A photograph is hidden in RAW #6 : Time Blending

"Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete"

"Grandma" was a tough picture to make. I call her a sweet suprise in what otherwise would have been just a technical landscape picture.

It started as an inspiration from the works of master craftsman Elia Locardi, this guy is a master of time blending. As he always says so rightly we remember a place not by a flash of a moment, we remember it by time. We create memories of a beautiful beach by feeling the whole sunset till the time stars come out, it's a duration of time that generates feeling not a flash.

So that what I went out to create on the beautiful banks of river Brahmaputra that afternoon.

It took me about an hour or two to find the right composition, I wanted something that fits​ good for a sunset and a startrail. This small beach leading to the river and the boat looked promising so I set myself down in there.

The small beach.

The setup and the frame.

My plan for this composition was to stick with it till astronomical night and get some startrail along with the sunset. That was an ambitious plan by any count as it's was mid monsoon and that means rain clouds at any moment can kill the plan. And that's exactly what happened as soon as I got my sunset shot in the bag, clouds moved in and bye bye startrail.

But before that happened something interesting did, out of the village nearby came the sweetest little Grandma. She silently came near me and asked "Can I check if that's my son's boat?" and I was just stunned by her humble ask. Here she was worried sick if her son is back, but she still manages to hold her composure and ask me as if my picture is any important. As she was standing on the beach trying to see as far as her old eyes could muster, I thought of just capturing this moment just for my emotional bag.

I was determined to make this picture work so I broke off from my style and did a composit for this one. And I couldn't stop myself from adding Grandma to the picture.

The final picture Grandma.

It seems this picture worked as I posted this picture on social media, I got lot of requests to share how I made the picture. So here goes nothing :)

I will try to show you my post processing steps in here with screen shots.

Let me show you my shot selection for the composit. I was using a Nikon D7200 camera body paired with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens shot @ 15mm ISO 100 and used a tripod Vanguard 263AT for rock solid stability.

#1 A well illuminated foreground.

#2 Used the finger to cover the direct sun on the lens and avoid lens flare.

#3 Now for the sun-star I narrowed the aperture to f/22 and increased the shutter speed to 1/50th of a second.

Now as I waited for the sun to go down for my star trail shots, one sweet Grandma came to check on if her son or grandson returned from fishing in the river. So without thinking much I took a caution shot, as she stood there for a minute looking out. Well as luck would play it, this became my anchor to the story for the picture and shot number #4.

#5 my luck soon wore out and the rest of the evening till night deep clouds turned in killing all chances of a star trail possibility there. So I used another star trail shot towards the same direction on the other side of the river in winter of 2016. LINK

So after I selected all the above shots and minor fixes done in Adobe Lightroom, I opened them up in Photoshop as layers.

Following are the screens of the processing done on it.

Base layer is the first shot with illuminated foreground.

To remove the lens flare for the above I used the second shot with no flare.

I masked out the covered area and brought the sky and sun only from the base layer.

Now I used the sun star layer on top of them.

I again used a luminosity mask on only take in the sky and the reflection of it on the river.

In the next layer I brought in the Star trail shot.

Using a blending mode "Soft Light" only brought out the starts of that layer.

Now used a mask to only show the sky area.

Now my base picture is ready.

Next I used a Clipping Masked Curve adjustment layer to add midtone brightness to the sky and also fix the colour balance a bit.

Finally as I was completing the picture, I added the Grandma shot.

Used a custom mask to only show her and her shadow.

Now as you see it add a unique dynamics to this picture. And completes the story of the picture.

Finally I did some CA cleanup as all the processing and masking added a few odd ones in such a high dynamic range scene.

That's how I made this picture, hope this information is helpful to you. And will inspire you to try time blending.

You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.

HAPPY SHOOTING

A photograph is hidden in RAW #5 : Midday Landscape Photography.

Let's see how I created this picture.

A photograph is hidden in RAW #4 : Night photography and a star-trail.

Night photography was always a challenge to me. There are so many factors to get a desired shot that it is sometimes very taxing. Nevertheless every winter I try my luck anyway, as winters bring cool calm wind less and cloud less skies. The cool air also helps in getting sharper celestial views.

So last year (2016) at end of December I went with few friends to a location which is expected to have minimum light pollution. There was no shot that I had in mind, living in the northern hemisphere there is no chance to get a good view of the Milkyway centre during that time. So all of us were almost ready and half expecting to have some star trail shots from this night shoot.

Star Catch

And here is what I got!

Some of my friends and fellow photography enthusiast wanted to know how this picture was made. So here you go friends.

There are two stages of making this picture first being capturing the necessary shots keeping a lose aim on what we want to create finally.

Night photography compounds the same rules of getting a good picture during day composition, light and an anchoring subject. In my mind I did not want to have this just as a simple startrail picture but to have more interest to it. So I stated looking for complementing subjects and right out of darkness I saw this fishing net in the shallows of the river and a line of crap to push the fish towards it. Now that looked interesting and after a few test shots I set my mind to this final composition. For the stars as I was pointing towards South West and my phone app Planit! told me that the star movement will place them right on top of my net. So I was a little optimistic.

Now a few tools of trade that we must have to capture a star trail as I did,

• A camera which can take a intervelometer or has a in built one. I use a Nikon D7200 so I am sorted on that.
• A fast lens, something that has an aperture below f/2.8. For this shot I used a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 which is sharp and gets me the picture I want.
• A very sturdy tripod is an absolute must.
• A determined and calm mind, because you will surely need it. Believe me! :)
• A friend to chit chat to kill time during the exposure or very tasty pack of snacks with hot tea. (...as alcohol does not mix well with photography or anything else for that matter.)

One of the 150 shots at ISO1600 12mm f/2.8 for 30secs

For this shot I set my temperature to 5095 Kelvin shooting in RAW at ISO1600 12mm f/2.8 for 30secs exposure. And I took 150 shots at that same setting with a in-between shot gap of 4 secs. This took my shooting time to 85 minutes.

On a side note which the experts don't tell and I had to learn the hard way is, you have to take a complete black shot of the same frame with the lens cap on, that can be used later in post processing for noise reduction.

Foreground light painted frame, shot at ISO400 12mm f/10 30secs

And as I had a leading line in my composition so I took a light painted shot of the foreground for safe measure at ISO400 12mm f/10 30secs.

Finally after reviewing the shots on my camera's LCD screen and somewhat satisfied, we called it a night.

This starts the second part of making this picture called Post Processing. 

Base layer of the complete star trail.

First I took all of those 150 shots to Lightroom and did some minor tweaks like removing the Chromatic Aberration and adding a little bit of exposure. Now I took these 150 shots to Starstax and created the startrail with fair bit of  Gap filling used. Ones I was satisfied with the trails I exported it to Photoshop as a layer. 

Added more stars with a Linear dodged frame of the set.

On top of that I brought in the 150th shot from that stack of pictures and converted the mode to Linear Dodge with 70% layer opacity. This helped me to bring back some of the static stars into the sky and I masked out the foreground from that layer.

Foreground interest.

If you remember I mentioned about my light painted foreground frame. Well here is where I brought that in and using a Lights luminosity mask showed only the foreground leading line with 90% layer opacity.

Finally I removed some of the stray lights in the right horizon with another frame from the 150 set using a mask to paint out that area.

And that's all it took to get the final frame that you see today.

I hope this will help you create you own startrail picture. Just remember, the viewer  is interested something beyond the technique. A technically strong picture might not be the best one, it also has to have the right recipe of Composition, Light and Subject.

If you think this was helpful to you please leave a comment or critique. You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.

A photograph is hidden in RAW #1: Post processing a long exposure frame.

A few of my friends were interested in understanding what are the in-between steps from taking this picture from RAW to the final output.

So I thought why not write a small tutorial :)

Step 1 : Opened the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom to balance the exposure by adjusting the Highlights and Shadows and finally a little bit of increase in exposure. I fixed the White Balance of the image to what it looked like at that time. Next I fixed the lens distortion and vignetting. (I usually add a custom vignette at the last stage of the process)

Step 2 : Took the adjusted file and open up in Photoshop for further processing.

Step 3 : Added a fast exposure of the same frame and using a inverted mask brought in the static leafs of the trees.

Step 4 : Now I merged all the visible layers to create a new merged layer and opened that with Color Efex Pro 4 to add some Polarization. This has increased the vibrancy on the foliage and given some contrast to the clouds.

Step 5 : Next I used Silver Efex Pro to convert the image to B&W also added additional contrast to enhance the dynamics.

Step 6 : Finally I used a Curve Adjustment Layer and pulled the midtones just a bit to make the image a little darker. I inverted the mask on it and painted in a custom vignette to pull the viewers eye towards the subject in the frame.

And voila its done.

As you can see once you have the basic idea of what you want to achieve, it will be just few simple steps to get there.

Although this one took not more then half hour to process. I would admit that in some of other pictures I did spend days taking breaks in between to get to the final output.

Hope you guys have enjoyed the explanation here and will excuse me for the cranky language.

Till the next picture, keep clicking!!

You can visit my Facebook page and 500px page to view and review my work.

A Landscape Photographer's treat : Framed Souvenirs

Framed Souvenirs is an annual showcase of photographic brilliance by the trio Arpan Kalita, Manabendra Choudhury and Himadri Bhuyan.



This year was a special treat for landscape photography enthusiast like me, as the walls are full of landscapes to wow and wonder.



Let's go in a journey of few of my favourites.

Dale of Hope by Arpan Kalita

This landscape pulled me again and again closer to the feelings of the photographer when he took it. It forces you to think did this dappled light on the rolling hills actually lit up like this, on asking Arpan he said "You got to see it to believe it" and I believe you. Arpan is an actualist when it comes to landscape photography, he intends to take the viewer to the location and to the time as it was.

Here are a few more by this wonderer.

Catch me on your way back by Arpan Kalita

Emareld Soul by Arpan Kalita

Manabendra Choudhury is the second jewel of the trio who showcased his landscape work. Lets follow a few.

Stillness Speaks by Manabendra Choudhury

He is the water man of the lot and his style of varied viewpoints on wetlands, lakes, cascades is really moving. This one above shot in Sonbill wetlands has such a mastery on perspective with the mallowness of the night that it pushed me to ask "How?". Manabendra da as we call him, said "this was shot from neck deep water on a full moon evening". Now that is what I call commitment and therefore the wonders captured.

Feast your eyes on few more of his captures.

Fairy by Manabendra Choudhury

Rapture of a flow by Manabendra Choudhury

Finally Himadri who does not need any introduction or may be needs a rather long one. :)

Here is a guy whose is creativity is always on steroids. I think of him as not a landscape photographer but a photographer with his own genre.

His intimate vision and expression has always managed to surprise me. Without trying to explain his art further, which is impossible for a mere mortal like me. Let me show you some.

Queen by Himadri Bhuyan

Now this is something although you want to keep looking for its prettyness, instead it takes you deep into the rabbit hole. Himadri was kind enough to explain me the technique to produce such an image, and from what I could understand its not easy. Then I thought folks like Himadri, Arpan and Manabendra da do it not because its easy but its hard. May be its a sense of accomplishment they get, and while they are at it we get to see wonders on shows like Framed Souvenirs.

Here are a few more from the poet.

Into the Universe by Himadri Bhuyan

Temple of the King by Himadri Bhuyan

Looking out for next year.

Landscape Photography Vlog#1 : Shooting the Bamboo Walkway

Hello guys I am Utpalendra Deka an user experience consultant with a passion for Landscape photography.

As always the first question I ask myself when I see Landscape photos from masters like Marc Adamus, Patrick Marson Ong and our very own Debraj Chakraborty is 

What was going on in his mind when he shot this?

So although a novice to Landscape Photography, I thought why not share what I was thinking when I took this.

The bamboo path : The amazing thing is, this walkway is completely built with bamboo on the hillsides in the bank river Brahmaputra by antigens from Majuli and the bend here feels like it's leading to infinity.
Shot with Nikon D7200 and Tokina 11-16mm f2.8
@ 11mm 1.3sec f/14 ISO100

On this day I got ready to shoot this location on the north bank of river Brahmaputra near  Guwahati city. The plan was to shoot the sunrise. So I did my ground work the day before fuelled up the car, checked the map for routes, checked weather forcast (expected slight clouds), packed food, checked memory cards (formatted), charged up the camera batteries and a few more ... sigh that's a lot!

As I was going for a sunrise shot and I had an hour long drive to the location, so I started way before first light. All the way I was hoping that its not going to be a complete grey sky.

As I reached the location and I was lucky as it is not that far from the road, I spend some time setting up the gear. Used the app Sun Surveyor to check the exact location where the sun will come up. Now its time to just watch and wait for the right light.

While I waited for first light, just to kill time I kept walking the bank of the river and found this awesome floating bamboo walkway built on the steep bank of the river. What a catch!!

As the first glow of the sun came I was heartbroken to see that the sky was as bland and grey as it gets, but now I have another shot in my mind. To shoot the bamboo walkway :)

So I reset my gear on this curve of the walkway.

A wider view of the walkway.

I chose a vertical frame to enhance the walkway, something like this.

A vertical frame worked best.

Here is what happened on the shoot.

If you want to see more of my photography visit my 500px page or Facebook page.