This time I am paying homage to a surrealist artist, Rene Magritte, whose man in the bowler hat was made popular again in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. I believe his canvas on the easel that disappears into the scene behind is called The Human Condition. The idea of being able to see through the current situation to the world outside appeals to me during the COVID-19 social isolation period.
To make this picture I took a couple of photos, one with a canvas and one with no canvas. I have a nifty remote control for my little Olympus so you can't see me triggering the shot with my right hand by my side. Rather than try to do a blended image I used the cloning and context sensitive retouch tools in On1 instead, to cover the window frame and easel where the picture would been.
No this is not an advert for an operating system or the next smart phone. It is the last, at least for a while, it my #StayAtHomePhotowalking series on TheWindow.
The cameras in smart
phones have improved greatly over the last decade. They only have tiny lenses
and thus their apparent depth of field appears very wide (almost everything in
the image will be clear). They also can be taken very close to the subject (ie
minimum focusing distance might just be a few centimetres. Their downside is
they are not so good in low light and if you are really close you are likely to
cast a shadow over the subject.
You could of course use a magnifying glass between the phone and the subject, but there is generally a significant downside doing this, the focal distance of the magnifying glass might be 5 to 10cm meaning you must be further back from the object even though the magnifying glass is enlarging the subject, it is the distance of your phone must be reduces the size of the subject in your camera. Pretty much cancelling out the percieved subject size advantage.
I have a nifty
little (and cheap) wide angle lens that clips over the camera lens and being a
wider angle now I can get closer to the subject but now the perspective becomes
extreme (which may or maynot help your image)
Hmm not many pictures of my window ... such is life
This
has been an age old challenge, to get both the inside exposure and the outside
scene balanced. Whereas our eyes can
automatically adjust to see detail over a wide range of lighting levels than
even the best digital camera. Also our eyes are constantly looking around the
scene adjusting focus on regions of varying brightness. The image our mind sees
is a reconstruction, and not a direct measure of the light entering our eye(s).
If you are skeptical, read the Cambridge in Colour article Cameras .vs. TheHuman Eye.
Exposed for Inside
The
camera just has to take a single image and because it has a limited dynamic range, and if its using the light meter to choose exposure it is likely to
choose something in the middle. The inside is very dark
compared with the intensity of light outside. Finding a compromised for these
two lighting condition may be too hard and any exposed in the middle will leave
the interior in deep shadow and/or the exterior view bleach out.
You
can override the automatic exposure metering and take two exposure one for
inside and one for the outside view. Then blend them together assuming you have
that capability in your postprocessing software. This is a very common procedure recommend elsewhere on the net, but it can be tedious to do.
Another
alternative is to use the HDR methodology, which combines different exposures
or can also exploit the extra information in a single RAW photo to expand the
range of tones that can be reproduced. The article I have linked is somewhat old but
does explain the method well. Most post-processing software now has a HDR
capability. I prefer Trey Ratcliff's AuroraHDR and using a set of three EV
bracketed photos (underexposed by 2 stop. Normally exposed & over exposed
by 2 stops) which I have dialed in for the camera to take as a series.
Bracketed EV Series
A
word of warning, be careful when tone mapping (or using presets with HDR images
because it is easy to overdo and end up with ugly. faux painted look that is disturbing to most viewers. I prefer to just use the default HDR image (with AI
controlled tone mapping and looks natural) from AuroraHDR and do any further tweaking in my chosen post-processing software, usually using On1 Photo RAW. It is my best solution to
the Indoor and Outdoor View at the same
time dilemma. Most real estate photographers must also believe!
When you think there
is nothing more to challenge your photographic desires taking photos of
TheWindow, its time to get closer."The closer you are too the subject, the more detail you see and
the greater the impact of your photograph" ... Rich Sammon. This advice is
not new but now is a perfect time to take the advice seriously.
You actually don't
need a specialist macro lens, although they can simplify the tasks when getting
really close up. You can use any lens really, but there will be a few challenges
to address.
Most lenses have a
minimum distance that they can focus and in general terms the longer the focal
length the greater the minimum focusing distance. This can work against you
when trying to use the magnification capability of a telephoto lens to get a larger
image. With your impressive Telephone Zoom you might have to stand a meter or more away!Whereas with your wide angle lens
you could get with a few centimetres.
The next obstacle is
depth of field which is a bigger topic than I need to address in full here,
where by the longer the focal length of the lens the shorter can be the
width over which the camera is able to achieve sharp focus and to confuse
things the Aperture (which controls the amount of light let through the lens)
also affects the apparent depth of field. Wider Aperture (lower f-stops) narrow
the zone within which the focus seems sharp.
The distance to the
subject also affect perspective. Wider angle lenses (lower focal distance of
the lens) make close objects seem larger. Telephotos (large focal length lens)
make distant objects appear larger and more similar in size to close objects (they
seem to compress space). This difference can be amplified for close up photo.
The final issue that
might prove a challenge is the about of light. Consider that there is only a
fixed amount light coming off a subject so as you use more magnification. The
amount of light landing on a given sized pixel in you sensor gets less. You will
need to either expose longer of move to a wide aperture. Leading to the
possibility of blurring via camera shake or soft focus due to a narrower depth
of field.
I'm deliberately not
telling you how to find the compromise between all these issues. I'd rather you
figured this out yourself. You should have plenty of time to work through your
solution. No need to keep those trial photos this is an exercise in understanding
not make a single great photo. However I found this nice explanation of what depth of
field Is and Isn't on a new YouTube channel called Photography Online. Its
quiet an informative show so perhaps check out some of the earlier episodes as
well.
This is an image
from the window I should have taken as part of my windows snapshots and I missed the
opportunity, because I had other things like eating dinner to distract me. Tonight I was ready BUT anormal standing shot it didn't take in the sky. I had to move the camera down almost to
the floor. Which gave a slightly skewed view.If this is done deliberately this is know as a Dutch Tilt and can add
drama, though strong diagonals in the composition.
Lets just leave it
as a happy accident and I like it. However trying to capture the light at dusk at The Window is now struck off my list of times (ie no Golden Hour photos)
The quality of light
varies a lot during the day but the changes to night and artificial light can
be even more dramatic. This is even more obvious in any photographs we take.
The artificial light normally has a different colour temperature and this may show
up as a colour cast. (orange in my example below)
This colour cast can
be fixed by a process normally know as White Balance, which is just a name for
the task of removing that cast and it will vary depending on where you
undertake it. It can be undertaken in digital cameras by the camera as your
take the picture, often as little icon in the menu for daylight, sunny, cloudy,
artificial light etc).
Jpeg direct from camera showing orange colour cast despite AWB
Most modern Digital cameras have an AWD (Automatic White
Balance) setting that the camera best guesses the colour temperature (usually very well). If
you are taking a jpeg image this adjustment is applied to the image, if you
Capture in RAW the adjustment is applied to the preview but the un-altered data
from the sensor is also stored and the white balance is easy to change later.
RAW image post processed with a WB adjustment
Most Photo
Processing software also has white balance tools built in, and it is possible to make the same adjustments to removed colour casts in the post-processing
step (as I have undertaken in my example above). How the adjustment is carried out
varies with each package but most offer a simple approach using a dropper tool
(that is pointed at part of the image that should be a neutral colour) through to
sliders that adjust the colour temperature in degrees Kelvin (how colour
temperature is measured)
The natural ambient light can be perfect for back lighting close up subjects. This bottle and glass where not cleaned up from a homemade pizza dinner the night before and this simple composition using the soft indirect morning light caught my attention.
Always be on the look out for good lighting opportunities now that you are staying at home.
Because these are large windows they lend themselves to including much of the outside as well as aome detail of the inside.
The obvious pair to this is looking back inside (I need to wait till the afternoon when the sun was streaming in and giving similar illumination to the light outside).
This a great exercise to begin the Window project with. Just take much the same view of your chosen
window at different times of the day. Perhaps even on different days so you see
the differences between a sunny and overcast days. Don't worry that these
photos just look like simple snapshots, they are not intended to be shared.
Set up
the images side by side, before post processing, and evaluate the levels of natural ambient light. What
is the best time of day and type of day to take photos. Of the window? Or
objects in front of the window. Spend a little time doing this, because now you
will be thinking of the quality of light. a great step towards becoming a
better photographer.
Ok this looks a lot like a snapshot but I was actually trying to follow the idea of sticking with the "rule of thirds" (I despise it, its not a rule its a myth but in some ways its close to the golden mean). So this more about trying to get a pleasant composition and the three panels do lend themself to a three-way split.
When you take a photo inside you may not be able to get far enough away from a subject and have to use a wider angle view to get everything in the frame. However, what happened is the edges of the resulting images can tend to bend and often curve in. Typically if you are photographing slightly down the verticals may bend out, if your looking up the verticals can bend in. I'm sure you have seen these effects. So you might have a couple of issues to fix. On really wide-angle lens you get what is often called barrel distortion. Things are wider in the middle and bend in at top and bottom. If you are using an exchangeable lens camera a lot of software (like lightroom, On1 & CaptureOne) will have lens correction tabs and tools which will recognize the lens type and focal length then will correct for this barrel distortion. The second item to fix is the converging or diverging verticals, and for this you should use a tool usually called Keystoning, Some cameras now have this ability built-in, the great little app Snapseed (see Tools/Perspective) can do it on your phone and many large software packages can also do it nicely (but not always called keystoning).
This is a return to
a project that I posted earlier. Infact it is exactly the same project. I just want to
add a bit more detail about the aim.
I expect that the
first day or so you will find a window (you might just have one if you are in
imposed self-isolation so that window will be it) and photograph it at different times
of the day. I also expect the photos will probably just be snapshots. You know
the ones you just pick up the camera aim at the window and snap. There is
nothing wrong with this, just get this approach out of your system for the time being.
The real purpose of
this project is to look deeper at something familiar. Now you should spend some
time looking at the window, looking at light and shadows before you pick up the camera. Think of abstract
composition, perhaps just a small segment of the window. Don't just do it once make some time to return to this project several times over a few days and focus on different aspects.
Don't go too soon,
race around trying every single home based photo project idea. Mainly because
we could be ineffective lockdown for a while, and that time frame will be
determined by the virus infection rates and extent of the epidemic; not
politician or self-appointed experts (please ignore the trendy but hollow
projects, rumors and fake news flooding social media and the populist media,
instead, find afew reliable news sources,
stay informed via them and ignore the rest. Follow your appropriate lockdown
rules).
The second reason to
pace yourself is that this will give you more time to experiment and practice.
Just doing 1,000 hours is a bit of a myth and that practice might be counterproductive if you just repeating bad habits. However, if you use the time to gradually
improve, discover new things and techniques you will emerge at the other end of
this a much better photographer
Rich Sammon has
great advice here as well -
"Surround
yourself (you'll have to use social media oronline services to stay connected while the lockdown is in progress)
with positive/fun people that can help you achieve this goal. Keep this adage in
mind: Stay away from negative people."
This time I am paying homage to a surrealist artist, Rene Magritte, whose man in the bowler hat was made popular again in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. I believe his canvas on the easel that disappears into the scene behind is called The Human Condition. The idea of being able to see through the current situation to the world outside appeals to me during the COVID-19 social isolation period.
