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Posts Tagged ‘contrast’

Digital Processing Workflow for Nature Photographers – Sean Bagshaw

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Sean Bagshaw’s work – his images to me capture the wilderness as I know it, a thriving, living, symbiotic space – full of energy, vibrance, clarity and expression.

One of the most common questions I get in one to ones and workshops is “How can I get my images to look better?”

For those of us shooting Digital, I believe the days of the images coming out of the camera looking their best is over. A RAW file is just a starting point, and because the camera is recording a range of potential values, it is not expected to deliver a best guess at what the photographers final intention may be.

And here is a key point about contemporary photography – Your creative Process starts with a stimulus, seeing something that catches your eye that you can begin to visualise as a final print or web post.

This creative spark is the start, you then work around your subject eliminating clutter, clarifying your subject and begin to work on exposure and capture techniques. Is their dynamic range issues to overcome, what about depth of field? This is the marriage of Art & Craft – Harvesting Light with which you create your final image with later in Processing.

The Digital Darkroom is as vital a component as any of the other primary stages. Harvested Light is of little value if it is spat out the other side in a few seconds without a thought.

This series of Video Tutorials by Sean Bagshaw, take the viewer on a journey through the most essential features of Processing, from Lightroom/Camera Raw into Photoshop.

I recommend them to everyone I teach, as they are as essential to producing great images as a good eye or great light.

$44.99

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Color & Contrast

As most of us know, our cameras do not always reproduce the scene we are capturing as we experience it. Regardless of how sophisticated or expensive our tools, often we have color casts or lack of contrast. Often, we are actually responsible for the adding the color casts, for example if we use graduated Neutral Density Filters – only the most expensive are truly neutral, the rest tend to add a magenta color cast. Other examples are Blue/Gold Polarizers, or Big Stopper 10 stop ND filters.

Natural Color Casts happen in twilight, sunrise and sunset or at night, when in camera white balance can get thrown off quite badly, especially in mixed lighting conditions.

Of course, some of these color casts at sunrise or sunset make our images look fantastic, the brilliant warm colors are so appealing, but are they authentic?

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