Essential techniques for unique silhouette photography

Why silhouette photography

In this post we would like to show you all the essential techniques for silhouette photography so you can create very unique and awesome images.

Now the first thing we hear from a lot of photographers is “silhouettes? I don’t do those tacky things!”

However did you know there are different degrees of silhouette not to mention so many ways to create them and incorporate them into your work? Maybe you’re looking for an ‘in your face’ silhouette or maybe you’re looking for something a lot more subtle. We would like to help you to take whatever silhouette photography knowledge you have on to a new and exciting level with our list of techniques ranging from the basic camera settings through to advanced Photoshop techniques.

Let us show you how to add the special interesting ingredients to your images.

Original ‘Donor’ image.

Original silhouette photographer image.

Select the photographer. I used a quick selection tool in Photoshop and then cleaned the image up with the Select and Mask tools.

Photographer cut out.

Photographer is on new layer. Position and scale cut-out so it looks correct.

Final composition.

Original image with white sky.

Original sky image.

Use Multiply to get the top layer to show darker areas of lower layers

The post All the Essential Techniques for Silhouette Photography to Create Unique Images appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Who is Steve McCurry. If you don’t know his name, you can be sure to know at the least one image by him. The National Geographic cover ‘Afghan girl’ is one of the most iconic magazine covers ever printed, however Steve McCurry has hundreds, if not thousands of portrait images that are just as hauntingly beautiful. So what is it about his images that is so engaging.

Analysing Steve McCurry’s work

• When you see any portrait of his, the first thing you notice is the eye contact. His subjects look directly into his lens with self assurance. No matter how torn the clothes they wear are, McCurry’s images allows their inner strength, uniqueness and most profoundly, their dignity to shine through.
• The next thing you notice is the lack of distractions. Any detail in the background supports the feel he is trying to convey in the image.

• Colours tend to be quite vibrant but with the skin tones very subtle.

• Shadows are very dark. There is limited detail to distract from the subject.

Why create photographs in a famous photographers style?

That is a stunning question, after all, the last thing you want is for people to say your work looks like …… Insert famous photographer name here …
The thing is that you can learn so much about photography by emulating the styles of the photographers you admire. Spend time analysing their work. Understand their vision. Learn how they edit their work. BUT… Don’t just do this for one photographer. Do it for many and then once you understand their processes you can mix, match and adapt their techniques with your own spin, to create something that is uniquely yours.

Have a look at our ‘How to photograph like‘ series to see other great photographers like Edward Weston, Michael Kenna, Ansel Adams and Arnold Newman.

So here is how to photograph like Steve McCurry

The image choice

I am using a photograph Ally made of a flower seller in the centre of Cape Town, South Africa and will try to “McCurryfy” it as much as possible. In McCurry’s images the subjects are usually looking directly into the lens, usually seriously. In Ally’s image the woman is looking directly into the camera. Like Steve, Ally has an amazing way of making her subjects feel comfortable in front of the lens so this image was an obvious choice as an example of how to photograph like Steve McCurry.

The first thing I will do is to crop the image down to a headshot. Most of Steve McCurry’s images are tight headshot images and although he usually crops to portrait format there are a few landscape (environmental) style in his portfolio of images.

I wanted to subtly keep the flowers in the image as the tell a story about the woman.

“What matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling” Steve McCurry

The Raw edit

As you can see the original image directly from the camera was totally flat so I set about adding contrast, clarity and vibrancy to the whole image just to get it looking acceptable.

Once the basic edit is done I went to the adjustment brush and lightened and darkened various areas (Dodge and Burn). To add more saturation to the clothing I increased the vibrancy. Once happy with the Raw edit I opened the file into Photoshop.

When looking at how to photograph like Steve McCurry, one of the main things one notices is the lack of inappropriate objects in the background. Now where he would normally change his viewpoint to adjust what he is seeing, we will use Photoshop’s tools to remove unwanted details. The Content-Aware Fill is a perfect tool for this. Just choose Fill from the Edit menu and then Content-Aware from the drop down menu. If you’re already an experienced Photoshop user you can use the Content-Aware Fill option directly from the Edit menu. This will open a new window allowing you to choose what areas you would like the software to use or ignore when doing the fill. It can also put the result on a new layer for you.

Lastly I noticed that all Steve McCurry portraits have one thing in common. There are large reflections in the eyes. When photographing I would normally use a large white reflector to add soft light into the face and it would also create beautiful reflections in the eyes. We couldn’t do that in Cape town as we only had a few minutes and as the area was deserted our guide was getting worried about us flashing expensive equipment around, so Ally had to work very fast.
To get around this problem I created a new layer in Photoshop and used a small paintbrush with white paint to paint in the reflections. After painting them in I reduced the opacity slightly to give a more realistic look.

Finally

Throughout this whole How to photograph like Steve McCurry tutorial I have shown you how to emulate him but don’t just go out and copy a photographer’s style. They are the master of that style and you will never be any better than second best. Get to understand as many photographers’ shooting and editing styles as possible and then take the best feature and mix with your own style to create something that is totally uniquely you. There can never be anyone better at your own style than you.

Click here for special deals on Tim’s Udemy course for Photoshop on the iPad and Affinity Photo v2 on the iPad

The post How to photograph like Steve McCurry appeared first on ImageExplorers.

In this post I will show you the photography editing steps I went through to turn a mundane image into something that brings me a lot of joy and is the image I pre-visualised.

Let me show you how it was done

When you are out photographing do you ever find yourself looking at the scene but visualising a result that doesn’t quite tally with what you see in front of your eyes. This was my experience when my son and I went photographing along the Jurassic coast. If you haven’t read the post about our photographic mini adventure you can find it here. In this post I will go through the editing of the Jurassic Coast image and show you my workflow from RAW to finished file.

The photography process

It was a blue sky day with a few clouds on the horizon when we photographed this scene. Due to the lighting we decided to wait until late in the afternoon as the top down lighting is certain death to most moody landscapes and also, it is too bright for long exposures even with the ND (neutral density) filter on. As the sun went towards the horizon the clouds came up and we got to work.

I photographed various exposures of the scene with my camera on the tripod. The longest I was able to do was 4 seconds as even with the aperture at f22, ISO at 50 and an ND filter I couldn’t go slower. I timed the exposures to go when the small waves were breaking. This meant I could achieve a bit of the misty effect I was after.

I also did some other stopped-down images at the same time to expose the details in the clouds which were bright and would have been ‘blown out’ (overexposed) in the main exposure.

The Initial Photography Editing Process

I started by editing the raw files separately. The main misty image has some shadows lightened and clarity added all over.

After this I went to the adjustment brushes and brightened up and darkened down (burn and dodge) various rock surfaces to add a more 3 dimensional element to them. I dodged the water to lighten the mist and added texture with the clarity slider. To get the green “toxic water feel”, I increased the saturation on the already green water.

Combining the 2 Images

To get the dark sky into my final image I opened both images in Photoshop and dragged the dark sky image into the misty sea scene.

Pro Tip:

When you have finished editing in the RAW file converter hold down the Shift key while you click the open image button. This changes the button to open object. When your image open in Photoshop it will open as a RAW smart object. When you wish to change the image in Photoshop just double click the Smart Object layer and it will open the layer back in RAW. Total non-destructive editing.

If you photograph both images without moving the Tripod then they will be exactly the same composition and if you drag one image in Photoshop onto the other whilst holding the Shift button down they will align exactly. If however your camera moved between the images then all is not lost. Select both layers ( the misty image and the dark sky image, and go to the Edit menu in Photoshop and choose Auto-Align Layers. This will automatically align the layers for you.

I used a selection tool to select the sky area and then added a layer mask to the top layer. This hides the areas of the image that are not sky on the dark sky layer.

Final adjustments in photoshop

The last things I do are to add adjustment layers to bring the images together. My favourite is to either use a warming photo filter for a warm reddish tinge or use one of the LUTs. These are Colour Look Up Tables that can give a overall colour and contrast look. My favourite is the Crisp warm look LUT.

And there you have it. I finally saved the image as a PSD file so that all the editable items (layers, masks, Adjustment layers and Smart RAW layers) would remain editable.

I was rather pleased with the result. The final image was just as I had pre-visualised it, brooding and threatening as a Jurassic scene might be.

The post Jurassic Coast Photography Editing appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Darkroom printing of Black and White images used to be the main way most photographers created their work. It was a rite of passage and everyone who did it will probably have a host of stories to tell. I know I do, like the time we would create a wall of flames around an unsuspecting printing colleague….. Enough of that now. I’ll tell you the full story later in this post. This post is all about the basics of Black and White darkroom printing and then in the next few posts we will go into detailed tutorials of various techniques – some beginner and some advanced. Like so many photographers who grew up black and white printing, first in a home or college darkroom and then in professional ones, Ally and I have a deep love of the darkroom.

This “how to” post is for those of you who grew up with digital and never experienced the incredible joy of seeing your print appear before your eyes in the developing chemistry. This is also a reminder for those of you who used to print and long for the old days, of how satisfying it was when you emerged from the darkroom, after an evening of printing, with a stack of wonderful B&W prints.

If you are still toying with the idea of black and white photography and haven’t bought a camera yet have a look at the article Best film camera for travel photography on ImageExplorers site.

How does traditional B&W Darkroom printing work?

Black and white printing works by exposing light through a negative to light sensitive paper and then using chemicals to reveal the image.
The enlarger shines a light through the negative and focuses it on the baseboard of the enlarger. The lighter areas on the negative allow more light to get to the paper and produce a darker area. Darker areas on the neg allow less light so the paper remains white.
The photographic darkroom printing process uses paper that has a chemical coating – (this is called emulsion and is usually made up of silver salts) coated on one side that is sensitive to light, but not red light. When exposed to light a latent image is formed and this is then developed in chemical developer. This development process is then stopped using another chemical called a stop bath. Finally the chemical process is fixed using a chemical called fixer and the chemicals washed away with water. The paper can now be viewed in normal light.

Finding a B&W Darkroom to use

We were very fortunate as there is a community darkroom in the middle of our city. For a very reasonable monthly fee you can use the darkroom as much as you need. Ally bought me several months of access for my birthday. Awesome present! I was shown the darkroom facilities, called SPACE in Colchester, UK by the very amiable general manager called Jack Briggs-Miller. 

Many towns and cities have similar setups but if your town does not you might try the local camera clubs. Of course, you could always build your own. A light proof room with running water is all you need. I can’t count the number of times I have blacked out windows in bathrooms to use as a makeshift darkroom. Enlargers are relatively cheap and the whole lot including trays can often be purchased off eBay for a song.

Getting started

For advice on loading the film into your camera have a look at our how to load film post.

Processing your Negatives

We will do an entire post on negative processing with techniques for beginners through to advanced. This will include topics ranging from what chemicals to choose, how to load a negative into a dev tank, times and temperatures, through to advanced topics like chemistry variations for fine grain and Mackie line effects to sharpen your negatives.

For advice on choosing a film for black and white photography we have a post that will help.

To start off though I would suggest sending your film to one of the numerous postal developing labs that will dev your negs. Most offer a push / pull (over or under develop) service as well as contact sheets. some will even do “clip tests” (cut off a piece of film and develop it to see if the remainder of the roll needs pushing or pulling).

Do a Google search but check out the TrustPilot reviews of lesser known labs to see what others think.

You will need to buy some photographic light sensitive paper.

There are 2 main types – FB or RC.

• RC stands for Resin Coated. This resin coated paper is ideal for anyone starting out printing as you can judge the exposure while it is still wet and it doesn’t take too long to wash. The other benefit is it dries flat 

•  FB which stands Fibre based is the usual choice for art or archival prints. The emulsion is coated onto archival paper and will hopefully last a lifetime if washed properly. Most FB papers have an excellent black density. The downside is it takes a lot of washing and it “dries down”. This means the blacks get darker when it’s dry making it difficult to get your exposures correct.

Your next choice is between Graded or Multi-Grade

Graded and Variable or multi contrast papers are as the name suggests, all about contrast.

• Graded papers come in 5 grades. If in doubt start with the middle grades.
• Variable or multi contrast papers are much easier to use however you need to have filters to change the grade. These can be bought reasonably cheaply from photographic suppliers. You can also use a colour enlarger with multi-grade and use the colour controls to change the contrast. I like this option as its easy for me to “dial in” contrast when I’m burning in. I did this with the image above so the sky and background was burned in with more contrast while keeping details in the white stone that had less contrast.

We used a company called AG Photographic in the UK. We bought both our film and paper there. They are very helpful and supply all things for traditional photographic darkroom printing. We don’t get any kickback from this link. We just think they are an amazing company that needs to be supported.

In the Darkroom

Once in the darkroom there are a few things to be aware of. Make sure the room is light tight and then switch on the red safe light. Photographic Black and White paper is not sensitive to red light so it won’t fog (expose) the paper.

1. Place the negative into the enlarger carrier tray. Make sure the neg and carrier are dust and fingerprint free.

2. Focus the enlarger on the baseboard. Open the enlarger lens to max so you can see what you’re doing. This will also help the focusing as it will show a narrow depth of field. There are various focus aids you can buy to help with this.

3. Stop down the lens 3 stops. Switch off the enlarger lamp and place a small strip of photographic paper on the baseboard. Set the enlarger timer. I usually start with 10 seconds. Expose the paper for 10 seconds and then cover a quarter with a bit of card – do another 10 seconds. Keep going so you’re doubling the light every time ie: 10 ,20, 40, 80 seconds etc.

4. There will be three trays of chemicals. Developer, Stop Bath and Fixer (known as Hypo to really, really old photographers). Pop the test strip in the developer and very gently swish it around for about 1.5 mins. Your image will appear before your eyes. Then put it into the stop bath. This stops the developer. Finally into the fixer for a minute and then give it a quick rinse in the water. If your box of photographic paper is safely sealed up, you can now switch on the white light.

5. Look at your test strip and decide on which one is correct. You might need to do another to get it perfect. Also look at the contrast on the strip. you might need to increase or decrease it using different grade papers or adjusting your multi grade filters.

Once you have the correct exposure and print you can then darken in (Burn) areas by adding a little bit more exposure to certain areas. For this, a piece of cardboard with a hole works well, or I cup my hands under the enlarger and just let the light through in areas I wish to burn. You can lighten (Dodge) by stopping light with cardboard during the main exposure. Most photographers use a black circle of cardboard attached to the end of a wire.

You can find out more about Dodging and Burning by looking at this post of ours.

When you have done your final RC print give it a good few minutes was in clean running water. Don’t over wash as it can cause water to seep in-between the rc layers and cause swelling. (FB papers need a lot more washing.) Hang your prints up to dry or pop them in an electric dryer.

That’s it. You have now created your first awesome Black and White darkroom print and are probably, like us, totally addicted.

So lastly the fire in the darkroom story. well…..

When I was a crime scene photographer for the Met Police (Scotland Yard) in London UK, I spent a lot of time photographing finger marks on objects from scenes. This was an art in itself, Sometimes the finger prints were in blood, sometimes dust or if a fingermark was on plastic eg, a car dashboard, then the fingerprint team would put it in a tank and coat the plastic with superglue vapours. We would then photograph the result. We used all sorts of lighting from high power lasers that required heavy duty filtered goggles through to the humble touch. Whatever would do the job. We made the photographs of these marks using 35mm Nikon film cameras with macro lenses and black and white Ilford FP4 or Kodak T-Max 100 film. Sometime we used a Sinar 5×7 large format mono-rail technical camera as well (in the days before digital came along.) We would then dev the negs and darkroom print the final black and white image of the fingermark.

Now this sounds very exciting and it was….for the first few weeks however, anything done in repetition gets boring and when you have boredom you need to find ways to get through it. In our department this was done by playing tricks on each other.

The darkroom housed 9 enlargers ranging from a beautiful Leica 35mm to a huge Durst large format beast. These were situated around the edge of the room with the trays (large 20’x24′) full of fresh chemicals in the middle. As this was a very busy professional darkroom it was designed with a bit of a maze of black painted corridors to keep the light out and no doors or curtain so photographers could rush in and out for a speedy workflow.

So … the perpetrator of the prank would nonchalantly wander into the darkroom whilst squirting a long trail of lighter fluid on the floor. (We used it to clean negatives.) Most people, when printing, go into their own little world and the chemistry smell was so strong it masked the lighter fluid so it was easy to spread it around without being spotted or smelled. After making sure that the liquid was in a ring around the feet of our ‘victim’ and out the door the fluid would be lit…. and a mini wall of flame would shoot down the darkroom corridor and around the unsuspecting photographer concentrating on their work. After much panicked shouting and then swearing the ‘victim’ would storm out the darkroom to be confronted by a sea of laughing colleagues.

Health and safety? What was that?
Ahh. Just another day on the job.

The post How to do Darkroom Printing part 1 appeared first on ImageExplorers.

To photograph the Jurassic coast where dinosaurs used to prowl, incredible plant-life grew, and the steamy swamps took the life of many an unwary creature, you would think we would need to travel to an exotic Island. Maybe somewhere where people had never set foot? Possibly near the tropics as we need the heat for the steam? Err no. The image you see here was photographed at a south of England (UK) seaside holiday town in full summer school holiday swing.

Where to go

So a few weeks ago I (Tim) went down to the south of the UK to visit our son Jethro, who is not only a designer and illustrator in Bournemouth, but also an avid photographer with a beautiful minimalist and graphic style to his images. Jethro had a really good idea about going to a seaside town called Lulworth cove to photograph the Jurassic coast. Lulworth is in the county of Dorset which is on the south coast of England. About 2 hours drive south west of London. This UNESCO world heritage site coastline is known for its rich supply of fossils from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and is now called the Jurassic coast. I immediately had visions of moody dark brooding images.

Equipment

As I have mentioned in many of these posts, we like to travel really light as we feel the weight of your equipment is inversely proportionate to your creativity when adventuring. With this mantra in mind I put together a minimal but effective kit. 

Lenses

I envisaged a wide vista, with detail in the foreground, stretching to the horizon in total focus, so my main lens was a Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical III. This lens is super sharp, totally mechanical and quite small. I also put in a 28-70mm Sony kit zoom as a ‘just in case’ lens. 

Filters

I added ND filters for both these lenses so I could do long exposures to create the misty water look, and polariser filters to take off the reflections from the water and the wet rocks. Naturally I had UV filters on the lens to protect it from the sea spray.

Pro Tip: Take spare UV filters when you’re in an area with dust or spray as it’s much easier and faster to put on a clean filter than it is to clean the dirty one

Camera

Sony A7r body. I normally use a vertical handgrip as it takes 2 batteries, but I take it off when using a tripod as it is more stable without it. Jethro shoots with a Sony A6000.

Tripod

We have more tripods at home than is healthy, from a 4×5 large format camera studio Gitzo through to a tiny ultra-light travel tripod that is really only good for a Kodak Instamatic. (You will know what these are if you are either over 50 years old or a hipster.) I chose the Manfrotto BeFree carbon fibre travel tripod as it’s ultra light, 1kg but very stable.

Bag

Both Ally and I love our camera bags but for this trip I choose to take the Domke backpack. Very light, small but with enough room for everything and I can even attach the tripod to it.

“Your creativity is inversely proportionate to the weight of your gear.”

So that was all. Super light but everything I needed for the image I had “pre-visualised” (as the late, great Ansel Adams would have said).

The problem with photography during holiday seasons

Ally and I had been to Lulworth Cove before during Christmas a few years ago, and spent a few evenings photographing the deserted coastline at sunset and early morning. So very peaceful. I really shouldn’t have been surprised though, when Jethro and I arrived to a jam-packed car park and kids and dogs running around as it was a beautiful summer holiday. My first reaction to this was to think that we were never going to get a good image. Still… We were there and we would make the most of it. 

Recce the area

Rather than jumping right in and shooting immediately we spent a good amount of time looking at various areas and deciding which area would be best to invest our efforts in. We started with the top of the hill where we could view most of the area and found the area we wanted to shoot. Unfortunately, the sun was too high, so we needed to kill about 2 hours, so some exploring and snacking were in order. The chips from the local Fish and Chip shop were excellent and well worth the wait.

Composition

I chose the scene I did for various reasons. 
The water had came up to the rocks and I knew it would work well for a misty Neutral Density filter long exposure.

The composition meant that the horizon was on the horizontal third and the point of entry into the bay was on the vertical third. Very classical composition method.

The sky is a V=shape and funnels you down to the bay entry point there. Your eye then goes about exploring the bay water until finally resting on the foreground misty effect.

The photography

The easiest part of the whole process. With the camera on the tripod and the ND filter on, I was able to get an exposure of 3.2 seconds at F22 with an ISO of 50. Just enough time to get the misty feeling, without losing the texture of the water. In these situations, it is normally wise to make several exposures as it is so easy to get camera movement during the long exposures that can ruin your image.

Timing is so important during these shoots. I waited until the small waves were about a second from breaking on the rocks to take my exposure. This gives the misty effect.
Doing some extra exposures at faster shutter speeds, stopped down, meant there were dark sky images to use too.

One last composition

I tried a second composition and froze the splashing waves, but it didn’t have the brooding Jurassic photography feel I was looking for.

Did it work?

Whilst I judge the success of a shoot on the final results that is only one aspect of photography. Yes, I was really happy with my photographs of the Jurassic coast, but more importantly I had an amazing time sharing a photographic adventure with our son.

The post Best techniques to photograph the Jurassic coast appeared first on ImageExplorers.

The 15th April 2019 was a very sad day. Not just for Catholics, nor for Parisians, historians, theologists or tourists but for all of us. Europe has lost one of its most beautiful buildings. Ally and I love Notre Dame so as a Notre Dame tribute we would like to show you some of our memories, inside and outside this stunning spiritual place.

Paris, our hearts go out to you.

The post Notre Dame Tribute After Fire appeared first on ImageExplorers.

This is how we edited the steam train cab image of the Umgeni Steam Railway train from the before and after post.  The following screenshots show the process of editing in Camera Raw to finished photograph.

The image was taken on a very wide angle lens. We bought a Voigtlander 15mm manual lens for our Sony A7r and A7 before we left for a South African trip. Have to be honest here. I (Tim) am a wide angle lens freak. I can’t get enough of them. If I could only have one lens ever, it would be a prime super wide. Not only that, I really like manual focus.  Ally, on the other hand has a more rounded view of lenses and is happier with longer focal lengths but will still use wides.

The great thing about wide angles is the huge amount of depth of field they give so for the image below, I didn’t have to focus through the camera. I just set the lens to about 2m and everything from o.5 to infinity was in focus at f11.

I was standing outside the cab and just held my hand with camera inside and pressed the shutter.

Finished image with Raw editing

The Raw file editing

The whole image exactly as it came from the camera

The first thing to do was to crop the extra unwanted detail away in Raw for a better composition.

Post crop without any Raw editing

Post crop after global Raw editing

Once this was done I set about doing a global adjustment in Raw. Darker areas were lightened with the shadow slider and the lighter areas darkened with the highlights slider. Don’t over do it or it will look either too flat or like a bad HDR effect. All the editing in Camera Raw here can all also be done in Lightroom, Affinity Photo or any other raw file editor.

Doing the dodge and burn dance

Most of the work on this image was done with adjustment brushes. Every little white dot you see on the above screenshot is an adjustment brush. Most of the brushes affect the lightness / darkness as well as clarity (micro-contrast) and finally saturation and colour.

The image was finally taken into Photoshop for resizing and sharpening.

If you wish to learn Photoshop on the iPad or Affinity Photo on the iPad have a look at our Udemy courses below.

Click here for amazing money off deals to Learn Photoshop or Affinity Photo v2 on the ipad with his Udemy course

Remember – All the adjustments I have done are just a form of dodge and burn but affecting colour and contrast, not just dark and light. All the great photographers from Dorothea Lang to Ansel Adams used dodge and burn so you are not ‘cheating’.

Final image verses the original from camera Raw file. Drag the slider to see the difference between before (right) and after (left).

The post Editing in Camera Raw – How to appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Do you ever look at your images and wonder why they just don’t have the ‘pop’ that you see on other people’s shots. There are many reasons that this could be, but we have found that the main one is down to processing. We would like to show you some of our before and after photographs of the steam train we shot in South Africa. If you haven’t read the article yet, click here for these images and more.

But I don’t want to manipulate my photographs

We hear this all the time. “I don’t manipulate my images”, “I only show the ‘truth’”, “What I saw is what I show you” or even “My shots reflect reality”. Let us look at what it is to ‘manipulate’ or ‘process’ photographs.
A photograph is all about using light from a scene and translating it onto a flat surface. This could be a print or on a digital device. Just the act of taking a photograph means you put your own slant on the image. You decide what to include and what to exclude. You change your camera settings and some things are darker and some things are extremely bright as the camera doesn’t have the same range of sensitivity that the human eye has. These things are, of course, a form of image manipulation.

Using dodging and burning as well as all the other options in Raw are just ways of getting the image to look how you envisaged it. Even one of the great photographer masters, Ansel Adams used a lot of image manipulation.

So, all our images are manipulated in Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo or other software, so that they look like we envisaged them.

Everything is manipulated. Do as much or as little as you want but always create your own vision of the world.

The post Before and After Photographs appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Black and white beach photography can be a really cathartic experience. Standing on the rocks hearing the crash of waves, feeling slight spray whilst watching the sun come down, can help the day’s worries just evaporate! After this blissful experience, you get home hoping for some gorgeous black and white masterpieces that you envisaged, but sometimes you end up with grey, lifeless images.

Let us show you 5 techniques that we use to get around this problem, when doing black and white beach photography. These will ensure that every time you go down to the sea, you will come back with unique photographs to be proud of.

During our recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa, Ally and I took a day trip to a tiny beach called Slangkop. (This means Snake Head in Afrikaans.) If you’re looking to go there, it is right next to a small village called Kommetjie. There is a beautiful old lighthouse there that dates back to 1919. This 33m high round cast iron tower looks so interesting from a distance that we hoped to get some amazing images of the area. We arrived mid afternoon and stayed until just after sunset. As you will see from the images in this article, the lighthouse was probably the least interesting thing to photograph, mainly because it closes at 3pm and is surrounded by a huge ugly electrified and barbed wire fence.

Why use black and white photography

One of the joys of photographing along the shoreline are the subtle colours one gets from the turquoise of the sea to the orange of the setting sun reflected off of rocks to the pale tan sand. It’s a watercolour painter’s dream, so why would we want to give up these amazing subtleties for a black and white image? There are a number of reasons, but the main ones we find are it forces you to look at the shapes of your scene and we end up with much better compositions.

Black and white can give you incredible dramatic images that any colour can dilute.

Everybody has taken photographs of the beach. Sofor your images to stand out you need to present them with something that’s not been seen hundreds of times before. Black and white photography will do this.

The 5 top techniques we use

1: Photography in the Golden Hour

The golden hour is the hour before sunset and after sunrise. It gives colour photographs a beautiful soft warm colour cast that is really desirable but what does it do for black and white photography? Well, we love shooting in the golden hour because the lighting gives objects a wonderful 3D feel with long and dark shadows. All the textures on rocks just come to life and even sand takes on a new textured look.

2: Silhouettes and contre-jour lighting

Of course the golden hour is perfect for photographing contre-jour. For a more in-depth look at contre-jour look at our article here.  By photographing into the sun you will find the scene take on new and interesting shapes as the light just touches the rim of objects, throwing the rest of the object into darkness. With large areas of darkness you can create mystery in your images as it leaves the viewer’s brain to fill in the details. Be careful with the extreme lighting as it’s really easy to totally blow out (lose all detail) in your highlights. If you’re photographing in an auto mode be careful as your camera could be lying to you by giving you the wrong exposure. Exposure compensation is your best friend in these situations.

There are so many interesting things on the beach to photograph and some of them take on a totally different look and feel when photographed as a silhouette. The stacked rocks have almost an alien world feel to them.

3: Details, details, details

The shoreline is like a fractal. The more closely you look, the more detail you see. Worlds within worlds. So why just photograph the big world everybody else is doing. Look at the details and sometimes some of the most interesting landscapes can be found there. Rocks and sand have so many beautiful textures on them but our favourite textures are to be found on old metal. When doing texture photography we look for old rusted structures wherever we go as they always give wonderful detailed images.

4: Polarising the light and filters

One of the must have filters for any outdoor photography is a polarising filter. A polariser will do so many things to both colour as well as black and white images. For our black and white beach photography we use it mostly to darken the sky. However it is also very useful for getting rid of reflections.

Slangkop lighthouse with a dark sky created by the polarising filter

The other filters we use in beach or any landscape photography are red or orange filters. This filter also darkens the sky (black and white photography only). We always have a UV filter on our lens to protect it as well. The protection is not just about damage either. Sea spray on your lens will degrade the contrast of the image and its so much easier to swap to a clean filter halfway through your shooting rather than trying to clean a lens in sandy sea spray conditions.

Be wary however of ‘stacking’ multiple filters on your lens. Unless they are the very expensive multi-coated variety, you will lose quality especially when photographing contre-jour. With wide-angle lenses you will also be adding a vignetting effect.

5: Neutral Density Filters for misty movement

Another technique is to use a long exposure to get a misty water movement. An ND filter will cut the light coming through your lens allowing you to do really long exposures that give the water a misty ethereal effect.

Don’t forget to use a stable tripod for these long exposures. Even the smallest bit of wind can cause subtle movement and ruin an otherwise perfect image. Usually, we try to put the tripod on rocks or really hard compacted sand to keep it totally steady.

If you are using film be aware of your exposure and reciprocity law failure and compensate accordingly. Depending on your exposure time you might even end up doubling the length of exposure to compensate. If you are not aware of reciprocity law then just bracket your exposures like mad.

Extra techniques – safety for you and your camera

The coastline and your camera don’t mix very well. Salty sea-spray will corrode your pride and joy so very quickly. Keep it out of the spray or sea mist as much as possible. This might mean keeping it in a bag when you’re not shooting or, if the spray is really fierce then put a clear plastic bag over it. (The ones you get for keeping food in work well.) Just cut a hole for the lens.

Be aware of changing lenses in areas where sand is blowing around. Once again sand and sensors don’t play well together.

Be aware of your surroundings. When we were photographing at Slangkop, I was so busy with an image that I didn’t see a very shifty looking person hovering around eyeing our stuff. Fortunately Ally was there, and some locals arrived too, so he scuttled off but if I was on my own things could have been very different.

Extra techniques – what settings should I use for best beach photography

We are doing a whole series on aperture, shutter and exposure compensation articles in this blog but the main thing about beach photography is that your camera can be fooled very easily. The bright sand and reflections off the sea make the camera think that there is more light than there really is so your images can turn out slightly underexposed. If in doubt, bracket a lot.

370,000 miles of unique possibilities

Around our planet there’s approximately 370,000 miles of coastline from stunning long sandy beaches to ragged cliffs. There is just so much variety and so many options to create unique and exciting images. Be safe, look for the less obvious and craft your own black and white beach photography and masterpieces every time.

The post Black and White Beach Photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

To paraphrase Mr Toad. “There is nothing quite so awesome as messing around in steam.” We love steam trains. Old, new, big, small – we don’t care. To be perfectly honest we don’t even know much about trains. We just know that these huge steam breathing, snarling and grunting creatures, that have a life of their own, make stunning photographs. In this article we’d like to share a few tips on how to photograph steam trains to get great images. (Of course we love all things steam – see our Steam, Smoke and Noise post.)

When we first started photographing steam trains we were rather disappointed with our results. The incredible steam beast that was so full of life on the track had been reduced to a dull, lifeless, public transport vehicle. We see the same issue in so many photographers’ images. We would like to show you how we tackled the problems, to create images that do these beautiful machines, and their keepers, justice.

Find your unique angle

What do you want your image to say about the train? For us it is showing the engine as a living entity, so we look for angles that are unusual but still show the train as living and breathing. We spend a lot of time with the engine at the station wandering around getting all sorts of angles. When we photograph moving trains we tend to scout the area for an interesting (sympathetic to the type of train) background first and then look for our position to photograph from. We tend to treat moving steam train images like a landscape photograph. If you can remove the train from the scene and still have a stunning shot then you’re onto a winner.

When thinking about how to photograph steam trains, one of the things we always advise, is to look for angles that not everyone else does. Go high, go low, go inside, put your camera under the train if it’s not moving and safe to do so. Just don’t be boring.

The decisive moment

As the train is not moving for most of our images we try to show the movement by including steam as much as possible. While the train is waiting in the station we usually are able to create images with a small amount of steam; however the perfect steam comes just as the train starts to move. Clouds of steam and smoke billow out. This has 3 functions. Firstly it gives the train ‘life’. Secondly it hides distracting background details (cars in the carpark, hoarding board advertising etc) and lastly it gives the image a wonderful impressionist look with swirling clouds of white and the front of the engine emerging from it. You can also try panning to capture the movement.

Details, details, details

A steam train is filled with interesting details but don’t get so carried way that you forget your composition. Sometimes it can be helpful to look at the details through your camera but un-focus the camera so you just see the blurry shapes. This helps to concentrate your brain on the relationship between shapes and you will fin your composition improves. If you have an auto-focus lens you can usually switch to manual focus to do this. If you can’t then just focus on something far away and don’t touch the focus button until you’re ready to shoot.

Ask and you might receive

People who run steam trains are usually very proud of their engines, and rightly so as they put a lot of work into them. If you ask politely they are often willing to let you photograph areas of the train that the public don’t normally get to see. Remember not to get in the way and send them some images afterwards.

Exposure

One of the issues with trains in bright sunny conditions is the high contrast in the scene. We tend to expose for the highlights most of the time as the shadow detail is easier to retrieve in developing in Lightroom or Photoshop Raw converters.

Leaving your camera set to auto is great if you are constantly switching from sun to shade and don’t have time to check the exposure as you could miss an important image. However if you do this be careful that the camera isn’t being fooled and over- or under-exposing. Ally always shoots on manual. I (Tim) occasionally shoot aperture priority but if I do I always keep an eye on my exposure and use the exposure compensation button if I need it.

Develop your images to create your vision

Don’t forget that a large part of the image creation process is developing your images. Were not talking about just taking the image and converting it from Raw to jpg. We’re talking about getting your image back to how you envisaged it when you shot it.

In the raw file converter:

• Correct your exposure. Make it look like you saw it.
• Sort out your colour (white) balance. ‘Correct’ is not always ‘right’. Make it look like you envisaged it. Warm it up, cool it down. Whatever works for your image.
• Increase or decrease the vibrance / saturation as needed.
• Add micro-contrast using the clarity slider.
• Try it in black and white.

All the above are done to movies. This is called Colour Grading. Different movies have different ‘looks’ to complement the scenes for example The Matrix series had a very green tinge. Some movies very contrasty or orange. Nothing is right or wrong.

Once you have created your ‘vision’ with the basic settings, save it as a preset so you can use it on the other images in that set. Most developing software, be it Photoshop Raw file converter, Affinity Photo, Lightroom or other has the ability to save and reuse Raw settings.

On an individual image basis go in and use the adjustment tools on the image to dodge, burn, increase or decrease contrast and vibrancy. Remember all the great photographers used dodge and burn techniques. From Ansel Adams’ landscapes through to Dorothea Lang’s migrant worker images.

Filters

When you are learning about how to photograph steam trains, filters can be a great help. If you are having trouble with the contrast between the sky and the dark of the train details, try adding a graduated ND filter.

To get rid of reflections and increase the saturation in vegetation try using a polarising filter.

As always the most important part of the whole process is to thoroughly enjoy your photography.

About the Umgeni Steam Railway (Inchanga Choo Choo)

All of the images you see in this article were photographed in South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal at the Kloof railway station. The train that runs here is the Inchanga Choo Choo that is part of the Umgeni Steam Railway (USR). The USR is a volunteer run organisation dedicated to preserving these railways in South Africa. The Inchanga Choo Choo runs on the last Sunday of every month generally. It is a lovely ride from Kloof to Inchanga (a tiny village approx half an hour’s ride away). It has a craft market at Inchanga and people often take a picnic. It’s a perfect way to experience the atmosphere of a traditional steam locomotive. It is a favourite of young and old alike. Tickets sell out fast in advance!

Thanks!

Many thanks to the Inchanga staff, particularly to Andre the driver, for allowing us to photograph inside the engine cab. We apologise to both the fireman and engineer, in whose way we inadvertently got in. For an awesome photographic experience we cannot recommend this highly enough

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