I know, I blogged about this before. But I think it's important to blog about it again because I came across this really cool video. It's a TED talk by Erik Johansson and totally love it. It reminds me of the work of Adrian Sommeling and it gave me so much new inspiration and new ideas!
Just Google these guys to get an idea of their work:
Adrian Sommeling
Erik Johansson
If you ask me, the best sentence in the TED talk of Erik Johannson is 'Capture the idea instead of capture the moment.'
Another photographer I totally love is Serge Ramelli. Recently he made some videos called 'On the trail of Ansel Adams' (videos). It inspired me to make more black and white landscape pictures.
Go out there, either on the net or outside or listen to some great music. Let that inspiration come to you!
Do you sometimes feel like you just don't have any inspiration? Or how to create that powerful image? Or just have the simple question, where are the hotspots in town ? Thank goodness for the net! So you're suffering from a lack of inspiration. Check out Flickr or 500px to see loads of great pictures that can inspire you. Let the colours and compositions draw you to new ideas. What also works for me is to just go to town. Any town'll do. Take a walk and look around you. With you head filled with inspirational ideas from checking out Flickr and 500px, you might just see your surroundings in a whole new light. It can also be a good idea to go out and shoot with a prime lens. Take just this one lens and go out to shoot an entire day. Forcing you to be creative, to find new ways to properly capture what you see. This video of Marc Wallace gives some more insight. And ofcourse, it's always a good idea to check out what other photographers are doing. Photographers you follow on social media are easy to check out. I'm a fan of the work (and workflow) of Serge Ramelli. It always works for me to check out his latest tutorials and publications to give my inspiration a boost. When going on the net, it happens to me quite regularly that I see a picture and wonder how did they do that? There's ofcourse several answers to that question. One way is to look on Youtube. If you want to know how for example digital blending works, just type in digital blending and you'll get a zillion hits. Guys like Serge Ramelli and Aaron Nace publish heaps of free tutorials. If you're really into their stuff, there's also great paid tutorials available. An other way is to look into the EXIF data of a picture. In the EXIF data you can find things like exposure, aperture and ISO (and a lot more). This can help you a lot to understand how to make a (simular) image. On Flickr you can see the EXIF data of a lot of pictures.
This EXIF data can help you when going out there to shoot yourself.
So, now you've got the inspiration flowing, you know how to create that really cool image and you're off to a city. What is the best spot in town to make your great images?
A very good site with a lot of high quality images is 500px. Let's say you're off to Amsterdam and you have no clue about the hotspots.
Other way is to visit the map of 500px. Just find your town and zoom in and you get images and their location.
So don't let anything stop you to pick up your camera and shoot. Have fun out there, go shoot some great pictures!
Remember the last post, where we talked about changing colours in photoshop? Well, in that post we promissed we'd get back to you on layers and layer masks in Photoshop. It might sound difficult, it might look tricky but it actually isn't. Stick with us through this post and I bet you'll agree with us afterwards.
So according to Adobe you should see a layer like a pancake. Only the top pancake is visible. Or actually, as Adobe puts it: Photoshop layers are like sheets of stacked acetate. You can see through transparent areas of a layer(a hole in the pancake) to the layers below.
When you open an image in Photoshop, it opens as a (background) layer. This is where the editing starts. Most of the time, you'll duplicate the first layer (CTRL J) and start editing on that particular layer. If in the unlikely case it goes terribly wrong, you just throw away the diplicate of the first layer. You'll still have the unedited picture you started out with.
Keep in mind that we're talking a stack of pancakes here: all layers are put on top of the other in Photoshop. The first thing you see - how logical - is called the top layer. Let me show you an example: In this image, you see the picture with layers. The top layer is black and white and the layer underneath is in color.
You can turn off the top layer by clicking on the little eye in front of the Layer 1 (right hand side of the screen). Voila! Now you get the coloured version of the picture.
With a basic understanding of layers, the next move is to talk about layer masks. With a mask you have the control over the transparency of that particular layer. When working with layer masks, keep in mind this utterly important rule: White Reveals, Black Conceals. So if you have two layers and you add a white mask to the top layer, it shows everything on that layer.
Here's some visuals: starting out with a picture with 2 layers, a blue top layer and a red second layer.
Adding a white mask to the (blue) top layer: use the Add Vector Mask icon. You can use the same icon in the layers panel by using the Alt (windows) or OPT (MAC) key.
And now adding a black mask (white reveals, black conceals!) to the top layer:
the blue is gone! Hidden by the black mask.
So when you have this stack of pancakes. And you'd like to show not only the top pancake but also a bit of the underlying pancake, you should use the brush and paint in the opposite colour. When using a white mask, you can make the underlying layers visible by painting with a black brush and vice versa.
And vice versa.
Do take a look at the right hand side with all the layer and layer mask info: in both cases the mask changed. The black mask changed to white where you have painted (remember: white reveals, black conceals)
So there you have it. A basic tutorial on layers and layer masks. In the beginning you might find working with layers confusing. You might mix up white and black layers. Another nifty trick to remember is CTRL I (i as invert) you can easily switch between white and black layers.
I find layer masks extremely helpful. For example to blend pictures together. Think of a sunset where you want a darker sky and nice silky water. In that case you take 3 pictures:
- one for the sky (underexposed),
- one for the silky water (over exposured) and
- one right exposed image
Now you can blend them together in Photoshop using layers and layer masks. That gives you a great control over your creativity and result. I have always found the videos from Serge Ramelli really helpful, easy to understand and very instructive. He starts with some editing in Lightroom and then blends his pictures together in Photoshop.
It probably comes as no surprise that colours give your picture more impact. The tricky part is: how to use colours?
So, speaking of colours: there are three categories:
Primary colours: red, yellow and blue Secondary colours: green, orange and purple Tertiary colours: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green & yellow-green
One way to give your pictures more colour depth, is to use the colour wheel. A colour circle - based on red, yellow and blue - is traditional in the field of art. Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colours in 1666. The idea behind the colour wheel is that complemantary colours give a strong image by using both warm and cold colours.
Complementary colors are opposite each other on the colour wheel. So for example you can use red and green or blue and orange. By using those opposite colours you add more depth to you photo.
There is a great blog which explains the use of colours in the foreground and background of your photo. You can also watch this video on Youtube from Serge Ramelli. He postprocessed a great sunset image using the technique of colours to add depth to his picture.
Another way to add colour to your image, is to use colours in the same range. If this aroused your interested, make sure to check out this cool guy: Aaron Nace from Phlearn. He has a really quick and interesting explanation on the use of the colour wheel in this video. More interesting stuff can be found on his site.
When I started working with my first ND (neutral density) filter, I really had to search for a good explanation on how to work long exposure shots with an ND filter. With this blogpost, it's my intent to give you a handy shortlist for shooting long exposure with your ND filter.
Ofcourse it all starts with your trusty DSLR and your ND filter. An ND10 reduces the light with 10 stops. For your long exposure shot, you'll need a sturdy tripod. No matter how steady your hand is, you can never beat a good tripod. I prefer to work with a remote control, the Canon RS-80N3 is my preferred choice.
Like with any good picture, it's most important to find a good location for your shoot. I prefer my pictures to be clean, without any unnecessary objects in it. I love going to our nearby Storsjön or to the fjäll with its lakes. But you can also find some really good spots for your long exposure picture with ND filter in the city.
Now let's get on with it!
1. Put your camera on the tripod;
2. Measure the light (aperture priority) with an F between 8 and 16;
3. Look in the table below (I always have the printout of this table in my bag) for the right exposure with the ND filter;
4. Use to autofocus to focus your image (or do this in manual);
5. Set your camera on Manual (bear in mind, you can't see a thing when your ND filter is attached);
6. Attach your ND filter;
7. Put some ducktape on your viewer (you don't want any light to come into you camera);
8. Make the picture (in the BULB setting), using the remote control;
9. Check the result;
10. Edit the picture in Lightroom or Photoshop. I'm a great fan of Serge Ramelli's work and I usually follow his basic workflow and add a bit of my own flavour.
These are the basic steps to follow. But, like with any technique, the most important is to try it out for yourself. Try and see what goes well and where you might need a bit more patience or maybe adjust your settings.
Besides keeping an eye on our blog, it's also great to watch this Scott Kelby vid. I love the way he explains it: a quick and clear explanation of how to shoot your long exposure shot with an ND filter.
Right now, I'm using a SRB Photographic filter and I'm quite happy with it. Popular filters manufactures are B+W, Tiffen and Hoya. I heard and read about Leefilters, they're also a really good option if you're looking to buy good quality filters.
The picture below I shot a couple of weeks ago. This is the Rödön Bridge in Jämtland, Sweden. This picture is on F8 and with a shutterspeed of 8 seconds. Right, now go out there and have fun shooting your long exposure shots!
Back in the days, way back in 2010, I posted this picture on my Flickr account. At the time I was pretty pleased with it. One of my earlier attempts at HDR, I thought it turned out as a pretty cool picture.
We're in 2015 now and looking back at this picture I now say it's a really boring and actually quite flat picture. So I took a few minutes to edite the picture again in Photoshop and Lightroom. What do you reckon, is it better than the one I posted back in 2010?
I like this picture a lot more than the earlier version. Over the years, I've learned a lot from guys like Serge Ramelli, Scott Kellby and RC Concepcion. If you have a minute, do check them out, either on their websites or on Youtube. Or both. I continue to watch every update they post as they've already learned me so much!
Adrian Sommeling
Erik Johansson
Adrian Sommeling
Erik Johansson
