Monthly Archives: March 2011

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Black and White

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I waxed poetic about jellyfish yesterday, so to do it again might flirt with overkill.

While the shot from yesterday was all about reds and blues and saturation, I think this one is more about light and translucence. This jellyfish and many others like it were in a tall, columnar tank in the center of the room, and rather than being lit up with a bright color, they weren’t much more than their won outlines and the darkness of the dark room. Just floating along, silent, gooey, flowing.

D300s, 24-70mm f2.8; ISO 800, 42mm, 1/40s @ f2.8

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Red and Blue

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Please watch this first if you are not aware of the dangers of eating the above subject on a sandwich.

I’m not sure what kind of lighting was going on at the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky, but it certainly made these jellyfish look quite the snaz. The room had several tanks with various types of jellyfish, and it was dark and almost as if the jellyfish were glowing from within.

I haven’t always been super-impressed with the D300s once ISO is pushed into the 1600 range, and as I got into this room and got over my first impression of “Holy freaking glowing jellyfish! Ima go and take a thousand pictures now,” I thought I was going t have to jack up the ISO and just deal with the noise.

Turns out glowing jellyfish produce more light than one might think. At ISO 800 and f2.8, I got away with a 1/40 shutter speed, which, at 24mm, was plenty for a sharp shot. Uh…a hundred sharp shots?

Funnily enough, I actually had to desaturate this shot a bit to get it to look good. The red was just a bit too much.

Jellyfish. Jelly, fish.

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Your Pants Are Not Made Of Iron; Don’t Treat Them As If The Were

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Yesterday I sat down to do a little work with curves in Photoshop. The result is above.

After working so much recently almost exclusively with Lightroom, it can be tempting to forget about the convenience of localized adjustments. The original shot here was taken in open shade, so the light was on the cool side and there wasn’t that much contrast; lights needed lightening, darks needed darkening. The problem in such a situation often is that when you lighten some of the lights, other lights go haywire, and when you darken some of the darks, others darks get petulant and block up on you.

The easy solution is to use curves adjustments locally and use layer masks to apply each adjustment just to one part of the image. The above image has an overall levels adjustment, then separate curves for the pants, the railing, and the stairs. After trying a few things, I decided I liked the shoes uncurved, and the bowl looked just fine as part of the pants layer. I focus just on, say, the pants, make them look good, and then brush everything else out (technically, I usually invert the mask and then paint the selection in, if you really want to know). ThenI work on the next element, doing the same thing. After everything is done and masked, I go back and tweak things to make sure that everything looks like it really belongs together…and sometimes there’s a fairly narrow margin of acceptability/believability. The result is that the pants, while having their contrast increased, don’t get as gritty looking as the stairs; the railing can have its textural details brought out without blowing out the brighter parts of the pants; and the stains and textures on the stairs can be emphasized much more greatly, coinciding with their harder nature, without making the orange bowl look as if it is on fire.

I don’t take a lot of time making exactly selections of the different compositional elements when I use this technique, especially on a shot such as this one; using a brush and varying its hardness to paint in layer masks works just as well and is much quicker. If there were harder layers, and it was important that those boundaries be clear and distinct, more exact selections would make perfect sense.

Then it was back to Lightroom for a little playing around with global color, and sharpening, and a bit of vignette.

Nikon D40 (have I mentioned how I love this camera?), 35mm f1.8; 1/200 @ f4.5, ISO 200

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Insert Foot

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I mentioned a couple days ago how my feet got wet and cold. Luckily, someone was there to catch it with a camera.

What I really like about this image is how there are three distinct types of reflection going on: there’s the rough ice that more or less ends up looking white and speckled; there’s the smoother ice under which bubbles were moving, creating smooth, flowing shapes that changed from moment to moment; and the surface of the water, which created the clearest, albeit darkest, reflection. This was shot late in the afternoon of an overcast day, by the way. As always, plenty of jiggering in Lightroom with blacks and vibrance.

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Toros In The Atmosphere.

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Good times were had this past week on a road trip to Ohio and Indiana. There were several days that hinted at the spring to come; lovely days for a walk on my brother’s wooded ten acres. Well, really it’s more like a honeysuckle infestation than woods, but there are a number of paths through it, covered with moss, and a burbling stream, and lots and lots of wildlife, both dead and alive.

Then, on the way back, we stopped at the Somerset rest area on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, stepped out of the car, and were hit with a frosty blast of Winter-Hanging-On. Downright icy. Which brings us to today’s shot, which is more ice.

In this one, the clarity slider is taken all the way down to -100, and blacks and contrast are accentuated. Also, me feet got very very wet taking this shot. I left holes in the ice.

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Ice Breaking

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I’m taking a break from the fine-art ice stuff to say this: I really like doing head shots. There are plenty of terribly boring head shots out there, but it’s not the fault of the genre; it’s the fault of the photographer. The whole point of a head shot is for someone to be able to represent themselves in the blink of an eye to someone who is seeing a lot of head shots.

Think about that challenge: to present someone accurately in that split-second of first impression. A blank stare and an expressionless face won’t do it (unless that person is blank and expressionless…in which case they probably wouldn’t be getting head shots). Peter Hurley, a far better head-shotter than I, has made this point over and over; it seems every time I see or read something by him, he’s beating the drum about having your subject do something or make a facial expression that s/he would actually make when not faced with studio lights and a big piece of fast glass. That’s the photographer’s job to bring out, and doing head shots is as much about coaxing personality of your subject as it is about exposure or pose.

People get nervous in front of cameras…pictures are so permanent and all; they want to be perfect, and perhaps they are feeling the weight of all those eyes that will be sizing them up from that single image. All the pressure! So it takes a while to settle into a session, relax, get past the tension, and start getting the shots that say what they need to say.

I like the process of getting to know the person on the other side of the camera. I like the process of watching the camera and the lights fade away and just become part of the room, not the reason for being there. I like seeing the first drops of personality ooze through (usually somewhere around frame 28) and then give way to unconscious self-expression. And of course I love hearing a client say, “Oh, that’s a good one,” and agreeing.