In this episode learn how I used visualization to turn...
this photo into this.
Adorama TV presents
exploring photography with Mark Wallace
Hi everybody welcome to this exploring photography...
I am coming to you from Katmandu Nepal.
I am just above the City, outside what they call the Monkey Temple.
There are monkeys everywhere you can't see them right here but...
they were trying to take my camera a little bit earlier...
but what I want to do is take a picture of the Katmandu Valley...
behind me using a principle that Ansel Adams talked about and that is...
Pre-visualization
Now what he said was that when you're taking a photo or making a photo,
more accurately,
that you should look at the scene and visualize the end product.
think about taking the photo as creating a score...
to some music and you capture all the detail that you possibly can and then
in post-production he meant in the dark room but we will use...
Photoshop and Lightroom.
You actually take that score and make the music.
You play that score and so what I'm going to do is
I've pre-visualized what I want to do with this scene...
so I'm going to walk through everything I've set up on my camera...
to tell you how I'm gonna capture the score so I can perform later...
Lets talk about the scene and what I have in my mind what I want to do...
in the final product we look out here this valley we can see that the dynamic...
range is pretty extreme we have really bright clouds and a really, sort of,
dim valley below and the colors aren't really ...
'contrasty' and saturated so I really don't think that this is going to make a good...
colour photo, so l'll probably convert this to black and white...
and because of that want to get as much detail on as much of the dynamic range...
as possible,
and so, what I'm going to do is make sure that my camera is set for...
auto exposure bracketing.
I'll take three exposures and that way I can throw them into an HDR image...
if I need to, I'm not sure if I need to but I'm gonna make sure I capture that...
so I've set my camera up...
to auto exposure bracket, three exposures...
plus and minus one stop. So I have that setup. The other thing I want to do is...
I want to make sure...
everything is in focus, so I've set my...
lens to an aperture value of F8 because it's really sharp right in...
the middle of the aperture values...
and I set my focus to hyper focal and what that means is...
I can get as much in focus as possible.
Now the other thing I want to do is make sure I have low noise and so I've set my...
ISO value to an ISO of...
200 and then the last thing I have done is...
to make sure I have no camera shake I've used my tripod, I've got a cable release...
and then I use Live View to make sure that I don't have any of this fence or anything in the way...
of this photo I think I'm probably going to crop the top and bottom off because...
with my big 21 millimeter lens...
I'm getting so much in the frame that there are some...
blue buildings toward the bottom of the frame and some other things I think...
I need to crop out so...
in my final image what I think I'm going to do, what I'm planning on doing...
is converting to black and white, cropping it so it looks like a panorama...
and then doing some HDR work, it really brings out the blacks, the shadows and the highlights...
and everything in between. Well everything is setup so I'm going to use my cable...
release to take this photo...
and what it will do is take three images so let's do that right now...
wham wham wham, I've got my three images there and now what we need to do is...
throw that...
into Lightroom and get to work so let's do that right now.
These are the three bracketed images that I shot.
Now what I want to do is convert one of these to the...
image that I saw in my head high; a high contrast black and white panorama.
Now I shot three in case I needed to convert one of these or convert all of these into a HDR image,
but it looks like when I look at the histogram that I have enough information...
in this last image to do what I want.
So let's go over to the developed module...
and I'll pop out this right panel here and it looks...
on the histogram, its a little bit under exposed...
so I'm wondering where the problems are so I'm going to hit the J key and...
you can see that the blacks here in the bushes are a little bit under exposed...
but that's okay because it works to our advantage up here in the clouds...
and these bushes are going to be cropped out anyway so I am going to use this image...
and the first thing I want to do is correct some of the...
tonality problems, the global problems that we have...
and also I'm going to fix this little dust speck...
right off the bat because it's bothering me so I'm just going to get rid of that...
really quickly.
Let's fix these clouds. These clouds look two-dimensional.
I don't like that. First we are going to fix the overall exposure...
We are going to bring that up so we have a nice...
well exposed image. Then we are going to take these highlights...
and bring them way down what that's going to do...
is that's going to give us more...
form in our closet brings in some in the shadows to make them look more...
three-dimensional and 'contrasty'.
Then we are going to bring in the blacks just a little bit and then open up the shadows...
to give us a little bit more contrast...
and then before we go too far, we need to start editing this in black and white.
So I am going to convert this...
to a black and white image and now what I can do is work with the...
a black and white mix in my colors here. So I'm going to grab my little chooser here...
I'm going to first fix the sky, these blues are just way too luminescence.
I'm going to bring this...
down, so that they are little bit punchier,
bring these guys down here and that is really going to help us...
out in terms of contrast. I may have gone a little bit too far.
Play with these mountains in the background.
There's not much we can do there.
Alright so now we've got our basic contrast set. Now we need to do...
some fine-tuning.
One of the things I didn't like when I looked through my eyes was...
the mountain ranges in the background here, they're in shade,
which means that they don't really have much contrast because is...
we need some side light to do that, we didn't have it so...
what we will do is we will go into to post and we're going to get an adjustment brush...
and we'll just take our contrast here and we will bump that up a little bit maybe...
25-30
35 we will just paint a little bit of contrast there and its going to take the exposure
down just a little bit...
but it gives us a little bit more punch in the mountains which i think we need...
so I will paint that on there...
That looks pretty good. The other thing we need to do is...
because of the tonality changes we made globally the whites...
in the city, all these buildings here have sort of turned to grey...
So I' going to get a new adjustment brush and then...
what I will do is I'm going to go to whites...
and I'm going to increase that to about 40...
then I'll get a nice big brush here...
I'm just going to paint in a little bit more so that my whites are a little bit...
whiter, in the city and that gives us a little bit more...
contrast. Sort of painting away. I can even adjust that a little bit more...
I really want this to be 'contrasty', there we go, and then I'll close those brushes out...
and then the last thing we can do here as we can take our...
overall adjustments, we will open up the shadows a little bit...
that looks pretty good. I need to crop this the way that...
I want to make it look like a panorama so I'm going to go to the crop tool.
There aren't really any aspect ratios that work for me, I've played with a few so...
I'm just going to unlock this...
and I will take this down right above this...
top cloud here. I don't want any of these bushes in here so I'm going to...
get rid of all of those. bring it up just to the bottom of this buildings...
and I will accept that...
and now this looks like a panorama.
I really like that. I can take this overall clarity, bump that up,
Adjust a hair and now I've got that image that I had in my mind,
a panorama wide-angle view so we can go back here...
And what I'll do just so we can compare is I will...
rght click on this and I'm going to create a virtual copy.
Then what I will do is on this very first virtual copy here...
I'm just going to reset it, so we go back to what it look like...
originally take a look at this this is what we saw with our eyes...
this is what we saw out there when we were walking around...
but this is what I saw in my mind this...
wide-angle black-and-white, high contrast...
image and the key to visualization and the key to post production is to be able to see...
the black and white, instead of what you see in front view, because the two...
are vastly different. So once you learn how to do that and you can see it...
when you're shooting your image you can make sure you take a picture that looks...
like this knowing...
that after some post-production you're going to get something that looks like this.
Well the next time you going sure hope you think like...
Ansel Adams so that you visualize the end result before you take your photos...
so that you can set your camera up to get the most...
out of your post production. Well before you go there is something really important...
I want to remind you about and that is here in Nepal...
this country was rocked by two devastating earthquakes very recently...
and Adorama has set up a fund raising project to help with the recovery effort...
we posted links...
to that fund raising effort so that you can become involved and help...
with the rebuilding of this country well thank you so much for joining me and...
I'll see you again next time.
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