Wheeler Avenue Tree
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 52mm ISO 320 3-bkts f/8 Lr3, HEP1 CEP3; PsCS5
A little change up this week from street life to a emphasis on color. This tree stands on Wheeler Avenue in La Verne, California, backed up by the San Gabriel Mountains. The image was captured in the late afternoon at 5:46 P.M. on May 21. I really like how the sun plays on the mountains during this time of day, the mountains are oriented on an east-west axis, and when the sun is getting low the light really delineates the contours of the south facing slopes. This always fascinates me as we parallel the face of the mountains when we drive along I-210 during this time of day.
After conversion from NEF to DNG in Lightroom, I tone mapped in Nik’s HDR Effects Pro working off of a preset furnished by Jason P. O’Dell, selectively dodging in, upping the contrast and structure in various areas of the tree using control points, slightly darkening the foliage to the left and right of the tree; using Nik Color Efex Pro, applied the Kodak Ultra Color 400UC film effect. In Photoshop I removed a distracting palm tree, light standard and electrical utility box that stood adjacent to the tree and attempted to mitigate the slight halo-ing effect by color masking in layers, but to no avail. Back in Lightroom I sharpened and did a little noise reduction, and exported the TIFF file that was created by HDR Efex Pro to a JPG file.
Fan Palms
Nikon D80 18-135mm @ 31mm ISO 160 3-bkts Lr3, HDR Efex Pro; Color Efex Pro
Palm trees are prevalent throughout Southern California. This shot was made in Chino Hills, California. I was attracted to the symmetry and grace of the palms when I captured this image, then brought emphasis to the sky and balanced the blue of the sky against the warm tones of the buildings using Color Efex Pro.
Mother & Daughter Bonding
Nikon D80 18-135mm @ 50mm ISO 160 3-bkts f/11 Lr3; HDR Efex Pro
When history is written in the future, it might be said that women were pioneers in the 18th century, homemakers in the 19th century, professionals in the 20th century, and shoppers in the 21st century. It might also be said that men were still in the feudal age in the 21st century, desperately grasping for power and treasure, more prone to waging war than making peace.
Midnight Run
Nikon D80 19-24mm @ 24mm ISO 200 3-bkts f/11 Lr3, HDR Efex Pro, Viveza, Color Efex Pro, Ps5
This is part of the rolling stock of the Fillmore & Western Railway, alongside the Fillmore Depot, ready to roll on another short excursion. A special hat tip goes out to Dave Wilson for his tip on reducing halos that result in the skies of HDR images. I had come across the same tip in a tutorial I was viewing recently, and after Dave reminded me of it, I tried it out, on this past Monday’s image and this one. Thank you Dave, for coaching me forward one more step in the development of my HDR skills.
Dusk Falls On City Hall
Nikon D80 10-24mm @ 24mm ISO 200 3-bkts f/11 HDR Efex Pro, Ps5, Viveza, Color Efex Pro
As the sun was getting low over Fillmore City Hall the shadows grew longer and the moon began rising in the eastern sky when I captured the brackets for this image.. The scene might suggest that the seat of government in Fillmore has stood the test of time, that would, however, be an incorrect conclusion. Fillmore was first settled around the time that the city’s grid was first laid out in 1887, incorporation occurred in 1914. While the appearance of this photograph would suggest that the Fillmore City Hall may have been erected at about the time of incorporation, in reality, this is the sixth incarnation of the Fillmore City Hall and it was built in 1997.
To arrive at this final image I combined and tone mapped three bracketed exposures using HDR Efex Pro. I used a combination of Viveza and Photoshop to adjust exposure and tone, and an adjustment layer in Photoshop to replace the halo’ed sky that resulted after the HDR process. The original color tones were too garish to my taste and inaccurate to boot, I used the Color Efex Pro Duplex filter to alter the color tones and the Color Efex Pro Vignette Blur filter to soften the focus on the edges of the image. Lightroom was used for final sharpening.
This was another image that I had worked over quite a bit, and only over time was I able to control my urges to produce a “punchy” image, and arrive at a more subtle interpretation and final vision. I really think that it does help to put aside my images after first processing them, and resist the urge to publish them immediately, so that over time I will find my way back to the images, and a different, and hopefully, better perspective. Deliberation is the key to producing memorable images.
Tree Dormant In Winter; An Exercise In Black & While
Nikon D80 10-24mm @ 10mm ISO 320 3-bkts f/22 Lr3 HDR Efex 1 SEP 1
The tree with its branches bare of leaves during its season of dormancy presides over Waring Park in Piru, California, hard by the usually dry Santa Clara River bed. I am surmising that the dark clumps of vegetation among the branches are nests for some of the local critters, but we did not see any while on the scene. Whether avians or small mammals or marsupials, the creatures that made their homes up in the branches did so to stay safe from predators who might be roaming the neighborhood.
We were in the area to photograph an old railroad trestle, and I did capture those brackets before I set my sights on this tree. I actually think the tree was the better overall image. After the initial HDR processing and merging of the brackets with Nik HDR Efex Pro I processed the final image with Nik Silver Efex Pro, and did a little dodging with the adjustment brush in Lightroom. I have pre-ordered a copy of Silver Efex Pro 2 and am waiting to get my hands on that, which appears to be even more robust than Silver Exfex Pro 1.
The Fruit Bowl; A Photoshop Exploration
Nikon D80 18-135mm @ 112mm ISO 800 1/50 f/5.6 Lr3 PScs5
I am just now beginning to explore the tools available from Photo Shop CS5, and have been enjoying myself practicing with some of the tools available with this robust application. I was in my family room recently keeping my sister company as she was preparing dinner for us one late afternoon, and after getting some shots of her peeling potatoes I zeroed in on the fruit bowl.
When I captured this image, the fruit bowl was sitting on top of a half height wine refrigerator that had a black surface, behind this was the cooking island with maroon colored cabinet work, a white tile top surface and other items you would typically find on a stove top. A very unattractive and distracting background.
When I first processed the image in Lightroom I cropped out the background elements that displayed above the fruit, but that led to a very constrained aspect ratio and an overall poor composition. Then I decided to find out what I could do with Photo Shop. The first thing I did was place the cropped image on a larger canvas, giving some “shoulder room” on the sides of the fruit bowl and adding height to the background.
Original image.
I then sampled the maroon color that was in the background cabinet and used that color to fill the background of the expanded canvas. I then painted in more color in the background and along the edges of the bowl and the fruit, doing this in an iterative process, and kept my brush at less than full opacity. In the process of cropping and painting I had destroyed part of the left rim of the pewter bowl and ended up using the cloning tool to reconstruct it. I also did some cloning on one of the yellow apples. I also used the blurring and smudging tools to a small extent, but the smudging tool is a bit tricky, and some of that I had to go back and fix.
As this is the first time that I have used Photo Shop to such radical effect I am quite happy with my results, Photo Shop allowed me to take a non-descript image and make it pleasing and interesting to my eye. This exercise also brings home the fact that you can do so much with your images after you have initially conceived them, and you should not be too quick to label any image in your Lightroom catalog as a reject.
Re-working An Image
Nikon D80 18mm ISO 320 1/20 f/11 (-2.0 0.0 +2.0) Lr3 HDR Efex Pro
You should never hesitate to return to an old image and re-work it. This image was originally created in September of last year when I was first experimenting with HDR techniques. Looking back at the original rendition of the image I can say in all honesty, it was fairly crude and cartoonish as you can see in this thumbnail. I did not hesitate to post the image back then because I consider this blog a manifestation of my growth and development as a photographer, and was just excited to share my journey of discovery of HDR technique. So it is with some pride and a sense of redemption that I am posting the revised image today. Isn’t this what life is all about, living and learning, every day.
As far as what I did when I reprocessed the image:
- HDR processed and tone mapped in Nik HDR Efex Pro instead of Photomatix. I used one of either the Architectural or Landscape filters in HDR Efex Pro (I did not write down which on) and then tweaked the individual control settings.
- Used the Nik Control Point technology to darken, increase contrast and further saturate the top of the building wall in the top right quarter of the image, I feel this gave the building more of a three dimensional effect, and redirected the radiation of the sun from the top right to the bottom left.
- Set a control point over the lower left section of the man and the flower bed and increased the exposure, contrast and saturation, to bring more emphasis on the human figure and also redirect the source of the sun’s rays.
- Used Lightroom to adjust for lens distortion and perform sharpening.
- It should go without saying, that this processing began using the original, raw image files.
I had a blast re-creating this.
Melvin Realized: Refining My Adjustment Brush Skill
Nikon D80 18-135mm 52mm ISO 200 1/200 f/7.1 PSE8 PMX4 Lr3
This is my reinterpretation of Melvin from yesterday, realized much truer to Melvin’s appearance in “the flesh”. I feel that by completely darkening out the distracting elements in the background using the Adjustment Brush set at maximum underexposure works much better than the last version. I am getting a lot better at using the adjustment brush. I purposely did not brush out all of the background detail along some of Melvin’s edges, which had the effect of making Melvin seem to glow against the background. I also did not lighten up the exposure on Melvin’s tires and wheel wells to the same extent on this version, I just wanted some definition around the tires without attracting too much attention to the wheel wells. Probably the most significant lesson learned doing this today is that even subtle adjustments, can have a significant effect on the image as a whole.
Melvin Get’s A Glamour Treatment: An exercise in HDR, tone mapping & using the adjustment brush
Nikon D80 18-135mm 52mm ISO 200 1/200 f/7.1 PSE8
Melvin is one of the family cars. His glamour treatment started with a spa day when he got a good washing. Today the “photo-cosmetologist” did his “make-up”. This was an opportunity for me to practice my skills creating quasi-HDR images. doing tone maping, and using the adjustment brush in Lightroom.
The set of images in this blog posting came from three single exposure camera raw files, converted to DNG by Photoshop Elements (when originally processd earlier this year), then imported to Lightroom today, then exported to and converted to quasi-HDR images by Photomatix (4) which created three variations of each individual DNG file at 2.5 EV separations as part of the process, Photomatix also offered up tone mapping pre-sets which were selected before the final images were returned to Lightroom as TIF’s
Nikon D80 18-135mm 38mm ISO 200 1/400 f/10 PSE8 PMX4 Lr3
Within Lightroom I used one of its tone mapping pre-sets as a starting point and then made slight changes in overall saturation and brightness for the image above. I also began practicing my adjustment brush technique by darkening the car hood and grill which were blown out.
Nikon D80 18-135mm 62mm ISO 200 1/200 f/5.6 PSE8 PMX4 Lr3
On the next image, above, I also applied a Lightroom tone-mapping preset, and tweaked overall saturation and brightness. I practiced more with the adjustment brush, but I went a little too far burning in the hood where it meets the grill, it almost looks like someone put a bad paint job on a body patch. I started getting the hang of the adjustment brush when I dodged the tire, wheel well, and wheel hub behind the wheel cover. I also burned in the headlight, brightened and increased saturation on the side lights, and dodged the GM logo on the door to highlight it.
In the third image I got really carried away with dodging out highlights in the background with the adjustment brush as a technique to isolate Melvin from the distractions behind him, I also burned in Melvin’s windshield to de-emphasize the car behind him, and dodged his wheel cover with the adjustment brush. I think the ultimate result, though, was a failure of conception and execution. As I progress in learning my new tools I expect to master masking techniques so that I could more “cleanly” just eliminate all background image, or evenly desaturate the background elements or, with the right tool, easily throw all of the image elements in the background out of focus.
None of the images in today’s post would be considered exceptional by any experienced and skilled user of these tools, but these exercises have resulted in my becoming more skilled and comfortable with the Lightroom tool kit. My work can only get better as I practice my craft.
Munger Research Center & A Birthday Present
Nikon D80 20mm ISO 100 1/45 f/9.5 3 brackets (-2) (0) (+2) LR3 PMXPro 3
The Munger Research Center doubled the amount of space available to the Huntington Library. Over six million rare books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, and other materials in the fields of British and American history and literature are archived at the Huntington Library. This includes an extensive collection of American Photographic images captured during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
It was my birthday recently and I gave myself a present of a bundle of software, Photoshop Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. As an already registered Photoshop Elements user, Adobe offered the new bundle at half off, that was a deal I could not ignore. For the past week or so I have been viewing Lightroom tutorials and learning how to use this new tool. The image above was originally processed in Elements and Photomatix and it was not appealing to me. I reprocessed the Photomatix result in Lightroom and applied one of its preset color and tone enhancements, and then fine tuned from there. I removed some spots caused by debris on the lens, reduced the noise in the sky and just slightly adjusted saturation and luminance. I particularly like the reflection of trees and sky from the windows on the building’s facade.
While the video tutorials (by Chris Orwig via lynda.com) help quite a bit, I am finding that mastering evertyhing that Lightroom has to offer will require a lot of trial and error on my part.
