black and white | alan frost photography

Flying in a new direction perhaps?

As far as my landscape photography is concerned I consider myself to be something of a traditionalist. I tend to adopt a rather ‘classical’ approach which may produce a very pleasing image, (I hope so anyway!) but it may not cross the boundary into something which might be remotely described as artistic.

Having given this a little more thought, I remembered an image I took back in February which might lend itself to a different and arguably more artistic treatment . So here is the result of my attempt at being a bit more arty!

In Flight
The crow flies away from the gorse, which is surrounded by the dune grasses
of East Head on the West Sussex coast.

As well as using my normal processing in Photoshop I have also applied ‘grain’ using Silver Efex Pro2, which I think adds something to this particular shot. It wouldn’t work for every image but I was keen to create a more atmospheric look, as well as having a bit of fun in the making.

I have to say that I was inspired to take a fresh look at my work by the work of the Welsh photographer, Chris Tancock, and in particular his on-going project called Beating the Bounds, where he explores ‘five fields over a period of five years’ and documents the changes which take place over time. Chris describes himself not as a landscape photographer but as a rural documentary photographer. I would simply call him an artist, who through his excellent work tells an intimate story about the world that surrounds him. If you have not come across his work then do click through to his website on one of the links.

Does this mark a photographic change in direction? Probably not, but I do think its very important to try new things, be willing to experiment and to challenge established techniques. At the same time it’s essential to enjoy the whole process, irrespective of the end result. Is it art? I don’t know, but I do know that I had a lot of fun making the image and that’s what really matters as far as I am concerned.

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London cityscapes

Since November of last year the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London has been staging a retrospective exhibition of work by Ansel Adams called ‘From the Mountains to the Sea’. As it was due to finish this month I did not want to miss the opportunity to see original photographs by this inspirational artist. So a day trip to the Capital was planned which also gave me the chance to take in some of the sights of London and of course take a few photographs.

Before heading off to Greenwich I also visited another photographic exhibition at Somerset House called ‘ Landmark – The Fields of Photography’. From there I walked eastwards along The Embankment towards St Paul’s Cathedral, The City of London and the Financial Sector. At Tower Bridge I used the Docklands Light Railway to Cutty Sark, the nearest station for The Maritime Museum. I very much enjoyed seeing areas of London which I had not visited before and here are a slection of images I took that day.

A view of The Shard from The Millenium Bridge

A mix of ‘old and new’ – St Pauls Cathedral and its reflection in the
contemporary buildings of One Change

The Lloyds Building – home of the Insurance Company LLoyds of London

The Lloyds Building frames another more recent icon in the City –
The Gherkin

The Gherkin or as it is formally known as 30 St Mary Axe

I also wanted to try my hand at some abstract geometric compositions of the the modern office blocks which are now starting to dominate the London skyline.

……..and finally an older couple walked hand in hand up the ramp leading to the Millennium Bridge. I assume they too were enjoying the sights and sounds of this remarkable city.

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Lake District 121 – pre-visualisation and post processing techniques

This is the penultimate entry about my 121 workshop with Paul Gallagher in the Lake District. There will be a final post concerned with ‘black and white’ printing to complete the series.

When Paul and I first met in the lounge of The Crowpark Hotel in Keswick, one of the things I said I would like to learn more about was how to pre-visualise the finished photograph before releasing the shutter. To start to think of the photographic workflow as one cohesive process, as opposed to a number of separate steps from seeing, to taking, to processing and finally to print or uploading to the web. This one step followed by another had largely been my way of doing things to date, so I wanted to try and link these stages together and change the way I thought about my approach to photography.

Common sense told me that what happens during each stage must have an impact on the next, and so on down the line. I guessed that by pre-visualising the finished image at the outset, decisions could be made at each stage, as the finished image could already be seen in the mind’s eye. The skill therefore would be to know what might be possible and to take the photograph with this is mind.

For me this idea of thinking ahead was best demonstrated when Paul and I drove through Newlands Valley. I spotted a small group of trees on the horizon and although when we first arrived at this scene the clouds were universally grey, there was some movement in the sky, so we set up our cameras for the shot in the hope that the sky and light would improve…….and after about 20 minutes it did.

Straight out of the camera the RAW image looked like this; not too inspiring you might think but Paul had already talked me through his pre-visualisation of the ‘finished’ shot. I used a 1 or may be 2 stop graduated filter just to balance the exposure values between the sky and the foreground.

1

Back in the digital darkroom and using Lightroom I applied a ‘preset’ to boost the clarity, remove any chromatic aberration and apply a modest amount of sharpening. The next stage was to adjust the saturation and luminance of the blue channel, knowing that when the image was converted to black and white there would be the opportunity to increase the contrast in the sky. Having made these adjustments the RAW image now looked like this.

2

An improvement on the first image but hardly a photograph to get excited about. The next stage was to import the RAW file into photoshop and then convert the image to monochrome. Using ‘Image’ – ‘Adjustment’ – ‘Black and white’ a window opens which allows you to make adjustments to a range colour channels. Having boosted the saturation and luminance of the blue sky in Lightroom, I further darkened the blue channel to a value of -80. The resulting image is shown below.

3

You might be forgiven for thinking this image is now worse than the colour version and I would probably agree but the next stage really brings the photograph to life. A ‘levels’ adjustment layer was applied and now the image looks like this.

4

However some further fine tuning in photoshop was required. A number of ‘curves’ adjustment layers were made to selected areas of the image, before finally sharpening the trees and the foreground, but not the sky. The final adjustment was to crop the photo to balance the composition. Paul is a great believer in cropping to suit the image and not be concerned whether or not the end result conforms to one of the common aspect ratios – i.e. 3×2, 4×3, 5×4 or 1×1. Why be constrained by uniformity if a more custom approach is adopted and enhances each individual image? When I went on the workshop to the Isle of Eigg with Bruce Percy he was a very keen advocate of 5×4 or 1×1, couldn’t stand 3×2, but rarely I think breaks away from the first two aspect ratios. His choice of course but it was good to hear another view. For now I will keep my options open and simply show the finished image.

Three Trees – the finished photograph
OMD EM5 on a tripod with Panasonic f2.8 35-100mm lens
42mm f13 1/100sec ISO200

Personally I really like this shot. I love it’s simplicity, the shape and size of the three trees and how their alignment echoes the diagonal line of the clouds. The ability to pre-visualise this shot at the outset is a great skill and is at the very heart of the photographic process. It’s a skill which I doubt is ever mastered but with practice out in the field my knowledge can only grow with time; after all Paul has been practising his art of fine black and white photography for nearly 30 years. For me though it has opened my eyes to what is possible and that in my view is a great place from which to start.

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Lake District 121 – Post Processing

One of the things I was keen to learn from Paul Gallagher during my recent workshop in The Lake District, was the art, and it is an art, of post processing a RAW file to produce a strong black and white image.

Up until my trip away I had used a combination of Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro2. Rarely would I use Photoshop even though it’s regarded as the ‘daddy’ of all software programs for image editing. Lightroom shares the same Raw converter as Photoshop and is a wonderful tool for your photographic workflow, from importing the images, key-wording, developing and finally to print or uploading to the web. However it does not touch Photoshop when it comes to the fine art of processing a really good black and white image. However I was daunted by the fact that the skills and knowledge to use Photoshop well, take a long time, so I was delighted when Paul demonstrated a few simple techniques which with a little practice I have now been able to apply to the shots I took on the trip.

In the following example the first image on the left is the original RAW file with no adjustments. It’s just as it was when imported from the SD card into Lightroom. The reason for the blue colour cast is down to the fact that this was a 60second long exposure using the Hi-Tech 10 stop ND filter. The second image on the right has simply been converted to black and white and whilst the blue cast has been removed, the image is very flat. The third image is the finished photograph.

RAW file – straight out of the camera

RAW file with simple black and white conversion

Wastwater Rocks – the final image

So what simple steps were taken in Photoshop to arrive at this end result?

Well, firstly in Lightroom I applied a preset which boosted the clarity to a value of 15 and which also applied some sharpening. Amount 50 – Radius 0.5 – Detail 50 and Masking 0. The preset also eliminates any chromatic aberration created by the lens I used for this shot – the Panasonic f2.8 12 – 35mm. On this occasion CA would not have been visible given the blue colour cast.

Secondly I exported the image from Lightroom into Photoshop CS5. Using ‘image – adjustment’ I then converted the RAW image to black and white. This was followed by a ‘levels’ adjustment layer to move the black and white points on the histogram, to give a full range of tonal values. The ‘mid point’ can also be adjusted if required but was not changed for this particular shot.

The next stage was to make local adjustments to certain sections or specific areas of the image using the lasso tool to select the area and then apply a curves adjustment layer. The choice of ‘pixel feather’ is critical to make sure that the adjustment only applies to the area required. This is really where a small but subtle change can make quite a difference. I don’t consider myself to be an artist but there is no question that these small changes are the equivalent of applying the finishing brush strokes to a painting. Poor technique in both cases could ruin a good image, the only advantage of Photoshop is that you can ‘step backwards’ or delete a layer. With a painting it would be much more difficult if not impossible to undo. Knowing when to stop is also very important. An image can very quickly look overworked. Once all the adjustments had been made all the layers were ‘flattened’. (Layers – flatten image).

The last stage was to apply further sharpening using filters – unsharpen mask. Not all areas of an image require or should be sharpened; the sky for example, so a layer mask should used. I created a duplicate layer of the background layer and applied the sharpening to this new layer so the ‘original’ background layer remained unaltered. Once I was happy with the amount of sharpening (easily previewed) the again I ‘flattened’ both layers.

Finally I ‘saved as’ a TIFF file and gave the image a title. Once done this new image is saved in the same folder in Lightroom, so it appears alongside the original image. This is a great advantage as I can still go back and carry out another conversion should I wish.

I think there is still a place for Silver Efex Pro2 in my workflow. After all it has been my default plug in for black and white conversions until now. However my eyes have been opened to new ways of working and I am delighted to have learnt some new skills.

Paul talked about other processing techniques and choices that need to be made before post Processing even starts and I will cover some of these key points in my next entry.

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Lake District 121 with Paul Gallagher

I realise it’s been a few weeks since I posted an entry on this blog. The reason is quite simple. A couple of weeks ago I visited the Lake District for a few days in the company of Paul Gallagher, a renowned UK based landscape photographer who just loves black and white. He is also a Master Printer for Epson; so what he doesn’t know about printing just isn’t worth knowing! It’s also been a very busy time for me personally and I wanted to reflect on what I had learnt before posting my thoughts and any of the images.

The photograph below was taken on the day I arrived in The Lake District before I met up with Paul the next morning. It was late in the afternoon so I had a limited amount of daylight left to take any shots. Blea Tarn was frozen over and I processed the image using a combination of Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro2. As it happens I would not using this plug-in again for post processing…..Paul was about to demonstrate to me the power of Photoshop……so more about this in a future post!

Blea Tarn with the Langdale Pikes in the background

The setup for the 121 or personal workshop was to spend two days out and about taking images, learning about camera technique, camera settings, composition, histogram and the use of filters etc. The third day would be spent back at his studio processing the images and producing large A3+ size prints. In essence I was keen to bridge the gaps between camera work in the field, processing and printing. In other words to develop a work flow whereby my photographic thinking or pre-visualisation at the time of taking the shot would be influenced by how I wanted the final image to look once processed and printed back in the ‘digital’ darkroom. The aim would be to combine the three elements into one, as opposed to treating them as distinctly separate processes where coherent thinking doesn’t overlap.

This will therefore be the first of a series of probably quite short posts about the various topics which we covered over the three days, including of course, some of the images taken. I should add that I had an extra day free in the middle of the 121, which gave me time to put into practice some of the techniques and ideas we had talked about in the first two days. In my opinion this was invaluable, as I could take some shots unsupervised by Paul before returning to his studio. He also set me a few challenges…..would I succeed or would I fail?

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