In defense of the planet...

Environmental Activism and photography have been bedfellows for a long time. From the photographs of William Henry Jackson, whose photographs in the 1870s later influenced the creation of Yellowstone National Park, through the later work of Elliot Porter, whose work in the Glen Canyon did not save the area from flooding but drew national attention to the environmental conflict, photographers have often fought "the good fight" to preserve the earth we inhabit.
Yes, the Earth has a tremendous capacity for renewal, and there are flowers blooming at Chernobyl. But do you ever wonder just how far we can push before we reach the end of Nature's potential to regenerate? If we lose this game, the stakes are very high.
So the next time some political genius asks, "How's that hopey/changey thing working for ya?", suggest that they ask the residents of the Gulf coast how "Drill, baby, drill" is working for them.

Fill Flash--Bring your Own Sun! (Part One)

Assassin Bug, Peruvian Amazon

Photographing from below can increase the sense of drama, especially if the subject is a predator, such as this assassin bug. If done well, it gives the viewer the feeling of being prey.

One of the technical problems, however, may be that light still falls from above, and the lower parts of the subject may be in shadow.

Full flash will light the subject, certainly, but then you have a harsh light, with the potential for those horrible (opinionated!) black backgrounds. A reflector might work, if your subject is dead, sleeping, or very passive.

Solution: Fill flash! Fill flash, when adjusted properly, supplies just enough light to "fill" those areas of darkness just enough to show the detail you want, without being overpowering.

One of the things that I appreciate most about digital photography is the immediate feedback that I get by looking at the LCD immediately after shooting. I can tell right away whether my lighting is effective or not, and make the appropriate adjustments. In the next several blogs, I will share my own techniques for fill-flash.

FANTASY...

99% of the time, I work in Photoshop the way I used to work in the darkroom--I manipulate contrast and dynamic range with layer masks instead of paper grades. I do my dodging and burning on adjustment layers with a trackball (I must admit that I do miss waving my hands above the print as though I were performing ancient magics...). Every so often, however, I stray from the pure and unpolluted path and lose myself in the creative potential of the program.

This Morpho butterfly was photographed in bright noonday sunlight in Costa Rica. There must have been a 20 stop contrast range and I worked for hours, trying unsuccessfuly to create a reasonable image. Not even PhotoMatix (an HDR program) could salvage this one. So I said, "Let's ignore reality and just play".

And there you have it...

Crab Spider on Datura

Two items of interest here. One is the neat way that the spider's arm recapitulates the curve of the datura's petal. This is pure serendipity--you can move some insects around to pose them--the arachnids generally are not amenable to that type of manipulation and will usually head underneath the flower.

The second issue is the white flower. For hairy insects (yes, I know--a spider is not an insect), I like to use fill flash to help the little hairs stand out a bit more. It is very easy to over-expose whites, and I rely heavily on my histogram to prevent this. With whites, the luminance histogram (black and white) is quite adequate. With colors, particularly reds and yellows, the luminance histogram may not tell the entire story, as we will see in the next post.

Another Dragonfly...

Yes, another dragonfly picture. I like this one a bit better than the first I posted. This has a softer entry into the frame--the triangle of grasses doesn't come in quite as abruptly from the lower edge, allowing the insect to float upwards. The stem on which the dragonfly is perched is angled in the opposite direction as the grass stems in the background, lending a bit of tension to the image. And I like how the two dewy strands of spiderweb recapitulate the dewy whiteness of the wingtips.
What I don't like--I wish I had used a shallower depth-of-field, so the background grasses would be just a bit less distinct and distracting. Often a change from f8 to f5.6 will be enough to give you a softer background. Of course, I know that in theory--I just wish I had thought of it in the field. This would be difficult to blur in Photoshop because of all the interacting lines, some foreground or subject, some background.

Just Playing...

AUTUMN HAIKU

"A DIFFERENT DRUMMER..."

"this way and that

this frog’s cousins

and second cousins"

Issa

translation © 2006 William J. Higginson


In the 1960s and 70s, the underside of every palmetto leaf in the Florida Everglades seemed to host its own resident family of green tree frogs (Hyla cinerea). Sadly, in many areas, this is no longer the case. If the frog is indeed our “canary in the coal mine”, we are in deep trouble.

The lighting here is a bit harsh, (see the shadows under the leaf rib, for instance), as this image was shot long before the days of TTL fill flash with a manual Sunpack 444 on 1/8 power. (In those days, I was using a 105mm Noflexar on the Novoflex Auto Bellows). The manual flash caused the “hot spot” on the hind leg of the larger frog, a common problem when shooting wet subjects. If I were to re-shoot this today, I would use either fill flash, polarized flash, a diffuser or some combination of the preceding techniques.

HAIKU PHOTOGRAPHS

The following is an excerpt from the electronic edition of a book that I published with William J. Higginson last year (my photographs, Bill's original translations of classical Japanese haiku).

“What are haiku and what do they have to do with photography?
Haiku are short “one-breath” poems, written in the present tense, that describe the writer's perception of some event taking place in the natural world. They are thus “in the moment”, a verbal snapshot, if you will, and may include all of nature (including humanity) as their frame of reference. The haiku poet tries to be objective and transparent, i.e. not allowing his or her ego to stand between the verse and the reader, although some say that simply the act of selecting a subject demonstrates a bias of sorts. Many haiku appear simply descriptive and straightforward on the surface, but may contain layers of deeper meanings. Reading haiku should not be a passive experience, but is like playing “fill in the blanks”. The poem should be suggestive and evocative as well as documentary, and should invite involvement. Rather than allowing you to sit back and admire the technique and artistry, it engages you in the process—Can you feel what the poet felt at the moment of inspiration and insight? Can you see the butterfly wings? Can you hear the cicada songs? And what else?
Now re-read the preceding paragraph again and substitute photography for haiku. Not a very difficult jump to make, is it?”

A "haiku photograph" also leaves the viewer with a part of the story to fill in.

Silhouettes

Field Theory and Perspective in the Context of Katydids: Part Two

Again, I began the process of "composition repair" by taking the camera off the tripod and moving around the subject. Fortunately, this event occurred in the evening and the slightly cool katydid was fairly calm and satisfied just to keep an eye on me as I worked. I had noticed in the background of the previous photograph a small blotch of yellow that turned out to be a patch of sunflowers in another part of the garden. I chose an angle that separated the katydid from the leaf, and a position that used the out-of-focus yellow sunflowers as my background. Much more pleasing, aesthetically, I think. A shallow depth-of-field (notice the repeating theme?) separates the katydid from its background, but I was not totally successful in paralleling the camera plane with the subject plane. (Did anyone notice the missing leg?)

ADDENDUM:
Although the second image is more dramatic and shows off the katydid more effectively, the first photo is not a "bad" shot. If, for instance, I were writing an article on camouflage, I could very well choose that first image as an illustration.

Field Theory and Perspective in the Context of Katydids: Part One

How's that for a convoluted title? Don't fret--all will become clear.

I have been photographing small critters for almost 40 years, and have shown, sold, and taught. One of the more common questions that I'm asked actually has nothing to do with equipment, technique, Photoshop, etc. It goes something like, "how on earth do you see those things?" Aside from the fact that I'm looking for them, there is another process at work below the conscious level that helps me in the field.

I have a friend who was a dedicated hunter. He didn't believe in ambushing from tree stands--he stalked his deer with a bow and arrow, and claims that all he needed was the twitch of an ear or flick of a tail, and the deer was his. He hunts now with a long telephoto lens, but the lessons he learned as a hunter have stood him in good stead in his new persona as a wildlife photographer. What he was doing was identifying field patterns.

When we become really familiar with an environment, we internalize the patterns that it contains. The patterns of branches, leaves, ripples, etc. all become associated in our minds with that environment. Although this is a subconscious process, we can call upon it and bring it into awareness. When I am in the field, my eyes/brain pick out anomalies or variations from the familiar patterns. Subconscious: "Hmmm, the lump on that leaf should not be there as part of the leaf; what is it?" And. there it is--a leaf-green katydid! Or the antenna of a praying mantis, peeking out from behind an identically-colored stalk of grass.

This photograph is an "accurate" one in that it portrays the animal camouflaged in its environment. It is, however, certainly not an aesthetic tour-de-force." How can we fix this? On to Part Two!

Spider and Web 2

Spider and Web 1

Spiders and Spider Webs

Spiders and their webs become increasingly interesting subjects as we enter late summer. They are larger than the spiderlings we saw in spring and early summer, and their webs are larger and more intricate. In addition, cooler mornings give us more opportunity for dewy webs.

These two images demonstrate several issues so vital to effective macrophotography: perspective and depth-of-field (d-o-f). Both images were photographed at f5.6, for shallow depth-of-field. If I had not done this, the spider and web would have disappeared into background clutter. The shallow d-o-f isolated the subject nicely. (In this case the subject is both the spider and the web.

After choosing the aperture, I then took the camera OFF the tripod and moved around the subject as best I could (there were pretty dense bushes in front of the spider, so I could not approach from the front) to evaluate the view from different angles. The lateral angle isolates the spider well, but doesn't show much of the web detail. To show more of the web, I had to photography from slightly below the level of the web (with the camera back on the tripod, of course).

Yet Another Use for Layer Masks...

We know that depth-of-field decreases as magnification increases, that is, as you move closer to your subject. In this image, I could either have the edge of the flower in focus or the insides of the flower, but not both at the f-stop I had chosen. And I had chosen a shallow depth-of-field because I wanted the background to be just a soft green, with no distracting detail.

Once again, Photoshop to the rescue. I photographed the flower twice, once with the inside sharp and once with the edge sharp. No other settings were changed except for the point of focus. In Photoshop, I brought both images together with a Layer Mask. (I always make the top image the one from which I will be using the most information, in this case the outer flower). I then used the Brush tool to bring out the sharp detail in the center. Note that there will always be a slight change in size, since when you change focus, there will be a change in magnification.

Once again, is this cheating? Or are we simply bringing to the screen the image as our eyes saw it in the field? Your call, but perhaps another reason to learn to use Photoshop's Layer Mask. But remember, this is a technique that needs to be planned for while you are photographing. I have put together as many as four exposures of the same subject to create the image I wished to see.

Fill-flash with Early Morning Light

The sun rises here at about 6:15, and the light is sufficient for focusing at about 6:30 or thereabouts. This is my favorite time for photography. I love the soft, even light, relative lack of wind, and cooperative subjects. Insects are poikilothermic, or cold-blooded. Their activity level rises and falls with the temperature of their surroundings. In the chill of the early morning, they are torpid and slow--posing nicely, just like this beetle. I occasionally use fill-flash in situations like this. Sometimes the lighting can be too flat, and fill-flash can add just a bit of "pop" to the colors without destroying the soft feel of the image.

Layer Masks for Increased Contrast Range II

Here is another photograph which required some manipulation to salvage a full contrast range. If I had exposed for the bee, the leading edge of the flower would have been totally burnt out. On the other hand, if I exposed for the flower, the bee would have been totally black, and without detail.

I used a slightly different technique for this image than for the last one. I made one exposure, taking care to maintain highlight detail. Then, in Photoshop, the RAW image was brought over twice, once correcting for the highlights, and the second time, correcting for shadow detail. These two images were then blended together with a layer mask into one image that maintained detail in both shadows and highlights.

I have found that using a layer mask to blend together almost identical images is an indispensable technique, at least for the type of photography I prefer. I use it to assist with depth-of-field issues as well as contrast range.

Composites---Imagination at Work!

I couldn't show dragonfly photographs without posting this one. One of my favorite images, it is entirely made up. It was composed of 4 different photographs and put together in Photoshop.
Reeds, insect, moon, and clouds--all from different times and places. The only common denominator--my imagination.

What I like:
The monotonic, dreamy softness of it.

What I don't like:
Not much. I'm not sure that the perspective of the moon is totally believable in terms of size and sharpness.

Any comments?

Cabbage Butterfly

What I like:
The balance of the image. I like how the bud recapitulates the color and position of the butterfly.

What I don't like:
The image appears almost two-dimensional -- quite flat. I used fill flash and perhaps this has obliterated the texture that gives objects their dimensionality. Background is BORING! Looks almost like poster board. Would selective dodging and burning help?