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Contents LETTER FROM KEN
AN INTRODUCTION TO SHOOTING THE NIGHT SKY Part 2: Techniques for Processing the Milky Way
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CONTROLLING MOTION IN LANDSCAPE IMAGES
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FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE MONTH Arpan Das
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PHOTO TOURS AND WORKSHOPS
p 11
PROCESSING TIP OF THE MONTH Increasing Water Texture with Nik Filters
p 14
THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE
p 16
CITIES AT NIGHT
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Cover Photo: Ponytail Falls, Columbia River Gorge 2
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Letter From Ken
Build Flexibility Into Your Itinerary I like planning trips. As much as I enjoy the planning process, I’ve found that a more open-ended, flexible itinerary, or at least having contingency plans in place, can lead to better pictures. I first went to Iceland in August of 2012 and, with the help of my friends, had the trip planned out well. We booked hotels in advance and had daily routes planned out. Looking back, however, we were counting too much on cooperative weather. Icelanders will tell you that, if you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes and it will get worse. I think we missed out on some opportunities in 2012 by sticking with our itinerary. My 2nd trip to Iceland was in September of 2015. My friend and I booked a car and had a list of priority shooting locations. That’s all. We planned on camping and had no reservations in advance. We had a basic itinerary which we ended up scrapping on the first day. In fact, we did not even spend one night as per the original itinerary. There was rain everywhere on the island for the first several days, so we adjusted to focus on locations that could be shot in overcast and rainy conditions. Then, we watched the weather closely and drove to whichever of our targeted locations was expected have favorable weather that day. Comparing the two trips, I was definitely less comfortable in 2015. However, the built-in flexibility really paid off. We captured the Northern Lights 4 nights out of 9... not bad for mid-September. I know that tenting in Iceland isn’t for everyone and that planning is important. However, finding ways to build at least some flexibility into your itinerary will improve your chances of bringing home great pictures. Thanks for reading! Ken Koskela http://www.kenkoskela.com To receive this magazine FREE each month click HERE 3
An Introduction to Shooting the Night Sky Part 2: Techniques for Processing the Milky Way
Welcome to Part 2 of a 3-part article on shooting the night sky. Part 1 focused on settings and image capture and is found on pages 4-7 of the August issue. Part 3 will be in October’s issue and be all about creating star trail images. For Part 2, I’ll go through in step-by-step format how I processed the above image of the Milky Way in front of a light-painted ancient bristlecone pine tree. This was done using some fairly basic techniques in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Many of the same techniques can be applied to other night images, such as Aurora Borealis shots. My processing involves making many subtle adjustments to the image, as opposed to just a few drastic changes. That, combined with how small the pictures are in this article, mean that you will not see a lot of difference between some of the steps. 4
Lightroom: Exposure and Color Temp 1. I started by increasing the exposure slider to get an overall “proper” exposure. You can see on the next page the exposure level I arrived at in this first step. 2. I had used auto white balance in camera. In Lightroom, I moved the color temp slider left to increase the blue tones a bit. I left the tint slider alone, although I sometimes add magenta. 3. I then jumped down to Lightroom’s effects panel and experimented with the dehaze slider. I settled on +20, which is high but worked well in this case. 4. Because the dehaze slider affects color temp, I went back and tweaked it slightly. You can see how the picture looked at this point on the top of the next page.
brought darks down moderately (-18). The idea is to bring some contrast to the image.
Lightroom: More Basics Panel Adjustments 5. Leaving contrast at 0, I adjusted the highlights, shadows, whites and blacks sliders. Each image is different, but here I brought down highlights, increased shadows slightly, brought whites down slightly and blacks up very minimally. The basic idea is to get some detail in the shadows (unless you want a silhouette) while maintaining contrast in the image. Don’t go too crazy lightening shadows or you will lose too much contrast in your image. 6. Continuing down the basics panel, I left the clarity slider at 0 because we will apply clarity later to the Milky Way using a local adjustment. 7. I added vibrance (+21) and saturation (+4). The image is still looking somewhat flat at this point.
Lightroom: Tone Curve Panel 8. Next, I added some punch to the image using the whites and darks sliders in the tone curve panel. I moved lights up quite a bit (+43) and
Lightroom: Detail Panel 9. I left sharpening at Lightroom’s defaults of amount (25), radius (1.0), detail (25), and masking (0). 10. I brought in some noise reduction due to the high ISO I used. Keep in mind that noise reduction removes some of the detail in your image. In this case, I increased luminance noise reduction to 25 and left color noise reduction at 25. If there was color noise in the sky, I would have increased color noise reduction. Lightroom: Local Adjustments 11. Using Lightroom’s adjustment brush, I brushed over the Milky Way and increased clarity, in this case up to +35. This really added some sparkle to the Milky Way. 12. Adding a new adjustment brush, I brought up some of the shadowy areas on the ground by brushing over them and moving the shadows slider right. The tree looked good, so I left it alone. 13. Using the radial filter tool (located to the left of the adjustment brush tool) I created a vignette by drawing an oval which covered the majority of the image. I pulled the exposure slider left to create a subtle, feathered vignette along the outer edges. You could also wait until later to do a vignette if you prefer. Here is the updated image after finishing up in Lightroom: 5
Photoshop: Orton 14. I usually open night images as a smart object in Photoshop. This is so that I can make further adjustments to the RAW settings within Photoshop if I want. 15. I first added a pretty strong Orton Effect to the image, masking out the foreground so that the effect was applied only to the sky and tree. You can read about how to create this effect in the July Issue of Inspirational Photography on pages 18-19.
the curve up and down to improve the color balance. After the red curve, I went to the blue curve and did the same, followed by the green curve. 17. To add a little more detail to the ground and tree, I added Nik Filter’s “Detail Extractor” (found in ColorEfex Pro) and reduced the opacity to 12% on the Photoshop layer. I masked out the effect from the sky so that only certain areas of the tree and ground where I wanted more detail were affected. 18. Lastly, I used Nik’s Viveza to brighten the image, which added punch. I also added a slight bit more contrast and saturation. After these adjustments, the image looked like this:
Here is the updated image after Orton. You can see that this made quite a difference. Back to Lightroom: Final Adjustments 19. My workflow always ends in Lightroom with some additional tweaks. In this case, I added a bit of warmth and magenta (with the color temp and tint sliders), increased the exposure, added some more contrast and a bit more saturation. Below is the final image.
Photoshop: Final Adjustments 16. I almost always create a curves layer late in my workflow and experiment with color balance. I added the curves layer and went into each color curve separately. This is done by using the curves pull-down box and changing “RGB” to “Red”, putting a point right in the middle of the curve, and then using the arrow keys to move 6
CONTROLLING MOTION IN LANDSCAPE IMAGES
Desired & Undesired Motion Blur in Landscapes
Like most of you, I’m a big fan of including moving water in images. Getting a nice motion blur with water is pretty straightforward and involves restricting the light hitting the sensor through any or all of the following: • • •
a low ISO a neutral density or other shaded filter; and a narrow aperture
By restricting the light hitting the sensor, you can shoot at longer shutter speeds, allowing time for the water to blur, such as in the above image. I defi-
nitely wanted this motion blur and was able to control it with shutter speed. The problem was that water was not the only thing moving in the scene. The plants and leaves were blowing in the wind. For me, this is undesirable motion blur. You can get by with some movement in the leaves in the background. However, a blurred fern as the subject in the foreground would kill the image. For the above picture, I’ve included the desired motion blur in the water while keeping the leaves and fern free from motion blur. To do so, I shot the image twice and blended the two images. 7
Getting the Best Image Quality Before I get into the technique I used, I should mention that, even if there wasn’t moving water, I would still have shot more than one image in this case. Here is why... It is common to shoot landscapes with closer foreground elements at f/16 or f/18 in order to keep the entire image fairly sharp front to back. Narrow apertures like these, however, let in less light and require longer shutter speeds than shooting wide open. If you want to freeze the action and still shoot at f/18, then that means increasing ISO.
Although less critical, there is also some movement in the leaves on the distant rocks.
Here is the point: It is kind of a shame to reduce the quality of the entire image by shooting at a high ISO just to keep a little foreground fern sharp. It would be much better to have the rest of the scene shot at a low ISO and then blend in the higher ISO fern element so that you get the best of both worlds: a fern free from motion blur and a low ISO image (except for the fern). Here is what I did in this case: Shot #1 for Water and Rocks Below is the first image (before cropping) after some initial Lightroom adjustments. The water looks nice and blurred because of the 1 second exposure I used. I shot at f/18 which resulted in an ISO of 250.
The image looks fine from a distance, but at closer inspection, the fern is quite blurred at the 1 second shutter speed due to some light wind. You can see this motion blur in the next image. 8
Shot #2 for Fern and Leaves To address this, I took a second shot (below) at ISO 2000, f/14 and 1/25th second. The water looks bad in this shot, but the fern is sharp, as are the distant leaves.
At the top of the next page is a close-up of the foreground fern at the faster shutter speed:
Blending the Images I used the same settings in Lightroom for both images. I adjusted my settings for one of the two images and copied the settings over to the second image. Before opening them in Photoshop, I made sure the pictures had identical exposures.
Although adjusting aperture shifts your depth of field, some photographers would favor shooting the fern and distant plants separately at a somewhat wider aperture (and lower ISO). You have to be careful with this approach when blending, as you get a shift in your depth of field when you change apertures.
In Photoshop, I put the faster shutter speed layer on top with a black mask and then painted white over the fern and the other mid-ground and background plants that looked better in the faster shutter speed image. When painting on the mask, I used a soft brush and did my best to hide the transitions in the darker areas of the image. I favored using the lower ISO image when possible, tolerating some slight blur in some of the background plants. This was so that I could use the 250 ISO image in a greater percentage of the frame.
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FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER:
Arpan Das https://www.instagram.com/arpandas_photography_adventure/
I met Arpan in a field in Tuscany in the middle of the night. Three of us were shooting the Milky Way and decided to shoot sunrise together at a nearby location. There, we were all confronted by a vicious German Shepherd that we thought was going to attack us. Good times. Arpan is an Astrophysicist by profession but has always loved landscapes and nature. Arpan began photographing only a few years ago with a compact camera, starting by shooting a variety of subjects, including insects and flowers. When Arpan moved to Europe to further his studies, he was amazed by Italy’s landscapes and decided to focus on landscape and nature. Arpan likes the challenge of taking unique compositions in places that have been photographed many times before.
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/photo-tours-workshops/
VENICE CARNIVAL w/ RENEE DOYLE February 18-24, 2017
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/ BOOK SOON! ONLY 5 SPOTS LEFT. CLICK HERE FOR INFO
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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
WAITING LIST ONLY
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/ SOLD OUT! SIGN UP FOR THE WAITING LIST.
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2017 PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS & WORKSHOPS NEW ZEALAND w/ RENEE DOYLE April 18-28, 2017 (Optional 3-Night Milford Sound extension available)
Join Renee 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! http://www.kenkoskela.com/product/2017-new-zealand-photo-tour/ CLICK HERE FOR INFO!
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Processing Tip of the Month Increasing Water Texture with Nik Filters
The Google Nik Collection is a popular set of Photoshop add-on filters used by many photographers. I still use Nik filters, but I use them differently than I used to. When I was new at processing, I would apply the filters globally at full opacity. Now, I use them sparingly at relatively low opacity for local adjustments. Most of my pictures have at least a trace of these filters in them somewhere.
I took to apply the filter. Just for purposes of this article, I’ve desaturated the water in the example images below to focus your attention on the texture rather than color. First, here is a close-up of the water prior to applying the filter.
There are different options for adding texture to water. I sometimes use Nik Filters to bring a little added texture and contrast into water, such as in the image below.
Next, I applied Nik’s “dark contrasts” filter at its’ default setting. Running the filter created a new layer in Photoshop as pictured below.
For this image, I used a Nik filter called “Dark Contasts” (part of Nik’s “Color Efex Pro” filter set) to enhance the contrast of the water. Below are the steps 14
At this point, there are two problems. The first is that the effect is applied to the entire image, as opposed to just the water or the parts of the water I want to be affected. So, next I’ll add a black mask to the layer (to hide the effect altogether) and then, using a feathered brush at 30% flow, paint white
on the mask over the water. Here is what the mask looks like. As you can see, I was not very precise in this case as rushing water is a fairly “random” pattern anyway, so a soft brush works just fine here.
An opacity of 50% is much stronger than what I normally use. Depending on the filter and image, my opacities with Nik usually range from around 10% to 30%. For a picture like this, you could also try Nik’s “tonal contrast” filter instead of dark contrasts. Tonal contrast is also in ColorEfex Pro and will result in less of a dark and gloomy effect. Here is the image using tonal contrast at its “strong” setting instead of dark contrasts. I’ve applied the mask and 50% opacity here, too.
The result is that the effect is applied to the rushing water and not the rocks.
Again, there are many ways to add texture and contrast to water, such as with a high pass filter in Photoshop. However, Nik Filters is pretty user friendly and does a good job. If you don’t yet own the Google Nik Collection, you can get it for free here: I’ve solved problem #1. Problem #2 is that the effect is too strong. So, lastly, I’ll reduce the opacity of the Nik Filters layer to around 50%.
https://www.google.com/nikcollection/ 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! 15
The Story Behind the Picture Cheap Fuel in Iceland
This is my third Iceland-related “Story Behind the Picture”. I think there is something about traveling in Iceland that leads to stories. Anyway, my friend and I were driving along Iceland’s Ring Road and passed a sign indicating it was 70 kilometers to the next town. In Iceland, that is a good time to check the fuel gauge, but it slipped our minds. We then came across a group of horses near the road. With manes blowing in the wind, they were a picture waiting to happen. After shooting for about 30 minutes, we started down the road again. At some point, I looked at the gas gauge and saw that it was on 2 out of 10. We knew that we had driven through a town before photographing the horses, but had no idea how far behind us the town was. It might have been 5 km or 50km back. We decided to keep driving forward. Five minutes later, the gauge dropped to 1. After driving 15 more minutes we saw a sign indicating the next town was now 40 km away. We should have chosen to go back and now were going to run out of fuel. We started coasting down hills. We drove by a farmhouse with a big N2 tank outside and thought it looked promising. We pulled over and, sure enough, the farmer had a container of fuel. He poured in what seemed to be a 1-2 gallons and we turned the car on. The gas gauge was still at 1. He poured the rest of the gas can in, about 4 gallons according to my observation. Knowing gas was about $7 a gallon there, I decided to give him about $10 a gallon (in Icelandic Krona) and thanked him profusely as I handed him the money. About 20 km down the road, my friend asked me how much I had given the farmer. I told him 500 Krona and realized as I was saying it that I had messed up on the exchange rate. I had paid the poor guy $4 for 4 gallons of fuel! This explained why he didn’t look too happy when I paid him. We couldn’t go back or we would run out of fuel again. I am 100% certain that he thinks he was intentionally scammed by foreigners. When we finally arrived at that next town, the gas station had a sign above it advertising “Cheapest Gas in Iceland!” That was definitely not true since we had just bought it for $1 a gallon at the farm up the road. :( Anyway, I am looking forward to paying the farmer back next time I’m in Iceland. 16
Cities After Dark Although I don’t specialize in cityscape photography, I do enjoy city lights and have managed to get a few decent night pictures of cities. Here is a little advice for getting cool city shots after the sun has gone down:
If your final image will be in color, then the difference between shooting at twilight and night is huge. First take a look at the image below, shot near Chicago’s planetarium during twilight:
Most Importantly, Shoot During the Blue Hour Twilight takes place when the sun is just below the horizon, shortly before sunrise (at dawn) or shortly after sunset (at dusk). Photographers call this period the “blue hour” for obvious reasons... the sky turns a beautiful cobalt blue which looks great in pictures. This twilight period lasts for around 20-30 minutes. If you are shooting in a busy area, you’ll usually get less clutter and traffic at the morning blue hour. However, if your composition includes city buildings, keep in mind that you will have more window lights on during the evening blue hour.
Next, take a look at the image on the top of the next page. Twilight had passed and the sky was turning black, resulting in a pretty boring picture. 17
out in the United States (and I’m guessing in a number of other countries). They are being replaced with more efficient lighting. Unfortunately, LED’s and compact fluorescents don’t have the same warmth quality in pictures as the incandescents do. Heavy sigh. Capture Motion
Shoot Street Scenes at Twilight Part of the reason that twilight street scenes look great is because of the warm color of incandescent lights combined with the blue twilight sky. This results in a very visually pleasing warm/cool color combination. By the way, incandescent lights are being phased
Assuming you are shooting at a reasonably low ISO, night pictures require long exposures. This gives you the opportunity to easily capture motion, whether it be moving clouds, tail lights, water or anything else. If you’ve followed my magazine, you’ll recognize this next image from London, which I’ve included in at least two previous issues. Yes, I’ve gone a little overboard with it, but it works great as an example of city motion and happens to be my favorite city shot.
I got a ton of cloud blur in this 30 second exposure because the clouds were low and moving fast. Depending on the conditions, you’ll usually need exposures in the range of several minutes to get cloud blur. The fact that the clouds were low also allowed the incandescent lighting to reflect off of them, turning them orange in the image. Process in Black and White Don’t put your camera away after the blue hour. Even with a black sky, you can still get compelling black and white city shots. This is because black and white images rely on contrast, not color. Even 18
cities presents all sorts of good photographic opportunities. The image at the bottom of this page is a good example. I did not plan this shot ahead of time. I was just walking around and liked the silhouettes against the Louvre pyramid. Similarities to Landscape Photography
if I plan on processing in black and white, I shoot all my digital images in color and convert to black and white during post-processing. The picture of the Eiffel Tower was taken after the sky had gone dark and looks much better when converted to black and white than the original color image. Look for Shapes Don’t just go for the big city shots. Nighttime in
There is a lot more that can be said about shooting cities at night. However, I’ll stop here except to say that many of the same principles that apply to landscape photography also apply to cityscape photography, including at night. For example, inclement weather can really add interest to a city image in the same way it can to a landscape shot. On a related note, city scenes at night look great after a rain because of the lights reflecting on wet surfaces. Lastly, similar to classic landscape shots, I like to have complete depth of field from front to back when my cityscapes have foreground elements. For this reason, I use a narrow aperture on most of my city shots.
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