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Inspiring Australian photographers

photoreview.com.au

Jun – Aug 2021

Vital ocean time RUSSELL ORD

Blindsight TREVOR PAGLEN

ISSN

1839-5899

$12.95 incl. GST Issue #88

BAGGING BACKYARD BIRDS INCREASING IMAGE RESOLUTION UNDERSTANDING CHROMATICITY DIAGRAMS RESTORING OLD PHOTOS

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L E A R N MOR E AT SON Y.COM . AU/C A M E R A S

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Knowing why I

t's a safe bet that if you're reading the editorial page in a photography magazine, you are, at the very least, mildly interested in the subject of picture taking. In fact, truth be told, you're likely more than mildly interested.

Chances are you've been making photographs for some time now, and even though you may not think of yourself as a real, proper photographer, you do know that it's something you love to do.

Also more than likely it's something you want to get better at.

And therein lies the rub.

Back in the days of analogue photography, 'getting better' often meant learning to master the technology itself. If you were serious about your photography, you not only had to understand the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, you needed to have at least a nodding acquaintance with both the film development and photo printing processes.

Happily, modern photographers don't need to undergo extensive training before they can reliably produce accurately exposed and sharply focused images. There's no longer a kind of status to be found in what might be described as "process expertise" which often features tut-tutting remarks from grizzled old darkroom veterans along the lines of 'You should have used water bath development to hold those tonal values.'

These days the challenges, broadly speaking, are to do with improving your timing and compositional skills. The former is a matter of continuous practice while the latter is best served by having a basic grasp of composition – and studying pictures that move you emotionally so as to better understand what makes them 'work'.

The final and most difficult piece in the puzzle of how to get better at your photography is finding the answer to the simple, but thorny question: why are you taking this picture?

Most of the time the answer will be equally simple; it was just a pretty sunset or you wanted a picture of your niece and her new puppy. But then there are those occasions when you want not simply to record a moment,

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‘Until you know the 'why', it's tough to figure out the 'what' that it is you're trying to photograph.’ but to convey something deeper, something emotional. And that's where your challenge as a photographer becomes much bigger than getting your exposure right and keeping the horizon straight. Now your task is to understand why you want to make an image of the scene in front of you.

Until you know the 'why', it's tough to figure out the 'what' that it is you're trying to photograph.

In their own ways, both of our inspiration profile photographers are deeply engaged with the 'why' question.

In his interview with Steve Packer, ocean shooter Russell Ord discloses how he came to the realisation that, given the same equipment, many experienced photographers could produce equally good pictures of surfers. This insight proved pivotal, as you shall see when you turn to page 4.

Asking a very different kind of 'why' question, photographer and multimedia artist Trevor Paglen (see page 18) has long been fascinated (and alarmed) by the way Artificial Intelligence technology, sitting at the intersection of state and corporate power, uses photographic images for its own purposes.

Many of us remain wary of travelling when COVID-19 is still not contained in much of the world, so finding photographic challenges close to home is a good thing. In 'Bagging backyard birds' (page 30) Margaret Brown is sticking very close to home indeed as she offers wise advice about how best to capture satisfying pictures of your local feathered friends. Speaking of which, as anyone who's tried bird photography knows, it is extremely difficult to capture a framefilling image, so very often one must resort to cropping. As Margaret shows in her article 'Increasing image resolution' (page 47), there are a number of techniques for 'res’ing up' your pictures so that the cropping need not be too severe. The same editing tools that allow you to increase image resolution are of course handy for many, many other tasks, including restoring elderly and damaged but precious family pictures. In 'Restoring old photos' (page 62) Margaret shows you just what you can do with little more than a photo editing package, an old picture and a little of your time.

Thank you for buying our magazine and may it inspire you on your photographic journey.

Don Norris Editor

CONTENTS INSPIRATION

INSIDER

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25 40

4

Understanding chromaticity diagrams

Vital ocean time Western Australian surf and surfing photographer Russell Ord has been riding a wave of heightened creativity ever since he was startled by… a white tiger.

Margaret Brown explains how to ‘read’ and utilise the information provided in the graphs used to plot colour performance in our monitor reviews.

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When artificial intelligence meets photography.

Trevor Paglen has long been concerned with the secrecy and surveillance undertaken by governments and large corporations.

Courtesy of Olympus

Bagging backyard birds

Amaury Tréguer’s interest in photography began with an early morning training regime on the sands of Bondi.

The lockdowns of 2020 triggered a surge of interest in photographing Australian birds, which continues during 2021.

The early riser

Blindsight

Inspiring Australian photographers

photoreview.com.au

Jun – Aug 2021

Vital ocean time RUSSELL ORD

Blindsight TREVOR PAGLEN

ISSN

1839 5899

$12.95 incl. GST Issue #88

BAGGING BACKYARD BIRDS INCREASING IMAGE RESOLUTION UNDERSTANDING CHROMATICITY DIAGRAMS RESTORING OLD PHOTOS

2

SHOOTING

On the cover Golden Sunset

By Russell Ord See page 4

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32 30

TECHNIQUE

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64

WIN Win an intuitive LOUPEDECK editing console

53 47

see page 63

Increasing image resolution We look at different methods for obtaining more resolution out of photographs with current image editors.

52 Restoring old photos Tools and tactics to help you bring old photographs back to life.

61 64

57

Image Review Don’s response to selected images from Lionel Mawhinney, Ron Johnson, Ros Osborne, Shane Walker, Tito Prato, and Trace O’Rourke.

Recommended sites From Lartigue’s boyhood pictures and arresting wildlife photography to the quasihipster world of Lomography, our editor has been keeping busy on your behalf.

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Vital ocean time WESTERN AUSTRALIAN SURF AND SURFING PHOTOGRAPHER RUSSELL ORD HAS BEEN RIDING A WAVE OF HEIGHTENED CREATIVITY EVER SINCE HE WAS STARTLED BY… A WHITE TIGER.

By Steve Packer

INSPIRATION

You’ve built up a strong international reputation for surfing and other coastal photography over nearly 20 years.

What have you been working on lately?

I’ve moved away from the regular surfing stuff to a certain extent because it’s such a flooded market. There’s an incredible amount of content out there for clients to choose from.

My main surf-related work at the moment is for Coastlines, a New Zealand wetsuit brand.

I’ve been working for them for five years, and they purchased The Surfboard Warehouse a couple of years ago. Normally that would involve about four international trips a year to wherever they want me to go and a handful around NZ. I travel with two or three of their team riders and a videographer for maybe a couple of weeks to get surfing and lifestyle photos they can choose from for marketing their latest products. Of course, that sort of travel has been disrupted lately.

I’m also about to do a campaign for YETI Coolers.

It’s the work I love – outdoor, story-based, using talented people who suit their brand, rather than, say, big-name athletes.

Is doing your surfing lifestyle photography in New Zealand any different from in Australia?

I love going to NZ. If you explore, you can still find spots down winding roads and tracks with absolutely no-one else around. Going around NZ

Previous page: Jack Robinson, The Box Opposite: Jed, Gas

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with my family, I’ve paddled down rivers, through farmland, to find out if there are good waves at the end. Surf on your own for a few hours, paddle back. It’s amazing.

Also, the light’s softer throughout the whole day in NZ, and it doesn’t matter if it’s cold, grey and gloomy. That’s the look the brand wants for selling wetsuits.

How did you get started in surf photography?

I grew up in Perth, and rugby league was my first passion. When I was 24, I moved with my wife down to Margs [Margaret River] to surf, and injured my knee. Rather than do a lot of sitting around, I started taking photos of my mates.

Photography was like an apprenticeship, trying to be as good as I could, learning mostly by mistakes. It wasn’t until I got a waterproof housing for my camera and got immersed in water that I had that really exultant feeling of freedom.

Then I started shooting crazy waves – ‘slabs’ – and because that was new to the magazines, it was far easier to get published and recognised.

They were pre-social media days, remember.

Has your overall approach to photography changed over the years?

A turning point came in 2012 when I picked up a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room and it had what were meant to be the top 10 wildlife photos of the year. I read down the list about

the incredible adversity the photographers went through to get their shots. But at number one was an amazing shot of a white tiger coming out of water, shaking its head – and it was taken in a ZOO! I was like, what the…? What were the judges thinking?

But you admit it was an amazing shot.

Yes. But it made me realise I was basically the same sort of photographer as that guy, and I started to question what I was doing. This bloke was probably camped out under an umbrella, sipping lemonade, watching the tiger go in and out of the water 10 times a day. And there I was, sitting on a jet ski, shooting anything that moved, getting pictures hundreds of other photographers could do. I was seriously disillusioned.

I put the camera down for a few months, and when I picked it up again, I’d decided that the effort, skills and the whole story behind the shot was far more important than the actual moment in time. The journey itself is the most important factor.

How does that gel with your commercial work?

When I have to do a job, there are different kinds of shots they want and I’m working to their brief to the best of my ability. But for my own personal satisfaction, when I look through my work in the future, I want there to be 10 or 20 shots where I can see effort. What I like to call an ‘Ord shot’.

INSPIRATION

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INSPIRATION

Above: Henton Opposite: Margs Swell

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INSPIRATION

‘I’d decided that the effort, skills and the whole story behind the shot was far more important than the actual moment in time. The journey itself is the most important factor.’

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INSPIRATION

Above: Golden Sunset Opposite: Sheldon Simkus, North West

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INSPIRATION

‘My latest challenge is shooting surfing/ocean with medium format and flash. I get my son to hold the flash in the water while I’m on the beach or swimming alongside him.’

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INSPIRATION

Opposite: Jacob Willcox, North West Above: Kai Borg Garcia, Backdoor Below: Matahi Drollet, Teahupoo

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INSPIRATION

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INSPIRATION

‘It's incredible how many people use their ocean time, not just for surfing and swimming, but also for mental health.’

Teeth

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INSPIRATION

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INSPIRATION

Speaking of effort, do you travel with a lot of equipment?

If I need to shoot surf and a lot of fast-moving action such as surfing, I’ll take my Fuji X-series gear and three or four lenses that fit in my AquaTech water housings.

If the client wants to use it for billboards and they don’t mind me missing a few things, I’ll take my medium format Fujifilm GFX100 gear.

If I’m shooting medium format from the beach, I’ll use a 250mm with the 1.4 teleconverter.

The camera has a 100-megapixel image sensor, so if I’m a touch too far back, I can crop it in half and it still looks amazing. In the water, I have 23mm and 110mm lenses for the GFX cased in a Dave Kelly housing.

My latest challenge is shooting surfing/ocean with medium format and flash. I get my son to hold the flash in the water while I’m on the

Beau Young, NZ

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beach or swimming alongside him. I use a Godox AD200 flash in a housing I got made for it, which is far more powerful than a normal on-camera flash. It definitely lights things up, but it’s not easy. You need the right surf conditions, when the sun’s gone down, with someone who likes surfing and swimming in the dark.

Do you have any personal projects underway?

When COVID hit, to keep myself inspired, I started a project on people who surf at Surfers Point, Margaret River. It's incredible how many people use their ocean time, not just for surfing and swimming, but also for mental health.

Throughout the book are quotes and stories that reflect the diverse community and how vital ocean time is, especially during a crazy 2020 Covid year. I’ve been shooting people

at their workplaces and swimming out in the dark for arty/different shots. I’ve also started a book project, ‘Life Around the Sea’, that documents people whose lives revolve around Western Australia’s coastline. From all walks of life: surfers, fishermen, marine biologists, remote communities, families, etc. The aim is to bring awareness and encourage social and environmental change through imagery for organisations such as One Blue Ocean. w To see more of Russell Ord’s work, visit russellordphoto.com

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Blindsight WHEN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS PHOTOGRAPHY.

By Don Norris

INSPIRATION

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INSPIRATION

T

revor Paglen has long been concerned with the vast, largely invisible edifice of secrecy and surveillance erected by both governments and huge trans-national corporations. It is a concern that has shaped his work as a visual artist for the last decade and which was evident from at least as early as 2006 when he and investigative journalist Adam Clay Thompson authored Torture Taxi, a book focussed on the CIA’s clandestine “extraordinary rendition” program.

‘I had been doing this work around military secrecy in the mid 2000s,’ Trevor said.

‘And then when Edward Snowden came along, because I was good friends with Laura Poitras [the independent filmmaker whose film about Snowden, Citizenfour, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2015], we started having a lot of conversations about the infrastructure that was described in the Snowden documents; this world of data centers, hacking and communications infrastructures like undersea cables and basically, the stuff that the internet is made out of.’

The Snowden documents, he said, revealed ‘how militaries were trying to occupy the internet, trying to occupy communication systems. When you're looking at a National Security Agency or a GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters], you know, basically spy agencies, you quickly realise that they're quite similar to a Google or a Facebook or an Amazon, in terms of the infrastructures that they're using and how they're using them.’

‘So then you start thinking about what is the infrastructure that the internet is made out of, and then, what's inside the internet? What's all the information moving around? How is that information being collected and classified and categorised? And how is our technical system doing things with that information?’

The critical component in this equation is artificial intelligence (AI).

‘AI is what you use to make sense of data at planetary scales,‘ Trevor said, adding ‘and then lo and behold, guess what's at the centre of that – photography. So much of what's on the internet is people's images. Computer “vision” is one of the core questions of artificial intelligence.

‘Because so much of the internet is made out of photographs, then so much of the project of artificial intelligence [is itself about analysing those photographs]. How and what do you learn about people by building AI systems to read things out of those photographs?

‘A super simple example is facial recognition. How do you identify somebody based on a picture that they uploaded to the internet for instance. But it goes much further than that. [It’s] trying to identify [for instance] what kind of products you might like, based on the pictures that you upload [and from those] what kind of environment you live in.

And, to me that's interesting, because [AI] is interpreting photos.’

Previous page: The Glen Canyon. Deep Semantic Image Segments, 2020. Dye sublimation print 40 × 50 in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco.

Left: “Fanon” (Even the Dead Are Not Safe). Eigenface, 2017. Dye sublimation print 48 × 48 in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

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INSPIRATION

For this 2017 exhibition, Trevor Paglen selected ten pictures from thousands taken of US military employees in the mid-1990s. The images were used by the US Department of Defense to develop face recognition technology and the faint letters printed on the photographs show which facial features the algorithm was being “taught” to recognise.

Left: It Began as a Military Experiment, 2017. Detail. Set of 10 pigment prints 13 ⅝ × 10 ½ in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

Middle: It Began as a Military Experiment, 2017. Detail. Set of 10 pigment prints 13 ⅝ × 10 ½ in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

Right: It Began as a Military Experiment, 2017. Detail. Set of 10 pigment prints 13 ⅝ × 10 ½ in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

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INSPIRATION

‘Trevor is interested in the way the AI interprets the image data – rather than the conclusion/answer it produces.’

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INSPIRATION

‘…the neural network is essentially putting together collections of those primitive shapes and textures…’

When we talk about AI “interpreting” photos, it’s worth remembering that what’s happening is not the same thing as when a human looks at, and makes sense of, an image.

‘When I went to art school,’ Trevor said, ‘the consensus was that digital images are different because there's no original; with analog photography you always have some place where you're starting from – the negative.’

That was fine as far as it went, but Trevor realised that unlike negatives and prints, digital images are in a practical sense invisible.

‘The core feature of a digital image that's different from an analogue image is that in the first and last instance, it is only readable by machines,’ he said.

‘A human cannot look at a digital image [by looking at the data]. It's just a bunch of ones and zeros. You have to use a JPEG interpreter.

You need some kind of program to render that collection of ones and zeros into something that you can see with your eyes and you need a screen to see it on.’

And then like Shrodinger’s famous cat, the moment the monitor is switched off and you stop looking at it, he said, ‘it reverts back to this form of ones and zeros on a hard drive.’

‘IT systems don't need [image data] to be turned into something that's displayed on the

screen. So there is this kind of “seeing” that can be performed on digital images, where you can build machines to “look“ at digital images, and there doesn't need to be a human intermediary.’

‘It’s kind of crazy, you know, thinking about the history of images and arriving at a point in time where the absolute overwhelming majority of images are now being made in ways that are, in the first and last instance, only visible to computer vision systems or AI systems or machines.’

In his most recent exhibition, Bloom, Trevor explored the way in which AI techniques, internet technology and photography are combining to influence, shape and direct modern culture. Along with sculptures, drawings and paintings, the exhibition included a series of large scaleflower photographs that have been processed by AI. ‘The Bloom images are black and white photographs that I made [with a large format film camera] and they're colourised using AI techniques.’

Created during the pandemic, Trevor said, ‘I was trying to make images that are obviously coming out of this intense sense of trauma around COVID. So I was trying to think about what it feels like to live in this world filled with

Hough Circle transform is a technique used in AI image analysis. The overlapping circle pattern in this picture shows how Hough Circles divide and map the image data.

CLOUD #865. Hough Circle Transform, 2019. Dye sublimation print 60 x 48 in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Pace Gallery.

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so much trauma, where our [ways of interacting] are reduced to things like Zoom calls and other kinds of [communication] platforms that are anything but neutral.’

After taking the photographs, he scanned the original negatives to give the AI tools something to work with. The initial scans, he explained, have too much resolution for the AI models to process, so the first step is to downscale them.

‘The way machine learning works,’ he said, ‘is that they build up images. ‘They “learn” to recognise basic shapes and measures, and to select curves and lines. Then they detect simple gradients. The way that object recognition happens is that the neural network is essentially putting together collections of those primitive shapes and textures and arriving at an idea of what something is based on.

‘So, for example, if you give it a picture of a spoon, the AI might in effect [read the data and] say, “Okay, well there's an ellipse [in this part of the data] and there's a kind of gradient from light to dark here [and taken together, the data looks] kind of like chrome in that it goes from a grey to something with some kind of highlight.

Then there are some sort of parallel lines and some other basic shapes and gradients and textures that define this object. And then we'll say okay that's probably a spoon.”

INSPIRATION

Above: Bloom (#9b746d), 2020. Dye sublimation print 40 ½ × 54 in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Pace Gallery.

Right: Bloom (#a5808a), 2020. Dye sublimation print 54 × 40 ½ in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Pace Gallery.

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INSPIRATION

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INSPIRATION

NSA-Tapped Undersea Cables. North Pacific Ocean, 2016. C-Print 48 × 72 in. © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist, Metro Pictures, New York, Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco.

Trevor is interested in the way the AI interprets the image data – rather than the conclusion/answer it produces.

‘So now that final step where it says “it’s a spoon”, we ignore that [because we] don't care what the AI thinks it is. We want it to show all of those component parts [it identified] and to assign different colours to them.’

Trevor’s IT team didn’t provide the AI with colour data. Instead, AI generated the colours from an algorithmic analysis of the image structure, grey scale gradients, etc, and then drew on historic data in the form of known colour values accumulated from millions of previous image processing events.

The question Trevor asks through his work is, essentially, how, exactly is AI mediating the data, and therefore purporting to make sense of the world for us?

Thinking about the process of mediation is an enduring theme in Trevor’s work. Again and again he asks: who decides what something means, who says what’s important, or more

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importantly, decides what isn’t? And, when we use an AI algorithm to simplify the world down to quantifiable answers to those questions, what has been left out of the calculations?

AI may purport to give us information that is without ambiguity, but, said Trevor, ‘that is the bill of goods being sold to you by the computer vision industry.

‘This has been with us from the beginning of photography. You go back to the mid 19th century and there was a huge hype around photography as this objective way of seeing, but one that [paradoxically] could not truly represent nature. That has been a part of the discussion about photography ever since.

‘You're seeing the exact same kind of claims being made about computer vision and AI. I'm just showing how much subjectivity is in the process – even when you reduce the number of variables to as few as possible.’

‘Photographers are really primed to think about this area in a way that's different from the way that a computer scientist or a

marketing person would think about it,’ said Trevor, adding, ‘I think we're sort of tuned to understand the complexities that go into the creation of images and the interpretation of those images. Understanding those complexities and thinking about them is really critical right now. This [AI-driven] social media system is so much a part of our culture now and so influential in terms of shaping society that I feel it’s ultimately the job of the artist to create the possibility of asking questions.’

Trevor Paglen online w www.paglen.studio trevorpaglen

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SHOOTING TIPS

Bagging backyard birds THE LOCKDOWNS OF 2020 TRIGGERED A SURGE OF INTEREST IN PHOTOGRAPHING AUSTRALIAN BIRDS, WHICH CONTINUES DURING 2021.

Margaret Brown

L

ast year’s AussieBirdCount – an annual event, which is held each October – was particularly well subscribed, probably because many keen photographers were prevented from travelling to distant places for vacations. Interest in bird photography has blossomed. Scientifically, this was welcomed by Australia’s leading ecologists and other scientists who have been calling for data and photographs documenting how birds are responding to climatic and environmental disturbances. This article has been prepared to help Photo Review readers participate in these important conservation initiatives.

Bird photography is a genre that will challenge your shooting skills but also provide stimulus and satisfaction – and occasionally excitement. Before you get started, we recommend downloading the Ethical Birding Guidelines from the BirdLife Australia website (www.bit.ly/bird-guidelines). It’s free and in PDF format and provides useful guidelines on watching and photographing birds.

Equipment Canon’s 600mm and 800mm f/11 fixed-aperture super-zoom lenses have made extreme telephoto lenses more affordable and easier to use handheld. This shot of a Yellow Wattle Bird on a grass tree inflorescence was taken with the Canon RF 800mm f/11 IS STM lens on an EOS RP camera.

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Although compact cameras with super-zoom lenses can be used, the best bird shots are usually obtained with interchangeable-lens cameras because of their larger sensors.

Sometimes you can get lucky when using a small-sensor camera, but you’re normally stuck with JPEGs only so the quality of images may not be great.

Interchangeable-lens cameras also give you a much wider choice of lenses. All models support raw file capture which is recommended

for bird photography, especially in challenging lighting (which is common). Zoom lenses are more versatile but prime lenses are usually faster and may be sharper. You will need at least a 200mm focal length (in 35mm format) to provide enough shooting distance to avoid ‘spooking’ your subjects – but even that may not be enough for photographing small birds.

Stabilisation is an absolute must for handheld shots; either in the camera or in the lens – but preferably in both. Make sure the camera and lens IS systems are compatible (if both have the same brand they should be). However, a tripod or monopod may be required for heavy camera/lens combinations, particularly when you’re shooting from a hide.

Telephoto prime lenses are usually (but not always) faster than zoom lenses at equivalent focal lengths. They also perform better when used with telephoto extenders (or ‘teleconverters’), which are handy if you find your longest lens isn’t quite long enough and can’t afford a longer lens. Although it reduces the light reaching the sensor, when an extender is fitted to a well-matched lens, the resulting images can be indistinguishable from those taken with a lens of the same focal length.

High resolution cameras give you scope for cropping shots when the lens focal length is too short for the subject. Check out our feature article on increasing resolution on page 47 for tips if you plan to make prints from cropped images.

Know your target The better you know your subjects, the easier it will be to photograph them. Even when you’re

SHOOTING TIPS

Cormorants are commonly found close to water and occur both close to the coast and along inland waterways. This picture of a pied cormorant drying its wings was taken with a 100-400mm zoom lens at the 400mm focal length setting.

Suburban parks can provide homes for some spectacular birds. This Powerful Owl, which stands roughly half a metre tall, was photographed in a Sydney park in deep suburbia. A 200mm lens was used at f/2.8 to ensure a nicely blurred background. ISO 800 was required in the low light levels.

Bird photography can start in your own backyard. This pair of Tawny Frogmouths took up residence in the tree outside our back door last summer. 200mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/40 second at f/4.

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SHOOTING TIPS

‘Bird photography is a genre that will challenge your shooting skills but also provide stimulus and satisfaction.’ confined to your own backyard, it’s important to observe the birds that come to it and get to know where they’ll be, what they do and when they are most active.

Check the lighting at different times of day so you know where to be when the birds arrive and the direction to point your camera.

Being in just the right spot is critical if you want attractive backlit shots since direct light spilling into a lens can produce unwanted flare and may damage the image sensor.

Foregrounds and backgrounds can make or break a shot. Both should be unobtrusive – unless you wish to show birds within their habitat. Wide lens apertures will let you isolate subjects from the background. Be flexible; you may need to lie on the ground to photograph ground-feeding birds or climb a wall or tree for a different angle on larger species – or even wade into water for good angles on water birds.

Letting birds come to you requires patience and setting yourself up in advance but can result in more compelling and intimate photographs. Practice on birds that visit your garden or the local park as they will be more accustomed to people and be easier for you to capture.

Know your camera settings Avoid full-auto modes as they can be unreliable.

Shoot raw files wherever possible and position exposures to record the widest brightness range the camera can handle. Wide aperture settings let you concentrate upon the main subject; but it’s best to stop down a little to keep most of the subject in focus.

Most lenses are sharpest one to two stops down from their maximum aperture. The trick is to decide how much of the scene should be sharp and the degree to which the rest should be thrown out-of-focus.

Taken with a compact super-zoom camera, this shot shows some of the limitations of small sensor cameras: JPEG only support and a limited range of controls plus a restricted dynamic range in shots. 42mm focal length (equivalent to approx. 250mm in 35mm format), ISO 125, 1/160 second at f/5.5.

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SHOOTING TIPS

Even relatively common birds can make attractive subjects when shots are taken in interesting locations and carefully composed. This pair of Galahs was photographed in The Pinnacles National Park in Western Australia.

Some birds will come close if you sit quietly and wait. This tiny female Fairy Wren was captured when it came close enough to be photographed with a 200mm lens.

The f/4 maximum aperture enabled a fast shutter speed to be used to freeze motion while providing an attractive blurred background behind the subject.

What could be more Australian than a Kookaburra perched on a Hills Hoist? This shot was taken with a tele-zoom lens at a focal length of 200mm using an aperture of f/2.8 to blur the background.

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SHOOTING TIPS

Above: Photographing birds in flight is challenging, especially when they are flying quickly towards you. Free flight bird shows give you the opportunity to develop skills. This shot, taken with a 200mm lens, shows a Black Kite swooping to catch a pellet of food thrown by the handler. Shutter priority mode was used with an exposure of 1/640 second at f/5.6.

Below: This black-winged Stilt was photographed from a public hide in the Bicentennial Park Wetlands in Western Sydney. The area is free to visit and popular with bird photographers, particularly between September and April when more than 15 species of migratory shorebirds flock to the area to feed in flocks of up to 500 birds.

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SHOOTING TIPS

‘Shutter priority mode is useful for "freezing" the wing beats of birds in flight.’

Centre-weighted average metering will deliver correct exposures under most conditions, although you should probably swap to spot or partial metering for backlit subjects. Shutter priority mode is useful for ‘freezing’ the wing EHDWV RI ELUGV LQ ÁLJKW 6HW WKH ,62 WR DXWR DQG limit the range over which it can be adjusted, establishing a minimum shutter speed to minimise blurring. Make the most of image stabilisation for hand-held shots.

Select the correct AF area mode from the options your camera provides, taking advantage of options like subject tracking. Birds’ head DQG RU H\H UHFRJQLWLRQ LV DYDLODEOH LQ VRPH cameras to prevent missed shots. Wide focus DUHDV ZRUN ZHOO ZKHQ VKRRWLQJ ELUGV LQ ÁLJKW ZKLOH small AF areas are good for stationary subjects.

‘Spray and Pray’ shooting – using the camera’s Continuous High Speed shutter mode – is best avoided. It’s noisy, which can ‘spook’ subjects; it’s wasteful and it only works when you use a fast camera with very fast and accurate AF plus a fast card with adequate storage.

Shooting tips 'RQ·W XVH /LYH 9LHZ WKH YLHZÀQGHU LV JHQHUDOO\ more responsive and you’re less obvious to subjects. A lens hood will reduce the impact of stray light. Be aware of distracting elements, such as foliage and other people or animals intruding into the shot. (You may not notice them when focusing on the subject.)

Be selective; a sharp, correctly-exposed picture of a common bird doing something interesting in good light is superior to a blurred shot of a rare

bird doing nothing in bad light. Always aim for a well framed composition that captures the essence of the subject. &DSWXULQJ ELUGV LQ ÁLJKW LV FKDOOHQJLQJ DQG different people can have different views about what makes a good picture. However, good shots will always have: • The main subject sharply focused.

• Minimal background distractions.

• Either a total ‘freeze’ of motion or slight blurring due to wing beats.

• An interesting subject attitude, such as take-off, landing, diving, neck extension or novel wing, leg or body position or showing activities like aerial combat or carrying food, prey or nest material.

• )OLJKW IRUPDWLRQV DQG RU V\PPHWU\ $LP WR ÀOO WKH IUDPH ZLWK WKH VXEMHFW WR NHHS any cropping to the minimum. Where possible, take horizontal and vertical shots. If you see a bird doing something unusual take a photograph; if possible record a sequence showing the behavior. Shots like this can often be valuable for scientists and ecologists.

Many public spaces have hides built near areas frequented by birds. They are usually well maintained and will let you get closer to shy species. If there’s no hide, try shooting from a vehicle (birds often ignore them) or a tent.

Carry camera protection whenever bad weather threatens, even if it is only a plastic EDJ $ERYH DOO DYRLG XVLQJ ÁDVK

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OLYMPUS SPECIAL PROMOTION

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OLYMPUS SPECIAL PROMOTION

THE EARLY RISER Every photographic journey begins in its own way. Some start with a hand me down camera from a doting parent, or after ending up as designated photographer on a gap year backpacking adventure overseas with friends.

For MorningBondi.com’s Amaury Tréguer it started with an early morning training regime on the sands of Bondi back in 2011.

‘Every morning, I was waking up at 5.30am to train down the beach with a few friends,’ Amaury says. ‘I kept on being amazed by the sensational and ever-changing sunrises.’

So, he started taking pictures with his phone.

‘After a few months, I got hooked and started to move on from my phone to a compact camera and then quite rapidly I was taking a

full-on SLR down the beach. I never intended to become a photographer but the passion grew organically and I've been taking photos for the last 10 years almost every day. So I guess I became one.’

Although he didn’t realise it at first, like his photography career, the idea of Morning Bondi also began with those early pictures.

At first he was posting them to a photo album on his Facebook page, but he says, ‘After a few months, I decided to start a dedicated Facebook Page so that more people could enjoy the daily photos of sunrises. The Morning Bondi community has now grown a fair bit across various social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, a newsletter and a website.’

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OLYMPUS SPECIAL PROMOTION

Since being introduced to Olympus in 2017, Amaury has been a firm convert to the brand.

‘Olympus gear is perfectly suited for my Morning Bondi routine,’ he says. ‘I'm usually down at the beach from 6-7.30am, exercising, swimming, having coffees with friends and I’m taking photos all the time.

‘I need a light and compact, dust, sand and weatherproof interchangeable lens camera that I can easily carry around and which still delivers an amazing image resolution for printing purposes. And that’s pretty much what the OM-D E-M1 Mark II is all about.

‘Most days I shoot with the E-M1 Mark II and an M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens’, Amaury says, adding ‘When I shoot from the water, I use the same E-M1 Mark II body, but with the M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 which fits perfectly in the Olympus PT-EP14 underwater case. I actually love the fact that Olympus is probably the only camera system that offers water-housing options as part of their range.’

You might think that taking pictures of the same beach every day would get to be a challenge, but while agreeing that it can indeed be demanding to sustain his inspiration when the skies turn grey and the southerly wind sweeps away all but the hardiest beachgoers, Amaury says, ‘the beauty of Bondi is that there is never a dull moment. If it's not the sunrise that is spectacular, the surf might be big – or a completely flat 'Lake Bondi' – there might be whales cruising along the coast, dolphins jumping around, cockatoos going mad or simply people on their morning routine. I'm always amazed by the number of people that you see around 6am exercising, walking, surfing

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or swimming. One thing that I love about my Morning Bondi routine is that I've had a chance to meet so many people, the same early-birds, who like me can't start their days without a stroll along the beach or a dip in the ocean.’

For the last couple of years Amaury has worked as Executive Director Social at an agency called Red Havas where he oversees a team of 18 social media specialists. Asked how he ranks the various social media platforms from the perspective of a photographer, he says ‘Your website should always be the core of your ecosystem. Nowadays, you should focus most of your efforts on platforms that you own – as opposed to 'rented' platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter that receive low organic reach and are subject to unpredictable algorithms. If I could dedicate more time to Morning Bondi, I would spend it writing blog articles and using social platforms and newsletters to drive traffic to it.’

Reluctant as he is to embrace the label ‘photographer’, when asked what advice he has for others starting their own journey in the medium, Amaury says that in his view there are two key keys to success: experience and consistency. ‘The more photos you take, the better they get. Thanks to hard work and dedication, I do feel like my photography has improved a lot over the years. When I scroll through some of my older photos, I sometimes think ‘why would I ever post that…’. But, Morning Bondi has been a fantastic journey so far and I'm hoping that there is a lot more to come.’ w www.morningbondi.com w www.olympus-imaging.com.au

OLYMPUS SPECIAL PROMOTION

The beauty of Bondi is that there is never a dull moment.

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INSIDER

Understanding chromaticity diagrams WE EXPLAIN HOW TO ‘READ’ AND UTILISE THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE GRAPHS USED TO PLOT COLOUR PERFORMANCE IN OUR MONITOR REVIEWS. Margaret Brown

Q

In a chromaticity diagram, luminance (brightness) is plotted against two colour co-ordinates, x and y.

The gamut boundary contains all the colours that can be perceived with normal human vision.

The numbers around the borders of this space represent wavelengths of light in nanometers.

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uantifying colour is difficult. You can’t be sure the hues and tones you see are exactly the same as those seen by anyone else and if you’re that uncertain, how can you be sure the pictures you take will communicate the colours you saw in the subject in a way that represents what you saw?

Because photographers communicate with images, accurate colour reproduction is important to convey the key ‘messages’ of pictures. Yet many people are confused by the different settings in the devices they use and few implement systems that can track and manage colour reproduction from capture through to output in order to ensure their images are reproduced as faithfully as possible.

What’s needed is a standard way to track colour reproduction from capture to output – and that’s where chromaticity diagrams can play an important role.

Chromaticity diagrams Chromaticity diagrams show the range of colours that can be reproduced by a camera, monitor or printer. Their most common use in photography is for showing the range (gamut) of colours a device can display compared with the range of colours people with ‘normal’ vision can perceive (370 to 730 nanometers).

Colours are defined by three attributes: hue (what we know as ‘colour), chroma (saturation, or how strong or vivid the colour is) and value (lightness or darkness). These attributes are given numerical values and plotted out in a chromaticity diagram, which looks a bit like a tilted triangle with some rounded points and is shown in the graphic on this page.

Defining colours Colour perception – and the interpretation of colour – is highly subjective. It’s affected by physiological factors like your age, whether you have some degree of colour ‘blindness’ and even how tired you are. Environmental factors that can also play a role include light levels, the presence of other colours in the area and the colour of the illuminating light.

Many of these factors were considered almost a century ago in Paris, when a branch of the International Standards Organisation (which also oversees the ISO standards for measuring sensitivity) set up the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) to standardise colour measurement. In 1931, the CIE released a colour matching system that specifies each colour on the basis of its wavelength.

The CIE 1931 system specifies which combinations of light will appear to be the same colour to people with ‘normal’ human vision (free from any degree of colour blindness). Colours falling outside of the gamut boundary can’t be seen or reproduced. Because wavelength is easy to measure, this system can be used for accurately quantifying the colours that can be reproduced in print or on digital displays.

INSIDER

The primary colours (‘hues’) of red, green and blue are assigned to the apexes of the triangle, with green at the top since human eyes are most sensitive to this waveband. Between the apex points lie colours that are intermediates between each pair of apexes.

Throughout the diagram, the highest saturation lies along the gamut boundary. As you move inwards, saturation is reduced until the point at which all the colour wavelengths combine to become pure white.

Colour spaces In 1976 the CIE released the CIEL*a*b* system of colour values, an international standard that expresses colour as three values: L* for the lightness from black (0) to white (100), a* from green (−) to red (+), and b* from blue (−)

to yellow (+). This system enables colours to be defined by numbers and forms the basis for a ‘device-independent’ colour space, which defines colours independently of how they are created or displayed.

Photographers will recognise CIEL*a*b* as the Lab colour space, which is supported by the most capable image editors as well as TIFF image files and PDF documents. While CIEL*a*b* numerical values are used in chromaticity plots, the LAB space is three-dimensional and covers the entire range (gamut) of human colour perception.

This makes LAB Colour the standard against which all other colour spaces are compared.

LAB colour is used by the PantoneLive colour library as well as Datacolor spectrophotometers (for colour difference calculations) and for ICC profile connections.

‘Photographers communicate with images, so accurate colour reproduction is important to convey the key ‘messages’ of pictures.’

More capable image editors provide support for the CIEL*a*b* colour space, which is usually labelled as ‘Lab color’.

This illustration shows typical default colour settings found in camera menus (left) and printer interfaces (right).

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INSIDER

Sometimes you’ll see an additional standard illuminant label added; usually D65 or D50. D65 corresponds to approximately 6500 K (Kelvin), which is the colour of daylight at noon (and also in the sRGB colour space). (Note: CIELAB D50 is available in ICC profiles as a profile connection space named ‘Lab color space’, which is slightly warmer at around 5000K.) The main place where these terms will be encountered is during hardware and software colour measurements for monitor calibration.

Photographic colour spaces

This graphic shows all the colour spaces commonly used in photography, including the standard sRGB and Adobe RGB colour spaces provided in most cameras.

Note the area covered by the SWOP CMYK pentagon as this is the range of colours that can be produced by a typical commercial printer. (Inkjet photo printers will usually cover a slightly wider gamut.)

In photography, we tend to rely on the sRGB and Adobe RGB colour spaces. sRGB is the ‘universal’ colour space shared by most cameras and screens (monitors, TVs and EVFs). Use it and your pictures should look the same (with a few reservations) everywhere, all the time.

Adobe RGB (1998) covers a wider range and was designed to encompass most of the colours achievable in the CMYK colour space used by colour printers. It is preferable when your images are destined for printing.

Neither sRGB nor Adobe RGB covers the entire gamut of human colour perception. If a colour falls outside the range of the colour space used

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by a device, it usually gets clipped to the closest expressible colour. To overcome the limits of sRGB and Adobe RGB, additional colour spaces have been defined, some for specific applications.

The ProPhoto RGB colour space encompasses a wider gamut than Adobe RGB, although it is only supported by high-end professional cameras. Using it can be slightly problematic because it includes colours outside of the human visual range.

The Colormatch RGB working space has a smaller gamut than Adobe RGB but a wider gamut than sRGB. It is mainly used in the printing industry, and by photographers for proofing images that will be printed on a CMYK press.

The SWOP CMYK profile is used by commercial printers and based on standardised cyan, magenta, yellow and black (‘key’) inks. It’s only relevant to photographers when images are printed by web offset printers; for example when photos are published in magazines like Photo Review.

Compared with sRGB and Adobe RGB, the SWOP CMYK colour space is quite narrow and it doesn’t show the colour purity of the axes on the gamut plot. Blue-greens, in particular, are hard to reproduce accurately in this colour space.

INSIDER

Gamut plots from two monitors calibrated eight years apart. The plot on the left shows a monitor that can only display the sRGB colour space accurately. The plot on the right is for a more modern screen that performs very well when displaying images in the sRGB and Adobe RGB plus the video-orientated DCI-P3 (‘P3’) colour space.

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INSIDER

This graphic shows colour accuracy charts obtained for two monitors with Datacolor’s Spyder spectrophotometer. The numerical values used are based upon the CIEL*a*b* system.

When it comes to video, sRGB is the default colour space for most cameras but it’s unrelated to professional broadcast standards. Most of the latest ‘full frame’ mirrorless cameras will include one or more of the colour spaces used for professional broadcast work.

The Rec. 709 video colour space is almost identical to sRGB with the same chromaticity values and the same gamut but a different encoding transfer function. If you’re creating video for broadcast on online delivery, Rec. 709 is supported by all common display technologies across many devices.

DCI-P3 (‘P3’) is a wide gamut video colour space introduced by the SMPTE for digital cinema projection so it’s closely matched to the gamut of colour movie film. Most professional reference monitors can display the full DCI-P3 gamut. Apple devices have supported it since iOS10.

Rec. 2020 is an alternative colour space designed for UHD HDR and includes support for 10-bit and 12-bit colour depth. It’s not commonly used in amateur equipment and few display technologies are fully compliant.

But as OLED HDR televisions become more common it may gain popularity.

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Chromaticity diagrams in use In photography, chromaticity diagrams are most commonly used in monitor calibration, usually to make gamut plots for comparing the colour gamut of the display against commonly-used colour spaces (generally sRGB and Adobe RGB).

They can also be used for comparing two or more monitors attached to the same computer as well as for finding out which colours will be clipped if they occur outside the range of the colour space used by your camera, monitor or printer.

Calibration provides a relatively quick and straightforward way to see whether the monitor you’re using is capable of displaying the hues and tones your camera can capture with the colour space you’ve selected. If you use fully automatic camera settings and monitors that are configured to reproduce the sRGB gamut, there’s little point in calibration since both camera and screen default to sRGB. For serious photographers who shoot with the Adobe RGB colour space to encompass a wider colour gamut it’s important to know whether the screen on which you view your photos is capable of displaying all the colours the camera can record. If it can’t, out-of-gamut colours will be clipped when images are displayed on

the screen and it may be difficult to obtain a natural-looking colour balance.

Chromaticity diagrams are also useful when images are printed as they can show which colours will be clipped when shots are printed with the SWOP CMYK profile. ICC profiles for pairing up printers and media can play an important role in reducing the degree of clipping to ensure your prints retain the widest possible colour gamut.

Note that colour gamut alone does not determine image quality. But the ability to maintain consistent and accurate colours throughout the imaging workflow – from capture to output – is underpinned by being able to see how well the monitor display can match the image hues and tones your camera records to the prints you make.

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EDITING TIPS

Increasing image resolution WE LOOK AT DIFFERENT METHODS FOR OBTAINING MORE RESOLUTION OUT OF PHOTOGRAPHS WITH CURRENT IMAGE EDITORS. Margaret Brown

W

hen photographers talk about increasing an image’s resolution, they’re usually referring to its pixel count. In this feature we’ll look at options to create more pixels that are available through editing software. Best results will be obtained if you start with the highest native resolution of the image sensor or, when scanning images, decide the size for the end use of the image to be scanned and set the scanner resolution accordingly. (As outlined in the previous issue of Photo Review, to make A4 sized prints from a 35mm slide requires a scanning resolution of 2400 ppi, while for an A3 print you should scan at 4800 ppi.)

The challenges of upsampling The only practical option for increasing resolution in a given file is up-sampling with editing software. Most image editors can be used, but the process can be tricky and you may not get the result you want. No matter how good your software is, there’s a limit to what you can do to improve a low-resolution photo.

How far can you go? That depends on the image you start with and the method used to increase the pixel count. This is why you should shoot at the highest available resolution and quality.

The up-sampling process involves adding pixels to an image, using interpolation to fill in the gaps between the existing and newly-added pixels. There are several up-sampling techniques but whichever one you choose it’s important to understand that each has limits and no technique will increase the apparent detail in the image without imposing some compromises.

In Photoshop, clicking on Image > Image Size opens the dialog box shown in the top right corner of the frame, which provides all the resizing options. Copies of adjustments available are also superimposed on the screen grab.

Using this dialog box you can simply key in the desired dimensions of the image in one of the eight parameters provided in the dropdown box (second from the top right corner) and the software will do the rest. Make sure the Resample box is checked.

You also need to select the resample method (third box). The default setting is Preserve Details (enlargement). Photoshop provides six resizing methods in addition to an Auto setting that evaluates the image

as a whole and guesses the most appropriate resampling method to use.

Preserve Details is considered the best choice for up-sampling most images.

Consider this scenario: a friend has asked you to make a print of a photo taken with a compact camera about 20 years ago for fitting into an A4 sized frame. The image, which is shown on page 48, was taken at VGA resolution (480 x 640 pixels) and 96 pixels per inch (ppi). It’s the only photo they have of the child at that time.

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EDITING TIPS

This illustration shows the degree of enlargement required to print a VGA image at 96 ppi on a sheet of A4 paper.

Enlarging a VGA image to A4 size is a big ask; the ideal resolution for printing is 300 ppi, which means the best quality setting for this image is 2.13 inches by 1.6 inches. That’s a long way from A4 size. It’s unlikely you could enlarge the original enough to make a decent print, even when allowing for margins of roughly 2 cm around the picture.

In this case we’d be turning a 480 x 640 pixel image measuring 12.7 x 16.93 mm at 96 ppi into an image that is 170 mm (6.69 inches) wide and 226.7 mm high - or 2008 x 2678 pixels at 300 ppi. That represents a roughly 17 times increase in resolution from 900 kilobytes to 15.4 Megabytes.

You would expect image quality to deteriorate with such a substantial enlargement. And, not surprisingly, it’s easy to see JPEG artefacts in the enlarged picture in the form of outlining and a loss of apparent sharpness and subtle tonal transitions.

Other software applications provide different resampling options. Corel’s PaintShop Pro lets users choose to upsample by pixels, percentage, print size or the height or width dimensions required. It also provides an AI-Powered resampling algorithm with separate modes for Photorealistic or Illustration.

Affinity Photo offers a choice of Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic and Lanczos 3, the latter being a complex algorithmic method that delivers the best results but with long processing times. IrfanView software, which is free to non-commercial users, also offers Lanczos3 interpolation plus five other resampling methods.

AI-based upsampling

Some of the JPEG artefacts resulting from excessive enlargement are shown in this illustration.

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A recent update to Adobe’s Camera Raw (ACR Version 13.2) improves on existing resampling methods. As well as providing a quick – and remarkably effective – way to upsample images by up to a factor of four, it can be used with most image files, including JPEGs, TIFFs or raw files from most digital cameras. You can work on raw files directly in ACR but JPEGs and TIFFs must be opened via Adobe Bridge.

The new Super Resolution tool represents an extension of the Enhance Details feature already available in Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC. It works through the demosaicing process, which is used to combine the red, green and blue values of each pixel to

EDITING TIPS

create a colour value for each pixel based on the relative proportions of each primary colour.

Typically, the demosaicing algorithm averages the colour values across four neighboring pixels to determine each pixel’s hue. Demosaicing can be straightforward in parts of the image with smooth gradients or constant colour, such as blue skies. But the calculations become very complex for areas with texture, fine details, repeating patterns and well-defined edges.

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) – or machine learning – comes into play.

The original Enhance Details used a ‘trained’ convolutional neural net (CNN) created by examining more than a billion examples of potentially problematic images to fine-tune demosaicing methods so they would deliver higher resolution and more accurate rendering of edges and details, along with fewer artefacts like false colors and moiré patterns.

Super Resolution represents the next step in the machine learning process. According to Adobe, it uses a ‘deep convolutional neural network’ that goes further than the processes used for the Enhance Details function and trains directly from the raw data to make the most of potential image quality.

The dialog box will show how long the image processing will take (usually a couple of seconds) and the software will produce a new raw file in the Digital Negative (DNG) format that contains the enhanced photo at twice the resolution of the original. Any adjustments you made to the source photo will be carried over to the enhanced DNG file. The enhanced image should be saved automatically in the original folder.

Super Resolution processing is currently restricted to images no larger than 65000 pixels on the long side and up to 500 megapixels in size. The processing works best on raw files. If it’s used on highly compressed JPEGs or HEIC files, any inherent artefacts are likely to become more visible. Computers with faster graphics processors (GPUs) will deliver quicker results and the process can leverage the advantages of CoreML and Windows ML machine learning technologies.

Even within its current limitations, Super Resolution processing can produce very large files, which take longer to read from disk.

Fast storage drives will be advantageous, as will increasing the cache memory in your editing software.

Different resampling methods are offered by different image editors, as shown here. Top: Corel PaintShop Pro, Middle: Affinity Photo, Bottom: IrfanView.

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EDITING TIPS

We found the results to be generally good – and better than the existing upsampling methods in Adobe’s software. The screen grabs on this page show the application of Super Resolution processing applied to an ORF. 5$: ÀOH IURP D PHJDSL[HO 2O\PSXV 7* FDPHUD ZKLFK HQDEOHG us to create a double-page spread in a photo book we were printing on 12 x 12 inch paper. But we’d caution against pushing the process further WKDQ WKDW XQOHVV \RX KDYH KLJK TXDOLW\ ÀOHV

Using Super Resolution is easy; just right-click on the displayed image (or click while holding down the Control key) and select Enhance from the drop-down menu.

Then, in the Enhance Preview dialog box, check the Super Resolution box and press the Enhance button.

The top screen grab shows the resolution of the original image, while the lower one shows the doubling of resolution that occurs with one application of Super Resolution processing.

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BAGGING BACKYARD BIRDS INCREASING IMAGE RESOLUTION UNDERSTANDING CHROMATICITY DIAGRAMS RESTORING OLD PHOTOS

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EDITING TIPS

Restoring old photos TOOLS AND TACTICS TO HELP YOU BRING OLD PHOTOGRAPHS BACK TO LIFE. Margaret Brown

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f you followed our ‘Copying old photos’ article in the last issue of Photo Review magazine you will probably have a collection of images digitised from old photographs. In this article we’ll look at ways in which you can remove blemishes and restore hues and tones to create some semblance of what these photos looked like when they were first taken.

Full restoration of damaged photos can be very time-consuming and involve a lot of detailed work. If you hand the job to professionals you can expect to spend up to $500 per image, depending on the condition of the original and the end result you expect.

But if you’re prepared to do the job yourself, some basic steps can produce noticeable improvements to most photos. And the requisite tools can be found in any dedicated image editor.

Furthermore, you can do it much more cheaply and it needn’t take nearly as long.

What can be fixed

The cropping tool provided an easy fix for the patches of mould identified in the top picture of this pair. The lower picture shows the image after cropping.

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Sometimes fixes can be really simple. A simple cropping of the top of the picture on this page not only removed the blemish caused by mould near the top of the frame, but simultaneously improved the shot’s composition.

Yellowing and fading are just as easy to fix with the one-click Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Colour functions. You may need to apply some additional tweaks with the manual contrast control and/or the Levels or Curves tools.

Creases, tears and mould spots can often be at least partially removed with the healing

and/or cloning brushes. But a lot depends upon which areas of the image they cover. If they occur in a detailed area, restoration is usually possible as long as you’re prepared to spend the time needed and have the required degree of expertise. But sometimes the amount of work involved may not justify the effort.

Stains produced by contact with rust and food/drink spills can often be removed, although in some cases the process can be very time-consuming. Adhesive residues resulting from storing photos in so-called ‘magnetic’ photo albums, which were popular in the 1970s, can also be difficult to remove without damaging the emulsion and may require professional attention.

Old colour photos are often faded, but seldom to the degree where some of their original vibrancy can’t be restored. Most image editors include one-click automated settings that can improve the tone, colour and contrast.

Sometimes they will provide the improvements you need but more commonly, further adjustments will be required (you may need to ‘undo’ the auto correction when it produces an unattractive result).

All editors provide global adjustments for brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation. Noise-reduction filters are also available. Most also support levels and/or curves adjustments and many allow users to create layers, which can be turned into masks to facilitate adjustments to localized areas in the image.

EDITING TIPS

‘Old colour photos are often faded, but seldom to the degree where some of their original vibrancy can’t be restored.’

Four common problems you’re likely to encounter when restoring old photos.

Clockwise from top left: yellowing and fading, tearing, stains, creases.

Photographs like the top picture, which was taken during World War II, are worth spending time on since they represent valuable family records. Fortunately in this case, the creases on the picture could be quickly and easily eliminated with the cloning tool, as shown in the edited version below. Most of the other blemishes were easy to correct with the healing tools. The image was also cropped to remove the large area of blank sky.

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EDITING TIPS

‘Full restoration of damaged photos can be very time-consuming.’

Applying automated fixes to a faded image goes part of the way towards restoring original brightness, contrast and colours. But further editing will be required to fix blemishes and introduce some needed contrast and vibrancy. Unsharp masking is also likely to be required.

After removing all the blemishes with the spot healing brush we applied +40 of Contrast adjustment, +40 of Vibrance and +10 of Saturation before adding unsharp masking to achieve this end result. These adjustments took roughly 10 minutes.

The tools you’ll need Most problems can be fixed with a small number of familiar editing tools. Always enlarge the image you‘re working on to at least 200% to make it easy to work on small blemishes. Make use of the following tools: 1. The Cropping tool can cut off areas that aren’t worth spending time on if their removal won’t affect the main content of the picture. It can also be used to improve shot composition by removing areas of uninteresting sky or foreground.

2. The Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush are used to overpaint blemishes with similar tones and textures.

The Healing Brush requires you to select a ‘source point’ in the image similar to the area you want to fix.

The Spot Healing Brush, which is normally ‘context aware’, creates its own source point by sampling pixels surrounding the spot you want to remove.

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3. The Clone Stamp tool is used to paint one part of an image over another part of the same image or part of one layer over another layer. Although not ‘context aware’, it can be handy for fixing blank sky areas and when the healing brushes aren’t quite precise enough.

4. The Patch tool lets you repair a selected area with a ‘patch’ of pixels from another area. Working much like the clone tool, it can match the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels. A slider adjusts how quickly the pasted region diffuses into the surrounding image.

5. The dodging and burning tools allow you to lighten (or darken) parts of the image. Adjust the size, hardness and strength (percentage) of the brush to meet requirements, starting with a relatively low percentage.

Note that the sizes of the healing brush tips and the clone tools are adjustable and users can control the ‘hardness’ or ‘softness’ of the edge of the brush. Most editors also include options for setting blending mode, opacity and flow of the adjustments.

When working on colour originals you can use the contrast, vibrancy and saturation sliders to restore colours. You may also require the colour balance adjustment to correct unattractive colour biases. All good editors will provide these tools.

Layers can be used for localised adjustments, using the Layer>New plus Layer via Copy or New Adjustment Layer options. They are best used to single-out areas in which adjustments can be applied without affecting the rest of the image.

EDITING TIPS

What can’t be fixed Today’s editing/retouching tools are powerful; but there are some things you simply can’t fix as well as a few where the time involved in achieving a result far outweighs the end quality you can obtain. For example, it’s not worth spending time on seriously out-of-focus images because even the sharpening and shake reduction tools will seldom yield acceptable results – although they may be worth trying on images that are slightly soft or blurred.

Burned-out highlights and blocked-up shadows are not worth spending time on because you can’t put back details that weren’t recorded in the initial exposure.

It’s worth working on photos containing recognisable people who are correctly exposed if only areas like white shirts or dark trousers lack details.

Be aware that sometimes the shadow details can be revealed, especially if the originals were on film. But this is best accomplished by adjustments at the scanning stage.

Poor shot compositions can sometimes be salvaged by cropping, straightening and re-framing; but not if it involves unacceptable compromises.

applications will provide multiple ‘undo’ steps that allow you to work back through the edits you’ve made until the last time the image was saved. Saving your work will ‘bake in’ the last changes you made and regardless of how many undo steps the software supports, you can’t go back once the image is saved.

Always work on a copy of your original image and save the original separately. This ensures you can start again whenever you’ve made changes that subsequently prove unsatisfactory.

Editing tips Try to match the diameter of the brush to the size of the blemishes you need to remove.

In areas without noticeable detail (like skies) it is often better to use a slightly larger brush, keeping its edges very soft so they blend in with the background.

Swap from the spot healing to the healing brush when working on detailed areas, making sure you ‘pick up’ areas similar in tone and texture when copying pixels across to the area you need to fix. The same applies when using the cloning and patch tools.

Use short strokes across the blemish, ensuring you pick up some of the surrounding pixels. Longer strokes can work well when removing fibres, particularly if they’re not in detailed areas. Where there’s surrounding detail, stick with the short strokes.

You can easily adjust the strength of adjustments, either in the Edit dropdown menu or, if you’ve carried out the adjustments on a layer, by changing the opacity of the layer. All the best editing software includes easily-accessible help files and many developers provide video tutorials that cover various functions. Use them to expand your knowledge of what the various tools can do and how they work.

The best way to learn about image editing is by actually doing a restoration. All worthwhile

Out-of-focus pictures like the one shown above can’t be fixed with any readily-available editing tool so they’re not worth wasting time on.

Adjustments that have been taken too far can be easily controlled with the Fade slider, shown here in use to reduce the effect of a dodging brush.

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COMPETITIONS

Image review

Making Little Hoverflies

By Ros Osborne Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark ll; 60mm macro lens

Capturing an image of mating hoverflies in mid-flight proved quite challenging!

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Don’s response As anyone who has ever watched these tiny insects knows, they only hover in one spot for a moment before zipping away. An image search suggests that Ros has captured a pair of Ischiodon scutellaris, or Yellow-shouldered slender hoverflies. The larvae resulting from this union will feed on aphids before growing up to become 10mm long adults like these.

Hats off to Ros for having the patience and skill to capture this exceptionally vivid picture.

COMPETITIONS

European Honey Bee On Hibiscus Stigma

By Ron Johnson Nikon D500; Sigma 150mm macro; 1/1600s; f/13; ISO 1250; Manual; Handheld.

The dark background is natural and is the shadow on the dark green leaves.

Cropped to 16:9 ratio.

Cloned some orange colour from a couple of corners which was annoying me.

Don’s response The subjects could be found in many suburban gardens, but the image is plainly the work of a skilled photographer. Common as the elements may be, getting them in focus, perfectly lit and delightfully sharp is no mean feat. We’ve published a number of photographer Ron Johnson’s pictures for the same reason we’ve shared this – the composition and technique are impeccable, and they are produced using nothing more exotic than a reasonable camera and a reasonable macro lens.

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COMPETITIONS

The Artichoke

By Tito Prato Nikon D800; 60mm macro lens; f/5; 1/100; ISO 200 with ring flash.

It represents the artichoke section on a black background.

The use of the ring flash increases the contrast.

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Don’s response Images such as this one from Tito Prato remind me how often we take for granted photography's special power to capture the ephemeral flashes of beauty we encounter in everyday life. What could be more ephemeral than a sliced artichoke heart that has clearly reached the point where it is fit only for the compost? And yet, even in its decaying state there is something softly melancholy about those loosening folds and that delicately beautiful mauve heart.

COMPETITIONS

Tasmanian Thornbill

By Shane Walker Canon 5D Mark lV; 100-400mm lens; 1/60s; f/8; ISO 800

A Tasmanian Thornbill dashing round a shrub early one morning on a frosty morning. Didn't have a chance to change settings at the time as the bird just showed up, was fast-moving and the size of a computer mouse, if that.

Don’s response Photographer Shane Walker may not have had time to double check his settings beforehand, but his quick hands and obvious skill delivered the results. Along with the quiet delights of all the fine detail in the little Thornbill’s plumage, I love the frosty look of the foliage and the creamy smooth bokeh of the background. While one might wish that one frond wasn’t clashing with the beak and forehead of our star, I think this is nonetheless a keeper. Some might think it cheating, but if this were my picture, I’d consider a little judicious “pruning” in post.

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COMPETITIONS

Stirling Range

By Lionel Mawhinney Nikon D5600; 18-140mm lens

Taken during a sunset whilst a top the Stirling Range Ridge in the south west of Western Australia.

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Don’s response This is a time-honoured technique for landscape shooters.

And rightly so. To work well, as this study from Lionel Mawhinney does so beautifully, it really helps to have the sun low in the sky and the angle of view slightly off a direct contre-jour (ie: angled to the WNW or WSW in the southern hemisphere). The almost panoramic aspect ratio is just right for the long, serried ranks of the ridgelines.

I like the way the image gradations step from the deeply shadowed foreground through a succession of delicate, slightly lighter tonal values until our eye arrives at that distant peak, standing out against the nearly white sky.

As a lifelong devotee of black and white landscape, I’d love to see how this would scrub up in mono.

COMPETITIONS

Eagles Nest Low Tide

By Trace O’Rourke Sony A7R II; FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS lens; ISO 200; 1/125s; f/8 @ 24mm

Exploring the Gippsland coast, this vantage point can only be accessed at low tide.

This sandstone formation is called Eagles Nest. The top half also resembles the top of Australia.

Don’s response This image grew on me. It’s not a particularly dramatic landscape, but photographer Trace O’Rourke’s decision to use her lens at its shortest focal length has given the composition an understated but distinctive intensity. Although the Eagles Nest formation has a certain visual interest, the viewer’s eye is drawn to it by the subtle leading lines in the streaky clouds and the extended fronds of the seaweed in the foreground that seem to reach toward the centrally positioned crag.

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NET EFFECT

FROM LARTIGUE’S BOYHOOD PICTURES AND ARRESTING WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY TO THE QUASI-HIPSTER WORLD OF LOMOGRAPHY, OUR EDITOR HAS BEEN KEEPING BUSY ON YOUR BEHALF.

In Black and White

Lartigue Online

Wild World Seen

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Born into immense wealth, Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) might have lived out his entire life largely unknown outside the exclusive social circles he inhabited. However, in 1966 a collection of photographs he’d taken just before WWI were published in Boyhood photographs of JH Lartigue and he strode into the pantheon of photography. His memorial foundation maintains a selection of his albums, which are accessible at the click of your mouse. Highly recommended.

London’s Natural History Museum’s annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year award started life back in 1965 as a magazine competition.

They received 361 entries. This year they’re expecting 45,000 entries in what has become one of the world’s most important wildlife photography competitions. Even if you’re not a wildlife photographer, spending time with these beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking images will leave you inspired and uplifted.

The BJP

Mervyn Bishop considered

Lomography culture

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In 1991, a group of Viennese students found a beautiful and curious little camera in an old fashioned photography shop. Called the Lomo LC-A, it was a Soviet copy of a Japanese compact camera called the CX-1. When the students got home and processed their film they were smitten with its distinctive image quality.

Fast forward to the present and there is a large international community of Lomographers for whom a dizzying array of retro film cameras and lenses are now being manufactured.

Their website and online Lomography magazine are an absolute analogue treat.

} www.bit.ly/pr88ne4 Starting life in 1854 as the Liverpool Photographic Journal, the British Journal of Photography, describes itself as ‘the world’s oldest and most influential photography title’. Now owned by a digital media company called 1854, the print edition has a companion digital version and of course a website. Content is updated frequently, and given the pedigree, there’s a fair old back catalogue. It’s a membership site, so you’ll have to provide an email address if you want to read more than two articles.

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Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive’s exhibition “Mervyn Bishop: Australian Photojournalist” opened in March of this year and runs until 1 August. Bishop’s 60 year career in photography began when a school friend’s father showed him a developing print in a home darkroom. Born in Brewarrina, Bishop is perhaps best known for the iconic image of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring sand into Vincent Lingiari’s hand to symbolise the hand back of ownership of his people’s traditional lands.

OFF

} www.bit.ly/pr88ne6 Photographer Tim Nevell’s sinuous road in a snowy landscape captured first place in BNW Minimalism Magazine’s Black and White Minimalist Photography competition.

An unapologetic fan of monochrome images, your editor found much to inspire him among the photographs and recommends it to all of our readers who share a love of black and white’s mysterious power.

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