If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

On the last September 18th, Brian at Epic Edits Weblog started a group project asking his readers to edit his photo.

I though this was one of the most interesting projects that I’ve seen around the photography blogs for some time. The reason is simple: from a starting point, how many interpretations can be originated?

Of course that such a project requires more of a Photoshop (or other photo editing software) knowledge and less camera handling, but as we have been seeing, in silico processing is a major part of photography.

Problem 1: of course that I saw the project a long time ago (actually on the day Brian posted it) but I was always thinking, and as he noted, 3 weeks is a long time… Wrong, never leave the things you want to do for the last minute. Postponing is never the solution.

Problem 2: emails work very well up to the point that they don’t. I’ve asked Brian for the original on the 4th but it seems that he never got that message. Finally, today email decided to work.

Result: Compensating for the time differences, instead of doing a good job, I’m just going to use shortcuts and adjust as I go… I’m not thinking this will be a very good result, but at least I’ve tried.

So, I’ll be writing as I go (also not a good idea) and try to meet the deadline.

Here we go…

  1. The original…

  2. Opening the RAW in Lightroom.

My first impressions: the photo was taken in color but due to poor color diversity and saturation, the result was not very color appealing (sky, sea and wet sand all share the same tone). My first reaction is turning it into a grayscale image (of course that, as I mentioned before, I’m partial to B&W photography) so that is the path I’m taking. I’m also planning to make extreme adjustments to create a more texture feeling.

  3. Lightroom adjustments

Since the focal object is the seagull (it is a seagull, right?) I want to highlight it somehow. Also, there are some objects (buoys?) floating just beneath the waves. Somehow I feel that they might make nice contrast points on the sea “texture”.

To achieve it, here are my final values for Lightroom:

• Temp: 6650
• Tint: -2
• Exposure: 0.0
• Recovery: 58
• Fill Light: 25
• Blacks: 28 (mainly to compensate for the poor contrast resulting from the Fill light)

So far this is what I got:

Note how much information the RAW has that can be pulled out. Now we have a more extended color range, texture has been improved and the bird has much more detail.

Time to loose the color and go grayscale. Even if we loose the color, the “warmth” can be adjusted. If I was going for color, my choice would be to go as cold as possible. Again, this is my objective from the very first feeling I had when I saw the photo. Many other choices are equally valid and good.

Going cold:

• Red: -76
• Orange: -53
• Yellow: -88
• Green: -81
• Aqua: +4
• Blue: +51
• Purple: -48
• Magenta: -48

So far:

  4. And going Photoshop

The true sport begins now. What to do from here? Looking at what I have, I want to increase the contrast and separation between shadows and highlights… Let’s see.

At this moment, I’ve played a bit but I’m not happy at all… One of the reasons is that, wherever I go, I tend to be more attracted to the sea than the bird. Soooo… let’s do something with the background and try later to just  minimize the bird and blend it with the surroundings. This requires and extreme approach. As I mentioned above, as soon as I saw this image I imagined an extreme makeover, turning it surreal…

I won’t post step by step pictures but I’ll try to describe what I’m doing as I go…

First thing I did was to duplicate the background layer and blend it as Overlay with 90% opacity. This creates a high contrast image (as intended), clearly separating sky from sea from foam.

Next step was to “minimize the damage” to the original image. I achieved this by adjusting curves in the background layer in a way that I had good detail on the bird (to help in this step a trick is to turn the duplicate layer to 0% opacity and restoring it after the adjustment). Now, I’ve created a layer mask, revealing all the superposed layer. Remember that the objective is to turn the image extreme without loosing detail on the bird. So, on the mask layer, I’ve erased the bird and it’s reflection using a 10px eraser (as you see not so careful, but can’t invest much time on this if I want to make it before the deadline).

So far, we have a high contrast image, even extreme, with the seagull not loosing detail. But the seagull doesn’t fit too well to the image since there is still some dullness in the mask. I overcame this by using the doge tool set to highlights on the background layer in order to increase contrast on the seagull and corresponding reflection. Note that the blown contours are also seen on the reflection. This is needed to keep the effect intended.

The next step was unexpected even for me. I’ve noticed that I can achieve more of the extreme painting effect by actually adding some color to it. So, on the foreground layer I used the channel mixer to reduce the green on the red channel by 6%.

The result is an even more cold image, a bluish gray. I did it on the foreground layer to keep the seagull in monochrome separating it more from the background.

The last step was done to increase the dreaming effect. 25% noise (yes, people try to reduce the noise and I increase it…).

The final result, after 45 minutes of editing and writing, is shown bellow. I hope you like it…

On a final note, and I don’t know how allowed this is according to Brian’s rules, I’ve tried cropping it to highlight the seagull and the result was not so bad. Nonetheless, the above image is my final entry to Brian’s project.

And that is all for image editing for today… pufff…

Sometimes, after taking a shot, particularly if there are strong light sources, you may notice some weird light spots on your photo. Most certainly, they were caused by lens flare.

But what is lens flare anyway?

To understand lens flare you need to know how light works in photography. Basically, everything reflects light. You see an object as it is because it absorbs some light wavelengths and reflects others. Similarly to the human eye, a camera records the light reflected from objects and that reaches the sensor.

In a perfect situation only your photography subject should reflect light directly into the front element of your lens. But this never happens and everything that surrounds your camera is reflecting some light and some of it will indirectly enter your lens.

Lens flare is thus caused by indirect reflected light entering your lens and being scattered around your lens elements (bouncing inside your lens) until it reaches the sensor, as shown in the schematics bellow.

On normal conditions, the direct light is stronger than the indirect one and lens flare will be minimal and hardly noticeable. Problems arise when the indirect light comes from a strong source (like the sun). If it’s strong enough you’ll see those flare artifacts. Even when flare is not strong enough to produce artifacts, light can be broadly distributed all over the photo, reducing contrast and turning the photo pale. On a more extreme situation, lens flare can create all sorts of weird aberrations and destroy the photo completely.

The bigger the lens, the bigger the flare

Although lens manufacturers use special coatings on the lenses (particular on the front element) to reduce light reflection and scattering while allowing light refraction, it’s impossible to eliminate it completely (light has to go through anyway).

The more glass elements your lens contains, the more pronounced lens flare will be as more surfaces are available to scatter light around. Therefore, lenses with a wide range of focal lengths are particularly affected as more elements are needed. 

Intended flare

Of course that, when used correctly, this property can be applied for the photographer’s advantage. Lens flare can give a special kind of drama to the photos and in fact there are many filters out there (physical as well as software) that intend to mimic lens flare to introduce flare effects on the photos.

Reducing lens flare

The best way to reduce lens flare is by minimizing the amount of indirect light entering your lens. This is usually accomplished by shading the front element on all it’s sides with the use of a lens hood (those bulky nasty things have a use after all). Lens hoods, their design and how they work are also complex matters and will have a post of their own in the next days. Meanwhile, keep this in mind: Whenever possible, use the hood.

PhotoShelter Collection intends to compete with high-end stock houses. Can they change the views on the market?

Microstock sites are, without a question, a great opportunity for both amateurs and professional photographers to increase their photographic earnings. It is even discussed that due to microstock popularity, the earnings are set to increase.  

Although microstock photography is not as easy as it may sound at first, it’s also not that hard and even simple photos can get a good general acceptance.

If you want to try it (why not), Rasmus shares 5 tips to get you started.

One of the biggest issues raised by photographers wanting to expand into microstock is (of course) finances. Microstock sites are based on quantity of sales opposed to higher prices and many sell photos for $1. This requires that the photographer keep extending the portfolio in order to make any decent ammount of money. Even so you can see that with some effort it can pay for your gear.

Now, why am I going into the Microstock issue?

Today I got an email from Mike Scolins at Noise Marketing announcing the new feature of PhotoShelter, the PhotoShelter Collection.

As many of you probably know, PhotoShelter is a storage service for your photos. For a monthly fee you can upload your (if not all) most valuable photos and be sure to have at least that as a backup, just in case the sky falls on you and you loose everything else.

Now, PhotoShelter launches Collection…

What is PhotoShelter Collection?

For what I’ve seen of their site (yes, I’ve registered), at PhotoShelter Collection, it is my feeling they try to distance themselves from the “regular” microstock sites. Although the more personal touch feels good (they make it sound so familiar), the general guidelines are those of a microstock agency. No word yet as for how tough their reviewing procedure is. From their guidelines, I got the impression that PhotoShelter Collection wants to explore a certain niche inside stock photography, turning it more casual.

Payment

This is where PhotoShelter Collection distance themselves from the crowd: the photographer’s revenue is 70% (85% for photos submitted before November 5th and up to six months) and the minimum price set for a photo is $50. The price is only a recommendation and you are allowed to price your own work. At least, you’ll be getting $35 for each sale minimum. The payout is set at $100 if you choose to be paid by check but they also offer PayPal or ACH as other payment methods (no word on payout here).

Advantages & Disadvantages

I have mixed feelings about PhotoShelter Collection from what I’ve read so far. I haven’t tried to submit any work so I can’t say for now how successful it can be.

Nonetheless, the high revenue percentage, low payout amount and relatively high price per photo make of PhotoShelter Collection something to seriously consider if you want to try selling your images. Also, it’s free to join.

On the other hand, competing with all the microstock sites out there is not going to be easy (is this even their aim?). Although many companies still go for the established (and much more expensive) stock agencies like Getty, the accessibility and affordability of microstock sites is hard to beat and only time will tell how PhotoShelter Collection will establish themselves in the photo market business.

Overall

Overall, I was surprised with PhotoShelter Collection. Maybe this is just a feature to increase sales on their main business (backups) and maybe not. Anyway, I’ll seriously consider uploading some work there and see how it turns out.

If you are already into stock photography and you’re not exclusive to any site, maybe you should also consider at least looking into it.

Disclaimer

Although I just gave a very brief and positive review of PhotoShelter Collection, I’m in no way associated with them (besides having a user account at their site) and this is NOT a paid post. Truly, there aren’t even affiliate links on this post.