The Luminous Landscape is one of the sites I watch on a daily basis. Micheal Reichmann always has great articles on photography as well as great guest essay’s.

Today’s guest is Art Wolfe. Most of the work we see from Art and all other photographers is the final product, the end result of sometimes lots and lots of planning, time, patience and luck. The essay Art provided gives a glimpse into what it takes to get to a great shot and what some of the hundreds of thousands of images professional photographers capture that usually never see the light of day.

Art Wolfe Essay at The Luminous Landscape: Night Fisherman

Digital Photography, Miscellaneous

There are always problems that have to be solved when working a shoot. Most of the time the problems revolve around light. Solving the problems sometimes requires a little creativity.

Exterior light is too bright

The image above is just such a problem. This shoot started out in the morning with fog outside providing a nice bright, but diffuse light to the interior. By the time I got to this corner cabinet shot, the fog had burned away, and the double-doors just to the right of the cabinet were lit up with very bright indirect and direct sunlight.

Exterior light getting better

After placing a couple of scrims (light blocking tools) outside the window, the image was better, but not great.

To get rid of all the light required three scrims blocking both doors and the windows above the doors. This being the winter, the sun was at such a low angle that it also reflected off the floor and onto the ceiling. Another light blocking scrim, this time a dog blanket laying nearby, was placed on the floor to block the light reflecting onto the ceiling.

Final Image

The final image shown above, shows off the contrasting cabinets nicely.

Recent Work lighting

After an image has been sized to the proper dimensions, it should be sharpened. Sharpening is a process that enhances the contrast between light and dark areas of an image. Ironically sharpening is done in Photoshop through a filter called Unsharp Mask. Starting with Photoshop CS3 there is also the Smart Sharpen filter which provides more options for the sharpening process.

For this article I’ll use Unsharp Mask. The first step is to view your image at 100% magnification. You can select the View menu and then Actual Pixels. Then scroll the image around until you can see a good location to evaluate your sharpening settings. You will not be able to properly review the results of sharpening unless you are viewing the image at full size (actual pixels).

Now select the Filter menu, then Sharpen, then Unsharp Mask.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Unsharp Mask Dialog

For a good explanation of why it is called Unsharp Mask, see the Wikipedia article on Unsharp Mask. The article also explains the three sliders: Amount, Radius and Threshold.

Each image is going to be different, and an image sized for the web will not require much in terms of Amount and Radius. The Amount slider changes how much sharpening is applied. The Radius slider changes how wide the sharpening effect becomes. Increase the Threshold slider to make sharpening work on the areas of the image where contrast is greatest.

Start by having Amount around 50 and Radius around .3, and Threshold at zero. Use the Preview checkbox to see what happens before and after the change. Then adjust Amount way up to 200 and run the Preview checkbox a few times. The change in the image is very pronounced. I call this popping. You want the image to pop a little, but not too much. Play around with the Amount and Radius until it pops how you like. Of course this is subjective, so do what works for you.

Conclusion

Determine what size you want your image. Size it for that specific use. Sharpen it appropriately. Create an IMG tag that works for that image.

Processing Images For The Web (Part 1) - Introduction
Processing Images For The Web (Part 2) - The IMG Is Everything
Processing Images For The Web (Part 3) - Proper Resizing

Digital Photography photoshop, sharpening, web

Rampathon 2009 happened on March 16th. 32 teams of volunteers built 32 ramps for deserving people and families. For my part I visited 7 ramps and took pictures of the teams and some of the recipients for use by the MBA and the participating volunteers. I was only able to get team pictures at 6 of the ramps as the 7th one finished before I was able to show up.

The weather this year was absolutely beautiful. It wasn’t as hot as last year, but it was still sunny for a lot of the day. I’m sure the volunteers appreciated not having to deal with rain.

Here are the pictures of the teams that I visited:

Professional Women in Building

R&R Specialists and Persyst Consulting

Shirey Handyman

Tenhulzen Remodeling

Tenhulzen Remodeling

Stewardship Remodeling

Wirecraft Electric

News Rampathon

Lately I’ve been wanting to move away from doing studio head shots. They work and have their place, but a nice environmental portrait I feel has more interest.

So what is an environmental portrait? It’s any photo of a person taken in their environment. A studio could be considered an environment, but it’s not the subject’s environment, it’s the photographers. The best environmental portraits are as much about the environment as they are about the subject. They work together to tell a story better than just a picture of the person.

My work for The Builders Journal has expanded my skill set in this respect. While the subjects are the primary focus of the image, the background is also very important.

    

The subjects above are Logan’s Hammer, Mittendorf Quality Construction and JD Bergevin Homes.

The same techniques can be applied to business portraits or head shots to make them more interesting.

  

The subjects above are David Gregory of DSG 4 Design and Heather Jellerson of Calluna’s Gardens.

Of course in all cases getting the lighting right is one of the biggest challenges. For David’s shot above there was a large bank of windows just in front of him and it was a bright but overcast day. I only had to add a little light to camera right and bring up the background to a suitable level. I had studio strobes already on location for the shoot we were doing, so it was pretty quick to get the levels correct.

Heather’s portrait didn’t go quite as I had planned, but quick repositioning saved the day. We went to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens on a partly sunny/partly overcast afternoon. I planned to position her in the shade if the sun was out.

I brought along two speedlights (Canon 580EX), one for on the camera to provide a nice catch light in the eye, and the other on a light stand to add some directional light. I changed the batteries in both my speedlights before the session so I wouldn’t have to worry about them.

When we got to the spot I wanted to set up I turned on my speedlights and found they were both dead. The rechargeable batteries I had just put in had apparently sat around too long and at least one of the batteries in each set had lost it’s charge, rendering them with not enough power. So now I had no supplemental lighting to work with.

After a test shot I saw that the shadows from our current location were not flattering. So we moved into full shade and I had her face towards the sun hidden behind the clouds. Using my 200mm lens and a small aperture I was able to nicely blur the background so Heather remains the focal point of the image.

Digital Photography, Recent Work people, portrait