infra-red black & white photography – urban landscapes
Funny how personal projects often work – there’s the initial enthusiasm, and then life and work takes over. Last year I bought a used Canon 5D mark II that had been converted to Infra-Red. I did take it out twice for walkabouts in New York – and posted the initial results. But then the work-load added up, and then a particularly harsh winter where it was just too miserable outside to go exploring in the city – and I never took it out again, until now. With the weather improving now and the sun shining, it was just a good time to go out and shoot for fun again.
A photographer friend, Amanda Stevens, joined me with her Fuji X20 that had been converted to deep Infra-Red … and we went exploring in Manhattan. One trick that Amanda showed me that should’ve been so obvious to me from the start – since you can’t really meter for infra-red, it made sense to view the scene via Live-View, and then adjust the camera settings until it looked good on the back of the screen. So obvious, and yet, I still worked within the old-school mindset of looking through the viewfinder, and trying to read the scene.
The image at the top was taken at Columbus Circle, NYC – the bit of green shrubbery started to turn white where the sun hit it. The sun behind the globe also gave a glow to the image.
Canon 5D mark II (converted for IR); Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II (B&H)
1/50 @ f/16 @ 1600 ISO
Here are some of the other images that also worked particularly well:
Learn more inside…
post-processing workflow: how to deal with color banding / posterization
If you’ve ever noticed banding or posterization in your photos, where you’d expect solid colors, then there’s a relatively easy fix for it. This posterization effect appears as bands of colors, where the transitions between similar tones aren’t smooth, but have jagged edges instead.
It is caused by the 8-bit JPG not having enough data to give you a smooth gradient when large blocks of color slowly change. You’ll often see it in the blue sky in landscapes, or as in this case, with large areas of color in the background. Actually, the image above doesn’t show this – I fixed it. Here’s how.
Learn more inside…
Peiwen & Eric – wedding in Melbourne, Australia – slideshow
I’ve shown a few images already of the wedding I photographed in Melbourne, Australia, early in March 2014. Everything fell into place during our visit to Australia – and on the wedding day itself – great weather, lovely people, a truly fantastic couple. It’s a huge honor indeed that Eric reached out to my last year, enquiring whether I’d be up for photographing his and Peiwen’s wedding in Melbourne. And yes, I did feel a lot of pressure. The images dared not be mediocre!
But Eric and Peiwen really were great to work with – sparkling personalities, and full of energy and ideas. It also helped that they allowed for ample time for the romantic portraits on the day, as well as the next day with a visit to Brighton Beach. It all turned into a set of photographs that I am truly proud of. Here, are some, (yes, only some) of my favorite photographs from Peiwen and Eric’s wedding.
Learn more inside…
software review: Capture One Pro v7 RAW Converter Tests
guest article by: Adrian
Mackay wedding photographers
(Adrian is better known as Trev in the Tangents forum)
Recently I have been trialling the Capture One Pro v7 Raw Converter to see if I could get my files better from the get-go before I started tweaking in Photoshop.
Short Verdict: Simply outstanding; makes ACR and Lightroom look very mediocre compared to Capture One Pro v7 in initial rendering of images.
Now, to be clear, I am not doing full edits within it like a lot of people do in ACR/Lightroom, etc. but basic edits like WB and Exposure, Shadows, then I export out to PSD files and tweak it in Photoshop.
The reason I wanted to try was mainly to see what sort of highlights I could retain so I experimented on several images which were well over-exposed, up to 3 full stops. The samples shown here are 2 over-exposed images and 1 very difficult image with extremely bright Highlights and very dark Shadows, shooting against the sun, seascape type image.
Learn more inside…
exposure metering: under-exposure / over-exposure vs exposing correctly
When I posted this photograph of Peiwen & Eric’s wedding in Melbourne, Australia, on Facebook, someone asked the question: how much did I over-expose this photo by?
We have to be very clear with our terminology regarding over-exposure and under-exposure. This photograph is not over-exposed. It is exposed correctly! Did my camera’s light-meter jump all the way to the right-hand side? Yes, it surely did. Does it matter? No, it does not. Why not? Because I exposed correctly. Not under, not over, but correctly.
This photograph (which is ambient light only), is exposed correctly … because my subject, the bride, is exposed correctly. This is a key concept – we have to expose correctly for our subjects. Even if you decide to turn your subject into a silhouette, the decision was still very specific about how you wanted to expose for your subject.
If you are a landscape photographer, then most likely your entire scene is your subject. If you are a portrait photographer, then invariably, your subject is what you need to expose for correctly.
However, if you want to balance your subject which is shaded, in relation to a much brighter background, then you’re going to have to use additional lighting to expose correctly for your subject. But working with just the available light, you will invariably aim to expose correctly for your subject.
Learn more inside…
Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART lens
This lens is now available for pre-order from B&H: Canon | Nikon | Sony | Sigma
The initial rumored price for this lens was around $1,500 but now that it has been officially announced, the price is a relatively moderate $949.00
There’s been an incredible buzz around this lens – the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART lens. The initial reviews are unanimously impressed with this lens’ optical performance. Right up there with the very best.
If it is in the same league of awesomeness as the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HMS art lens, then we’re in for a treat. As soon as I get my hands on the 50mm, I’ll check it out for a proper review.
After Dark Photography Education – St Louis – 2014
After Dark is one of the very best experiences to learn more about photography, whether technique or business or to be inspired. Not quite a convention, it’s more of a slightly-anarchic experience. It’s hard to describe really, but ask anyone who has attended, and they will all rave about it, myself included.
The After Dark Photo Education convention took place again this past week: March 30 – April 2. Awesome news for the 300+ people who attended. Sad news was that this will be the last After Dark event. So for those who were there, there was definitely a sense of making this one really count! At the end of 2013, Dave Junion, the mastermind behind After Dark, announced that that would be the last event. I’m going to take a (probably accurate) guess here that repeatedly running an event of this magnitude across the USA, takes its toll on your stamina. But because of the outcries from past attendees, the After Dark team hosted an After Dark event in St Louis in 2013 … and now again.
Learn more inside…
off-camera flash / speed light – overpowering the sun – what are my settings?
Teaching a class on using off-camera flash at the After Dark photography convention, I took a group of attendees outside on the street with two models. Then I stepped them through the thought-process in how to get to your basic, fail-safe, works-everytime camera settings and flash settings.
Regular visitors to the Tangents blog and those who have read my books on flash photography, should know the algorithm off by heart. There’s a specific thought-process that will get you to your basic camera & flash settings when working in bright sunlight, where you have to overpower the sun with a single speed light.
Instead of re-treading this ground myself, and re-stating everything, I thought it would be good to have everyone work through this themselves. It’s a good check to see if you’re familiar with what you need to do. There’s a very specific series of decisions you make that gets you to where you need to be with your camera and flash setting – and then you can concentrate on composition and everything else that is important in taking a photograph. The camera settings choice should be second nature and should take you a few seconds.
So here’s the challenge - call it homework if you will:
- what are my (typical) camera & flash settings for the photograph at the top?
- how did I arrive at these settings?
Learn more inside…
