A Runner and Photographer's Journal

While I was doing some folder clean up in my capacious thumb drive last week, I stumbled upon photos which was very dear to me and yet, had not been posted to my blog before. The photo was post processed but then it was left there for some reason or another. Maybe I’ll just send them to Digital Camera magazine for photo of the month. Not sure if it is good enough but hopefully this photo do look good to you.

The photo was taken after the 2009 Pacemakers Wild Wild Run at the Zoo. I liked the way the big guy cuddle up to the lioness and show a more ‘gentle’ side of it.

As for this sweet guy, this photo was taken when he was facing me. I just love the expression of this Orang Utan.

In this photo, it was taken during the dullest morning I had ever come across with and again, I had the idea of turning the photo into Black and White. I can still remember clearly that rain was still falling slightly during this time and while scouring around for a shot suddenly, the patterns of these black tar caught my attention. There were several lines leading out into the jetty which served as a ‘leading line’ on the photo. Immediately, I set my camera upon the tripod and had it standing just 2 feet from the sand to get the best depth of field. Knowing that there is no way I could contort my body like those contort artist does, I just lay flat on my stomach with all the tar stuff soaking my tee. I felt as if being soaked on the most filthy goo I had came across in this lifetime while the smell of diesel dulled all my senses. Trying my best to ignore all these unpleasantness, I just focus myself on the task of composition and getting the exposure right while trying very hard not to stain the camera with remnants of salty sands. After several shots, I could no longer stand the foul stench of oil mixed with sea water and decided to call it a day. However, all efforts are worth to the penny when the photo turned out to be what I envisaged it to be in the first place. With a little more dodging on the highlights, the leading lines did it’s job whereby it led the viewer’s eye with the intention of settling it towards the horizon. It is one of my favourite photos to date and it will continue to do so when time passes by.

This photo was taken in 2008, during my very active period of landscape photography. On the photo above, it was a very dull sunrise (in fact there’s no sun at all) during that day and I could remember vividly, that the rain clouds were floating angrily above me, as if it is about to flood the whole area. So I had this idea of converting the photo to a black and white landscape, seizing the opportunity where the dynamic range of the scene is very narrow. I set the camera on the tripod and had it stood just 3ft above the ground, meaning I was practically lying on very wet sand with all the ship oil goo all over my body and this area is actually an oil container ship jetty, hence the beach is literally covered in black tar. It can be very filthy at times but to me, that becomes the main subject of the photo. Black and White Landscape is a very form of specialized art, where not all photos can be converted into black and white just for the sake of converting. There is an important main criteria that must be met for such photos to be interesting and that is, there must be impact in the photos that we are going to create. So how do we go about creating impactful photos? The answer lies in composition and the dark art of Dodging and Burning.

Another reason not to use flash. So how do we get the blurry water coupled with a sharp subject (my parents) in the front? Simple.

Step 1: Place the camera on the tripod.

Step 2: Turn off your flash.

Step 3: Meter the rear object (as it is the brightest) and make sure that the lighting is sufficient to create a blurry water scene.

Step 4: Read the amount of exposure time required (e.g. in this photo it is 8 seconds).

Step 5: Ask the subject to stand solid and do not move a single limb as per the required time (in this case 8 sec).

Step 6: Snap away and start praying.

There is no amount of photoshopping that can be done to create such scene. It needs to come from the camera itself.

Many things had been said about photography without using flash light / flash gun and I am not going to add a pinch or two of salt on this matter rather, I favour photography without using flash although this would be the opposite of what professionals would usually do. So what’s the small deal about Flashless photography? It’s the highlights and shadows that exist simultaneously with one another. I had said before in my earlier posts on the subject of photography that when there are highlights, there must be shadows in a photo and there is no compromise on this matter. With technology, shadows can be virtually eliminated leaving a so called ‘perfect’ exposure to the viewer’s eyes but to me, the photos are not ‘talking’ to the viewers. Yes, it can be very interesting where there is this wow factor that everything on the photo appeared so crisp and clear but IMO the photo is characterless. Without shadows, the photo took on a monotonous dimension of colour and direction while the object / subject appears to be all flat. I had the opportunity to test and push my skills to the limit during the last Chinese New Year in my Grandpa’s house where I was situated within the hall, without any lighting of sorts and only relying the single light source from two small windows and a large door which opens to the courtyard which acted light a giant light box. The ‘dynamic range’ or let’s called it the exposure latitude, was so great that a small error in metering the subject, would either render the photo over or under exposed. Let’s dig into some photo’s.

In the photo above, kids are the hardest to photograph as they constantly move around. I had to photograph my niece above using ISO800 and with my limited 70-300mm, I had to leave the aperture on it’s widest setting (f5.6). I was lucky to yield a shutter speed of 1/125sec to capture this roving kid. She’s a gem. I love the interplay of the light falling onto her face while rendering all other areas within the shadows, allowing her eyes to be the center of focus.

Of the two pictures above, the second one proved to be much difficult to photograph. My father was carrying his grandniece and the main issue was that my dad’s face was located in the shadows while my niece’s face is within the light. In this situation, I had no choice but to focus on the shadows, just rendering the right amount exposure and to make sure that the highlights weren’t too blown out. I used Photoshop to recover slightly the overblown highlights in this case.

Just by looking into these photographs, you’d have an idea the exposure latitude (or headache) of the situation that I am facing.

For the first two photos of my uncle, getting the exposure right wasn’t that much of a problem however as for my cousin, it’s a much more difficult thing to do. She is sitting against the light hence her facial features are within the shadows. In such cases the photograph must be exposed for shadows. I used Photoshop to slightly bring out her facial features while trying to limit the blown out of highlights. Overall, the photos are still ok in the sense that the blowout portion is only restricted to small percentage of over photograph.

Photography is all about being quick to see your subject’s ‘next action’. Being able to judge what they’re going to do next will yield photos which is somewhat lively.

A beautiful lady with a gem, what more can I say.

Just to drive a point to photographer’s out there…how important is colour management in Photography Post Processing? Very Important I would say. I stumbled this by chance when my Dell notebook went kaput and had to be sent in for repairs, so I had to rely on my company’s computer  with CRT monitor to do my work. Surprisingly, when I navigated to my website, the CRT monitor showed a more natural rendition of colours on my photo compared to my notebook and I was already wondering why was the case? Painstakingly, I looked for answers during evenings and I was quite dumbfounded that some of the pro’s mentioned that our monitors (or most monitors) out there are not displaying correct colour and colour temperature. The reason for this is that, at lower colour temperature (9000 kelvins and above) the supposedly white would look very bright to the human eye and there is no way we can ever discover that there is actually a blue cast appearing on photos if side by side comparisons on colour temperature output aren’t made. Hence we tend to over compensate by post processing which made things even worse.

After gathering some info on what is ‘supposed’ to be correct, I reset my CRT to a cooler (or higher) colour temperature of 6500 Kelvin just to see what the effect would be. I was actually quite surprised that my photos turned out to be very natural and this is what I had aspired to see all along. Incidentally, I compared another monitor which had a setting of 9300 Kelvin and was surprised that there is a blue cast appearing on the monitor while my photos looked ‘odd’ under those circumstances.

Setting the correct colour temperature and colour in the monitor alone is inadequate, it is important that you need to enable your internet browser to display correct colours too and that is by enabling colour management within web browsers. Currently, only Safari V2.0 and FireFox V3.0 above can be enabled with colour management to display correct colours. For Internet Explorer, I doubt there is such a thing (they are not good at rendering HTML codes too).

I was lucky that my photos turned out to be ‘colour correct’ in my case because within the PhotoShop, I enabled colour management to display colour using sRGB profile which I would think most web browsers and monitors are displaying today. Although it is by far perfect (Adobe RGB Wide Gamut is really beautiful), it is still the only medium where your photos would ‘look’ correct in most monitors and with the increase in use of the internet to display images, it is even more important to get your photos colour managed.

Yes, as the post had suggested,  I am shooting myself on my foot. Why? If you’d remembered in my last posting, I had written this:

“It’s not that I hated HDR but the appearance of a HDR photo is too unnatural and the exposure latitude is severely limited / retarded by the software. My philosophy towards light is that, ‘If there is bright highlights, then there must be hard shadows in a photo’. Sorry guys, but seriously if you were to search my photo database, I don’t process my photos using HDR’s (disclaimer: who knows what’ll happen in the future?).”

Ok, now I am going to claim the disclaimer as I had just post processed my HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo and I had inserted this photo into my photo album. Ouch, I had just slapped myself multiple times on the face…

I got up 5 am as usual for all my sunrise shots while looking into the sky from my window, the rain had stopped and I was more than glad since it had been pouring the day before. I could see some stars in the night sky and in my heart, I was quite happy that it may be a good outing after all. While driving towards the point of interest, suddenly flashes of light appeared on the sky and I screamed ‘No! No! No!…not rain again!?” and upon reaching the place, I had a feeling that things may change for the worse. By 6.30am, I still could not see the sun and I knew it is going to be disappointing day for my trip and imagine, getting up that early and just to see that your efforts are wasted…So in my mind, what am I going to do with the scene in front of me? HDR popped up after a brief 5 minutes of thought. So there I go, went about doing my stuff and due to the nature of HDR post processing, there is a minimum requirement that you need at least 3 photos of the same scene but with different exposure of -2, 0, +2. All these photos add up to quite a lot of space and that morning alone, I shot 800Mb’s worth of photo in RAW format.

Upon reaching back, I started my work on the photo and was utterly surprised that my skills took a dive where after my initial evalutation, there was only a set of photos that were usable out of that 800Mb! GOSH!

In my mind, I just didn’t want any ‘normal’ HDR photos but something that is realistic enough and can be seen as a HDR. As a matter of fact, I just didn’t like the normal HDR post-processing because of the flatness in dynamic range and the photo would look retarded. So in the shot above, I had post processed 2 sets of HDR, one for the sky and the other for the foreground. After adjusting for the white balance and colour correction, I went ahead with layering both sets of HDR’s together. In order to enhance the shadows and highlights, I kept both layers separate while adjusting the curves for the sky and also the foreground. Next, I added a touch of colour burning process to further charactrize the shadows and also colour filter to give a hint of warmth to the shot. Finally, I sharpened the photos on each layer before combining them together. I used cloning tool to further touch up the areas that would seem ‘out of place’ because of the combination and finally, resizing the photos.

The weather had taken an about turn in JB and became terribly hot.  I wasn’t sure why the sudden change but then, I welcomed it with open arms. Since September, it had been raining day in and day out without even having a chance to catch a glimpse of the sun hence, a decrease in my running activity as well as photography. With a sudden change in weather, I took the opportunity to venture out to whet my appetite for photography and with such a clear weather, there is nothing much that I would like to ask for more. I packed all of my lenses (I don’t have much anyway) just in case I needed them and made sure that my Sigma 24-70 f2.8 was cleaned thoroughly.

Upon reaching the photography point, it dawned on me that there was absolutely too much light going around where everywhere was so bright. The skies were devoid of any clouds and made the situation a very tough one in terms of exposure latitude where hard shadows and bright highlights existed within very tight confines. In my mind I was already thinking of how to expose for such exposure latitude and after scanning around the environment, my only option is to post process it later using extensive layering process. In my term, such extensive layering process would usually involve more than 3 shots with different exposure of the same scene while the usual fanfare would be to process the photo using HDR, instead I would stack these layers upon one another and slowly pick the sections with the best exposure while revealing it on the uppermost layer. It is the most painful way of post processing but then, it is the best where ‘lights and shadows’ are naturally retained without those hideous HDR appearances. It’s not that I hated HDR but the appearance of a HDR photo is too unnatural and the exposure latitude is severely limited / retarded by the software. My philosophy towards light is that, ‘If there is bright highlights, then there must be hard shadows in a photo’. Sorry guys, but seriously if you were to search my photo database, I don’t process my photos using HDR’s (disclaimer: who knows what’ll happen in the future?).

My first sets consist of photos to ‘test’ my light meter whether it would be confused by the light bouncing around the barrel and indeed, it severely underexposed my photos because there is simply too much light going around. Then out came my tripod, where it is the most essential piece of equipment for such multiple exposure shots and as usual I go about doing my business. Oh yes, there is also my trusty Lee Graduated ND 0.75 Filter where you cannot leave home without it and it helped me in this situation.

There is no shortage of photographers coming to this place, where most of them would carry a DSLR and busy clicking like there is no tomorrow. As for me, I would have been considered as an old timer in this place hence, my relaxed attitude whenever I am photographing it. While photographing, there was this guy whom was so busy getting all the shots, he ventured far out to the sea (it was low tide) to get his shots and while observing his antics, I did find that he is cute. However, as for me, it is not the quantity that counts but the quality that you can produce from your photos. There were several unthinkable areas that I had ventured to which I think, captured the attention of this photographer hence, he occupy the photographed area immediately after I had completed my work there. That’s what I mean by slowing down and you’d get more photos out from your trip because you can ‘see’ better.

It was 2 hours after I had reached this place where the sun is dipping into the horizon. I packed up my gears while there were some others whom are busy snapping into the horizon I decided to stop so that I can enjoy the sight of the beautiful sun setting. I just took my gears with me, headed towards the wooden jetty and sat there with my legs stretched out. While enjoying the warm breeze and looking into the warm amber coloured horizon I was thinking, when is my next chance of looking at such fabulous sunset?