It is especially easy to fall victim to these ruts when you already know your way around a camera and your photography habits have begun to solidify.  Beginning photographers, on the other hand, also face the same tough conditions, they just don’t care.  Every chance to shoot, no matter what the weather or conditions, is seen as a chance to experiment and learn about the photographic process.  Starting out, I too spent hours walking around my backyard shooting everything I could find.  It is almost embarrassing to admit how many cat photos I have.  The point is, I didn’t try to make every image a masterpiece, I just wanted to shoot.  Sometimes as our skill develops we forget that feeling, getting frustrated when things don’t work like we planned.

A few years ago I tried to shoot the amazing poppy fields of central California.  I researched the best place (Antelope Valley) and the best time to go.  The flowers start to bloom over the course of a few weeks, with only a few peak days each year (assuming there is enough rain).  Impatiently, I watched internet sites, read reports, and tried to pick the moment when the bloom was at its best.  Finally it was.  I packed my gear and drove throughout the night.  Finally, as the sun began to rise I arrived at the field.  I stepped from my car, and was buffeted by a cold whipping wind.  The delicate flowers were closed, and I was very frustrated.  What should have a perfect day of shooting became one of frustration.

Days like that will always happen.  Now, however, I realize that with a little experimentation they don’t all need to be unproductive.  Here are a few examples of making something out of nothing.  The key is to remember that any day you can pick up a camera to shoot; it’s a good one.

Examples:

I shot this photograph well after the sun had gone down in Joshua Tree National Park.  Originally, I had gone to the park to photograph some of the interesting rock formations during sunset.  Unfortunately, an heavy traffic and an accident derailed my plans.  I arrived at the park just as the sun dipped below the horizon, but instead of heading home I pulled a heavy-duty flashlight from my car and began experimenting.

This image of Split Rock is one of my favorite from that night.  The yellow glow was from a lantern wedged into the boulder’s base.  It took a lot of experimenting to get the right exposure and composition, but the end result was worth it.  It is a photograph I probably wouldn’t have taken if things had gone as planned.

That disastrous flower trip I already talked about… well it did let me take some abstract flower images.  Here is one where I used the wind and a slow shutter speed to get a photograph of how it “felt” to be standing in a field of blowing poppies.

Sometimes going out with a clear mind can lead to interesting images.  Here is a recent photograph taken during a day trip along the Sunset Cliffs in San Diego.

As you can see this image isn’t exactly a work of art, instead it looks like your typical mid-day coastal scene.  However, after taking this shot I remembered I had a 8 stop neutral density filter in my camera bag.  Since I didn’t know when I would be coming back here (hopefully for a sunset shot), I put the filter on and added a little pizazz to the scene.

The slower shutter made for a more interesting scene, and I had fun experimenting with it.  Just by adding a filter I was able to rejuvenate my creative impulses and create a decent image.

An outdoor photographer will always have difficult days.  It comes with the territory.  I do hope, however, that these examples illustrate how these “bad” conditions can be turned into opportunities.  It just takes changing your expectations.

Ian

Here is a nice sunny day picture for all those who (like my parents) are buried under several feet of snow.  This image is of the Portland Head Lighthouse that was taken last fall on a photo trip to Acadia.  I wish I could have stayed around longer to get more interesting evening light, but my plane was leaving and I only managed a few different compositions before having to leave.  The hardest part when shooting this lighthouse was waiting for all the people to stop meandering into the frame.

Shot Info:  Canon 5D with Canon 24-70 at 58mm.  Set to ISO 100 exposed at f/16 for 1/3 of a second.

Backstory

Big Sur has to be one of the most beautiful sections of California’s coast.  There are meandering streams, jagged cliffs, pristine beaches, and just about everywhere you look there is something to photograph.  For this image I was poking around an area called Pfeiffer’s Beach.  The beach is located down a small winding road that ends in a small parking area (fee required).  I’ve been there a few times and have never seen more than a dozen cars so it’s a nice spot for lunch or to enjoy the sunset.

After walking down the short sand path to the beach, the first thing you notice are the large offshore rocky ridges.  Many of these rocky outcrops have tunnels eroded through them.  This was one of the biggest and first opening I came across and I quickly setup my camera and tripod.  The evening light was swiftly changing so I had to work fast, and while shooting this spot, there was only a few minutes when the light angled into the opening from the right direction.

This image was tough since there were dark rocks, intense sunlight, and the crashing waves that all made for an interesting balancing act.  I knew that the sky would be blown out, but for this image I like how the small opening seems to spill water and a golden light across the darker rock walls.  There is a distinct  feeling of movement and place not captured in many of the other images I took that day.

I’m making it a point to shoot more local scenes and focus on the area around me.  It’s actually kind of fun trying to find pockets of nature in a city like San Diego.  Here is an image from an area call Sunset Cliffs.  The park is small, little more than a slice of undeveloped land along San Diego’s coast.

I didn’t get a nice sunset, but instead took this photo on my way back to the car.  The strange color of the eroded cliffs is from the distant lights of a parking lot.  I think they made a nice contrast to the starry sky.  It just goes to show that if you keep an open mind, you can get interesting images in your own backyard.

Shot info:  Canon 5D Mark II with Canon 24-70 lens at 24mm.  Set to ISO 400 exposed at f/ 14.0 for 1/50 of a second.

Backstory

This photograph was made because of a mix of curiosity, caffeine, and stubbornness.  Last spring I took a trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  The drive there from San Diego was painfully long and boring, but the beauty of the canyon was well worth it.  The drive also made me realize that if I didn’t break up the return trip, I’d probably go crazy.

Luckily, I had an ipod and google maps.  With a little looking, I stumbled upon the Kelso Sand Dunes which were along the way home.  These unique dunes are located  in the Mojave National Preserve of Southern California.  The light colored sand is made mostly of quartz and feldspar, which have an interesting habit of “booming” or making a low rumble as you walk through it.  Hearing this singing sand was truly bizarre.   It made hauling heavy gear up and down the shifting dunes a little less monotonous.

After a short bumpy drive into the preserve I parked at a small empty lot.  The late afternoon sun was roasting, and the hike just to get to the dunes was deceptively long (good idea to bring some water).  The strong breeze that felt good at the parking lot turned into a sand blasting annoyance by the time I got to the dunes themselves.  Sand and wind whipped into my face, covered my camera bags, and ripped the hat from my head on more than one occasion.  It was definitely tough shooting.

This image was made after finally dragging myself to the top of a large dune.  Looking back at my own tracks made me realize how sensual the diagonal curves of the dunes looked from this angle.  Quickly I pulled out my camera, covered it with a spare shirt, and prayed that it was protected from the sand and grit.  I captured several different views before packing everything away again.  I liked this particular shot because the sand glowed from the setting sun, and I think that the clouds added a nice touch.  Hiking back to the car with a beach worth of sand in each shoe was fun, but this side trip was certainly worth it.

This is a picture that was tucked away, hidden among a bunch of other raw files taken during a past trip to Death Valley.  Obviously, unless this was Mars, the colors and look are a result of some computer software (Photomatix) and too much beer.  Try not to look too long at it since the colors may burn out your retinas.

I put this image up mainly for fun, but to also point out that technology (when not abused like this), can be coaxed into bringing out the best in a photograph.  Ansel Adams had a dark room, we have photoshop.  Check out the article on HDR where I fumble through several techniques to see what I mean.

Ian

Let me begin by saying I don’t shoot many HDR (High Dynamic Range) images so this little article is written with that in mind.  I also have a tendency to skip over most software instructions that don’t have nice photos or a scratch-and-sniff section, so keep that in mind too.

What I do know is that one of the main challenges facing nature photographers is dealing with scenes that have a large dynamic range.  Because our pupils and chemistry actively adjust to different conditions, our eyes can see a huge range of illumination (around 20 stops).  Unfortunately for us, digital cameras are much more limited with the typical sensor capturing about 9 stops.  What does this mean?

Basically, if you’re trying to shoot a scene that has both bright and dark areas, there’s going to be trouble.  Either the highlights get washed out and overexposed, or the shadows drop into inky blackness.  This isn’t a new problem however, and ever since that “prehistoric” medium called film was used, there have been ways to cope.  When I used to shoot medium format slide film, each frame ended up costing me a couple dollars to shoot and develop.  With little room for error, I began using a variety of neutral graduated filters to hold back the sky’s brightness and make the contrast range more manageable.  These rectangular filters worked well but were a pain to use.  With the rise in digital there came better (I think) and easier ways to cope with difficult scenes.

I’m not a photoshop wizard, but I’ve found that by bracketing a tough shot (under and over-exposing), I am able to keep the details in both the sky and foreground.  When an image does need help, I  bring the underexposed image in as a layer (over the one that was correctly exposed for the foreground) and mask the sky’s details (from the underexposed shot) onto the original photo with the gradient tool.  It is a rough and quick way of expanding the displayed contrast range in the final image, and often gives very nice results (similar to using a graduated filter with film).

The one problem with this technique is that it lacks finesse.  If the horizon has important elements jutting above it, a tree or mountains for instance, then they too will go dark along with the sky.  This is where dedicated programs designed for HDR imaging come in.  The slew of new programs out there now are amazingly powerful.  They are capable of improving local contrast, merging a large number of different exposures, and creating some remarkable results.

I’m too stupid to use most of them properly.

I did, however, stumble through a few different HDR programs over the course of a boring afternoon to see which software gave the easiest and best results.  What follows is not a comprehensive look at all the HDR options or techniques.  I’m sure that I’ve forgot to tweak some setting or missed others altogether.  Instead, look at this as a comparison for how easy it is for a relative newcomer to open a few exposures and spit out a nice HDR photo.

Photomatix:

I actually just bought this program about a week ago, and playing around with the different settings spurred my interest in more complex HDR imaging.  From what I’ve seen on the web, Photomatix seems to be the “one” when it comes to increasing the dynamic range of photographs.

Things seem relatively simple to start, just drag some similar photos with different exposures in, and it renders a HDR preview.Clicking on the tone mapping option brings you to the heart of the program where most of the different options hide.  This is where I had my first difficulties with Photomatix.   Suddenly, I was confronted with a host of new sliders and choices.  Some of them looked familiar, some did similar things, and some just confused me.

Here is an example of how it looks:

It’s a confusing but complete set of options, not the easiest thing for a first timer to learn.  As you can see, some of the basic settings did give a nice result without too much work.  I’ve found that the strength, color saturation, and smoothing options had a big effect on how natural the tone mapped image looked.  Unfortunately, Photomatix wasn’t the fastest at rendering previews which was a minor annoyance.

Here is a test image of a subject I typically shoot.  You can see how the rising sun and dark rocks, which would be impossible to capture with one exposure, ended up looking nice with only minor adjustments in Photoshop after saving in Photomatix.

It was only when I zoomed in that I noticed some problems.  There was a weird ghosting on some rocks in the water and a nasty bright rim around some objects.

The ghosting was due to the water moving over the rocks between shots and I have a feeling would have been evened out more if I plugged more than two bracketed images into Photomatix.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other images of this scene so I was stuck with this after my first attempt.

Overall I do like Photomatix.  The ability to tweak a range of options would be very useful if you shoot a lot of HDR and got familiar with the work flow.  For me, however, it seemed a little unintuitive and slow.  There was also some funky image artifacts I couldn’t get rid of.  I haven’t given up on Photomatix yet, especially with the LSD/dreamy images it can create, but it did cause me to look into other options.

Picturenaut 3.0:

I gotta say that I’ve always been a big supporter of open source and freely available software.  It’s nice for users and promotes more of an unrestricted flow of ideas.  Picturenaut is an example of really nice “donationware” that is available free on the HDRlabs.com website (a lot of nice info there too).  Before I go further, I did also try the open source program Luminance HDR .  I thought the program was very capable, just not polished and somewhat confusing (more for those experienced in HDR).

The first thing that struck me about Picturenaut 3.0 was how simple and quick the interface was.  It started similarly to Photomatix, by selecting two (or more) differently exposed images, choosing “standard” response curve (worked best for me), and generating a HDR preview image.  The initially HDR image looked usable already, but clicking “dynamic compression” button brought up a new preview and some similar tone-mapping options.

As you can see, the layout is less cluttered than Photomatix and the settings seem a little more logical (at least for me).  One really nice thing about Picturenaut, is how quickly it previews any changes (thanks to its multi-threaded architecture) with the ability to rapidly  zoom in or out of the image.  There are several “methods” you can choose from with each technique having its own set of variables to tweak.  I found the Adaptive Logarithmic or Bilateral to give the best results.  I also like the ability to adjust the histogram and individual color channels, something I’m familiar with from Photoshop.

I realized after the fact that the water and sky are a little too funky, something easily changed with another attempt (although some may like the surreal look).  More importantly, Picturenaut seemed to do a very nice job with blending problems along the water line.  There still were some issues, but not nearly as apparent as other programs I tried.  The highlights do seem unnatural and featureless though, but that could be the settings I used.

Picturenaut 3.0 is a very capable and very nice (free!) program.  It’s quick, does a nice job blending images, and was simple enough for me to muck through it without much pain.  It is certainly a good choice for making quick HDR images, but like with Photomatix, I struggle to get the program to do everything I wanted.

Fumbling around with Photoshop:

Photoshop is like an onion.  Every time I use it there seems to be another layer of tools and techniques to learn.  It is a program that is both amazingly complex and powerful, with an endless variety of ways to get to the same result.  I did try Photoshop’s automatic “merge to HDR” and didn’t like it.  This is instead a technique my addled brain picked-up from random internet tidbits and a lot of trial and error.  It also seems to give me the most intuitive control and the best (natural) looking results.  Once I got the hang of it, doing it in photoshop is almost as fast as the other programs.

First I opened the same two raw files used in the other programs.

After bringing up the shadows slightly in the underexposed image, I open both raw files as smart objects (hold shift while opening raw files).  I then drag the “darker” (underexposed) smart object onto the “brighter” (overexposed) smart object.  Hold shift when you release the layer to keep the images aligned.

After dragging the darker layer over I make a copy of the original brighter layer and move the copy on top of the dark layer.  I know it sounds confusing, but basically the dark layer which was exposed for detail in the sky, is sandwiched between two layers exposed for the foreground.

Next click on the top brighter layer and go to Select—>Color Range.  Click on the brightest part of the image (usually the sun), turn localized color clusters to on, click invert selection, and a fuzziness around 100-150.  After you do all this click on the add layer mask button and Photoshop should create a mask from your selection.  At this point if my convoluted instructions haven’t melted your brain, then you’re doing better than me.

This is what the image looks like now (each situation looks a little different initially, the key is getting familiar with the right settings).  At this stage the mask is basically revealing the darker sky from the middle layer while keeping the rocks bright and noise-free.  If you get to this point and the image looks bad or flat, you can play with the opacity of the top two layers, try to reselect with a different fuzziness for the layer mask, or open the smart objects in raw and adjust exposure there to see what happens.  Usually it only takes a few adjustments to get things looking good.

After getting a general image that looks nice, I zoom in to 100 percent, highlight the mask, and turn to the edge refining option.  This is the most useful part of this technique since it lets me feather, shrink, expand, or smooth out the mask.  Usually, I shrink and feather the selection slightly, doing it a few times or until transition zones and highlighted edges look more natural.

Another nice thing about this technique is the ability to go back into the raw and adjust each layer for chromatic aberrations, a common problem with HDR imaging.  It may seem complex but this method worked wonders for me and definitely looks the most natural and intuitive for my way of working.

Here is the final result

Here is a crop along the water’s edge.

Notice how the highlights look more natural and have detail, the rocks and water look nice and crisp without any ghosting, and the color didn’t go crazy.  I’m still refining this technique, but so far it is the only one I’d use for serious work.

Conclusion:

I want to say that each program I tried was impressive in its own way.  This little experiment also made me realize just how complex HDR imaging can get and how far we’ve moved from slapping a graduated filter in front of a lens.  As in life, there is no one way to make an HDR image, and I hope that this little article takes away a little of the fear and gets people thinking about this unique tool.  I know that this is something that can open a wide range of shooting conditions and I will definitely be experimenting with it more in the future.

If anyone has any suggestions or settings on how to use these or other HDR programs, send them my way.  I’d love to post a follow up and figure out what I was doing wrong.

Ian

The reason I bring up Kauai now is that I’ve been going through all the photos trying to put together a short book of the trip.  It’s more of an experiment now but I’ll let everyone know when it’s done.  Until then here is a photo from the top of a cliff before the water plunged over the side.

Ian

For this photograph, I shot the Bass Head lighthouse about 45 minutes before sunset.  There was already a horde of other eager photographers just sitting and waiting for the sun to drop.  Being too impatient to wait, I began shooting anyway and this image is the result of two shots merged to get a more even exposure.  You can also see the effects of using a neutral density filter by how the clouds begin to streak across the sky.

Ian

The following photographs aren’t all works of art, but after going through them I realized that when viewed chronologically, they give a good impression of how evening light can quickly change. When it comes to shooting sunsets, even 5 minutes can completely alter the feel of an image. The first image was taken about 45 minutes before sunset with some medium cloud cover (looking over the Pacific from a San Diego beach).

The sun is above the frame and behind some clouds, giving the sky a pastel soft look. Not very dramatic but nice evening light.

Surfer paddling into the ocean

Same surfer, same nice pastel colors. If you look you can see near the top of the frame the thicker cloud that is hiding the sun. Underneath it there is a gap over the horizon that I hoped would stay clear.

Sand Piper feeding along the shoreline

This was taken a few minutes later. The sun finally starts to push through the thinning clouds and patches of water took on a nice yellow reflection. I was happy to see that the canon 7D locked focus quickly and things looked sharp (see the “fuzzy lens” post for why I had problems earlier).

Man pulling kayak into Pacific Ocean

Here you can see that the sun really starts to push through the clouds making it hard to shoot the sky without blowing the highlights in part of it.

Kayakers row into ocean

Here the kayakers begin paddling into the ocean. They are no longer directly in front of the sun so the sky is still warm, but less intense.

Surfer and orange sky

Now the hidden sun and sky are becoming more colorful and orange. I underexposed slightly to bring out this color and keep the surfer a nice silhouette

Interesting evening clouds

Away from the setting sun, the clouds start looking interesting. It seems like there are several layers bunching up near the horizon.

Surfer looks over the ocean

Here you can see that the light levels are starting to drop and there is a definite evening feel to the image.

Female surfer enters the water

By using the 100-400 zoom lens I picked out a colorful piece of water and waited for this female surfer to pass through it.

Surfer scans horizon

Another view of a surfer looking over the waves. I like this image for the seaweed covered rocks.

Cont…