American muscle

Concept

During March 2010, I visited the “BORN IN THE USA” American Classic Car Show hosted by the Lincoln-Mercury Car Club Of Victoria . It was late in the day and completely overcast so therefore the light was diffuse, the skies grey and the shadows very very soft. In retrospect, this was ideal shooting conditions for highly polished objects of consumer art being lavished by highly obsessed owners (ie collectible classic cars).

Setup

I personally find highly customised cars quite boring and consequently, the majority of my shots were what I would call documentary snapshots - think wide angle, typical angles, people wandering aimlessly around the scene. I wanted something more creative so started experimenting with angles and details.

The biggest problem I found was getting a shot of the cars without obvious reflections, particularly the legs of people walking past. I waited for this shot for a minute or two kneeling beside the rear quarter panel of this awesome red "pimp-mobile".

Camera Setup

Canon 5D mk 2 at f/2.8 ISO100 1/640sec in aperture priority mode handheld.

Processing

The treatment I was looking for was a an old-fashioned black and white, highly vignetted "holga" look but with the car itself crisp, sharp and brilliant red. This processing was beyond Lightroom's Raw Processing capability and consequently some serious Photoshop heavy lifting was going to be needed.

Adobe Lightroom was used to do the basic processing of the photograph, first cropping it to make the car dominate the frame. A combination of Vibrance and very warm colour balance was used to bring out the deep red lustre of the paintwork. Thats it.

Once in Photoshop, a new duplicate layer was created and immediately converted to black and white, blurred with a gaussian blur then came the long process of removing the monochrome layer from car using a Layer Mask. One question I faced during this effort was 'Do I want the car in colour or just a spot colour effect highlighting only red?' Checking the processed version against the original, you can see that I chose to remove all colour including the green reflections from the wheel rims.

Finally there were some unwanted reflections still showing in the paintwork and these were removed using the Healing and Clone tools in Photoshop.

Improving the photo

I am actually pretty happy with the shot. Bearing in mind I am not a car "nut", the paintwork so obviously the star of the show and all I had to do was let it shine, so the speak. The shot was since posted on my Flickr feed and also submitted to several Flickr groups specialising in Lincoln collector cars. It has since become one of my most viewed shots. 

Suggestions for improvements consequently revolve around reducing the time-consuming processing required to remove reflections. Specialist car photographers understand paint, reflections and dramatic angles and this is why they earn huge fees. My shot falls into the category of a "happy accident". Still ... I'll take that when I can.

God Skies

Concept

During 2008, I took a cycling tour to follow "Le Tour de France". After riding some spectacular mountains in the French Alpes, we followed the tour route back towards Paris. After a hard day riding in the humid summer weather, I looked up to see the late afternoon sun hidden behind an enormous cumulus cloud with the moisture in the air forming the most amazing "god lighting" display I have seen.  

Setup

Handheld and shooting through the bus window travelling at speed. With camera set to exposure for the highlighted sky,  I shot off a series of frames to try to get one where the blurry foreground vegetation was not obvious, the roadside electricity wires did not intrude and the horizon line was balanced and interesting. This was the best of 8-9 exposures.
Camera Setup

Canon G9 at f4.0 ISO80 1/1000sec in aperture priority mode.

Processing

Adobe Lightroom brought back most of the highlights and cropping the image removed the blured foreground. Then began a long series of experiments to recreate the image as I remember it. Small  point and shoot cameras struggle with extremes of lighting. The low dynamic range of the sensor coupled with the high levels of software processing the camera does to optimise performance results in flat-looking, low contrast images. The best method I found was to massively reduce the RAW exposure setting and bring up the colour and highlights using the Curves tools. This image lends itself to the surreal looks which a lot of processing can deliver and had a ball applying a huge number of creative presets, however I was trying to recreate the image I saw.

Improving the photo

There seems to be a trend in my "improvements" section that shots taken hurriedly with a small point and shoot camera could be improved by using a better camera, taking more time and composing the shot in a more considered way. Unfortunately like many of my most valued travel shots, this was simply not possible. Chase Jarvis has an often used quote that "the best camera in the world is the one you have with you". Although the Canon G9 - however limiting - is an order of magnitude more capable than the iPhone camera which Chase Jarvis uses, in this instance I must agree. 

St Patrick's Cathedral on New Years Eve

Concept

When I purchased my first digital camera and started experimenting with digital processing, I used a similar snapshot of Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral looking through the gardens of Parliament House to experiment with various black and white digital processing techniques. At the time I was using an earlier version of Adobe Photoshop and a lovely plug-in called Exposure from Alien Skin. A print of this original image became one of my favorites and often drew comment in my old-fashioned hardcopy portfolio. Two years later, I wanted to refresh my version of this image using newer equipment and accumulated experience to improve the original.

Setup

Handheld and standing in the middle of busy Spring Street Melbourne to catch the spires of the cathedral bathed in late afternoon sun. Taken on New Years Eve 2008, the city was alive with revelers enjoying warm sun, good friends and cold beer.  

Camera Setup

Canon G9 with polarizing lens at f3.5 ISO80 1/1000sec in aperture priority mode.

Processing

Adobe Lightroom does a great job processing black and white and - in this case - duotone images, but will not generate convincing blur and grain effects. Further, while its artificial vignette effect works great on uncropped images, producing a realistic vignette effect but its cropped image vignette effect looks muddy, unpleasant and obvious.
Consequently the fantastic vintage film effects which I experimented with extensively on the original photo are just not possible using Lightroom. While the Canon G9s small sensor introduces its own subtle grain effect which Lightroom can either enhance or suppress, the Canon G9 lens at f/3.5 is stunningly crisp with no chromatic aberration and minimal distortion. Consequently, a sharp, detailed look is the most pleasing aesthetic for this shot.

Improving the photo

One of the looks I enjoyed most about my early experiments was a soft, grainy, mushroom coloured Sepia effect produced by Alien Skin Exposure. This sepia look was warm, evocative and familiar. Lightroom just cannot reproduce this look.
In my view, more extensive processing will not yield a more rewarding image as the shot remains a basic snapshot. 

Apart from the personal danger of standing in a busy CBD street, getting the shot was a easy and fun and processing took about 30 mins to get the results I was after. Viewing the original however reminds me of the excitement of learning new techniques which I felt at the time - and isnt that what these personal photography projects are about?

The Reading Room

Concept

One of Melbourne, Victoria's landmark buildings is the State Library and its main photographic attraction is the La Trobe Reading Room - a three story, circular atrium with desks radiating out from a central station.

I wanted to capture the extraordinary light, the colours and textures of the timber and the hushed atmosphere of the room.

I have always loved the LensBaby 3G's sharpness at its point of focus, but the smearing and blur effects are often unpredictable. This gave me a chance to try out the LiveView feature of the Canon 5D mk2 by checking focus, blur and framing onscreen before taking the frame.

Setup

The upper balconies of the reading room have a dual railing. Inside the original stone balustrades circling the open room there is a glass railing at a distance of about 1/2 metre and chest high. Getting a lens over the edge of the balustrade means a long reach. Steady hands are required as my expensive camera is suspended at arms length over a three story drop.

The light inside the atrium is amazing, entering via windows circling the room and bouncing around inside the white  circular room. The timber desks and floor just loves this light. 

Camera Setup

Canon 5D mk 2 with LensBaby 3G at maximum aperture (f2.0) at 1/50th ISO100 with the camera lens resting over the lip of the outer balustrade pointing down.  LiveView was used to adjust the point of focus on one of the patrons while focus was fine-tuned with the lens focus ring.  

Processing

Almost none - just a tweak of colour balance to warm up the timber and saturation to bring out the amazing deep reds of the leather desk blotters ... and the skirt on that woman walking through the room like no-one noticed her.

Like 99% of all my processing, Adobe Lightroom was used. 

Improving the shot

The photo would be amazing as a large, glossy print but JPEG images viewed in a web browser dont do the colours and smooth gradients justice. One solution might be to reduce the colour gamut and increase contrast, however the intense reds and electric blues turn to mush. I want my OLED monitor right now!

Tour Racers

Concept

This photo was taken during a very special day when I was present 150m before the finish line of the 2008 Tour De France on the Champs Elysis in Paris. My aim was to get a photo of the racing peloton flying past in front of our grandstand - I even managed to get one of my favorite riders, George Hincappe, in centre frame.

What a shame the photo was not sharp. With the riders flying past at 50kph or more, I just could not achieve the shutter speed I needed to stop motion. To rescue the photo, I decided to exaggerate the blur to produce a more abstract look.

Setup

Standing up on my chair in the grandstand at the finishing line of the 2008 Tour de France in Paris trying desperately toshoot past the heads and arms of the crowd in front of me ... pure chance that the framing was OK and I happened to catch legendary tour rider George Hincappe. 

Camera Setup

Canon 400D (my camera at the time) with Sigma 70-200 f2.8 at 1/500th f/6.3 ISO400 handheld. And still not enough. 

How the professional cycling photographers like the legendary Graham Watson, get sharp photos while swinging off the back of a motor bike is beyond me. All respect. 

Processing

In the middle of a series of over 1200 frames shot that day, this photo would not normally be a keeper but for the fact that I was desperate for a full-page spread of the peloton in full flight for my custom-printed Blurb book to highlight the last celebration day of the Tour, so I had to try to rescue it in Photoshop.

After trying everything to sharpen it up, I gave up and decided to go with a more abstract look - the riders "flying past in a blur of colour".

After lifting the saturation and sharpness as much as possible to bring out the bright and contrasty colours, I added a strong motion blur filter and adjusted the angle of blur to match the direction of bike travel. Then came the time-consuming task of masking the blur layer to bring back the static areas of the frame such as the background cobbles and the fence. Blur was also removed from the leading edges of the faces, bike frames, arms and legs so that these were recognisable.  Consequently, the highlights and strong colours of the jerseys and helmets are left smeared across the frame.

The photo was printed in my Blurb book - Mémoires de la France - surrounded by sharp and meaningful photos of famous riders which my non-cycling friends glance through at rapid place. But this almost-reject shot always draws pause and a passing comment.

French village at 100kph

Concept

A terrible "snapshop" photo taken out of the window of a tour bus doing 100kph with a blurry foreground, dull grey sky, reflections off the glass and using a Canon G9 point-and-sheet.

But the memories of the landscape for me are precious. An idyllic, French provincial village centered around its church tower.

Nothing but an extreme photoshop treatment would make this photo interesting to everyone other than me. I have been experimenting with the "Top Gear" treatment and chose to recreate this look.

Setup

This photo was one of those "out the window of the bus with a point-and-shoot camera" shapshots which dont normally survive the first edit.

There was no second chance for this photo - I waited for a rare gap in the roadside trees to grab this shot. And then the view was gone.

Camera Setup

Canon G9 (point and shoot) at 1/250th f/4.0 and cropped about 2/3 of pixels to remove blur and some annoying window reflection. Camera was handheld through the bus window with my hand around the lens hood to limit reflections.

Processing

Only highly stylised processing would save this photo as the even, grey sky meant the entire scene was lit like a huge softbox. Lightroom 2.0 curves were used to bring back some contrast, colour saturation sliders brought back some oranges in the building roofs and an artificial vignette to focus the eye to the central church tower. The stylised sky is thanks to one of my Lightroom graduated filter presets which simultaneously reduces exposure, adds a strong deep blue tint and reduces clarity to zero to make any cloud highlights "glow".

Improving the photo

In an ideal world, I would have had one of those glorious blue French summer skies with white fluffy white clouds and be standing behind my Canon 5D mounted on a tripod with a huge piece of quality glass. Next time ...

For me the photo is special. I rode my own bike through a dozen of these small villages in the Provence region of central France during a week-long tour in 2008 and this photo brings back memories full of romance. This photo brings back memories of cycling through rural France which I will never forget.

Do I care if the stylised "television" look does not suit some peoples' taste? Nup. This photo always brings a smile when it pops up in the electronic photo frame.

Fine art lily

Concept

Inspiredby a recent magazine article to reproduce classic B&W fine art photographs, my intent was to create an image which draws its interest from shape and composition using subtle and elegant monotone.

Setup

After experimenting with white backgrounds placed in the garden bed in a) full sunlight and b) a gusty wind, I gave up and cut a young flower head and moved the whole setup under a clear-ish perspex awning at the rear of my house.

The white background (my Lastolight white reflector) was then easily propped up behind the upright flower and caught the diagonal pattern coming from the sunlight diffusing through the overhead perspex. No flash or reflectors. Incidentally, at certain time of the day this same perspex awning produces fantastic diffuse light for portraits as well.

Camera Setup

Canon 5D mark 2 with Canon 24-70 f2.8 L lens at f2.8 in aperture priority mode to blur the background shadow as much as possible. Camera was handheld to allow me to easily move to achieve the framing I was after.

Processing

Lightroom 2.4 rocks, baby. I simply applied the Selenium tone preset which provides the beautiful blue duotone with a small vignette, then played with the highlight sliders to adjust the contrast in the background texture. Moving the noise reduction and sharpness sliders to zero was enough to introduce a small amount of grain to the photo without resorting to photoshop. If I decide to enlarge the photo, I would add more artificial grain using a favourite photoshop plugin but at screen resolutions, adds nothing.

Improving the photo

The stem is quite dark while I was aiming for a more 'ghostly' look.

More disappointing is the framing. My original concept had the flower stem curving elegantly around one side of the frame but the shape of the stem and the natural "face" of the flower head did not look natural in this position so I settled with a "bolder", more geometric framing.

Overall I am happy with the outcome. The shoot took about 1 hour and the result is reasonably close to what I was envisaged. It has a fine art look to it which I would be happy to frame.