Editing

For this exercise  I have used 52 images taken last month at Canoe Lake in Southsea. The lake has a visitor attraction which comprises large boats shaped like swans. At this time of the year they are kept moored in the centre of the lake often surrounded by a large number of real swans attracted to the lake by the promise of food from passers-by. While I was initially attracted by the idea of capturing images of real and make believe swans at the end of the day, the real swans became the subject of this exercise being more of a challenge in photographic terms.The workflow for this exercise was broken down into the following stages :

Step one - the technical edit

This edit reduced the number of images to 26.

 

Step two - the selects

I used a star rating system to identify those images that worked in creative terms.  

 

Step three - the first selects

The first selects came to 8 in number i.e. those rated as 4 or 5 star.

 

 

Step four - group and review

 Looking closely at the first selects again after a few days had passed, I decided the ratings given were still sound.
 

Step five - a final choice

Using the same star rating I looked again at the first selects and opted to review the three  5 star rated images below.



P485: f14 @ 1/60  ISO 200 -0.7exp 300mm cropped 

 

 



P486: f14 @1/250  ISO 200  180mm cropped



P487:  f14 @ 1/200  ISO 200  259mm 

Knowing that I now had to choose only two of the three images, concentrated the mind and
finally opted for P485  and P486. I chose P485 as I liked the way the image showed the swan as less an iconic unruffled regal image more a moment captured in time i.e. with water dripping off its beak and the wind ruffling the bird's feathers. P486 was more about the play of the sunlight on both water and birds. The arrangement of birds conjured up the idea of a small flotilla calmly sailing away across the choppy water.

Looking back at the editing process here, I'm left wondering not so much about the process of editing as the exercises have very much endorsed a way of working that I follow but more what software I should use to assist in the process. Using Photoshop Elements Organiser is proving more of a problem than a help due to some kind of gremlin which is proving difficult to sort. 

Histogram

For this exercise I needed to find and shoot the three most basic categories of scene by contrast i.e low, average and high contrast. 



Low contrast



P476: F6.3 @ 1/25  ISO 200  55mm



Histogram 476

Interestingly, the historgram ( 476 ) depicted on my camera display showed a lower contrast image than the above taken from Photoshop Elements i.e. the histogram was concentrated in a smaller area. This histogram shows no clipping.

P477:  F7.1 @ 1/25  ISO 200  55mm





Histogram 477

Again no clipping in Histogram 477. Increasing the f stop to 7.1 makes no demonstrable  difference.

.


P478: F8  @ 1/15  ISO 200  55mm

Histogram 478

Again no clipping either side of the histogram but a slight change at the top of the 'peak' and between the colours comparing the Fstop 8 and Fstop 7.1

Average contrast

P479: F5.6 @ 1/1250  ISO 200  28mm

Histogram  479

In this histogram, we can see a more evenly spread out histogram. Although no clipping there is a peak towards the white side suggesting some over exposure.

P480: F4.5 @ 1/2000  ISO 200  22mm

Histogram 480

Lowering the F stop to 4.5 produces a similar histogram...no obvious change.

P481: F6.3 @ 1/800  ISO 200  22mm

Histogram 481

Raising the Fstop to 6.3 moves the histogram over to the left and slightly more over to the right  though the overall spread/ pattern remains the same.

High contrast

P482: f6.3 @ 1/5  ISO 400 12mm

Histogram 482

Some slight clipping on the white side of the histogram.



P483: f7.1 @ 1/4  ISO 400 12mm

Histogram 483

 

 



Here with a smaller aperture than the previous image.there is increased clipping on  the right  and now on the left.

P484: f5.6 @ 1/6  ISO 400  12mm

Histogram  484

A further increase in highlight clipping can be seen on the left of Histogram 484 where the lowest F stop of F5.6 has been used. More light  produces clipping at the white side but seems to removed the clipping on the dark side of the histogram.



This was more of a challenge than I expected given that the camera I was using only provided the histogram after the image had been taken. I found it difficult to judge a scene beoforehand as to whether the image would likely come out as low, average or high contrast. With hindsight the images chosen for this exercise while the best I could find after a number of 'goes' are not really sufficiently clear enough to demonstrate the difference between the three types of contrast and the impact on the contrast of using different F stops.

Man Ray Portrait Exhibition March 2013

I have never seen any examples of Man Ray's work other than in books so I took the opportunity to visit the current exhibition in London last week.

Knowing that he was anything but a conventional photographer, I was interested to see his approach to portraits. The exhibition was arranged chronologically which was helpful in terms of seeing the development of his work over time. Images included classic celebrity portraits ( Elizabeth Duquette in 1948), fashion shoots and examples of magazine work, for example, Gertrude Lawrence in Harper's Bazaar (1936).The descriptions alongside each image were disappointing however, in that they concentrated on biographical detail pertaining to the subject and as always, I wanted to know more about the photographer's intention and the technical side of the image. Also, many of the images were extremely small ( less than postcard size ) which made viewing difficult.

That said, I found some images  that really intrigued me. His solarised portrait  of Lee Miller  taken round about 1929 was very striking and drove me to find out more about the process of solarisation. Interestingly he returned to this process for a portrait of Leslie Caron in the 1950s.

I discovered that solarisation is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone. Dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark. It was usually caused by accidentally exposing an exposed plate or film to light during developing.The effect is one of the earliest known effects in photography and certainly known to Daguerre. Apparently Man Ray perfected the technique after it was accidentally discovered in his darkroom by his assistant Lee Miller.
'Noire and Blanche' (1926) was a very good example of his series of female faces made up in a mask-like way and placed in an unusual composition. Here he placed an African mask from the Ivory Coast next to the head of Kiki, resting with her eyes closed creating a very memorable evocative surrealist image.

His first colour portrait of Genica Athanasiou ( 1933 ) was beautifully composed and the colours very evocative of the period. He used the time consuming tri-colour carbro printing process. This involved the printing of three negatives taken through red,green and blue filters on casbon tissue that are then transferred, one after the other onto paper to form the final print.

Coming away from the exhibition, I felt my appetite whetted for more Man Ray images and I would like to take a wider look at his work and the interplay between his photography, painting and sculpture. More reading needed..

A sequence of actions project : Your own workflow 2

The purpose of this exercise was to devise a workflow for a specific shooting assignment which would be unstructured and open-ended. I decided to try out the workflow I used previously. Post exercise comments highlighted in red.

Stage 1 Preparation



Theme - Seaside in winter 

I chose this theme as I know from experience that it offers a variety of seafront scenes  and activities and I wanted to convey the closed for the season feel juxta opposed to people enjoying the seaside anyway.

• Location - I chose Southsea seafront as being easily accessible and knowing that I would likely need more than one visit.
• Timing / weather forecast - given the time of year ( March ) and the recent poor weather, it made sense again to check the 10 day weather foreast for this area to ensure my availability and suitability of weather for outside location opportunities matched up
• Equipment preparation - checked batteries were fully charged, memory card empty and enough storage space on desktop. Decided against using a tripod due to the distance that needed to be covered and the possibility of limited time on each visit due to weather variation.

Stage 2 Site checks / shooting

• Camera settings - check on site - . Past experience suggested that the light on each visit was likely to be very bright at this time of the year and the sun at a difficult angle for some subjects
• Shooting the images - the number of images I would take would be limited by the weather, possibly the time of day ( given where the sun would be in relation to possible subjects ). 

Stage 3 Uploading images

• Expect well over 100 images from the combined shoot

         260 images taken

Stage 4 Technical check of images

• Will need to allow plenty of time here given the number of images to be checked

        Number of images reduced to 76

Stage 5 Interim selection of images for processing

• Edit technically correct images 76 images reduced to 38 images
• Order and number images

• Decided to order and number  images at Stage 6 due to quantity

 

 Stage 6 Processing interim selection

• Record technical detail  

         Ordered and numbered images at this stage


 Stage 7 Final selection

• Selection    14 images selected - examples below:

        

P465: f9 @1/400  ISO 200  22mm

P466: f4.5 @ 1/2000  ISO 200  22mm

P464: f7.1 @ 1/60  ISO 200  18mm



 

P469: f22 @ 1/60  ISO 200  30mm

P 473: f16 @ 1/400  ISO 200 42mm 



P474: f8 @ 1/800  ISO 200  55mm

• Further processing if required ..some cropping of P475
 

P475:  f9 @ 1/640  ISO 200  218mm cropped

Stage 8 Saving selected images in : 

• Course database  yes
• Backup archive database yes
• Learning blog ( as appropriate ) yes
• Print  no

          

Post exercise thoughts...I slightly re-ordered the workflow again ..this time to help with the time taken to deal with the quantity of images taken. In terms of the time allowed for each stage, I think this went reasonably well though perhaps where the editing was concerned I maybe should have allowed more time ahead of the shoot given I knew I would be taking quite a few images.