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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Well whether it’s Christmas, birthday or any time of year there are always things that most photographers need so a special occasion is the perfect opportunity to treat yourself or the photographer in your life. We’re not talking about the new 85mm f1.2 lens that requires a mortgage or the sale of a kidney but every photographer loves camera bags (we certainly do). We would like to showcase our best camera bags.

So what type of bag?

We have 3 types of bags. Our ‘hold everything’ bag that only leaves the house when we have to photograph a commercial job. This bag holds our cameras, lenses, speedlights, microphone and all the ‘stuff’ that one needs for a commercial shoot. Our backpacks are the bags we use mostly when we travel and carry our cameras as well as a tablet, spare jacket, lunch and water bottles. Lastly, we have “grab and go” bags that we use when we are just off to the river or coast or local day trip and need only our camera. Camera bags though are as personal an item for photographers as their underwear and everyone has their best camera bag favourites.

These next 5 camera bags are our favourites

Before buying any bag, you need to have a good idea what you will use it for or a spur of the moment purchase will sit unused in the cupboard until finally ending up on eBay. We know as we have done this on more than one occasion.

To help you decide you need to take a good look at what you will use the camera bag for and then also consider the following.

• Does the bag need to be waterproof? Yes, for us if were traveling. Our photography backpacks are water resistant and have rain covers.
• Does the bag need to be weasel proof? Yes, for us if we visit places where pick pockets are rife (I spend a lot of time in central London and while most Londoners are amazing people there are a few that would take anything that is not nailed down. (Same as most big cities.)
• Is the bag comfortable enough to carry all day? Remember that your creativity can be inversely proportionate to the pain or tiredness you are experiencing.

One thing that most photographers agree on is that you can never have enough camera bags so here are a few we use and would recommend. The one we would recommend every photographer has and if they haven’t it makes a perfect present.

The “grab and go” bag

The Billingham Hadley bag

This beautiful timeless bag is a classic. We have one that Ally bought for me quite a few years ago and it still looks like new. They are very well built and superbly designed with ample padding. Ours is canvas with brass and leather trim and as the inserts are removable it gets used not only for camera equip but anything that will fit.

Tim with his Billingham Hadley bag

The Domke F3X

Jim Domke designed these bags as ‘run’ bags for pro photographers so they are not ideal for protecting your beloved camera from a rhino attack but they are perfect as a quick bag that looks professional. A second hand one that has been through the mill looks uber cool. Mine has lasted 20 years and is now been retired due to the rip in the pocket but I still use a Domke backpack when traveling.

A new version of my very loved and now retired F-3X

Backpacks

Domke Backpack

Out with my well loved F2 Domke backpack

The F2 backpack

The Domke backpacks are quite small. Ours has a main pocket that is just big enough for a camera and 2 lenses and then another section above that large enough for a lightweight jacket and a few odds and ends. These lovely litte bags have all sorts of pockets on the ends, but like the F3X shoulder bag equivalent, they’re not terribly well-padded and the pockets on the sides are definitely not weasel proof. The big plus is that is doesn’t look like a camera bag.

Crumpler Backpack

Crumpler make some superb bags. These well-made bags come in all shapes and sizes. We have travelled extensively with the “Muffin Top” (no longer made) backpack and have used the smaller shoulder bags for travelling with both camera equipment and laptops.

Ally with our trusty and well-travelled Muffin Top

Tim with Crumpler backpack in Venice

The interesting thing about these apart from their style are the wacky names the various models have from Crippy Duck to Lounge Lizard and the new interesting one called the female flasher. Crumplers are well-made and come in a range of styles and colours and the ones we’ve had have been extremely well-padded for good equipment protection, appear to be quite well rain-proofed and seem to have cavernous storage.

“All my gear” bags.

Billingham Bag

We use a large Billingham 335 bag for all our ‘stuff’ but a lot of our equipment at home is stored in aluminium cases with foam inserts to keep things neat and protected. Ally used to use the 335 for photographing weddings as it’s easy to get things in and out of in a hurry. There is a tendency for us to overstuff it, making it very heavy to carry. It’s good for short jobs where you don’t have to carry it far but need a reasonable amount of equipment. It also helps if you have a very well-built assistant! The padding on the Billinghams are very good and therefore safe for your beloved cameras etc, as well as being pretty waterproof too. Not only that, but the build quality means that these bags last for decades and as a result, command high second-hand prices on eBay.

See our ideas on best cameras for travel photography.

So, which bag you choose will be dictated by the type of photography you do, how much equipment you carry, your budget, and finally, your own personal style. However, we all love bags and our motto is “you can never have too many”. (Internal groan by Ally, as Tim has way more bags than she does!)

Do let us know your favourites.

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Churches and cathedrals provide some truly extraordinary lighting. The glow from the altar candles, the multi-coloured light reflections onto stone textures from stained-glass windows or even the delicate light rays visible through the darkness and dust make low-light photography in churches and cathedrals an absolute joy. In addition to this, there is often the opportunity for some stunning symmetry in your images. We found the Eiffel Tower in Paris was incredible for creating symmetry.

Unfortunately, the ecstasy of these images comes with photography agony. Let us show you how to overcome the problems and create some truly awesome low-light photographs.

Fantastic symmetry and lighting – here at St Chappelle in Paris

Getting Your Exposure Right

Obviously, the issue in many churches is the contrast of the darker areas with the bright lights which could be candles, stained-glass windows or tiny clear windows that let in a beam of light. If you expose for the church you will find your candles / windows will be totally over-exposed but if you expose for the candles, you’ll have no detail in the shadows. What we tend to do is to expose for the main church shadow areas, and then stop down 2-3 stops to prevent the highlight subjects overexposing. It’s a good idea to do a few test images, bracketing at 1-stop intervals. With bracketing, you can also mix 2 or more images together in post-processing to get the details from both the shadows and highlights. This process is a form of HDR.

When you see your images in the back of the camera, or once they’ve been downloaded, don’t panic if they look a little bit on the dark side. You can always bring back details from the shadows easier than you can rescue burnt out highlights.

Pro-tip:

When lightening (dodging) areas in Camera Raw, remember that you will be increasing the grain in the shadow area. Also, the shadow areas have less saturation than the middle tones. To compensate for this you can reduce the grain and increase the saturation with the same adjustment brush that you are using to lighten the darker areas.

Light rays make stunning images – St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Rome

Using Slow Shutter Speeds without a Tripod

If you can use a tripod in a church, by all means do so. However, a lot of the large cathedrals have a ban on tripods and flashes but are happy with other photography. There are a few ways around this. Using a small bean bag, you can steady your camera on the top of pews or any other flat surface for longer exposures. We often push our camera hard against a wall or a pillar to hold it steady for multiple-second exposures.

There are a few mini-tripods that are very sturdy available on the market and most church-photography-police don’t see these as an issue if they even realise what they are at all.

Look for the Spiritual Element

Churches can be beautiful empty places, but sometimes you want to get more of the spiritual feeling of the place. Look for elements that can enhance this feeling like beams of light streaming through upper windows in the darkness (light of Heaven lighting the dark paths!) Sometimes you’ll find worshippers in contemplation – if you are able to photograph them in a respectful way, retaining their anonymity – these can make for beautiful images.

Whilst being sensitive, worshippers can add the spiritual element to your image – Notre Dame, Paris

What to do About Tourists

Tourists can be an annoying bunch … ourselves excluded of course! One of the methods we use, especially in churches, is to have them moving through the long exposures. This augments the feeling the ethereal or spiritual and can look quite interesting. The other method is to take several images and put them together in post-processing to remove the people. (See our Vatican stairs tutorial).

Fixing Weird Perspectives

Try to bear in mind when you are taking the photograph with a wide-angle lens that your perspectives are going to be quite extreme and if you can keep your camera as parallel to the ground as possible, then the wild perspectives will not be quite as bad. You will of course have lots of foreground in your image but this can be cropped off in post. Of course you can always sort out your perspectives in Camera Raw using the perspective correction tools.

Watch out for your perspectives – these can add to an image, or you can adjust in Adobe Camera Raw – Notre Dame, Paris

So, there you have it, five easy techniques to improve your low-light photography. The next time you have access to a church or cathedral, go in and practice so when the building is truly awesome you will be prepared to create incredible imagery.

The post Beautiful Low-Light Photography in Churches & Cathedrals in 5 Easy Techniques appeared first on ImageExplorers.

There was a new release of Photoshop today as Photoshop CC 2019 on Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe never cease to amaze us with the updates that come forth making editing images easier but still allowing you to be creative. This release has made user experience improvements and is more intuitive.

The Content Aware Tool

This has evolved over the past few years and gets better and better. If you’ve never used it, you are in for a treat. The Content Aware tool can be used with the Patch, Lasso and other selection tools. It looks at the pixels around the selection and will intelligently fill your selection with these. It’s not foolproof and will sometimes get it wrong, but generally is an awesome way of filling in gaps or removing unwanted objects / marks. However, they’ve improved it so that there is now more control and you can even choose which pixels to use and which to exclude, as well as create fills on separate layers.

The older version was great at getting small parts of a larger image, but if you had a larger area to fill then it needed more work.

Now there is a new option in the Edit menu called Content Aware Fill. This is different to going to Edit > Fill > Content Aware and will bring up a dual pane.

New Content Aware Fill from Edit Menu

The green area is your sample area, so now, if you don’t want it to include anything you paint it out! It’s much more accurate with amazing results. The panel on the right is the preview of the final image.

The right hand panel is a preview

The green area is the sample area

You then paint in anything you want to copy from and paint out anything you wish to exclude.

There are blending modes (Color Adaptation) that you can experiment with to get slightly different results.

By default, it also outputs your new content aware fill to a new layer so it’s non-destructive. This also means you can have a couple of goes and blend those results to get an even better result if required.

Technology really is incredible isn’t it!

Frames

These are really good and are similar to frames in InDesign. You set your frame and then drag in an image from wherever you wish (can be Finder, Libraries, local disc etc) and it fills the frame proportionally with your image. They are a neater version of the Clipping Mask.

New Frames in Photoshop CC 2019

This is not limited to images. Bringing in some text, you then convert to a frame (makes it non-editable). Then apply an image or effect!

New frames can convert images and text to frames

You can also click over an embedded image with a frame and it converts to a frame and a smart object.

Another really cool feature in frames is you can create your own shape – you then right click in the layers panel and convert to frame!

New Symmetry Painting Mode

This is really beautiful. Adobe have improved on the Symmetry tools that were released recently adding various options – you can paint in perfect symmetry – not so much a photographic feature but more illustration but stunningly good.

Painting in Symmetry in Photoshop CC 2019

Auto Commit

You can now work uninterrupted with the new Auto commit when using various tools – you no longer have to hit return or the tick (check) any longer. Tools crop, place, transform and text entry will be automatically committed when you click on a new tool or layer.

Blend Mode

Previously, unless you used the Shift + shortcut, to scroll through the different blend modes to see which one you would like to use, you had to apply it each time. Now, you see a preview by just hovering over the blend mode without having to guess and then undo! We have a bunch of our favourite shortcuts we’ve put together – check them out there.

New blend modes preview in Photoshop CC 2019

Transform

You now don’t need to hold down Shift to keep the aspect ratio. This will take some getting used to but is a great addition!

Undo

We now have multiple undo – instead of Cmd (Ctrl) Alt Z, it’s now just Cmd (Ctrl) Z. That’s also going to take some getting used to … but it’s great because it’s the same as InDesign!

So that’s the latest update for Photoshop CC 2019. We look forward to using some of these and giving in-depth tutorials in future posts. We also have a number of tutorials on other issues such as how to make your image black and white, dodging and burning, what makes a good black and white image and looking at shadows and highlights to bring back things like a ‘blown-out’ sky using Adobe Camera Raw.

If you’d like training in Photoshop, check out our training site. We love all things graphics so train not just in Photoshop but other packages too.

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One of the most iconic towers in the world has to be the Eiffel tower in Paris. Rising up from next to the Seine, (Paris’ main river), it can be viewed from most parts of the city. Most photographers who come to Paris will be drawn to its mysterious beauty.

So, armed with cameras, like everyone else, we rushed up it to create interesting travel photographs from the Eiffel Tower and ……. STOP …. NO!

Another BOORING view from the Eiffel Tower

What do you mean NO?!

Let me explain. We did our homework and scoped out the tower on the day before we were due to go, and found that the best times would be sunset as that would give us both daylight, sunset and night photography opportunities. We chose our equipment for ultra-light travel so we wouldn’t get tired walking around. All good so far.

Well, once you get up the tower, (we went to the 2nd floor as it is supposed to have the best views of Paris), and have finished oohing and aahing at the view of the river you soon realise that you’re  looking at a city from a 40-storey building. Yes this is romantic Paris and yes the river is beautiful, but photographs from the Eiffel Tower are still photographs from a 40-storey building. Most sunsets looks better from the ground with something in the foreground for perspective. See our post for tips on sunsets and creating dramatic skies.

So how do you create unique photographs from the Eiffel tower?

Be different

Like with our Paris graveyard post, we look for images that are different to the norm.

Start to look around for unique features that you can put in the foreground. We spotted the telescopes dotted around the viewing platform and used them as foreground details. This helped us with our images’ ‘story’. The telescopes are shiny metal, so are perfect for reflecting the sunset and sky. They are all about the view (which is why we came) and finally, despite being modern, they have a bit of a victorian mystery about them … a sort of Philip Pullman spyglass feel.

A different perspective with the reflected sunset

Photographing the Eiffel Tower itself

Look for interesting details in the Tower that everyone else takes for granted. Use all your skills with shape, symmetry and contrasting colours to create beautiful images. Ally was fascinated by the pulley wheels and created some extraordinary images with the symmetry of the 2 wheels using the yellow and blue colour to complement the image.

Walk down the stairs

The stairs between the 2nd and 1st floor are not as daunting a trek as it might first seem. Had we walked ‘up’ them, then we might not be as forgiving! Unfortunately the sides of the staircase have a thick grill around them so you can’t take photographs through it. The trick is to look in the corners. There are small gaps between the mesh that are just big enough for an average size lens. At certain levels you can look up and get extraordinary views of the Tower’s workings.

Look up inside the tower

On the first level there are interesting views to be had looking up inside the tower from the leg areas. Once again symmetry is your friend.

On the ground

When on the ground, find the centre of the tower and look up. The symmetrical view up the inside of the tower is quite spectacular. Nobody will look at you funny if you lie on your back to photograph this view!

Ally photographing up the tower

Enjoy the experience

When you go up the Tower start off by forgetting the photography side. Enjoy the experience, look at the magnificent views of the Seine and marvel at the incredible structure itself. After that start to think about your photography. Look for the lesser-photographed areas but above all enjoy your time.

Footnote

It wouldn’t be right to write a blog article on photographing the Eiffel tower without mentioning the odd night photography law. In most of Europe there is a ‘freedom of panorama’ law that exists so one can photograph historic copyright protected artwork and buildings without any issues. There are a few exceptions, the Eiffel Tower’s light show being one of them. Now thousands of tourists photograph the tower every night and the SETE website says that for private use you do not need to contact them but beware if you are photographing for commercial reasons. You will need permission from them (and pay copyright fees).

https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel-tower

The post How to create unique photographs from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France appeared first on ImageExplorers.

“So Tim and Ally, you went to Paris for a week. Awesome! What was one of your favourite times? Maybe the romantic river, how about the photographic interior of Notre Dame?…..”
“Er no. It was when we went to photograph Paris graveyards.”
“REALLY!!!”
Now this conversation could only have been with a non-photographer, as most photographers are aware that graveyards, especially ornate and dilapidated ones, can produce some quite stunning and unusual images. To photograph Paris graveyards was one of the highlights of our trip and we thoroughly recommend it to any photographer who needs more than the usual tourist images of Paris.

This cemetery had so much character and photographic opportunities

Why the cemetery (Cimetière du Père Lachaise)?

Let us tell you about it and we’ll try not to put in too many death puns. Although it doesn’t sound too inviting, a morning or afternoon spent wandering around the mausoleums, some well-kept and some dilapidated, is a very relaxed experience and not in the slightest bit morbid. The photographic opportunities abound with more beautiful textures than you can shake a bony old stick at. While out there look out for graves of Oscar Wilde, Chopin and Jim Morrison to name just a few. However, they are not as photo-worthy as the old and forgotten ones.

How to find it

Cimetière du Père Lachaise lies at the North East side of Paris about 3 km from the centre but is really easily accessible by car or the Metro. Père Lachaise (line no’s 2 and 3), Philippe Auguste and Alexandre Dumas (both on line no 2) and Gambetta (line no 3) all surround the cemetery. There are various entrances around the walled graveyard and depending on which one you use, you can usually find a map of the who’s who of Paris dead and where to find them. (Or you can download and print one before you go).

Getting in the supplies

When Ally first suggested we photograph Paris graveyards to me, I was really excited. How romantic – not! We started off for an early breakfast at an awesome café nearby called Chambelland Boulangerie. They do gluten-free bakery items and the continental breakfast we had was superb. We enjoyed it so much we even bought extra to eat after the cemetery photography. Turns out there is a lovely small wild park on the south side of Cimetière du Père Lachaise and we had our lunch there.

The photographic experience

Don’t feel bad

Arriving at the graveyard we were totally taken aback at how gothic it felt. Don’t worry about offending people by having a camera out. Most people we saw were either making photographs or on a pilgrimage to see their favourite dead artist’s final resting place (and photograph themselves in front of it).

What to look out for

Mini stained glass windows in mausoleums throw amazing light shapes on the stone.

Ravens that frequent the tombs give the images a sense of mystery and Edgar Allen Poe feel

Trees growing through or around old graves can make interesting images.

Try looking for contrasts like saturated colours in a bleak stone surround, or small delicate flowers blooming next to a rusting old façade.

Textures. There are just so many awesome textures we couldn’t get enough.

Post production editing.

Black and white – Try some moody black and white versions of your images. Up the contrast but keep the shadow detail for a little macabre feel or a high key misty image for mystery.

Toned – A duo or split tone can give a eerie feel if for example you mix blue shadows with yellow highlights to get a green; Cyanotype gives a cold feel and selenium or Sepia tone for an old vintage feel.

Blue shadows mixed with yellow highlights

Sepia toned

Selenium toned, using the gradient map

Cyanotype style

Desaturated colour – This equally gives the feeling of life being drained

From well-tended to so old that a large tree has taken over the grave there are image opportunities aplenty when photographing Paris graveyards. Set aside a warm afternoon, take your favourite camera and lens and dig-in. (Sorry, I couldn’t help that one.) You’ll be glad you did.

For more info on this and other places to visit in France, see this great comprehensive article by RV Lifestyle.

The post Photograph Paris graveyards appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Occasionally, in your photographic life, you will find that creativity comes to a grinding halt. A bit like writers’ block! You are bored of looking at super sharp, over-saturated, perfectly grainless travel images and your creative soul longs for something more. As amazing as digital is, it can be too perfect and our humanity likes imperfections. Of course, maybe you just want to try something different. Possibly you yearn for analogue film days but have a digital camera, or sometimes a specific subject just cries out for the vintage look. Whatever the case, we would like to show you how to reinvigorate your photography with 5 professional techniques to make a photo look old.

Here are the techniques we will cover so grab your software and follow along.

1 – Sepia or blue tone (cyanotype) using black and white Adjustment layers
2 – Split toning using raw files or raw filters
3 – More accurate tone types using Gradient Maps
4 – Adding grain
5 – Adding a photo border

What software can you use?

Although for these techniques to make a photo look old are done in Photoshop Creative Cloud, you can do most of them in any other software. We recommend either Photoshop, Lightroom or Affinity Photo, but there are so many different image editors available to you at different price points. Most tend to work in a similar way and use the same terminology.

1 – Sepia or Cyanotype tone using Black and White Adjustment layers

What is it?

A Black and White Adjustment layer allows you to non-destructively colourise your image to a tone approximating a Sepia or Cyanotype photograph.

How to do it

• Open your image in Photoshop. It doesn’t matter if it is a colour, black and white or even a scan. You will need to then apply an Adjustment layer so go to the Layers panel and click the new Adjustment layer at the bottom. From the list chose Black and White.
• Click the tint button and choose a suitable colour.
• If you are adding this adjustment layer to a colour image then adjust the sliders to lighten or darken various colours in the image to taste.

Choose Black & White from the Adjustment drop-down menu

Click the small tint button above the sliders to choose a toning colour

Why are we using an Adjustment layer rather than doing this from the image and adjustments menu? If you use Adjustment layers and save as a PSD file you can always come back and adjust your settings later, as nothing is set in stone. You can also delete or hide the Adjustment layer to get back to your original image.

This black and white tint process enables you to do a very rough approximation of a Cyanotype or a Sepia image. Later in this post we will do a more accurate version of toned images. See our previous post on how to make a digital cyanotype including making the background! 

2 – Split toning using raw files or raw filters

What is it?

Split toning is a technique that allows you to tone the highlights of the image with one colour and the shadows with another.

How to do it

• If you have a Raw file then open the image in the Raw file converter and switch on the Black and White convert button.

Convert colour to black and white in Raw by choosing button in basic tab

• Open the tone tab and lighten the colours to taste.

Adjust sliders to lighten and darken original colours for authentic old vintage photo feel

• Open the split tone tab and choose a colour for the highlights and for the shadows. You can then dial in the saturation and even change the balance so you get more shadow colour or more highlight colour.

Yellow highlights

Blue shadows

Mix of yellow highlights and blue shadows for a greenish look

Mix of yellow and cyan for old photo look of vintage traction engine

A mix of yellow highlights and a reddish  shadow can give a very beautiful warm sepia feel.

To do the same to a non-Raw image, open it in Photoshop and then go to the filter menu and down to Camera Raw. Follow the instructions as above. If you are using this technique to make a photo look old you might wish to convert the image to a smart object first. This means that you can double click the filter on the smart object layer and go into the filter to change any settings.

3 – More accurate tone types using Gradient Maps

What is it?

A Gradient Map allows you to map colours to various tones (light to dark) in an image by applying a gradient with the new colours in. If this last sentence sounded like Geek Speak then just look at the examples to see what we mean.

How to do it

• Open the image in Photoshop and find your layers panel.
• Click the Adjustment layer button at the bottom and choose Gradient Map.
• In the Gradient Maps panel go to the gradient map and choose the drop-down menu and add in the Photographic toning maps.
• Choose a tone to apply to your images.

Choose Photographic Toning from the Gradient Map option menu

Cyanotype gradient colours mapped to image

Gradient map with a heavy sepia so the highlights go orange/brown

Of course you can just go wild

Our favourite tone is the Selenium no 2 tone. See more on Gradient Maps in our how to photograph like Michael Kenna tutorial.

4 – Adding Grain

Why do it

Adding grain can cover a multitude of bad-retouching ‘sins’. It can also augment an image. What it cannot do is to make a bad image better.
We like to add a bit of grain to some digital images to give them a more analogue feel.

How to do it

Grain can be added either in Raw (from the effects tab), from the Raw filter (in Photoshop) or from the add noise option (in the noise filter in Photoshop).

5 – Adding a photo border

A scanned border can make all the difference to the authenticity of your old photo technique. Scan in and old image, put it above your image in the layers panel.

The first thing to do once you have both images open in Photoshop is to drag your toned image into the border image as a layer. (We flattened the toned image before dragging it onto the border image to keep things simple.) We used ‘overlay’ from the Modes drop-down menu in the layers panel to mix the toned image with the border image below.

Here are 2 before and after examples

Original tractor before ageing process

Tractor with old photo look – Zante Greece

Original books before old vintage photo treatment

Original books after old vintage photo treatment

Your own look

These are just a few of the many techniques you can use to age a photo and give it that old treasured image look. We use the Gradient map with Selenium tone on most of our Black and White images to give them a warm feel.
Experiment with these techniques and come up with your own unique look.

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Waterloo in London, is the busiest railway station in the United Kingdom with a quarter of a million people traveling through it every day. How do we find a secret place in London to photograph, in one of the most crowded cities and areas in Europe? I discovered this place by accident a few years ago while out exploring and have visited to take photographs again many times. Yesterday, Ally and I took our cameras to photograph a secret place in London where she had never been before. Let me tell you about it and how to find it.

What is this secret photographic place?

It’s a tunnel covered in graffiti!
“Really Tim? You expect me to read a post about a grubby road tunnel next to an overcrowded station?”……
Now before you stop reading let me explain a little more …

Banksy tunnel or to give it its correct name Leake Street Arches is an incredible photographic paradise.

It is nicknamed “Banksy tunnel” because the well known street artist called Banksy organised The Cans Festival there in 2008. He invited graffiti artists with stencils to paint their own pieces.

Street Artist hard at work in the Banksy Tunnel unaware of us taking photographs.

Banksy Tunnel is now a spiritual home to some of the best street artists in Europe and the best thing about it is, you can usually find some of them working on a huge piece there. Most of the artists work freehand rather than stencil so the scope for interesting images with artist doing big sweeping movements is immense.

The tunnel is just an amazing photography opportunity for people and textures as none of the artists object to being photographed while they work.

Another Street Artist creating a very large piece. The smell of aerosol spray paint can be overwhelming. We were surprised he wasn’t wearing a mask.

Low light

As this is quite a dark tunnel we put the ISO on the camera up to 1600. A bit grainy but I feel the grain adds to the secret London place feel of the image. It’s grungy, dirty and in your face so the grain seems to work really well. See our post on low-light photography.

The Vaults, Leake Street, London where you can safely photograph a secret place

Is it safe?

Absolutely. Despite what you might read in the press, London is very safe. Unless you go to totally deserted areas at unsociable hours you’re highly unlikely to have any problems. I have been photographing in and around London for the past 25 years and have never once had a problem. Be sensible, and like anywhere in the world don’t flaunt your equipment in dark deserted areas late at night when nobody is about and you’ll be fine.

A bonus not quite so secret place

When I was out exploring areas of London with our son Jethro (excellent Illustrator – see his illustrations here), he took me to this most awesome, quirky and cool little bar/café. It’s just outside the far tunnel exit and is called the Scooter Caffe. You might walk right past it without a second look.

You could walk right by the Scooter Caffe London, Waterloo, and miss a phenomenal experience

Coffee with Jethro (left) and pan of  the interior of the Scooter Caffe, Waterloo, London

The theme of this beautiful grungy bar is old Vespa scooters and all the details that go with them: helmets, number plates and appropriate film posters. Go in and you’ll be rewarded with a unique experience.

The staff are so friendly and whether you have a quick coffee or spend a few chilled hours with several bottles of very good cider (yes I did both), you will be rewarded with some interesting details to photograph.

Lighting is a challenge as there is darkness with neon lights inside but daylight streams through both ends of the building.

Wander down the tiny spiral staircase for more interesting details to photograph. We had a similar issue when photographing Truth Coffee in Cape Town.

Beautiful textures and shapes that you can photograph when you find a secret place 

To quote from the We Are Waterloo website, “It featured in the third Bourne film, Johnny Depp has dropped in for a drink and Ethan Hawke is a regular when he’s in the area.”

Where to find these secret London photography places

When exiting Waterloo station (there are at least 4 main exits) you need to head around to the back of the station. The easiest way is to go out out the front, turn left and find York Road. A very short way down York Road (you’ll see the London Eye on your right) you’ll find Leake street. Turn left into it and after a short walk you’ll be there.

Once you’ve finished creating amazing images and wondering how some artists painted the ceiling, head out the opposite end of the tunnel and turn right into Lower Marsh Road and you’ll see the Scooter Caffe.

Ally inside Scooter Caffe after a long day of photographing a secret place in London

Two secrets for the price of one

If you are just passing through Waterloo station and have some time before you next train or your visiting the London Eye (five mins walk away) be sure to take a tour of the Banksy Tunnel, and once you’ve finished making images there, give your creative soul a treat and head over to the Scooter Caffe. You will not be disappointed.

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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.

Who doesn’t hanker after photographing crocodiles, snakes and a traditional Zulu shields maker, not to mention Zulu dancing?  If you do then you need to visit PheZulu.  Forty minutes drive inland from the City of Durban, South Africa in the green KwaZulu-Natal hills, lies an extraordinary experience. There are traditional Zulu shields makers, a crocodile farm, game park with private guided tours, a restaurant and a traditional Zulu dancing show. All in one small area.

Traditional Zulu shields made by Joseph at PheZulu

When we went in, Joseph kindly let us take some photographs of him working. We had to up the ISO slightly whilst indoors, but we got some great depth-of-field by shooting wide open with some close-ups of the parts used in the shields, and some with shields in the foreground and Joseph working out of focus in the background.

Joseph hard at work making Zulu Shields – see our post on what makes a good b&w photo

Zulu spears ready to go with the shields

The restaurant overlooks another absolutely phenomenal view and there’s a small curio shop which used to be in a beautiful rondavel – (a traditional circular African dwelling with a conical thatched roof) – near the entrance but sadly, only recently, burned down completely after being struck by lightning. This is another place where we love to do pans.

They also do Segway tours including a tour where you ride around the game park right up next to giraffes and other wild South African animals. We did the short one first and Nicole introduced us to the segways and how they work. What we didn’t expect was going up and down steep banks that would be a real effort to climb up. It was brilliant fun and she was very patient as I was a bit wobbly in places.

Valley of 1000 Hills

Valley of 1000 Hills. It sounds so gentle and not like anything that would be photography-worthy but that is not the case. In the right light it’s beautiful. The small restaurant / café is a regular haunt for us whilst we’re in Durban as it’s a short drive from Tim’s mom’s. You can have your coffee and food (at ridiculously low prices) whilst enjoying a view that never gets tiring. It  was previously called HillBillys but has changed hands and become Fern Gulley. We don’t know what happened to the last people but they used to have a restaurant training programme, a variety of animals, including pigs, birds, and a talking parakeet who only used to talk to Rachel the previous owner.

The new owners have done wonderful things with the café and it is more inviting with a small gift shop. The views is one of our favourites – I (Ally) took one of my first digital pans with our old Kodak DCS – one of our first digital SLRs and a print of it still has pride of place on our lounge wall.

Valley of 1000 hills South Africa, made up of multiple images and put together in Adobe Photoshop

Before you get to the cafe there are small rondavels which are rented by small businesses. There’s a mixture of jewellery, beadwork, leather goods, trinkets, clothing and bags, as well as the Puzzle Place which has been there for years – think wooden puzzles that drive you crazy! Amazing stuff!

Bracketing and Pans

We sat in the restaurant one evening towards sunset with tea and our cameras poised. Whilst we were admiring the view and in-between Tim’s swearing at his scratchy eye as he’s getting used to contact lenses (don’t get me started on how long it takes to put them in!), we were noticing how the light and the shadows were changing. We knew the haze over the top of the hills would be quite heavy although the way the light models the closer hills, fantastic, but with the fabulous dehaze filter in Photoshop we knew this wouldn’t be a problem. There were cattle grazing in the foreground so we made sure we got those in some of the images to add to the rural feel. I tend to bracket more when shooting skies, but Tim doesn’t, or if he does, he does it manually. I prefer the bracketing function as it means you are more likely to shoot exactly the same image, rather than move the camera a bit whilst you adjust the exposure settings. This showed up when we got back and Tim had only 3gb to download and I had 6gb!! See our top 10 favourite Photoshop Shortcuts.

Wait for the landscape to reveal itself

There is so much to photograph in Natal, not just Zulu shields, and so easy to miss when driving around seeing green hill after green hill, but sit down at a coffee shop, watch the world go by and wait for the sun to get lower and the beautiful landscape will come to life in front of your eyes as the hills reveal themselves.

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