The Marlboro Marine

When I saw this I had to post it,  click here go to the video.

The advantages of digital and the process of rescuing a photo in Photoshop

Digital photography is an extremely useful innovation in the field of photography.  Its incredibly cheap to shoot with digital; you no longer have to buy rolls of film then pay to get them developed.  By film I mean in general the standard 35mm that was used in most cameras, there are other formats which may allow for better shots but I have no experience with those.  Digital allows you to shoot indiscriminately and to view your pictures in full size before you get them printed.  There also are many advantages of having all your work saved electronically, you can edit them in Photoshop without having to scan them in, and if you ever want to look through your work and need to pull up some good pictures its very easy to do.  Some photographers still maintain that there is something lost in digital that film captures, but in reality I believe the benefits outweigh any small disadvantages that may be present.  Sure if you are an extremely skilled photographer and you have been working with film your whole life you may maintain that film is better, as for the less experienced of us digital is definitely the way to go.  There is no reason why you cant get an excellent photo with a digital camera.  There are so many variables that go into developing a good print off film that for anyone starting out in photography it is much better to start with digital.  That way you can shoot all you want for basically free and constantly shooting is what it takes to develop your skills as a photographer.  Many famous photographers, such as Steve McCurry, have switched to digital over film especially in the past decade as digital cameras have become more and more advanced.

A good picture is hard to get, sometimes you will spend hours photographing something only to look at the pictures the next day and nothing will catch your eye.  This is why digital is so much better because you didn't waste any money, just time, and as a broke college student time is plentiful while money is not.

The main advantage of digital is how easy it is to edit, and that with the capabilities of Photoshop you can turn a lackluster photo into something at least halfway decent.  Here are some examples of how improved a picture can look after just messing around in Photoshop for a while with before and after shots included.  I chose some of my first shots when I originally began experimenting with photography as they are the best examples of bad pictures I have.


A perfect example of a bad photo, its crooked, there is no real subject matter, the sky is a blown out, a large portion is out of focus specifically the lily pads, which are probably the most interesting part of the picture.  Also the boathouse is distracting and out of place along with the bow of my boat that you can see in the upper right corner.

And this is my edit of the photo the boathouse and bow of my boat are cropped out, I increased the blacks and contrast in order to make it a little more dramatic, and straightened it.  The sky is still blown out as that quiet difficult to fix in Photoshop and the lily pads are still out of focus which is impossible to fix, but there is a slight improvement in the photo.  It's still not a good picture but its not quiet as bad to look at.

Another poor quality picture, at least I had the right idea in photographing the lily pads.  The photo is crooked, sky is blown out, foreground is out of focus and the trees in the background really don't add anything to the picture as they are not in focus and not interesting.

Again with the magical powers of Photoshop I did my best to save this picture.  I upped blacks, contrast and vibrancy, cropped out the trees and straightened it.  There is still the problem with the foreground being out of focus which really emphasizes how important it is to think about what should be in focus in a picture when your shooting it.  In this case I remember I was trying to take a picture of the shoreline combined with the lily pads.  A better way to have accomplished this would have been to set the f-stop higher to bring more of the picture in into better focus, and move closer to the shore to get a tighter shot.  Also the exposure was wrong on the photo and I could have used a higher shutter speed. 

Finally I would like to emphasize that although you can do a lot to rescue a photograph in Photoshop, you still have to put the most emphasis on taking the picture right the first time around.  Sometimes it just can't be saved and you can lose what could potentially be a good picture.  I'm actually somewhat proud of the below photo as I took it when I was just starting out.  However it is too blurry to ever be printed it looks good when in a small format, but as you enlarge it, it's just not sharp enough.

I did what I could with this picture, adding a little color and contrast but its not possible to fix the sharpness as it is just blurry.  I could improve it slightly by increasing the clarity but the beauty of the photo comes in a large part from the long exposure ghostly look that the water has.  If I up the clarity the water loses its look.  If only I had used a tripod it would have worked, but its a lesson learned.

Silent World by Michael Kenna

Michael Kenna is a well known photographer born in england in 1953 he has become famous for his black and white landscape photos.  Kenna achieves the the eerie look of his photos by photographing when light is different such as dawn or night and using extremely long exposures.  Heres a few of his photos from his collection Silent World found here: http://trinixy.ru/michael_kenna.html

Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry is one of the most accomplished photojournalist alive today. He is known most famously for his work in Afghanistan, and particularly the famous Afghan girl photo that was published in the National Geographic.  This is one of the most recognizable photos ever taken. 

 Born in 1950 McCurry graduated cum laude from Penn State 1974 and got his start in photography working for the Penn State newspaper The Daily Collegian. After college he traveled around the world doing freelance photography and worked for a newspaper for a few years. He really wasn't well known at all until he snuck into Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion and smuggled back some of the first pictures of the conflict there. These photos were widely published and were really the start of his career. Thanks to his work there he won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad. His work in Afghanistan has inextricably tied him to the place.

“When you visit a place so many times, you notice what areas really need help and you want to call it to the attention of the world. You realize that even a nominal effort can be a significant contribution to a country like Afghanistan. It was a way for me to thank and give something back to the many people who have helped me in my work over the years”

McCurry established a foundation called ImagineAsia that provides books and school supplies to schools in Afghanistan. He has returned to Afghanistan many times over the course of his career and seen it destroyed by war.

“Afghanistan has changed in many significant ways. When I first visited Kabul, the city was intact and functioning. Visiting for the past 27 years, I have seen Kabul as a fully functioning city to a city on its knees—and I am happy to say I am seeing it now in its rebuilding stages.”

In 2001 he and a team from national geographic went back to the same town in Afghanistan to look for the girl in the famous Afghan girl photo. Amazingly they found her and rephotographed her.

McCurry is an expert at photographing people. He can capture an emotion or theme in the face of a person like no other photographer can. All of his work involves a person as the subject. This ability combined with the innate knack for being in the right place at the right time that good photographers seem to have, has made him one the worlds most renowned photojournalists. His body of work is massive due to his unceasing drive to document humanity. He often gives this gem of advice to young photographers.

"If you want to be a photographer, you have to photograph. If you look at the photographers whose work we admire, they've found a particular place or a subject, dug deep into it, and carved out something that's become special. And that takes a lot of time and a lot of work - that's not for everyone."

McCurry has won many awards for his photography such as; the Magazine Photographer of the Year. four first prizes in the World Press Photo Contest, the International Understanding Through Photography award, and the Olivier Rebbot award twice. He was even given the exclusive honor of shooting the worlds last role of Kodachrome, one of the first reliable color films produced by Kodak, he shot around 800,000 pictures with this film throughout his career.

McCurry has had to put his life on the line for his work many times. Hes covered conflicts in Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Being out in the field in dangerous areas such as these just shows his “drive to collect other people's stories to show what the world is like.“ He once nearly died in a plane crash:

“I was almost killed in Slovenia. I was in a small plane that crashed into Lake Bled, near Ljubljana. The pilot got too close to the surface of the water, and I found myself upside down and under water with a seatbelt that I couldn't undo. Miraculously I wiggled flee. There were only two of us in the plane, myself and the pilot. And he got out immediately -- he didn't help me -- I had to get out on my own.”

However he never stopped being a photojournalist and continues his work today, commonly being featured in National Geographic, and has published several books containing his photos. At 61 years old, he now lives in New York City and holds workshops to teach photographers what he has learned.

Works Cited

"Q&A STEVE Mccurry." Geographical (Campion Interactive Publishing) 74.10 (2002): 106. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

McCurry, Steve. "CONVERSATION WITH…: Steve Mccurry … ON AFGHANISTAN." UN Chronicle 43.1 (2006): 39. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

Bailey, Carol. "Society Recognition Awards." PSA Journal 71.10 (2005): 18. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

Hughes, Holly. "Photographer Steve McCurry Biography -- National Geographic." National Geographic. National Geographic, n.d. Web. 13 Nov 2011. <http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photographer-steve- mccurry/>.

 "Steve McCurry." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 08 Nov 2011. Web. 13 Nov 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_McCurry>.

Hughes, Holly. "An Interview with Steve McCurry." Photo District News. PhotoDistrictNews.co, 08 Jan 2008. Web. 13 Nov 2011. <http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/? verb=sr&csi=297875&sr=BYLINE(Holly)+w/3+Hughes)+AND+HLEAD(Steve McCurry: An Interview with PDN)+AND+DATE+IS+2008-01-23>.

. "Biography." Magnum Photos. Magnum Photos, n.d. Web. 13 Nov 2011. <http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx? VP=XSpecific_MAG.Biography_VPage&AID=2K7O3R1312JM>.

Fall

During autumn you can get some good pictures.  The contrasting colors in the changing leaves can make some striking photos.  Here's some of my own work from last week.

Amazing photos taken by soldiers

I thought theses pictures were really good I found them here I selected a few of my favorites.

Cheap FishEye Lens

Check this out: an extremely cheap way to make a fish eye lens that will fit on any camera even if you don't have a removable lens.

Battle At F-Stop Ridge

Though this was entertaining.

Abstracts

For this post I will show some of the more abstract shots I have taken, sometimes when a picture doesn't seem to have a clear subject or purpose you can change the colors to an extreme and put a lot of effects on it and it will turn into something neat.  The goal is to make whoever is looking at the picture kind of wonder what is that?  Therefore I will give no explanation for these photos they are better left unexplained.

Landscapes

Landscape photography is one of the more difficult things to do.  Its hard to get a clear picture when you have miles of distance in between you and your subject.  It is also hard to translate the natural beauty you see into something that looks good on film.  One method I like to use to keep landscape photos interesting is to partially obscure the subject matter with any means available.  One easy way to do this is to just wait till the sun starts  to set, you can use the mixed lighting to obscure areas of the photo that wouldn't be sharp enough.

You can also use fog to create the same effect.

Woods of Guilford

On Monday this week I packed up my gear, lenses, batteries, memory cards, and camera then headed out into the woods to take some pictures.  Unfortunately the weather was not perfect it was a little cloudy and in the shade of the woods it was pretty dark.  Generally in photography you want as much light as you can get.  To counteract the lack of light you can do a couple things.  You bring down the shutter speed so you have a longer exposure, the only drawback to this is you cant capture moving objects without blur and you either have to have an extremely steady hand or a tripod.  With a tripod it takes a while to set up for each shot so it is definitely a slower means of shooting.  The other option is to bump up the ISO this basically affects the speed of the "film" the higher the ISO the shorter exposure it requires.  However is you take the ISO too high you can make you picture appear grainy.  The third option is to adjust the aperture to be as wide as possible this will affect how large the area of focus is in the photo.  Using these tools in conjunction you can compensate to some extent for poor lighting.  As you can see in this first picture I had it on a higher ISO setting and the graininess is apparent.

Film grain isn't always bad for a picture it can be a good effect on certain photos but sometimes you just want it clear and sharp.  I managed to get this next picture with a lower ISO as I rested the camera on my arm and laid on the ground this steadied it enough to allow me to lower the shutter speed.

Sometimes it can be hard to find subject material that actually produces a good photograph in the woods.  Lots of things look interesting to the eye but when you try to capture them with a camera they turn out boring and lacking feeling.  I find that close ups are essential you don't want the background to be distracting.  The next two photos are actually the same picture however one is cropped and in black and white, cropping is the most useful tool you have as a photographer.  As you can see it removes a lot of the noise and confusion from the original photo.

The HDR Photography of Trey Ratcliff

A very interesting technique to use is HDR or High Dynamic Range photography.  Its a method that is newly available to photographers through the benefits of digital cameras and the ability to edit them in photo software.  Basically what it involves is digitally blending several pictures of the same thing together but each picture is slightly different in contrast exposure et cetera.  I don't have the software required for this technique yet but I wanted to show it anyway so Ill be sampling some of Trey Ratcliff's photos.  You can find some of his best work here.  Here are a few of my favorites:

This technique can really bring out the beauty in the natural world.

It can also be really abstract as seen here:

Darker shots are also great looking

My favorite out of all his pictures this one has so much intrigue

Ice

My last two posts were about water.  First water in its smallest form visible to the human eye water drops.  Second running water the type we see most commonly around us in streams rivers lakes and oceans.  So I've decided to continue on the water theme for one more post and show water in its third form, when it is frozen.  The following series of photos were all taken on the same morning after we had a freezing rain.  The weather conditions the night before were somewhat unique.  I am not a meteorologist but from what what I can assume the temperature in the clouds must have been higher than that on the ground.  But it was extremely cold on ground level so water hit the ground in liquid form then began to freeze almost instantly.  This produced some very interesting patterns in the ice and dramatic looking icicles.

As usual I played around with the color in all of these photos.  My style in Photoshop is to not edit the original image in any way besides cropping, changing colors, sharpness, and blacks.  This way everything you see in one of my photos is actually there I simply edited the feel of the photo to bring out certain bits I thought were interesting.  These three pictures were altered to change their base color one to red and one to blue and one to green.

While I was playing around with the colors I found a combination that seemed to work very well bringing up the blacks and contrast and letting a hint of green and blue show through.

One handy thing you always have in your back pocket as a photographer is to simply remove all color from a picture this can give it an old timey classy feel.

You can also use the sky as a blank background in order to draw more attention to your subject.  As you can see in these next three photos.