It’s too busy, it’s too flat and that’s not the color I saw!
Light does not always work the way we expect, especially in the season of color. In today’s video, we head to the autumn woods of Washington and talk about how to get better images of fall color.
In the end, knowing the tactics of good light like we talk about in Exposed and taking the time to just experiment and study your scene will make all the difference. Then comes the processing. If you crave great color don’t miss this month’s Photo Kit workshop on fall color science that’s coming out in a few days. If you’re not a member you can join for free here.
Deep night sky and Autumn Aspens lit with a flashlight. Sony A7R II, ISO 6400, 13 sec, f3.5, Canon 24mm TSe II. Power Workflow 5 Presets.
My top night photography tips:
Setup slowly and carefully on tripod before you shoot. In daylight if possible.
With stars decide on deep field or star trails, then visualize everything else.
Use a timer or cable release so as not to have any camera shale from button pressing.
Long exposure noise reduction generally helps your final image.
When light painting run some test shots and plant your best light strokes.
Metering is hard at night, but use your histogram to make sure you’re using the tonal range well.
I found this spot up in North Washington. In the day it was a plain aspen grove that was a bit weak. But I thought, this will all change under the stars. So I used a basic LED flashlight with a zoom head. That way I could get a bit of focus on the light. I have much bigger lights but at this ISO they washed out the Aspens as I wanted to gear the light towards the top.
Initial setup is important. You’ll likely have to experiment to get the flashlight just right and you don’t want to hassle with comp or focus at that point. Get that first. I setup neat camp before it was dark and then left the camera waiting. It can be done in full dark with high ISO test images, but setting up in the light make things much easier and you can really think about your composition and visualize.
If I want deep field like this, rather than star trails, I try to keep exposure 8-16 sec. If going for Star trails I want to extend out to 30 minutes or more. A camera that can handle high ISO is important for the shorter exposures. If you are doing longer star trails, you can dial back to ISO 200 or so and open up the shutter in bulb for 30 minutes or more like I did in 140 Minutes of Night. Of course everything changes if you have bright moonlight.
The key here was a balance between the trees and sky. I wanted the Aspens at Zone 6-7, but metering under these conditions is not so easy so I made a visualization in my head and then used histogram and previews to dial in the result (see the EXposed workshop for more on light).
Night exposes different from day. Post processing needs to be deliberate. I stay with the RAW file until the end. In night scene I’ll usually have to dial up the lights and white, but have to be careful not to blow anything out. I’ll generally start with presets and then dial it in. At the end I’ll do details in Photoshop.
There’s nothing like the Autumn; all of nature pauses, shining in all it’s radiance to give glory to God. The detail is great and this will print beautifully for gallery.
Winter’s End – Taken a few minutes apart. The mobile image lacks any fine detail up close and fine detail is totally lost in that pasty look that is common of low end cameras and lenses. The film scan however holds up well. See complete image details here on Gavin’s journal. More examples below.
The camera in your iPhone costs about ten dollars to make – Now I was browsing Facebook the other day I found the above reference photo I posted while on our Spring 2012 tour. I remembered that morning, the light on the trees and how my 4 year old son rode with me to greet the sunrise. It was a good memory. But next I compared it as a photographer to the final print version of Winter’s End. That promoted me to compare others, from both film and digital, comparing them to their mobile counterparts.
A great image is more than the sum of it’s tech specs – But when those details are far below the sum of it’s artistic merit, it brings down the entire work.
What was really illustrated was the vast difference between a point and shoot image and a quality photograph. Even I had not realized how poor the quality was. The phone photo is a good reference and helped me plan and log I wanted to produce. It was also fun travel memory and some might say it was “good enough”. But I’ve learned that “good enough” is not how we produce great images to stand out in today’s market.
I see more and more people acting as if phones are serious cameras. Sometimes even touting it as something special. This bothers me because a low grade camera is not a feature of your art (and make no mistake, your phone camera is low grade). It’s true that gear does not make a photographer. But low image quality can make even the most accomplished photographer look like an amateur. Comparing a phone snap to a professional level camera is a bit like comparing a Prius to a dragster.
As promised here’s another shot from my recent trip down to the Leavenworth area to shoot nature around the Wenatchee River. This is a few miles up Highway 2, right by the bridge I posted last week.The color and vibrancy of nature in the fall is always so amazing. God sure knows his colors. This is one of my High dynamic range pieces with a few of my effects added. To get the broad range of light I use the tones from three images taken at different brightness levels.
