Hi everybody,

A week or so ago I posted this image on the Africa Geographic Facebook Page.

Since then I have received quite a few questions as to the settings I used for this image.

The catch is, the image is actually a mixture of three different exposures so it’s not just as simple as a quick Facebook comment.

So… grab yourself a cup of coffee.  It’s tutorial time!

First things first.  You need to shoot the images you want to blend.  In my case I shot two star trails and then one image of the milky way to add some ‘punch’ to the star trails.  Here are the three images I used.

2160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200

1474 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200

25 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2000

The reason I shot two star trails was that I was worried about the amount of light that could possibly blow out the details.  So, I shot two images back to back to make sure I get the star trails without excessive light.  Yes, I could have also closed down my lens a bit but I chose to shoot two as secretly I wanted to check the first image before doing the next one.  It’s amazing how your mind starts doing strange things while the shutter is open for such a long time.

Let’s divert for a second.  How do you actually shoot the star trail images?

• You need a remote control that can lock your shutter.
• Set your camera to manual mode.
• Change your shutter speed to ‘Bulb’ setting which will allow you to keep the  shutter open for as long as the shutter / remote is depressed.
• Select an aperture of between f/5.6 to f/8.  Play around, easiest way to learn!
• Set your lens to manual focus and change it to infinity focus.
• Set your camera up on a tripod and start firing away.

Composing your images and setting up your camera in the dark is quite a challenge so remember a torch and be ready to experiment for a bit.

Right, back to the blending the tutorial.

After downloading my images to Lightroom I did a number of basic adjustments to one image, including cropping, straightening, brightness and contrast.  Since the images were all shot from the exact same tripod position I simply copied all the adjustments I made to the one image to the the other two images.  This saves a lot of time and will help you to get the same adjustments on all images.  I will do short tutorial on this in an upcoming episode of the Weekly Chat.

After this I had the three images above in Lightroom.

From here I selected all three images, right clicked and selected ‘Edit In’ – ‘Edit in Photoshsop CS5′.

So, now i have three images open in Photoshop ready to be be blended into the final image.  Now at this point it is important to note that there are hundreds of ways to do any particular task in Photoshop so this is just one of the ways you can quickly and very easily blend the three images into one.

For the blending in Photoshop I have done a quick video so check it out below and then we’ll keep going from there.

So there you go.  Pretty simple right?

After the blending in Photoshop I made a few more minor adjustments to contrast and saturation and then applied some sharpening to leave me with my final image.

In case you forgot, this is what it looked like.

And that just about wraps up this tutorial on blending three star trail images in Photoshop.

I purposefully kept this tutorial quite basic so that you can try some of these techniques on your own.  When you get a chance, give it a bash.  Not only is it great fun but the resulting images might just surprise you!

As always, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave a comment below.

Until next time.

Gerry van der Walt

* * *

Doesn’t this old boy just pop out of the frame?

When I took this photograph I clicked the shutter because I liked the composition of the old guy next to the tree.  I was not too happy with the overly bright light coming through the branches but in wildlife photography you normally cannot have it all.

So, as I sat down to write this blog I was not quite sure where to start.  You see, it has been quite a hectic few days so I started flipping through some older images and found this one.

With a lack of anything better to do (or stalling from doing some real work) I started playing around with with the image.  I am sure you must have done it in the past!

Choose am image.

Start playing around in Lightroom.

Play a bit more in Photoshop.

And then, after a lot of processing, undoing and redoing you sit back and think – damn, that’s actually not bad!  Definitely more on the ‘arty’ side but still not bad!

I have no idea how I got to this result but I know that the slight bit of desaturation makes the image feel old, like the elephant.  I also know that I like it more than the original.  Out of interest, the thumbnail at the top of this post will give you an idea of the original image.  Nice, but not quite.

Is there a lesson in all of this?

How about don’t write off your old images.  In time we all get better.  We get better at photography and we get better at processing our images.

Hey, our entire vision and photographic outlook changes and when you go back to your old RAW files you will be surprised at what you can come up with.

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

After a weekend of meetings and trying to get stuck into processing a lot of images from a recent hotel shoot I have an interesting week ahead.  In between a lot of small projects that need some attention I will be making time to shoot a few specific images I need for upcoming workshops.  Looking forward to heading out on my own to shoot what I want, how I want to.  It is a luxury that I don’t always have so hoping for some good photo time!

During the weekend I was going through and organizing some of the images from last week and one particular image caught my attention.

This is the straight from camera RAW image I shot as we were watching a group of 12 Wild Dogs finishing up a young impala they killed about 10 minutes earlier.  The sun had just dropped below the horizon as the dogs were running all over the place, each one trying to keep a piece of the kill to themselves.  I locked onto and was trying to keep up with one individual as he took off with a piece of the carcass.  In the low light conditions I was already shooting at 1/125, with a 200mm f.2.8 lens, and ISO 1600 and tracking the Wild Dog in the viewfinder was quite a challenging task.  I was also shooting on Auto White Balance as the light during the last 30 minutes of the day changes all the time and instead of worrying about it decided to go Auto and change it later if necessary (as I was shooting in RAW) .  There were quite a few blurred images in between but this one felt like it had potential.  To me there was something about the dog running into the open clearing.  So here goes with the basic though pattern as I quickly processed the image.

When I opened the image in Lightroom I knew there was something in this image that could work but also had a few concerns.

First off the subject was slap bang in the middle of the frame, which was the result of me trying to keep up with the moving Wild Dog, and then there was also a few distracting elements.  The one dog who snuck into the bottom of the frame is the obvious one but then there was also the large piece of dead wood on the right of the frame.  In an image our gaze gets pulled to areas that stand out, whether light or dark, and to me this piece of wood was almost more of a focus then the dog I was trying to keep up with.  Difficult o keep track of all these things as you try and keep a fast moving subject in the viewfinder.

So, the first step was to crop to get it closer to what I originally ‘saw’ in the image.

Even after the crop there was still one area of the image that I was not sure about – the little piece of shrub in the top left corner.  On the one hand I actually quite liked it as it made you gaze jump between the dog and the top corner to where he was moving but in the end I decided to clone it out as well in order to keep the focus 100% on the running Wild Dog.  Still have mixed feelings as to whether I should have kept the shrubs but anyway – moving on.

From here I took the cropped image from Lightroom and made a few adjustments using a few Nik filter (which plugs very easily into either Lightroom or Photoshop).  These adjustments included:

• Contrast – Using Viveza I made a few small local adjustments to the Wild Dog which included upping contrast and saturation to make the subject stand out form the grass.
• Vignette – The second step was to add a vignette around the image in order to make the background, the entire area around the Wild Dog, to bring the brightness down and also pull the viewers eye even more towards the subject.
• Saturation – The last step was to up the saturation and warmth of the entire image just a little to get the image closer to that soft, golden late afternoon light.
  

Now once all the above adjustments were finished I sharpened the image every so slightly using a high pass filter which brought me to the final image.

Nice, but quite different from the first image.  Do you think that the ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ of the image has been compromised?  Does it not still show the essence of the original scene?

To me this image captures perfectly the scene we saw just after sunset a week ago and not just in my minds’s eye.  This is the shot I ‘saw’ as I was snapping away at the running dog, the image I wanted show as the final product.  I am very clear and open about the fact that I cropped and removed a few distracting parts out of the image.  With regards to the various color and contrast adjustments, this is a natural part of digital photography and something I believe you have to do and yes, the goal is to keep your wildlife images natural and at all times be honest about what you do to them during post processing.

I would much rather do some post processing work on an image and come up with a usable, yet realistic, wildlife image than end up with a shot that looks (sounds) like Marlo Brando’s character Terry in the 1954 movie On The Waterfront – “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.”

Possible lessons from this post?

• Never delete images while you are out in the field as there could be a ‘contender’ in there somewhere.
• Look for images inside your images that might have something to offer.  Something that catch your eye.
• Don’t be afraid to crop, process and work on an image to create a ‘contender’.
• Be honest about what you do to your images during post processing!

I know there are many people out there who do not believe in ‘photoshopping’ their wildlife images.  Personally I think it is imperative to touch up contrast and saturation and perhaps crop should you have not been able to get it perfect in camera.  Not going to digress into this never ending discussion so will end off with a quote I recently saw on Scott Kelby’s website – “The photographers who don’t like HDR are the ones who don’t know how to do HDR—just like people who complain about the use of Photoshop in photography—those are people who aren’t very good at Photoshop. You don’t hear HDR experts complaining about HDR, just like you don’t hear Photoshop experts saying “There’s too much Photoshop!”

When you next look through your latest wildlife images, don’t forget to look for images that you initially overlooked but that could possibly work.  Look for a contender.

Gerry

Lightroom presets have opened up a whole new world of one click creative possibilities.  Love them or hate them they are here to stay.

It has been pouring with rain for the last three days so in order to kill some time I had a look through some Lightroom presets.  A preset is a series of adjustments that has been saved and which you can then apply to your images with a single click.  The amount of presets on the internet is truly staggering and you can find one for pretty much anything.  Weddings.  Landscapes.  Nature.  Portraits.  I took a few minutes and applied various single click presets to one of my images.  This is the image I used.

The image above is directly from camera.  No adjustments whatsoever.  From here I applied a number of single click presets with quite a few interesting results.

Vibrance

Quite a nice one to use as it just gives your image that little bit of color-punch.

Dark Vignette

A single click gives you a dark vignette around the image which draws your attention to the focal area.

Only Orange

This preset removes all the colors, except shades of orange from the image for an interesting result.

Antique

Called antique and gives an… interesting (?) result.  Not my favorite type of images but still – made with a single click.

Antique

Another version of the antique look.   Even with all the digital improvements we have seen the ‘antique’ look keeps on popping up.

Sepia

A single click sepia image with a dark vignette.

With thousands and thousands of Lightroom presets floating around on the internet anybody can now create ‘artistic’ images.  You don’t even have to understand the difference between hue and vibrance to be able to use them.  Yes, presets can make for interesting images and give you a creative boost to you digital darkroom but I still believe you need to play around with your images and do it yourself.

I have personally never used a preset to process an image as I like to have control over every little adjustment.  After looking around on the net I might just change my mind as there are a lot of very subtle presets available which, especially when you are processing a large number of images, will make things a whole lot easier.  If you are keen to download and play with Lightroom presets here are a few links that will get you started.

• WOW Presets
• Preset Heaven
• ProphotoShow
• Lightroom Presets

These links will get you started with a lot of presets.  Use them.  Try them.  But also make sure you try and play with the sliders in Lightroom, and Photoshop, to understand what they do and what they mean.  To truly let you images come alive and realize your original vision you will more than likely have better results if you take full control of the digital darkroom rather than apply a single click preset, however cool they might be.

Hey, there is a time and a place for everything.  Whether you use presets or not, remember that our craft is still based on creating images.  Use your camera, see the light and photograph what excites you.  And then decide how you want to process your images.

If you have any thoughts or links you would like to share, I look forward to hearing from you.

Gerry

The processing of wildlife images remain a highly debated subject.  Yes or no?  If yes, how much?

Recently I was asked how a specific wildlife photograph could be processed in Photoshop or Lightroom in order to improve it.  Wait!!  Before we all get excited and start arguing the rights and wrongs of processing wildlife images stick with me for just a little while.  You might recall a post I did a while ago called “Should you Manipulate or Alter Your Digital Images”.  You can read the post here but the bottom line was this.  The Photographic Society of South Africa released, with regards to the whole processing debate, the following statement.  (I reckon this is pretty universal?)

Digital manipulation is an accepted part of photography. The original image must have been made by the exhibitor on a recognized camera and all modification of that original must be made by the exhibitor or under his personal directions. For the purpose of telling a true story (not manipulated), images of Nature, Photojournalism and Photo-Travel may not be manipulated.

The following will not be considered as digital manipulation:

• Removal of dust and scratch marks.
• Adjustment of exposure and contrast.
• Adjustment / correction of the color balance.
• Application of color saturation.
• Reduction of digital noise.
• Sharpening of the image.
• Cropping and resizing is permissible.

Right, so now while keeping that in mind back to the question as to how an image can be improved by altering / processing / editing / photoshopping it.  Obviously the idea is to improve and not change the content of the image.  So here goes with the first example I was asked to look at.

This is the original image I received from Quintin.  Great close up shot of an African Scops Owl. Now apart from the square crop I have no idea what digital adjustments has already been made to this image.  I created a copy of the file and made a few basic adjustements in Photoshop CS4.  Here is the resulting image.

No major changes but it pops just a little bit more.  The image content has not changed but has just been and all the adjustments made to the image fall within the boundaries of what is allowed and accepted as a part of the digital photographic process.  Here is another example.  Bar the cropping on this next image the adjustments was almost exactly the same as in the above example.

Again, great spot to actually see this secretive little fellow in the day and decent image.  After more or less the same adjustments as in the previous example, here is a new version of this image.

Same image, same content and still ‘natural’ looking.  With just a little bit more ‘pop’.  In my opinion, processing wildlife images in this manner is completely acceptable.  Actually, it is necessary.  Before I get chastised for that comment, here is what I did to these images.

• Crop – The first image was very slightly cropped.  I did this to remove the branch in the bottom left corner, which was slightly distracting, and also to pull the owl little more to the right of the frame.
• Contrast – The contrast on both images was very slightly increased to create more depth and highlight the textures in the image.
• Dodge & Burn - To pull the eye subtly to the focal area, the owl, I slightly burned (darkened) the outside of the frame and dodged (lightened) the centre.  Our eyes are naturally drawn to lighter areas in a dark images and this helps the viewer to focus on the owl.
• Saturation – The saturation was increased by 7% in the above image and by 11% in the first example.
• Sharpen – I sharpened both images, specifically for web use, using a high pass filter.  This is one of the ‘safer’ ways in which to sharpen your images as it does not, like many other methods, infleucnce the colour in your image.

The adjustments on each image could not have taken more than about two minutes and all falls within the normal photographic process.  It is actually very subtle and if your screen is not properly calibrated you might not even see all the adjustments.  If you look at all these adjustments, except perhaps for the dodging and burning, none of them are considered digital manipulation.  Even dodging and burning could be accepted if we look at it as selective contrast and exposure adjustments –  naturally!  The steps I followed was purely following through the digital photographic process in order to end up with the best possible, natural looking image.

I have no doubt that there are varying, and quite passionate, opinions on this matter but I still believe it is a necessary part of the digital photographic workflow.  Our cameras cannot see what our eyes see and as you control the camera and the resulting images should you not keep this control throughout the entire process.  Why go through the process of chasing your vision and capturing the beauty of nature and then just stop before having the image reach it’s intended look and potential.

To clarify, when you process your wildlife images:

• Keep the adjustments subtle and natural looking
• Don’t remove or add any elements (apart from cropping)
• Be subtle with your adjustments
• If you do apply any adjustments not included in the ‘accepted’ list, be honest about it.
• Be subtle!
• Get the idea!

The way in which I process my wildlife images is obviously very different to the way I process my commercial images where the client determines the kind of look you are aiming for.  Unless I am purposefully trying to create ‘wildlife art’ or black and white images I will always lean towards a conservative approach when processing wildlife images.  But I do process my wildlife images. Do you?  

I look forward to hearing your comments on this one.  Also, if you have any examples you would like us to look at on the blog email them to me and we can discuss from there.

Gerry

Having spent quite a bit of time browsing through magazines and various web sites the last while, this question keeps on popping up and there does not seem to be any ‘civilised’ agreement about the answer. 
Should you ‘Photoshop’ or ‘alter’ your digital images?

Why should this be such a contentious issue? Whether for a crop or a full edit it is the final process of a digital shoot just a film was processed in the darkroom when we were all still using film cameras. 
Do I edit my images? Absolutely! I believe that if you want your work to stand out you need to not only have an eye for light and composition but also be able to take the process further by editing and processing your own images in a professional manner.

The Photographic Society of South Africa (PSSA) recently published the following:

* * *

Digital manipulation is an accepted part of photography. The original image must have been made by the exhibitor on a recognized camera and all modification of that original must be made by the exhibitor or under his personal directions. For the purpose of telling a true story (not manipulated), images of Nature, Photojournalism and Photo-Travel may not be manipulated.

• The following will not be considered as digital manipulation:
• Removal of dust and scratch marks.
• Adjustment of exposure and contrast.
• Adjustment / correction of the color balance.
• Application of color saturation.
• Reduction of digital noise.
• Sharpening of the image.
• Cropping and resizing is permissible.

* * *

I feel that editing and post-processing is a part of the larger art form that is photography. I do feel that by sticking to the above ‘guidelines’ you will be able to not be altering your image but refining it and completing the entire artistic process.

I am currently using Adobe Bridge CS4 to sort and edit my RAW files. Sometimes I mights use FastStone Image Viewer to quickly look through images but not for editing. (Great little program and it’s free!)

After that I might, depending on the desired result and use of the image, run the files through Photoshop CS4.I have added various filters which I find extremely useful. These includes Viveza, Color Efex Pro 3 and Sharpener Pro all from Nik Software. Really easy to use and great results!

So there you go. My thoughts on this ,apparently, very touchy subject. It is a part of the entire process and something that can only, if done correctly, lift your images to that next level!

As always I look forward to hearing from you!

Until next time.

Gerry