Working with Monochrome

On January 5, 2012January 5, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn One Way to Do it, Photography6 Comments

Just a little ramble from me, this is not instructional in the literal sense. A fellow blogger and photographer, Nigel (or greysqrl) always asked me to write a tutorial on my monochromes and specifically my black and white photographs, but I’ve never felt that I had an “art” to it or a specific sequence of steps in the methodology to really do a tutorial type of blog, so I thought that at least I can do some rambling or musing on the subject.

Back when I shot with the Canon S5 Super-Zoom bridge camera (basically a hyped-up point-and-shoot) there were several colour modes including black and white and sepia, so I had disciplined myself to taking the scenes that appealed to me in these aspects in those modes, so I never had a full-coloured version of the photograph for any sort of comparison. So for me, the idea of a scene being in monochrome always started out before I pressed the shutter-button.

After I started using a DSLR (for now the Canon T1i or 500D) I learnt about post-processing further, using RAW images, etc. Now, I still consider many scenes in monochrome and earmark them for that specific type of processing later, but I also change my mind about some scenes that were not considered for monochrome initially.

What makes a good monochrome image? I really never thought about it, I just “feel” that some scenes make better monochromes than others. I am sure that as I continue my photographic journey I will learn more about what actually makes a good monochrome, to me it’s a “old” looking scene, or a scene with high contrasts, or in many of Nikhil’s cases one with lots of texture 🙂

How do I process a monochrome image? Since all my current images start out as full coloured, it is usually that “feel” that helps me select the ones for monochrome, either that or the new method of processing as colour and then it doesn’t quite come out the way I want and I send it over to monochrome just to see what would happen 🙂

I use Lightroom as my primary image processing and workflow application, but the majority of my monochromes are done in Nik Silver Efex (after some processing in Lightroom). I take each photo on its own merit, some need to be treated softly while others need to be more contrasty and structured. Nik Silver Efex has a range of presets that you can view easily and then do your own fine-tuning.

With scenes that have clouds (I seem to have many of those now) I always go for bringing out or enhancing the detail in the clouds. The dynamic range captured using a single exposure is not (always) a true representation of what the human eyes saw or can see. Often I would look at the scene and see the nice detail in the foreground, then look up and see the layering in the clouds, but when the photograph is taken I lose some detail, and In post=processing I try to retain that detail that I saw.

This particular photo was not intended as a monochrome image, the upper portion of the boat (or lower portion in the image, since the boat is upside down) was yellow and I had initially intended to emphasize that, but it didn’t work out as planned.

Intentional Under-Exposure

On January 4, 2012January 4, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn One Way to Do it, Photography2 Comments

There was a challenge recently in the Guyana Photographer’s FaceBook page, it was about silhouettes, while there seemed to be various interpretations on the theme, I noticed that not everyone had the same idea of a silhouette.

Although many dictionaries seem to have similar definitions, they usually go back to the original meaning, referring to “cut-outs”, the explanation that I like the best I came across on Wikipedia (yes, I know, not always the most reliable of sources, but its accurate here), “A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black”. I think this explanation covers the idea of a silhouette regardless of the medium used to illustrate it.

This image I intentionally under-exposed when I took it to capture more detail in the sky and less in the foreground and objects between myself and the horizon, although I did under-expose I apparently didn’t do so enough since I still had to adjust the black levels to get what I wanted 🙂

Although the tree-line takes prominence in this image, the real interest is the child on the wall walking into the sunset. Intentionally under-exposing the photograph is one way I know of getting the silhouettes that we try for in images like this. Getting the right exposure is important, goodness knows I’m still trying with that, but learning when to over-expose the photograph and when to under-expose it can create those moments that are more memorable than an average exposure 🙂

For a better look, click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2011 Deck – Week 52

On December 31, 2011December 31, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography6 Comments

The final week of the year, and the final photo for the Deck Project for this year. This one I can say I like, it has been “edited” a bit in addition to the standard processing, I added a “purplish” gradient to the sky for effect.

Another year has ended, I am a bit disappointed with myself, and I think I need to refocus for the new year, I plan on restarting the Deck Project, it gives me a sense of purpose for my photography, so I wouldn’t want to stop it. I think that Nikhil may be re-starting his 365 Project that he did a year ago, I look forward to that.

As we end this year and look forward to 2012, I present a photo that I think represents many Coastland Guyanese, a typical afternoon on the coast, enjoying the winds of the Atlantic and just “Shooting the Breeze” (chatting, talking, gaffing!)

2011 Deck – Week 51

On December 29, 2011December 29, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography4 Comments

I had shortlisted four images for this blog-post, two of them were too much in keeping with the general theme of the last few weeks, so I discarded those (for later publication) and one was somehow reminiscent of photos I’ve seen from Nikhil and some other local photogs, so I ended up with this one.

I titled it “Ritual at Dawn” because I had inadvertently caught some people in the frame, I think they may have been Hindus out to perform a seaside ritual (I think I should enquire more about this)

I was a bit dissatisfied with the original capture, but was taken enough by the scene to try to “salvage” the image. I tried a single image HDR tone-mapping, but that didn’t work out as I expected. I then decided to go for a pseudo-HDR, since I hadn’t actually taken multiple exposures, I created the multiple exposures in Lightroom (using a 1.5ev on the original image) In the image with the +1.5ev I wanted to get more detail from the rocks on the shore, so I used a gradient to adjust the exposure in that area. Using the three new exposures I did an HDR process in Nik HDR Efex Pro, and although the full-coloured resulting image was OK, I thought that in this instance I would get a better image using a black and white HDR rendering.

2011 Deck – Week 44

On December 20, 2011December 20, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography5 Comments

I didn’t have time to go running for the kit lens and my Raynox macro clip-on, so I shot this with the lens that was on the camera, the Tamron 18-270.

I must say, I don’t think it came out too bad… I was looking for something to shoot, when I noticed some movement in the grass, I think this is the one we generally call a stink-bug… maybe.

2011 Deck – Week 43

On December 19, 2011December 19, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography6 Comments

Every year I tell myself that I will try to get some really good photos during the festival of Diwali (or Deepavali), the Hindu Festival of Lights, I haven’t really made the effort to do this for the last few years. This year I thought I could at least get a photo of one of the many men (yes, and sometimes women/girls) who spin lighted steel-wool in the streets. I think to myself, it can’t be hard right? How can I mess it up?

And then I forget the Tripod….

So, I really wanted to use one of those shots, so here it is 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 40

On December 14, 2011December 14, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Sometimes we just take a walk out to the seawall for, well, a walk 🙂 We go to see the boats, walk in the water, enjoy the breeze… well, the children go walking in the water anyway.

This photo was taken on one of those walks, there’s a spot at Lusignan where the boats that have finished their day’s fishing are moored, the fishermen are finishing up their day’s work, where the catch of the day is off-loaded and packed for sale, it was at this spot we walked to, my daughter and her cousin are down at the water’s edge, and I’m walking ahead to look back and, or course, snap some photographs 🙂

I could try saying a lot more, but I think in this instance the photo can speak for itself 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 38

On December 12, 2011December 12, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography2 Comments

On this week, I only went out to take photos on one occasion, and on that occasion I took 45 photos, and I was way odd that afternoon, most were very underexposed. It wasn’t that I wasn’t feeling in the mood, I was fairly enthusiastic, I was enjoying the fresh air, the brief walk, and the scenery, but I never once looked down at the screen to check my photos, no chimping.

I was fairly disappointed but one of them had to work 🙂 I chose one that appealed to me in a general sense and felt that it would work well in monochrome, after playing with the processing for a while I found I wasn’t getting what I felt the scene needed, so I took the file into Nik’s HDR Efex to try a single image BW tone-mapping, and amazingly got what I thought was a good final processed image. I would never consider this a true HDR, since I only used one image, but the tone-mapping of the HDR software helped bring out the details that I wanted in this image.

2011 Deck – Week 36

On December 9, 2011December 9, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Since the members of the Guyana Photographers (Facebook Group) started doing PhotoWalks it has provided me with other opportunities to get out and do some photography, as well as to see and admire the photos emerging in the group from these walks, there truly is a lot of enthusiasm and talent among the members.

On one of those walks (this one was to the villages of Good Hope and Triumph, I got what I thought were good shots, then I saw what others put up and realized that mine were all just OK 🙂

I fell into the trap set by all the enthusiasm and put my better shots onto the Group’s Page, without thinking to reserve at least one for this post, so a-hunting I went through my images for one that I could use. You can check out some of the photos from the group in the 3rd Photo Walk album Facebook.

2011 Deck – Week 35

On December 8, 2011December 8, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography8 Comments

Making Time. If anyone has ever figured out how to get more hours out of the day, please let me know 🙂 Once in a while you just have to stop, and slow down. Back in August (yes I’m writing this blog several months late) I was visiting with my in-laws and we decided to take a drive/walk out to the seawall at Lusignan. I took some photos (many left to be processed) but I processed two sequences that I had intended for HDRs, and was somewhat satisfied with this one.

I think that I was still standing in the village of Lusignan, but I was looking towards Annandale, I was told that somewhere ahead of me was an area known as Courbaine Park and (probably more to the left) is an area called Sand Reef. As usual, when taking outdoor HDR images I tend to go for the clouds, there was a very nice layering and depth (or height) to the clouds.

I used Nik HDR Efex to merge and tone map the image.