Strategy for eliminating people

Strategies for Eliminating People

from Your Photos

Nothing is quite so frustrating for a travel photographer as other people -- or, worse, crowds of people, -- in the pictures. Palaces, castles, gardens, cathedrals . . . it doesn’t matter what the place is. Other people even ruin selfies. And for the serious photographer who wants to capture artistic compositions devoid of annoying distractions like people, there’s almost no point in shooting if the images are going to be worthless. Tourism has exploded in the last few years, and now that the Covid pandemic has subsided, travelers are itching to go anywhere. Popular destinations like Keukenhof Gardens in Holland (25,000 to 45,000 visitors per day), Angkor Wat in Cambodia (2.6 million visitors per year), Antelope Canyon in Arizona (2400 per day), the ancient coliseum in Rome (6 million visitors per year), and the Louvre in Paris (9.6 million visitors per year) make meaning-

ful photography almost impossible. Sure, you can always shoot upward at architectural and natural details, but including the floor or the ground is just not feasible.

Let me offer some techniques I use to address this vexing issue. They won’t always work, but in most situations they make the difference between being disappointed in the lack of photo opportunities versus ending up with great shots.

1. Get there really early.

This is the best thing you can do to avoid people in your pictures. Be the first in line. That’s how I was able to take the picture on the previous page of the Paris Opera House. I got in line one hour before they opened; no one else was there yet. Within 15 minutes, there were about a dozen people behind me, and just before opening time there were probably a hundred people in line. As soon as they opened, I paid cash for the ticket (to save time) and rushed into the main salon of the spectacular work in architecture. I had visited there the day before so I could scout out the best locations, and now without any people (yet) I rushed around taking hand held HDR images. Within about 10 minutes, the best photo opportunities had come and gone. A group of school kids numbering about 20 had plopped down on the stairs to hear a history lesson about opera. At that point, it was impossible to shoot anything but architectural details.

I did the same thing with the now famous Lello Bookstore in Porto, Portugal, below. I brought my photography tour group to the entrance 75 minutes before they opened, but this

time there were two people already ahead of us. I was surprised because usually one hour is enough lead time to guarantee the first place in line. Not this time, though. So, in the future, I’ll queue up 90 minutes before opening.

2. Take multiple shots for compositing

I took the photo of an interior courtyard of Pena Palace in Sintra, Portugal, about 20 minutes after they’d opened. There were already several people milling about, but two large groups made it impossible to eliminate everyone with the clone tool (or even content aware). The two green arrows point to the problematic areas: A large gathering on the upper terrace, and another one on the staircase I couldn’t simply clone them out because there were no other elements in the shot I could clone from to cover up all those people. The solution was to take multiple shots of the same composition over a period of time. Over the course of 60 seconds, I fired off a frame every 5 seconds or so. In that time inverval, everyone in the scene moved.

For example, the group sitting on the stairs got up and walked down to the ground level of the courtyard, thus exposing to the camera the stairs on which they had been sitting. That meant I could copy and paste that section of the stairs over the group of people in the first shot -- the one you see below. As people moved off the terrace, I did the same thing: I made a selection (using the lasso tool) of the terrace area and pasted that over the densely packed group of people in the shot below. Once those two problematic areas were fixed, it was easy to clone out individuals left in the frame. The finished image is shown on page 8. I replaced the

China Photo Tour

January 26 to February 8, 2023

An entire city constructed of ice illuminated at night, Harbin, China

Rainbow Mountains, Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park China

sky as well, but the elimination of the people made the image work.

Note that this shot was taken shortly after the palace opened. By mid-morning, there were hundreds of people everywhere. This technique would probably still work, but it would be a lot more challenging. Also, you’d need more frames to work with. I would shoot at 5 second intervals over a period of two minutes. A tripod would be useful, but it’s not necessary for this technique.

3. Long exposures

In low light environments like twilight or dimly lit interiors, you can use a long exposure to eliminate people in motion. For this technique to work, three things have to happen: 1) The camera must be mounted on a tripod, 2) people must be moving during most of the exposure, and 3) the level of light and the camera settings have to allow a long exposure.

The picture of the Plaza de Espana in Seville, Spain on the next page is a 25 second exposure. I used the smallest aperture on the lens, f/22, and 100 ISO. These settings forced the shutter speed to be long, and this in turn gave enough time for the people in the shot to ‘disappear’ as they walked through the frame. If you look closely, there are few faint ghost images but these can be easily cloned out.

To eliminate people using this technique in daylight environments, use a neutral density filter of at least 10 f/stops. On a bright sunny day, this translates to a shutter speed of 60 full seconds with an aperture of f/32 and an ISO of 100. This is enough time for most people to

completely disappear providing they aren’t sitting or standing in the same place for the duration of the exposure. I used this approach to capture the Old Town in Prague, below right.

Don’t be discouraged if other tourists interfere with good picture taking. There are several techniques you can use to eliminate them.

4. Multiple exposures with Stack mode

Another approach to eliminating people from photographs is to take many exposures and stack them together in Photoshop. Each exposure should be at least 10 seconds apart. This gives each person in the scene time to change their position. Take at least 20 to 30 frames. This technique should be done from a tripod so all of the frames align with precision.

In post-processing, place all the images in a folder. Then use the pulldown menu command, File > scripts > statistics. At the top of the dialog box where it says: Choose Stack Mode, select ‘mean’.