The Cascade

The Cascade, 12"x30" digital archival print [iso100, f22, 1.3s]. I posted it here so that you could see how I revised this image. I was dissatisfied with the overall composition: felt like the gnarled roots in the middle popped up out of nowhere, that the balance of the waterfall with the rock walls was too harsh, the focus a bit off, etc. So I went back to the scene, reshot everything, rebuilt the panorama and arrived at this image:

This has a better sense of depth, a calmer balance from left to right, and a few spots of new interest -- the bokeh at the top middle due to moisture in the air, and a couple zones where ferns have some motion blur due to a breeze during the long time exposures needed to make the photo. The focus is also crisper throughout. Printed at full size 300dpi this would be 12" tall and 33" wide.

The Cascade is a wonderful place here in North Adams, MA… just a short hike from the trailhead, and nestled deep in the woods. Whenever I go there it feels otherworldly and intense, waterfalls thundering in the early Spring.

Snapshot versus Fine Art, Part 2

Part 2:  Intersections with Photojournalism

Similar to the snapshot is a strictly photojournalistic approach, in that snapshots and photojournalism tend to rely on unretouched photography. But photojournalism unlike the snapshot can be quite intentional.

The photojournalist's documentary photo is intended as evidence to tell or support the news. With photojournalism, realism is necessary and the photographer aims to tell a story that’s consistent with what’s really happening in the world. For that reason, retouching of the image is forbidden. In contrast, the fine art photo includes much of the artist creating the image in such a way as to draw out expressions, images, and content that the artist finds most important – not merely what’s there to be photographed, but rather, what’s there to be richly emphasized, even altered if needed. The fine art photo could be (but doesn’t need to be) heavily altered and retouched, whereas the photojournalistic photo must not be retouched, and the snapshot photo too is normally little retouched. But unlike the documentary photo's need for realism, the snapshot is not retouched for a different reason... it’s just too casual to bother with much redesigning and retouching.

Our expectations are that fine art photos don’t have to be but could be retouched, redesigned, and altered for aesthetic or symbolic effect, whereas the snapshot probably isn’t altered and the photojournalist or documentary photo had better not be. We expect some photos to be truthful representations, even evidence in a court of law, whereas we expect other photos to be expressive or even wholly fictional.

But at a certain level no photo is entirely truthful, since the photographer must always adapt camera settings, lens settings, and composing to the imagery that she intends to record, thus altering what can be recorded every step of the way.

On the intersections and problems among the differences between careful editorial photojournalism, strange retouching issues, truthfulness versus misleads in photography, there is no better writer than Errol Morris (who made the academy-award winning documentary, The Fog of War). I recommend reading these two sets of his online essays:

It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1, and Part 2) – detailing the problems of how to title and caption a ‘truthful’ photojournalism.

Photography As a Weapon (linked here at the NYTimes Blogs) – regarding the unusual retouching and captioning that happens in photos such as the missiles shown here, which is widely recognized as a fake, although it was published by numerous newspapers:

[photo credit: New York Times / Errol Morris]

All of this begs the question... can you really trust any photo? Responding to this question requires being very familiar with the intentions of the photographer, the apparent uses of the camera and its settings, and looking for tell-tale clues in the photo that something may have been manipulated. How do you recognize the fakes? In addition to Morris’s articles, here’s a great sidebar discussion at Scientific American, Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo.

If you’d like much more detailed information about photo fakes and image forensics, then you should check out the research and writings of Hany Farid, who leads the Image Science Group at Dartmouth.

Sometimes, of course, finding the fakery is delightfully easy. You'll see lots of humorous examples (and some fakes of fakes), at PhotoshopDisasters.  Enjoy!

Know Your Lighting

Now there's a nice rainbow! (As seen last June, from Williamstown, looking towards Mt. Greylock.) As a landscape painter and when doing nature photography, my teachers often said you’ll get a great image if the sun is at your back – in other words, when light spreads out and illuminates the landscape in front of you. This tactic works for many scenes, but of course, not for every landscape – if you did a sunset image, probably the sun is in front of you. At sunset did you turn around and look behind you to see the orange-pink glow on the world? That glow is often referred to by artists as ‘Magic Hour’ since it only occurs for a short time during dusk, and dawn. And what about rainbows, when the light must be far in front of you? Really the point of this kind of advice is this: it always helps to be aware of when, where, and what kind of lighting you are using. Know your lighting.

Some things to know about your lighting...

Color Temperature: this you already know, via our white balance exercise.

Location: Where are the Light Sources? Light can come from any direction. In art we tend to group it simply as scenes that are front lit, side lit, silhouette, rim lit, flash (direct), flash (bounced).

What kind of light: Light can also be direct, meaning from an obvious light source. Sometimes a light source is bounced from one place to another, such as beamed into a mirror and then onto your subject matter, and sometimes light is bent through a material like water. These situations are called Direct Light (common), Reflected Light (uncommon), Refracted Light (rare, like rainbows)

Today’s exercise: create a still-life scene with one direct light source, and some simple subject matter. Then take a series of ten photos of the scene where you systematically move the lighting and add reflections, thus demonstrating and experiencing each main type of lighting. Put the photos together to create one composite image wherein you can easily compare the differences of one lighting scenario to the next.
        Hints: You’ll need to set this up so that you can easily adjust the lighting. You will need a light, such as a desklamp or clip lamp. Use only that light. Turn off all other lights. You'll also need a reflector such as a mirror or piece of white posterboard or paper. To create reflections, hold or place the reflector opposite the light source and angled towards the still life... experiment to see if you can soften the shadows. It helps to put the camera on a tripod, if you have one. Use the same scene throughout, but alter the lighting for each photo. You may need to adjust the exposure to avoid blinkies and crunges. Make sure of course that you’ve set your white balance for the best result for your scene.
      Create the following directions of light: silhouette (the light is behind the subject matter, pointing towards your camera), silhouette with an additional reflected light (I used a mirror for the examples above), side lit right, side lit right w/reflection added, side lit left, side lit left + reflected light, 3/4 lit (light is in front, somewhat above and somewhat to the side), 3/4 lit + reflection, bottom lit (lit comes from below, the 'spooky campfire' look), and bottom-lit + reflected light. It's not required but if you'd like to do light from above (Top Lit), you could add it in and it's top lit + reflection version too. Be sure you note what kind of light you use, and then label each direction of light source that you use.
      Your final result should be similar in format to this image (although you might choose to use color)...

               

 

Understanding Color: Part 1 Basic Terms and Concepts

Color terms: Hue Saturation Value

Hue: the name of the color (or in digital photo, the numbers) Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet

Saturation: the brightness or chroma of the color, how much grey versus how much pure hue. Especially vivid colors tend to be highly saturated.

Value: the lightness and darkness of the hue. A black-and-white photo uses no hue, and only relies on value.

Warm vs. Cool Colors: a Warm Color is in the red-orange-yellow range, such as fire. a Cool Color is in the blue-green-black range. For example, the right block is said to be cooler than the left warm gray:

RGB and CMYK. Cameras and printers rely mainly on RGB (Red Green Blue) systems to describe color, and sometimes on CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). RGB refers to what happens when you mix Red, Green, and Blue lights together. If you look closely at the pixels on your computer monitor, you’ll see that they are tiny groups of red green and blue dots. CMYK is mainly used as a color model for printing colors, and is increasingly uncommon.   

RGB Color and How to Number the Colors. Each range of Hue in this model is assigned a number, usually from 0-255. So, zero Red and zero Green and zero Blue combined – no color at all – equals black, where 255 Red and 255 Green and 255 Blue is white. All the other colors are a range between these extremes. Check out the numbers within this menu box, which is the 'Color Picker' (the little eyedropper tool), from Photoshop:

               

You can of course move the slider arrows up and down, and see how the numbers move along with you through the spectrum. If you click on 'only web colors' then you'd see a chunky chart showing a more limited range of colors. In GIMP these controls are similar.[if you'd like to learn a lot more about RGB color, then click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model ]

Here is probably the easiest way to change all of the colors in your photo at one time: the Hue/Saturation control (under Photoshop menu Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation)

The image unchanged, from a photo of a sun dog:

The image altered severely with the H/S controls, same photo:

This is now extremely saturated, the Hue was shifted down, and the image was darkened. For almost all photos, I find that I rarely alter the Hue, and tend to use the LEVELS controls for lightness/darkness. Thus this control is used mainly for saturation, about which I find that increasing the saturation above the number 18 is just way too much for naturalism, and becomes expressionistic instead.

Another basic color control is the Color Balance menu. (in Photoshop it's under Image --> Adjustments --> Color Balance). It looks like this:

Here I simply slid the balance far more into the red, making the entire image a lot pinker. If you're curious, here is the photo I was toying with to show you these color controls. I hope you'll agree that it's a pretty picture:

Watch for sun dogs like this in the Berkshires... they happen here all the time thanks to the mountains, the moisture in the air, and the angle of the sun at sunrise and sunset.

As far as thinking about color goes, I think it's good to keep in mind the variables involved. Some basic Color Design Questions can be

-          (Value) Should this image, or part of it, be Lighter or Darker?

-          (Hue) Should this image or part of it be Warmer or Cooler?

-          (Saturation) Should this image or part of it be More Vivid or More Grey?

Some Simple Ways to Alter Color Relationships:

-          Levels (you already know about this... and maybe you also found the Color Histogram)

-          Hue/Saturation control (the best!!)

-       Color Balance control
-       Apply Color Photo Filter (easy)

-          Create a new Layer, Paint it with a color, and then set the Layer to mainly transparent (fun)