exercise: Black and white

For this exercise I need to plan and take a photograph which will look better in black and white.

I have chosen a building over looking the creek in Faversham, the shape was one of the first things that attracted me. I decided to focus purely on the shape of the building, and composed my shot accordingly, there was nothing I could do about the bushes around the base of the building so I decided I would need to work with them and use them to form a base to the shot.
As it was quite a bright day I used F11 at 125's shutter speed with a daylight white balance and matrix metering.

 Above is the original colour photograph, which is ok but nothing special, with all the colours the shape of the building is lost.

By converting the shot to black and white the shape is more defined, and appears more 3 dimensional.
To convert the photograph to black and white I carried out the following adjustments.

I opened the image in raw and adjusted the exposure slightly to remove the clipped highlights on the windows and door frames I then adjusted the clarity slider and then opened the image in photoshop elements. Once opened I went to image  convert to black and white and used the pre set urban/snapshots as a starting point.  I made further small adjustments to the red, green and blue sliders and the contrast. finally I adjusted the black and white points in levels.
I was surprised how differently I looked at something when I wanted to photograph it as a black and white picture rather than just taking a photography then getting home and thinking that might work in black and white.

project black and white

I have been looking forward to this section for a while now, black and white photography is something I enjoy both looking at and trying to master.

Black and white photography has become more popular again in recent years, this I think is particularly true for portrait work especially babies, children and weddings.

Due to the lack of colour other factors become more important for example shape, form and proportion.

It will be interesting to see how my views of both black and white photographs and how I set about taking them changes over the course of this project and the connected exercises.

I have the complete guide to black and white digital photography by Michael Freeman which I intend to use as a starting point.  I have had a brief look through and can see plenty of information to help me on the various sliders and other adjustments I need to think about making, and also black and white hdr work.


In addition to my favourite old time photographers I have also looked at the work of some more contemporary photographers. One who caught my eye was German photographer Osman Balkan.
He photographs handsome men rather than the usual feminine portraits favoured by most photographers. His gritty pictures use little or nothing in the way of props but rely on lighting and expression for maximum effect. One of his photographs of Jaco Van Der Hovan where he appears to be looking directly at you is both mezmwerising and disturbing, I think the model has the viewer held captive with his piercing eyes, where as other photographs show the more vulnerable side of men.

I think this will be a very interesting section to complete.

Exercise:Interpretative Processing

The next exercise is really all about being creative. There are plenty of controls within photoshop which can be used to help interpret an image.  The image I have chosen to practise with is an old fishing boat from Whitstable.  This is  very much photographed therefore it will be interesting to try and do something a bit different with the image.

Above it the original raw photograph, it is a nice enough picture but one that has been taken many times by many many people. Below is my interpretation of it.

The adjustments I made were; the white balance was changed from auto to daylight. I then took the vibrancy and saturation sliders right down until I had a barely coloured photograph, the final adjustment was to increase the contrast. I chose to keep a small amount of colour in rather than go black and white, as I wanted to keep some of the interest in the boat and a black and white version isn't quite right on this.

For the second part of the exercise I need to take a photograph and make three different versions of it. It occurred to me that the chimneys I had used in the previous exercise would work well for this particularly after my comments.

Above is a reminder of the original raw shot.

I wanted to go for a vintage or aged look, something I think suited the age of the chimneys.

for the first photograph I kept the white balance as shot, I then opened the raw file and using layers I applied a photo filter, I choose a warming one at 56% to give an aged look.

For the second one I changed the white balance to daylight, I then adjusted the contrast, brightness and saturation sliders down before pushing the vibrancy slider up slightly. This gave a darker look to the photograph.

For the final photograph I used a custom white balance and adjusted the temperature and tint sliders and the saturation down, I was looking for a faded photograph look.

Photographs two and three had all the adjustments done in Raw, I only have elements 11 but I must admit I was surprised how much could be achieved just by using this.

I now need to assess whether I have achieved my aim for this exercise, I think the answer to that question is yes. The three photographs all show a look of aging, my favorite is photograph one I like the warmth to it, almost in a way like the afterglow from a sun set, or a photograph that has been kept in a box for a long time.

Managing Colour Cast

The brief for this exercise is to find two or three photographs showing a significant colour cast, and then to 'correct' it.

I have looked back over the photographs I have taken for this module to see if there is any thing suitable to work on.

I found this Photograph of some chimneys taken from my mums garden, they are all that really remain from a beautiful old house.

It is possible to see that the clouds are not the correct colour, and have a cast of almost magenta across them, as this spoils an otherwise nice photograph, I am interested to see how by 'correcting' the colour cast  I can 'improve' it.

The 'corrections' I applied to this photograph are to adjust the white balance from Cloudy to daylight and to adjust the tint slider to +3, although this was only a very small adjustment it has added a bit more depth.

This second photograph is again of the chimneys, this time I intend to adjust the white balance as before, but also  to adjust the temperature slider to see if that makes  any significant difference.

 I adjusted the temperature slider to +4700 and this time the image looks as I remember it, the sky is better and I am happy with this now.
One of the things I did notice on completion of this exercise, is that although the photographs I chose to use originally had a colour cast,  it did almost add something to the photograph.  By this I mean that the original photographs had an aged look about them which is almost in keeping with the chimneys in the photographs.
This I guess could be called artist choice.

Exercise: Managing Tone.

Optimizing the tones (Black, White and mid tones) are one of the most important steps to getting the image correct. These can be small adjustments but they will always be a necessary step. This should be the first thing you do after images have been logged and saved.
My monitor has been re-calibrated using a spyder 3, and therefore I am already to start this next set.
I need to set the black and white points, and starting with the top slider I will work my way down them, making sure I have the clipping warnings on. This is all performed in raw.

However having said about making these adjustments the first task I have to perform is to adjust the JPEG version. Below is the J Peg before any adjustments have been made. I chose this photograph because there is a selection of shadow, highlight and mid tone areas.

I have now opened the JPEG in photo shop elements, and set the black and white points.  I have also brightened the mid tones, making the overall look of the photograph much brighter. It is now possible to see the bottom third of the photograph. The only other thing I would possible do is to burn very slightly the white area, however I do not think it would be totally necessary.

Above is the final version of the JPEG with a 3% burn to the white wall, I do however appreciate this was not performed through the raw converter.

On to the raw file, I started by making sure the highlight clipping warnings were activated. I then took the exposure slider completely to the right so that the photograph was over exposed, I then slowly adjusted it until there were barely any warnings showing. A further adjustment was made to the mid tones using the contrast slider.

Above is the before and below is the after.

Unfortunately I am unable to make any other adjustments in raw and I would need to open the photograph to continue with further adjustments.

I also have light room, however this is not something I am really conversant with at the moment, but below is a trial attempt.

Exercise Raw

The brief for this exercise says to set your camera to take a combination of raw and high quality JPEG, as this is something I have done for a few years I am quite comfortable with it
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One book which I feel will be invaluable to me for this section is once again 'The Digital SLR Handbook' details of this book have already been included in my reading list, also the digital camera magazine.

I need to plan and shoot three three images in three different lighting situations. I had brought some Gerber's and had been wanting to photograph them for some time so I decided to take the opportunity of using them in the artificial light situation, I set up a small table with a black back drop and the Gerber in a small vase, I then used a studio light to light it from the side, I kept the iso to 200 and varied the speed and f stop finally settling on f6.3 and the shutter speed of 1/13 second, I used a tripod and shutter release to take the photographs,.
I have included four  photographs for this section two raw file conversions and two jpeg conversions.

This is the jpeg  I didn't do a lot to this just some brightness and contrast adjustments followed by hue and saturation adjustments, I was pleased that I had managed to keep the black of the back ground from the start and that this needed very little adjustment at all.

this second photograph is the raw conversion, this time I did most of the adjustments in the raw converter I use elements 11 at the moment, I adjusted the highlight trying to avoid too much highlight clipping which I managed to do apart from the edges of a couple of the petals, I then adjusted the clarity and vibrancy sliders before opening the file and using the adjust colour curves.

The next two photographs I tried a slightly different process on each one.

This is the jpeg i cropped it altered the brightness and contrast and then in levels I adjusted the mid tones in levels.

The fourth shot is the raw file again I cropped the image then adjusted the clarity, vibrant , brightness and contrast sliders all in the raw converter.

I was really pleased with this set of photographs particularly as I had managed to get the black to remain black on the j peg file something which can be difficult to do as it often seems to have a green tinge to it, I left the white balances on the incandescent setting, I tried flash but the effect was not right.

I am hoping to keep the flower theme for  the other two photographs, I have a patch of chives in the garden which are just coming into bloom the light in the afternoon looks beautiful on them.

The chive flowers are now on hold at the moment but I have taken a photograph I have been waiting for a year to take, my mum has a small apple tree in her garden and also these beautiful very old garden chairs, for a long time now I have wanted to take a photograph of the chair under the tree, my original idea was to have a lady sitting there in a floral dress with a big hat but there wasn't enough room under the tree to sit someone comfortably.
I therefore decided to just have the hat, with sunglasses and a book laying on the chair as if someone had just got up from it.

The first one is the raw file I changed the white balance from shady to daylight preferring the colours, this particularly photograph I must admit I was unsure which white balance to use and finally opted for shady which I cold see didn't look quite right when I looked at it on the computer. I then adjusted the clarity before opening the raw file and slightly cropping the right hand side of the photograph,the only other adjustment I made was to adjust colour curves.

This was the JPEG and the white balance hasn't been changed from shady, although its not right there is something that I like about it, i think I might try a sepia filter over it to see what the effect would be. I again cropped the right hand side of the photograph then altered the mid tones in levels and darkened the photograph slightly in layers.

I have included the sepia conversion, firstly I removed the colour then I applied a sepia filter over the top, I rather like this and may well print this for my mum, as it will suit her house.

The third set of photographs needed a high dynamic range so I again picked somewhere in my mums garden to keep the flower and garden theme together, this time I chose a small wooden man with a white statue next to it. I decided that this would be interesting as the was dark shadows and also the white of the statue to deal with, this i judged would be the hardest part as I didn't want to loose the detail and it took several attempts before I was happy with the result.

the J Peg version is the first one , I tried to dodge and burn on this photograph but I still struggled to bring any detail out in the shadow area behind the man, I also adjusted the levels slightly.

The raw version I adjusted the clarity and used the shadow slider to lighten the shadow area, you can see this was more effective for showing the detail in the area behind the man and it is now possible to see some of the brick work. I then adjusted the brightness slightly, but I think the detail is only just held in a couple of places on the statue, this may have been helped if i had burnt the highlights slightly at maybe 1%.

Having completed this exercise I am glad that I made the decision a few years ago to shoot in both JPEG and Raw as there is more that can be done with a raw file and a lot of 'mistakes' can be 'helped' in Raw rather than a JPEG.

The other thing to remember is that Raw files are none destructive unlike a JPEG where the more changes you make to it the more the detail is removed.

One of the other big advantages of shooting in raw is the fact you can change the white balance, and how by correcting it you can really improve a photograph, this is shown quite clearly in my daylight photograph were I had inadvertently used the wrong white balance and by changing it in photo shop I was able to salvage that photograph.

Processing the image

Part three and its starting to get a bit more interesting now, as its time to get to grips with processing images,, I have shot in raw and j peg for about four years now, the jpegs are really just references for me when looking over the photographs I have taken on the computer screen.

I have been looking back over some my old photography magazines (I always knew I was keeping them for a reason) and reading the various articles, the main two magazines I have used are digital Camera magazine and N Photo.

Raw files are essentially a package of data which can only be opened using special software for example photoshop, cameras also come with software packages that will allow you to open raw files Nikon for example use viewnx2. One of the best things about using raw files is you can do none destructive editing in other words you can make as many changes to the raw file as you wish but the original date will always be kept.Because raw files capture more detail than JPEG It is possible to rescue parts of a scene which might not have been possible with JPEG dark areas in particular can be lightened.