I was recently looking through the achieves of this blog and ran across a series of posts I wrote two years ago on the topic of white balance. And it occurred to me that I should link them together somehow and decided to just create a post that does just that. So here goes….+
Archive for the ‘Image Capture’ Category
One Evening: Sunset to Blue Hour
I’ve been away on a scuba trip, actually a Great White Shark expedition. I’ll show some pix from the trip later. Because of the trip, the posts over the past two weeks were prepared in advance and scheduled for posting. (That’s why the narrative that when with the pix was a little short.)
For today’s post I what to show how fast the light can change by showing three images shot within a 35 minute period. I’m going to start by showing the last one, the one shot during the blue hour. The blue hour is another name for twilight and is named for the characteristic blue color cast the light has at this time of evening. According to the metadata for this pix it was shot at 7:47, about 35 minutes after sunset. The natural light is all coming from the blue sky; it is dim, low contrast, and colored blue. And for a brief period the exposure for the natural light matches the exposure for artificial light.
The blurring of the clouds in the sky is a result of the long exposure, 4.5 sec at f/4. After all it’s almost dark out. We don’t see the blue sky, we see a dark sky. But the long exposure allows the blue that is there to dominate. It also contrasts well with the warm exterior lights of the building, Sea Colony in Bethany Delaware.
The next two images are from near sunset, 7:12, and a little after sunset, 7:29. They are of a clam evening along Little Assawoman Bay.
Harrison Wright Falls#2–Ricketts Glen State Park, Pa.
Alternative Presentations
Here is another composition from my short trip to Ricketts Glen State Park. (The other composition.) And I want to take the opportunity to say a little about the possibility of showing more than one interpretation of a digital shot (capture).
A while back I did a post titled Digital Has Changed the Way We Shoot. In it are links to a few of Brooks Jensen’s audio podcasts. These particular podcasts were about the differences in how he used to shoot with film and how he now shoots with digital capture. In part, he talks about when he shot with film needing to capture the tonal values the way he wanted them to show in the final output (print). But with digital he wants to capture, not necessarily the best looking image, but rather a file that contains the most data for future post processing. Read the rest of this entry »
Fall Workshops and Classes
For those readers that are “local” to the West Chester PA area, I’ve published the classes and workshops I’m offering this Fall and Winter. I have them listed on two interlinked web sites:
- The Workshops and Classes Page on this blog
- The It’s All About the Light Tours web site.
There are a couple of new entries: Advanced Raw Workflow with Lightroom and/or Adobe Camera Raw Workshop and a Digital Black and White class for the Chester County Night School. Both of these are relatively short, at three sessions.
And if you are not local. can’t fit a class or workshop in your schedule, or prefer learning on your own you can visit this blog’s Resource Page for book recommendations. If you buy a book , or anything for that matter, after clicking through to Amazon I get a few pennies and you get a warm felling all over because you helped keep this site going. Thanks!
Double Processing a Single Raw File–Different White Balance
This image is a composite of two different interpretations of the same raw file. One with a cool White Balance to enhance the blues and greens in the sky and foreground grass. The other version is a warm White Balance to enhance the coat of the horse. I outlined the technique for Double Processing a Single Raw File in yesterdays post.
Digital Has Changed the Way We Shoot
Last night I was getting caught up listening to some podcasts that have been setting in iTunes for a while. And I though these three audio podcast from Brooks Jensen’s Postcast on Photography and the Creative Process went along with and enhanced an idea I had for a blog posting. So I thought I would combine the two.
In my recent classes I’ve been reinforcing the idea that digital photography is a two step process: image capture followed by post processing. And if you don’t do much post processing you are doing your images a disservice. Tasteful post processing will allow you to bring out the emotions that you were experiencing while you were photographing. And this will cause the viewer of you images to become more engaged. Read the rest of this entry »
WB Part4: Setting Camera White Balance
In previous posts in this series I’ve talked about what white balance is and how it can be used creatively, both in the field and in post production. In Part 1 we noted that if the camera’s WB setting matches the color temperature of the light hitting the subject; white, and all other colors, will be rendered correctly. And that we could change the mood or fell of an image if we intentionally used an “incorrect” WB to render the image warmer or cooler. But if colors can be accurate or intentionally changed which is correct? I addressed this question in Part 2 and gave two different approaches or strategies that can be used to determine which WB setting to use: Accurate and Creative. And in Part 3 we discussed how shooting in the raw format allowed for greater flexibility in setting any WB after the shoot. And that when shooting in jpg the photographer needed to pay more attention their camera’s WB setting during capture.
In this post I’m gong to discuss ways to determine what your WB should be set at. Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Photography Cheats Physics — Pt 2
Part 2
The first digital darkroom tool to be popularized was stitching software that blends together a series of overlapping captures. The most common use of stitching software is in making panoramic images. The image below, the interior trusses of Hayes-Clark Covered Bridge in Chester County Pa., would have been virtually impossible without stitching software.
(Sorry for the small size but with the limited width this is as large as I could make it.)
Stitching software can also be used to create very high resolution images. Instead of capturing a single image with a WA lens a photographer captures the same scene as a series of images in matrix form with a telephoto lens. For example he could capture three rows of four images each, overlapping sides and tops; and stitch them together to form a high resolution image (on the order of 6x larger) in the same format, 3×2, as the single capture. When creating both panos and high resolution images, the stitching software is used pretty much the same way. The difference is the photographer’s intent when the capture was made.
The next tool that photographers starting using in the digital darkroom was focus bracketing Read the rest of this entry »