Archive for December, 2008
Happy New Year to all the readers of my blog! Thanks for dropping by to see my work and to read about my progress over the past year. I hope you will continue to visit throughout 2009 and maybe provide comments to help me improve my photography.
On this last day of 2008, I will leave you with a “postcard” from my October trip to the Oregon coast. It is an amazing place, one that is rich in images for newbies and professionals alike. I have already planned my return trip there in the Fall with one of the best photographers I know, Bryan Peterson. This photo is of the numbers on a boat that was dry docked in Astoria close to the Cannery Pier Hotel where we stayed. Although it might seem like this was taken in or converted to black and white, the image has actually not been altered at all (other than my message to everyone which was added in Photoshop). The boat was white and the numbers were black and it was taken very early in the morning just before sunrise. I just love it when I get it correct in-camera so here’s to many more images like this one!
autumn in black and white
Part of today was spent cleaning up my computer and memory cards and backing up my files in preparation for the new year. I came across this photo taken in October in Ottawa. It is one of those classic “room with a view” images snapped from my hotel room. Although there is no trace of the lovely golden leaves evident of the season, I think the lines and tones make it a much more powerful image when rendered in black and white.
BEFORE
AFTER
Vancouver had a record snowfall over the past week making it rather difficult to go anywhere. However the weather conditions presented an opportunity to stay indoors and catch up on the Camera RAW self-study I was supposed to do in late November/early December. The self-study group was arranged by one of my classmates in the last PPSOP course and in preparation for our next course on HDR. It follows the Kelby Training DVD on Camera RAW Workflow Essentials by Matt Kloskowski which is a great DVD and one I highly recommend.
For readers who find this stuff technical, here’s a short explanation. You probably own a digital point and shoot camera that takes photographs in JPEG format which is a compressed format. Information is lost as it goes through the process of recording and saving the image on your memory card. Some digital point and shoot cameras and all DSLR’s can save images in Camera RAW format which is basically a digital negative. This format does not lose any information as it is saved. In addition each time you open a JPEG file, you will lose information and ultimately the quality of the image is affected. This is not the case with Camera RAW files. You can open up and manipulate the file and the quality remains unchanged.
Above is a photo of the Astoria-Megler Bridge which spans the mouth of the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. It was taken last October when we visited the Oregon Coast. Compositionally it isn’t great but it is a good image to demonstrate the power of Camera RAW. The first image is the original Camera RAW image and as you can see, it is dark and the horizon is crooked. The second image is the edited Camera RAW image which is cropped and straightened. Also I adjusted the white balance, hue and saturation and in doing so I was able to reveal the details that were hidden in the dark areas of the original image. While the results are quite amazing, I do think about the debate between photographers who believe you should get it right in-camera rather than spending your time fixing your errors in post-processing. On the other hand as long as the weather remains frightful and we’ve no place to go, we have an excuse to play around in Photoshop.
BEFORE
AFTER
AFTER
(several days of snow and some more PS CS4)
A couple of weeks ago I upgraded from Photoshop Elements to Photoshop CS4 and now I’m waiting for Scott Kelby’s lastest book to arrive before diving full force into learning PS CS4. In the meantime, I’ve been playing around with some of the features in Camera RAW and with all the snow we’ve had, there is a great opportunity to tinker with the White Balance. For those of you who are not familiar with WB, it is basically the colour temperature of your photographs. If you are using the Auto setting on your camera, it will attempt to correct the WB for you. Most digital point and shoot cameras also have the ability for you to set a custom WB where you calibrate the colour white for your camera and then it knows how to render the colour temperature in the pictures you are taking.
If you are fortunate enough to have a digital point and shoot that allows you to shoot in both RAW and JPEG format, select the RAW format and you can forget about doing a custom WB and make the adjustments in post-processing. The two photos above illustrate this process. I purposely took the first photograph with a Cloudy WB setting and as you can see, white is rendered more as grey in the photo. This is not unusual for snow pictures as the light meter in your camera sees the world not in black and white, but in neutral grey. I am sure that you will agree that the first image is not how I actually saw this chair in the snow and that the second image more accurately represents reality.
This second image is the exact same picture taken at the same time but just the RAW file format with adjustments and then saved as a JPEG. PS CS4 allows you to open up the RAW file and change the temperature, tint, brightness, contrast, etc. It is a definite improvement on the original. Wouldn’t you agree?
P.S. I added another photo on Dec. 24 to show how much snow we’ve had but you also will notice how the image has a dreamlike feeling to it…that’s Photoshop for you!
