How’s it done?
I love cities for a lot of reasons, especially for all they offer a photographer in subjects that can be photographed. I take walks on the streets early in the morning and shoot people, buildings, light and shadow and even elements like door knobs. I usually work with long lenses. These were taken with a Fuji XT2 and a 100-400 zoom.
Seems there is a bit of controversy about the image I posted on Luminous-Landscape.com the other day. A lot of people liked it and a number of readers had a difficult time with it. Yes, I could have made a regular straight image as shown below (further down in the article). It would not have had the appeal at least for me and many readers as the final image did. So let’s see how the image evolved.
It has been worked on to bring out the details lost where there was no light and to generally give the image some pop. I used a few techniques that have been coined by friends as being “Raberized”. I like to think of it as RaberEYES. So, to the people that want to know, I liked this image the best.
The image below is the original image straight out of Capture One with no work done to it.
Pretty bland if you ask me. So, I made some adjustments in Capture One and began to see improvements but still not there.
So, at this point maybe some people would like this. I didn’t. I ultimately went into Photoshop and with the help of Third Party Tools as well as some Photoshop tools and ended up with the image that I published. I suppose we can argue to the cows come home what is right or wrong. For me the only thing that is right is that I liked the published version. Seems a lot of other people did too based on emails, comments and remarks published elsewhere. and on LuLa. I am the artist I take full responsibility for my actions, techniques and images. I had a lot of fun taking this and making this.
And, just for sake of qualifications, I can make Capture One, Lightroom and Photoshop do amazing things. I am an accomplished photographer and have been doing this my whole life. I have fun taking and making my images and every now and then as the artist I take certain liberties with my images and stretch it just a bit. when I do I get a lot of people that notice. I love sharing and I like it when an image stirs up discussions.
Thanks for visiting and reading.
Like in my previous post this image was made on one of our daily excursions to see what we could see. So much possibility for images is close to home. You just need to keep your eyes open. This shot was made at an old abandoned garage. On the wall of the building was an old Goodyear Tire sign. It was rusted badly and since I love rusty things so much I was attracted to it immediately. And, rather than just shoot the whole sign I looked for an image in the image and played around to I came out with this composition. This was not a crop but made while looking through the viewfinder. Shot with a Nikon D800e and 24-70mm lens. Processed in Capture One and then into NIK HDR single image tone mapped.
I just got back from a week in Canada. During this week I have been working hard with my business partner Michael Reichmann on our web site Luminous-Landscape. We are planning all sorts of new and enhanced things for this site. It is one of the most heavily visited photography websites on the internet. every day after we accomplished what we had on our agenda we rewarded ourselves by going out shooting. We would aim the car and just go and with no specific place in mind we would just find stuff. Always a lot of fun not only shooting but having a great conversation while seeing the countryside. While we were driving we both saw at the same time this one tree on the hill with these great clouds behind it. We stopped set up our gear and shot. We both have different interpretations of the shot. This is mine. Shot with a Nikon D800e and 80-400mm zoom lens. Tis was 5 exposures combined in HDG then converted to BW image.
While photographing in Death Valley I visited the Artist Pallet are to shoot sunset. There on the side of the road was this motorcycle guy leaning back on his bike watching the mountains light up in all the magic they do. I went p to take pictures and I started talking to this guy. Turns out he has been cruising the highways for 17 years. everything he owns or needs is packed on the back of this bike. I asked if he would pose for some shots and he was more than cooperative. This is the result of the shot. I did some post work on this image in Photoshop to make it a bit different.
Along the Washington and Oregon coast lines there are some classic places to take magnificent images of the coast and stacks and crashing surf. One of the more iconic places is Second Beach in Olympic National Park. A little bit of a hike through a well marked trail deposits you at this super location. Sunset being the best time to be there. I wanted my images to be different than others I saw before of this location. This was shot with an IQ180 and then processed out with one exposure to six levels at one stop increments. So I had a 3 stop over and under and one normal from one shot. The Phase One camera takes an incredible image with 12 plus stops dynamic range. So in one image I was able to hold all details in highlights and shadows. It’s quite the moment when you look at the histogram of an image like this expecting clipping on highlights and shadows and the Phase One back shows a very nice histogram with toes at both ends. This allowed me to know I had the information to produce an image like this. Then using Photomatix I processed them together to make an HDR. I made adjustments so it didn’t appear to grungy or fake. I retained enough detail in the rocks but didn’t overdue it. I decided on a gold tone cast as that is how I remembered this image. After the image was processed and saved I opened it using NIK Viveza and did some desaturation in the clouds and darkened some corners. Finally I saved it, flattened it and then did a JPEG at a smaller dimension so I could post it on my blog and FaceBook. There were number of images from this one nights shoot that were keepers and this was one. I like the rock in the foreground and texture the water makes. Hope you enjoy it. This weekend I will make a 30×40 inch print.
So, what do you do when you go to an industrial site (Gravel Quarry) and want to make the place look gritty and sort of apocalyptic? You use a good camera and some of the app you can find on the iPad. This shot was of a big old dump truck at the quarry, obviously not used much. I shot a variety of angles of it and this is the one I selected. I like the flat tire, low angle, and the hose coming off of it. I pulled the image into the iPAd and used SNapSpeed to adjust the drama, grit, and selective colors. Enjoy!
A photographer I very much admire is Jay Maisel. He is a typical tough New Yorker who has been shooting images forever and does so everyday. You never and I mean never see Jay without a camera on his shoulder. He finds a shot on the streets, in stores and anywhere he goes. He never has the excuse I can come back and shoot it later or I’ll get next or I wish I had a camera. His work is amazing and his philosophy towards photography inspiring. So, why the rambling? Because this is a classic case of seeing something and grabbing it. These are just plain standpipes in Broad ripple are of Indy. I saw the color, contrast and sun and had to shoot it and I let my shadow become part of the shot too. I like the design of the shot. Messed around with it a bit on the iPad and here is my image. Enjoy.
The other night after experiencing some dramatic storms the skies began to clear and just turn wonderful colors and they were so dramatic. My friend Debra grabbed me and we drove the block it takes to get to the Performing Arts Center. I jumped out of the car and began shooting away. I had grabbed my GH3 and shot in HDR mode – 5 exposures per shot. This technique allows my camera to shot over exposures opening up shadows and underexposures allowing highlights to be recorded. I then bring my images into Capture One and do perspective control (straightening lines on building so they don’t or do distort). Then I process he images to tiff format and run them through PhotoMatix combing all the exposures into one image. Then I took the image into photoshop and run them through a series of other programs. In this case I used a plug in called Topaz Adjust. So here is my artistic version of PAC at a dramatic sunset. I have more so look for them soon. Also, finished up some dramatic Moab B&W Images. Stay tuned.
Well it’s another day and another plane ride. Today it’s New York for a few days. Need to spend some time in the office working on pushing the PODAS workshops along and making sure we are set to go for a busy rest of the year. We have a PODAS workshop every month for the rest of the year. Also, I have a trip to China coming up in the next month to promote a workshop there. Life at Phase One is always busy.
Today’s image is another take on the barn with the truck I posted the other day. This time from the front with some effects thrown onto it for artistic sake. Shot on a P65 and then converted using an iPhone app. It’s just fun. The details in the original Phase One file are amazing. Definitely be working on some big prints when time allows. Think I’ll post some Neon Graveyard images the next few days.