“Seen Better Days”: Interpretive Postprocessing of Photos

I was going to call this collection “Dilapidation” until I got a deliciously evocative shot of an alleyway in a rundown town and I didn’t think “dilapidated” really described alleyways. Whereas my historic collection captures the Enduring–buildings such as at New Paltz’s Historic Huguenot Street or in nearby Hurley or the Kingston Stockade District that have been deliberately and lovingly preserved for their aesthetic and historic value–”Seen Better Days” rather preserves the Ephemeral–before the building gets demolished or renovated or succumbs to the ravages of the weather.

My “Seen Better Days” collection lends itself particularly well to black-and-white processing. This can be classic black-and-white, some version of sepia or another “antiquing” sort of look. Some photos can be processed in multiple ways, depending on the interpretation I want to give them. Here I’m going to show you one photo in three different interpretations.

The location of the building is best identified vaguely as “somewhere in the Catskills.” It was for sale and I understand that it has recently been purchased, so obviously I needed to do my work before the new owners do theirs. As I pointed out in my previous blog, if you shoot in color, before you can make a successful monochrome image you have to start with an acceptable color original. The color version here was processed first in Raw and then in Photoshop CS5: some cropping, straightening (it can be difficult to attend to such details during the actual capture when you and your tripod are standing in the middle of a road), enhancing the contrast (and, in Raw, always the clarity), vibrance, and saturation.

I wanted the first monochrome to be a starkly clinical black-and-white image. Starting with the color image here, I processed it with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, choosing the Fine Art Process preset and increasing the structure to 72. Even though it’s “starkly clinical,” I consider that it nicely straddles the line between Fine Art and Documentary work. (I’d appreciate your comments on this!)

Then I wanted to “reproduce” an old, faded photograph that someone may have kept because they, or their family (parents? grandparents?), lived there a long time ago–during those “better days.” Again using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, I chose the Antique Plate preset, increased the brightness to 60 and decreased the structure to -4. (I’m obsessed with high structure these days and so it was an exercise in artistic discipline for me to see that I can occasionally live without it and still produce a satisfactory photo!) As a “crossover” I think this interpretation is also a candidate for my Fine Art “Modern Vintage” series.

I’ve sent the photos to some friends and have received different opinions on which ones people liked best. I’d like to hear from you: Which one is your favorite, and why?

Processing Photos for Black and White

The original unprocessed jpg

Two weekends in a row I was on field trips with other photographers and both times the light was such that I knew I was going to end up doing a lot of processing in black and white. It happens sometimes, especially on a very bright, contrasty day or on a day with dull, boring light (as distinct from the kind of overcast that, say, makes colors on flowers and trees pop).

The second of the weekends began at Sandy Hook in New Jersey. The historic Sandy Hook Lighthouse is the oldest in the country, and there I was, looking at it in the most boring light conditions imaginable. But this wasn’t going to stop me–I like to photograph lighthouses and I was determined to make something of it. Fortunately there was a pretty decent hint of clouds, not one of those pale, totally blank skies. OK. Let’s go for a composition that’s a bit different and that has the clouds surrounding the tower. After all, I had been to Sandy Hook twice before on bright, sunny, blue-sky days and taken the typical “postcard” compositions.

Another problem was that the lighthouse appeared to have acquired considerably more rust stains than I remembered from my last visit in January 2010. Those would have to go.

Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, who was also a master orchestrator, said that you can’t orchestrate well what hasn’t been well composed. This observation has more than one application in photo processing. For one thing, you can’t take a poorly lit photo, add a B&W layer (or slide the saturation lever all the way down), and think, presto, problem solved. You need to do some optimizing of your original first, preferably starting in Raw. Increase the contrast, increase clarity, work with Levels. Only then can you begin to work with theB&W.

The processed image

Sometimes when you decide to process a photo in B&W you may be open to anything, have no particular notion of what you want your end result to be, and so you try the presets in the B&W layer in Photoshop or (for the adventurous) the whole gamut of presets in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 until you find one that’s a good starting point, then you start tweaking various settings until you get a result you can live with. (I’m currently in a high-structure craze and sometimes deliberately force myself to try something “soft” just to remind myself that there are other ways of making my photo look.) Better yet, though, is when you start with an idea of how you want it to look, then try the presets until you find the one that corresponds to what you envision, then do the necessary tweaking.  That’s what happened with this lighthouse photo. I wanted that dark tone and contrast in the sky–then, as an experiment, decided to see how bright I could make the lighthouse (including giving it a digital “paint job”). The Red Filter did the trick. This was done with a B&W adjustment layer in Photoshop; I wasn’t envisioning anything as adventurous as what you can get with Silver Efex Pro–not just now, anyway.

If you want a great wealth of B&W tips from the really top pros, let me recommend two things. First, Harold Davis’s book Creative Black & White. Harold is a superb teacher. Check out his website too. Also, Rob Sheppard has been getting into a lot of B&W work of late, and he teaches an online course at BetterPhoto. Rob, too, is an excellent teacher, and this course has videos as well. Check it out, and check out Rob’s fine nature and photography blog.

Art by Accident: Unusual Photo of a Beloved Rhode Island Icon

Like any photographer who is active in Rhode Island, I’ve shot the Newport-Jamestown Bridge countless times over the last few years. At dusk, in early morning, with or without the Goat Island Lighthouse–I’ve done all these and yet will never tire of photographing this lovely bridge over and over again.

The above photograph, taken shortly after sunrise on a bitterly cold January weekend recently, is unique. At least, unique in my collection. And it happened quite by accident.  Here’s the original image, right out of my Nikon D90:

How did I get this original capture, and how did I transform it into the artsy version you see at the top of this post?

As I said, it was bitterly cold. And very, very windy. Not always conducive to thinking first and shooting after. So I set up the camera on the tripod, focused, dialed in what I thought were the right settings in Aperture Priority, and fired away.

Except that I wasn’t in Aperture Priority–the camera was still in Manual, from a shoot the previous afternoon. My usual method of shooting is to start in Aperture Priority but then, if the blinkies warn me that I’ve overexposed or (less frequently) I see that the result is underexposed, I correct it by readjusting in Manual. That’s what I had done the day before, during “normal” daylight, and I had forgotten to switch the camera back to Aperture Priority. Hence the extreme underexposure. The settings were f/14 at 1/125 sec. with -0.3 exposure compensation, and ISO 320.  Not conducive to overwhelming brightness early on a January morning.

Normally I would simply have deleted the image after upload, but this time curiosity got the better of me. Could anything be done with it? So I opened the image in Raw (I always shoot Raw + jpg), adjusted the exposure, then opened it in Photoshop CS5 (my editing program of choice) and simply adjusted a few sliders. No filters, no plug-ins, nothing other than the most basic tools CS5 has available. And I deliberately didn’t de-noise it either; that’s what gives it the “artsy” look, almost as if it were a colorized version of a charcoal drawing.

Could I repeat this crazy experiment successfully? I don’t know–but given the opportunity, I’ll certainly try.

The picture (the Photoshopped one, not the original) is available for purchase on my website at the special Print of the Month price for the entire month of March. Act now–by March 31–to get your own print of this iconic bridge in one of four different sizes.

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Above you see a selection of some of my more “normal” photos, as purchased and framed for a corporate office. The purchaser specifically wanted to display images from my “Windows, Doors, Reflections” collection, and here you see one way of framing them. “Window, Doors, Reflections” is an exciting series for me and one to which I am always adding new images. If you’re interested in a themed display for your home or office, why not take a look at this gallery on my website? You can create your own themes, perhaps from my lighthouse images, or my Monochrome or historically-oriented Modern Vintage collection. I look forward to your visit!

More Photo Opportunities at Highland

Along with the “fine art” images I shared in my previous post, the Highland trip offered a complete change of pace to environmental photojournalism. I’ve always admired the work of Robert Glenn Ketchum in this realm, and of course, his book on the Hudson Valley is especially dear to my heart. Ketchum shows how you can make beautiful images while, at the same time, documenting environmental degradation.

Now, I’m far from claiming that my work is anything like comparable to Ketchum’s, but I do feel a responsibility to use my skills to document and raise awareness of the harmful effects of both manmade and natural disasters on the environment. It began with a shot I took a few years ago of the controversial Indian Point Nuclear Plant in Buchanan, NY–the plant ironically framed by trees from my vantage point across the Hudson at Stony Point–and more recently, I was encouraged to pursue this work during a portfolio review with well-known photographer William Geddes.

The aftermath of Hurricane Irene left no end of opportunities to document the destruction in the Hudson Valley, and back in the summer I photographed various places, including this very spot from above, looking down from the Walkway over the Hudson, and posted images in my Hudson Valley blog. One of those evocative images, a wide-angle view of the swollen, brown, green-flecked river, was awarded Pick of the Week in the Environmental Photojournalism category on the website of Nature Photographers Network, of which I’m a member.  Now I found myself down on that very shore, eye level with the persisting effects of the storm. The first picture (above left) shows how part of this wooden walkway, part of an outdoor area belonging to a local restaurant, has buckled. I took a horizontal as well but chose this vertical to process because it’s a tighter shot, focusing in on the buckled portion of the walkway.

The next image (above) shows how the flooded Hudson River breached the brick wall at the new Highland Landing Park, leaving a gap. Notice how both of these images, while highlighting the destruction I want to show, still includes enough of the surroundings to show where we are; this is the Hudson River, the Hudson Valley.

In the final image (above left) I had to turn my back on the river and the two bridges. Here you see homes on the shore, homes that should enjoy a lovely view of the river, but since the summer they’ve had a front-row seat to watch construction equipment repairing the extensive damage caused when the river overflowed the banks. The work proceeds slowly, no doubt because it’s not merely a matter of repair but also one of preventing, as far as possible, that this level of damage could occur again.

In my next post I’ll show you a couple of miscellaneous opportuinities that presented themselves on this shoot. Did I succeed in taking the best advantage of them? I’ll let you decide.

Wealth of Photo Potential at Highland, NY

It was by accident that I discovered what I believe is the only spot on the shore of the Hudson River that has a good view of both the Walkway over the Hudson and the Mid-Hudson Bridge. It’s at the new Highland Landing Park and is reached via a steep downhill drive from the main road. The fact that I arrived later than planned worked in my favor: too early would have had the rising sun glaring directly at me–maybe nice for a classic sunrise view from an elevated spot, but not when I’d deliberately chosen a vantage point from which everything I’d be shooting was above me.

With two bridges, a railway line, and a shore, there were plenty of lines to create interest as well as tension. I deliberately underexposed my first shot in order to emphasize these lines as well as to accentuate the moody sky (one of my trademarks).

In the next two images I used lines in a different way: to zoom in for close-ups, almost creating abstracts. This was a technique learned from one of my great mentors, Kerry Drager: virtually stop thinking of your subject as a particular object and conceive it, instead, as a pattern.  In both of these shots I moved the clarity slider in RAW way up to emphasize all the lines, and later, in CS5, applied some Unsharp Mask.  The first image I kept in color, having tweaked the white balance a bit in RAW to warm it slightly, but even so it resembles a tint rather than a true color image.

The second image, inspired by the work of another mentor, Harold Davis, I turned to B&W in CS5, experimenting with different settings until I decided I preferred the high-contrast red filter.

This industrial riverfront location offered still other kinds of photo opportunities. I’ll describe them in my next blog.

PRINT OF THE MONTH! My Print of the Month for February is Journey into Autumn, a favorite that has been exhibited and has just been purchased for corporate use. It’s available at a special 10% discount in three different sizes through February 29. To purchase, please visit my website. Here’s a preview:

New Year’s Surprise

“All is quiet on New Year’s Day,” the U2 song says. And so I decided to take advantage of the quiet to drive over the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge to check out a historic homestead in the Beacon area.

I don’t always listen to the little nudgings from the Spirit (usually to my great disadvantage), but this time when the little voice said, “Take the Canon G11 as well as the Nikon D90,” I did. And when the road to the historic homestead took me right through Beacon’s Main Street, and the little voice prompted me to park right there and check it out, I did so–there was even a parking space just waiting for me.

Beacon’s Main Street proved to be a real photographic treasure. Vintage buildings with colorful storefronts abounded–just the sort of thing I love shooting, whether as straight architectural shots or for my “two for the price of one” reflections series. The lightweight, discreet G11 is ideal for this type of photography; no need to lug a tripod to ensure sharp shots or to call attention to yourself. One or more of my images from this shoot will find their way into my forthcoming Historic Hudson Valley photo book. Here are a couple of previews for you.

And the historic homestead? Actually, pretty much a waste of time, definitely an exception to the rule. The lesson? Never, ever ignore the promptings of the Spirit to take an extra camera or to make an unexpected stop. It could be the making of your photo trip.

My Favorite Photos of 2011 are now posted in their own gallery on my website. Check them out, and if you’re interested in purchasing any of them enjoy a 10% discount (for a minimum order of $10.00) by using Coupon Code NYSP12, valid until January 31.

Also, I’m selling some beautifully framed matted prints left over from an exhibition. If you’d like to check them out, please visit the online shop I’ve set up for this purpose.

A Happy New Year to all my readers! Thank you for your continued interest in my work.

The Hudson Valley and Catskills Post-Irene

Those of you who are familiar with my obsession for making funky images of paths and walkways won’t be surprised by this one — I took this picture yesterday while navigating the Walkway Over the Hudson, New York’s newest State Park, a 1.28-mile (each way) walkway connecting the historic village of Highland and the town of Poughkeepsie on the opposite side of the river.

But here’s another photo I also took yesterday from the new Walkway. It shows the Lordly Hudson, now muddy brown and with green debris–I think it must be some form of algae; anyway, my boots were full of it after I walked out of the now flooded and damaged trail that leads to the Saugerties Lighthouse–as a result of Hurricane Irene.

This is all I’m going to say in my photo blog this week. Instead, I’m going to direct you, no, ask, even beg you please to read my Hudson Valley and Catskills blog. You’ll find more pictures there.

Discovering a Neighbor

A biking/walking trail called the Heritage Trail runs close to where I live, connecting the villages of Harriman, Monroe, Chester, and Goshen. Normally I start my walk at the Monroe access. First, it’s the closest; second, the terminus of my walk is usually an ancient cemetery at a place called Oxford Depot, about halfway between Monroe and Chester. The oldest gravestone here dates from 1795; the majority of them are roughly from the Civil War era.  (Recently I was amused to read a blog that claimed that there is supernatural activity taking place at this cemetery; for one thing, strange orbs appear on photographs taken there. Well, yeah, I’ve had those orbs on my photos of the site–it’s called lens flare and it’s produced when your lens is inadequately protected from the sun!)

Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago I decided to start my walk at the Chester access, because I dimly remember, several years ago, seeing a lot of goldenrod along the trail in that area and I thought it might be fun to try to shoot.

It turned out to be one of those delightful occasions where the shoot turns out to be quite different from, and better than, what I expected. Sure there was a bit of goldenrod, but nothing that made for a worthwhile photograph. But driving into town I was stunned by the historic buildings, especially near the old railroad station.  (Interesting how one’s photographic eye expands or changes with the years; on that first trip a few years ago the buildings wouldn’t have popped up on my photographic radar at all.) I made a few images of a colorful American-themed building right close nearby after having photographed several cyclists on the bike trail and then, because the light was starting to turn too harsh and hazy, decided to return another day to continue the shoot.

This I did yesterday, and here are a couple of results. The sunflower was one of a few growing at the station, and I’m including her picture here because she seems to be saying, “Hey, look at me–I survived Hurricane Irene!” And so she did, she and her sisters with her in the little plantation.

Some of my shots used my “two-for-one” approach in which the actual contents of a store window are combined with the reflection of what’s across the street. You see one of those here; I also made a sepia version (right out of my “faux vintage” school), and for that you’ll need to visit my regular website.

Margaretville and Hurricane Irene

I’ve just watched a sickening video of the beautiful town of Margaretville being destroyed by Hurricane Irene.  Margaretville is in Delaware County, the Western Catskills.  I’ve visited there twice and walked through the town with my Canon G11, enjoying photographing the buildings. One of my “signatures” is to photograph a window so that the result is a combination of what’s in the window and what’s being reflected from across the street–two for the price of one, you might say. Anyhow, enough for words at a time lke this; on with the pictures. Below are three of my favorites from my first trip to Margaretville in May of this year.

The Best Camera …

… is the one you have with you.  Years ago when I attended a two-day seminar with renowned photographer John Shaw, he made this comment about tripods, in answer to someone’s query about what were the best tripods–meaning, if you buy some fancy piece of gear that’s so heavy and complicated you’re discouraged from taking it along most of the time, it’s not doing you much good compared to something of more modest proportions that you’d be more motivated to use.

Same thing is true with cameras. Now, don’t get me wrong! I’m not advocating that you go out and sell your DSLRs and buy only a tiny point-and-shoot in the $100 range. But there are times when the DSLR may be impractical to carry around–to your day job, for example–and thus to supplement the larger camera for those times when portability and size are major factors, I encourage you to purchase a compact camera. Again, if you’re reasonably serious about your photography, cheapo will defeat your purpose. I own two Canon Powershot G11s–one as my main street photography machine and one (as described in my last blog) for infrared work. But when I want even more portability than this–i.e., a machine that I can take anywhere, just in case–then my little Canon Powershot S90 is my trusted friend. (I bought it used just around the time its successor, the S95, was coming out.) (The S90 is also great for street work where discretion–all right, relative invisibility–is of the utmost importance, but that’s for aother blog.) 

“Anywhere” means a walk around Mill Pond near where I live, but it also means something that travels back and forth to my day job in my briefcase. I work in the beautiful suburban landscape of northern NJ and sometimes the animal life that shows up is interesting–everything from turkey vultures to a young coyote and, recently,  a frighteningly enormous raccoon. But aside from the animals, the weather sometimes provides remarkable photo ops. Last week a positively sky-darkening, drenching rainstorm came our way. I turned off my office lights (including the computer screen), closed my office door, and aimed the S90 out the window. Originally it wasn’t my intention to try for blurred abstracts a la William Neill, but inevitably, that happened; the exposure time was so long, it was easy to experiment with moving the camera while the shutter was open.

I’m attaching three results for you to see. One is a straightforward shot of the raindrop patterns on the window (not easy to get the correct focus with a compact, I must say) and the other two were achieved with camera blur. Normally I’m not a great fan of extensive shooting during the monotonous green of late-ish summer, but under these conditions it served me well. It reminded me of my film days (remember film?): “This scene has been brought to you by Fujichrome Velvia.” Hey, it was good enough for Galen Rowell …