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

Let me show you how it was done

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

The photography process

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

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

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

The Initial Photography Editing Process

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

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

Combining the 2 Images

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

Pro Tip:

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

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

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

Final adjustments in photoshop

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

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

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

The post Jurassic Coast Photography Editing appeared first on ImageExplorers.

So, you’re out with your camera and you come across a really interesting landscape or scene. It looks good from every angle, but it’s not awesome. We’ve all been there and struggled with making an eye-catching image from a great, but not amazing, subject. How do we deal with this? Photograph reflections!

It seems like such a simple answer but adding a reflection to your image will lift it and give a depth that it didn’t have before. A beautiful reflection can add a sense of symmetry to your image, that can very often improve your composition. We’d like to give you some of our top tips on how to photograph reflections and where to find them.

The Obvious!

Ponds, lakes, and very still rivers. These are the usual tools to create interesting reflections, but they’re not the only source of photographic reflective goodness. Anything with a shiny surface can be used for beautiful symmetry and reflections.

Wivenhoe River – River Colne

It was a beautiful, blue sky but cold Autumn morning when we headed down towards the river from our house. With camera and tripod in hand with our trusty ND filter in the bag. We had hoped for a bank of mist hovering over the river as it sometimes does on the cold clear morning and were hoping to do some long exposures to capture the movement of the river in a misty form to complement the hovering mist. Unfortunately, when we got there, most of the mist had lifted and the river was very still.

Best laid plans etc … must get up earlier!

We decided to make the best of the situation and used the reflectivity of the still river to create images that gave the boats a symmetrical floating feel. We put the camera on the tripod and experimented with various exposures (including some 30 second exposures using the neutral density filter).

Symmetrical boats on the River Colne – 2.5 second exposure with an ND filter

Even though it wasn’t what we’d initially planned, Tim’s inner minimalist was overjoyed with the simplicity and symmetry of the final image. This one was converted to a black and white tone as we felt it worked really well. See our tips and geeky explanations for converting colour to black and white.

Not the Obvious – Shiny, Happy Surfaces!

Not all reflective images need to be from water. When we were photographing St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, Rome, we used the shininess of the cobbled street to photograph reflections of the lights which brought the foreground to life and also helped to lead the eye in to the main architectural details. We find that wet streets, after a short downpour can give beautiful results.

Cobbled shiny streets make for great photographic reflections of light

Life in a Puddle

Not every reflection requires a large pool of water. Keep an eye out for even the smallest puddle which will work if you photograph from a low enough vantage point. Our initial image of St Mark’s Square, Venice, would have been quite acceptable. However, towards evening the water starts to seep up from the canal creating small puddles in the square. We crouched down, much to the amusement of our fellow tourists, who thought we were trying to photograph the puddle itself, and used the puddle as a reflective surface during few second exposure. As we didn’t have a tripod with us, this exposure was hand-held by balancing the corner of the camera on the ground for stability.

The initial puddle

The scene from a low vantage point with the puddle in the foreground

Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa and Chewing Gum Hogging Baboons!

After an interesting day where Tim managed to get chased by a baboon that had stolen our fiery hot cinnamon chewing gum out of the car, we managed to capture the sunset dropping down behind Champagne Castle (the mountain) South Africa. As beautiful as it was, it still didn’t have that special something, until we found a small pond and used the reflection to create a symmetrical mountain landscape.

Beautiful symmetry using the lake in the foreground

Spyglass in Paris

During our trip up the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, we were on the lookout for something a little bit different to the usual aerial views over Paris. Tim spotted the spyglass reflections and immediately honed in on the glow of the orange sunset reflected in the metal contrasting beautifully against the dark blue of the Paris skyline.

Sunset reflected into the metal of the telescope adding a strip of red to bring the image to life

Reflective Symmetry to Mess with the Mind

Photographing reflections can lead to really interesting images. Look at the image below to see what we mean.

Now scroll down to see how the scene actually looked.

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Makes your head hurt, doesn’t it? Flipping photographic reflections upside down can create some really interesting, mind-bending images. Have a look at the master photographer, Andre Kertesz’s, classic images for many more examples.

Colours in Movement

You can capture movement during your long neutral-density filter exposure but don’t forget you can also use it to display stunning reflective colours without the reflected detail. This 20 second exposure removes all the reflections of the mountain but keeps the orange sunset.

2o second exposure with ND filter showing movement in the water but also the beautiful colours of the sky

See here for our tips on buying and using an ND filter. If your sky is a little on the light side, see how to retrieve using Camera Raw.

Go Forth and Reflect!

To bear in mind: a reflection can be fleeting, depending on the source of the reflection. A rain shower can cause a puddle that will disappear; moving water will give a completely different feel to glassy, still water; cobbled streets can give a textured matt feeling or a shiny reflective image, depending on the wetness or dampness of the street.

Next time you are out looking at land or cityscapes, keep an eye out for any surface that can be used for a photographic reflection. Try something a bit different – change your angles, change your viewing position, climb up high and go down low … experiment and have some fun!

The post How to Photograph Reflections that will totally improve your photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

A Neutral Density filter reduces the amount of light coming through the lens thus giving you longer exposures that you are unable to get in bright light even with an ISO of 50.

Why would you want longer exposures?

It will capture movement rather than freezing it. This could be either water, people, vehicles or anything that moves. On water this produces an ethereal misty effect and with people it can produce water-like blurs. Very effective if some people are moving and some totally still. We have used this filter a number of times for dramatic effect. Our Shongweni Dam images would have been nothing special without it and it made our Drakensberg images really unusual.

Shongweni Dam, South Africa –  with a normal exposure freezing the water is nothing special.

Shongweni Dam South Africa with nd filter and long exposure to add magic to image.

See our post on using this filter for the first time at Shongweni Dam.

Bushmans Nek, Drakensberg, South Africa – Long Exposure with neutral density filter to smooth out water.

What to buy

They come in a variety of stop options, as small as 0.3 of a stop up to a whopping 24 stops. Therefore, with a 10 stop ND filter, your exposure of 1/60 sec at f16 becomes 15 seconds at f16 or 30 seconds at f22 and so on. If you’re not sure which one to get there is also a variable variety. Prices range from cheap eBay plastic versions, through to glass ones that can carry a heavy price tag, by main filter manufacturers.

Doing it on the cheap

If you don’t want to spend any money on a filter before you’re sure you will use one, a quick hack is to buy a plastic welding lens glass for a small amount of change. Attach this to an existing filter with blue tack or modelling clay. Anything to keep the light from entering the gap between the filter and the welding glass. Not the highest quality of filter but it will give you some interesting results for very little money.

Use a tripod

Setting up your image the way you wish to a tripod is essential.

Depending on the brightness of your screen with the filter on you may be able to focus but otherwise focus without it. Then pop your filter on, and set your exposure. You can either do this by working out what it is before putting the Neutral Density filter on then stopping down your shutter speed the number of stops of your filter, or working it out with the light meter when the ND filter is on. Experiment and have fun.

The post How to photograph with a Neutral Density filter tutorial appeared first on ImageExplorers.