Before and After

This week one of my favourite photography magazines arrived in the mail - Outdoor Photography Canada.  If you've even the slightest interest in outdoor photography I recommend subscribing.

In this months edition there's an article on black and white landscape photography that will serve as the inspiration for my next few posts.  I'm going to do it as a before and after series.  Here's the first installment.

The top photo here is the unedited JPEG export from the original RAW file.  The photo was selected from three bracketed exposures.  Usually the best file to work with is the one that looks a little overexposed but with a histogram that shows no 'clipping'; that is, no overexposure nor under exposure.   Most camera sensors hold more data in the lighter areas of the photo that is on the right side of the histogram; you will sometimes hear the expression 'expose to the right' and that is what it means.

The first step was to open the library containing the RAW files; I use Adobe Lightroom for this.  There are some obvious faults that I fixed first; for instance the camera was not level when the photo was taken and the horizon isn't level.  There's also some sensor dust in the sky.  Lastly I wanted a 2:1 aspect ration for the final image so a rough cropping was in order.  Then I clicked on the black and white tab and started the black and white editing process.

I used the Black and White Mix sliders to adjust the Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Aqua/Blue/Purple/Magenta settings until I was happy with the look of the photo.  I adjusted the Tone curve and Clarity then adjusted the contrast.  There were some very dark areas that needed brightening to bring back some detail; I used the spot adjustment to correct that.  Then I used the virtual nuetral density filter to darken the sky a bit and further add contrast to the sky.  I then exported the file as a JPEG where I tweaked the levels a bit and added precision to the cropping.  Time to complete, about 5 minutes.

Canon 5DII with Canon 17mm TSE Lens.  ISO 100, f/16 at 1/13 sec.  Gitzo Explorer Tripod with Really Right stuff head and camera bracket.  Abraham Lake, Alberta 2012 February 12