So what does it do? Well put simply, when activated it records the inputs that you are making to your image and saves them, allowing you automatically apply the same inputs to further images. The actions are very flexible, you can create an action to carry out a simple repetitive task in the middle of more complicated manipulation or you can create one to carry out all the operations in one fell swoop and then rename the image and change it’s format.

I will give you a very simple example one how to create an action and then run it on a batch of images. In this action we will open a JPG file, resize it suitable for web and save it as a PNG file.

First open a JPG of your choice. If the actions palette is not already open, open it from the Photoshop menu WINDOW – ACTIONS.

The actions pallete should now be visible on the right side of the Photoshop screen. If you have not used actions before you will see a folder called default actions at the top. This is a set of actions provided with photoshop.

You can create your own library of actions and assign them to different folders called sets. Lets create a new set called My Actions. Click the new set icon on the bottom of the actions palette and enter the name.

Now select that set in the main window and click the create new action icon at the bottom. Give your action a name, in this case Web Size.

With your image open and the Web Size action selected click the record button. We are now recording our Photoshop moves. From the Photoshop menu, select IMAGE – IMAGE SIZE. Set the resolution to 72 pixels per inch and make sure Constrain Proportions is checked. Enter a new height or width size, in our case a width of 800 pixels. Click ok when everything is set.

Now we will save the image so click FILE – SAVE AS rename the file as required and select PNG from the File Type drop down. Click SAVE.

This next bit is important, we will now close the image from FILE – CLOSE. If you do not do this, when you are running a batch of images, they will all remain open, slowing down your computer.

With the actions finished, we must now stop the recording. Click the square box next to the record icon, you action is now saved.

We can run the action two different ways, from Adobe Bridge where you can define which images to batch or from inside Photsohop itself where you can batch an entire folder of images. We will do the latter.

From the Photoshop menu, select FILE – AUTOMATE – BATCH. At the top you will see the Set drop down menu, choose MY ACTIONS. You can now select the WEB SIZE action from the next drop down. For source select FOLDER and from the CHOOSE icon select the folder of images you wish to batch.

Under DESTINATION, select FOLDER and choose a suitable folder to send the images to.

Check the “Override Action Save As Command” tick box

Next you have options for renaming, I usually create a new name using the Document dropdown box then add a 2 or 3 digit sequence number in the next drop down, finally in the third dropdown select extension. Set your serial number to 1 and click ok.

You will now see your images wiz past in Photoshop as the program applies the action and saves the file and you can make a cup of tea and put your feet up knowing you have saved hours of work.

As mentioned this is a very simple example but with a little practice you will find yourself creating more advanced actions and drinking more tea.

Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. You can follow him on Facebook or visit his site, The Odessa Files. He also maintains a blog chronicling his exploits as an Expat in the former Soviet Union

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

What you will need:

• A camera
• A tripod
• A prop to sit/stand/recline on

Optional:

• Trigger release
• Flash (entirely up to you)
• Other props to add to the look of the photo

So what can you use? As outlined previously, a lot of things. Most people use something like a table or chair, a ladder or two, planks of wood, boxes; the list is endless. In my example, I’ll be using a box.

Yup. That's one boxy box.

I’ll be the first to admit that this potentially isn’t the comfiest method of achieving levitation (depending on your prop), but it’s one of the most frequently used methods and one of the most convenient to boot. Always remember to keep safety first, and don’t do anything too risky! You might get hurt, and that wouldn’t be fun at all.

First, choose your location. It could be anywhere – the local park, the beach, a room in your house, a studio, and if you’re feeling really brave, maybe even a shopping centre! Be prepared to get some odd looks if you decide on the last one though.

Next, set up. Take your prop along with your camera, tripod and anything else you’ve decided to use. I use a remote trigger as it saves on trips back and forth to the camera, but if you’re photographing yourself there’s nothing wrong with using your timer setting. If you’re photographing somebody else you might not even need one.

Frame your shot the way you want it, get it focused and then before you do anything else, take a photo of the scene without you or your prop in it (I call this the canvas image). This is key. I’ve been in the situation where I didn’t have a canvas image to work from, and it was no fun at all when I tried editing it. So, always always always take a photograph of your scene without you in it, even if it is just a brick wall!

I even do canvas images in the studio!

Once you have your canvas image, don’t move the camera or the tripod. Don’t zoom in, don’t reframe. This is another reason why you might want to use a remote trigger. It avoids any accidental movement of the scene and saves you time later on when it comes to the all important editing stage. Place the prop you want to use as an aid to levitation in your scene somewhere, and start posing with it. Here’s an example of a pose I did in the studio:

I'll admit, I've been comfier

You might want to take several photographs before you’re happy with the outcome, but when you are, you’re ready to pack everything up and head to your photo editor of choice. I use Photoshop, but they’re all pretty similar and the process is fairly simple so don’t worry about it too much.

Load your images and sift through them until you find the ones you want to use. Keep your canvas image to one side, and keep it safe. This is what you will build on. Open that one first. Next, find the photograph with the pose you want to use. Make it a new layer on top of the canvas image, and make sure it lines up with the image underneath. You can do this easily by making it snap to guidelines or decreasing the opacity and shuffling it around. Just make sure to turn the opacity back up or you’ll look like a ghost, unless that’s what you’re after of course.

Make sure the layers are lined up properly

The next step involves something called layer masks, which you’re either very familiar with or have no idea what I’m talking about. These are used to non-destructively mask out areas in the image that you don’t want to keep. It’s better to use this than the eraser tool as if you make a mistake on a layer mask, it is very easily modified. In Photoshop, you can find layer masks under Layers > Layer Mask. Make sure the layer you want to modify is selected. You can use either a hide all or reveal all layer mask, personally I prefer to use reveal all. This won’t appear to change anything, but it will create a little white box next to your ‘posing’ layer with a link icon next to it. Like this:

Make sure this white box is selected by clicking on it once, or the next step won’t work. In order to remove areas of the image, take the brush tool and paint in black the area you wish to hide. In this case, it’ll be the prop you’re using. Watch as the canvas image shows through and makes it seem as though you’re flying! To hide areas again, paint in white. It’s worth mentioning that if you choose hide all instead, you’ll get a black box instead of a white box as above and your subject will appear to vanish! Don’t worry, they’re still there. Just paint on the mask in white instead and you’ll see them re-appear.

You could leave it like this, but for some extra realism you may want to do things like make it so the body and clothing doesn’t look squared off by the prop.

Removing the box

You can do this by taking bits of clothing either from the same photograph or different ones you took that day and pasting them in on a different layer and making sure they blend in with more layer masks and strategic placement. In the below image, I decided my back was too squared off by the box. So I took another pose I did without the box where the curve of the back was more visible. With some layer masks, I hid the parts I didn’t want and made sure the whole thing blended together seamlessly.

Making the pose more realistic

Another way to add to the realism is to include a shadow. You can easily paint a shadow in by taking a large soft brush and painting in black underneath and altering the opacity and blending modes. Another method for the shadow is to use the burn tool which tends to look more realistic, though it depends on your location. In my example, I painted the shadow in with some black and changed the opacity.

And that’s it! These kinds of photos are very good editing practice and will get you used to everything mentioned above very quickly. You could get even crazier and put several different versions of yourself floating in the same image. Have fun, and post your levitating photos in the comments. I look forwards to seeing more!

Marionette - Emma Brabrook

Article by Emma Brabrook – Emma is a photographer from the UK. You can follow her on Twitter, visit her Flickr, find her on 500px, join her Page on Facebook or visit her Blog.

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

As mentioned before, there are a number of image management programs out there, my personal choice is Apple’s Aperture, mainly because I am Apple orientated and like the way the program interfaces with the rest of the Apple operating system. I allow Aperture to manage my library, meaning that I do not import my images separately to a folder then catalogue; I import them directly to Aperture and allow the program to deal with filing them.

So, for efficiency, start as you mean to go on. Get into the habit of uploading your images every time you return home. This way you can clean your cards, and start afresh next time you go out to shoot. It also means you are cataloging whilst things are still fresh in your mind.

The first thing I do when returning from a shoot is ingest my images into Aperture. As most of my images are travel based, my cataloging hierarchy is date and place related. My images are organized into projects by year, into folders by month and into individual shoots by albums. Typically I would return from a shoot and create a new album called for example 2012-01-01 Odessa. This album would reside in a folder called 2012-January inside a project called 2012-Images. Upon importing, I would batch name each image 2012-01-01 Odessa-(Sequential Number) Most image management software allows you to batch name your photographs in various ways. Before importing, I also add any keywords that are consistent throughout the shoot and most importantly add my copyright and date information to the metadata. I then import all the images.

 Add relevant keywords and copyright info on import

Once all are imported, the next stage of my workflow is to go through all the images one by one, very quickly and tag any sub standard unusable image. In Aperture I use the 9 key or rejected command. Once this is done, I then do a search within the album for all mages marked 9 and delete them.

Reject anything substandard

The next stage is to go through and mark anything I think is useable for stock. Using Aperture’s rating systems, which run from 1-5, I rate any potential stock images as a 3. Using Apertures metadata filters, I select all images rated three, a much smaller amount than the original upload, and once again go through the selection. This time I am looking for the outstanding work, which I will rate either a 4 or 5. Anything that achieves a 5 rating must be good enough to warrant a place in my portfolio, a rare event indeed.

Give a rating to anything usable

 Now with all my potentially useable images rated, I can get to work on key-wording the images. This means adding to the metadata, specific wording relevant to the image, that allows me, and potential clients to find the image in a search. As you can see, by rating the images first, I only have to go through the laborious and time consuming keyword process on images I have selected as potentially useable and hence  highlighting the key feature of a good workflow, efficiency.

Add more specific keywords and captions

 This is just one workflow, the one I have adapted and found best for my own needs. The best way to find a workflow suitable for yourselves is simply to hone your techniques until you find the most comfortable way of doing things. Then stick to it.

Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. You can follow him on Facebook or visit his site, The Odessa Files. He also maintains a blog chronicling his exploits as an Expat in the former Soviet Union

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

So how do I select my best images? Well I think it takes practice and some knowledge of what an audience will respond to. Of course certain images will do better depending on their medium and audience which is why photo editors have the job they do – they make this call. There are however other general qualities we can find in “better” images without considering the audience.

Below are some examples that explain why a particular photo was selected over others. I think this is a good exercise to do so we can start to be more critical of our images. Details in a photograph matter and can change the entire meaning of an image. When we start spending time learning how to select images we become more aware of the small details that are so important. We also start to get familiar with stronger compositions and the use of light. Likewise, we start shooting better and begin to share only our strongest images.

This is a good series to show how small subtleties can make for a stronger image. The first thing I noticed when looking at these images was that I liked the ones with the girl holding her shirt the best. It seems that in these images she is more relaxed and I like her stance much better. I was also able to zoom in during these particular gestures which I think helps isolate the girl a little more (I think isolating the girl in this particular image works because we already know she is in a rice field). I decided on the right image in the middle row. The girl seems most relaxed in this particular image and you can see more of her face. Additionally, although a small detail, the rice stalks in the chosen image look better to my eye. If you look closely at the other images you will notice one rice stalk shooting off into the left of the picture. To me this “out of place” rice stalk adds a small distraction that takes away from the girl.

In the above series, I selected the bottom left image. The women looking up at a customer gave this image an extra component the others were lacking. I feel being able to see her eyes helps the viewer connect better with the photo, in addition to providing a deeper storytelling element (showing her engaging with a customer).

Here are two photos that are similar yet very different. These photos were taken within 5 minutes of each other but tell completely different stories. They could both potentially be used depending on the purpose, however, I find the second photo to be more engaging. There is more emotion shown in the second image because the man is carrying the vegetables and his helpers are on the side. It makes me want to know more about the situation and what they are doing. Because of the storytelling component of the second image I believe it is the stronger one.

In this series, I was looking for a natural expression of the shrimp fisherman. I didn’t want a photo of him looking straight at the camera, but I wanted to be able to see his face. I felt the best way to do this was to ask him if he could look in the other direction away from what he was doing. I knew I may get some awkward shots of him looking away, but I was only after one frame that captured a heartfelt expression. To me there is only one that captured this expression, the left image on the third row.

Tools for helping you select images: There are many software programs that can help you organize and make the selection process easier. Here are a few of the more common ones I find useful.

Photo Mechanic – Photo Mechanic is a great tool to view your images with speed before importing them into Lightroom or Aperture. It allows you to quickly compare multiple images and select the best ones from a sequence. The speed at which you can view and select your high resolution images is one of the best attributes of this software.

Adobe Lightroom - Lightroom is a great all-around program for organizing, selecting, developing and exporting your photos. You can use the Library module to select your best images using tools called Compare View or Survey View. Although these can be useful for selecting your best images, I often just use the Thumbnail View and select from there. Lightroom can sometimes be slow when dealing with a large amount of pictures and therefore I recommend using Photo Mechanic or Bridge for your initial selection process.

Adobe Bridge – Bridge is a another great way to view images, especially if you plan to edit your photos directly in Photoshop or prefer to use Camera Raw for your raw conversions. I also find Bridge to be much faster than Lightroom providing a better way to view images when all I need to do is make selections or look at metadata.

Jacob Maentz is a freelance travel, culture and documentary photographer currently based in the Philippines. You can visit his website here, read his articles on his blog, follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

So why use an image management program? Well there are many reasons but lets start with the simplest and most important, knowing where your images are. By this I mean two things, firstly that the software knows exactly where your images are stored, secondly that you know where specific images are.

Powerful yet easy. Image management software is vital to todays photographers

Image management software allows you to easily catalogue photos in projects and albums, you can choose how to specify this hierarchy, in my case I use date and location but you could use any structure you like. You don’t have to assign the image to one album either, if for example you had a picture of a mosque in Istanbul, you could assign it to an album called Istanbul and an album called religious buildings. For each image or batch or images, you can assign specific and targeted keywords, allowing you to further refine your collection. The beauty of image management software is that they are really only databases, the image is not copied multiple times to different locations, it is merely referenced in each album hence conserving your harddrive space.

 Make advanced adjustments and corrections.

For those of you shooting RAW, advanced image management software such as Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom are invaluable tools. Not only do they make cataloguing your RAW files easy, they allow you to make quite complex image adjustments to your files. Of course this is not just true for RAW, the programs will handle most image types and like the previous point, when you make an adjustment, all you are doing is make a reference to the file, the original image is not touched, what is shown on screen is a representation of the original with the adjustments made. All that is saved, is the tiny amount of code saying what the adjustments should be, not an entirely new manipulated image.

Most of the advanced level image management programs will include some form of automated backup system. This allows you to tell the program where your backup harddrive is and when and what to back up. Any of you who have lost images will know how important backing up is.

 Export to Facebook and Flickr, among others.

As well as managing your catalogue many of these programs have advanced export options; you can export your images in any combination of file size, compression, or file type. You can add watermarks, export custom designed web galleries, slideshows and create all sorts of print templates. Some even allow you to geo tag your images, will export to Flickr or Facebook or even catalogue movie files from your camera.

 Powerful printing options are among the many attributes.

There are a multitude of choices out there, a powerful free version is Picasa, at the more professional level Aperture and Lightroom are the most popular choices. For those of you still using a folder hierarchy on your harddrive, take a look at the current crop of available software, many even have free 30 day trials. The powerful yet user friendly aspects of these programs will change the way you manage your digital collections forever.

Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. You can follow him on Facebook or visit his site, The Odessa Files. He also maintains a blog chronicling his exploits as an Expat in the former Soviet Union

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

There used to be many arguments against using RAW in the early days of digital photography. It takes too much space, the post-production is complicated, will there be compatible software in 30 years? I don’t have big enough memory cards to use RAW. Many of these arguments will still be trotted out today so let’s dissect each one.

Too much space – hard drives today are not only cheap, but they are massive compared to just a few years ago.

Post production – well there is an array of image management programs out there now, all very capable of reading and adjusting RAW files. If you are on a Mac, you will already have some great-inbuilt software in iPhoto. Even Photoshop’s Raw program is a lot simpler than in days gone by.

Compatibility – well first you are making the assumption that either your camera manufacturer will go bust or stop supporting older formats. Both are unlikely but if they did occur, think about how many freeware programs that are out there running or emulating 20 year old software. If there is a need, someone will write the code.

Lastly memory cards – well it’s more or less the same response to hard drive.

So why should we use RAW? Put quite simply, its better. First and foremost, you will be able to attain the highest possible quality that your sensor can deliver. When you shoot JPEG, you camera makes all the adjustments based on your settings then applies them to a file that is then compressed. It’s a double whammy, the image is already manipulated then it is reduced in size.

With a RAW file, you make all the corrections in the post-production getting the image perfect before you save it as a JPEG. The latitude and dynamic range of a RAW file is significantly higher meaning if you are struggling with a difficult exposure you are more likely to be able to “save” the image in post.

RAW captures a higher dynamic range

You can also correct your own mistakes, have you ever returned home to find you have shoot the wrong white balance or wrong image size. RAW files do not apply white balance so you can be way off with the original camera settings yet return the image to perfect in post, and the image size is always the maximum dimensions of the sensor.

RAW allows for much more image manipulation without loss of quality

Because of the increased dynamic range of RAW files, it is possible create effective HDR images from a single file simply by post producing two or three different exposures from that single file.

This image used three versions of the top image to create an HDR effect

One of the unsung hero’s of RAW files in my opinion is being able to control and protect your intellectual property. If you strictly control your RAW files, and only release into the public domain, JPEG’s or TIFFS, you have a very strong argument if you incur copyright infringements.

Whilst there are a few minor problems shooting RAW for instance, older cameras may slow down when shooting in burst mode, the pros far out weigh the cons. If you are looking for maximum quality and control over you images then RAW is the way to go.

Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. You can follow him on Facebook or visit his site, The Odessa Files. He also maintains a blog chronicling his exploits as an Expat in the former Soviet Union

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

The Histogram is Your Friend

If you have seen the levels controls before and been daunted by it, don’t be. Perhaps the scariest element of levels is that strange looking graph called the histogram. In fact this is your best friend and like all best friends it takes a little time for your relationship to develop but in the end it will be rewarding and long lived.

The histogram is basically a graph that shows your exposure. Think of it as a bucket full of light. At the left end you have the darkest parts of the image, and the right the lightest. Your goal is to have the bucket full but not overflowing.

At the left end of the histogram you will see a small triangle moving this to the right will increase your black levels. You aim is to bring it as close to the beginning of the graph as possible. Similarly at the right end is another triangle by moving this to the left you reduce the density only for the highlights.  The middle triangle represents the mid tones of the image, drag that left to lighten the mid tones and right to darken them.

So why should you use the levels rather than the brightness/contrast and color controls? Well put simply it gives you a huge amount of control over your image, much more than you may think at first glance. When you use brightness and contrast your editing program is controlling an image using a fixed inflexible algorithm. It simultaneously changes dark mid and light tones in all three colors with little or no control.

By using levels you can control exactly how you want the dark, light and mid tones to look. By compressing your bucket of light, you can infinitely tweak the contrast. Using the included eye dropper tools you can define your black point, white point. Between the white and black point  droppers you have the grey eye dropper. By clicking this on a neutral grey tone in your image, you can quickly correct a colourfast.

Boosting the Contrast

Controlling the grey point brings us onto the next advantage of levels and often under estimated tool, color control. When you first open the levels palette you will find the histogram shows the overall RGB levels. Look closely at above the histogram and you will see a drop down box. This allows you to individually see the red/green/blue histograms and adjust them individually.

Why is this important, well let’s say you have a blue cast in a shadow that is spoiling your image. By selecting the blue only histogram, you can move the black point a little to the right, this would add yellow to the blue shadows only, and neutralize the cast.

The levels tool become even more powerful when you combine it with the selection tools. For instance if you wanted to warm the tones of a grey building but keep the rest of the image the same color, you could select just the building, open the levels dialogue, use the mid tones blue or red slider and warm up the greys. The rest of the image will remain exactly as it was.

Using a selection to enhance the red face by Jason Row Photography, on Flickr

In some imaging programs such as Photoshop CS5, the levels control has a series of presets to base as a starting point, for instance, increase contrast or lighten the midtones.

There are a multitude of things you can do with the levels controls, so why not take a look and see what you can do. Remember to work on a copy of your original, just in case you get a little carried away and end up with a Hockney rather than an Adams.

Jason Row is a British born travel photographer now living in Ukraine. You can follow him on Facebook or visit his site, The Odessa Files. He also maintains a blog chronicling his exploits as an Expat in the former Soviet Union

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

Keywording photos can be a time consuming endeavor, but it should still be included in your workflow if it is not already. There are programs that help you select words (just do a search on Google for “photo keywording tools”) but the best way I have found is to brainstorm and figure them out on my own. Every photo is unique and should be given time for tagging appropriate keywords. The great thing about digital photos is we only need to add keywords to our images once. By saving keywords to our photos’ metadata we are essentially storing them for use at anytime in the future.

Types of keywords:
Location – Describes the actual location of the photo. Start with a region of the world and work your way down to the city or town. (Ex: Asia, Southeast Asia, Philippines, Mindanao, Surigao del Sur, Bayabas)
Conceptual – These are words that describe moods, emotions or ideas associated with an image.
Descriptive – Keywords describing what is actually happening or shown in the photo.

Not all photos will need to be tagged with every type of keyword. It will depend on each individual photo and what you feel people will search for to find that image. Put yourself in the searchers shoes and think about what they’d type into a search field box to come by your pictures.

Examples:

Title: Mangrove Seedling
Description: A single mangrove seedling in its coastal environment.
Keywords: alone, Asia, beginnings, environment, Flora, future, growth, hope, leaves, new, nursery, Philippines, plants, progress, single, Southeast Asia, ocean, coast, coastal, tree, seascape, grow, branch, renewal, new life, prosperity, seedling, infancy, mangrove, salt water, sapling, estuary, awakening, Mindanao, Bayabas, Surigao del Sur, mangrove habitat, coastal environment, mangrove swamp, mangrove forest

Title: Children silhouette playing in ocean
Description: Children playing on a boat anchor rope, Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines.
Keywords: Asia, carefree, childhood, children, energy, enjoyment, friendship, fun, innocence, leisure, partnership, people, playful, playing, recreation, relaxation, silhouette, Southeast Asia, sunset, togetherness, tropical, Happiness, boy, game, child, lifestyle, ocean, shore, coastal, beach, play, girl, seascape, island, joyful, backlit, salt water, Human relationships, archipelago, Cebu, island life, Visayas, Malapascua, Philippines, island lifestyle, Pacific Islands, Malay Archipelago

I often find myself looking other places to help me discover relevant keywords for my images. I almost always look to Wikipedia for suggestions, especially for those location and descriptive keywords. I will also sometimes visit a thesaurus or just simply do a Google search on the particular topic to see if any other important words stick out to me.

Using Lightroom to Organize and Add keywords:

The Library Module in Adobe Lightroom gives photographers some fantastic tools to organize and add metadata to their photos. Within this module Lightroom as developed a structured and time saving method to add keywords – the parent/child hierarchy method. By organizing your photos in this hierarchy manner when you apply a child keyword to your photo the parent keywords are also applied. Lightroom makes it easy to move your child and parent keywords around and automatically updates your photos.

To create a child keyword within a parent, right-click on the parent and select “create keyword tag inside.” The number on the right hand side indicates how many photos in your collection are tagged with that word.

By spending some time in Lightroom you will see how easy it is to manage your photos keywords. I have found that by being more organized in Lightroom I am willing to take a little more time to add the appropriate keywords to my images.

Jacob Maentz is a freelance travel, culture and documentary photographer currently based in the Philippines. You can visit his website here, read his articles on his blog, follow him on Facebook or Twitter.

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

This is one of several images shot at a fall wedding in Eastland, a beautiful region in the North Island of New Zealand. The bride, groom and I were flown to this location for an hour of shooting following the ceremony and prior to the wedding reception. This was one of the last images captured as the light was failing.

The lens was the ultra-wide Tokina AT-X PRO 11-16 f2.8. Because ultra-wide lenses exaggerate the perspective (increasing the apparent distance between near and far objects) it is possible to create quite dramatic landscapes. However, ultra-wides are not particularly easy to use when photographing people. In my experience, anything wider than 16mm (DX) or 24mm (FX) requires the photographer to position the subject rather carefully in the frame. The eye is far less tolerant of perspective distortion when it is applied to the human body. This image was shot at 11mm at which even the slightest change in lens axis alters the composition markedly.

I shot handheld while lying on the ground and pointing the camera slightly upward. This exaggerated the shape of the dress but it also “placed” the horizon where I wanted it (approximately a third from the base of the frame). It of course also enabled me to include more sky in the image.

The bride is also placed roughly one third from the right of the frame.

The Nikon SB-800 flash was used off camera. The groom stood to the bride’s right and held the flash quite high. On this occasion I used the Nikon SC-26 cable to connect the body and flash. Had I had more time the shot could have been improved by attaching a diffuser to the flash. This would have softened the shadow edges on the dress.

The original image is shown here. To achieve the final result this image was heavily processed in Lightroom 3. The procedure can be divided into three stages: effects, color adjustments, darkening of selected regions.

Under most circumstances one would introduce image effects later in the sequence. However, for this image, because the effects are so radical it is best to introduce them at the outset.

First, I pushed the Fill Light to its highest setting. Then, (with the image looking awful), I adjusted the Blacks, Brightness, Clarity and overall Saturation in order to restore the image to something a little closer to reality. The extreme Fill Light setting along with Clarity tends to create a very interesting effect on the details -particular the grass.

Noise Reduction has also been introduced to create a slightly painted effect.

Second, I moved onto color adjustments. Skies are often made more attractive by lowering the luminance and increasing the saturation. It is best to begin with the luminance before touching the saturation. I prefer to use the adjustment tool available within Lightroom’s HSL panel.

Sometimes it works well to remove certain colors from an image entirely. In this case I removed the green. I also shifted the hue of the yellow grass away from green towards red.

Third, I darkened selected areas of the image. This is most easily done with vignettes and graduated filters. By setting the Lens Vignette midpoint parameter to 0, I created a smooth vignette that draws the viewer’s attention toward the centre of the image. This, of course, would not be suitable for an image in which the subject is far from the centre.

I also applied two graduated filters to the image -one from the top down and one from the bottom up. Again it is important that the graduated filter is smooth. A “stepped” look is unattractive.

Finally, because the rather radical effects tended to blowout the detail in the upper part of the dress I used the Adjustment Brush to darken the dress very slightly, thus restoring detail.

This is one of six tutorials featured in The Wedding Photographer iPad and iPhone app. A free version is available from the app store.

Author: Perry Trotter

Perry is a New Zealand wedding photographer. You can also find him at Perry Trotter Photography’s Facebook page.

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.

Play With the Blacks Slider – Lightroom has a convenient little slider called “Blacks” in develop mode that allows you to have more control over the contrast in your images. Dragging the slider to the right to increase your blacks will usually result in a slightly more dramatic image in landscapes owing to an increase in contrast. Be sure not to clip too much (you can see exactly how much clipping you’re doing by holding down the “option” key on a Mac or “alt” key on a PC as you use the slider with your mouse). For a great little video on using the black slider, check out this tutorial.

"Sacrifice" (Explored #23) by Luke Peterson Photography, on Flickr

Schweriner Schloss in the Evening Sun by saturn ♄, on Flickr

Give it a Gradient – Another convenient tool you can use to make your clouds and sky a little more ominous is to darken them by way of a gradient. This has a similar effect to using an ND Grad filter on your camera while you are shooting. Sometimes it can also create a more interesting effect if you add a slight gradient to the foreground. This helps highlight the center of interest in the image. There is a nice tutorial on adding drama to a seascape image with the graduated filter in LightRoom here.

Dune 45, Sossusvlei by coda, on Flickr

dance of the microghosts by mugley, on Flickr

Vignette – The final tool that can often be used very quickly and effectively that we’re going to mention is the vignette tool/s in Lightroom. Darkening the surrounds mildly while leaving the center of interest a little brighter is an effective strategy to draw the eye of a viewer in any photograph. There is a tutorial on using the vignette palette here. In landscape photography, it can be used quite effectively and looks especially dramatic in black and white landscapes.

Stop-motion by digitalpimp., on Flickr

Teaspoon by Astragony, on Flickr

This is by no means a comprehensive list of things that can be done to a landscape quickly in Lightroom, but often they can be the go-to tools to spruce up a flat image.

Photography Tutorials, Case Studies and Discounts - LightStalking Photography Newsletter.