Out and About December

There is (or probably more accurately, was) a trope in exploration films of the last century that the natives would refuse to let themselves be photographed for fear of losing their essence, that the camera would magically capture their soul or 'essence' and leave them somehow diminished. As enlightened people we pooh-pooh such superstitious nonsense, especially the more scientifically minded of us (I have a PhD in biochemistry). But more recently I've come back to this question, from a slightly different perspective. Not that I'm advocating that capturing light reflected from a subject on a sensor in any way takes something away from the scene, but the idea of capturing the essence of something.

At The Castle Gate I || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250 

It all boils down to the age-old question; what makes a good photo? Obviously there are n+1 answers to that question, where n = the number of photographers asked, and a lot will depend on the genre of photography in question. What makes a good portrait photo isn't the same as what makes a good product, macro, wildlife, abstract, street, sport or landscape photo. I'm not even sure that there's a single over-arching principle that captures what constitutes a good photo for a single one of these genres, but I think that the concept of capturing the essence of the subject comes close. 

The Setting Sun: Composite || Olympus 100 mm f/5.6, 1/320 s, ISO 200

The shot above is a three-shot composite. I hesitate to use the term HDR as it was more a case of exposure blending - manually combining the correct levels of exposure from the three otherwise identical photos instead of a computer (or camera) -generated HDR. Hand-held. The essence of the scene is the setting sun in the context of the ice-covered branches and wintery sky.

A portrait that tells you something about the subject's passions by capturing the person in their environment, a sports photo that conveys the tension of the game, a landscape photo that transports the viewer to the environment and scene in question will always be more compelling than a plain documentary shot. But how do you get such an image?

A Man and His Dog; Rule of Thirds || Olympus 100 mm f/7.1, 1/30 s, ISO 1600

This is where the standard rules of photography composition play a supporting role, but no more - which is all they should ever do (IMHO). The rule of thirds (above, horizontally and vertically), the use of leading lines to direct the viewer's gaze, focus point and depth of field, centred reflections are only ever aids to arriving at decent photos and never a guarantee. It's easy to take a photo that obeys all the rules, but taking a photo that captures the essence of the scene requires something more than following a list of step by step instructions. This is what separates the good from the great.

The Village Oak Tree || Olympus 31 mm f/5.6, 1/60 s, ISO 250

A great question that can help really capture a photo that tells a story is to ask yourself which aspect of the scene really caught your attention. Once that question has been answered, the next one is more technical; how can I take a photo of the scene that accentuates that aspect. Which focal length do I need to use to emphasise the aspect in question? What light do I need to light the scene? Exposure? Depth of field? Sometimes the response to all of these questions is instinctive and you just know as soon as you look at the scene what you need to do, but this instinct requires training. 

The American photographer Joshua Cripps sums up this process with the following analogy: "a good landscape photograph is like a caricature: it simplifies and exaggerates". I think that's a great concept to hold in mind as we as ourselves these questions. In the photo above I've done this partly in post-processing, emphasising the brightness of the snow on the branches. Trees with a low amount of snow on them like this are infinitely more interesting than without, or even with tons of snow on them. What would otherwise have essentially been a high contrast image without the snow - more or less black and light blue, gains an extra dimension.

Winter Evening Personified || Olympus 41 mm f/7.1, 1/80 s, ISO 1250

When looking through my photos from December so far, this was an concept that I had in mind. Which of these photos capture the essence of early winter, that transport the viewer to the scene at the time? Which of them leave the viewer feeling the cold on the end of their nose and tips of the ears? Or hearing the crunch of snow under their feet as they walk the local fields?

At The Castle Gate II || Olympus 23 mm f/7.1, 1/50 s, ISO 1600

My daughter gave me the idea for the shot above as she crouched close to the ground to catch the reflection of the gate in the frozen water. Never be too proud to steal a good idea, or to get your trousers grubby/wet for the cause!

Winter's Morning || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250

Equally, it's always good to be able to go at the drop of the hat. This wintery sunrise shot was shot pretty much from the front doorstep

Landsberg Christmas Tree || Olympus 11 mm f/3.5, 1/13 s, ISO 250

I love shooting in the blue hour - the hour or so after (or before) the sun goes down. Whether in towns such as our local Landsberg (above) or out in nature catching the first stars whilst there's still enough light to illuminate the mountains. Any earlier for this scene and the Christmas lights would have been overwhelmed by the daylight, much later and there wouldn't have been enough light to see the buildings properly.

Between the Villages || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250

Another venerable tree, a solitary beech in the fields between us and the next village. Again, the snow on the branches make an otherwise relatively dull subject a lot more interesting. The ploughed field and resulting lines help to add interest and geometry to the shot. In retrospect I should have got a little closer to the tree to get more separation from the tree behind it, but it's not disastrous.

Across the Fields || Olympus 61 mm f/6.3, 1/100 s, ISO 250

I really like winter skies, especially towards the ends of the day. There's often a lot of pink in the clouds even when sunset isn't imminent. This photo was taken just an hour after midday looking south.

A Glimpse of Sun || Olympus 31 mm f/20, 1/15 s, ISO 200

This is a good example of a caricature image. The things that caught my eye were the sunlight twinkling through the tree tops and the snow lying on the downward sloping branches. I deliberately stopped the aperture down to f/20 to achieve the little sunbursts. Combining low aperture with fragments of sun - whether it's just breaking over the horizon, peaking from behind a mountain or behind trees like here lets you get these classical star shapes. Some lenses will give more, others, such as the Olympus Zuiko 12-100 mm here, less, but they still give that classic sunburst. This is another manual exposure blend, one for the sky and one for the forest. The pile of dead wood in the foreground emphasises the snowy branches by repeating the pattern of lines.

Into the Woods || Olympus 18 mm f/8, 1/60 s, ISO 800

Classic leading lines here heading into some local woodland. Exposure bracketed / HDR in order not to overwhelm the shadows and highlights in the final image. The curve of the track really strengthens the image, as do the snowy branches left and right and the upright trunks of the firs at the back. The fact that there's some light at the centre illuminating the trees also helps; the eyes are always naturally attracted to the light. 

Unearthly Glow HDR || Olympus 15 mm f/8, 1/10 s, ISO 320

I really like this last shot. Walking back towards the house through my favourite local woods the low afternoon sun and slight mist caught my eye through the trees. Taking care to hide the direct sun behind a tree I shot an exposure bracket (again, +/- 2 EV), combined as an HDR image in ON1 Photo Raw. The snow on the ground and the high branches (you had to look back didn't you?) really set it off.

So, that's my December photography so far. How's yours going? What weather have you got? Are you able to get out still?

Between Times

November and April are strange months in central Europe near the foot of the Alps. In April there's not enough snow in the mountains to go skiing any more but too much to go hiking. In November, autumn's over; the trees have lost their colour and winter hasn't yet arrived. I used to dread this time of year. In my fourties I went through several years of seasonal affective disorder - winter depression. For a couple of years it was so bad that I was prescribed medication in order to be able to function, until I worked out that the side effects were at least as bad as - if not worse than - the symptoms. Towards the end of last week I began to feel the old claws began to sink into my shoulders and I knew I needed to get out, get some sunlight and exercise. Sharon was kind enough to set our Saturday plans aside and join me as I headed down to Oberstaufen and the Buchenegger Waterfalls. 

(Tip: If you click on a photo, you get taken to the gallery view where you can see a larger version and can flip between the images without having to read the boring bits 😉).

Hoarfost on the Hündlekopf || Olympus 44 mm, f/7.1, 1/400 s, ISO 200 

The mild weather had given way to a frosty weekend - it was so cold that by the end of the day there was still frost on the fields where the sun hadn't shone - and there was snow on the ground from about 1,000 m up combined with hoarfrost in the trees. We parked at Steiblis and made our way through the woods down to the waterfalls. The frost had only made its way into the edge of the woods - the further we pressed on the less of it there was to see, and even then it was predominantly on the wild raspberry leaves. 

Frosty Raspberries  || Olympus 66 mm, f/4, 1/400 s, ISO 1600 

Isolated Farmstead  || Olympus 21 mm, f/8, 1/80 s, ISO 200 

When I visited the waterfall back in early September, I struggled with the intense light of a late summer day as well as an over-abundance of foliage getting in the way. I knew at the time that I'd be back in late autumn or on a more overcast day to see whether I could do anything else with the pool. But even in better light there wasn't a whole lot I could do with this relatively straightforward scene. 

Buchenegger Waterfall || Olympus 17 mm, f/20, 10 s (live ND), ISO 200 

The Funnel || Olympus 100 mm, f/20, 3.2 s, ISO 200 

The best view of both sections of the falls is to be had half way up to Buchenegg on the eastern side of the river, but even this disappointed. The leaves had gone from the trees but there were too many saplings in the way for a decent shot. Next time I'll just have to bring my lopping shears with me 😉.

Upper and Lower Falls || Olympus 66 mm, f/8, 1/20 s, ISO 200 

What I did get though was this juicy shot of the sun shining through the moss on the side of a tree. I hadn't noticed in the field (alright, in the forest) that the background was so cool. This one breaks all the composition rules, but it works really nicely (IMHO), partly because of the palette of colours.

Mossy Tree || Olympus 44 mm, f/8, 1/60 s, ISO 200 

Tree stumps are wonderful things to photograph. I've really discovered them this year and they rarely let me down. They're microcosms of the forest, whether they have bracken growing out of them or moss like here. If you're lucky, you'll get a root system as well thrown in for free. My bonus here was the raspberry plant. 

Stumped for a Composition? || Olympus 86 mm, f/8, 1/80 s (HDR), ISO 200 

Having climbed out of the valley our route took us past a number of lovely old farmsteads, many of which would have normally been selling buttermilk or a cool beer to supplement their income. Today they were all boarded up for the winter, but still looked pretty in the sun, especially when accompanied by larches like this. Larches are the only fir trees to cast their needles in the winter. Before they do this, though, the needles turn a magnificent golden colour. In the right light they can be real eye-catchers.

Bifurcation || Olympus 23 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 s (HDR), ISO 200 

Frozen Puddle || Olympus 41 mm, f/5.6, 1/125 s, ISO 200 

Last Colours || Olympus 100 mm, f/5.6, 1/50 s, ISO 200 

Frost Border || Olympus 44 mm, f/8, 1/80 s, ISO 200 

On days like this there are plenty of details to catch. Some photographers tend to plan every shot down to the last degree, plotting where the sun's going to set and when, slavishly studying tide tables and weather systems. I tend to be a bit more spontaneous with my shots, with the exception of Milky Way photography, where you need a strong foreground and a new moon. For the rest of it, a little research can't hurt, but more often than not it's the chance encounters that delight.

Crystals || Olympus 75 mm, f/5.6, 1/80 s, ISO 200 

Forest || Olympus 86 mm, f/5.6, 1/100 s, ISO 200 

Transitions || Olympus 31 mm, f/5.6, 1/200 s, ISO 200 

Walking back along the other side of the Mittelbach towards the Weißach river we were given occasional glimpses of a ridge a little ways above us that had managed to stay mostly in the shade of the main ridge. One tree in particular caught our interest, a well-shaped deciduous tree on a bare ridge surrounded by firs. My longest lens was the one I had on my camera - my trusty 12-100 mm, but Sharon, bless her, had brought the 100-300 mm Lumix that I'd given her when I bought my 100-400 mm (following so far?). Once she'd finished with it, I begged a borrow (no, I hadn't packed the bazooka, it weighs almost 1,200 g and I hadn't thought I'd need it). I hadn't noticed the farm on the left until I processed the image, and yes, I did take the liberty of enhancing the colour of the roof. It's art!

Standing Out || Olympus 120 mm, f/5.6, 1/500 s (HDR), ISO 200 

As we descended back towards Steiblis where we'd left the car, there were a couple of larch trees catching the late afternoon light and glowing golden in a very tantalising manner. There was too much foreground though, and by the time we got to a place where we had a clear line of sight the light had dipped too far behind the ridge leaving them unappealingly dull. You win some, you lose some. Walking along the road though Sharon pointed out that the moon had just risen above the Hochgrat (yes, THE Hochgrat of the sunset fame). And whaddaya know, there were some larches lurking in the foreground, rounding off the day very nicely.

Half Moon over Hochgrat || Olympus 100 mm, f/5.6, 1/400 s, ISO 200 

When I go out on a walk like this, I don't usually reckon on getting a single three star image, let alone three of them. Let me explain. I take so many photos these days that if I didn't have a rating system to help me organise them I'd drown. When I import my photos into ON1 Photo Raw, I scan through them and sort out the discards - shots that are out of focus, the 'butt-dial shots' where I've pressed the release putting the camera back on its bracket (yeah, I do it too!). At the same time I give a single star to the images that I at least want to look into editing. Once I've sifted through all the shots from a shoot like this, I move onto editing. If I'm happy enough with an image that I think I'll want to share it to social media (Facebook, Instagram or here on the blog), I'll give the image two stars. Once I've edited the whole set I batch-process the pictures, exporting the two-star images to jpegs. If I really like an image, I'll give it three stars. These are the ones I feel confident about submitting to PicFair for selling or submitting to magazines, photos that I'd be happy to print and hang. Occasionally I might even print one. Once or twice a year, I'll give an image four stars. I've yet to take a five-star shot.

So, can you spot the three-star images here? It's a completely subjective system of course, everyone has their own preferences. Which are your favourites?

HDR Edit in ON1 Photo Raw 2021

I thought it was time to do another edit run-through, in case anyone's interested in that sort of thing. I do 99% of my post-processing using an all-in-one editor called ON1 Photo Raw 2021, it's a great programme that covers a lot of the functionality of Lightroom and Photoshop in one package.

Blue Hour over the Allgäu last Saturday

Talking to friends, I have the impression that for a lot of photographers, post-processing is a book with seven seals and something that they'd rather not bother with. To be fair, a lot of cameras produce excellent quality jpegs, but what a lot of people don't realise is that a jpeg isn't an unprocessed image: It's an image that has been processed by your camera (or RAW editing software) using automated algorithms. 

So the question is - who do you want to edit your digital negative? your camera or other automated processing software, or yourself? If you're happy with the edit your camera/software has made, then there's not a lot of need for further editing. If, on the other hand, the jpeg out of camera doesn't meet your expectations, or more importantly (for me at least), if the final photo doesn't convey the emotion that you experienced in the field, the only solution is to get to grips with digital processing. That's deep isn't it? And that's the principle underlying most of my editing; I want to convey to the observer the emotion that I experienced when I took the photo. 

HDR Assembly

This photo is a high dynamic range (HDR) image. It has been assembled from three separate exposures taken one after the other; one exposed as normal, one for the dark parts of the scene and one for the bright parts of the scene. The camera has a much lower capacity for distinguishing between the brightest and darkest parts of an image for the human eye. Conservatively, my eye is 30x more sensitive to extremes of light and dark than my camera sensor is. To compensate for this, it's necessary to take multiple images and compact them together in order to arrive at a compelling image.

Base Exposure; 12 mm, f/8, 0.6 s, ISO 200

Dark: ibid with 1/13 s

Light: ibid with 5 s

Normally I would set the camera to expose two stops over and two under for 1/4 and 4x the brightness (one stop= one doubling or halving of the exposure). Here I elected to use a three stop bracket due to the extreme conditions. The three base images are nothing special, as you'll see here. The basic image is exposed for the sky, the darker image has more colour in the brighter sections of the sky and the lighter one for the valley foreground.

To create the HDR base image, you'll need to select the three images in ON1 Photo Raw Browse and then click the HDR button on the right. You'll now be confronted with a number of choices; Deghosting, Default Look and a bunch of sliders and options. 

Deghosting is all about how the programme processes compositional differences between the images, which will play a role if the shot was hand-held or if there are moving elements in the scene. Here neither is the case; the photo was shot from a tripod and there's nothing in the image that was moving sufficiently to cause problems over this distance and time-scale. The orange square reflects which image you've selected as the base image.

Selecting the base exposure and HDR algorithm

The next choice to make the Default Look. This dictates how ON1 processes your images into the final HDR picture. There are four options here; Natural and Surreal, both with and without Auto processing. Just for fun, I've tried all four options here below. The difference between Auto and native is that ON1 chooses how to set the basic level sliders for you. 

Natural	Natural Auto
Surreal	Surreal Auto

Because I want the image to reflect the darker mood of blue-hour, the dusk hour after sunset when there's still ambient light to see by, I've set the base image for the exposure using the iris icon in the left-hand image in the HDR window.

Effects and Local Edits

Once ON1 has generated a base image that you're happy with, it's off to the Develop module to do the actual editing. This is where the magic happens and where you can turn a good image into something special. Of course you've still got the option of just hitting AI Auto at this stage for ON1 to perform an automatic edit. If you really want to make the image sing, however, a little more finesse is involved.

Normally if I was editing an image, I would have applied one of a personal custom preset, applying a bunch of Effects and Local Edits to the image. Actually in my custom preset, most of these aren't actually applied, instead they're pre-loaded but not yet selected. This is a huge time- (and wrist-)saver, because it means that I don't have to click through a number of menus items to select the standard edits that I use on most photos. I apply this preset automatically at the import stage, but the output file from the HDR module strips the photos of all these filters.

I used the Natural Auto HDR as my base image as a starting point. Everyone has their own particular style. Mine tends toward the hyper-realistic feeling of Albert Dros or Fabio Antenore, two landscape photographers whose eye-catching Instagram images  really stuck out to me, but I don't take it quite as far as they do.

Having set the base image using the HDR sliders, it's down to some Effects and Local Adjustments:

1. Base Image

Here's the base image. I've cropped to a 2:3 format to cut out the immediate foreground.

 

2. Noise Reduction

I hate performing noise reduction. It's process I don't understand and usually involves me randomly sliding Luminance and Detail up and down until I arrive at a compromise I'm happy with. Unfortunately, cameras with small sensors are prone to noise grain. I normally avoid this by leaving the ISO at the native level. Even though I did that here, I seem to have picked up some noise in the sky. I've reached an unhappy compromise here with a Luminance of 40 and Detail 15.

3. Colo(u)r Enhancer: Increase Colo(u)r

Adds some colour saturation to the image, deepening the blue of the sky. I've applied it to the whole scene at 100% opacity except the yellower area of the sky because it became too dominant.

4. Tonal Enhancer: Highlights Darker

Darkens the sky somewhat, intensifying the colour even further. Applied to the sky with a gradient mask. There was no need to apply it to the foreground.

5. Tonal Enhancer: Tonal Contrast I

Adds a bit of sharpness to the scene. Applied using a large feathered brush at opacity 50% to the mountain area to restore some detail. 

6. Tonal Enhancer: Tonal Contrast II

I applied a second, more gentle tonal contrast filter as a gradient at 33% opacity to the bottom of the picture to give the trees a little more detail.

7. Split Tone

Using the split tone filter you can add different colours to both the highlights and the shadows of an image. Here I've used it as a diagonal gradient with the highlights unaltered (set to white) but the shadows given a purple tone. As you can see it subtly changes the darker blue tones into slightly purple ones. 

Note: the purple bottom-left was unintentional and removed in later photos.

8. Local Adjustment: Lighten

The foreground was looking just a little too dark for my taste, so I adjusted the Exposure to +0.6, Contrast to +20 and Saturation and Vibrance each to +15. Applied as a gradient to the bottom of the photo.

9. Local Adjustment: Reduce Highlights

The orange sky was still a little wan for my taste so I applied a radial gradient to the right-hand side of the photo in which I only pulled the Highlights down to -85. No Exposure adjustment, just the Highlights, it's a neat way of dealing with local Highlight (or Shadow) issues in a photo and here it just enhances the colour in the western sky towards the set sun.

10. Local Adjustment: Lighten

This last step is the salt in the soup and one I'm quite proud of: Instead of decreasing the highlights as one usually does, I selectively increase them - on the snow. Again, the exposure on this edit was left neutral and I just upped the Highlights by +40 and Midtones by +70. Then to rescue the snow a little bit out of the blue tone I increased the colour temperature by 5. This slider is incredibly sensitive at this level, but +5 really brings it enough towards white that it stands out.

Applying this brush wasn't easy and took me several attempts. In the end I opted for the ON1 AI Quick Mask, modified at the micro level along the ridge of the mountains and then removed from the immediate foreground. I love the way that you can set a gradient or mask in ON1 to tell the programme where to apply the effect that you want and then make micro adjustments to that mask to correct any mistakes.

Looking back up the series, the difference between steps is relatively subtle, so before I reveal the finished image, let's look again quickly at the starting point and then immediately on to the final photo for comparison:

Before

After: Blue Hour over the Allgäu

Anyway, that's the final edit (for now). Let me know below if you've found this helpful at all, or if you'd have done anything differently. Until then, stay safe and happy shooting.