childs play - photoshop actions
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A 4X5 crop that includes 3 pillars and creates the perspective that leads the eye to the distant bathers. A slight rotation was made to correct the horizon.
Someone asked me how I processed my photos which led me to write my workflow out on my "About" page. After some confusion, I decided to do a visual as you see in the attached image.
During the pandemic, I've been using my cell phone for almost all my pictures. I just wanted to pass along my workflow for others who haven't tried their phones yet. Just remember that a RAW file gives you much more room to adjust contrast.
I went to a forest called "Rude Skov" - yes, the name is weird in English but I assure you that it is not rude ;)
I had all my gear with me but decided only to shoot handheld and to do so in manual mode, so no help from anything but the meter inside the view finder; it was so much fun and actually not that hard. Going manual gave me a sort of peace of mind, knowing how the camera was set and that the shutterspeed or aperture wouldn't change unless I wanted them to. I really encourage you to try manual mode for landscape if you haven't already.
The shots are basically of the same subject around a small lake in the forest but with variations in perspective and composition. Hopefully it's not too boring to look at.
Here's to experimentation! I plan to do a lot more of that in the near future.
Thanks again to Adam and his Landscape Masterclass at First Man Photography - without that I really wouldn't have considered going manual and not even gotten the shot because going through that masterclass has made me rethink how I shoot landscapes. I am still learning; I still struggle when looking for interesting subjects and also the composition. Also, ISO, aperture and shutterspeed is something I still need to incorporate into my workflow for each shot because I tend to forget checking and setting them. Heh.
Sunrise in Moll del Petroli (Petrolium dock), Badalona.
Simple shot in Manual mode with 416 seconds (7 minutes) of exposition. A double filter (Haida ND3.0 and Haida ND1.8) was used.
This shot was taken and published in 2019, being processed under the display-scene workflow. Now I repeated the process under the scene-referred workflow and version 6 of the Filmic module in Darktable. The result is much more realistic.
The Great Photographic Gear Myth (and the Rise of Tog-Lite)
Modern photography has a terrible secret: most of the gear is a waste of time, money, and spinal health. It doesn’t improve your photos—it improves your anxiety. While you’re standing at the door wondering which lens, bag, backup bag, and emergency bag to take, the light has changed, the moment has passed, and your dog has fallen asleep.
When I go out to take photos, I take my camera. Also a coat, a hat, boots, and the dog. That’s it. I’ve heard of photographers so mentally stressed about gear choices that they forget to take the actual camera. This is not a workflow; this is a cry for help.
Enter Tog-Lite: a revolutionary concept for taking half good photos some of the time, with no preparation and absolutely no unnecessary expense.
Lesson One: The Tripod
Tripods are confidence crutches for people who don’t trust their legs. For the Tog-Lite initiation, imagine yourself carrying it to a cliff and throwing it heroically into the sea. (Metaphorically, of course. Please don’t litter.) Feel the freedom. Use your body. Or a rock. Or just accept a bit of blur and call it “mood.”
Lesson Two: Filters
Filters are shiny discs of regret. The true Tog-Lite practitioner symbolically tramples them into a muddy hole. Diehards will retrieve them, wipe them clean, and proudly announce they’ve created a “natural brown grad,” faintly scented with cow-based authenticity.
Lesson Three: Flash Guns
External flash: a bulky invention designed to frighten wildlife and strangers. The flash built into your camera is already in the right place, perfectly paired, and just as capable of ruining photos—without extra batteries.
Lesson Four: Remote Triggers
No. The battery is always flat, the signal never works, and by the time it fires, the moment is gone. Also, you have arms.
Lesson Five: Camera Bags
Empty it into a ditch (again, symbolically), eat any emergency snacks, then discard the bag. If your camera needs a suitcase, it doesn’t want to go outside with you.
So get your Tog-Lite today.
Save weight. Save effort. Save money.
Deliver half good photos some of the time—and enjoy yourself the rest of it.
The upper wild part of river Isar, just before it flows in Sylvenstein reservoir. A magical sunset in autumn.
I have another version of this shot devloped with Fujifilm Valia. Then I tried a new workflow starting with Adobe Color, still with the objective to create high contrasts and intense colors with a fairly neutral balance.
- Thanks to everyone who looked at my picture, favors and have commented. Please press "L" or "Z" for a large view - an absolute must to fully enjoy this picture!
Said Bear has had a word with me about improving my workflow - whatever that means - and we published this picture directly from within Shotwell (a photo manager for Linux).
Said Bear has definitely settled into his new home, and I think he is actually taking over. No bad thing tbh.
When I begun to process this exposure bracketing, I thought that I knew what I wanted to attain. I was perfectly wrong. Indeed, these RAW files kept a few secret bits of beauty which I was not aware of when I selected them for processing – and they changed the course of the journey I had foreordained.
I was in a gloomy mood, for both personal and general concerns, and the RAWs looked rather duller than the average – taken: they appeared to accurately mirror the state of my soul. At worst, I would have wasted some hours of pointless procesing work before deciding to look for something better. Nobody would have known. However things were to contradict my expectations. I got some good news (a rarity in those tough days) about the health conditions of my brother and my “adopted brother-in-law” (i.e. my brother’s brother-in-law); on the other hand, Darktable – that wonderful software – gifted me with a few unanticipated treasures. My thoughts were growing more and more positive and the processing of this bracketing were proceeding accordingly: a hidden beauty was unfolding before me, my own persisting unawareness of it notwithstanding. At last I found myself with a picture that had apparently self-processed itself*, while I was busy exploring uncharted thoughts that kept emerging along the way
* Admittedly a bizarre phenomenon, which Maurits Cornelius Escher would have loved – think of his Drawing hands.
I would avoid to nag you about this incredibly wonderful location: you can take a look at my album Silent banks, the complete collection of the photos I have taken there; the attached narratives are rich in information about the place, if you are curious enough.
This location is especially renowned for its legendary morning mists, but only a thin layer of milky mist floated above the water that morning. On top of the hill in the distance, beyond the river, lays the sanctuary of the Madonna della Rocca ( = Madonna of the Rock), already brushed by the first light pouring from the Eastern horizon.
I have obtained this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-1.7/0/+1.7 EV] by luminosity masks in the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal exposure" shot), then, as usual, I added some final touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic as a possible final contribution to the processing. While this technique (which, its imposing name notwithstanding, is pretty simple to implement) often holds interesting results in full daylight landscapes, its effects on a low-light capture (e.g. a sunrise) are utterly unpredictable, so at the end of my workflow I often give it a try to ascertain its possibilities. In this picture I have exploited this technique in a very frugal, yet effective, way – just some touches where needed.
RAW files has been processed with Darktable. Denoising with DFine 2 and the Gimp (denoised and original images blended by lightness).
This is a stitched and tracked panorama from the end of May and is 19 Frames @f/2.8 60s ISO1600 50mm.
This is my first 50mm pano so I'm still learning how to shoot at this focal length for Astro and my first processing of such a humongous file in PS.
I shot some frames at different locations, as we visited three that night but this is from two of them, as some frames I had to reject as my tracker was dropping a little!
I used StarNet too to remove stars for the first time also.
Nikon Z6II 50mm f/1.8 lens
@f/2.8 60s ISO1600 50mm
Date 20220530
hybrid workflow Mint SLR670S/instant Lab, Polaroid bw 600 film film, Bonn Germany, day one 1/2
Happy PolaroidWeek to you all! so looking forward to see your great polas this week. this community is so inspiring, glad to be a part of it.
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- bsky.app/profile/polaroidweek.bsky.social
you can find me or my work here:
Website www.vulturelabs.photography
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I have just updated my store with new works available
www.etsy.com/uk/shop/VultureLabs?ref=hdr_shop_menu
My next B&W fine art long exposure photography workshop will be held in London on the 5th and 6th of March, and again on the 12th and 13th of March, learn my complete post processing workflow, and lots more. please email vulturelabs@gmail.com for more info
Please follow my Instagram account, as Im posting more photos there
Thank you all, for visits, comments and faves, most appreciated ;-)
My new BW post processing video tutorial is now ready for download, for a limited time get all 9 videos for the price of 1
Video 1 My Complete BW Workflow
Video 2 Mastering BW Conversions
Video 3 Fine Art Architecture
Video 4 Fine Art Landscape
Video 5 Fine Art Seascape
Video 6 Fine Art Cityscape
Video 7 Fine Art Long Exposure
Video 8 Fine Art Street
Video 9 Minimal Photography
also included are my photoshop files and post processing notes!
An extremely comprehensive post processing tutorial for fine art BW photography
www.vulturelabs.photography/product-page/b-w-post-process...
The start of a new project, re-visiting old favourites that are just sat on the hard drive and re-processing with my current workflow and detachment from the original trip
My first FGR: Tell me what you're thinking when you play with yourself!
And my first TRP: doctored up photos
For those who asked, this was my workflow:
I darkened out the BG to black.
I then made a selection of my head and copied it into a new layer.
Then selected little pieces of that layer with the lasso tool and moved them away,
repeat this effect (yes this takes time) until you're satisfied. The smaller the pieces the longer it takes.
After that you can use the liquify tool to make the pieces flow more .
Then it's time for some brush action. I used various starfield brushes for the dust effect. Use different layers to paint them and blur so you get a sense of depth and density.
The cracks are just textures placed on top of the rest and using an "overlay" to blend them into the skin. Use layer masks to paint out unwanted parts and paint with different opacity settings.
When finished add some blur to certain parts to add depth and do some colorcorrection on the whole image...and Presto!!!
Textures used by: cgtextures.com
Brushes used : starfield brushes
Sometimes I wish I had recorded my workflow especially when the results are like this. I tried very hard to replicate it with another similar image but got nowhere near.
Selati Game Reserve
Gravelotte
Limpopo
South Africa
Lately I have been re-examining some of my post-processing workflow and trying to master new techniques such as exposure blending, luminosity masks and LAB color. I've re-examined some earlier pictures and decided that in my effort to widen the dynamic range I sometimes went too far and created an unnatural appearance. This old picture of Mount Moran is one that I reworked to better convey my current aesthetic vision.