Exposure done Wrong

It's often easy to talk about different styles of photography, or methods of taking a picture, when you're using the one-out-of-a-dozen images that turned out exactly the way you wanted.

To really show what is happening when you snap that shot, I wanted to share a couple images that did not quite 'work'.



This is from the same series of photographs as the waterfall image from last time. Like I said then, a long exposure shot requires low level light in order to keep from washing out the image. This is what happens when the sun comes out from between the clouds just as you take the photograph. The shutter stayed open for nearly a full second, soaking up sunshine and causing this blowout glare. Those places that are pure white are lost - there is nothing you can do in post production to rescue those parts of the image unless you want to start redrawing pixels and trying to create texture where there no longer is any. At that point, you may as well have started drawing the image from scratch. Much better to simply wait for more clouds, or closer to sundown.


The bee may have been holding still, but this butterfly was not. Unfortunately, rather than just take the shot and wind up with an image of a butterfly blurring away from the flower, I wound up trying to move the camera with the butterfly. I wasn't able to keep up, and my shutter speed wasn't fast enough to freeze things, so the whole image smeared into a worthless 'zoom' picture. It's a problem of having not quite decided what image I wanted before setting up the shot, and not being prepared to adjust to a suddenly moody subject. Butterflies are primadonnas. Now you know.


Another problem with choosing your subjects and lighting is that ever demonized 'red-eye' effect. It happens in people because you're literally flashing light off the back of the eyeball just as you snap the shot. Due to the red blood vessels surrounding the inside of the eye, you get that horrific crimson glare. In things that lack red blood, you get this crazy white-eye effect. It happens with frogs, fish, and certain politicians. If I could have trusted my hand to be steady enough, and the frog to hold still, I would have taken a slightly longer exposure to get a natural-light shot. As it was, it was getting dark and I had no convenient rocks on which to steady the camera.

Now, though, I've acquired a new tripod and a remote, by which I can take shots and never disturb the camera. That should allow some very interesting photos!


Of course, equipment does not guarantee that you'll get the shot you're looking for, if you haven't done your homework...

The Long and the Short of It

Preparations continue for the National Novel Writing Month. If you’re curious to watch my progress or learn more about the event, here is the link to my NaNoWriMo page.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/404901

For this novel project (that was a pun), I plan on using photographs I’ll be taking through the month of October as inspiration and illustrations for different sections. I’ll probably do quite a bit of photomanipulation to them, adding increasingly less subtle adjustments to them in order to express the ‘fantasy’ side of the genre I’ve picked for the novel. I still have no outline, no plans, and barely a setting. That means that I will be discovering this story as I write it.

In the meantime, let me show you some neat effects that can be done with a camera before you need to take the photograph to post-production. As a segue, here is the image I’ve chosen to use as the cover to this upcoming novel.

Obviously there have been some touchups, like the text and the blur around it, and there is even a soft blur and glow to the whole image. We’ll cover how to do that at some other time. The original photograph has its own magical appeal, however, and isn’t something that can easily be done with a typical point-and-shoot camera.

Long-exposure photography is something I would like to get into more, in the future, and so I have invested in a digital remote for my d60. This will allow me to release the shutter without touching the camera, further minimizing the amount of shake that may blur or smear the image. For this waterfall, however, I was lucky enough that a steady rock and holding my breath were sufficient to keep the stones and grasses crisp and clear while the water blurred into a silk sheet.

This style of photography is used a lot for scenic waterfalls, or shots of old houses (to let the moving clouds in the background blur into obscurity), but it takes a lot of work. You have to know the spot, you have to know the time of day, and you have to be able to hold still for multiple seconds while the shutter is open. The reason that the time of day is important is because, while your shutter is open, it is absorbing more and more light. If it is a nice, sunny day, and you leave your shutter open for up to a second, then you will see nothing but glare. The image will be almost entirely white. The best times for images like this are early morning, late evening, or just before/after/during a rain shower. Obviously the rain can be dangerous to your equipment, and potentially uncomfortable, so the gloaming times of the day are perfect for photographers looking to get the long exposure image like this.

On the other hand, a dark day is very poor if you are trying to take a photograph of something in movement. To freeze the image, and reduce the amount of smearing (the opposite of what we wanted with the waterfall), you need to have a fast shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed, the less movement you will see. The best examples of this are hummingbirds and bumblebees in flight – but frozen. It looks as though they simply stopped moving in midair. For this image, I believe I may have gotten lucky and the bee actually stopped for the millisecond my shutter was open. Perhaps it was posing for me? Or just too busy eating.

A dark day would have given me a dim, greyed out image. With the shutter only open for a split part of a second, there isn’t much time for light to hit the sensor. If the day is bright, and the sun is direct, then the image will be perfectly fine, and the color will be vibrant and the details sharp. A cloud overhead will destroy the effect. A setting sun will force you to consider taking the image to post production and lightening it up, but you can never fully recover an image that is soaked in shadows.

Next week, I’ll show you some examples of how badly things can go with both a long exposure and a very short exposure. It always seems easy until you see that only one out of two dozen photographs were acceptable.

Thank goodness for an 8gb memory card.

Punctuation Practice

With the coming of the controversial movie, “Blindness”, based on the novel of the same name by José Saramago, we will turn our attention towards the part of written language that only seems to get attention when it is misused.

No, not spelling.

Punctuation.

Saramago’s novel is actually somewhat famous for being one of the few published pieces of literature that intentionally abuses punctuation. Leaving out commas is one thing, as commas and other parenthetical marks are often a matter of opinion rather than concrete law, but Saramago’s “Blindness” actually removes quotation marks, periods, and many other literary clues that make communication flow from author to reader. There are passages of dialogue that are missing the quotation marks, leaving the reader uncertain as to who is talking. There are sentences that go on for a full page or more. Paragraphs continue unabated. Perhaps these are stylistic choices made with the intention of putting the reader in a state of discomfort, or unease, or leaving them confused like the characters in the book may be. However, other authors of other books have taken this similar challenge and mastered the concept without completely ignoring proper modes of written communication. The major sticking point is the inconsistency, making it appear that Saramago simply did not know how to write, and the publishers assumed it was avante garde, and everyone just went with it.

Rather than turn to a lesson on how to properly use such punctuation as the comma, exclamation point, question mark, or quotation marks, I would instead like to play a little while in the sandbox of punctuation you may not see every day.

For instance, the Irony Mark (؟). Also known as a ‘snark’ or a ‘zing’, it’s to be used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level. Originally proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm (aka Marcel Bernhardt), it was picked up in 1966 by Hervé Bazin for his book Plumons l’Oiseau. Bazin had a few other suggestions for additional marks, such as the doubt, certitude, acclimation, authority, indignation, and love point. Personally, I think Bazin has quietly succeeded with at least the final suggestion. After all, perhaps you have written something similar to in your own text messages or emails to friends and loved ones. How different is his proposal ( ) to our own usage (<3)?

The interrobang (‽) is a superimposition of two familiar marks, the question and exclamation, or the interrogative mark and the bang. More and more frequently, the same effect is being seen in established literature and common usage when the two marks are used simultaneously. Eg: “How could you do such a thing?!” The order in which they appear has no consistent bearing on the meaning, or emphasis, of the sentence preceding them, but many users agree that the interrogative should appear first to make certain that the question is apparent. Emphasizing the tone and urgency of a sentence is not aided by repetition of the characters, despite common and informal usage today. “What have you done?!?!?!” Despite the increasing frequency of the combination, it should be noted that the use of both-at-once predates the invention of the interrobang. Invented in 1962 by Martin K Speckter, the interrobang lived for almost a full decade, making its way onto typewriters and into dictionaries. After that, the fad ended and the two characters were again divided to be only set together in dialogue, informal writing, or chess moves.

A mark that is used, but for a sound only heard in African languages, is the click. Yes, there is a symbol for the click. Often, especially in names, an exclamation point will suffice, but this is usually only for sounds that fall immediately before a soft consonant, like an “n” or “m”. !Mbobi is a difficult name for non-native speakers to pronounce, but such names can be a source of pride for people who work in foreign lands but are unwilling to make drastic concessions to the english speakers they interact with. The actual palato-alveolar click, done with the tongue creating a pocket of air against the roof off the mouth, and then, with a velaric ingressive airstream mechanism, plosively released. The symbol for such is the ǂ, followed or preceded by a consonant indicating the dictation of the sound. I recommend a lot of practice.

Word of the day : NaNoWriMo

We’re going to learn another new, weird word, today. It isn’t latin, and it isn’t any other foreign language. The word is Nanowrimo. In the spirit of all things internet, it’s an abbreviation of a phrase.

National Novel Writing Month.

In the month of November, 1st through 30th, interested parties will devote themselves to creating a 50,000 word novel. That word count is actually pretty low, considering the size of most novels these days, and a novella is only 40,000. Novels you might have heard of, ranking in at about 50k, are Brave New World, and The Great Gatsby. 50k is not the upper limit, but the lower limit. Entrants can write as much more than that as they like, even completing two novels if they want.

The idea of the event is to encourage writing, plain and simple. In fact, a book written by the originator of the event, is titled “No Plot? No Problem!” and is designed to aid newcomers in feeling comfortable with, and understanding the concept behind, Nanowrimo.

I’m introducing you to this event to not only encourage fledgling authors out there to give it a go for themselves, but also to warn you about the upcoming deluge of words. Through the month of November, it is very likely that this blog will see few picture tutorials. I intend to write, on average, about 1,667 words a day. It is, without a doubt, a marathon, and I am inviting you to spectate. Cheer me on, laugh, or just watch to see if I can actually accomplish this feat – it’s up to you.

The rules of the contest state that you can not use pre-written material, so I won’t be able to tap into any of the stories I’m currently in the midst of. I would, however, be interested in seeing if I can pull the two facets of this blog together and ‘illustrate’ the 50k words with photography. It would help keep me motivated, possibly inspire a section, and may even keep people from avoiding this page for a full month if massive quantities of text is not their style.

Wish me luck. One month until November, and Nanowrimo.

Make them Smile

Last week we skipped the pictures to talk about a different part of the palette. Prior to that, I promised we would go over smiles.

Smiles are very important in an image. They're not always necessary, but always important. Maybe I should say that people's expressions are always important. The presence, or absence, of a smile can tell a lot about a situation. Sometimes a smile would seem horribly out of place - or even horrific. Other times, the absence of a smile makes the image look bland, or dull, just as you would feel if you were in that situation with the subjects and no smiles were to be found.

Photographers, in order to get the right smile from their subject, often have to resort to tactics used by other professions that thrive on smiles. A photographer can suddenly morph into a clown, or a comedian, or a suave politician trying to talk someone into reluctantly smiling despite themselves. Sometimes, though, this transformation is not an option. In candid images, for example, you don't want the people's attention on you. Also, in crowds, it may simply not be possible to get everyone in the frame to smile.

Nevertheless, if you're showing a portrait of people at an event, you'd like to capture a moment where they are having fun.


Here is an example of some people watching a parade. You have a few different expressions, here. The man in the foreground seems to be smiling almost reluctantly. He's having fun, almost like something has unexpectedly amused him despite the frown lines and wrinkles that may belie a somewhat dour attitude. The woman beside him has the tight-lipped smile of someone uncomfortable with the expression. Maybe she's self-conscious about her teeth, or maybe she just really hates the photographer. Behind them are more grins of people watching the parade, and even the fellow walking by seems to be chuckling to himself. The picture is full of life, and of different stories, but the sum of the parts is that people are having fun. This is a place you would want to be, and it is an even that can make anyone grin.

This is the portrait you would like to hand the event organizer, or someone possibly interested in hosting a similar event. The image could be what convinces them that a parade is just the thing they need to bring some life to their town. It is good advertising,and it tells a good story.

Like most advertising, this image is a lie. I used the same techniques we've been talking about: blur, smudge clone-stamp, and even some copy-pasting. I took more time, about 20 minutes, and worked in closer detail. It is my hope that you cannot immediately tell what artwork I did to the image. Comparing a before-and-after, though, would show what things required my attention.



Here is the original photograph of these people as they watch the parade.


A photographer, a comedian, and even a politician can convince people to smile.

Me? I can make them smile.

In Media Res - In the Middle of Things

No pictures, this week. Instead, we’re going to talk about another aspect of the palette of pixels. Words themselves paint a picture, and while some would say it takes a thousand words to make a picture, I would beg to differ. You just have to know how to use the different tools.

One tool used by the word-artist is something called “In media res”. It’s a term from Horace’s “The Poetic Arts”, and it’s part of his description of an ideal poet.

“Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the double egg,
But always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things…”

(Double egg being a reference to the egg-with-two-yolks laid by Leda, Helen’s mother, after her run-in with Zeus. Yes, Greek myths are weirder than we were told in grade-school.)

The encyclopedia describes the technique like this:

In medias res, also medias in res (Latin for "into the middle of things") is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (ab ovo or ab initio). The characters, setting, and conflict are often introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters relating past events to each other. Probably originating from an oral tradition, the technique is a convention of epic poetry, one of the earliest and most prominent examples in Western literature being Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. Other folk epics beginning in medias res include the Portuguese The Lusiads, the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid, Germany's Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), the Indian Mahābhārata, and the Finnish Kalevala. Virgil's Aeneid began the tradition in literature of imitating Homer, continued in Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy.


Like with the Indiana Jones series, where you meet Indy right in the middle of a small, introductory adventure, this device has been used over and over again because of its effectiveness. The audience has no time to decide if they like this or that character, or to be put to sleep by some long and boring struggle to get to the adventure. War movies rarely begin with our hero getting suited up to head off to boot camp, or in Horace’s example, being born. That’s 16 years of prologue the audience now has to get through, before the hero even thinks about joining this conflict.

This technique has its ups and downs, however, and cannot be used simply because it lends itself to a quick and easy hook. Inevitably, the storyteller must turn around and explain this background. Flashbacks work for this, but can be tricky. Dialogue is an excellent tool, where two characters discuss or explain something that has happened previously, outside the context of the story. You must always be careful, though, of telling, rather than showing, events that are important to your tale. After all, your characters will be telling the events from their own perspective. Even if they tell it exactly as it happened, a discerning audience will take this conversation with a grain of salt and may have their doubts about the veracity of your background story.

These flashbacks, whether true flashbacks, or dialogue, or some other device to show a past event, must be used with care. Each one has the threat of overtaking the real story you’re trying to tell, and it can be jarring for the audience to go back and forth. They very well may lose track of which time is ‘now’, and which has already happened. Details that you want them to remember may be lost in the time you’ve taken to explain a history lesson. Be prepared to remind your audience about important facts when you come back from these flashbacks, and emphasize what is important now, as opposed to what was the focus then.

The most important thing to remember is that ‘in media res’ is a technique to begin a story. It should not dictate anything else about your story, and once you’re past the first few paragraphs and deep into the action, your audience should be given enough information that they be able to forget that they were dumped into this tale in the middle of things.

Restoring a Portrait

It can be a lot of fun making sure your digital photographs look pristine and clear of intruding tourists. Photographs that tell a reliable story can capture a moment for a long time. Did you know that modern ink used in home printers is actually designed for archive use? Tests have shown that desktop printed documents are capable of surviving over 200 years. That’s a long time for you to be keeping pictures of Scruffy the dog, still wet from his first bath.

Some images, however, are priceless. They’re not printed on modern acid-free paper, using this state-of-the-art ink that makes us glad we’re not running our cars on anything made by Lexmark. These photographs are often of our own ancestors, the portrait surviving only because it has been behind glass for years, or was tucked into the attic for a couple generations, or sheer luck. Sometimes luck isn’t enough and time takes its toll despite our best efforts.


This is another image I found on the internet. There is an amazing amount of old photographs that have been scanned and uploaded onto the world wide web, and many of them are in similar condition to this. Age spots, mildew, water damage, creasing, wrinkles, and simply the changes in environment making the ink peel and flake off – many things can cause these minor bits of damage that grow to ruin the entire image. Soon, the portrait becomes unrecognizable and it goes from priceless to worthless. This effect is tragic, but correctable.

It used to be, before digital technology, that a skilled artisan needed to step in and take the original photograph to a laboratory. There, under a microscope or multiple magnifying glasses, the artist would carefully paint, cut, paste, and eventually repair the marred surface of the image. It was a painstaking process, not least of all because the artist was working with the original piece. If anything should happen, the photograph is gone, and is irreplaceable.

Nowadays, with scanners and other digital-capture devices (even your camera!), you can have something to work with and leave the precious original alone. To mimic the hard work performed by the artist mentioned previously, you simply need to use the methods I mentioned in the beach scene. You cannot erase the damaged sections, but you can take pixels from another section and paint over the flaw. Taking your time and envisioning what result you want will allow you to gradually restore the portrait to its prior glory. With the right training and a lot more time devoted to the project, it is even possible to improve on the original and clear up errors inherent in old photography – even adding color to a black-and-white portrait!

Here is the result of a few minutes’ work on this piece I found.


If you did not know it was originally damaged, it should be difficult to tell that anything has been done to the image. It is still very soft-focused, the colors are all the same, and lines that are supposed to be continuous do follow from one point to another without apparent disruption.

Just for comparison sake, here are the two images side-by-side.


Now if only we could make her smile…

We can. We’ll do that next week.