Luminosity Masks -Tony Kuyper

 

The wonderful thing with our evolution as artists is we can always improve – our creativity matures with our perspective on life – our moods change, as do our priorities and motives. It really is a life long journey.

This blog post is about Photography as Art and Expression.

Nikon D3x 14-24/2.8
2 Images for foreground and Sky
Manually blended in CS5 using TK’s Luminosity Masks.

In Landscape Photography, we start with an experience – we see a scene that captures our hearts and motivates us to attempt to create a photograph with it  - THE VISION

Then, there are some technical requirements, Harvesting the Available Light, our colors, tones and luminosity – COMPOSITION & EXPOSURE

Finally, we take this light that our camera has recorded and we take it into our studio, our work station, our computer. And it is here that we make many of our creative decisions – PROCESSING

This year, I discovered the tutorials and writing of Tony Kuyper - and have began to work all my images using his practices of Luminosity Masks. Probably the best $30 I have ever spent.

Images that contain high dynamic range have always been a problem for Landscape Photographers, and the traditional tool of choice has been the use of Graduated Neutral Density Filters. (Google that for a million articles). But the big problem with those is that if the scene does not fall into a comfortable composition with a straight line between the areas of extreme luminosity, you have very limited control. But they allow you to deal in many cases with extreme situations with a SINGLE EXPOSURE – A PHOTOGRAPH.

For now, cameras are not capable of capturing extreme dynamic range – Many HDR solutions have come along including popular ones by Photomatix, NIK and Adobe. They all rely on Multiple exposures. BRACKETING.

Simply, you take a series of images at various exposures to record a broader range of exposure values, as seen here -

One evening last week, Rafael Rojas & I were out at our local beach and were rewarded with an excellent sunset. But, the scene I wanted to take had a huge dynamic range. I took many images, 4 of which are displayed above. And I worked the final image using just three of them. One for the sky, one for the mid tones, and another for the deep shadow details.

Using Tony’s techniques, I created a single frame that contained all the details I wanted in the various areas. I blended them using LUMINOSITY MASKS.

The final image shown below shows the scene as I experienced it – the wonderful sky of fire, the striking silhouetted sea stack, the silky water and finally, details in the cliffs on my right.

 Nikon D3x 24-70/2.8 @ f10
3 exposures (2s for the rocks – 2 image with a BW 10 stop filter, 30s for the sky, 2 minutes for the mid tones)

Tony has a number of Tutorial Sets and Actions that can be purchased, I thoroughly recommend them for anyone wanting to take their processing to the next level.

Click here to visit Tony Kuyper Photography.

Related Posts

- Extended Dynamic Range Processing For Nature Photographers