Photography Article Black and White Book Club: week 3 (Feb. 10-16)|Photography Artist Statement

We have reached the mid-point of the month for our Black and White Book Club study of Michael Freeman's The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography (or the Black and White Photography Field Guide). Be sure to read the overview,week 1, and week 2 posts if you are just joining in. Everyone is welcome to participate, even without a copy of either book, but if you do have the book, you will have more to draw on during the month.

Week 3 (Feb. 10-16th) will focus on Elements of Visual Design in Photography – thinking about shape, structure, tone, volume, form, and texture. We will be covering pgs. 46-61/44-59 (optional processing pages: 82-103/80-103).

* For those participating via 365project.org and want to also add the "Flash of Color" element, Feb. 13th will be the day for Flash of Color – an image processed with selective color to bring out only a specific color. Last year was flash of red, but you are free to choose any color. This will create one color image in the precise center of your 365project calendar.

Elements of Visual Design in Photography

This week's chapters cover some of the elements of visual design in photography: shape, structure, tonal nuance, volume, form, and texture. (For the curious, I am borrowing the cohesive term "elements of visual design" from last August's Photography Book Club of Freeman Patterson's Photography and the Art of Seeing.)

I will admit to being a little pissed off at Freeman's brevity in these chapters. While he alludes to the various elements within the chapter titles, he does now not do much to outline or explain them for the reader. So, for the curious, I can be borrowing extra from Patterson to put out some basis.

Shape: "All shapes are two-dimensional, such as a square, a circle, the silhouette of a tree, or the outline of a cup … In real life every three-dimensional object has as many shapes as there are positions from which it can be viewed" (Photography and the Art of Seeing, pg. 106). Freeman focuses on the idea of shape as silhouette that "depends heavily on outline … defined by edge contrast" (pg. 46/44). Think about edges and silhouettes and how to see shapes this week.

Tone: Tone includes the range of hues or colors in an image, which is simplified when shooting in black and white to the tones from pure black to pure white and all the grays in between. "What this allows is a clearer, purer concentration on the subtleties of transition between shades of gray" (pg. 50/46). Think about which tones are present or featured in your image.

Volume and Form: While a two-dimensional photograph does not have actual depth, "the illusion of depth or perspective is easily created. In fact, it occurs naturally, owing to the ways that the intensity, quality, direction, and colour of light illuminate the subject matter" (Ibid, pg. 107).  Freeman shows in his example the impact of side lighting in highlighting the volume and form of a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional photograph. Think about lighting and the angles of your lighting this week. See how side lighting or backlighting or front lighting changes your image.

Texture: "Texture is the visual weave or fabric-like nature of surfaces … As much as anything else, the direction from which light falls on the subject matter influences the photographic representation of texture" (Ibid, pg. 107). Freeman stresses that "almost any relief texture looks stronger under a point-source light that casts hard shadows, and in particular under raking light, from a low angle" (pg. 54/52). Try to search out some interesting textures this week or fill the frame with a single texture or a combination of textures.

There are quite a few methods to use those thoughts this week, as the subjects are as much as you. Think about shapes and angles; consider lights and timing; and consider what you want to reap: shape vs. Quantity, texture vs. Smooth tones, or ?

Delving in to "Digital Monochrome" chapters

This week's optional section on digital processing takes a look at some unusual processing options as well as a basic processing workflow (pages 82-103/80-103). The infrared spectrum, while outside our normal visual range, is not necessarily outside the range that can be capture by your camera's sensor. Freeman details how cameras are created to filter out IR and how you could use infrared for photography.

The processing workflow chapters are certainly at the heart of the "digital darkroom" idea. Freeman presents an overview of what a number of the options and panels appear like in diverse RAW conversion packages, and he devotes an entire chapter to Silver Efex Pro.

Example of an Adobe Camera Raw workspace

"Reduced to the handiest, there are simply three basic picture features for monochrome photography: brightness, contrast, and tonal variety. When you shoot ? You can affect just the first of these ? In relation to processing, but, each of these is adjustable" (pg. Ninety six). Freeman then walks through a few basic definitions of each of these three terms and covers a few common ways to alter them in publish-processing, frequently inclusive of numerous editions to perform the equal intention. He shows adjusting the quit factors of the histogram first (tonal variety), then adjusting the brightness, and finally running at the comparison, and he gives several comparative (although frequently pretty subtle) examples of such changes.

Does his system suit your workflow for black and white photography? Do you watched there are steps that he's lacking, that you could re-arrange, or that seem like they need more explanation? Consider sharing to your descriptions a few detail approximately your workflow system this week.

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment with your thoughts or a link to a picture you have taken for the Book Club and an explanation of how the book influenced your image. Or, you can post pictures and contribute to the discussion by joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Parting words for the week, "It makes it feasible to reap nearly any doable distribution of tones, with nearly an excessive amount of choice. It absolutely demands a clear idea of what you need to reap, preferably before you start the procedure" (pg. 50/46).

Anyone else locating precisely this aspect a struggle?

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Photography Article Black and White Book Club: week 4 (Feb. 17-23)|Photography Artist Statement

Welcome to the fourth week of our Black and White Book Club study of Michael Freeman's The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography (or theBlack and White Photography Field Guide. Be sure to read the overview and week 1, week 2, and week 3 posts if you are just joining in. Everyone is welcome to participate, even without a copy of either book, but if you do have the book, you will have more to draw on during the month.

Week 4, Feb. 17-23, will focus on Creative Choices in Exposure – exploring over- and underexposure, high key, low key, high contrast, and low contrast. We will be covering pgs. 138-165/140-165 (optional processing pages: 104-121/104-119).

Creative Choices in Black and White Photography

This week we are jumping ahead to section three, Creative Choices (section two, you may remember, we are covering in optional chunks each week). Freeman starts the section by explaining that, "Possibly the greatest difference between photographing in color and photographing in black and white is in expression" (pg. 139/140). This week we will be exploring the limits of creative expression in black and white by looking at the two extremes of low key and high key images.

Freeman starts offevolved by using evaluating and contrasting numerous special photographers and their types of black and white photography, from Ansel Adams and Edward Weston with their focus on the variety of tones, to Paul Strand and his interest to the center range of grays, to Bill Brandt and Don McCullin and their high assessment pictures with extreme blacks and extreme whites. Each of these patterns is a valid approach to black and white, and the chapters recognition on methods to obtain those one of a kind seems and patterns.

Low key photo, showing the conventional left-heavy low key histogram.

Think about choosing a favorite photographer and style for the week and try to spend the week shooting and processing on this fashion. Or, take the opposite method and strive a special fashion every day and notice which one higher suits your needs in your given scene and subject. Consider sharing to your description the thought system at the back of your style and processing preference.

Freeman also provides a lot of varied examples of processing options for the same image, looking at the ideas of high contrast, low contrast, low key, and high key. Do you always agree with his choices about which image works 'best' for each scenario?  If so or if not, why?

For the ones with out the book, here is how Freeman describes every style:

• High Contrast: "increasing contrast is a particularly good way of emphasizing structure and form …" (pg. 150/150). A high contrast image tends to reach towards both ends of the histogram as well.
• Low Contrast: "some picture situations are obvious candidates [for low contrast]. Fog, mist, rain, indeed any softening effects to the atmosphere, has a certain evocative appeal … low-contrast images like this tend to sit well inside the scale, with no blacks and no whites" (pg. 154/154).
• Low Key: "the setting is a dark interior, with weak side-lighting that reveals enough of the subject to make it obvious, and a background that can easily go to black" (pg. 158/158).
• High Key: "For high key to work visually, it demands high contrast with a few remaining dark tones …" and "there usually needs to be some smaller, darker elements that are integral to the image" (pgs. 160-162/160-162).

Example of a low assessment situation - a foggy morning - and some area on each ends of the histogram

Think approximately trying and exploring each of those unique approaches to black and white pictures this week, or choose one to clearly recognition in on.

Delving in to "Digital Monochrome" chapters

This week's optional section on digital processing takes a look at the process of converting color images to black and white using colors and hues (pages 104-121/104-119).

Freeman explains how we intuitively 'see' hues as having positive values in black and white, and so there are conversions that make greater 'feel' to our brains when we are looking to translate what we see in black and white. There is a short dialogue of using shade filters in black and white photography, which suits in with what lots of us were coming across while exploring the variations between unique shade channels and how colours and shades are recorded.

More of an overexposed photograph than traditional excessive key, but you may see the excessive key histogram.

Freeman then explores several exceptional processing examples, looking at how differential treatment of the extraordinary hue sliders may have a dramatic impact at the final picture. There are a few tips unique to a way to increase or reduce contrast in an picture, which might be of interest to those exploring high contrast or low assessment pictures this week.

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment with your thoughts or a link to a picture you have taken for the Book Club and an explanation of how the book influenced your image. Or, you can post pictures and contribute to the discussion by joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Parting phrases for the week, "'Full' black-and-white pictures means looking ahead to, choosing, and composing monochrome right from the begin. And the simplest way to do that is to educate oneself to think and spot in black and white" (pg. 140/142).

Agree or disagree?  Is the Book Club changing how you think in black and white?

Click right here to read the post for week 5.

Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with sensible advice about the technical and creative components of DSLR photography as a way to have you ever taking stunning pics right away.

Photography Article Focus Stacking for Macro and Close-Up Photography|Photography Artist Statement

Focus can be a tough prospect with macro and close-up photography. The nearer you're for your subject, the thinner your intensity of discipline (the vicinity of your concern in awareness) turns into. Even if you use a slim aperture (like f/22, read more right here), your widest intensity of discipline is probably less than an inch, front-to-back. Focus stacking is a method for capturing and mixing a series of pics to acquire attention across as lots of your concern as you need.

Close-up flower, photographed the use of 50 mm lens and 10x close-up lens. 3 photos cognizance stacked.

How to Photograph a Series for Focus Stacking

In order to easily blend your series of images, you will want to shoot in Manual mode (M) on your camera. This will ensure that all your photographs have the same settings and exposure. (Unsure about manual mode? Take a test image of your subject first, using whatever mode you are comfortable with ... Av/A for aperture, Tv/S for shutter, P for Program, or even just Auto. Then, look at the settings your camera chose for that picture. Switch into manual mode and dial in those same settings for ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Ta da!)

You may even need to apply guide focusing. You can either determine for your composition and twirl the point of interest ring to your camera lens till your situation appears flawlessly in attention, or you could twirl the focal point ring in your digital camera lens first after which move your body barely ahead or backward in the direction of your situation till it seems flawlessly in cognizance. (The first approach will provide you with precisely the composition you need, at the same time as the second one approach will give you the closest-in cognizance you could get.)

Then, think about your composition and exactly which elements of your problem you do or do now not want in recognition in the final image. Maybe you want every single aspect in focus, or maybe you handiest want one positive region of your subject to be in focus.

2-photograph attention stack of a near-up flower

For this photograph of a flower I knew that I wanted the center of the flower to be in cognizance, but I still desired the petals blurred and out of focus. When I took my check shot, I centered on the front of the flower's center, and I become able to get approximately 1/2 of the middle in cognizance. I then took a second shot maintaining the returned half of the flower's center in awareness. You can see that the rest of the petals aren't in recognition whilst maximum of the center (besides for the very foreground) is in awareness.

Since you are the use of manual cognizance, the movement required among every shot may be very, very small. All you want is the slightest of leans nearer or farther from your problem. Practice searching through your viewfinder (or the use of Live View, if you decide on) and watching the region of cognizance pass thru your situation as you lean in-and-out slowly and slightly. When you are equipped to photo your collection for cognizance stacking, start from either the nearest in or farthest out which you need in awareness. Take the first photograph, move barely to adjust the focal point, freeze and take the subsequent image, and repeat.

Focus Stacking and Processing

Once you have your series of photographs with varying areas in focus, you are ready for the post-processing focus stacking step. These directions and 'how to' images are using Adobe Photoshop. There may be other options available for focus stacking, but this is what I use.

The first step is to open each of the individual images in Photoshop. Then you will copy and paste them all into one single file. Hold down shift and click to select each of the individual layers. Then choose Edit -> Auto-Align Layers. I find the Auto projection usually works just fine. Click OK. This will exactly line up all of the individual images. Since you have to move slightly to take each picture and change the focus, the images will each be slightly off from each other, and this will correct those differences.

After the Auto-Aligning is finished, all of your layers should still be selected. Then choose Edit -> Auto-Blend Layers and choose the Stack option. Click OK. Photoshop will then select the sections from each image that are best in focus and create a composite final image.

Click caption to peer focus stacked image larger on Flickr.

This collection indicates the results of attention stacking three man or woman pics of frozen droplets. The pinnacle 3 photos display the exceptional portions of the 3 images that had been selected for inclusion within the very last, blended, awareness stack image beneath. (You can tell from the final image that I surely needed a fourth photograph, of the ice crystals closest to the digicam, with a view to get them in attention as well.)

Click caption to peer the final image large on Flickr.

This college shows a evaluation of the 4 person photos and the very last, recognition stacked photo. You can see, again, that small sections of the leaf are nevertheless no longer in recognition, due to the fact the area in attention jumped barely an excessive amount of from image to picture (for example, take a look at the middle of the close to-center leaf). The key with consciousness stacking is continually to move very slightly and attempt to overlap the regions in awareness from picture to photograph.

Try Focus Stacking

Focus stacking is a brilliant technique to try while photographing a close-up or macro subject while you want a bigger location of the photo in consciousness. Focus stacking permits you to mix more than one photos with barely exceptional areas in consciousness into one, properly-centered final photo. The hints for a success recognition stacking and blending are to apply manual settings and awareness and to make only minimum moves from image-to-image on the way to ensure ideal attention.

What will you operate awareness stacking for? Share an idea or photograph within the comments under.

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