Let's talk landscapes
- antonroland
- Oct 7, 2021
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 8, 2021
OK, so let's move on beyond the sentimental bit, shall we? But can we really? All of my favourite landscape images have a story or two to tell. Chances are yours will too. After all, we are creating memories aren't we?
In this article I hope to share a few practical tips on landscape photography and post-processing. Unlike my hard drive, yours should not be full of hundreds of images little more than shutter burn that will never be seen.
Sometimes you get a great image not too far away from home. Sometimes it is not so close to home. The mountain won't go away but the spectacular weather does not happen on cue every 24 hours.
The old saying goes that, in order to capture a good landscape, we must be at the right place at the right time. The only way to be at the right place at the right time is to be at the right place at the WRONG time...OFTEN...
Now you could snap away with what you have and often get rather pleasing results OR you could lug your own bodyweight in equipment and go "professional". The above image was shot with a fairly old but very capable 20Mp Sony compact camera. Why? It was all I had with me on a family outing. It would probably make a decent A2 print but bigger than that might be pushing your luck.
The end result you have in mind dictates the approach and required equipment to a large degree. Also the amount of time you will be spending on-site and post-processing later. For an Instagram post your cellphone is more than adequate most of the time. For a really large print it becomes a tad more complicated.
When you are blessed to sell a print of this size you do need to be sure everything is done exceptionally well. For printing I would recommend no-one but these fine people. I have yet to come across people who can beat Stephen Walker and his team in Mill Park.
Possibly as important as the printing process is the eventual presentation of the hanging print. You would do well to knock on THIS door. Colin Wells is the original gentleman and his lovely wife Jan is a total darling. They are as good as they are nice. Perfect is the worst you will get from them and they always deliver sooner than promised.
Using the best light is always first prize. The best light is also a very subjective issue. For landscapes this often ends an hour or two after sunrise and starts around an hour or so before sunset. This does not mean you can't create good images in the midday hours. It simply means the approach must be a bit different to cope with harsh midday sun and shadows. Of course many other factors also play a role. You simply might not have the luxury of time to wait 5 hours till golden light.
Any old way we slice it, the first problem is that of dynamic range. Dynamic range is a factor of the brightest highlights and deepest shadows in your scene. It is also very much a factor of your camera's ability to capture them.
I used to come home from a single outing with dozens or hundreds of images and use none. They were mostly sets of three bracketed exposures. In bracketing, the camera is set to over-expose and under-expose by a selected quantity. A sequence of three bracketed shots would contain one exposure on the light meter centered. One would be over-exposed by, say, 1 stop or 1 and 1/3 of a stop. The third one would be under-exposed by the same quantity. If you wanted to be very fancy you could also tell the camera to do the middle exposure at a pre-determined amount of over-exposure or under-exposure. The other two would then further over-expose and under-expose according to this mid-point.
This whole thing was simply too hit-and-miss and arbitrary for my liking. Since I started shooted Fuji things are much more simple. I shoot my effect shot first and then shoot the sky for effect at the correct exposure for colour. Here follows a rough example from out-takes to show the process of blending two exposures.
All that red is ACR's way of telling me the sky is blown out. That was the plan.
When this opens in Adobe Photoshop ACR it looks like this.
All the blue is Adobe showing me where the shadows are totally lost. That is the plan. All we want from this image is the sky colour we lost in the previous image due to over-exposure to get the moving water. Now to combine them. In doing this we blend the foreground of the first image with the background of the first image. That way we lose the blown-out sky in the one and the dark foreground in the other. We basically take the best bits of both and make one image out of two images.
With both images open in Photoshop, use the move tool to drag the dark exposure into / onto the brighter exposure.
The move tool is the top tool in the left-hand side toolbar.
If the dark image is placed correctly over the bright image it should look like this. Look at the Layers Palette.
Now it is simply a matter of activating the dark image layer which is the top layer. Click on it to be sure that layer is active. At the bottom of the Layers Palette third from left you will find the "Add Vector Mask" button. It looks like a white rectangle with a black circle inside it. Click on it.
A white rectangle will appear next to the upper dark image in the Layers Palette. Click on it and then press Ctrl + i (Windows) or Cmd + i (Mac) simultaneously to invert it. The white rectangle will turn black.
Now, at the same time, the main image will turn bright and look like the bottom bright image. This is correct. The top thumbnail icon in the Layers Palette will still look like the dark image.
Now two things need to happen. Select the brush tool - see arrow 1 in the next image.
Now be sure that the foreground colour is white - see arrow 2.
Adjust the brush settings to taste for the job - see arrow 3.
Watch your progress in the History Palette and click back up through the steps as required - see arrow 4.
Watch your progress in the Layers Palette - see arrow 5. As you paint out the top to bring in the darker rich colours in the sky the Vector Mask will change as you go.
See how 3 brush strokes in the sky brought back the darker tones in the sky? Note how a white sliver appeared in the vector mask in the layers palette.
-- UPDATE --
Apologies for leaving you hanging. It dawned on me I never showed what the final product should look like.
When done, flatten the image to save it as a jpeg and dodge and burn a final bit to taste. Flattening the image compresses all the layers in the layers palette into one layer. This is required to save as a jpeg. To flatten the image, go to the "Layer" menu and select "Flatten Image" near the bottom of the drag-down menu by clicking on it.
The unflattened image can also be saved as a .psd file and you can tinker again later.
A few (moderately advanced?) ideas on this technique
You could make some adjustments to taste in ACR even before opening the two images into Photoshop. These could include adjustments to contrast or exposure or nearly anything else to taste to create the image you want to create.
The settings on the brush tool can give an almost infinite variety of results. Play around with many different settings, especially the opacity, flow and brush size.
After flattening, try some cautious burning of mid-tones and highlights to taste. Do not exceed 7%-8% in the exposure setting of the Burn Tool for best results.
OK, this was a very quick-n-rough guide to one of many ways to blend exposures. For more detail, please leave a comment?
And sometimes you just get it wrong. There will always be something to learn from on every outing. Be careful which way the wind blows. The finest of mist could settle on the front element. You don't need a spectacular splash...
Until next time, happy shooting and go play often,
Anton
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