Exercise: correction.

For this exercise I need to have two images one with dust spots on and one with lens flare, easy to find images with dust spots on from my collection I thought as I had a problem with dust on my sensor for a couple of months before finally resolving it. However finding a photograph to actually include was harder than I thought finally though I chose one.

Above is the image I chose this is Baltimore harbour and I took it last year whilst out there for a family wedding, I have circled a dust spot.
Below is the 'corrected' version I have scrolled the image to 100% and removed the dust spot using the spot removal tool and making sure proximity match was ticked. Interestingly I also found a couple of other small dust spots that I hadn't seen on the original image so I removed those, then adjusted the levels and contrast sliders.

This image looks more like I remember the day to be with a blue sky and the buildings standing out against it. further adjustments I could make would include cropping the photograph to remove the top of the light at the bottom right hand side.

In answer to the question should dust spots be removed? I would say yes if they spoil the photograph , sometimes dust spots look like a greasy mark and I think most people would agree these should be removed. On the other side of the argument I would say that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between marks that could be birds in the sky at a distance and dust spots in which case I would leave them alone.

The second part of this exercise is to do with lens flare, these are far more difficult to resolve and having searched through my photographs I think I have found a suitable one to work on.

I have chosen to use this photograph I took of some poppies, you can see the lens flare marked in the area out lined in black.

I am hoping that I will be able to 'clone' the lens flare to remove it and allow it to blend in with the greenery in the background.

The photograph I chose had highlight clipping warning on when I opened it in camera raw therefore I firstly adjusted these before continuing.
I used the darker green area to clone from for most of the photograph but I also used the blue of the sky in a couple of places too. I found that by zooming to 50 % I could see the areas that needed to be cloned.

Do I think this exercise was justified? For the above photograph probably not as I think the lens flare adds a slight artistic flare and that by cloning the 'flare out' the photograph has lost something and looks almost flat this time. Having said that I am sure that this exercise could be justified on other occasions, I think it comes down to the individual and what effect they are looking for.

Part four Reality and Intervention.

This part is all about the 'truth' of photography, how much of the work done to an image afterwards is acceptable and how far is too far.

It could be argued that the photographer should get it right in camera and not have to do any 'work' to the image afterwards but as most of us are aware this work is nothing new and a lot of the adjustments made to digital images started life in the dark room.


It would be very easy to get into various moral debates at this point one of the most obvious ones would be the 'work' done to actresses and the like and how this can affect peoples image not only of that actress but also of that person, this is a subject I suspect I will dealt with in more depth further through this part.

To begin with I will discuss points as they become relevant to the part I am doing.

Wildlife Heritage Foundation

I was very lucky recently to spend a day at the wildlife Heritage Foundation about an hours drive from where I live. I was part of a group of six photographers who had the joy of not only having a superb professional photographer with us for the day whose sole aim was for everyone to get amazing photographs but also to be able to get very close to lions, tigers, leopards and many others including white lions and a snow leopard. I even got to stroke a lion something that I felt very honoured to have done.
I came away from the day having learnt so much about light, iso, shutter speeds and positioning the subject I felt I wanted to include a small piece on my blog to show a part of my learning curve.

I have included just one of the photographs that I took.

Exercise: Colours into tones 2

The aim of this exercise is to achieve a specific effect.

There are three different ideas for me to choose from,
 Landscape, not my strong point and something I am really not looking forward to doing a  whole module on.
Portrait My favourite and the one I have chosen.
Garden. I  have already included a few pictures of gardens in this section.

I was looking through some of my photographs and came across a couple of my young grandson, at the time he was a bit unsure about having his photograph taken, but the expressions are lovely on his face.

The top photograph has been de saturated in camera raw then opened in elements.
I then converted it using enhance remove colour, there is an option for portraits within this, which I used then I did further adjustments using the channel sliders. I lightened the red then also made smaller adjustments to the green and blue sliders before finally tweaking the contrast.
The complexion has been lightened considerably, however it has also adjusted the soft toy he is holding. This means this picture doesn't quite meet the criteria of the brief. therefore I processed a second photograph.

On this second set of photographs he looks much happier, again I de-saturated in camera raw before opening the photograph in elements, I made very similar adjustments again enhance, remove colour then adjusted the various sliders.

The one thing I have noticed is that by lightening the complexion it is possible to lose detail in the skin tones, care needs to be taken to make sure that areas aren't burnt out, something I feel is evident on the second photograph.

Overall the last two exercises have been very interesting, I am starting to think that elements may have its limitations, I have light room installed on my computer and I really think the time has come for me to experiment with it a lot more.

Exercise Colours into tones 1

For this exercise I have to chose an image with at least two contrasting colours, I have chosen red and green in the form of poppies.

This is the original JPEG version I decided to use aperture priority for these photographs allowing me to concentrate on the image its self.
The settings were F6.3 with a shutter speed of 1/640's matrix metering and daylight white balance, I kept the iso at 200 as there was plenty of light.

I then needed to produce a 'default' black and white image this I did by opening the photograph in raw  and adjusting the clarity before opening it again in elements and going image,  convert to black and white.

This produced a fairly 'flat' photograph with no real depth to anything.

The third photograph in the series saw me lighten the red of the poppies and darken the green of the leaves.

This produced a completely different image, the poppies are now white and detail is missing in the bottom right hand corner, the green is still almost a background to the poppies without much detail or interest being there.

the final photograph saw me make the opposite adjustments this time lightening the green and darkening the red.

This time the poppies are almost black and again detail is lost , the leaves are much lighter now and are more evident in the photograph. One other thing that I did notice was that the bright spots are more noticeable in the final photograph, in a way there is an almost dappled light to it.

For the purpose of this exercise I have pushed the sliders to the extreme, to really highlight for myself the 'power of getting the tones correct.

Exercise: Strength of Interpretation.

The idea of this exercise is to take two photographs and create two different effects one in colour and one in black and white.

This first photograph was taken along the Thames not far from the London eye, it was quite a bright day when I took this. 
I increased the contrast as much as I could and when I looked at the raw conversion it was possible to see the clipped shadow highlights around the folds in the fabric, detail was also lost in the facial features, I tried to increase the clarity to see if it was possible to compensate for this but it didn't really make that much of a difference.

The black and White conversion I did using just the raw settings. Firstly I de saturated to remove the colour and then checked for shadow clipping, I noticed that this was more evident in the black and white photograph, I did however notice that the main focal point ie the 'statue' looks more pronounced.
for the high key versions I again chose I photograph from a recent trip to London, this time it was taken from the London eye.

I adjusted the clarity in raw then opened the photograph in elements and used levels to make the adjustments.

for the high key Black and white conversion I adjusted the clarity in raw then opened it in elements, I then used enhance remove colour and did the final adjustments in levels. I like this photograph it has an almost misty look about it that seems to suit the subject.