The Skies in Troll Country?
- This topic has 12 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated Apr 10, 2008 at 11:44 pm by
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Zach-
Today’s Troll Country photo look familiar and I was wondering where it is located? That is my kind of fishing.
Also the technical photography question. I seem to take many photos like the troll photo, overcast and the sky wants to burn out, you start loosing tree detail. Is there a way to keep some more sky and tree detail while shooting. This is for professional purposes as well. I get a whole slew of photos like this from an apartment client of ours and they always want me to fix the sky – It is a pain. Any technical advise on recovering details like this while shooting or post processing. filters maybe?
Thanks.
You might be able to select the sky with a color range selection and drop in a stormy sky. Being backlit its a problem and its going to be tough to make it look natural though. Or you could use the come back in the afternoon filter. HA!
Or you could use the come back in the afternoon filter. HA!
I like that one David 🙂 Is that anything like the early morning filter or the meter filter?
Kevin, you can try some image blending but paint the better sky back in through the dominant channels, in channels mode. There are a lot of ways of saving this image but the truth is, is the time required really worth the trouble? As David mentioned, you can try adding stormy skies but save the trees as vectors first, then paint the sky in. Either way, it will take a lot of time. If you have to use this image, I think Zach came up with the best solution.
There are a lot of things that could of been used to capture the original picture better but that would be a course in photography. Filters, layered filters, azimuth, relative bearings, key lights, fill flash, commingled underexposing strobes with overexposed key strobes and even metering improperly “properly” would help a lot. But all of these would only come into effect if the shot just could not of been shot at the proper time of day. I know the strobes sound like overkill but they aren’t as 3 remote adequate strobe lights now fit in a pocket and if the photographer is shooting into competing overpowering light, he/she must gain control over it to help prevent harsh highlights. Of course I am only talking about images that are shot specifically for publication.
Zach, I hope that I didn’t come across critical of your skill as I certainly did not mean that nor would do that. I think that you are a very good professional photographer!
Having said that, Like I said, if you have no choice, you have no choice and trust me, I have many shots that I too had no time to set up. Filters and even an expansion tube could help to reduce the amount of light but one thing that I was getting at, if you underexpose the shot a bit, you can then use the exposure blending technique to return some of the highlights that you wanted but still have more detail in the original hotspots by erasing or painting that section out.
Bad thing about the internet is that a message may not always come across properly, no harm meant 🙂
Ben –
Don’t worry about criticizing my alleged skill – I can’t hold a candle to half the serious photographers on this board, and I mostly rely on the camera to do what it can.
Great stuff.
I also know it happens to me quite a bit because I seem to fish on days like this one.
Honestly, I was trying to avoid the photoshop part and look for a easy shooting idea for the clients – but dont see it happening.
In documentary photography, the photographer is very limited on what they can do, as you know. The photo’s that I took of the fire, I know they don’t look that good but on images like that, the photographer is not allowed the luxury of extreme post editing or the changing of anything as that does change the reality. One of the best friends of a documentary photographer is, however, a good gradient filter. I think that you would fall in love with that and it won’t get in your way. Fast and easy on as well as off application and the best part, it allows you a much better comfort zone in where and what you decide to meter on as the sky blowouts, will become more muted.
I couldn’t use a filter on the fire pics as I knew that it would mute the smoke and simple wb post editing as they had to be untouched. As you can see, they are crappy in the terms of art but true in documentary.
Also, I was just commenting on this one pic, as a general type of condition.
I have used the gradient filter in the past and it really does help. That skipped my mind.
The apartment client just provides poor photographs for brochure work. They do not realize that the cost for My photoshop time could be better spent and good photography. Taking out crime tape was not a joke.
Thanks
You could try colour selections and cooling filters in cs3.
Ive messed around with that a bit with similiar skies and have had mixed results. Not looking to drastically change the sky, just add a taste of colour (blue).If you find yourself in this situation again I would bracket bigtime and see what I got. You might get something dramatic on the darkside or maybe us the top of 1 image and the foreground of another. I think you were working hard to get a vertical, but with the log and the lines of the bridge it would make a really nice square or landscape image in Black&White or sepia. I did a quick edit in CaptureNX
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