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.

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

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/.

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

Photography Travelogues: Imperial Shag

March 8, 2012 by 2 Comments


Bleaker Island, Falklands

It was a bleak morning on Bleaker Island in the Falklands. However, if you like photographing birds, then the Falklands is a great location no matter what the weather is like, although transport from island to island isn’t without its challenges. Although there are small airfields dotted around, most people visit as part of an expedition ship and I was no exception, travelling with Peregrine Adventures.

Where we landed on Bleaker Island was home to two colonies of birds, Rockhopper Penguins and the Imperial Shag. The weather was cold, overcast and very windy. We even had a couple of snow showers pass over which was great for atmosphere, but not particularly helpful for photography.


As usual, there were strict rules as to how close we could get to the birds and our group was strung out along a fence line. It was hard to know what the island was like in fairer weather, but I have no doubt it would be very picturesque!

At the end of the fence was a colony of shags who used a stretch of land just in front of us as a runway. The birds would gather speed and throw themselves into the wind and out to sea. It was a perfect location for shooting the Imperial Shag on the wing, but I confess to shooting several hundred frames of which only a couple were satisfactory.

And then, of course, there was the unsatisfactory nature of the light. It was dull and lifeless, so I figured this was a time I could use Capture One to breathe in some colour and excitement!

The first adjustments made in Capture One were to crop the image so the bird was positioned in the centre of  the frame, rather than on the left side. I’d actually prefer there to be a little more room on the left than I have – and that could be easily arranged later in Photoshop. I also adjusted the exposure and contrast to produce as much detail in the shag as possible, being mindful that its white and dark feathers had to be carefully managed.

In this way, the Imperial Shag is natural and honest. This is what I saw. Now, I may get into trouble with the purists for the next few steps!


My first Local Adjustment layer darkens down the sky, with a soft edge brush just above the bird.


I then repeated this with a second Local Adjustment layer, but I positioned the adjustment brush a little higher. I find two or more small adjustments usually produce a better result than one larger adjustment.


Then I added my third Local Adjustment layer and lightened the eye and surrounding feathers. From other photographs I have seen of the Imperial Shag, I think these colours are reasonably realistic – I haven’t added in any colour saturation, just increased the contrast and exposure appropriately.


The fourth Local Adjustment Layer darkens down the top and right hand edges a little more to contain the eye – some people will like this vignetting, others will not. I like it! And at this stage, I stopped, because I figured I couldn’t get into too much trouble for the adjustments I had made. However, the image still lacks a little punch…


So I couldn’t help myself! The final Local Adjustment layer reduces the background exposure and increases the colour saturation, which brings up the colour in the blurred grasses in the background and further darkens the sky. I have masked the shag so that its colours and exposure are not affected and I’m quite happy with the result!

If you’d like to see in more detail how I worked on this file, you can access a short video on the Better Photography website by clicking here.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine publisher 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 Travelogues Tagged with , , , , ,

Photography Travelogues: Black-Browed Albatross

February 16, 2012 by 5 Comments

West Point Island, Falklands

I’m not an expert wildlife photographer, but I love photographing wildlife! And they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I know enough to know I’m just a beginner when it comes to fauna and flora.

As with so many genres of photography, to be a true expert requires thousands of hours in the field and, for wildlife, a good understanding and knowledge of your subject is a great help. I know next to nothing about birds, least of all the majestic Black-Browed Albatross. Its huge wing span is deceptive and it isn’t until you’re up close to these birds that you realise just how large and impressive they really are.

The cliffs of West Point Island, Falkland Islands

As part of my Antarctica circuit with Peregrine Expeditions, we left Ushuaia in Argentina and sailed north east to the Falkland Islands. The Falklands is an amazing group of hundreds of tiny islets, many only a kilometre or so wide. Some are almost completely flat, others have towering cliffs, many are inhabited. One wonders what people do to survive as the nearest town (Stanley, the capital of the Falklands) can be easily a day away by boat!

And the weather is so changeable that you simply can’t predict it. During our few hours on West Point Island, we experienced rain, hail, snow and brilliant sunshine. It was wonderful!

Looking across the bay to the tiny farm on West Point Island

West Point Island has a generous harbour around which the four or so farm dwellings stand, but it is on the other side of the island where the Black-Browed Albatross has its colony. It’s possible to get remarkably close to the birds’ nests, but there are strict rules against approaching too closely.

One thing that’s certain on these expeditions is that you can never get intentionally lost. This is because most of the passengers are wearing bright red suits to keep out the elements. I guess the birds have become used to the strange crimson characters that walk carefully around the outskirts of their colony!

I found a spot on the edge of a cliff looking over the colony and the sea below. Every now and then an albatross would glide effortlessly past and so I set myself the task of tracking the birds with my camera and lens. I used a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III with a 300mm f2.8 telephoto. The combination feels a little heavy towards the end of the day, but the results are spectacularly good.

What I enjoyed the most sitting on the cliff edge was the opportunity from time to time to look down on the albatross. So rarely am I above birds that I found myself intentionally waiting for one of the huge albatross to soar below. It’s not the perfect shot, but I like the way the broken water and cliff edges are slightly blurred. The only element within the frame that is tack sharp is the albatross – the 300mm f2.8 is very good wide-open and the 1/2500 second shutter speed (helped with the lens’s Image Stabilization) ensured there was no motion blur either.

The Film Strip mode in Capture One makes sorting your files very expedient.

Of course, not every photograph I took was a winner. In fact, my success ratio was particularly poor, which is why I like the Filmstrip Viewer in Capture One – it lets me slide through my photos and I press ‘3’ every time I think I have a good one. Once rated, I can have a closer look later on!

To show how I worked on this file in Capture One, I’ve made a little video which you can access here on the Better Photography website.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine publisher 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.

Another angle of the amazing black-browed albatross

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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 , , , , ,

Newer posts →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 766 other followers

%d bloggers like this: