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Color or Black and White?
To color or not to color, that is the question.
I have been enjoying minimalist photography for quite a while now and I would say it is more and more so. I have also enjoyed color photography though for the most part. Lately however, I find myself leaning more and more towards black and white. Is it just a further move towards minimalism? Disposing of color further simplifies the scene and the focus is on lines, shapes, textures, and light.
Here's an example of a photo liked as captured in color, however, was it really the color that mattered? Did the color express what it felt like by the pond? Or does the black and white do a better job expressing the emotions?
Have fun, whether in color or black and white!
Nature's Call, Another Unplanned and Unexpected Fun with the Camera
Back from a week in the mountains, I headed to downtown Buffalo to do some street photography and capture a mixture of natural and artificial light from neon lights at twilight. It was mostly a scouting night for a shoot when the conditions are perfect. As such, I wrapped up quickly and headed home.
On the way home, high up on Skyway, I looked to the right (west) and saw a scene I could not resist. A nice crescent moon was low enough in the sky to have a chance to include it in a photo along with the Buffalo Main Light. So I turned around and headed to the Erie Basin Marina and sure enough, the moon was sitting right over the lighthouse.
There were some last hints of blue in the sky that I captured in the first few photos but the sky turned black pretty quickly and there was also a layer of clouds on the horizon threatening to eat the moon in minutes. I did some somewhat long exposures to stay at low ISOs while keeping the moon mostly static (it always amazes me how quickly the moon moves and even at wide angle, 30 seconds result in a significant move), and also preserving depth of field to have a sharp moon outline.
Then this sailboat showed up and I wanted to incorporate it. That changed my strategy, I cranked up the ISO to 800, opened up the aperture and went for the shortest time I could pull off, which ended up being 0.62s. With the wide angle and darkness, that sufficiently kept the sailboat in place. I also used the sail to cover up one of the lights illuminating the lighthouse, thus eliminating a the strongest light and also backlighting the sail a tiny bit.
Since there was no color left in the sky I planned to and converted to black and white, which nicely simplified the scene by eliminating the various color casts from the different lights. It also allowed me not to worry about noise so much since (in my opinion) noise is much less of an issue in black and white photography. However, at ISO 800 my camera has some hot spots that I'd need the camera noise reduction on for, which I did not activate. As a result, these random dots showed up and more densely than I expected. However, they only looked distracting in the ground and water area. I thought they were fine in the sky and make it look like some stars got captured in the dark sky.
For comparison, the second photo is a longer exposure, lacking the made up stars but showing some moon movement.
Have fun with whatever nature throws at you!
Shooting at Noon
I've recently commented on the magic hour photography in my The Mainstream Photographic Theory - The Magic Hours post. Here's another midday photo with less dramatic clouds this time. However, here, the cloud cover provided a nice diffused light that worked well for the symmetric composition and the reflection. Shadows to either side would have broken the symmetry.
To intensify the pier reflection in the water of Lake Erie, a graduated neutral density filter held the light above the horizon back a bit and allowed for the bright rendering of the water surface, showing as transparent where the pier cast its shadow and a reflection.
Have fun no matter what time of the day!
The Last Frame
Quite often do I find out that it is the last frame I take that I like the most for the particular shoot. In a way that makes sense. I like to start by getting some establishing photos to capture the location as I found it without tinkering with the gear, the angles, or anything else. Really just the first impression. Then, I start looking for additional perspective options, wide views vs. close ups, different filters or fill options. For an evening session the light usually improves along the way too. In the end, I may finally be happy with what I have done and pack it up, having the best image as the last.
However, this also poses a question. Did I really capture the best image I could have? If they tend to be the last ones, why not stay even longer and capture at least one more!?!
What do you think?
Have fun!
Creative White Balance - Presets or Custom
This is my third post on the topic of creative light balance. You can find the previous two posts here:
- Creative White Balance (exploring the incandescent white balance preset)
- Creative White Balance - Fluorescent - An Emotional Scene Copy
After specifically writing about using the incandescent and fluorescent presets for creative results, I have decided to go one step further and show a side by side comparison of all of the common presets. While it does not stop there since today's cameras offer detailed setting of white balance in Kelvins or manually based on a target, it shows the wide variety of results one can get even with the built-in settings.
It's interesting to note that all of this can be applied even with various filters attached. You may have a warming filter on, a warming polarizer, or even color effect filters like the Cokin Varicolor Blue / Yellow, Red / Blue, Pink / Orange, Red / Green, Blue / Lime, or others. Based on white balance settings the colors will be further modified
To start off, the photo on the left is taken with the automatic white balance in the camera. This was a 25-second exposure through the B+W 6-stop neutral density filter, combined with the Cokin Varicolor Blue / Yellow filter and a 2-stop Graduated Neutral Density Filter fitted in the Cokin P holder on a 72 mm adapter ring.
As one might expect, it's not completely neutral or natural. That was the point of all of the filters attached. It's warmer with hints of purple and exaggerated yellows. Overall, I thought it worked well with the sunset.
To contrast this look, the second photo on the right is with automatically calculated white balance in post-processing. It's even the same vendor. The camera AWB was in my Nikon camera, the SW AWB is in Nikon Capture NX2. Yet, it;s quite a different look!
I must admit that when I first tried this I was rather surprised. I knew the camera and the SW calculate the automatic white balance differently but it usually stays very close. I thought the difference here was rather striking.
For the next trio, you can see what a Sunlight, Cloudy, and Shade white balance setting does to this image. All similar, all warm, resembling the original camera AWB.
After these, let's cool things of a bit and check what an incandescent white balance will do with this scene. Isn't it interesting how it resembles the Capture NX2 calculated white balance? I guess it must have been convinced the thing behind the bridge was a light bulb!
Now for a similar, yet still different look the sodium vapor white balance setting on the left.
And to close things off, the fluorescent white balance setting finishes the sampler off. However, your white balance creativity does not have to end there.
You can set the color temperature to any level using the Kelvin setting.
Or, you can manually set your white balance off of something not white, not neutral. I know, that's not what the function was invented for, but why not give it a try!?!
Have fun and keep clicking!