Workflow

I do not shoot a lot of pictures. Some people tell me they shoot thousands in a weekend. I do not know how. I can understand if the subject is sports or wildlife or something related since then the action has to be captured and several shots taken to get one that captures the moment, but for landscapes? Wow. Anyway, even though I may just take around 60 shots in a day, I still need a workflow. Mine is pretty simple.

First, I copy the image folder from the card using a card reader.

Next, I rename all of the images using their exif data. I use ExifRenamer and find that it does an excellent job. I name the images dyyyymmddhhmmss. The head 'd' is for digital. ExifRenamer can add numbers if you get more than one shot per second, which many of you do. I use yyyymmdd so that the images sort correctly, older to newer.

I then make folders for yyyymmdd and place the images for each day in their folder. I move this folders to my images folder. Thus ends the Finder side of the workflow.

Now I turn to Adobe Bridge to look at the images. I start by brutally editing and throwing any sub-par image away. That's right, in the trash and empty the trash. Gone. Deleted. All temptation removed from trying to "fix" the image. Just be sure that you do not toss out several of a series for HDR or selective exposure for later merging.

After editing I pick an image to work on and off I go! That's it. The next step is in the RAW converter, which I will save for later.

Let me know in the comments - what workflow do you use? I am especially interested in hearing from any Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture users. Should I move up from Adobe Bridge?

More on Color Casts

Earlier I had written about "Gray Cards and Color Casts", and I feel I should expand on the issue of color casts a bit. While what I said about wanting the color casts caused by the different light temperatures we get during different parts of the day, particularly dawn and dusk, is true, at times the color cast is not pleasing to the eye and appears unnatural. Have you ever worn ski goggles? Without them the snow appears white and natural. Put on the goggles, though, and they look like the color of the goggle lenses, and very strange. After a few minutes your brain gets used to this color cast and reinterprets the color of the snow as white and natural. Take the goggles off and the snow looks wrong again until your eyes readjust. This is also true for unnatural color casts in photography, but the brain does not get used to it, at least not as easily. Instead, the picture just looks unnatural. The biggest effect of this that I regularly see is blue shadows. The blue of the sky is cast into the shadows. In the field the shadows look normal, but the image on screen shows the shadows as blue, sometimes quite blue. The blue light is really there, but it still does not look right. Warming this light will remove the cast, but sometimes this means double processing in Photoshop. More on that topic later. Another scene that will look blue when captured is white water, especially a long exposure scene with flowing water. Yet another scene is snow under a blue sky.

All of these color cast situations can be dealt with, but you have to look for them. Make two versions of an image at different white points and see which looks more natural. Play with the white balance. In the end you want to represent the scene, but also what you felt and saw when you were there, so try different settings. Often a shot looks just fine until you try something different, and then the original cast jumps right out at you.

Where to Focus - The Eyes Have It

Focus, when depth of field is not wide enough to bring everything into focus, or when wide depth of field is not desired, is not an easy task. Especially when shooting macro since the depth of field is extremely narrow. When photographing a subject that has a face, or something similar to a face, or at least has some eyes, make sure that the eyes are in focus. Even if you are highlighting some different feature, if the eyes are not in focus, the image just does not look right. Something seems, well, out of focus. Here is an example of a spider that I shot just yesterday:

Spider on Berry Bush

Her front legs are a bit out of focus. The berry's are out of focus. The background is out of focus on purpose so as not to be a distraction. Her eyes are in focus, so the image works.

For that image, the entire focus and subject is the spider. Sometimes, though, the focus needs to be a bit wider. For this shot of a sea turtle on the sand at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau I wanted some foreground in focus and for the turtle's body to be in focus, while blurring the background, so I had to pay close attention to my depth of field. Still, the single spot that I checked was the eyes.

Turtle at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau

If your camera can zoom in to the image on the preview LCD, use it. If not, be a brutal editor on the computer. No sharpening is going to bring back the eyes.

Nikon D300, D3

I just saw on DPReview a preview of the new Nikon D300. See it here. They have moved to a 12 megapixel CMOS sensor, which will help tremendously with noise. At around $1800 list, it looks like I will be staying with Nikon. Available November 2007.

Nikon has also announced the D3, previewed at DPReview. It is a 12.1 megapixel full frame CMOS. It can shoot 9 frames per second with AF tracking. List is around $5000.

White Balance

I have written in previous posts about color casts and using gray cards. A related topic is white balance. White balance sets the camera so that the light source is considered in an attempt to make objects that should appear white in person appear white in the photograph. Not only do we shoot in different light sources, such as incandescent, fluorescent, solar, etc., but we also shoot under different lighting conditions using these different light sources. For example, mid-day sunlight is much cooler and harsher than dawn or dusk sunlight. As a landscape photographer, I most often do not want a white object to appear white when the light from the rising sun is cast upon it, simply because that light is not white. However, the white balance still affects the way that the ambient light is captured.

You can set the white balance on your camera, either to its preset conditions or to automatic. Many higher end cameras let you set the white balance via the color temperature. There are even products out there, like the ExpoDisc that will set your white balance in the field. These options are of tremendous benefit if you need a white object to appear white, as in product or portrait work, or if the scene just does not look right without it. But I tend to not deal with white balance at all in the field. Instead, I shoot RAW. The RAW format allows for setting the white balance in the RAW converter. As such, I leave my white balance set to auto and change it to suit the image in post-processing. For most of my images, the white balance is by far the most drastic change I make.

In this shot of sea stacks taken in the early morning at Oceanside, OR, there is a good bit of mist in the air, reflection on the wet sand, and shadow. All of these tend to reflect the blue sky and therefore cool the image. The rising sun, though, illuminates the tops of the stacks with warm light. Striking a balance in these settings is quite difficult. If I had shot in JPEG with a preset white balance I would have a very hard time getting the white balance just right. Shooting in RAW lets me adjust and view on the fly.

Sunrise on Sea Stacks, Dark Cliff, Oceanside, Oregon

Another example is this shot from the top of Steamboat Rock in Steamboat Rock State Park in western Washington. I captured the image in the early afternoon. The auto white balance had the dried grasses very dull and cold. Adjusting the white balance in the RAW conversion brought out the reds and yellows of the grasses and rocks while maintaining the blue of the sky and water.

Banks Lake Below Steamboat Rock

The RAW converter I use is built in to Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop. And when I complete the conversion I bring the image into Photoshop as an object so that I can, if needed, make changes to the RAW conversion later.

I will speak more about RAW files and my conversion workflow in later posts. If you have the ability to shoot RAW in your camera, give it a try. You will be amazed at the amount of post-processing you can do before you even enter Photoshop.

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III

Just a quick not to let you all know that Canon has released its EOS-1Ds Mark III. Some specs are:

• 21.1 million effective pixels
• Full frame sensor
  
• Dust reduction
• CMOS for low noise
• 3 inch live preview LCD
• Silent shooting

Looks pretty nice. List price is $8000 US. If any of you are wanting to get me something for Christmas... I am a Nikon shooter and have been for years, but this camera body looks sweet!

See the preview at DPReview.

Histograms

I have been promising to cover histograms, and so I will start talking about them with this post. I have been talking a bit about metering, so histograms tie right in. You set the exposure before you take a picture using the light meter. You check the exposure after you take a picture using the histogram. Most modern digital cameras can display the histogram, but what does that pattern mean and how do you use it?

Every tone in your image for each color channel is assigned a number between and including 0 to 255. 0 is no color and 255 is all color. Pure red is 255,0,0 in RGB, which means all red, no green and no blue. The histogram can be shown as representing all colors together to show full tonality or you can view the histogram individually for each color channel. I will be dealing here with the the all color histogram.

The histogram shows you how much of your image is at each tone. If all of the pixels are at 250,250,250, or near white, the histogram would show a single line at 250, like this (as shown from Adobe Photoshop):

Histogram for 250,250,250

If all of the pixels are instead at 5,5,5, or near black, the histogram would show a single line at 5, like this:

Histogram for 5,5,5

Understand so far? Good. Now let us introduce a little variation. Here is a gradient from black to white, the same direction of the tones in the histogram, and its histogram:

Gradient and its Histogram

I left a little pure white and pure black in the image. You can see that all of the tones are represented.

Now to move on to interpreting the histogram as an aid in checking exposure. First, there is no single histogram to shoot for. There is no "best" histogram. Each scene is different and you the photographer has to decide on what the histogram "should" look like for the image you are shooting. If the scene is composed of a green field with dark shadows and white clouds, expect to see most all tones represented in the histogram. Here is an example:

Full Tone Image and its Histogram

However, if the shot is dark or contains silhouettes, the histogram will be shifted toward black, like this:

Dark Image and its Histogram

See how the silhouette is represented as a tall line at or near 0 in the histogram? The sky is represented near the middle tones.

If you are trying to capture detail in the brightest areas, make sure the histogram is not clipped at 255. If you want to capture detail in the darkest areas, make sure the histogram is not clipped at 0. Sometimes you can capture detail in the highlights and shadows, but only if the tonal range is handled by you camera. If not, you have to make a decision as to which tones you want to capture and use the histogram to make sure that they are not clipped. Unless of course you want to try your hand at either High Dynamic Range (HDR) or merging shots of different exposures. Both of these are topics for later posts.

Here are a few more sites that are each a good read on histograms:

• The Luminous Landscape
  
• Ken Rockwell
  
• Digital Photography Review
  

I have said this before, but it bears repeating. Get out there and practice. The more you do this and see your own histograms, the better you will be at using them as yet another tool to better your photography.

Photo Galleries

On my photo site, Randal R. Ketchem Photography, I wrote all of my code by hand. All of the Perl CGI code to build many of the pages on the fly and all of the HTML. The Perl development was time consuming and if I want to change the functionality of my site I will have to recode much of the back end code. This is time that I could spend working on photography. What to do? I knew that Apple had released a new version of iLife which includes iWeb. Having written code for years by hand using Vim in Unix, though, I never bothered looking at any web page builder. Then I saw this post on Scott Kelby's blog pointing to Apple's new iWeb demo gallery. Wow. Move the slider on the lower right and the images resize on the fly. Try out the Carousel mode. Did I already say Wow? I do not yet have iLife '08, but I will, and I will be giving iWeb a demo of my own.

Gray Cards and Color Casts

Speaking of gray cards and color casts, one technique often mentioned to remove color casts from an image is to use curves in Adobe Photoshop to make a pictured gray card, in a second image, gray. While this is a great idea and technique for product or portrait photography, removing the color of the ambient light from a landscape picture is generally counter productive. We get up early and stay out late for the very reason of catching great light with beautiful color casts! During this late afternoon sun the clouds were lit up with warm yellow light, and the color cast is just the way I like it. Look at the sky above and the water below. The water has a much stronger color cast imparted by the setting sun, and I would not want that removed.

Clouds Over West Seattle #2

Gray cards can be great tools for exposure, but not for color in landscapes. With histograms, though, gray cards are less and less needed for exposure. I keep mentioning histograms, and will write more on them soon.

More on Metering

In my last post I mentioned using a gray card or spot metering off of something in the scene that is neutral, or has tones that are near middle gray. This does not always work, though. The natural light is definitely not white, and it varies tremendously by time of day and location. A gray card during sunrise would not be gray or neutral since the warm, crisp light of the rising sun would brighten and impart a color cast on the card. Also, the brightness of the card or an element in the scene is changed with the changing light, so metering the same way all of time will not give you the desired result. Perhaps you want the foreground to be dark, as in this shot at Deception Pass:

Sunset from Deception Pass #3

If I had metered off of the rocks I would have obtained more detail in the foreground, but would also have blown out the sky. I wanted the foreground dark, so I knew I had to underexpose the foreground from the meter reading. I also knew that my histogram would be shifted toward and clipped at the blacks, but since this is what I expected, it is what I looked for. More on histograms in a later post.

So what is the answer to metering in these difficult conditions? Look for how you want the scene rendered, meter off of elements for which you know where you want them to fall in exposure, and set the exposure to match. The meter will definitely not read 0.

I will say again that getting out shooting and studying your results is the best way to perfect your metering, but the practice will pay off.

Light Meters - Searching for Middle Gray

Most of us have a light meter built right in to our cameras. Most of those light meters also have several modes, such as matrix metering, center weighted metering, and spot metering (can you tell that I shoot with a Nikon?). But how many of us make full use of our meter? Modern in-camera light meters do a pretty good job of accurately metering the scene, but the information the meter gives us is useless if we do not understand what it is saying.

Light meters attempt to render the scene (or center or spot) middle gray. That is all. The meter sees the light and tells you if you are under or overexposed from rendering that light middle gray. So, if you are shooting a bank of snow, the light meter will cause the scene, if you go directly by the meter reading, gray. It will be two to three stops underexposed, depending on the light. If you are metering black velvet the meter will give you exposure information to far overexpose the image, rendering the black middle gray. You, the photographer, have to understand this and make use of the meter reading, adjusting the exposure to match the scene. Setting your aperture and shutter speed so that the meter reads 0 is usually not the best exposure. In the shot below I metered off of the light higher up in the sky, away from the sun. The sunset is not overexposed and the foreground goes to black, illustrating the encroaching darkness.

North Head Lighthouse, Cape Disappointment State Park, Sunset

Spot metering can be very useful if there exists around you either an object that is middle gray or one for which you know how to expose. A gray card would be a great help. Grass tends to expose correctly at middle gray. In landscape work I can usually find either something close to middle gray to spot meter or I know how to over or underexpose from experience.

Experience is key. Understanding the data the meter gives you gets you started, but there is no substitute for getting out there taking pictures. Later I will discuss the histogram and its use in metering.

Manual or Automatic

How do you tend to set your camera? Automatic? Aperture Priority? Shutter Priority? Full Manual? Beginners tend to set everything to auto and hope for the best, or at least to get one keeper out of many shots. This works fine when it works, but it lends no control. Hopefully this tip will relieve your fears of leaving auto mode and give you some understanding of aperture and shutter sped and how they interplay.

First, what do the aperture and shutter speed do? Shutter speed is easy. Well, they both are, actually, but shutter speed seems easier. The faster the speed, the faster the camera takes the shot. A fast shutter speed freezes motion, a slow shutter speed blurs motion. Common examples of this are with flowing water. A slow shutter speed blurs the water for an appealing, flowing look.

Money Creek #1

At times, though, the dynamics of water are best illustrated using a fast shutter speed, such as when catching the power of crashing waves.

Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, Waves Breaking

But a fast shutter speed also lets in less light since the shutter is open for less time than a slow shutter speed. So, in order to get in enough light during a fast shutter speed, the aperture must be opened for proper exposure. This lessens the depth of field, or the region of the image that is in focus. The opposite is true for a slow shutter speed. Since much light is getting in during the shot, a smaller aperture must be used to compensate. This widens the depth of field. For landscapes this is generally what is desired, but not always. Ultimately the photographer wants to be able to control all aspects of the shot. We must work with the light we have, though.

For situations where the light is brighter than we would like for a slow shutter speed, the light can be cut using filters. For landscapes I almost always use a circular polarizer, and tend to use B+W filters. This cuts two to three stops of light. Neutral gradient filters of various strengths can also be used to cut light without imparting a color cast. For scenes that are too dark, fast shutter speeds are not possible without external lighting.

What is a stop, you ask? Stopping down one stop is reducing the light in half. Up one stop is double the light. This can be done with shutter speed, aperture, or a combination. For example, changing the aperture from f11 to f22 reduces the light in half. Going from 1/60 second shutter speed to 1/120 second also reduces the light in half.

So now we get back to the camera settings. First, automatic. The camera looks at the scene, primarily the amount of light, and sets the aperture and shutter speed for you. Not the depth of field you wanted? Too bad. Wanted the shot to focus on the foreground subjects with the background blurred, like these tulips below? Maybe the camera set itself up correctly.

Tulip Field Trio

Or perhaps you wanted large depth of field, as in this wide angle landscape.

Skagit River, Cascade River, Bacon Peak

You just have to hope for the best. Sure, some cameras have auto modes like portrait or landscape that will aid you, but why not learn how to set the camera yourself?

This brings us to aperture priority. You set the aperture, the camera sets the shutter speed. This works pretty well if you know the depth of field you want and the scene is easy to expose. If the shot is people standing in a green field with nice, warm side light, no problem. The camera will most likely do a great job. But what if the field is full of white daisies? Or even worse, they are standing in snow? Or black lava? These will throw your light meter way off. Sure, you can compensate with exposure compensation, but that is just another step and removes the ease of the aperture priority.

Next is shutter priority. You set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture. Taking pictures of a football game? This is a pretty good way to go. Set the speed fast and let the aperture fall where it may. But for flowing water or a landscape subject, you lose all control of your depth of field.

Now we get to manual. You set the aperture for the depth you want, look through the lens at the light meter, and adjust the shutter speed for a good exposure. If the shutter speed is not what you wanted, either change the aperture or use filters or external lighting, as the case may be. In the end, particularly for landscape work, manual affords the most control and results in the most shots turning out just like you intended.

The best practice is to practice. Play with the settings. Test the meter. Test metering modes. Test various apertures and check the depth of field. Look at the shots on your computer and take note of the settings you used. This kind of practice will pay off, both in your comfort with your equipment, and, most importantly, your ability to get the shot.

P.S. I will save the workings of the light meter for another day.

It's a Bug's Life, or, Macro in the Garden

Macro photography is fascinating. I love the close up looks at nature that macro affords. The patterns and detail are beautiful and rarely noticed unless looked for. I have walked right past bunches of flowers with barely a glance, but with my macro lens, a Tamron SP AF180mm F/3.5 Di LD (IF) 1:1 Macro or Sigma 50mm 1:1 macro, I force myself to linger, explore, and see the details. A tulip is pretty, but can be a landscape unto itself when looked at through a macro lens, as in this shot taken at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival:

Exploration of the smaller places yields glimpses into a world that is astounding. While searching for spiders amongst lupine and grasses at Steamboat Rock State Park, I ran across this lone ladybug searching for a meal:



Once I knew I was looking for ladybugs, the hunt was on! I found ladybugs all over the place, but I never would have seen a single on had I not been looking.



The opportunities for macro abound. Light too harsh for landscapes? Look beneath some foliage. Sky too cloudy? Look on top of foliage. Light too bright? Shade a flower. Even right in your own front yard, with a little searching, treasures can be found.



While macro opens up new worlds, these worlds have a very shallow depth of field. The slightest movement throws everything out of focus. For this reason, a good tripod that has multiple, adjustable positions is critical. I use Bogen 190XPROB tripod legs. The center column can be repositioned on the fly for horizontal or vertical shooting, and the legs can be angled to 0 degrees. Both of these allow for ground level camera positioning. On these legs I use an Acratech V2 ball head. It is light, highly adjustable and very stable.

Now get out there and explore!

Web Site Hosting

I have recently switched my hosting from GoDaddy to DreamHost. GoDaddy gave good service for a good price, but I did not like their advertising. DreamHost charges a single fee to host unlimited domains! Also, DreamHost gives terminal access. If none of this means anything to you, I will get back to photography soon.

Some things to look for in hosting:

• Up time. Ask them how often their systems are down and what measures they take to ensure up time.
• Back end features. Do you need perl cgi? Java? Tomcat? MySql? Terminal access? A shopping cart?
• Disk space. How big is your site and will it fit in the package you are willing to pay for? For a photography web site, DreamHost provides way more than I will need!
  
• Bandwidth. How much bandwidth do you need or expect your users to use? DreamHost adds disk space and bandwidth the longer you keep your account.
• How many other sites are on the same server as yours? This will affect the speed of the site, but probably not as much as the slow speed of most user internet connections.

If you want to use DreamHost I have a discount code that gives the maximum possible discounts on whatever package you choose. It is RRKMAX. For this I get no pay, unless you refer somebody that joins or something like that.

Choosing a Tripod

For several years I have wanted a carbon fiber tripod. My photography takes me on long hikes and into remote regions, so I wanted the strength, durability and lack of weight that carbon fiber affords. I was looking at Gitzo, specifically the GT1540. While doing some hard comparing at Kenmore Camera, looking at several options and versions, I ran across the Bogen 190XPROB. But this is an aluminum tripod, you say. Yes, indeed it is. It is about 1.5 pounds heavier than the GT1540, too. But I really liked several features of this tripod. First, a built in bubble level on the legs. Second, the center column can rotate to horizontal without removing or unscrewing anything. Third, it is a solid tripod without too much weight. The center column sold me. I am starting to do a lot of macro work, so having that flexibility is a nice feature.

Now for a head. I wanted a ball head, and I wanted it light, especially since I was going with heavier legs. The Acratech V2 fit the bill quite nicely. I love this ball head! It is light yet solid, has a panoramic feature, and holds the camera exactly in place. Even with my D200 and Tamron 180mm 1:1 Macro, it does not budge. Sweet!

So, after years of waiting for carbon fiber legs, I went with aluminum. So far all is well.

Nikon D200 and Salt Water

Last summer I was set up with my Nikon D200 on my Velbon travel tripod on the beach on the Oregon coast. Specifically, I was standing right up against the high point of the wave wash up near the town of Oceanside. I had my camera all set and the scene well composed when a strong wave washed up much higher than the previous waves. Instead of ditching the shot and starting over, I made the split decision to keep my feet dry, leaving the tripod standing. The water, as you can imagine, undermined the tripod and the D200 went crashing down. I caught it just as it splashed into the cold salt water of the Pacific. Argh! I rushed back to my trailer (we were staying at Cape Lookout State Park) and dried it all off, rubbed it down several times with a damp cloth, carefully took everything out and apart, and let it dry overnight. It worked, but only with that lens and I had some gunk on my sensor. Still, I was able to get off some decent shots, like this:

When we returned from our trip I had the entire camera cleaned by an authorized repair shop. Twice. It has been working fine ever since.

The moral of this story is: Save the camera, not the shot!

Getting Started

As I am getting started in this blog, perhaps I should begin with a "Getting Started" idea in photography. As I shoot primarily nature and landscape, these will be my primary subjects. However, I will also cover equipment ideas, camera gear, add-ons, digital darkroom hardware, techniques, and how to posts. Feel free to send me questions or ideas. Let the blog begin!