This year's winter seems to last eternally. At least it's more of a winter than we have had for a decade, and of course just when you get winterguest birds in your garden, you don't have your camera ready (4 fieldfares, in Dutch 'kramsvogels'). So you'll have to make do with an 'Image du soleil levant', the painting that sparkled off impressionism in the end of the 19th century, but then in a 21st century fashion. Keep warm!
2010-01-31
2010-01-17
How a Classic was Made: Moon over Hernandez
'Moon over Hernandez' is one of Ansel Adams's iconic landscape photos, and in this videoblog by Marc Silber of the Digital Photography School, Ansel's son Michael tells a little about how the picture was made. It was a shot 'at the spur of the moment', a single negative at intuitive exposure settings (he couldn't find the exposure meter!) because before Ansel could make a second one, the light in the foreground had faded. In our digital age, we could have made a dozen photos, bracketed for exposure...
But the real point was how different a straight print from the negative was from the final black-and-white print: all kinds of darkroom magic was used, for instance to make the sky darker (Adams's later prints were even more dramatic than his first published ones) and mask some clouds at the top. The video showed a whole 'storyboard' that Ansel used for a graphic depiction of all that he wanted to do when enlarging the picture--much like the different steps you would have in Lightroom, or like the different layers you would use in Photoshop.
The main lesson for us, black-and-white landscape photographers: interpret your pictures afterwards when processing it at the computer, to get the result you want. There is not a single-best conversion from the red, blue and green pixels that make up your sensor data into the black-and-white you are going to print, and 'highlighting' certain areas of your picture through software adaptations is allowed--maybe we can make our own classic!
But the real point was how different a straight print from the negative was from the final black-and-white print: all kinds of darkroom magic was used, for instance to make the sky darker (Adams's later prints were even more dramatic than his first published ones) and mask some clouds at the top. The video showed a whole 'storyboard' that Ansel used for a graphic depiction of all that he wanted to do when enlarging the picture--much like the different steps you would have in Lightroom, or like the different layers you would use in Photoshop.
The main lesson for us, black-and-white landscape photographers: interpret your pictures afterwards when processing it at the computer, to get the result you want. There is not a single-best conversion from the red, blue and green pixels that make up your sensor data into the black-and-white you are going to print, and 'highlighting' certain areas of your picture through software adaptations is allowed--maybe we can make our own classic!
2009-12-21
Dressed-up portrait
At the 'Midwinter fair', 12-13 December in theme park Archeon (Alphen a/d Rijn, NL), people paraded in fantasy and gothic dress. You're welcome to look at my Flickr-photostream for some examples of my snapshots. (Just click on the picture and you'll be taken there.) My best portrait, I think, was made inside, of this wood nymph, or was she a Maid Marian escaped from a Robin Hood story?
Taking pictures outside was a challenge--to put it mildly--because of the low winter sun and the high contrasts it created; high ISO-setting was needed because of the low light intensity overall, but the difference between sun and shadow sides of faces almost called for HDR solutions, which of course is impossible with moving targets (to keep with the bow and arrow inspired metaphors). I'm waiting for HDR-sensor chips in a next generation of cameras!
Taking pictures outside was a challenge--to put it mildly--because of the low winter sun and the high contrasts it created; high ISO-setting was needed because of the low light intensity overall, but the difference between sun and shadow sides of faces almost called for HDR solutions, which of course is impossible with moving targets (to keep with the bow and arrow inspired metaphors). I'm waiting for HDR-sensor chips in a next generation of cameras!
2009-12-14
Want to see more photoblogs?
The Digital Photography School has a poll to ask if we, its readers, have photoblogs ourselves--and to give their web addresses. Of course I added mine to the list and maybe get more reactions? Would be a good reason to become more prolific again! I am not very satisfied with the few pictures I took in the last couple of weeks, but I might share a few with you: some suggestions for improvement would be nice! So watch this space in the coming days.
Besides: do have a look in the list of blogs that follows the poll: awesome stuff to be found there!
Besides: do have a look in the list of blogs that follows the poll: awesome stuff to be found there!
2009-11-12
Lightroom 3 makes a difference
Lightroom 3 Beta does make a difference against version 2: one of my favourite photos of this summer was the dancer's portrait made with impossible light conditions and impossible camera settings: ISO 6400--the highest sensitivity on my Sony A700, so that noise ("speckles") was guaranteed. Nevertheless, I liked the result and put it into this blog on 2 Sept. ("Beauty in 36 Months"). But now I re-imported the picture from its RAW form into LR3-Beta and lo and behold, the noise level was already lower on the rough import and after using the Noise reduction option it got even better. Maybe the dancer did not need that many speckles to be a nice photo after all.
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