Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: laughingbear on July 01, 2014, 08:42:52 pm
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Holy %@#$ was my first thought too! Fantastic shot!
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Ominous weather over the luminous landscape. Lol!
I certainly hope not! :D
Eduardo
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It must be the same storm that battered Chicago a few days later. There were three tornado touchdowns in Illinois that evening, one was just 7 miles (12 km) south of my house. Photographed by my friend, Elena Korbut:
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beautifully shot and appropriately titled. Ah, the joys of living in the Midwest/Plains (yes, Ontario is "Midwest").
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Very well composed. I like it a lot.
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Michael, can you tell us a little about what PP you did on the cloud? I have the devil of a time capturing the dimensionality of clouds that is so evident in your image. Thanks!
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I agree, the detail is great.
Something that would probably sell like mini donuts at the fair, would be a book by Michael or Kevin that has a tip with each image. Whatever they feel would be the most use to photographers in similar circumstances. I would be all over that.
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Looks like a pretty standard (but aggressive) clarity (mid tone contrast) adjustment?
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Looks like a pretty standard (but aggressive) clarity (mid tone contrast) adjustment?
Having seen similar storm clouds recently I bet it is very close to what it looked like being there. It is not synthetic drama.
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Michael, can you tell us a little about what PP you did on the cloud? I have the devil of a time capturing the dimensionality of clouds that is so evident in your image. Thanks!
Post processing quite minimal. I had exposed ETTR, to avoid blowing out the cloud highlights – the dynamic range was huge. I then used the Shadow slider to open up the foreground, because it was of course quite underexposed. This meant that the overall image was a bit flat, so I used a large brush with clarity and painted the sky.
Not all that different that I would have done on the chemical darkroom, except that it would have taken 3 hours, using lots of hand waving and chemical bleaches.
The point is that the image had inherent drama, and I used the basic tools in Lightroom to enhance what was there to create an image that was close to the way that the scene looked to my eye / memory.
What's felt good is when I show a print to my son, who had seen it with me, he said – "That's it. That's what we saw." He had taken an iPhone shot, which captured the image, but not the "feeling: of what we saw.
Michael
Michael
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"The point is that the image had inherent drama…"
I found that the point is that every aspect of picture production from data acquisition to pre-press and publication details is important. Michael undermines his own statement regarding "the point" with the tale of his son, who "had taken an iPhone shot, which captured the image, but not the 'feeling' of what we saw": that iPhone recording had the same inherent drama, but not the same effect when used to produce a picture. ("One day, son, you'll have a camera as big as Dad's.")
As such, it is more than a bit disingenuous (imho, obviously — and I mean disingenuous in the same way Michelangelo disingenuously claimed to have learned to carve from his wet-nurse) to dismiss shooting for exposure (ETTR), altering the exposure, then selectively altering the edge transitions and very-small-form luminances as "minimal" processing. That what used to take 3 hours (per Michael) with matter now takes a few minutes with software (and a highly-trained eye and hand) does not make it "minimal", except perhaps in duration of effort. The same duration of effort, in other hands, with other equipment (light recorder) and tools (software) would not, and could not, produce the same result.
I see two things at play here. First is the fundamental prejudice among photographers that the picture is somehow "real" and that all they do is help guide it to an accurate rendering of what was present at the time of data recording. Pictures are illusions; photography is an art of illusion. Hundreds of thousands of person-hours of engineering have gone into creating machines that let us easily create these illusions. The ready availability of illusion-making does not make the illusion any more real than if it had been blown from iron-oxide dust onto a cave wall. I recognize (one should read that word slowly) my cat in pictures I have of her; she does not, and not because she is uncaring of my compulsion to make pictures.
Second is the age-old artist's ploy (cited above): "O shucks, it's nothing". This persists because it works by inflating the artist and his/her works in the minds of the artist's public — one might think of it as "the impenetrable opacity of genius", or, simply, magic. In a mercantile sphere this can be, with some reservations, recommended. But it is a poor posture for a teacher to take. All art is ... artificial. If dimensionally in cloud-forms is the artifice that you desire, then — and Michael has both given and swept aside this advice — make sure you record usable data in each pixel (don't "blow" any highlights), lower the luminance of the highest luminance pixels in the cloud-forms, and increase the edge contrast, and the mid-contrast as judged by the luminance range of the cloud-forms. That is artifice on artifice — what might be admitted to be clambering towards high art.
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I had exposed ETTR, to avoid blowing out the cloud highlights – the dynamic range was huge.
So, you did ETTR to avoid blowing the highlights?
:~)
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Sigh. Common Jeff, you known what I mean. I controlled the exposure to maximize it without blowing the highlights.
As for Mr Krieger.. what on earth are you saying? Sorry, but your comment is so annoyingly obtuse so as to completely evade me.
Michael
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Jeff i think perhaps Michael missed out the (OJ) in the ETTR
i.e. E(OJ)TTR - Expose (only just) To The Right "to avoid blowing the highlights - don't you think ??
p.s. I have the exact same image which I captured over our land at about the same time - although we don't know each other i happen to live just 20 miles south of Michael and my wife called me to see the 'amazing cloud'.
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I have the devil of a time capturing the dimensionality of clouds…
Have you seen Charles Cramer's LuLa article "Tonal Adjustments in the Age of Lightroom 4 (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/tonal_adjustments_in_the_age_of_lightroom_4.shtml)" ?
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Common Jeff, you known what I mean.
LOL...so, now you are calling me "Common"?
Yes, I deduced what you meant...you used ETTR but stopped short of clipping...so you did ETT slight R...
:~)
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...you used ETTR but stopped short of clipping...so you did ETT slight R...
To be truly pedantic, when one says ETTR, adding "but stopped short of clipping" is simply redundant. Because, by definition, ETTR implies no clipping. ;)
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To be truly pedantic, when one says ETTR, adding "but stopped short of clipping" is simply redundant. Because, by definition, ETTR implies no clipping. ;)
I think it's safe to assume that. It is not pedantic. It is mentioned from the get-go:
Basically the ideal exposure is as Michael describes: get your histogram as close to the right side as possible but not so close as to cause the over exposure indicator to flash. The ideal exposure ensures that you have maximum number of levels describing your image without loosing important detail in the highlights. The closer you get to this ideal then the more of those levels are being used to describe your shadows.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml
(If that is obtuse — let alone "annoyingly obtuse", I will give up.)
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That post was about exposure? Thanks for clearing that up.
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Basically the ideal exposure is as Michael describes: get your histogram as close to the right side as possible but not so close as to cause the over exposure indicator to flash. The ideal exposure ensures that you have maximum number of levels describing your image without loosing important detail in the highlights. The closer you get to this ideal then the more of those levels are being used to describe your shadows.
If someone does as suggested using raw then there is - in my experience - a 2/3 stop of underexposure before clipping occurs. A little flashing of overexposure is good. Experiment by taking an image with different f/stops and load them into Rawdigger and that will give you a more "accurate" idea of clipping.
http://www.rawdigger.com/
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Basically the ideal exposure is as Michael describes: get your histogram as close to the right side as possible but not so close as to cause the over exposure indicator to flash. The ideal exposure ensures that you have maximum number of levels describing your image without loosing important detail in the highlights. The closer you get to this ideal then the more of those levels are being used to describe your shadows.
If someone does as suggested using raw then there is - in my experience - a 2/3 stop of underexposure before clipping occurs. A little flashing of overexposure is good. Experiment by taking an image with different f/stops and load them into Rawdigger and that will give you a more "accurate" idea of clipping.
http://www.rawdigger.com/
There is not a fixed level of exposure difference. The amount of overexposure as judged by a RAW histogram depends on the metering method, the camera and the light distribution over the scene and dynamic range. This is judged from my experience using Canon and Nikon cameras (1Ds III, 5D series and D800E and the older Canons were not that different in this respect). You can easily have blinkies on the LCD and no clipping of the RAW file. You can have clipping or underexposure using 0EV exposure compensation with matrix metering. Also you have quite some clipping on the LCD and some clipping in RAWdigger and Lightroom will still not show clipping with default parameters and AWB from the camera.
In my experience the best method (unless you are a big fan of using exposure compensation all the time) to simply bracekt your shots and choose the best exposure in Lightroom. This usually would be the most exposure without clipping.
In the case of the picture from Michael on a Canon or Nikon this would be a +1EV exposure compensation and show some underexposure and a +2EV might have a little clipping.
I feel the picture was Michael was still a bit flat. My experience is that opening up the shadows and highlights need to be compensated with not just clarity but with contrast and exposure adjustments (of course).
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Hi Slobodan,
At least in my book.
Best regards
Erik
To be truly pedantic, when one says ETTR, adding "but stopped short of clipping" is simply redundant. Because, by definition, ETTR implies no clipping. ;)
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There is not a fixed level of exposure difference. The amount of overexposure as judged by a RAW histogram depends on the metering method, the camera and the light distribution over the scene and dynamic range. This is judged from my experience using Canon and Nikon cameras (1Ds III, 5D series and D800E and the older Canons were not that different in this respect). You can easily have blinkies on the LCD and no clipping of the RAW file. You can have clipping or underexposure using 0EV exposure compensation with matrix metering. Also you have quite some clipping on the LCD and some clipping in RAWdigger and Lightroom will still not show clipping with default parameters and AWB from the camera.
In my experience the best method (unless you are a big fan of using exposure compensation all the time) to simply bracekt your shots and choose the best exposure in Lightroom. This usually would be the most exposure without clipping.
In the case of the picture from Michael on a Canon or Nikon this would be a +1EV exposure compensation and show some underexposure and a +2EV might have a little clipping.
I feel the picture was Michael was still a bit flat. My experience is that opening up the shadows and highlights need to be compensated with not just clarity but with contrast and exposure adjustments (of course).
The image looks natural if you have seen similar storm clouds. You may be right that some contrast and exposure is needed, but the description of the processing is still correct. Most of us have our software on auto levels which makes those adjustments when it first opens the image.
For example on my similar cloud shot which i posted as "Storm Coming" Raw Therapee opens it with auto levels. I clicked neutral to see where the histogram really is. It was compressed in the middle with a long tail to the right. I set clipping from default 0.02 to 0, clicked auto levels to put it back, set vibrance to 10, then saved as 90% jpg. That put a very light banding in the clouds in case some internet scourer tries to blow the clouds up to be the sky in their assignment or brochure.
As you say, bracketing is important to make up for any strangeness in the metering. The habit I have for landscapes is to bracket so that the darkest shot of 3, 1 ev apart is ETTR. That gives me lots of shadow data I can pull from the other brackets if I need it. I also know I can process with no (or very little) noise.
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The image looks natural if you have seen similar storm clouds. You may be right that some contrast and exposure is needed, but the description of the processing is still correct. Most of us have our software on auto levels which makes those adjustments when it first opens the image.
For example on my similar cloud shot which i posted as "Storm Coming" Raw Therapee opens it with auto levels. I clicked neutral to see where the histogram really is. It was compressed in the middle with a long tail to the right. I set clipping from default 0.02 to 0, clicked auto levels to put it back, set vibrance to 10, then saved as 90% jpg. That put a very light banding in the clouds in case some internet scourer tries to blow the clouds up to be the sky in their assignment or brochure.
As you say, bracketing is important to make up for any strangeness in the metering. The habit I have for landscapes is to bracket so that the darkest shot of 3, 1 ev apart is ETTR. That gives me lots of shadow data I can pull from the other brackets if I need it. I also know I can process with no (or very little) noise.
I have seen lots of them and my comment is not about a so called natural look. In my opinion what counts is what is a great and convincing image. Natural is a heavily overused word in my opinion. If you are documenting then it is important, but if you create art then who cares what is natural? I don't think it is a good idea to open a RAW image with tons of default adjustments, at least it is not what I do.
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I have seen lots of them and my comment is not about a so called natural look. In my opinion what counts is what is a great and convincing image. Natural is a heavily overused word in my opinion. If you are documenting then it is important, but if you create art then who cares what is natural? I don't think it is a good idea to open a RAW image with tons of default adjustments, at least it is not what I do.
Whatever you are doing is working, you have many fine images at your site. Very nice.
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"I say what I mean and I mean what I say". - The Mad Hatter.
Since I invented the phrase ETTR (Thomas Knoll first described it to me, and I wrote it up more than a decade ago), I am allowed to mean what I mean, which is "...and don't blow it".
Michael
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To be truly pedantic, when one says ETTR, adding "but stopped short of clipping" is simply redundant. Because, by definition, ETTR implies no clipping. ;)
I agree 100% (see Slobodan, we can at times ;D). ETTR should never be about blowing out any highlights you wish to retain. That's exposure 101. Why would anyone clip highlights they don't want to clip, especially Michael! If I had a dime for every time someone felt that ETTR was about over exposing, resulting in blown highlights, I would buy something real expensive and frivolous.