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Contents LETTER FROM KEN
HOW AND WHEN TO USE A CIRCULAR POLARIZER
PROCESSING TIP OF THE MONTH Introduction to Luminosity Masking
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p6
THE MAKING OF AN IMAGE Oil & Water Pictures
p 10
MINIMUM SHUTTER SPEEDS FOR MAINTAINING SHARPNESS
p 12
THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE
p 14
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE MONTH Achraf Baznani
p 15
PHOTO TOURS AND WORKSHOPS
p 16
SHOOTING COASTLINE MOVING WATER IMAGES
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Letter From Ken Raising the Bar
There are a few photographers out there who have a special gift and began shooting and processing amazing images almost from Day 1. Usually, this is due to their background and skills in another discipline that really helped them out, such as graphic design, outdoor adventure and the like. For the rest of us, there is a longer learning curve. As our photography improves, we should be raising the bar on what we let into our portfolio. Once every year or so, I do a “portfolio cleaning”. I generally raise the bar on my photography and get rid of some images that don’t meet up to the new standards. Just for fun, I checked to see how many images from my first year photographing are still on my site. There are just 9 images. I took around 6,500 pictures in my first year. That’s essentially a 0.14% success rate, although that will probably drop even more in my next portfolio cleaning. Now, to be fair to myself, I only processed 116 of these into final images. That still means I deleted 92% of my processed images from the first year. Did I know I would be deleting all these shots? No. Did I have tons of fun photographing these images? Yes. The moral of the story is to keep raising the bar for yourself and don’t be afraid to let go of images that don’t meet up to your increasingly higher standards. Some well-known photographers only keep 25-30 of their best images on their sites. I have a lot more than that. It is up to you on how picky you want to be. Thanks for reading! Ken Koskela http://www.kenkoskela.com
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How and When to Use a Circular Polarizer In the May issue of Inspirational Photography, I wrote about the value and use of solid neutral density filters. Another must-have filter that cannot be replaced with post-processing is the circular polarizer (a.k.a. CLP). Polarizers absorb polarized light, which has some serious benefits for photographers. These include: CLP’s Cut Down Non-Metallic Surface Reflections For me, the most important feature of a CLP is the filter’s ability to cut down reflections. In landscape photography, this means that reflections on water, wet rocks, wet leaves and even dry rocks and leaves can be cut down and often eliminated altogether.
Without CLP
This is extremely important since the reflections essentially replace detail and saturation with ugly shiny spots on your image. This can ruin your otherwise colorful scene. Just take a look at these next two images to see exactly what I mean. With CLP 4
By rotating the circular polarizer, the reflection in the foreground is removed. What might not have been as immediately apparent is how the leaves in the background look more saturated. This is because leaves are reflective. Cutting through this reflection allows more detail and saturation in the background trees to come through. However, sometimes you want a certain amount of reflection in your shot. You can control this by simply rotating the polarizer. With wide-angle lenses, it is a delicate balance to get a desirable amount of effect in as much of the scene as possible.
However, the filter has some limitations in this area. If the sun is in front of or behind you, then you will not get the effect of the polarizer. The sun should be perpendicular to your camera lens... 90 degrees to your right or left. This limits the cases where you can use a polarizer to enhance the sky. Also, because wide-angle lenses cover a larger area of the sky, some of the sky will be 90 degrees perpendicular to your lens, but not all of it. This causes uneven polarization across the sky, as seen below.
As we’ll see in the next section, the direction of light is very important for a CLP in certain cases. However, if you are in overcast conditions and not including the sky, then the angle of light is not really an issue in its effectiveness in cutting reflections. Deepening the Blue Sky We’ve already seen that polarizers can help colors to look more rich by reducing reflections. Another common use of CLP’s is to increase contrast and saturation in a blue sky. Skies look more blue and clouds more detailed with the polarizer.
You can correct this somewhat in post-processing, but it takes work to get the sky looking reasonably acceptable. For this reason, it is better not to shoot too wide when using a polarizer to enhance the sky. By the way, when rotating the filter, don’t go too overboard on deepening skies, especially if the sky is already quite blue. You can turn nice blue skies way too dark. Cutting Down Haze
Without CLP
CLP’s also help cut through haze in distant landscape elements. This is because haze is also reflective. In some cases, you may want to include at least some of the haze in your image, so use your own judgment on this. Cutting Down Light Reaching the Sensor
With CLP
Polarizers function similar to neutral density filters in that they cut down the light reaching the sensor, typically by about 1-2 stops. This makes slower shutter speeds possible. Depending on the situation, this can be completely neutral, a benefit, or a drawback for you. Either way, just use your solid neutral density filter instead if all you want is to slow down your shutter speed. 5
Processing Tip of the Month Introduction to Luminosity Masking
I use luminosity masking (a.k.a. channel masking) all the time to make selections and create masks in Photoshop. You can make very natural looking adjustments without even touching a selection tool. Those ugly halos along the transition line of your layer mask can be a thing of the past. I’ve called this article “Introduction to Luminosity Masking” and I really do mean it on the “Introduction” part. There is a lot you can do with luminosity masking that will not be covered in this article. But, if you are new to the technique, hopefully this will get you started on the path.
Isolating Adjustments If I want to darken the distant trees in the top center of our image, the most common option is to add an adjustment layer to darken things and a mask to reveal the adjustment in the area of the trees. However, if you are familiar with Photoshop’s selection, painting and drawing tools, you can see this particular adjustment is a little tricky in terms of selecting and isolating those distant trees. This is because, generally speaking, Photoshop’s selection tools result in hard edges, like this:
Let me use the following picture of Little River in Tennessee as our working image throughout this article.
Even if we use a soft brush tool to refine this mask, it will do a horrible job at isolating those distant trees. The best option here, apart from luminosity masks, is the “Color Range” selection. You can see this does a much better job. However, the mask is still very black and white with hard transition lines when you look closely.
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Using the Color Range selection on a mask, let’s change the Curves layer blending mode to “Multiply” to darken the areas which appear as white in the mask. The resulting adjustment looks harsh:
Because brighter areas of the mask reveal the adjustment in Photoshop, what you are looking for is the channel that is brighter in the areas you want adjusted (the distant trees) and darkest in the areas you do not want darkened. Start by clicking on the blue channel....
The problems are more pronounced when you zoom in: For this image, the blue channel mask below provides no help whatsoever in isolating the distant trees from the rest of the image. The distant trees are just as dark as everything else.
There are ways to improve the selection to look much better if you put additional work into it. However, you could spend hours refining the mask and not get results near as good as with luminosity masking. Luminosity Masking Let’s darken the distant trees using luminosity masking instead. First, with the image open in Photoshop, click on the channels tab. You’ll see the RGB channel as well as the individual red, green and blue channels.
In this case, the green channel offers the best initial separation of the distant trees.
We can now refine this mask to further isolate the trees by using some keystrokes to create some additional masks. 7
Refining the Color Channel With the green channel chosen, do the following:
masks and see which gives the most brightness to the distant trees and darkness to the other areas. In this case, the Alpha 3 mask does a good job.
Compare this mask with the one created using color range selection. You’ll see this mask is much smoother and could not be created using a selection tool.
Alpha Channels
Now, to apply the adjustment, do the following:
Create Selection
Create Alpha Mask
1. Hold down Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) and click on the little mask image on the green channel (to the left of the word “Green”. You will notice the “marching ants” appear on your image as a selection. This selection represents the 50% brightest pixels in the image. 2. Then, click on the Alpha Channel mask button at the bottom of the panel. A new channel called “Alpha 1” should appear. 3. Next, hold Command-Alt-Shift (Mac) or ControlAlt-Shift (Windows) and click again on the green channel mask image. This cuts the selection to the 25% brightest pixels. 4. Repeat Step 2. A new channel called “Alpha 2” should appear. 5. Repeat Step 3. This cuts the selection to the 12.5% brightest pixels. 6. Repeat Step 2 (again) to create “Alpha 3”. 7. Hold down Command-D (Mac) or Control-D (Windows) to release the selection. The “marching ants” will disappear. Now, click on each of the three newly created Alpha 8
1. Click on the chosen Alpha channel, in this case Alpha 3. 2. Click on the selection button to create a selection from Alpha 3. 3. Click on the RGB channel to make it active. 4. Go back to the layers palette and, for this example, create a Curves adjustment layer right above the image layer. When you do this, your selection of the Alpha 3 channel will create an identical mask on the adjustment layer. 5. For this example, we will darken the distant trees, so change the Curves layer blending mode to “Multiply”. To further isolate the adjustment to the trees, I created a Group folder and put the Curves layer in it. I added a black mask to the folder. Using a relatively soft brush, I painted white on the mask in the area of the trees.
Now, let’s compare the actual color range selection adjustment with the luminosity mask adjustment:
Color Range Selection Adjustment
Luminosity Mask Adjustment
The adjustment looks a lot smoother with the luminosity mask adjustment. Due to the smoothing effect of luminosity masks, you can sometimes lose some contrast in the adjustment. This can be at least partially overcome by making a levels adjustment to the Alpha mask, but that is for a future article. Only Scratching the Surface If this is your first introduction to luminosity masking, then it probably seemed confusing and cumbersome. However, luminosity masking is faster and more effective than the other options in many cases. This is just one example of an application of luminosity masking. There is a lot more that can be done, including painting color through luminosity selections, adding contrast to the mid-tones, bringout detail in the darks, targeting a certain color for a hue or saturation adjustment, etc., etc.
Full Adjusted Image
Automating the Process Tony Kuyper’s actions (his TK Actions Panel) include the ability to create various luminosity masks at the touch of a button. (http://goodlight.us/specialoffers.html) I can teach you my processing techniques through one-on-one, on-line instruction via Skype and screen share. I can help you with: • • •
Basic Lightroom and/or Photoshop Intermediate and Advanced Environmental Portrait Processing Techniques Intermediate and Advanced Landscape Processing Techniques
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO! 9
The Making of an Image Oil and Water Pictures
Oil and water pictures can look pretty amazing and are fairly easy to take. To do so, you’ll need a way to trigger off-camera flash, a macro lens (or an extension tube or reversing ring), a tripod (recommended), a glass dish with a flat bottom surface, oil (vegetable or olive oil work), water and something with a colorful pattern. You can use a colorful shirt, scarf, CD cover, or anything you want with good colors and an interesting pattern.
Once you’ve collected all this, here are the steps to take these images: 1. Put just enough water in the dish to cover the bottom of it, perhaps around 1/4 of an inch at most. 2. Now comes the tricky part. You’ll want to get 10
the dish suspended flat at least a foot or so off of the floor with nothing blocking the center of the dish. In other words, you should be able to look down through the dish and see the floor below. I used a square baking dish and balanced its handles on two chairs. I only dumped the water over once, which isn’t bad. You’ll need to be creative here.
3. After you get the dish stable, put the colorful object underneath it. I used some construction paper of various colors and cut out little circles. Then I scattered the circles on the floor below the suspended baking dish. 4. Set your camera up on a tripod (preferred) above the dish pointed straight down through the water.
should get some bubbles floating around. You can move them around as you like. 9. Take a lot of shots, while checking the results in the monitor. Move the bubbles around and recompose. In my opinion, you are best off shooting a pretty small section so that just a few larger bubbles are in your composition. In Photoshop, you may want to clone out a few bubbles in post-processing if it helps simplify and improve the image. In the header image of this article, I cloned out some extra bubbles. In the image to the left, I left all the bubbles in.
Did you miss a previous issue of Inspirational Photography? Click below to read...
5. Set up your off-camera flash so that it points towards whatever colorful object you have below the dish. In my case, I set the flash on the floor on a very small stand pointed down towards the construction paper circles. The idea is to light up the colorful object with the flash. 6. Set your camera to manual. Because this is a macro shot and the bubbles have shape to them, you will want some depth of field. Something in the range of f/11-f/16 should work fine. As for the speed, you will want it at or below your camera’s maximum flash sync speed. 7. It probably makes sense to set your flash to manual. Using your camera and flash triggering device, take some test shots and make adjustments to the flash power until you get the level of brightness you’d like.
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8. Now, add just a little of the cooking oil and you 11
Minimum Shutter Speeds for Maintaining Sharpness
Any serious photographer knows the feeling of looking closely at their pictures after a shoot only to realize their favorite image is blurry. Awful feeling. That feeling is much worse if it is your own fault because you used a shutter speed that was too slow. This article is focused on choosing the right minimum shutter speed for getting all elements of your image sharp when artificial lighting is not being used. Motion Blur and Camera Shake There are two kinds of movement you need to take into account. One is the blur from the movement of elements within the scene, such as a person walking, a bird in flight or leaves blowing. This is called “motion blur�. The second kind of motion is from the camera itself moving. Tripods can often eliminate camera shake 12
from the equation. Also, some of the more expensive lenses have the option of a stabilization feature to help offset some of the effects of camera shake, allowing you to handhold a camera at slower shutter speeds. This feature does not eliminate motion blur. For this article, I will assume that no stabilization is involved. Factors in Choosing a Shutter Speed When flash is not being used, there are four factors that go into choosing a shutter speed for a fully sharp image, accounting for both motion blur and camera shake. 1. Whether elements in your image are moving and how fast they are moving. 2. How still the camera is. This translates into whether you are hand-holding the camera (and
how still you are holding it) or have the camera on a secure tripod. 3. The distance from the camera to the various components in the image. A person riding a bicycle left-to-right five feet in front of you will move across the frame much faster than if they were off in the distance. 4. The focal length of the lens. If you are holding the camera, longer lenses are generally heavier which is one factor. Additionally, if you are using a 200mm telephoto lens, you have a much narrower perspective than if you are shooting with a wide-angle lens. This narrower perspective means that the same subject moving around or across the frame will take up a greater proportion of the image and can create more motion blur. Shutter Speed Guidelines Now, here are some shutter speed guidelines for different shooting situations. As a general rule, if shutter speed is an issue, I like to err on the side of shutter speeds that are too fast rather than too slow. The trade-off is a higher ISO or wider aperture, but I prefer this to risking it with shutter speed. Blowing Grass and Leaves - Using Tripod
the leaves or grass sharp, I have found that shutter speeds in the 1/25 to 1/100 usually freeze the action, depending on the speed of the wind and proximity of the leaves and grass. In this situation, start with 1/100 if possible and check for sharpness. If I want to try for a lower ISO or narrower aperture, I’ll try slower shutter speeds and check for sharpness. The waterfall image here is blended. I wanted the water blurred, but the fern very sharp and the plants in the background at least somewhat sharp. So, I had to blend more than one image. The plants were shot at 1/50, while the water was shot at 2 seconds. Stationary Subjects - Hand-Holding For stationary subjects in cases where I am hand-holding the camera, I will generally use the “reciprocal rule” and then often increase shutter speed a bit. What does that mean? If I am shooting at 200mm, I would use a 1/200 shutter speed or faster (so, 1/250 at minimum) to avoid the effects of camera shake. However, if I am using a wide angle lens (say 14mm), I would still not shoot below 1/40. For slower shutter speeds, I will turn on image stabilization and, if possible, lean against something to increase my stability. I’ll hold my breath and fire off 3 rapid shots by holding down the shutter button (in continuous firing mode). Then, later I can choose the sharpest image. Slower Moving Elements
For stationary subjects, such as a landscape, I almost always select a low ISO and my aperture as the top priority. I then use a tripod for the sharpest image. However, there are often moving elements in the scene, such as blowing grass and leaves. If I want
For slower moving elements (such as a person or animal walking), generally I use at least 1/125 and prefer 1/250 at minimum. But, again, this depends on factors I’ve previously outlined, such as lens 13
choice, distance to the subject, etc. Somewhat Fast Moving Elements For somewhat fast moving elements, such as a person running, I prefer 1/500 or faster. A little bit of blur looks good sometimes, but this article is about creating sharp images. Fast Moving Objects For fast moving objects, such as a moving car or running water, I generally prefer about 1/800 or 1/1000. For very fast objects, such as a bird in flight, 1/2000 is often recommended as a minimum. For the image of the leaping caracal, I used 1/1600. I had tried earlier images at 1/1000, but they were not quite sharp. The compromise was my depth of field. I shot this at f/4.5, which was less than ideal at capturing the entire cat in focus.
The Story Behind the Picture Ballet at Sunrise
My wife danced ballet when she was younger. I got this idea of taking silhouetted ballet shots at sunrise. She liked the idea too and immediately offered to wake up early to do the shoot. We got up the next morning at 4:30 am and drove downtown to Chicago’s lake front. We positioned ourselves at the farthest point along the pier, perhaps 150 yards/meters from the parking lot. She started with some poses just as the sun was rising. Everything was going well. Then, one of us came up with the brilliant idea of her trying some ballet jumps and having me capture them mid-air. This started off well. Unfortunately, though, she was a bit out of practice doing the jumps. After this shot, she landed hard on her ankle and sprained it. The session was now over and I essentially had to carry her back to the car. I learned an important lesson that day. That is to bring a wagon if we ever try to get this type of shot again. 14
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER:
Achraf Baznani http://www.baznani.com
Self-taught artist Achraf Baznani lives and works in Morocco. He got his start in photography as a teen when he received a Kodak Ektra compact 250 camera for his birthday. Achraf is the first artist in the Arab world to publish a photo book based on surreal imagery. Both of Achraf’s books, Through My Lens and Inside My Dreams, place himself within his photographs of everyday objects, scenes and amusing situations. Achraf is also a filmmaker who has made several short films and documentaries, including his 2007 film “The Immigrant” which received several national and international awards. Achraf is off to a good start in 2016. He has already won the prestigious Prize Colosseo award in Italy and the Golden Orchid grand prize in New York. Please join me in congratulating him and be sure to check out more of his photography on his website!
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/photo-tours-workshops/
GUILIN, CHINA w/ RICK SAMMON May 17-25, 2017
Join Rick and I to photograph the beautiful karst mountains, Li River, cormorant fisherman at sunrise and sunset, the incredible Longji rice terraces, the XiangGongShan overlook, Cuipinghsan Hill, and many other locations. We will also meet and photograph rural villagers. http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-guilin-china-photo-tour/ BOOK FAST... ONLY 4 SPOTS LEFT!! CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO!
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS NEW!!! NEW ZEALAND w/ RENEE DOYLE April 18-28, 2017 (Optional 3-Night Milford Sound extension available)
New Zealand is on most photographer’s bucket lists. Join Renee Doyle and I to photograph this amazingly beautiful country during the best time of year... Autumn. In addition to the iconic Church of the Good Shepherd, the lone Wanaka Lake tree and Nugget Point Lighthouse, we will photograph turquoise lakes, rolling hills, hidden waterfalls and New Zealand’s iconic mountainous regions. Also, join us for the optional extension to Milford Sound to round out an amazing visit to the South Island of New Zealand! CLICK HERE FOR TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT STARTING JUNE 12! http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-new-zealand-photo-tour/
VENICE CARNIVAL w/ RENEE DOYLE February 18-24, 2017
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Venice comes alive during Carnival as amazing models in ornate masks and incredible costumes descend upon the city. I am co-leading this tour with Renee Doyle. Renee and I have some great connections with many of the best models which will allow our group to have opportunities for private shoots in some locations away from the crowds and not accessible to the general public. http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-venice-carnival-photography-workshop/
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Shooting Coastline Moving Water Images
I love coastline images that include moving water. Although there are many ways to incorporate water into an image, I especially like combining blurred streaks of water bubbles on the foreground beach with still elements in the scene, such as in the above image of Ruby Beach.
This image works well because the sea stack makes a cool subject out in the water. This is not always easy to find, which is why so many landscape photographers flock to the Pacific Northwest. If you are lucky enough to have access to this type of scenery, here is how to take these pictures: Equipment Needed A sturdy tripod. I’ve emphasized sturdy here because you will be standing in some moving water, with water running around your tripod legs. A flimsy tripod will not stay still enough to capture a sharp image during the somewhat long exposures required to blur the water. 18
A remote shutter trigger. This will help you keep your eyes on the waves to get your timing right, as well as minimize camera shake. You want to avoid pressing the shutter button when using a tripod, as avoiding contact with the camera or tripod during the exposure is important. If you use the 2-second timer, it is much more difficult to anticipate when the water is in the best position to trip the shutter. The remote trigger really helps in this case. Solid neutral density filter. Depending on the lighting, you will most likely need a solid neutral density filter, such as a 4-stop or even a 10-stop for bright conditions. (last month’s issue had an article dedicated to these filters) A relatively wide-angle lens. How wide you go is up to you, but you will generally want something fairly wide to help ensure the water bubbles are an important part of the composition. Footware and clothing. You cannot get these types
Settings • • •
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• of images without getting your feet wet. Making sure you stay comfortable is important because, let’s face it, if we are cold and wet, we might be inclined to take less shots and take our focus off of photographing the scene. Composing the Image Where you stand and what focal length you use will be driven by getting the water streaks composed properly in the foreground and the subject as an important part of the image. You will want to position yourself in a spot where the water passes you as the waves go in and out, but is relatively shallow or dry after the water moves out. One good compositional technique is to use the water streaks as leading lines to the subject. This occurs naturally if the waves are coming towards you while shooting.
Set your camera to manual mode Set your ISO to 100 For starters, set your shutter speed to between 1/4 and 2 seconds. You can then adjust later based on what looks good to you. I prefer 1/2 to 1 second. You then have to arrive at a desired aperture. I generally choose between f/16 or f/18 so that the distant subject as well as the water streaks are in focus. Even though the foreground water is blurred, you still want it to be in focus. If you are still overexposing the image, you can then bring in the neutral density filter(s) and re-adjust to your final aperture to get a proper exposure.
Timing the Waves You want to shoot as the water is retreating back into the ocean or lake. When the water retreats, there are often bubbles which help the water streaks look more pronounced. Generally, you don’t want to shoot when the water is coming towards you. You will have to work with the timing of when to trip the shutter, but I generally wait until the water is beginning to retreat around the tripod legs. Keep checking what your images look like and make adjustments to your settings and timing. Lastly, take a lot of pictures… each one will be different, so it is best to have more options to choose from.
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Click the link below to sign up to receive this magazine for free each month! http://www.kenkoskela.com/page/inspirational-photography-magazine/ Website: http://www.kenkoskela.com Click here for my Facebook page Click here for my 500px page Instagram: @kenkoskela Questions? You can reach me at: kenkoskela@hotmail.com 20