Exercise : Highlight clipping.

 Outline: Using a scene with plenty of contrast and an auto setting with exposure adjustment, make a series of photographs, adjusting the exposure setting to alter the area of highlight clipping.


I took my series of photos in the garden on a cloudy afternoon. The sky being overcast with white clouds would prove a decent experiment for the highlight clipping exercise. I searched the menu of my camera but unfortunately my camera does not have a highlight clipping warning, so I shot the images anyway in RAW and then used the highlight clipping warning in photoshop to complete the exercise as best I could.

I set the camera to auto setting where I could adjust the exposure and the aperture was set to F5 and the shutter speed was set to 1/30. I used the auto ISO setting.

The first image without adjusting the exposure:

Even by looking at this image here, we can see that the sky in the image is completely white. The garage roof and the childrens play house are both white also, but here we can see a distinction between each of these details and the whiteness of the sky. There is a definite outline to where these subjects end and where the clouds begin. With the highlight clipping visible:

We can see the sky is completely highlighted with it being washed out. There is even warning on the top level of the childrens slide. The sky has no different levels of colour at all, it purely shows that all colour and visible information has been lost. The garage roof has also lost information but here we have a break that can be seen between where the colour has been lost and the actual white colour of the guttering.

By increasing the exposure by 1 fstop, we can lose even more information.

I notice by this image that the visible break between the garage roof / play house and the sky has pretty much disappeared. The shed roof still has some colour but this is also a lot whiter than in the previous image. This is worth mentioning as a visible break between white and nearly white.

The highlight clipping warning emphasizes these issues, showing more colour being washed out on the garage and play house. The slide is almost all washed out here and we have even lost information in some of the plants. The shed roof still has colour showing there is still a visible break between it and the sky.

However, just by decreasing the original image by 1 fstop we can see a huge difference.

The sky in this image does not appear to be white anymore, more of an 'off white' colour. There is a grey colour cast along the roof of the garage, showing a shadow and therefore, extra detail to differentiate between the garage roof white and the cloud in the sky. There seems to be a lot more detail through shadows in this image however, the colour saturation still shows no detailing through the sky. But then if we were to amend the image as a whole to highlight the detailing in the clouds, I am sure detail through other areas would be compromised.

With the highlight clipping warning on, we see that there are no areas of lost information in this image.

Going back to the original image and using the recovery tool, I moved the slider to the right and noticed a significant change with the recovery at '20'.

Here, we see that almost all the information has now been restored to the sky and we only have slight clipping warnings along the edges of the subjects against the sky. By the time the slider reached '26', all the highlight clipping warnings had disappeared.

I did experiment with the slider but after slider got to '26' (above), there was no change to the image at all no matter how far to the left I moved the slider.

Conclusion: This was a very interesting and necessary exercise to explore the highlight clipping facility and after all the evidence shown through using the highlight clipping warning in photoshop, I'm slightly disappointed that my camera does not have this facility built in. However, looking at the images above, I much prefer the image where the exposure was decreased by 1 fstop compared to the 'recovered' original image. I feel there is more detail available in that image and with more shadows it gives the image more of a 'cloudy/overcast' feel to it.

Middle finger news - The Defiled fan site inclusion.

Wow! I have just been made aware that the photos that I submitted for assignment 1, as well as a few others, have been included on the fan website 'Middle Finger News' for the band that was photographed 'The Defiled'.
Each photo has been tagged with my copyright as well and I can say that I'm very happy :)

If anyone wishes to have a look for themselves, they can be found here.

HAPPY! :)

Exercise: Sensor Linear Capture.

Outline: Simulate a linear image quite simply by applying the opposite type of curve.

The image below is a jpeg from a recent trip on a nice sunny afternoon with plenty of lighting.

After loading up Elements i noticed that there was no option to convert the image from or to 16 bits. I think that it was already set at 16 bits as the link to alter it to 8 bits was unavailable...

So heading into the next task, I then noticed that by going into 'Image' there was no 'adjustments' option and no visible 'curves' option but after a bit of searching I found the option to adjust colour curves.

So using this option, I screen printed the image as it starts, showing the histogram with the points stretched over the whole graph.

I then altered the curve to one similar to that shown in the diagram...

This screen shot shows the before and after image with the curve I have created. I then saved the linear image and took a screen shot of the new histogram.

As noted in the exercise, the tonal values have now squashed over to the right compared to the original image.

I then altered this darker, linear image and amended the curve to that of the gamma correction curve in the example.

We now have an image of the two pictures, the dark linear one and the lightened one.  The shadows have been lightened, as have the highlights.

Here is the final, re lightened image with the histogram showing the tonal values leveled out again. This image still differs from the original with a smaller difference between the highlight and shadowed areas than in the original. The tonal values in the histogram are a lot lower and flatter than in the original as well. 

Conclusion: The ability to alter the curves has a dramatic effect on the image and the exercise has given a good insight into what the camera's processor does to the image once it has been captured. 

Inspiration.

So, the first assignment has been completed and I can say I'm very happy with it. I know I've said it before but I'm really taking a huge liking to 'gig' photography. It's truly a case of practice makes perfect but I get such a sense of achievement when I pull off some decents shots, especially with the challenges of bad lighting etc.
I have recently come across two photographers who are exceptional in this field in my opinion.
They are Scott Chalmers and Fiaz Farrelly.
These guys take some amazing photographs in the music and gig field and I get great inspiration from them to achieve the images that I aim to get.

I'm looking to start on the next chapter of this course now and am looking forward to receiving tutor feedback for this first assignment.

Assignment 1 - Workflow.

I have had a good think about what subject I would like to use for this first assignment. My two main hobbies are photography and music and so I love being able to combine the two. I have two gig's coming up in the next few weeks and think I would like to use one of those for this first assignment.
At this moment, I can produce an advance workflow for going into this assignment and then I will complete any amendments and comments at the time of shooting and record them.

WORKFLOW


For starters, I will not be able to take my DSLR camera into the gig venue so therefore I will be using my compact camera. This will eliminate the need to charge my camera battery and sort any lenses but in preparation I will still need to check that I have enough space on my memory card and that I have replacement AA batteries just in case.
I will also not require my tripod due to the nature of the event. I will be photographing from the crowd and therefore unable to use a tripod but I am aware that the low lighting will be an issue and my compact camera does not have the ability to amend an ISO setting, so this will be a challenge to face at arrival at the venue.

I will be hoping to get a good spot at the front of the crowd to be able to get some good performance shots of the band. If at all possible, I'd like to be able to move about to at least three different positions/camera angles of the stage but depending on the volume of other attendees, I predict this will be highly unlikely. So I hope to arrive early enough to get a decent enough spot to be able to at least overview the whole stage area.

I will still have to adjust my camera settings, even though i'm only using my compact camera. I can still adjust the aperture/shutter speed or depending on the shooting conditions, I can shoot manual. I wont be able to use my flash so I will have to just be prepared to decide the best option when I get there.

This is obviously a timed shoot as I will be trying to get the best possible shots of the entire gig in the time the gig is on, so I really need to be able to capture the essence of the band and the atmosphere within that time scale through poses, expression and crowd participation. I am there to enjoy the music as well so I don't intend on taking pictures all night. I plan on making use of the 3 song rule for myself to see if I can capture what I need in that time scale but I can adjust accordingly. During shooting I would also need to check my histogram and use on the spot development to negotiate a change in any settings etc due to possible lighting changes.

Following the gig, I will be uploading all images from my memory card to photoshop elements to evaluate the images in a separate selection process.
Here, I will be using the five step process of refinement to narrow down my images, taking out noticeably unusable images immediately and then producing the best 6-12 images as my final choices. Along the way I will be labeling my selection choices for each step.

I will then save all my images and selection processes to my external hard drive and exhibit my final choices in an online web gallery for assessment.

I now have a couple of weeks until the gig so I will continue with the course during this time and will come back to this assignment then.

GIG SHOOT
In practice the shoot pretty much followed to the advance workflow.
On arriving at the venue, the lighting was a lot worse than I had originally expected and so even after altering my shutter speed/ aperture, the lighting was just too dim and therefore the best option was to use both the auto setting and the auto scene recognition settings. I was also able to use my flash after all so that was a another amendment to the original workflow.
I originally stated that I wanted to possibly move about to a number of positions but in practice, this was not possible. The venue was very small and without an actual 'stage' , so the gig was very intimate but also very crowded and there was no possibility of moving to shoot at different angles.
The gig lasted for about an hour for the main band so this was my shooting time. I took a wide variety of photographs during this time including different band members, poses and member positioning. I also used on the spot development to check images taken to keep tabs on my progress.

Following the gig, all photos were uploaded to photoshop elements to start the selection process and to evaluate the most appropriate images for editing. I have listed each process of selection below:

All images

I had a large selection of images to work with, therefore I uploaded them all to photoshop elements and then sorted through them, taking out all the immediate unworkable ones (see below).

Technical edit

Removing all the above images left me with the task of looking through the rest a bit closer and then picking out my 'selects' which are the ones I am most happy with. These start a group of images that I continued to narrow down to the final images I would use to represent the gig.

Selects

With my group of selects I had a lot that looked the same and a lot of one band member so I then made my selection of 'first selects'.

First Selects

Again, I still had a lot of the same poses, etc but I managed to go back through and review these selects again  to choose my final favourite photographs of the night.

Group and Review

I decided at this stage to start editing all of the above images, as I wanted to include all of these in my personal portfolio, and then I would go about choosing my final edits afterwards. With the music being heavy rock, I wanted to edit the images so that the final result would reflect the genre of the music. I edited each photo in PICNIK as it has some great effects including sepia, grayscale, vignette, cross process and a number of others that I chose to use. The final images all have a selection of these effects to enhance the theme I was wanting to create. After looking through these edited images I decided on my final images.

Final Images

I have displayed these final edited images in a web gallery. This can be found here:

Workflow web gallery

I am extremely happy with my final choices and the final edits of these images. I have a real passion for photographing music events, due to the fact that I am joining two of my greatest passions. I think that the essence of the gig has really been captured through these images and that is what I was trying to do.