Interesting techniques from Guy Gowan

I came across a method of processing recently as exercised and flaunted by Guy Gowan...I had heard of him before and got the usual "he changed the way I process images" comments. Now I can see why. I had seen excerpts of what he had done so I could work out his methodology.

Below are 2 images - your typical before and after. Nothing special just a club outing to Leenane, Co. Galway during 2010. It was taken handheld using the Panasonic Lumix LX3 in low light. The image was about 2 stops underexposed and had a green cast (as you can see).

Before:

 

After:

In Lightroom I raised the Exposure about 1+2/3rds of a stop. I didn't worry about the bright sections to the right side as the Histogram said nothing was blown - I could have balanced it but that wasn't the intention of this exercise.

So exporting to Photoshop I got to work on the colour cast. I saw by the Histogram (expanded version) that the greens were excessive so I added a photo filter magenta to bring the colour back...about 25% with Luminosity preserved. I tried to boost the blues a little but this served no real purpose so I left it as it was. A bit of noise reduction then with an interesting method of contrast boost.

The contrast boost utilises firstly a Levels layer where Auto is selected with "Enhance Monochromatic Contrast" checked in Options and 0% clipping. Then an alpha channel from the RGB Channel placed on a Curves adjustment as a mask for highlights was run. This was on a 50%/50% point and dragged down by 10%. Then I ran a levels adjustment on the Alpha Channel generated mask (Alt-L) and moved the sliders in to just past the edge of the histogram edges.This layer was duplicated, the mask was inverted and the Shadows were increased by 5% by using the same method but not placing a Levels adjustment on the mask as this had already been done on the prior layer. Then this was flattened and sharpened by using a LAB Mode Sharpening technique and only running a 25% opacity on this new layer.

I was quite happy with the technique, all of which is lossless and can be constantly re-adjusted once saved as a .psd file.

So what is street photography?

This is a peculiar question to ask anyone who isn't into "Street Photography"...but what is it...I mean, street photography? To me it's a answer that I initially thought was an easy one until I tried to answer it.

 Is it people in an environment where the image produced holds the viewers attention longer than a passing glance?

Or even more detailed - where a person sees an image where they exhale a short burst of air through their nose...not a laugh or a snort, just a recognition of a situation in a period of time?

 It can be when a sequence of events leads to an image where you think "You couldn't make it up" - almost like spotting a rare bird or witnessing an unusual sporting event...you can say you were there.

But on the other hand the juxtaposition of people with their environment suits well. Just in a position that holds the attention but nothing startling stands out...it's just a situation. But then you just take a photograph just because it's an interesting composition and the people just add to the randomness and create a pleasing effect.

To try to answer the initial question - it's probably a lot of things to a lot of people but the interesting fact is that it is just that - varying and diverse. Rather like the people that feature in the images.

Whale Watching?

3 mental sons, stuck in front of a TV fighting over who was on the PS3 next. An idea - go see the whales that have been reported off Hook Head. So 3 kids, wife, 2 cameras and off we went. As soon as we got there we could see the shine of car roofs through the haze - not the only ones out for a Sunday afternoon of amusement. 

Driving down the peninsula we saw snow drifts...we got closer and they were mounds of foam from the surf...of course - the storm from yesterday was still wild at sea.

So we saw no whales. We didn't look. We were bemused with the people standing around the perimeter of the inlet under the Tower (Hook Lighthouse) watching the waves converging and shooting into the sky. Everyone seemed to have a camera or a dog...why no one had both is one of those unnecessary but curious thoughts. So I tried to get something that showed the people and the tower and the waves. This was probably the better of the day but with the wind and the cold we didn't stay long. Last time I did this I got soaked but it was worth it.

 

Of course I said 2 cameras - my wife had the other. I think she pipped me at the post today with this one. Competition is tough in the Rossiter Household! 

For Sale

After pondering the inevitable for some time I have now presented images on my site for sale. Along the top of all images the details can be retrieved for prints, e-cards, downloads and sharing. The joy of this for me is that I use a third party vendor for the printing, payment and delivery of the images which gives me time to do other things. The company, if you're interested, is Fotomoto. I've seen and used a couple of these types of vendors but none have been as simple to use and as easy to adapt to my site. Image quality is also top notch...best idea all round methinks.

Feel free to contact me if you want further information about this provider or my site.

Merry Christmas

To all my friends, relations and colleagues may I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Here's to the future.

It's been a while

For anybody following this blog - my apologies for the obvious lack of input since February. It's been a quiet time on the photography front. But I'm back making shapes again.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be making a few changes to this blog and also to my website. I'll be adding the feature to buy images from my site but that'll mean restricting images from that part of my site to sale-able images. On the other hand it'll give me a reason to update this blog a little more.

So watch this space for the changes and thanks for hanging in there.

Film...the story so far...

A friend says to me "So, wonky...where's all this film stuff you've been doing". Well, it's been an adventure. First I got a Kiev 88CM...I was warned they could be difficult or might not work at all...but first shoot was quite good.

Then it went a little downhill. I went to Johnstown Castle and I found a little light leak...just a little one.

OK, this I could have fixed with a new seal. But then this black band happened on all exposures with the next back.

Ignore the scratching...I have that one sussed. But I thought this was a shutter problem so sent the camera back. Only tonight I discovered looking back at mixes (or soups...if you like) that I had only made a 500ml mix instead of 600ml...so the black band is not developed correctly. Ah well!

But in the meantime I had the Holga out for a run:

This turned out OK but in low light conditions it wasn't what I'd seen others doing...so slowly got disillusioned with this whole film thing. But I ran another roll through the Holga:

Faith restored. More recently I've run a roll through a pinhole and the Bronica GS-1 but got too brave and tried a stand development...stupid idiot...should have stayed with the basics first till I know what I'm doing. I have a film through the Holga drying at the moment run at Massive Development times and the negs look good. Now if I could only get to grips with the scanner!

To be continued...