Posted on October 11, 2014September 8, 2014 by Alex Wise

Before and After – Southbank Overpass

This photograph was captured from a busy overpass in Southbank, Melbourne. Coming from Hobart where traffic is let’s be honest – quiet, I’m forever looking for city overpasses that provide a good vantage point that overlooks the busy and constant flow of traffic entering and exiting Melbourne. I’d like to share the before and after for this image as there’s quite the difference between the two.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded”]This photo forms part of my Before and After Series. Be sure to check out previous posts of this series[/box]

Southbank, Melbourne on Blue Hour

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Capturing the Photograph

Generally when shooting traffic from an overpass that doesn’t have a constant flow of traffic, I will slightly cheat and set my camera to manual mode and fire exposures as each big burst of traffic goes through my scene. The reason for doing this is it allows me to combine the larger flows of traffic into one photo to give a sense that the road was busier than it actually was. It’s probably not ethical but coming from Hobart where the highways aren’t high flowing like huge cities, sometimes we have to use any trick up our sleeves to get the photo we’re striving for.

Luckily though this wasn’t needed on this occasion as I was overlooking one of the busier highways in Melbourne where there is an abundance of trucks and cars constantly flowing under the overpass.

The photograph was taken after sunset on blue hour. I find blue hour is perfect for shooting long exposure cityscape photos as there is still a lot of natural light which the camera picks up through long exposures that may not be visible to the naked eye. Although there was a lot of light still about, I wanted to ease on the side of caution and capture multiple exposures at different exposure values. By this I mean, I wanted to capture an under exposed, neutral exposed and over exposed image. No no, before you ask, not to create a HDR image but to err on the side of caution. Although shooting at this hour provides a lot of available light that may not be visible to the natural eye, it still doesn’t overcome the issue that there was some dynamic range drop off around the buildings and dark points of the overpass where the over exposed image would be useful.

Using Automatic Exposure Bracketing

For this reason I set the camera into automatic exposure bracketing mode (AEB) and set the camera to fire at various exposures. This is quite a useful tool for when you are shooting and don’t want to risk missing the right dynamic range.

[box size=”large” style=”rounded”]Further information about Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) can be found on a previous post of my blog which explains how to use it on your camera and when it can be useful[/box]

With the images captured at varying levels of exposure, I was quite content that I had the image I was after and set off home to process the images.

Editing the Images

Opening the images in Lightroom, I was glad to have taken multiple exposures and decided to use the +1 over exposed image as my neutrally exposed image was slightly too dark. Instead, the over exposed image provided a good level of dynamic range without blowing out any highlights while bringing out detail in the shadows.

Upon editing the image, it was quickly apparent that the surrounding lights had warmed the RAW temperature of the image to a level that didn’t accurately reflect the scene. Normally I would drop the colour temperature within Lightroom but opted to go straight to Photoshop for colour grading.

I’m quite fond of using Photoshop for colour grading of my images through using Curves to make this change. Curves is super powerful as it allows you to isolate your changes to the shadows, midtones and highlights of the red, green and blue channels of the image. Through using this tool, it provides you with the ability to have great control over the tones and contrast of an image. For example, in this image I used Curves, selected the red channel and made changes to the shadows to correct the colour temperature. For more example about Curves, Adobe’s website has some [ilink url=”http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/curves-adjustment.html”]great information[/ilink] about using the tool.

For the most part, the final image involved a lot of back and forth edits in curves with layer masks to subtly introduce different parts of the curves to parts of the image. This generally meant bumping the shadows then layer masking it to a particular part of the image (i.e. boosting the shadows for the under pass of the image).

If you enjoyed this post be sure to check out my other posts in this [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/category/technique/before-and-after-technique/”]Before and After Series[/ilink] or if you’re feeling brave, give me a follow on Twitter or Facebook 😉

Thanks for reading.

– Alex

Posted on September 27, 2014February 14, 2015 by Alex Wise — 4 Comments

Before and After – Mansfield Tree on Sunset

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Recently I posted this image on [ilink url=”http://www.reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/comments/2epv5r/lone_tree_on_sunset_in_mansfield_victoria_by_alex/”]Reddit[/ilink] and received some great exposure. Amidst the exposure, some people were calling that the sub-reddit had degenerated into nothing more than heavily Photoshopped images that didn’t depict how the scene accurately looked. As part of my [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/category/technique/before-and-after-technique/”]Before and After Series[/ilink] I’d like to look at how this image from [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2014/06/24/exploring-country-victoria-mansfield-and-abroad/”]Mansfield, Victoria[/ilink] was captured and processed.

The Evolution of the Dark Room

When reading comments comments about photographs that don’t resemble a scene whether it’s directed at me or others, I question whether there is a level of ignorance surrounding post processing. Let’s not forget that Ansel Adams was a pioneer in the use of dodge and burning and other darkroom techniques as discussed in interesting detail with comparative pictures by [ilink url=”http://whitherthebook.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/ansel-adams-and-photography-before-photoshop/”]Jack Dziamba[/ilink]. I would argue that if Ansel Adams was alive today, he would be using Photoshop as his digital dark room and pushing the envelope by using its features to process his images. Not only was Adams a pioneer in developing darkroom techniques but his involvement in the now famous, f/64 group, were also pioneers in exploring darkroom techniques which are now imitated in the digital equivalent – Photoshop. Regardless of time, photographers will always be looking to explore and push the envelope with photography and to me, that is the joy in Photography. We’re always constantly learning and developing. It’s definitely what keeps me hooked.

My Shooting Process

Before I even press the trigger on a my camera shutter, I am not only correcting the camera as much as I can (i.e. setting it to the settings that I desire, straightening the horizon, etc) but also considering how I will process the image whether this be adding a duo tone or using the dodge/burn tool to highlight particular parts of the image. I don’t simply take a photo, look at my LCD and think “ah well, I’ll fix it up in Photoshop”. Instead I capture an image on the camera that forms part of ‘my vision’ for the whole photograph. For this reason, you may find notice my before photographs in this [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/category/technique/before-and-after-technique/”]Before and After Series[/ilink] are often captured quite flat. Shooting in RAW mode, your images will appear somewhat flat regardless however often I will aim to shoot my image without any harsh highlights which often means shooting slightly under exposed. Modern digital camera’s have come a long way however pulling detail from highlights is a lot more difficult than pulling detail from blown highlights. For this reason, I will often expose just before I start to lose my highlights. For example, if the highlights are starting to blow at 5″ seconds, I will reduce to a shorter exposure of 2.5″ seconds. But enough ramble… Let’s look at how this photo from Mansfield was captured and post processed.

Capturing the Photo

Images captured at varying exposure times for the final image

This photograph was taken while staying on a remote rural property in June 2014. We stayed in a farm house on an actual farm filled with livestock. It was an amazing experience and something I’ll never forget. Upon arriving home from photographing the [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2014/06/24/exploring-country-victoria-mansfield-and-abroad/”]Howqua Valley[/ilink] the sun was just starting to set and without much time to drive far, I decided to take a walk around the farm in the hope of finding a composition to capture the sunset. Luckily I came across this tree and decided to setup my tripod and camera gear while having a walk around to try find a good angle. As I was setting up cows were walking across the crest of the hill, I worried for a second that they may take a seat and call it home for the night but fortunately they kept moving. On this evening, there was quite a bit of breeze about which in turn was bringing through clouds at a rapid pace which I wanted to capture through a long exposure. The clouds weren’t moving as quite as much as I would have liked so I captured multiple long exposures with the intention of layer blending them in Photoshop. However through taking a long exposure, this ran the risk of also blurring the grass and puddle reflections. For this reason I also took some shorter length exposures in case the long exposures left the scene unsharp.

Processing the Images

The location was lacking for stand out compositions so I decided to take a chance and just take this one composition of the sunset of the tree reflecting in the background. Once I setup my camera, I took a few photos over the sunset which included:

Long exposures – The idea was to capture the moving clouds but unfortunately they weren’t moving as fast as I would have liked so to capture them properly before the sun went down, I captured multiple exposures with the intention of combinging them through using layer masks in Photoshop;
Short exposure – Shooting 3-5 minute long exposures with a slight breeze ran the risk of blurring the grass and puddles. I captured a shorter exposure in case I got home and these elements were blurry from the long exposure. By having this image I could easily layer mask the short exposure into the image and retain the sharpness of the image and;
Self portrait – Can I just say, putting the camera into a one minute self timer and sprinting (and perhaps awkwardly tripping) makes you look like a complete fool to anyone nearby watching? Fortunately no one was around nor do I really care but I’m sure if someone saw they would have been slightly bemused. This image never eventuated but was just an idea for something different in case the tree didn’t work on its own.

[box type=”info” size=”large” style=”rounded”]Layer what? Check out a previous blog post that discusses how to use layer masks[/box]

Generally I’ll tend to make most of my adjustments in Lightroom but obviously when you are doing some layer masking Photoshop is required. Once I identified what images I would be using (a mix of long exposures and a short exposure), I exported the images from Lightroom without much change and began editing them with the following process:

Opened my short exposure in Photoshop to use as the base layer
Imported the longer exposures and added them as layers to this image
Slowly introduced the clouds one shot at a time by using layer masks
Once the clouds were introduced to the shot and I was happy, I wanted to go a bit experimental with the vignette and colour grading for the image. This resulted in a lot of selective curves and saturation masks making minor changes to the different channels of the image. For the most part, this was just playing around until I was happy with the end result but the intention was to focus on the tree and reflections and slowly fade off to a vignette using dodge and burning
Added a ProContrast layer from the [ilink url=”https://www.google.com/nikcollection/”]Nik Collection[/ilink] and juggled the opacity until it was at an acceptable level
Save image (this will form my master copy for printing)
Resize image for web (900px at the longest edge)
Added a unsharp (USM) layer to sharpen only the tree and grass of the shot. The idea here was to keep the sky looking as soft as possible while trying to boost the sharpness of the rest of the image. I do this quite often for my images however be mindful not to do over do this as having one part of your image with strong sharpness and the rest looking unsharp can look quite odd if you’re not careful
Save web image

Apologies if the process sounds a bit vague but for the most part, dropping and the different clouds exposures was the easy part. It was experimenting with different colour styles and dodge/burning where I dabbled and experimented with different looks until I ended up with something I was happy with.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions about the processing of this image be sure to leave a comment or drop me an email as I’d be happy to help!

– Alex

Posted on September 10, 2014September 10, 2014 by Alex Wise — 2 Comments

Before and After – Sunlight at Hopetoun Falls

This is an entry for my [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/category/technique/before-and-after-technique/” style=”note”]Before and After series of photographs[/ilink] where I share how I captured and post processed an image. This particular image is from Hopetoun Falls looking back down river of the water that runs off from the main fall. Hopetoun Falls forms part of the Otways Ranges and is a beautiful part of the world. If you’d like to see more photos from this trip be sure to check out my [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2013/12/08/weekend-trip-down-the-great-ocean-road/” style=”note”]post from the Great Ocean Road[/ilink] which includes this among many.

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Capturing and Editing Sunlight at Hopetoun Falls

This is one of those photographs that as a photographer, we view it through our eyes and then when we try to capture it in camera it’s incredibly difficult to replicate what our eye is seeing. On this particular day we had shot the waterfall most of the day under overcast conditions (perfect for photographing waterfalls). Later during our time at Hopetoun Falls, the cloud started to clear and the sun began to shine stunningly through the trees. Rather than pack up my gear like I normally would when the sun starts shining harshly at a waterfall I wanted to try pull off a shot of the sun bursting through the trees.

Taking the Photo

Bracketed images that would be later stitched and combined in Photoshop

Framing the photo straight away I knew if I wanted to get both the stream and sun bursting through the trees in shot I would have to take two photos and stitch them together. Even though I was shooting with a Canon 17-40 it still wasn’t wide enough to fit in the one shot so a two image stitch would be the go. Shooting the images I’m using my Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 17-40, Hoya Circular Polariser and Manfrotto tripod.

I also knew that trying to capture the dynamic range properly in one shot for each stitch was going to be very difficult. Not one to normally use the auto bracketing exposure (AEB) feature on my camera, I opted to take 3 exposures of the top half of the stitch and another 3 for the bottom part of the stitch which resulted in a slight mess of images in my Lightroom catalogue.

In case you’re not familiar with the AEB feature I wrote [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2013/01/12/automatic-exposure-bracketing-aeb-explained/”]article about Auto Exposure Bracketing[/ilink] a while ago now which explains the feature a little more. I took the multiple exposures as it provided me with some insurance that if I didn’t get it right with the neutral exposure I would also have the under and over exposed images to play with.

Combining and Editing the Photos

When it comes to exposure blending my level of competency is around average so the idea of combining this with a two image stitch was a recipe for disaster. I processed the images from the trip and let the images for this one sit for a while. Normally when I shoot, I like to process my images within 24 hours of taking them. I hate the feeling of sitting on unedited images and like to get them processed, not necessarily to post online but just to have them processed according to how I remembered the scene. For this one, I was actually too intimidated by the prospect ahead and knew I was in for some fun in Photoshop.

It wasn’t until a weekend a few weeks later that I finally decided to give combining and editing the images a crack.

Combining The Photos

Having used auto exposure bracketing to capture an under, neutral and over exposed image for both the top and bottom parts of the frame, I went about creating two image stitches for each bracket.

By this I mean, I created a two image stitch of the two over exposed images, again for the neutrally exposed images and another for the under exposed images. This resulted in 3 separate stitched images consisting of 1 over exposed stitch, 1 neutral exposed stitch and 1 under exposed stitch.

When stitching images, most people tend to recommend various different pieces of software like PTGui but I’ve had quite good luck with the Photoshop stitch tool. This can be found under File > Automate > Photomerge.

Editing the Photos

[box type=”info”]Haven’t blended images in Photoshop before? Read my Photoshop image blending tutorial to get started[/box]

Now that I had these 3 separate image stitches of each exposure, I went about opening the neutral image in Photoshop and layering the over and under exposed images as layers on top. The over exposed image would be used to bring out the dynamic range in the foliage surrounding the waterfall and the waterfall itself while the under exposed layer would be used to capture the sun bursting through the trees. Luckily, it wasn’t as hard as I originally thought but just required a lot of low opacity layer masking to subtly bring out areas of a layer. The hardest part was blending the sun into the shot which required me to use a combination of the brush tool and gradient masks to ever subtly drop it back in without it looking uneven to the rest of the scene.

I’ve attached a screenshot to the right which highlights the different parts of the image where layer masks from the 3 images were used. Call me lazy but I’ve become a fan of the [ilink url=”http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-photoshop-cc/using-contentaware-fill-to-remove-distractions/”]Adobe Photoshop Content Aware Tool[/ilink] which for the most part works perfectly. Generally if this doesn’t work I’ll revert back to the [ilink url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY023ZQJy0M”]Adobe Clone Stamp Tool[/ilink] to remove unwanted distractions like the branch in the corner and lens flare at the bottom of the stream.

Once all the images were blended in, I then went about making selective adjustments to the saturation and individual colour channels to colour grade parts of the image. I’m fond of using layer masks for saturation changes as it allows you to increase or decrease the saturation or change the hue of a particular area in the image without affecting the overall photo. For this image, I used selective saturation and hue adjustments to both the water and foliage areas.

Finally some cropping was applied to the image and a warming filter was applied to add some warmth to the sunburst coming through the trees. With this I used a layer mask to ensure changes with the warming filter were only limited to the sunburst and not the rest of the image.

And that’s that. Something I learnt from this photo was that sometimes it’s okay to sit on an image and procrastinate about it rather than process it immediately. Sometimes I should probably do a bit more often.

Thanks for reading and I hope this was helpful,

– Alex

Posted on August 30, 2014August 24, 2014 by Alex Wise

Before and After – Dark Mofo 2014

Following up from my recent post sharing photos of [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/2014/08/22/a-quick-weekend-in-tasmania/”]a quick weekend photographing parts of Tasmania,[/ilink] I shared a photo from Dark Mofo 2014 and thought it was good timing to share a before and after of how the image came together.

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Capturing and Processing Dark Mofo 2014

This forms part of a [ilink url=”http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/category/technique/before-and-after-technique/”]Before and After Series[/ilink] where I share both the before and after images and do my best to provide an explanation of how the images were captured and processed. I’m not one to heavily process my images but when I can’t capture what I see, I will resort to using Photoshop and multiple layers to achieve what I visualised before even pressing the shutter. Perhaps some may feel that this is cheating and I appreciate that this level of post processing isn’t to everyone’s tastes but I would argue that post processing like this remains within an acceptable level of photography post processing and does not cross over to photo manipulation. The later involves adding skies, moons or sunbursts from other shoots where the lines of an acceptable level of Photoshop starts to be questioned. But let’s move on to how this particular image was captured and post processed.

Capturing the Images

Some background about this years Dark Mofo

This year Dark Mofo had an installation of multiple lights scattered around the city of Hobart where the general public could go and control them for a few minutes. Last year the organisers of Dark Mofo had a one light installation which was centered in the city of Hobart – making things a bit more easier for photographers. This great image of Dark Mofo 2012 by Ben Short captures it in all its glory.

With the lights being controlled manually, imagine a kid dialed up on red cordial controlling the lights and them quickly moving around the sky (in case you’re curious I recorded this admittedly terrible video of two of the installations doing their thing). Rather than take a photo close up of the installation I looked for somewhere out of the city which would provide me with a viewpoint that captured all of the lights located around Hobart. For this reason I chose Bellerive which provided a direct view from across the river looking towards the city and the Dark Mofo light installations. After standing and watching the lights flicker around the sky I knew straight away that I would need to capture multiple exposures of the lights and combine them in Photoshop if I was to get the result I was after.

Capturing the light installation

Setting up for the image I decided to use my [ilink url=”http://www.adorama.com/ICA5DM2.html?KBID=65353″ style=”note”]Canon 5D Mark II[/ilink] , [ilink url=”http://www.adorama.com/CA2470.html?KBID=65353″ style=”note”]Canon 24-70 2.8 L[/ilink] , tripod and interval remote for the photo. Composing the image I used the jetty with me standing on it in the foreground and the Dark Mofo lights in the background. This would require multiple images to be captured of the light installations (to capture them at the different points in the sky) and then another shot of me standing on the jetty.

Capturing the light bursts I wanted to capture shorter exposure times so ramped up my ISO to 2000 and set my camera to aperture priority mode and shot at F/2.8 which resulted in an exposure time of around 0.5″ of a second. I set the camera to burst mode and fired around 15 shots of the lights. These would later be selectively combined to form the top part of the image

Capturing the image of me standing on the jetty

For the image of me standing on the jetty, I changed my camera settings to manual and set the ISO to 200, aperture to F/4 and an exposure time of 15 seconds. Using the interval remote, I was able to set the count down timer to be one minute, giving me plenty of time to get down to the jetty and stand ready for the photo to capture. The reason I used a longer exposure (15 seconds) was to smooth the water of the bottom part of the image. I found the shorter (0.5 second) exposures were leaving the water a little choppy from the outgoing tides and by capturing a longer exposure time this would also capture more reflection of the light installation.

Post Processing the Images

The final image was composed of 8 images and various saturation, curves and contrast adjustments (using Niksoft ProContrast and Viveza for the later). The image below gives you a sense of how rapidly the lights were moving based on the exposures that were captured. Note the exposure time was 0.5″ of a second so the 10 blue temperature photos you see were taken over the space of around 40 seconds. Quite a lot of movement!

bracket-images — Some of the 15 images that were bracketed to capture the quick moving lights

Once I’d loaded the images up into Lightroom I exported them as full JPG and loaded them into Photoshop. Here I used one of 0.5″ second exposure images as the base image and then added the other images (including the one of me standing on the jetty) as layers. The idea here was to selectively mask myself and different parts of the light installation into the base image by using layer masks.

[box]Haven’t used Photoshop Layer Masks before? Check out this tutorial on using Layer Masks that should bring you up to speed.[/box]

Using layer masks on each light layer, I selectively introduced parts of the light into the base image and also masked myself standing on the jetty into the shot. Once this was done, I set about using some curves masks to play with the red, green and blue colour channels to make some subtle changes to the colour of the image. Lately I’ve become quite the fan of the Pro Contrast Tool and Viveza that forms part of the [ilink url=”https://www.google.com/nikcollection/”]Nik Collection[/ilink]. I’ll generally use one of each and then play with the opacity of the layer. For this specific image though, I used a Pro Contrast layer just on the light beams of the shot to give them a bit more punch.

The above is a little confusing so to help explain things a little better I’ve put together a small clip that starts at the base image and enables each individual layer showing the progression and processing of the images.

Hopefully the clip provided some clarification regarding how the different layers were used and the subtle changes which using curves and ProContrast had on the image. If you have any questions about the process or the image itself be sure to leave a comment or drop an email and I’d be happy to help.

Thanks for reading,

– Alex

Posted on August 17, 2014September 10, 2014 by Alex Wise

Before and After – Mortimer Bay

Over the coming months I’d like to share with you some before and after images of shots I’ve taken over the years. I’m a firm believer that there needs to be transparency in photography and the days of photographers hiding away secrets is done. Sorry to the old guard and old rules (oh yeah I just quoted Jay-Z in a post). Sure, there’s some aspects of photography that can’t be taught but I for one enjoy a behind the scenes look of how other photographers work. It’s both beneficial to people starting out and people who have been shooting for sometime. I shoot quite a bit with various people and find even though we’re shooting the same thing and processing quite similarly, there’s always subtle differences and it’s that what I hope to capture in my posts.

Through these before and after images, you will sometimes find that there is a dramatic change between the straight out of camera image and the final image you see on my website. While in others there may be minimal difference. For me, this is highlighting that we aren’t always fortunate to get great light while in other cases we are fortunate for the get great light and walk away with great photos in camera.

I’d like to use this as an opportunity to demonstrate how the image looked prior to my processing and briefly explain the processing techniques I used to achieve the final image. In some cases, the final image won’t be to everyone’s tastes and I fully accept and welcome that so feel free to chime in if you have any criticism of how you may have gone about things differently.

Continue reading Before and After – Mortimer Bay