More Bicycles in the Snow

I find this image much better than the previous two. I read somewhere that if you cannot explain why something is good, you cannot repeat it, and as a “head person” I tend to agree. So let me try and critique this image and see if I can put into words why I like it.

Even though this image is somewhat abstract, it’s very clear that it is showing us two bicycles covered with snow.  So without giving it much thought, I called the image “Bicycles in Snow.”   But the main subject are clearly the three red lights.  Like in real life their strong color causes them to immediately stand out  and draw attention to themselves.  Here however they appear as cheerful spots of color and not in their typical warning function.  If you are so inclined, you could even interpret them as signs of life within an otherwise cold and colorless image.

(So we already have a literal and an abstract interpretation and then the juxtaposition of warning and cheerful.  That’s enough for me to call the image a keeper and give it three stars.)

Looking a bit longer I notice the interesting texture of the snow and the nice contrast to the black frame of the bicycles.  Also the strong lines leading upwards and to the right, thus strengthening the notion of cheerfulness and optimism.  But there is also an ellipse that starts with the bicycle frame of the right side, follows the handle bars to the left, and then continues down along the mud guard of the left bike.  And there, while traveling along the ellipse, our eyes meet the three red spots of color again — very nice!

I approached this scene with my wide-angle zoom attached to the camera.  I knew immediately that the angle-of-view is too wide, but my fingers were too frozen to change lenses, so I got in closer and took a few shots.  That caused too much exaggeration in the lower-left corner, so frozen fingers or not, I mounted my 50/1.8 and took one last shot.  While evaluating the images at home I was immediately drawn by the tight framing of last image.  That image has the further advantage of being shot with a prime lens of normal focal length, so it has tons of detail throughout.

(Which accounts for the forth and final star.  But I won’t give a fifth one because the image lacks strong impact and memorability.)

In terms of editing I didn’t do anything special.  Other than a very slight crop from the right, I cloned a piece of trash in the upper left, I strengthened the saturation of the red lights and desaturated the yellows completely (there was a yellow sticker of the left bike’s mud guard that was visible despite the snow).  All of this took about a minute in ACR.  I then opened the image in Photoshop and run two actions: one produced the preview above and the other the large image that appears after clicking on the preview.

Now tell me please, do I file this image under “places / Hamburg” or “transportation / bicycle” or “seasons / winter”? 

Good Morning!

The view from my living-room this morning.  A phone call woke me up and after I hung up, still half asleep, I took three images and let Photoshop merge them automatically to a panorama.

The Histogram — Light Meter of the XXI Century

The 2008 fall/winter program of the local Volkshochschule¹ (VHS) came out today, and I will be teaching a course called “The Histogram — Light Meter of the XXI Century.” Since I like teaching, I’ve been wanting to do a photography course for a while now. My course will take place on Nov 1 and 2, four hours on each day.

On the first day I will explain what the histogram is, how to set up the camera to display the histogram and how the camera controls affect the histogram. Then I’ll get into the more controversial topic of how does an optimal histogram look like. And for the RAW-shooters I’ll explain the “expose to the right” idea. On the second day I’ll explain how to manipulate the histogram using brightness and contrast, levels and curves. And we will do lots of examples in ACR and Photoshop.

I’ve been teaching photographic concepts to my friends for quite a while, but this is the first time that I will be doing it officially. So I’m quite excited.

¹ Volkshochschule = German school for adult education. It’s similar to a community college, but it does not grant any degrees.

Making a Black-and-White Photograph “Sing”

I’ve received a few questions about what “tricks” I’m using for my black-and-white images. Well, I’d say that I don’t use any tricks, just the tools of the trade. Let me show you…

Here is a typical image straight out of the camera. It’s quite good already — it shows an interesting face with a very intense gaze, it’s sharp and well exposed.

But naturally there is room for improvement. In Camera Raw I cropped to a 3:4 ratio, increased the exposure some, darkened slightly and increased the contrast a good bit.

Now the face is much more dominant, and the eyes, mustache and beard are more vibrant. I could leave the image in color, but it begs to be converted to black and white. But before doing that, I inspected the whole area at 200% magnification and removed any dust, skin blemishes, etc. That small triangle of background in the upper-left corner bothered me too, so I filled it with pixels from the turban.

The next step was to look at the three individual channels. I liked the green one much more than red or blue one, so after experimenting some, I settled on -20, +170, -50.

There — the clash of the skin and turban colors is gone, but the image lacks contrast. I added a contrast layer and it did wonders to the face, but made the turban too bright. I counteracted that by adding a mask and limiting the contrast increase to the face only.

Now the eyes, forehead and especially the right quarter of the face became too dark, so I added a lightening layer and a mask that revealed the effect only in the desired areas.

The right eye is still too dark, which I corrected with a lightening layer.

The most noticeable problems have been addressed now, but the turban, the mustache and the background in the lower-right corner are still too bright. I counteracted that with a darkening layer.

Now, that’s already very good! In fact, this is the first version that I printed and showed around. I even glued it on my wall and stared at it for a few days. After getting over my initial excitement, I started noticing further possibilities for improvement.

First I darkened the brightest areas of the turban, shirt and collar as they were drawing attention away from the face.

Then I darkened the edges and corners of the image a good bit.

The light area of the background on the left-hand side and by the much brighter background on the right-hand side bothered me immediately, so made them very dark, almost without any detail.

And that’s where I am right now. Admittedly the last three changes were quite subtle, but in my mind, they are the ones that make the image really “sing.”

I’ve been staring at the version above for a while now and I can’t think of any further improvements. I’ll look at it again tomorrow, and if then too I don’t see anything that bothers me, I’ll make a second print.

That print might reveal further problems and lead to even more adjustment layers, but for now I’m satisfied.

By the way, here is what my layer stack looks like right now:

UPDATE: It is now one day later. This morning I didn’t see any problems on screen, so I made a 10×15 cm print on cheap glossy paper. When it came out, I immediately saw three areas that just had to be improved. I lightened the white collar on the right-hand side, then lightened the whole image a tiny bit. Finally I spotted the very dark area in the middle of the chin, which, although perfectly natural, was too obvious and distracting.

I’m making another small print right now, and if that one holds for a day, it will be time for an A4-size print on pearl paper.

Review of Mastering Black and White Digital Photography

I am still on a quest to improve my black-and-white photographs, and I am still looking at various books. I’ve already reviewed two books (review 1 and review 2) which were not quite what I was looking for, but Michael Freeman’s Mastering Black and White Digital Photography is quite good.

The book delivers exactly what the title promises — clear and practical advice about how to create good black and white photographs using digital methods. It is divided into 5 chapters.

Chapter one, The language of Mono, is supposed to be an introduction: why do we make black and white photographs, what makes a good black and white photograph, what to watch out for when making black and white images. In other words it’s more artistic than technical, but with 16 pages only it’s too short to cover the topics in any depth at all. In fact, the book would probably be better off without this chapter. Or how about showing 16 gorgeous black and white images without accompanying them by superficial comments?

Chapter two, Color into Grayscale, covers just about everything you need to know about converting a color image into black and white. On 50 pages it discusses the channel mixer in great detail and shows you how to “place” any color anywhere on the brightness scale. Several pages are dedicated to achieving realistic skin tones of dark, light and Asian skin.

Having attained a black and white image with optimal relationships between the gray tones in chapter two, chapter three, Digital Black and White, shows you how to optimize the appearance of such an image: maximizing the dynamic range, retaining shadow detail, preventing blown highlights, various methods of adjusting the tonal distribution, dodging and burning using layers and layer masks. There is also a discussion about noise, upscaling, scanning negatives and positives. All in all, quite interesting 40 pages.

On the next 28 pages chapter four, Image Editing and Effects, discusses further important topics: conveying a specific mood, image toning, duotones and tritones and some less important ones: bas relief, solarization, posterization, hand coloring.

The last chapter, The Print, is once again too short to have any depth or value. On 10 pages the author touches on the topics of desktop printers, creating contact sheets, printer calibration, ink and paper and mounting and framing an image. Not only is the information here utterly short, it is also dated. The printers discussed are the budget Canon Selphy and Pixma without a word on the higher quality ink jets like the Epson 3800. Instead of talking about third-party monochrome ink-sets, Michael Freeman should have better discussed the now-standard black-and-white modes of the printer drivers and their ability to produce stunning black and white images with the standard ink sets.

So what’s the final verdict? I’d say that the book is definitely worth reading and the information presented in chapters 2, 3 and 4 more than makes up for the weak chapters 1 and 5. Simply concentrate on pages 26 — 144.

And now a question. Are there any even better books out there? Something more artistic maybe? I feel like I now have a grasp of the technical side of black-and-white, but I need a ideas on further increasing the impact of my images.