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.

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.

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.

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

The post How to photograph steam trains appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Aperture is one of the ways we control how much light gets to the film or sensor but it is is just so much more useful than that. In this article we will look at how it affects the image in so many other ways. Of course, aperture also enables lots of creative ideas to be realised. Come with us on an enjoyable journey down the exposure rabbit hole while we explain what aperture is, and how you can change your camera settings to create exceptional travel images.

The basics of aperture

The hole that changes size

Aperture is the hole in the lens that gets bigger and smaller depending on your settings. The bigger the hole, the more light that comes through onto the film or sensor. The hole can get bigger or smaller because it is made up of a number of blades.

Wide aperture means the hole is big (more light enters).

Small aperture means the hole is small (less light enters).

Different lenses have different numbers of blades. Some are straight and some are curved.

The number of blades (and if they are straight or curved) will affect how the out of focus areas look. The quality of the out of focus area is known a bokeh.

What are f-stops?

The light that comes through the aperture is measured in f-stops. Each full f-stop is double (or half) the light of the next stop. So f.5.6 allows double the light through than f8. f16 allows half the light of f11.

The lenses are usually advertised with the maximum aperture value so for example you might have a zoom lens that says 24mm-70mm f4 – f4 being the widest aperture of that lens. The bigger the maximum aperture, the more light can come in and the lower light you are able to photograph in. Of course larger maximum apertures come at a price. A wide aperture lens is usually heavier and more expensive than a smaller aperture.

All lenses are different but this lens shows the f-stop of 2. The number after that is the lenses focal length.

Pro tip

If you want really sharp images, shoot in the f5.6 to f11 range. Not to get too technical but less expensive lenses are corrected for sharpness better in the middle than at the edges. So why not shoot with very small apertures? Well the light is diffracted by the edge of the aperture blades causing the image to be less sharp.

A prime lens (not zoom) will usually be sharper than a zoom lens.

What is the difference between a “pro” lens and the kit lens that came with my camera body. Is it the aperture?

Generally yes. The aperture is usually wider on the pro lens.

Other factors also affect come into play.

• The kit lens is often made of plastic, whereas the professional lens needs to take a beating and so is usually made of metal.
• The more expensive pro lens probably has better correction for colour fringing – chromatic aberration.
• While the kit lens that comes with the camera usually has very good middle sharpness at most apertures, the images are not so sharp in the corners and especially so at wider apertures.

Aperture can be controlled from either the lens or in the camera

Aperture also affects focus

The wider the aperture you use, the narrower the depth of field. This means that out of focus areas will be more out of focus which allows you to isolate subjects away from their background

The smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field

As a gross generalisation, people photography works well with wide apertures where you want to isolate the person from the background, whereas landscape photography works well with small apertures where you want everything in focus from foreground to infinity.

Drag the slider to see the difference between f4 and f16

For the left image of Ally, I used a larger aperture f4. Doing this ensured that the background is thrown totally out of focus.

For the right image I used a small aperture f16 so the background is more in focus and is less visually pleasing.

So how does it work – The Tecky Geeky stuff

This diagram shows how bigger apertures make the out-of-focus areas more blurry

The light comes from the scene, goes through the lens and the wide aperture and focuses to a point on the film or sensor plane.

The light comes from the scene, goes through the lens but is out of focus. The focus point is in front of the film or sensor plane. As the aperture is very big, the out of focus area called the circle of confusion will be big too. Lots of blur.

The light comes from the scene, goes through the lens but is out of focus. The focus point is in front of the film or sensor plane. As the aperture is very small, the out of focus area will be small too. Much less blur.

How does this affect travel photography then?

Lets look at some images

Ally shot this steam train handle glow, with a large or wide aperture (f2.8) to isolate the handle from the details in the steam.

Tim shot the Croatia “hole in the wall” using a small aperture, to get everything in focus from foreground to infinity.

So finally lets break some rules!

Once you are comfortable following the ‘rules’ of aperture it will then be time to break them. Maybe try photographing a wide vista landscape wide open to isolate the horizon or a foreground tree. Try shooting a portrait with a busy background with a small aperture to get all in focus. The more you experiment, the more you will learn so keep trying new techniques.

Aperture seems such a mine-field; however armed with the knowledge we looked at in this article you should be able to improve your technique, and create some awesome photographs.

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Bokeh! Got to be one of the weirdest terms in photography It is only beaten by scheimpflug (ability to get your focus plane to any angle you like on a large format camera) and mackie line (helps make your film images sharper by developing the edges more). But more to the point. What is Bokeh and why do we love it.

When looking at lens reviews you might come across the reviewer talking about the ‘buttery soft’, ‘swirly’ or even ‘donut’ bokeh. In this article we’d like to explain about it and why you might need to be interested in it – or not, for your travel photography.

Don’t stress the Bokeh stuff

Bokeh (pronounced BOH kay) is the aesthetic quality of the blur in the out-of-focus areas of your images. The narrower the depth of field (bigger the aperture), the more out of focus areas you get. So Bokeh being an aesthetic quality means that it is subjective and nothing is right or wrong. This is a big relief as it means we don’t have to get bokeh ‘right’, just ‘how we want it’. Phew….

Types of bokeh

Bokeh can be described in all sorts of creative ways so here are some of the more popular adjectives that people use to describe it:

• buttery
• donut
• swirly
• grainy
• circular or oval
• hexagonal

The type of bokeh and the smoothness of it, is a product of the construction of the lens. Both glass and the aperture blades will have an effect on the bokeh. The round look on the previous photograph is down to the blades (10) on the Leica Summicron lens I was using. More blades give you rounder out-of-focus highlights. Round blades will compensate for less blades to give more round highlights.

A mirror lens that uses mirrors rather than glass will give you extreme donut highlights.

Image with small aperture so no noticeable bokeh

When the same image is defocused the soft buttery bokeh in the out-of-focus areas complement the hexagonal bokeh highlights

What and how Bokeh does the job

So bokeh is the quality of the out of focus area. The out-of-focus bit can add so much to an image, but one of its main ‘jobs’ is to make the background appear separate from sharp foreground subjects. This could be to separate the person you photographed from a busy background, or to create a sense of depth in a cityscape or landscape. We use this technique a lot in our night photography as it allows us to create beautiful out-of-focus highlights.

Ally used an aperture of f8 on these mushrooms in Wivenhoe woods, Essex to isolate the subject while still keeping them in focus

Ally used an aperture of f4 on her portrait of Idris inside Truth Coffee in Cape Town, S Africa

On the image above, the out-of-focus lights and metals of all the steam punk paraphernalia give a beautiful backdrop to her portrait of Idris at Truth Coffee … is it the best coffee shop in the world!

To create more out-of-focus areas you need to have your subject a reasonable distance from the background and then use a wide aperture on your lens. (The smaller the aperture number, the wider the aperture is eg, f16 is a small aperture while f2.8 is wide.)

Lastly

Bokeh is a fashionable word at the moment. Sometimes people pour over images, drooling over the bokeh or criticising it at the expense of the content of the image. It is not nearly as important as lens reviewers would have you believe. The most important thing is the image – not the quality of the out-of-focus areas.

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(or how to photograph like J.M.W. Turner)

This is Creative use of Shutter and Aperture series no 1

We are great fans of super sharp images and usually do all we can to get things razor sharp. This could be by spending extra on lenses (we both use sony camera now with rather pricy Zeiss glass). Or it could be we sacrifice our health to carry a heavy tripod to our chosen scene to avoid any camera shake. Sometimes however, the subject calls for a more impressionist style and this is where some camera motion blur created by panning comes in.

The how and why of the subject

The subject I (Tim) choose for my panning for camera motion blur was old cars. Now 2 things you should know. Firstly both Ally and I really like photographing old stuff, be it trains, planes, boats or automobiles. Ally aIso like cruise ships and gets very excited whenever she sees one – real life or on the screen. This strange affinity for large floating hotels is because she spent some time as a photographer on the Caribbean cruise ships many years ago. That was about the same time as I was photographing crime scenes around London. Mmmm… I wonder who had the better gig? I digress, so on to the subject matter.

The second thing you need to know is that I absolutely love a painting by J.M.W. Turner called ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway’ that gives the impression of the movement in the painting. If you haven’t seen this beautiful painting then look here. Turner painted a slightly blurry impression of the train and then used the steam to add movement to the scene the and I hoped to create the impression of movement in my cars photographs.

London to Brighton Veteran car run

There is a ‘race’ every autumn for vintage cars that goes from London to Brighton in the UK. If you’re travelling around the UK November time, this is a really interesting spectacle to photograph. I use the term ‘race’ lightly as most cars go well under 20 mph and often break down several times along the route. There is no place order – if you finish before 4 pm you get a medal. The run has been going every year since 1927 but was first started in 1896 and is for cars built before 1905. There was even a fictional movie about it made in the 50’s called Genevieve. Now combine the beautiful autumn yellow leaves with a blue sky and an old car and you can see we are already set up for some amazing images especially when you add the steam of a cold morning into the mix.

Equipment

Now while I like to travel light I don’t always make things easy for myself. I wanted beautiful images of the cars with all the colour of fall so I went with medium format and colour film. A Hasselblad 500c/m with a standard 80mm lens and a Hasselblad SWC/M which has a super wide 38mm (by medium format standards) fixed lens. When I was standing at the side of the road watching a few cars go by I realised my mistake. Super sharp images of these cars wouldn’t show the movement. If you’re looking at getting into film photography, see our best film cameras for beginners guide, best black and white films for travel photography, and how to load 35 mm film into your camera.

Sharp but dull image

Not so sharp but an infinitely more pleasing image

Panning for camera motion blur

I decided to use the super wide Hasselblad to pan with a slow shutter speed to create movement. The SWC/m has a separate finder on top so it’s actually easier then you would think.

The technique

The way this works is to follow your subject, as it passes, with the camera and when you push the shutter button to take the exposure just keep following. Don’t stop the panning movement until well after the exposure is finished. Now combine this with a slow shutter speed – start with around 1/15 second. It’s best to practice this with a digital camera as it takes a bit of getting used to and there will be many ruined images. The longer the shutter exposure, the more blur you get, but the less sharp the main subject will be.

Panning with a slow shutter speed keeps subject sharpish and background a blur

Pan and blur for images with a JMW Turner like impressionism

Spinning wheels

The other thing that happens is that the car wheels end up with circular motion blur too. Cool!!

Circular motion blur created by the longer exposure

Wide angle

I used a really wide angle so I was really close to the cars. This meant that the blurs have this awesome distorted look to them.

The final results

I scanned the negatives using a flat bed Canon f8600f scanner and then cleaned them up with the Raw file converter. Sounds weird but I scan the images to tif files and then you can open both tif and jpg files into the Raw file converter in Adobe Bridge. Ctrl + R (PC) or Cmd + R (Mac)

A bit of dodging and burning and some sharpening helped the image to ‘pop’.

These then become non destructive edits.

Try it out

This technique works so well on any moving subject. Mechanical objects are a-given but panning for camera motion blur can create incredible images of people and animals with blurred backgrounds and interesting blurs on legs and swinging arms.

Take lots of shots, get a nice smooth panning action and finally experiment with different shutter speeds. Above all – enjoy every new technique.

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What is shooting Contre-jour? Well Contre-jour is a French term for “against daylight” and it is a technique where you photograph directly into the sun. The technique has been used for decades as it was originally a painting technique.

The New Forest in the UK just after dawn photographing directly into the sun

So what should you do to create awesome contre-jour images?

There are a few things to watch out for when you point your camera at the sun. It does however usually depends on the type of final image you want but here are our top recommendations.

Lens flare

Unless you want lots of lens flare on your image make sure your lens is scrupulously clean. Smudge and dust-free will make all the difference. Very often, we will take off the protective UV filters we use so that we have a perfectly spotless lens. You could also cary a spare clean filter for just such an occasion, say if you were photographing in a very dusty or sea spray environment.

Sunrise on our local river with a clean lens for very little flare

More lens flare

Of course maybe you want tons of flare. The same applies in reverse. Carry a spare old filter that you  have smudged with oily fingers. The heavier the smudge, the more flare you can expect.

Contrast

This also goes with flare. If you are shooting a contre-jour image it will have a lot of contrast as you are photographing and possibly exposing for the sun, and of course the objects in the scene that face you are in shadow. Think silhouette. Haze in the scene will also reduce contrast. If you look at our New Forest image above you will see where the light streams through the early morning mist there is very little contrast.

Shadow details

The issue with contrast is that it’s very hard to get all the detail your eyes see in the scene. Your eyes dart around the scene that you are photographing and your iris opens and closes to get you detail in all areas. In photography we don’t have that luxury, so in order to let the viewer see all the detail (in a suitably contrasty scene) we need to help things along. If you were photographing in a studio you would help things along with a reflector to get details in the dark areas. In landscape photography we dodge and burn.

How it works in practice when shooting contre-jour

We usually increase the shadow slider in Raw to claw back some of the darker details. However we then counter this by increasing micro contrast with the clarity slider. After doing the basic edit we will then use adjustment brushes to dodge and burn (as well as selective contrast) specific areas. Even the most basic Raw file converter will allow you to do these edits. Finally we resize and sharpen our images.

Original image exposed to get enough detail in the highlights and a bit in the shadows

After a bit of dodge and burn processing in Raw I retrieved the shadow details

What else can you do when shooting contre-jour images to improve them?

Hide the sun

One of the tricks we use most of the time is to hide the sun behind an object in the scene. It could be trees or even the mast of a boat. We find this technique for photographing into the sun leads to our most pleasing images as we can still see some details as the sun doesn’t ‘blow out’ (overexpose) the main areas.

Watch your exposure

In digital we tend to expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves. This is the opposite of working with negative film where you expose for the shadows and let the highlights take care of themselves. (Unless you are a zone system shooter like Ansel Adams in which case you control everything with development based on the contrast of the scene.) We also bracket a lot (bracketing is when you take a number of different exposures of the same scene).

New Forest early morning contre-jour pan with added texture layer

The New Forest

The New Forest in the images above is in the south of the UK about 70 miles south west from the centre of London. It was proclaimed a Royal Forest by William the Conquer (First Norman king of England). It was later used by the Royal Navy as a supply of wood for their timber based war ships built in the nearby ports of Portsmouth and Southampton.

So finally give contre-jour photography a try. Get out early in the morning and don’t be afraid of the direct sun. Keep your lens clean and bracket like a crazy person.

Mostly just enjoy yourself. It’s why we all create photographs anyway isn’t it?

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