A bigger file with greater “depth” should by defacto produce a richer B&W image. I thought I would push that just to see if the math works. This is a hangar shot where 30% of the light is from sodium vapor. Processing is simple Silver Efex Pro 2 and the results, well I am quite thrilled with this impromptu test!
How do you express scale in a photograph? I could include a dime, what we do in wildlife photography but I just have this feeling you might not even see it. That’s when I start messing with your mind as I think about it, story telling is a nicer and more common way to think about it. The subject, what you’ve always have to establish in your photograph, in this case are the clouds releasing their snow on the Mono Hills (actually extinct volcanoes). To make the clouds appear much bigger than they really are, I included those peaks far of in the distance.
The bigger the peaks seem, the bigger the storm so that’s what I focus in on. Both images were taken with the D4 and 70-200VR2 (using the D4 Landscape Profile which I’m really liken) with only two slight changes between the two photos. The top image was taken from the ground at 120mm with the cloud not fully casting a cloud on the foreground. The bottom image was taken standing on a bench at 155mm four minutes later when the foreground was in shade.
We’re talking real subtle changes in taking the two images but to me there is a big visual difference between the two images. In the top photo, those two peaks appear more like they really are in life, kinda small. The bottom frame, those two peaks look much bigger then they really are. That in combination with shooting just a tad tighter makes the clouds, the subject, appear much more menacing and that’s the story telling. Both images were finished the same in ACR and then Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 > Detail Enhancer on just the clouds. So the moral of all of this is take the extra second and use those simple put important elements to give your landscape scale and the visual impact will be much greater!
That’s all that’s needed to communicate in a landscape photo you’ve got big clouds. Here’s an example. This is Mono Lake a couple of weeks ago when a storm blew through. The clouds are the subject and I want to say they fill the sky. The slope around Mono Lake to the south has a real slant to it and with the light falling the way it was, it is really dark. The lake itself though is a silver sliver. These are color photographs, not B&W. So I prefer the bottom image with just a sliver of lake and then the slope supporting the rest of the photo. I’ve got some more examples of what I’m talking about I’ll post later.
I’ve been up to my eyeballs with office work, yuck, so treated myself to some time off finishing images from this past weekend at Mono Lake. I wanted to finish the images to enhance the storm more so went into OnOne Software new Perfect Suite 6.1 for some fun. This really have done a really nice job with this update with more filters, layers and opacity on the preview. Being able to add filters together doesn’t hurt either! So what we have here, the top image I used Daily Vitamin, a filter I’m getting to really like. The next image is a combination of Magic Ocean (50%) and Texture Booster. The bottom image is simply Magic City. All of them are finished off with Borders > Black Key Frame.
One of the hardest things about landscape photography I think is learning the post so when you go click, you already know what you can do and how your want to finish an image in post. On those really great shoots, everything falls into place so you don’t have to do a single thing to finish the photograph. Often, especially when you only have one shot at an image, you have to finish some aspect of the photo. Knowing the possibilities of post give you a broader vision when you go click. If you’ve not tried OneOne Perfect Suite 6.1, download it and try it free for 30days. But here’s the warning, once you try it, you’ll buy it. Have fun with your photography and you will be rewarded!
The thing called time..it is SO important in the formula of a single image and in your photography overall. In my travels the last two months, I’ve come across more photographers who either never considered spending a great amount of time with one subject in one place or “have that photo” so move on in a heartbeat. My style of photography has never been to chase the subject. I prefer instead for the subject to come to me. In this way, we use time to get into the flow of life, see subtle changes that can make or break a photograph and quite often, capture the photograph. When I hear a photographer that is bored or has done something before so they’re not going to do it again, I have to scratch my head. With a camera in your hand, how can you be bored or think an image will ever be the same, again?
Here’s an example of what sticking about for just 45min did for photographing Bison calves. As normal, we were up and out early on our K&M Adv SD to where we’d left the heard the night before. Early light just works its own magic we are all well aware of. And with Bison, once you’re parked and you stand next to your vehicle, they will just walk right up to you (and as the signs say, Bison can be dangerous). On this morning, the light was great at first but then the cloud cover started to form which, as you can see in the middle image, softened the light to the point where backlit was great because you had the rim lighting but with really soft shadows. Then the light went flat to the point it had no real character. Shooting with the D4 & 200-400VR2, the trick with all three of these lighting patterns was to look for character in the subject that the light worked with. The only way I know of making that happen is time and while I’ve shot Bison for decades, I never have enough time with them and never get the image I have in my mind. Light and subject are always changing, the trick is being in the right place at the right time with the right subject with the right light with the right gear. No wonder I keep going back to the same place. That’s a lot of luck to make just one photo!
This past weekend was our first Mono Lake Weekend and the luck was with us! We had a freak winter storm come through the Sierra on Memorial Weekend leaving not only snow on the ground but great clouds floating past. To say Mono Lake has been photographed a few times is an understatement. The goal is to make the uncommon of the common and when you have nasty weather, you have an opportunity to do just that. If nothing else with such weather, you sure not going to be bored! Typical Moose style, we were at the lake at 04:30 to greet the day. It was a mighty dark and gray day at the beginning with a wind putting the waves to work on Mono Lake. With that mix, early morning, clouds and wind, I dialed in some settings into the camera. On the hope we’d have some sun for color at sunrise, I set the WB to Cloudy. With the dramatic clouds, I put the 18AF on the D4 and with the wind, I closed the lens down to f/22 and ISO to L1 for the slowest possibly shutter speed. The sun never appeared so the Cloudy WB was a bust. The 18AF definitely brought a drama to the dynamics of the scene and the slow shutter speed captured a flow to the lake’s surface that I like.
With everything working so well except for WB, processing was pretty clear cut. One thing I do in processing a file is follow the same logic that I made the photo by. The subject was the storm, a rather all encompassing subject but has certain elements heightening it. Opening the file in ACR, the first thing I did was remove the blue color cast caused by no sun. Simply grabbed the White Balance tool in ACR and clicked on a white. Then while in ACR, I used the Graduated tool to bring the drama in the clouds to the forefront so the eye is pushed down in the frame. Then in PS CS-6 I ran Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 > Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor. It was cold, it was windy, it was windy and it was spectacular!