the trees was a little light and lacking in colour.

A fourth and final Local Adjustment layer was added and I carefully used a small Draw Local Adjustment brush to select the reeds just below the trees. This area was then darkened and the contrast increased so it better matched the reeds in the foreground. The result is the opening photo at the beginning of this blog.

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. It contains articles and videos, outlining his camera and post-production techniques. Details can be found at www.betterphotography.com.

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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 – Finding the right balance

June 28, 2012 by 5 Comments

Young Street Merchants in Hosap, Eastern Turkey

Our bus stopped at the top of the hill at the entrance to the Hosap castle, so it didn’t take the residents in the town below too long to work out that potential customers were about! However, to sell to us, we also had a price: they had to pose for a photograph!

Does the colour look approximately correct in the photograph above?

We can see it is late in the day with yellow sunlight kissing the tops of the background hills, leaving the shadows cooler and almost blue. It’s an emotive response to colour, but is it accurate? And should it be accurate?

Often, the colours we use in our photographs are technically incorrect (depending on the colour model we’re using as a reference), but they still look pretty good!

For instance, your camera uses its white balance system to set a ‘correct’ colour balance, but since the camera doesn’t know what the light is like, it can only adjust the white balance to a theoretical ‘zero’ or ‘correct’ position.

Speaking non-technically, white balance is the term used for getting the colour cast correct at the point of capture, or when processing the raw file. It uses a temperature (yellow/blue) and tint (magenta/green) colour model to make colour adjustments. Colour balance is when we change the colour cast, usually during editing the file. The colour balance dialog uses the three red/cyan, green/magenta and blue/yellow channels. Both approaches to controlling the colour cast in a photograph can achieve similar results and  are sometimes referred to interchangeably.

This is the image with the white balance suggested by the camera. The camera has seen the warmth in the light and neutralised it, but perhaps cooling the colour a little bit too much.

If you’re not  happy with the colour balance, you can use the white balance tool in Capture One to change it. Using the white balance picker, click on objects that are white or neutral in colour, or that  should be or could be neutral.

In this image, I have clicked the white balance picker on the girl’s white handkerchief, but I think it has too many optical brighteners in it because the result is much too blue.

In this third example, I have clicked on the grey roadway on the right of the image. Whether the road should be neutral grey or not isn’t really the point, because the rest of the image looks just right. I find using the white balance picker on various areas in the image while processing in Capture One is a useful way for determining the best colour balance, even if the white balance setting isn’t ‘accurate’ or ‘correct’!

You also have to be aware of how your viewers feel about certain colours. For instance, technically speaking, snow at high altitudes in the shadows is blue, but if it looks too blue in a photograph, it can look unnatural to many people. For this reason, snow photos can benefit from a slightly warmer colour balance, even though this may be technically incorrect.

So, if a technically correct colour balance isn’t necessarily the best, why do our cameras try to set it?

Whether we end up using a technically correct colour balance in our final edit is one matter; starting our photographic editing with a technically correct colour balance within our image file is another.

Many photographers find it very useful to start with a correctly colour balanced file. It helps ground their creative process and it also gives them a place to return if colours go awry.

So, unless you are sure about the colour balance you want in the final image, good camera practice dictates that we aim to produce image files which can produce a neutral or natural white balance. This is one of the reasons shooting raw files is so important because you can always reset the white balance within a raw file, something that can be much more difficult (if not impossible) to do with a JPEG file.

In the hero image at the top of the page, I have used two white balance settings. The girls in the foreground have a warm white balance setting, while the background has a cooler, bluer setting. Providing this subtle colour contrast also helps bring the subjects forward, emphasising them against the cooler background.

I hope you like it!

Filed under Capture One Tips & Tricks, Photography Travelogues Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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.

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

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/.

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

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