Jim Zuckerman’s
PH OTO I N S I G HTS November 2013
• HDR at twilight • Winter bones • Paint abstracts • Chromatic aberration • Student showcase • Photo tours
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Table of Contents
4. HDR at twilight 11. Chromatic aberration 13. Winter bones 17. Paint abstracts 22. What’s wrong with this picture? 24. Short and sweet 26. Ask Jim 29. Student showcase 33. Back issues 2
Iwas sent an interesting artile by a subscriber
to this eMagazine, who is also a photo student of mine. It is something that should make all of you very pleased.
According to research at the University of Texas at Dallas, people who are 60-plus years old who take up photography show a significant gain in memory. Passive hobbies and activities like playing games and listening to music produced little memory benefit. More than 200 people were split into various testing groups, and they were asked to participate in an activity at least 15 hours a week. One group learned digital photography and imaging software, which are tasks that require remembering verbal instruction and complex reasoning (as we all know). Compared to other groups who participated in passive activities, these people showed improved memory function. If I can read between the lines, though, I think this doesn’t mean we photographers can remember where we put our car keys, where we parked in a shopping center parking lot, and when our spouse’s birthday is. I’ve been involved in photography for over 40 years, and I’ve been using Photoshop for 22 years, but my wife insists that if my head weren’t attached, I’d forget it! But ask me where a photo location is I visited decades ago or how to calculate the guide number of a flash when the f/stop and flash-to-subject distance is known -- something I learned in the 70s -- that’s not a problem. I guess it’s just the important things we remember.
photos@jimzuckerman.com www.jimzuckerman.com 3
HDR at Twilight
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he most common complaint I hear about HDR is that it doesn’t look real. The color, the contrast, and the structure (contrast and noise) tend to make images look garish, almost cartoon-like. I agree that this is often the case. Landscape photographers are often guilty of producing pictures like this especially when they include the sun the shot. The resulting image is striking, but it doesn’t look natural. HDR doesn’t have to produce images outside of our everyday experience, though. By pulling back on saturation, contrast, and structure, you can create pictures that look exactly like our eyes see reality. Contrast and digital sensors The truth is, though, that if you shoot a contrasty scene without using HDR, it doesn’t look natural at all. Digital sensors are not as sophisticated as our eye/brain combination, and while we see tremendous detail in both highlights and shadows, a single photograph, unmanipulated, doesn’t have a very impressive dynamic range. A case in point is the photo of Sacre Coeur in Paris, below left. This is how traditional twilight images always looked with film, and it’s how they look now with digital technology. The il-
luminated church looks great, but the trees and the grass in the foreground are essentially black with little or no detail. This is not what I saw when I stood there composing the shot. Using HDR, I was able to capture all of the detail in the foliage, below right. The trees and the grass are still darker than the architecture, which is appropriate, but the dynamic range of the image is now impressive. In the photo on the previous page, you can see the same incredible detail. To my eye, this does not look unnatural at all -- except in the context that photographers are so used to dealing with contrast, and a picture with dynamic range that somewhat simulates what we see is simply unexpected. This picture may look less-than-real if you are using as a measure film and single-frame digital captures. But when you compare it to the dynamic range of our brain, this looks correct. HDR and Photoshop CC I am now using the new Photoshop Creative Cloud. I took adantage of their $10/month cost, and I’m very happy with it. One of my favorite ways to blend the bracketed exposures into a final HDR composite is with HDR Efex Pro 2 by Nik Software, but with CC the steps are slightly different than with CS6.
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Here are the steps I use: 1. In Bridge, I highlight the bracketed exposures by holding down the Shift key and clicking on them. Then, holding down the option key on a Mac or the alt key on a PC, drag the RAW images to your desktop. Don’t open them. 2. Go to File > automate > merge to HDR Efex Pro 2.
choose to check the boxes ghost reduction, alignment, and chromatic aberration. I recommend all three. Then, hit Create HDR.
4. Click the button merge dialog. You can choose to check the box smart object, but I never do.
6. At this point, you will be presented with the familiar Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 dialog box with all the presets and sliders so you can tweak the image as you wish. It is here that you can make HDR look natural, or you can go off the deep end and produce a surrealistic composite photograph.
5. When the new dialog box opens, you can
On the next page, you can see a realistic HDR
3. In the dialog box that opens, upper right, click open and navigate to the images that you just dragged to the desktop.
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UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Winter Wildlife Workshop Hinckley, Minnesota Jan. 31 - Feb. 2, 2014
Baby WildlifeWorkshop Hinckley, Minnesota June 13 - 15, 2014
Frog & Reptile Workshop St. Louis, Missouri Jan. 25-26, 2014
Two back-to-back Carnival Workshops, Venice, Italy Feb. 21 - 27 - 23, 2014 Feb. 27 - March 5, 2014
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image along with the small inset showing what we had to accept when shooting twilight before HDR The tops of the trees at the bottom of the frame are extremely dark, and there is just too much contrast. The HDR image is so much more visually dynamic. This is the cathedral in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Let me review the procedure I use in taking the bracketed exposures in the camera. If tripods are allowed: 1. Place camera on tripd, use 400 ISO or less. Turn off the image stabilization. 2. Choose manual exposure mode. 3. Choose lens aperture, keeping in mind how much depth of field you need. All shots must be taken with the same aperture.
4. Take a test exposure to determine where you’ll start the process. Usually you can use the built-in meter to give a light reading that works. Take one photo. 5. Bracket manually in one f/stop increments. Turn the shutter dial to one stop less light, then two stops less light. Next, shoot with one f/ stop overexposed, then two stops overexposed. If the shutter speeds are slow, such as when shooting twilight, use the mirror lockup feature and either the self-timer or a cable release. You want to do everything possible to produce sharp pictures. If tripods are not allowed: There are so many instances when tripods are not permitted, and you need a strategy for this. Even outdoors in situations where you would think ‘who cares if a tripod is used’, someone
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or some policy prohibits it. Therefore, here is how to deal with that. 1. Set your camera to an ISO fast enough to permit a fast shutter speed -- say at least 1/60th of a second. If the environment is fairly dark, that may mean an ISO of 1600, 3200, or even higher if your camera permits that (we’ll deal with the noise later). 2. Go into the menu of the camera and set the auto exposure bracketing. Depending on the camera, you will be able to choose 3, 5 or 7 frames. 5 is ideal in my opinion, but if you only have a choice of 3 bracketed frames, that’s what you’ll use. Set the exposure increments to one f/stop. 3. Set the drive to multi so your camera can fire off all the necessary frames in quick succession. 4. Compose the picture, hold your breath, and gently push the shutter button. All of the pictures
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will be taken in very rapidly. 5. HDR Color Efex Pro 2 will do a very good job in aligning all of the frames assuming there isn’t too much variation. When I shoot, I use the central focusing point in the viewfinder and place it on some element in the shot. I try to keep it there during the multiple exposures. 6. After you go through the HDR process, if there is too much noise, go back into camera raw using this pull down menu (this is new in Photoshop CC): Filter > camera raw filter. Click the details panel icon, seen below, and move the luminance slider to the right. The noise will magically disappear. §
Eliminating
Chromatic Aberration T
here is no way around it. Chromatic aberration is just plain ugly. It needs to be eliminated from your pictures right away.
of a shot of leaves enlarged to 100%. In this instance the purple color is the chromatic aberration, but many times it is magenta, cyan, green, yellow, or red.
Chromatic aberration, or color fringing, is caused by the inability of lenses to bend all of the colors that make up the spectrum of light exactly the same. Red light bends at one angle, blue light bends at a slightly different angle, and the precise point where all of the colors should come together on the digital sensor isn’t as precise as it needs to be. Lens manufacturers try to minimize this, but it’s a very tough problem to solve.
While this problem exists in most lenses, it is most evident and pronounced in wide angle lenses, particularly in the corners of the image. When looking for it, enlarge an image and study the corners of the frame first.
You can see an example below. This is a detail
Photoshop has a tool to eliminate the color fringing (Filter > lens correction), but it’s not very good. Instead, the tool in Adobe Camera Raw is much better and it will completely rid your pictures of chromatic aberration.
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In all previous versions of Photoshop, RAW files had to be processed first before they were brought into Photoshop itself. Now once the picture is being worked on in Photoshop CC, you can bring it back into Adobe Camera Raw for further manipulation whenever you wish. This is good to know because if you forget to eliminate chromatic aberration and you are working on a picture and discover it’s a problem, use the pull down menu command Filter > camera raw filter. In the ACR dialog box, choose the lens correction tab (red arrow, below), and choose the color tab.
doing precise work in Photoshop, you’ll definitely see it. In a section of an image below taken with a 16-35mm wide angle, you can see the red color fringe on the lace curtains.
You can now check the box Remove Chromatic Aberration. Now use the sliders you see in the dialog box at the top of the next column to tweak the picture until you are happy with the results. As I said, when using a wide angle lens you should expect color aberration in the corners. If you are simply sending pictures to friends via email attachments, uploading photos to Facebook and to your website, chromatic aberration won’t be evident. However, for print enlargements or when 12
WINTER BONES
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inter is here for most of the U.S. and other temperate parts of the world, and this opens up wonderful photographic possibilities. For example, you can order from online retailers skulls and other bones of animals and then place them on snow. Set up the shot as if you had just come upon the bones in nature (which might really happen if you do a lot of outdoor activities). I photographed the coyote skull on the previous page in sunrise light after a night’s fresh snowfall. For the picture below, during my winter wildlife workshop in Minnesota (the next one is January 31 through February 2), the owner of the animals had a bear skull. I had the idea of making it look like it had frozen into a pond, so we dug into the ice of his pond and placed the skull in the depression. We poured some hot water on the area so everything melded to-
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gether, and it made a unique image. For the photo at the top of the next page, I placed a replica of a sabre-tooth cat skull (these animals unfortunately became extinct about 10,000 years ago), into a large container of water and placed it in my freezer for a few days. The frozen skull looks like an arctic explorer discovered it during an adventurous trek in the tundra. In all of these pictures, I used good photographic technique: a tripod, 100 ISO, a small lens aperture for complete depth of field, and beautiful light. Note that my choices for lighting were low angled sunlight for the coyote skull and soft and diffused daylight for the others. When shooting on snow or ice, I don’t worry about the brightness adversely affecting the meter reading. I simply take a shot, look at the LCD monitor, and if the picture is too dark or too light, I use the exposure compensation fea-
ture to tweak the exposure in 1/3 f/stop increments. In this way, I don’t have to feel insecure about the exposure. All the guesswork is taken out of the equation.
That’s what I did with the sabre-tooth cat skull. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if I were crosscountry skiing in the far north and happened upon a skull from an extinct animal frozen in the ice?” Then I made that happen.
When I photographed a porcupine during a workshop at a game farm, below right, I used elk Be expansive in your thinking. It’s fun to conantlers as a prop for my group. The antlers look jure up great imagery, and then it’s more fun to completely natural, and they add an interesting make it a reality. § grapic element to the picture. One of the things I learned a long time ago when I first started shooting for a stock agency was that if serendipity isn’t in your favor, then you have to set things up to get awesome pictures. Sometimes we stumble upon a wonderul scene or subject by chance, but usually that doesnt happen. Therefore, by saying to yourself, “Wouldn’t it be nice if . . .”, and a lot of visual ideas can come to mind. 15
E-books to help you take better pictures Click on any ebook to see inside
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Paint Abstracts
antastic images can be created with various colors of paint. The image below right, for example, is simply a porcelain mask I bought in New Orleans, and then I poured water-based paint colors on it. I purchased paint samples for $3 each at Home Depot (or Lowe’s), and I did this in my kitchen with nothing more than the mask and a piece of cardboard for the background. I bought six different colors of paint, but there are literally hundreds to choose from. You don’t have to be an artist in the traditional sense. All you have to be is a photographer with a sense of adventure into the abstract. If you mix a bunch of colors and make a mess, simply start over again. The water-based paint can be easily cleaned up in the sink. For pure abstracts, such as the picture on the next page, you can pour the paint into a shallow Tupperware container. Keep adding color as you go, and the designs will be intriguing as well as artistic. After you’ve photographed various compositions, tilt the Tupperware back and forth and let the paint run together and blend in new and beautiful designs. In one mixture of color you can find many pictures worthy of photographing and then framing as fine art. The Photography Complete depth of field is important. In my opinion, this is not the time to ‘be creative’ with shallow depth of field. Therefore, use small lens apertures like f/16 or f/22 to make sure the images are sharp from edge to edge.
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That means, of course, that you need to use a tripod if using ambient light. If you use flash, the artificial light will provide enough brightness for small lens apertures while hand holding the camera. However, stay away from oncamera flash because the paint will reflect the light and the pictures will be terrible. I took all of the shots you see in this article with a single off-camera Canon 580EX flash. I triggered the flash with a Canon ST-E2 infrared trigger, and I placed the flash at a 45 degree angle to the lens axis. This prevented unwanted reflections in the paint. I used manual exposure mode on the camera and ETTL mode on the flash, and my lens aperture was f/16. Sometimes an unexpected occurance turns into a striking picture. That’s what happened with the photograph on the following page. I was mixing the paint colors with a fork (my 18
wife wasn’t around so I had free reign in the kitchen), and the fork slipped out of my hand and fell into the paint. It looked great, just like fingers with nail polish. I took the shot, and that’s what gave me the idea of pouring paint onto other objects -- such as the porcelain mask. Use objects that can be easily washed. Glass and metal objects work great such as the silver medicine holder I bought in Bali, below. A black background makes the colors stand out dramatically.§
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New OnLine Course: LEARNING TO SEE by Jim Zuckerman
The ability to ‘see photographically’, to really grasp how your camera and lenses capture a subject or scene (which is different than how we see with our eyes) underlies successful picture taking. It is the bottom line that you’ve been looking for to take that quantum leap forward in your photography. When you register for this new course, you will be given download links to eight easyto-understand lessons that look like beautiful mini ebooks. At your convenience, you can study the material and then upload your photos for a professional critique by Jim. Included in the course is a phone call once a week to discuss your submissions or any other aspect of photography you want -- what new equipment to buy, advice about airline travel, problems with flash, or anything else. This course can be purchased directly from Jim’s website by clicking RIGHT HERE. The great thing about online courses is that they can fit into any schedule. Life gets in the way at times, and Jim puts no limit on the time you can submit your work for his critiques. 20
LEARNING TO SEE online course The 8 lessons that comprise this course are: Graphic design, Backgrounds, Depth of field, Patterns, Natural light, Color, Composition, and Motion. These lessons are beautifully illustrated and full of concrete steps to dramatically improve your photography.
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What’s wrong with this picture?
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he real quesetion is, Is there something wrong with this image? And, are the red leaves distracting?
Let’s look at this picture critically. What are the subjects? There are three possibilities: the bushes, my wife, and our cocker spaniel puppy. One could say all three are subjects, or you could logically conclude that my wife and Teddy are the subjects. I agree with the latter, but my wife specifically wanted to be photographed against that brilliant color, so to her the leaves are an important part of the picture. Therefore, to her, the foliage would be considered one of the subjects. That’s fine, but according to traditional guidelines in art, the eye is supposed to be directed to the subject without being distracted by background elements. Usually art critics and photography judges are quick to point out whether or not background elements take attention away from the subject(s). If you’ve had your pictures judged in a competition, you know that very well. But, if the background is one of the subjects, how does that mesh with what is usually considered good art? After all, how can a
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subject (or one of the subjects) be distracting? Here is how I view the picture of my wife in front of the red bushes. I see it as a lovely snapshot. It has good color, the soft lighting is ideal, the expression(s) are good, and I like the depth of field. I wouldn’t call this shot artistic or compelling in any way. It’s a nice memory captured well. On the other hand, the photo above is a portrait. This is a serious study, it has artistry, the background is as it should be -- non-distracting -- and our attention is directed to my wife’s face and arm. There is nothing wrong with snapshots. They document our lives, they capture fun moments, and they are practically efforless. I usually don’t critique snapshots because they are what they are. But it’s important to distinguish snapshots from serious photography. §
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SHORT AND SWEET 1.
Distortion isn’t a pejorative word when it has to do with photography. This is a 15mm fisheye shot of a passageway in the London Tube, and it is definitely distorted. The unusual curves and distorted lines of the architecture make the picture visually dynamic.
2. When photographing animals, the lower you can get, the more stature the subjects will have. This is true for a wolf, an elephant, a turtle, or any other creature. In the photo you see here, the wolf was on a small hill, and that put it above my eye level.
3. Always focus on the eyes of your subjects, whether 4. they be human, animal, bird, or insect. If the eye or eyes are out of focus even in the slightest, the picture will not work. I photographed this lioness in Botswana, and even though the grass and the rear of the shot are soft, the image is OK because the eye is sharp.
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When you photograph subjects with important white areas, take special care not to lose detail and texture in those areas. That would indicate overexposure. Shooting in RAW mode is your first line of defense to protect vulnerable highlights from blowing out. Using the highlight slider in ACR can bring back lost detail. §
Photography Tours 2013 - 2015 COSTA RICA December, 2013
BURMA (Myanmar) April, 2014
TIGERS, PANDAS, ICE FESTIVAL in CHINA. Jan. 2014
CARNIVAL IN VENICE February, 2014
WHITE HORSES April, 2014
SOUTH INDIA May, 2014
GREENLAND June, 2014
KENYA August, 2014
INDONESIA August 2014
POLAR BEARS October 2014
JAPAN February, 2015
MOROCCO March, 2015
Check out the itineraries and photo galleries from these and other tours: www.jimzuckerman.com.
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ASK JIM
Every month Jim will answer a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.
Q:
Jim ... I want to gravitate to street photography over the next couple of years. Can you put forth a concise and clear rule on model releases? I’ve been under the impression that if someone is out in a public place, you have the right to photograph them and use the photo any way you want. Some say if you can recognize them, and you don’t have a release, you can’t use the photo. You feature human subjects in your work. Do you have releases for all of them? Duke Miller, Maggie Valley, North Carolina
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: If you want to sell a photo of a person, you need a release. Even if they aren’t recognizable (such as when they are in a costume or seen as a silhouette), if they feel they can get a substantial amount of money from you, you should have a release. If you don’t have one and you sell the picture anyway, he or she may never find out and the issue is moot. However, if a stock agency sells the picture, they have deep pockets. If the person sees it, he or she can sue and will win. Therefore, you need a release no matter what because today people are ‘sue-happy’. It’s basically easy money. For personal sales, such as fine art prints, the odds of this coming back to haunt you is a million to one. So, you’d be pretty safe in that situation. Still, there is always a risk you could be sued unless you have a release. I used to get releases, but I don’t any more because income from stock agencies is so low now. I don’t submit images any more to agencies. But for my ebooks, eMagazine, etc., I don’t worry about it. It’s a risk I take, but the risk is extremely small. Besides, most of my people subjects are in Third World countries, and even if they understood the concept of filing a law suit, they don’t have the means to do it. This is a tough legal area to wade through. Ultimately it’s risk versus reward issue. If you don’t have a release, is the money worth the risk? That’s your decision.
© Duke Miller
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China Photo Tour January 4 - 16, 2014
Siberian tigers
giant pandas Harbin ice festival Shanghai
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Get professional critiques of your work Get professional critiques ofcourses your work with Jim’s online with Jim’s online courses Betterphoto.com
betterphoto.com
Learn composition, exposure, Photoshop, beginning fundamentals, techniques in low light photography, flash, making money in photography, and more at your convenience and on your schedule.
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Student Showcase
Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same place. Everyone gets great images on my trips.
Dr. Anatoli Malyguine, Derwood, Maryland
Many Betterphoto online courses, Learning to See online course
Š Dr. Anatoli Malyguine
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Dr. Anatoli Malyguine, Derwood, Maryland
Š Dr. Anatoli Malyguine
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Dr. Anatoli Malyguine, Derwood, Maryland
Š Dr. Anatoli Malyguine
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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home
Sat. & Sun., March 22-23, 2014
Photoshop is a photographer’s best friend, and the creative possibilities are absolutely endless. In a personal and ‘homey’ environment (I have a very cool classroom setup in my home), I start at the beginning -- assuming you know nothing -- but I quickly get into layers, cutting and pasting, plug-ins, using ‘grunge’ textures, modifying lighting, and a lot more. I promise to fill your head with so many great techniques that you won’t believe what you’ll be able to do. I go over each technique several times to make sure you understand it and can remember it.
creative ideas that will inspire you to produce amazing images with the pictures you’ve already taken.
Photoshop instructors approach teaching this program from different points of view. My approach is to be as expansive in my thinking as possible in creating unique, artistic, and compelling images. In addition to showing you how to use the various tools, pull down menus, layers, and so on, I spend a lot of time giving you
Contact me if you would like to participate in the workshop and I will tell you how to sign up (photos@jimzuckerman.com). All you need is a laptop and a lot of your pictures. If you don’t have a laptop, I have two Mac Book Pro laptops I can loan out for the duration of the workshop. §
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I live in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and if you fly into the airport (BNA) I will pick you up. If you drive, I’ll give you my address and you can find my home on Mapquest. For the $450 fee, I include one dinner in my home (prepared by my wife who is an amazing cook and hostess) and two lunches, plus shuttling you back and forth from my home to your nearby hotel.
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PHOTO INSIGHTS®
published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2013 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com physical address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014
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