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

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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.

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?

The post Shooting Contre-jour : Photograph into the sun appeared first on ImageExplorers.

As an experienced photographer I would have laughed about using my smartphone as a camera a few years ago but all this has now changed. Although it’s not ideal some very good images can be made with an iPhone, iPad or Android phone camera. Here are our 6 phone camera tips to quickly improve your photography.

So what has changed our minds about using smartphones?

Well a number of things. Firstly the quality. Although not DSLR or even point and shoot camera quality, it is still possible to get an acceptable image from a cameraphone as long as you’re not going for very low light, or want to enlarge or crop part of the image.

Secondly when we have been out, sometimes it’s the only camera we have with us. The photograph of Tower bridge in London was only done on an iPhone because I didn’t have my mirrorless camera with me.

Lastly and sometimes most importantly: You can create photographs and nobody minds as it is seen as part of life. Try pointing a pro-camera at a scene and you’ll sometimes attract lots of security trying to stop you that you won’t get using a smartphone.

All the images below were created using our iPhone 7 phones.

So lets start looking at awesome phone camera tips

1- Choose an unusual angle – go high or go low

I photographed Tower Bridge with the small water feature from down low to give more foreground detail and interest to a subject the has been photographed millions of times before.

2 – Use contrasting subjects – vegetation vs steel – soft vs hard – tall vs short

For the photograph of Lloyds in the City of London, UK  we went down low to get the foliage in the foreground. This worked in 2 ways. It firstly hid the unsightly traffic but more importantly the matt living wild plant life was in total contrast to the shiny dead repetetive steel of the building.

3 – Photograph low light by resting the camera on stable objects

To create this image of Tower bridge (London, UK) at sunset, I rested my iPhone on the very sturdy railings to get rid of any camera shake. I just waited for the sun in the clouds to be in the correct position.

4 – Have your phone ready to take a quick photograph when your camera is put away in your camera bag

We were photographing the Paris graveyard and I had the camera. (Ally and I were traveling super light with just one camera body and a single lens. A Sony A7r and a 24-70 mm Zeiss zoom.) We find the distance we can explore is inversely proportional to the weight of our camera gear. Ally saw the Raven sitting on a grave stone – so very Edgar Allan Poe – and just used her iPhone to get the image.

5 – Photograph in Raw using software like VSCO and edit your images to bring out colours and contrast in photoshop, Affinity or VSCO

While images directly from your phone look okay we will always edit them a bit to bring out the best. Using Raw images gives you so much more latitude in your exposure and then more confidence to try more adventurous (darker, contrasts or even directly into the sun) photos. We would sharpen and in the image below, we removed a reflection of Ally in the glass. For editing we use Photoshop, but any good package is an option – see our thoughts on Photoshop vs Affinity, and the free online Photopea.

6 – Finally use as much symmetry, repetition and reflections  as you can possibly get.

The image above with the dirty glass of a mausoleum in the Paris graveyard is a perfect example of interesting reflections as well as symmetry. The image below of Saint Chappelle is a perfect example of both symmetry and repetition. See here for our low light in churches and cathedrals tips.

Almost symmetry of the Eiffel Tower from below. Unfortunately there was some construction equipment directly under the tower so we didn’t quite get the perfect symmetry we hoped for. You can’t win them all! (So we created some other unique images of the Eiffel Tower on the mirrorless!)

Never be too proud to pull out your phone to create an image. When your work is displayed online after a bit of editing nobody will be any the wiser and you might just get a memorable image you treasure that you could never have got with a traditional camera.

Hope you’ve enjoyed these phone camera tips. Now, go forth and  enjoy yourself.

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“TOAST! Tim and Ally…. Really?” “Erm yes…It really does help with Dodge and Burn tools. We’ll get to that later but first things first.”

Dodge and burn tools have become a bit old hat to many photographers. With so many quick and easy digital ‘fixes’ it’s easy to see why, but these tools, although going back to traditional printing times, are some of the best ways to make your black and white images (and colour too) look amazing. We can safely say that there is not an image on our blog that doesn’t use at least one of these in some way or other. See our tips and geeky explanations for what makes a good black and white image.

Dodge and burn in traditional printing

In traditional printing, you have an enlarger which projects your negative onto paper. The more light you expose the paper to through the negative, the darker the print will be. After you’ve done a test strip, which helps you work out the required exposure, you would then expose the light from the enlarger onto your paper. Depending on the exposure, there can often be areas of the image that would be too dark or too light. You would then do another test strip over those areas to work out that exposure time. Dabbling or jumping into film photography – see our post on the best film for travel photography and filters for black and white photography.

Dodging

When it comes to the final exposure of the print, you would expose for the final image with adjustments, but for the area that was too dark and needed less time, you would use a piece of card, normally attached to a piece of wire to wave madly over that area to prevent light getting to it – well maybe not madly, but moving enough to prevent a hard edge being projected onto the paper. This lightening technique is called dodging.

Dodging the print with cardboard ellipses on sticks

The further away from the paper you manipulate the light, the softer the dodged or burnt area edges will be.

Burning

For the area that needs more light, you would expose the image with the normal exposure, then you would give the area the needs more light, the extra light that it needs. How do you do that? Well, depending on the size and shape of the area, you can use your hands cupped together to block out the light and only allow certain areas to get extra light, or you could also use a piece of card with a hole cut in it to give that area more light … directing (or burning) the light. Again you wave it gently between the enlarger and the paper (to prevent getting a hard edge).

Burning in areas by giving them extra exposure through the cardboard hole

Pro tip:

Now one of the advanced traditional techniques used by traditional film printers is to dodge or burn with a different contrast. This is done by using multi-grade paper and changing the grade filter on the enlarger lens before dodging or burning. This technique allows you to have a combination of high and low contrast so for example in your scene you might need more contrast in the sky to get awesome looking clouds but the foreground needs sensitive shadow and highlight detail so a lower contrast.

Dodge and burn in Photoshop or Affinity photo

Now digitally, the darkroom effect can be applied in Photoshop. In your toolbar, normally down the left-hand side, you should see what at first glance looks like a lollipop. This is in fact a version of the round piece of card on a piece of wire or stick, used in dodging. Click and hold that and you’ll see 2 other icons and the text. We’re not going to look at the Sponge tool but the Burn tool has a hand with a hole made with the fingers and the thumb. This is depicting one of the options you can use when burning in!

When you choose any of these you will see your options along the top menu change to something like this.

This means that you can control how much dodging / burning you will do to your image with the exposure, and what tones you will affect, such as Highlight, Midtones or Shadows.

Most of the time you will need midtones, but if the area you wish to adjust is in the highlights or shadows, you then choose the appropriate Range from here. Choose a brush size and click and drag around the area you wish to lighten / darken. Be careful not to overdo it and use a brush bigger than you think. Undo is your friend here!

So where on earth does toast come in?

Well a lot of people get confused with which one darkens and which lightens.

The easiest way to remember this is:

If you burn the toast it will go darker – hence Burn darkens – easy to remember now.

Dodge and Burn in Raw (adjustment brushes)

There are a number of reasons to dodge and burn using adjustment brushes in the Raw file converter but the 2 main ones ore these.

• This is a non-destructive technique so you can always come back and re -edit the image at a later stage.
• You can use the dodge and burn with contrast adjustments like the advanced traditional film technique mentioned above.

In Adobe Photoshop (CS6 or CC) Open your Raw image in the Raw file converter and navigate to the adjustment brushes. It’s along the top.

Paint the area you wish to dodge and burn and then adjust the settings on the right hand side. We usually use the clarity slider to add contrast when needed and the contrast slider to reduce contrast.

Do a new adjustment for each area you wish to work on. (Not sure about Photoshop or Affinity – see our post which gives the lowdown on them). See also our Top Photoshop shortcuts.

Putting it into practice

We photographed the tower on the City wall in Dubrovnik, Croatia, but the original looks so uninspiring that a bit of Dodging and Burning was required.

• The sky was quite tricky as while the whole area needed darkening, some parts needed less contrast and some more. We did this with 2 large burning in areas with adjustment brushes. Both darkened with the Exposure slider but one added contrast with the Clarity slider while the other reduced contrast with the Contrast slider. See our post about dramatic skies.
• The sea was burned in and had added clarity
• The tower was dodged to lighten it but with added clarity to show detail in the texture.

Original image

Areas we adjusted with the brush

Final result

Revolutionise your new images and give new life to old ones

Dodging and burning has been used by film photographers since photography was invented and it’s still one of the best ways to get what you want from an image. Give your new images that exquisitely beautiful look you have admired in the masters printers work or add new life to old photographs.

Mostly, enjoy what you do.

If you are in the London / Essex / Suffolk area, we run training at your office / premises in Photoshop. Want to buy Photoshop – click the Adobe image at the bottom of this page from this link.

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So you’re out travelling and all prepared to go out to photograph that amazing landscape you noticed on the drive to the hotel yesterday. Unfortunately, the weather has other ideas and it’s pouring with rain. What can you do? How about creating your own beautiful images from items you find around your apartment? In this post, I’d like to show you how to photograph like Edward Weston. Edward Weston was an American photographer born in 1886, and was regarded as one of the masters of 20^th Century photography. He photographed primarily using an 8×10 large format camera, and was known primarily for his black and white “landscape like” still lives.

Edward Weston’s most famous red pepper – photograph from Wikipedia. Find out more about him here

Learn from the great masters

Have a look at our other  ‘How to photograph like…’ series that includes Michael Kenna and Ansel Adams to see how to create images like they have.

Why remove the colour?

One of the important features of Edward Weston’s work was the beautiful shapes that he created. When we photograph the pepper in this tutorial, look at the original in colour. Yes, it’s very striking, the red on the black, but that’s all you notice – red and black. We really want to show the form and texture of the vegetable, so black and white does this beautifully.

The Setup

The photographic setup, is incredibly simple. I put the pepper onto one of my black t-shirts on the table. I set up the camera on a tripod and the whole scene was photographed next to a window. The only other lighting, apart from the window lighting, was from a large white reflector. You can use anything white to reflect light back into the image.

Camera set up for how to photograph like Edward Weston

The Photography

When trying to photograph like Edward Weston, the more gnarly and quirky the fruit or veg, the better. Unfortunately, my peppers from the local supermarket were neither, so I moved it into a position where it would at least look interesting. As it kept falling over, I propped it up with my lens cap.

Move your scene and your reflector around until you get some interesting highights on the subjects. I photographed with quite a small aperture, therefore the shutter speeds were quite long; so, a tripod was essential as I needed to ensure the camera was steady.

Tim tries a green pepper for how to photograph like Edward Weston

The Photoshop process

To get the final photograph like Edward Weston has done, we need a bit of post production.

I first opened the image in Camera Raw but you can do the same in Lightroom or Affinity Photo Raw

Original image opened in Adobe Camera Raw

Convert colour into black and white

There are many ways to convert colour to black and white and this is just one of them. See our article on converting colour to black and white with tips and techy-geeky explanations.

Darken shadows to get the Edward Weston contrast style

I darkened the black and increased the contrast and highlights so the feeling of my image was a photograph like Edward Weston although I went for a much darker overall look than he used to create.

Darken large areas with the adjustment brushes using Exposure or Blacks

Lighten highlights for authentic Edward Weston contrast

Still in the adjustment brushes, click on the New radio button at the top to create a new brush and paint in the highlights. In the highlights increase Exposure, Contrast and possibly Clarity. If you go too far you can click the Erase radio button at the top to remove any over-painting. Click New again and do the same but on the shadows, darkening them down to taste.

We’re now going to take this into Photoshop, but before we do, click on the information underneath the photograph which will then allow you to use sRGB rather than Greyscale as the Colour Mode. This will give you the ability to put colour into your image in Photoshop when you start to add the toning. If you open the image as a Greyscale image in Photoshop, you would then have to convert to RGB colour before adding any colour back in.

Techy-Geeky stuff!: Whilst you are in this area, you could also choose the 16-bit channel option, over the 8-bit channel option. This will give you thousands of shades of grey per RGB channel, rather than the 256 shades you get from 8-bit.

The first stage of toning your image in Photoshop for that authentic Edward Weston like photograph

In Photoshop, go to your Layers panel, and click the black and white circular icon at the bottom to add an adjustment layer. The adjustment layer you need is called Gradient Map.

In the Gradient Map, click on the drop down next to the gradient. In here you will see your basic gradients. But then now click the little cog to the right. This opens up some more options and you need to choose the Photographic Toning option. This will give you a lot of gradients, that replicate traditional photographic print toning. I chose Selenium 2 to get a beautiful subtle selenium tone to my final image. (If you go back to the cog, you can choose to view the gradients options in different ways, and by choosing the Text Only option, you’ll see what the gradients are called).

Experiment with various gradient map photographic tones

Using the master photographers as a base inspiration, you can go on to create all kinds of photographic styles. You can then experiment and tweak them to make them your own. This particular how-to-photograph like Edward Weston technique, works beautifully on vegetables and still lives. However, it’s also a really interesting technique on faces and real-world landscapes.

Most importantly, enjoy every part of the process!

See our convert colour to black and white in 30 seconds video.

The post How to photograph like Edward Weston appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Everyone has seen the images of scenes where the sky looks really dark and the clouds stand out and look awesome. From a slightly darkened down adjustment to an almost black sky these skies just bring out the cloud formations beautifully. We’d like to show you how you can also make the sky dark in a photo, whether it’s black and white film, black and white digital, colour film a or colour digital. Each requires a slightly different technique but by the end of this post you will be a “dark sky photo-ninja”!

Black and white film

Black and white film uses a full range of colour to create a full range of tones on your black and white negative. What we need to do, is to stop some or most of the blue in the scene from reaching and exposing the film. To do this we use a filter. The filter we need to stop blue is the opposite to blue on the colour spectrum, so a filter that is yellow, orange or red will do the trick. Try out different colours to achieve different amounts of darkness. See our post on what makes a good black and white image. New to film photography? See our guide on best film cameras for beginners.

To make the sky dark in a black and white film image use a yellow filter – Hoya make really good quality filters

A few things to note:

• Anything blue in the scene will also go darker.
• A filter stops light from getting to the film so if you are using a hand held meter you might need to compensate for the exposure. A through the lens meter should give you an accurate reading.
• (You can also use a polarizing filter like in colour film. See below.)
• Experiment with other colour filters. A colour filter in black and white photography will lighten the same colour and darken the opposite one.
• If you are printing your own photographs you can also ‘burn’ in the sky in the darkroom.

Colour Film

You can’t use a red, yellow or orange filter to make the sky dark in a colour film photo, as it will just give you a colour cast. So how do we do it? We use a polarizing filter.

Here is the techy-geek explanation first, and then I’ll do the normal human one after that.

Light reflected from a non-metallic surface becomes polarized. A polarizer allows light to pass in only one direction. This allows us to reduce reflections on non-metallic objects.

Light from the sky is also polarized, so a polarizing filter will polarize the light and reduce how much light enters the camera. As a result this will make the sky dark in a photo.

The normal persons explanation!

A polarizer will darken down blue sky but not affect clouds. (The effect is most prevalent on the area of sky that is at 90 degrees from the sun – Look at the sun and then the darkest sky will be at 90 degrees.). It will also reduce reflections which can make trees etc seem rather vivid in colour. To use the polarizer just turn the filter until the sky goes dark or the reflections disappear.

To make the sky dark in a colour film image use a polarising filter

A few things to note:

• This polarizing filter technique will work with both film and digital, colour and black and white.
• There are 2 types of polarizer. A linear and a circular. A circular CPL polarizer is best for modern cameras as linear polarizers can affect exposure meters and autofocus adversely.
• In case of a photographic emergency you can even use your polarized sunglasses in front of the lens to achieve a dark sky.

Black and white as well as colour digital

Lightroom or Camera Raw converter to the rescue. Find the HSL / HSB (Hue, Saturation and Lightness/ Brightness) tab in either software package. Choose the Lightness or Brightness tab and move the blue slider over to the left to darken down the blue of the sky. (This technique will also darken down any other blues in the image.) Not sure whether you want to colour or black and white? See our video on how to change colour to black and white in just 30 seconds.

Using Photoshop? See our Top 10 favourite shortcuts.

Use camera Raw to make the sky dark in a photo like this one of the Vatican statues

Anything else?

Do remember that a dark sky, whilst looking awesome, can also give the post–apocalyptic feel to some images that you might not be looking for. Photograph the same image with and without filters to give yourself more final options. If your sky exposures are a little out with the highlights and shadows, check out how you can rescue them with Camera Raw.

There you have it. A few ways to make the sky dark in a photo. Most of all – have fun doing it.

The post How to make the sky dark in a photo appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Have you ever seen beautiful old photographs with a blue tone and wondered how you could create the same? A romantic cyanotype photo can look so stunning yet is so easy to do digitally. Let me take you through the process and have you creating an amazing cyanotype photo in minutes. It’s a bit messy but oh so worth it.

Traditionally, a cyanotype photo print is usually created using ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide chemicals. The original process was invented by an astronomer, Sir John Herschel, around 1839. Of course, this was and still is a very messy process requiring coating paper with chemicals. This paper is then allowed to dry and then contact-printed (using your negative) onto the paper using a UV lamp or sunlight. It is washed and then dried. Lots of trial and error and not to mention cost. I want to show you how to get the same result digitally. It would be a shame however not to get your hands a little dirty so the first part of the cyanotype photo in digital will still require a bit of mess.

Some totally useless geeky info

Copies of architectural plans were named ‘blueprints’ because they originally used the Cyanotype process resulting in blue prints – now you too can impress your friends…

The preparation process or, as I like to call it, “Woo-hoo – I’m 5 again”

Ink, heavy duty paper and a brush is all you really need. I poured some ink onto the paper and painted it, making sure not to be too neat with the edges. When it had dried, I scanned the painted page in at a high resolution. I use 600 ppi at A4 as this translates into 300 ppi at A3 size. You can always photograph the paper if you don’t have a scanner. (Just make sure the camera is parallel to the inked paper.)

Cyanotype photo process – preparing the paper

Let’s get toning

While traditionally a cyanotype is Prussian blue and white, you can also achieve a slight yellow in the highlights by bleaching and toning. This split tone look is the one I am going for here.

Open your chosen image in either Adobe Photoshop Raw, Lightroom or Affinity Photo. I will be demonstrating in Photoshop Raw.

Original Image

After you have got your settings for lightness, darkness and shadow detail correct, you will need to click on the black and white photo button. Of course you can then still lighten and darken certain areas with the Black and White control sliders.

Converted to Black and White

Next step is to choose the toning tab. I added a small amount of yellow in the highlights, and more blue in the shadows.

Split tone sliders in raw for cyanotype colour

With Cyanotype photo colour tone

Creating the digital painted frame look

Open up the scanned image in Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Bring in your toned image. Drag or copy/paste the scanned inked paper onto the toned image.

Paste Painted paper scan onto cyanotype photo

Now for the magic … set the paper layer mode to Screen. Ta-da. A beautiful cyanotype photo with a hand painted paper edge replicating hand-made sensitised paper.

Set layer to screen for Cyanotype photo emulsion look

Useful Geeky Info about Modes

Simply put, the Screen mode hides the black on the layer. It is the opposite of Multiply which hides the whites.

Cyanotype photo with emulsion paint effect

A Reversed Background

The reversed background is nothing like a Cyanotype photo but still quite cool. If you wished to have the image look like it was painted onto a black background you could invert the paper layer and then set the paper layer mode to Multiply.

Original paper layer as used in cyanotype print

Paper layer as used in cyanotype print inverted

Convert mode to multiply for cyanotype on black paper

Variations on the theme

This Cyanotype photo technique has so many variations when it is done digitally. Why not try painting on various surfaces to get interesting textures on you photographs. Create other interesting split tones or even use it on full colour images. As always remember. A Black and White toned image will not rescue a boring photograph but a good photograph can be made even better with sympathetic tones. Mostly, have fun.

The post Create a Digital Cyanotype photo without too much mess appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Why would you wish to convert colour to black and white? After all, we all see in colour. There are so many reasons. Maybe the original image has too many clashing colours? It could be that the weird mix of colour balance (eg, a mix of outdoor light with some indoor lighting) in the image is just too time consuming to correct. Or perhaps you want to replicate old film. There are so many other reasons. But, I usually want to convert colour to black and white because it is just so very beautiful and striking.

This staircase that Ally photographed at our AirBnB in Bournemouth looks so much more graphical in black and white.

Here is the original colour version before converting to black and white

Surely you just choose a menu command and it’s done?

Well yes, you can do that but you would be missing out on the joy of controlling the converting of colour to black and white and seeing your image come alive. Most of the quick fix conversions just remove the colour from your image. This, more often than not, leaves a flat dull photograph that requires a lot of dodging and burning or contrast correction to give it more ‘pop’.

The technical explanation that you don’t really need unless you’re a geek or sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend!

All colours, whether in the real world or in an image have 3 main values.

1. The actual colour value (Hue)
2. The amount of saturation that colour has (Saturation)
3. And finally, how light or dark that colour is (Luminance / Lightness).

Colour Picker

This can be easily seen in a lot of colour pickers. It is usually referred to as HSL in software adjustments.

Hue, Saturation and Luminance (or Lightness)

So, to convert from colour to black and white, what we want to do is to remove the colour. But we also need to be able to adjust the lightness values of the separate colours individually. This is so we can maybe brighten up that beautiful red sunset cloud whilst at the same time darkening down the blue sky.

But this black and white voodoo never happened in traditional photography I hear you say

Ah, but it did. Here is some more geeky stuff to explain it. Traditional film (silver halide) is sensitive to light. So photographers used varying colour filters to lighten or darken parts of the image they were exposing. One of the most common filters was an orange filter. This absorbed blue light so when the image was exposed, less light from the blue areas got to the film, resulting in a darker blue. This was usually used on landscapes to make the sky go dark and dramatic whilst keeping the clouds white.

One of the greatest traditional landscape photographers, Ansel Adams, used yellow, orange and red filters on his camera to achieve the spectacular images of Yosemite and some of his skies are almost black in the print.

A different technique with film is to use a polarizing filter to darken down the sky.

We are doing the same thing, but with digital we can lighten or darken any colour in the image during conversion.

How the magic is done

In Photoshop or Affinity Photo go to your layers panel and at the bottom find the adjustment layers button. Add a black and white adjustment layer – in here you can lighten and darken the various colours to achieve a spectacular black and white image.

Using black and white to lighten and darken when you convert colour to black and white

Some tips to achieving black and white Zen

Quick tip 1: Try to pre-visualise your black and white image at the creating stage. Many mirrorless cameras let you change your display settings so the display presents in black and white. I use this technique a lot on my Sony A7R. This way, I concentrate more on the shapes and composition as well as the lightness values of the image. This helps stop me getting distracted by the colours. The great thing here is that the camera still records the full colour image, so I can have my cake and eat it!

Quick tip 2: If your camera doesn’t support this function you can take a coloured filter with you. View the scene through the filter to help get rid of distracting colours and enable you to concentrate on the lightness values and shape. Remember to take the filter off the camera before you take the photograph though. Also remember the filter might affect the way you see the values: such as a red filter will make the reds lighter and the blues darker. See our post on essential filters for black and white photography.

Quick tip 3: Geeky stuff alert! If you convert colour to black and white in the Raw file converter, be aware that the default file that opens in Adobe Photoshop will be a single 8-bit channel greyscale file. 8-bit channel images are made up of 256 levels of lightness per channel, from black to white. Therefore, a greyscale image only has 256 shades of grey. An 8-bit RGB image has 3 channels, each with 256 shades. This could mean you get banding in the beautiful graduated sky areas. (I will cover this in detail in a separate post soon.) More importantly, unless you convert the image back to RGB colour, you won’t be able to add colour in Photoshop, even in the form of text. You can do this by going to the Image menu > Modes > RGB colour.

In Summary …

Finally just remember… A boring photograph is still a boring photograph even if it’s converted to black and white. But a good photograph can sometimes become even more stunning once you convert it to black and white.

The post Convert Colour to Black and White – Tips and Geeky Explanations appeared first on ImageExplorers.