More Windows 10 Update Angst

I was starting to relax about Windows 10 and got a late night HP Service center request that I needed to reboot my little HP spectre. The on/off setting had an update and restart message (I’ve seem plenty before it was a microsoft windows 10 update I thought. Ok restart and the expected cycles of updating percentage displayed on the screen in fits and starts and the don’t turn your computer off warning. Then a restart and similar update message BUT then a final message that the update could not be installed and it was undoing changes. Not the time of day to investigate so I did a shut down, more updating messages.

In the light of day I restarted and went through the same cycle. I had to restarts twice and go through the updating and undoing changes charade two more time before I could finally log in. nothing seems wrong (ie I am back where I was. However trying to shut down I still see the Update and restart warning! Am I destined for an endless loop of annoyance?
But why?

Sketching before taking the photo

I had made up of couple of small plastic trays for a selection of my pastel  to use in the field on my trip through the Kimberleys. I only used them a couple of times, and not so successfully. The little plastics trays where fine, a great size for portability. As well as the pastels I made up a “soft” sketching kit with charcoal, compressed graphite, woodless pencil and conte. These are traditional sketching media but somewhat fragile, so not exactly field friendly.

However because the kit is nice and small, I’ve been trying it out as a way to prepare composition/notan sketches for my pathway project. My intention is to make quick composition sketches and possibly a few alternatives that incorporate the tonal balance BEFORE I take any photos. So I am thinking/seeing more like a “plein air” painter preparing a new canvas. The charcoal is quick and gives a strong contrast but it smudges easily, the compressed graphite is good but delivers a very pencil draw tonal range (its hard to get the deep darks). The woodless pencils seemed ideal, I have two hardnesses HB and 4B. They gave me the fast loose sketching of the main shapes and a decent spread from light to dark.

The composition was fine and I wanted to emphasise the lead in of the pathway in the lightest tonesand the contrast of the intersecting but hidden path and bush behind it. The strong dark blocks of the bush on the right hand side blocks this in a balanced sort of way. The lacy effect if the overhanging tree had some potential so I went to a wider angle and took a series of vertical (portrait orientation) bracketed images going from –2.0 EV to +2.0 EV. I have just recently purchase Aurora HDR 2018 and wanted to test it out. The default result was pleasing but having a notan sketch beside me when I did the post processing guided me to set the tonal balance to better match with what I saw. It also prompted to do a crop closer to the original framing of my sketches.

#AIart and using Hashtags

I haven’t been as active on Instagram this past month, no real help from Alvin, just a lot going on. I did notice a massive drop in followers while I was off the net in the Kimberley's, and I have seen a more gradual return recently, and I probably attribute that to a bit more of a focus on using specific hashtags. The “fame” of a good image on Instagram is a fleeting thing, last a day or so at most. For am image to be found it has to be searched (either by your name, and not so many folk know me by the weird Instagram names I have, or via hashtags). Using hashtags is however a double edge sword. Some tags are so generic there are hundreds of competing images and often conflicting themes, for example #FollowTheSun is used a lot but more importantly it is used by the folks promoting bikinis and beach wear or travel services. My project of following the sun around Australia and my sketches don’t get notice beside a pretty girl or a dreamy location. Also the folk that follow the sun are more likely to be the fair weather followers (they want more and more beauty each day, if you don’t post it seems its the unfollow button for you).

A better strategy for me has been to focus down on more specific Hashtags. The good example here is the #AIart tag I started using it in Flickr & twitter late last year, and from about April this year on Instagram, to describe using neural networks trained to recognized a given style (or content) with a regular photo to produce a hybrid work somewhere between the photo and the art work. The real trick here is to get at least one of your images displayed in the opening nine. Instagram has a algorithm, no idea what it weights to include photos in this opening nine, but they probably represent the better and/or more popular images within this hashtag group. In the case of #AIart I am fortunate to currently have 5 of the top 9, within some 1410 post.  It is probably easy to have a hashtag only you use and you will be in that top 9 for sure, The magic happens when you encourage or inspire others to use the hashtags as well. Alternatively construct  composite tag so it shows up in more general searches (eg AI + art)  or the little related topics that often appears that the top of a search include it because it is similar. Now many more people might see your work.

Its not only Instagram posts that I tag with the same hashtags, I use them in twitter (where photos have a much shorter life, and without so many followers virtually no general exposure for me) but a hashtag means they can be found. (eg #janesweather, which means several have been on the TV weather report) I must admit I’m not a twitter fan, have had very little feedback/engagement and probably will abandon it soon. Finally tags, without the hash symbol have always been a good tool for finding things in flickr, they still are.

Keep on (hash) tagging. Just not with spray cans or a Posca on walls, landposts & postboxes.

Single Image HDR

The new Aurora HDR 2018 for Windows can perform all its normal tone mapping on a single photo.The original for this was a bit over exposed (as you might expect for a largely white bird high in the sky). The default "HDR" was in fact very realistic, yes the clouds where that dark and threatening rain. So I only changes a few of the basic tonal slider and smoothed down the noise in the sky. Since this was only the fourth image I had processed in Aurora HDR 2018 so I'm impressed already, just a bit more to work out on defringing.

INKtober and now for something completely different

October seems to be the month for Sketching, flickr are running INKtober (so expect my photofeed there to suddenly become drawings), the YouTube SketchBookSkool are running monthly sketching themes on Instagram (some background on @oz_endless_summer) and pastel artist Marla Baggetta is also recommending a month long sketchbook challenge.

Given that I was unable to keep up a year long daily sketch routine last year I figured I should at least give a one month of drawing & posting a reasonable chance. So expect less photos and more drawings, wish me luck and get drawing yourself.

Does Exposing to the Right make a difference?

Exposing to the right, isn’t magic and it not applicable everywhere.  Its a relative simple method (“trick” is not the right word) to help capture more light and reduce the underlying signal to noise ratio issues in lower tonal ranges. Whilst it can be applied in jpeg format, with lesser success, it really needs photos to be taken in RAW format, which records more detail and  give the capacity to adjust tones with suitable post processing software for the “finished” photo. It also helps to have a digital camera that can display a histogram (of the light illumination levels) on the back of the camera.

Just a word of warning there is a lot of rubbish written about exposing to the right that will come up early in google searches. If you read this post and try it out for yourself you will realise that it isn’t a hoax or a myth (they are just BS, Fake news)

The other requirement before you can exploit exposing to the right, is having an image with some “head room” in the histogram to increase the exposure without hitting the dreaded white clipping. Once your sensor fills with photons to its maximum, no extra detail can be captures. in 8-bit RGB terms you have reach 255 level in each colour channel. The histogram will be hard up against the right hand edge (see lower right of the examples below). If your camera has the settings you can turn on the feature to show this clipping. They are frequently displayed by blinking zones of colour usually referred to as the “blinkies”.

I took this series of photo on the way home, trying to beat a storm, the new growth on the oak trees looks photo worthy so I stopped for a quick shot. The sky was darkening and the trees largely in shadow so I got a typical result (photo above left) with what appeared to be an reasonably exposed sky and most of the foreground in deep shadow. Looking at the histogram the exposure is probably ok in terms of average illumination. There is very little  bright light recorded on the right hand side of the histogram. The photo on the left is just not what the scene looked like, it appears darker than what I saw. This is the type of situation where exposing to the right can help achieve a better image.

In my series I am using the exposure compensation to try letting in more light, but if your are shooting on a DSLR you can use any combination of ISO, F-stop or Shutter speed. Just changing f-stop by one stop doubles the light, change to +1.0 EV achieves the same. I have taken +1 Ev (the middle photo above) and +2 EV (The photo on the right above). Immediately I can see that the +2 EV option is too much I am clipping the sky and no matter how much darkening I try to perform it will remain pure white. The histogram for the center photo looks better the histogram is just touching the upper edge but now a lot of the illumination has moved to the upper right, This is what exposing to the right is trying to do. The trouble is, the photo looks overexposed, particularly in the sky.

The important next step in the exposing to the right method is to post process (the center photo) to “pull back the tones”, particularly the whites & highlights, the sky in this case. I’m using lightroom and just the basic tonal sliders. I’ve moved the exposure slider back –1 (one stop),  highlights most of all, white & shadows less and blacks hardly at all. I have moved all slider to the left, darkening the tones. Essentially I’m reversing the lightening step I deliberately took in the camera, when using the +EV compensation. Avoid pressing Auto (tone) here because it will take you photo back to essentially the same as your first exposure. Just experiment with the sliders and remember “less is more”, be gentle don’ try and over do it.

The result (shown below) better captures both the sky and the shadow detail, with the important side benefit of reducing noise in the dark tones and making the colours and mid tones a little clearer (without having to use the clarity of vibrance sliders). It is definitely closer to what I saw.

It is also worth looking at a bit of the detail

An insert from the original photo shows some noise in the shadows and flatness in the mid tone details.

Similar insert of the tonally adjusted Photo that was originally exposed to the right, showing less noise in the darks and also better detail in mid tones and slightly richer colours.

With RAW it is also possible to also lift the tonal range, (ie lighten the darks/shadows) of the original but this will only increase the obvious noise.

Exposing to the right can be a rewarding approach if your shoot in RAW, and have access to good software for post processing. Try it out next time you see a photo with the “head room” in your histogram to up the exposure (and collect more light).