As I promised in my previous blogs I have created my first video tutorial. It demonstrates the conversion of a color HDR image into an HDR Black and White image using Nik Software’s Silver Efx Pro plus a bit of Color Efx Pro. Note that the video is HD so when you go to the Vimeo sight right click on the video and select full screen. in the popup menu.

Click here to go to the video tutorial

It isn’t perfect, but hopefully you will find it useful. Please feel free to leave me feedback – it will help me produce better videos as time goes on.

If any of you have been following my Flickr Photostream you may have noticed a lot of old barns lately – converted to black and white. The detail you can bring out in a B&W HDR  barn image is just wonderful. Old barns strike a cord with me, either because I am getting old or because I had the privilege as a teenager of working on a farm – mostly tossing hay bales around. Must be the later. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites from the series so far.

Note: I am still working on the first video – taking a bit longer then I thought to work out all the technical kinks. The first video will cover the B&W conversion of a barn image so stay tuned.

As I promised in my previous blog here are some additional ideas of what do with sunflowers.

Blog Images:

The lead blog image is just a simple close-up but getting it wasn’t simple. I was shooting outdoors in the early morning light. There was just the slightest breeze, but not enough to let me shoot the length of exposure I needed for f36 (need the DoF when you are this close). A really high ISO might have gotten me there, but instead I shot at f10 at 1/30sec and ISO 640 and shot five images each with the focal point moving from the front of the flower to the back pedals. As in a previous blog I used the focus stacking capability of Photoshop CS5.

A bridal veil drawn vertically across a group of sunflowers was used to create the unique look shown here. The shutter was a bit long to allow the veil to blur a bit. Window light and reflectors were again used for illumination.

The next image was shot in the same field as those in my previous blog using the wheat as a background. For the unique look shown here I applied the Monday Morning – Sepia filter from  Nik Software’s ColorEfx Pro. Viveza 2 was used to lighten the lower center of the sunflower. Finally  the edges and wheat were burned in using Photoshop’s burn tool.

In the final image, three sunflowers were arranged in a vase in my studio and shot using window light and reflectors against a black background. A wide angle lens was used to create the perspective (I don’t use wide angle lenses indoors all that often). Again I used the Monday Morning filter but with different slider adjustments. After that the Tonal Contrast filter was used to bring out a bit more texture. The face of the front sunflower was lightened a bit using Viveza 2.

NOTE: I plan on adding How-To videos to my blog in the near future. If there is any image you would like me to walk through the post processing  let me know.

It is definitely the time of year for sunflowers. They are showing up on everyone’s blog. So in keeping with the trend, here are a few of my recent sunflower images. This set is all from one sunflower field. If you can’t think of new ways to shoot sunflowers, these might stimulate some ideas. Here in Oregon the sunflower fields are pretty spread out. I found the nearest one using Google, a place called Grandma’s Garden.

Blog images:

1. The opening image is a field of sunflowers overexposed. I must admit I came into this image sideways. I was actually shooting an HDR image and decided I liked the look of the +1 stop exposure. I hope to get back and shoot a panoramic vs. this crop.
2. A wheat field was next to the sunflower field and made for a great background (color and texture). I used the tonal contrast filter in Color Efx Pro to bring out more texture.
3. For this image i did a 9 image multiple exposure while rotating the lens in its collar and keeping the rotation point over one sunflower off of center.
4. The final image utilizes the wheat field edge, which had a little curve, to add more compositional interest as the sunflowers tapered off into the distance. I used the side facing sunflower to push the viewer’s look back and to the right  – making the C-curve stronger.

I am sure I will be posting some more  sunflower images in a future blog.

As I continue to shoot different subjects in infrared, I am starting to learn a couple things I didn’t know. Note that I am shooting IR using a Nikon D70 which has been converted/modified for infrared image capture.

REVISED – I realized as I was shooting more IR today that what I wrote down yesterday was backwards. My apologies. Here is a more correct explanation

1. CORRECTED – Metering behavior is different. At first it seemed a bit erratic. While the meter still looks at the visible light, the amount of IR energy in the scene can vary with the subject and time of day. If the scene is mostly green foliage the meter will read that typically as 18% gray tone. However, green foliage emits a lot of IR and is thus very bright (more as the day goes on)  – it is almost white. Your meter is effectively overexposing for a scene that is mostly white not gray as it measured. This means you need to adjust the EV –1 to –2 to keep the image from blowing out.  On the opposite end, images with a lot of water or other “cool” elements (that record nearly black) may require adjusting your EV  +1 to +2. For a nice mix of say sky and foliage the meter gets it about right. In time you start to see the infrared image in your head and compensate your exposure accordingly. Checking the LCD and histogram is a good idea too.
2. Not all lenses behave the same. Besides the usual lens flare issue you can encounter in normal photography, there are hot spots (milky areas near the center of the image – shown in the adjacent image). Some lenses are very prone to this while others are not. Apparently the behavior depends on the coatings for a specific lens. It is aggravated by small apertures. Using wider apertures may help but may not eliminate the problem (but you lose depth of field). Bottom line, standard camera lenses are not necessarily designed or tested for the infrared light spectrum. One last note, apparently this hot spot can often be eliminated in post processing by not using the color channel in which the spot is dominate.  I didn’t find that worked on the image shown to the right.
3. Even if your modified camera was adjusted so that the IR light focuses correctly on your sensor for one lens it may not for others. Same bottom line as above – standard cameras and lenses are not designed for IR. If you avoid shooting with the aperture too wide open this will not be a problem.

Now don’t let these things scare you off from going into digital IR. They aren’t that big of an issue once you know about them. They might limit you in some ways, but infrared photography opens up a whole new photographic frontier for you to explore.

Finally, I have been experimenting with different post processing to see what I like.  The final blog image is one example of using toning with a heavy vignette on an infrared image.

Here is another example of keeping things simple. This image is all about the light and composition. Even the depth of field is simple – everything is in focus, front to back. But there is the rub. Keeping all of this in focus was not simple. This close up was shot with a 105mm macro lens at f32 but that did not keep everything in sharp focus. To get things sharp from front to back I had to take three exposures with the focal point different for each one: front edge, stamen and back interior. Fortunately there are great tools like Photoshop CS5 that allow you to align and blend three images with just a couple mouse clicks.

Here is how you do that:

1. Import your set of exposures as separate layers in Photoshop.
2. Select all of the layers.
3. On the Edit pull down menu select Auto-Align Layers.
4. In the Auto-Align popup box select “Perspective” and click OK.
5. When that is done go back up to the Edit menu and select Auto-Blend Layers… and select “Stack Images” in the popup box. Click OK.
6. At this point you should have a nicely blended image with only the sharp focus section of each exposure used.
7. If there are some artifacts or errors on Photoshop’s part, you can go in and touch up the Mask layers, created by Photoshop, with a brush as needed.
8. Flatten out the layers and you are done.
9. Now wasn’t that simple?

You may have noticed that I like to work (play) with a lot of  different techniques in my photography; both in the capture and post-processing. However there are times when keeping everything simple just seems best. This is one of the reasons I like a lot of William Neill’s images. The blog image is one example of my keeping it simple. I have also included it in Black and White.

One of the keys to “simple” is simply great light. Another is just simple composition – think simple graphics.

So if you are like me, and like to push the limits, step back now and then and keep it is simple.

Photographers often shoot alone and I know we may often prefer it that way, but next time you go out consider bringing another photographer along with you. You not only keep each other company, you get so see how someone else sees the same subject in a different way. I think this is one of the appeals of a photography workshop or a photography club, but you don’t have to wait for a workshop or a club outing, just give someone a call, email  or twitter before you head out. I think you will be glad you did.

Blog images: Here are a couple images I took on an evening drive out to the coast with a couple friends. The lead blog image is a 15sec exposure taken using a vari-ND to soften the water. The second image is an HDR image taken near dusk. The third image used the vari-ND again with a bit of Nik Soft fog added to create yet more mystery and depth. The final image was created using the “Holga” preset in Nik Soft SilverEfx Pro with some minor adjustments

Do you find it hard to resist shooting a subject even when all the conditions are "wrong"? Bright sun, wind, wrong lens, wrong camera, etc. I do. While this can force you to be creative in your handling of the subject and sometimes that works. Most of the time it may just be best  to come back and shoot later when conditions are more favorable. Now I know this may create some arguments, but the reality is we only have so much time and isn’t it better to invest your time when the odds of getting strong images are most favorable. I am not talking about being a fair weather photographer – I personally would view inclement conditions as generally favorable. But there are times like Sunday when the sun was just plain harsh, I accidently forgot one of my camera’s with my mid-range zoon, my wide angle was in the shop and the wind was blowing. Not exactly prime conditions to shoot images of lavender with a macro or long lens. Did I try to shoot? Yes. Should have I, I don’t think it was a good use of my time. I did do some multi-exposures, swipes and long exposures (multiple seconds with my Vari-ND), but nothing really came out strong because the light was just inappropriate for the subject. Was it a good exercise? Maybe. What are you thoughts on this? Are you driven to shoot when you know it probably won’t be worthwhile?

Blog image: I did try to shoot some classic lavender images with my long lens. A cloud did pass over now and then so I waited for one, upped the ISO and waited for lulls in the wind. The image was still very flat and unsaturated (RAW image on left). In post processing I adjusted the white balance, added saturation, contrast and then applied the Orton filter effect which is good on low contrast images.

You may have noticed a lot images using texture overlays as of late. You take two images overlay them and blended them together – a nicely textured rock overlaid and with a flower for example. But if you go back to the writings of Freeman Patterson, he discovered that you could create textured images using multiple exposures where you mix  images of different subjects along the way. This is probably best explained through an example – like the opening blog image.

Two types of flowers have been combined via multiple exposures to create the blog image. A total of seven exposures went into this image. As in the past, this has all been done in camera (a Nikon feature, but you can recreate this using layers in Photoshop).

First a background pattern or texture if you will was laid down by taking the first five exposures of the Blue Star Thistle shown on the left. The five images combine  into a background image that  looks something like the next image. Note that you can create texture images like this and use it to blend with other  images you may already have.

Second,  two additional exposures were take of the Helen’s flower shown here. Note that you may need to up the EV +1 for these last two exposures to bring them out a bit more.

Hints:

1. Choose the colors of your material carefully so they work together. Here we have a classic blue/orange combination. 
2. For the background (thistle in this case), try to create a nice even texture by thinking ahead about the framing of the multi-exposures.
3. Post process for contrast, saturation, etc as desired. I did little to not adjustments on the blog image.

Have fun!