{"id":816,"date":"2013-11-20T07:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/?p=816"},"modified":"2017-06-20T15:33:17","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T21:33:17","slug":"digital-darkroom-image-capture-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/photography-lessons-tips\/digital-darkroom-image-capture-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"The Digital Darkroom: Image Capture is Only the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The

The much more truthful final photograph of storm clouds brewing over Kickapoo Prairie, after using Adobe Camera Raw & Photoshop CS6 to restore shadows, colors, and depth to the originally captured image.
See the originally captured\u00a0image below.<\/p><\/div>\n

Like it or not, capturing the image with your camera\u00a0is only the beginning. Digital darkroom work is needed to best convey the truth of your experience.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, straight out of your camera, digital images are inherently flat, lacking the sparkle of life and the fidelity of the experience. If you recorded the image correctly with your camera, it only takes a couple of minutes to restore the life and the truth\u00a0using image editing software\u00a0like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. And, when you do,\u00a0your pictures will look so much better, that you\u2019ll never show an uncorrected photo ever again.<\/p>\n

If you think that the pure image, captured by\u00a0film or by sensor is the\u00a0truth, let’s be real. It\u2019s just not fair to expect your camera to communicate, in just\u00a0one shot and two dimensions, your rich 3-dimensional human experience. There are many reasons for this.<\/p>\n

For one, your brain records many frames, acting more like a video camera than a still camera. Furthermore, your eyes constantly auto-focus and adjust for the light, combining multiply corrected\u00a0\u201cframes\u201d into a single memory. Perceptually speaking, whenever you put your attention on a subject, you completely ignore the foreground and the background. A picture, however, brings fore and aft into the same plane of focus. For all these reasons, and more, simple to advanced digital darkroom tools and techniques are required to more accurately reflect your reality.<\/p>\n

\"Kickapoo

This is an\u00a0image Kickapoo Prairie, as it was originally and unrealistically captured using a Nikon D800E camera, in an effort to\u00a0record as much information as possible by exposing for the bright sun and sky.\u00a0This\u00a0photo illustrates a\u00a0more extreme example,\u00a0but every single picture that comes out of\u00a0your camera will benefit\u00a0from some digital editing.<\/p><\/div>\n

Digital editing techniques, such as controlling local and overall contrast, are very easy to do. Bringing out the color is also important, but care should be taken not to embellish the truth or\u00a0to enter the\u00a0realm of \u201cPhotoshopping.\u201d People who say that Photoshop makes photographs untruthful have it backwards. If you\u2019re not using Photoshop, your pictures are less truthful than they could be. Simply using Photoshop does not mean that you\u2019re \u201cPhotoshopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Removing a distracting bright spot in the background of, say, a portrait of a little girl is also a simple editing task and perfectly legitimate, too, since nobody on the scene looking at the girl\u2019s face ever noticed that the background existed. Of course, the photographer should have caught it, which is why the best photographers get it right in the field. But, this is the real world and it\u2019s impossible to be perfect. Just remember, if you capture the best image possible, you\u2019ll not only end up with a superior picture, you’ll save\u00a0yourself a lot\u00a0of work trying to fix it on your computer later on.<\/p>\n

The photographs shown here illustrate a more extreme example,\u00a0where the final photo\u00a0little\u00a0resembles the captured image. But,\u00a0every image, bar none,\u00a0will benefit\u00a0from the use of digital darkroom techniques, though it may not seem apparent at first glance.<\/p>\n

The above photograph of Kickapoo Prairie in Riverdale, Illinois was\u00a0made during the late afternoon, as storm clouds brewed\u00a0and winds blew at 25 mph. If it weren’t for the wind, I may have been able to make two exposures and combine them into one well-exposed image (using layers in Photoshop), one exposure that perfectly exposes the land and another that perfectly exposes the sky. But, because the wind was\u00a0jostling the subject matter, two\u00a0exposures would never align, making the task impossible. Therefore, only one image was possible, and I chose the one that exposed for the sun and the sky because that would have produced the fastest shutter speed. Granted, the land\u00a0appears extremely dark in the capture, but the important thing was that the motion was stopped and all of the details were recorded (as I could see in\u00a0the histogram). Digitally captured\u00a0with the\u00a0high dynamic range of the Nikon D800E, I was able to gather all of the necessary visual information into a single shot, then\u00a0use\u00a0Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS6 to open up the shadows, resurrect the\u00a0color, and restore the third dimension and the feeling of depth.<\/p>\n

While the\u00a0prairie\u00a0danced and the\u00a0sun\u00a0peaked in and out from behind\u00a0the clouds, I was shooting\u00a0as fast as the wind. With\u00a0the camera secured on\u00a0the tripod and the picture carefully composed,\u00a0the light was changing\u00a0too fast for me to check each image to see if I was getting what I wanted.\u00a0I just kept shooting. Everything was a blur. Only later, after I loaded the images on the computer and reviewed them, did I realize that I this was probably my best picture of the summer.<\/p>\n

Start out with a good, clean, image capture, one that exhibits excellent technique and composition, and one that gathers all of the information. If you do, completing the job in the digital darkroom\u00a0will be\u00a0much easier and, if done properly, will result in a final photo that conveys a look and feel that very closely resembles the original moment.<\/p>\n

Learn more about my Photoshop Elements Essentials class<\/a>, coming soon in January of 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like it or not, capturing the image with your camera\u00a0is only the beginning. Digital darkroom work is needed to best convey the truth of your experience. 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Here in the woodlands of Will County, this afternoon landscape of bluebells along the stream would have been impossible to convey with just one photograph. Those who are familiar with HDR (High Dynamic Range) will take several\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Digital Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Digital Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/photography-lessons-tips\/digital-photography-lessons-tips\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Landscape photography may seem tough when there's a wide range of light, and a lot of photographers turn to HDR software. But, in most cases, HDR doesn't work for landscape photography because of artifacts caused by the wind. Here, this springtime image of a Will County woodland would not have been possible without merging two consecutive shots taken at different exposures: one for the land and the other for the sky. 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In\u00a0Photo A (below), the feathery June grass, yellow flowers of hoary puccoon, and other ground foliage are smothered in the open\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Digital Photography"","block_context":{"text":"Digital Photography","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/photography-lessons-tips\/digital-photography-lessons-tips\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"PHOTO A: Here, diffused light is cast upon a foreground of June grass, flowers, and foliage, resulting in a flat image that no amount of additional compositional prowess can improve.[\/","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Pembroke-Savanna-140607-0010-s1-No-Glancing-Light-copyright-600px-sRGB.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":963,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/photography-lessons-tips\/landscape-photography-use-your-minds-eye\/","url_meta":{"origin":816,"position":2},"title":"Landscape Photography: Use Your Mind’s Eye","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"June 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A photograph is\u00a0a facsimile of reality and our experience. Sometimes it represents the moment quite accurately; at other times, quite poorly. Landscape photography can be more like the latter. This article\u00a0is about how to photographically communicate the drama and the magic of the landscape, and the\u00a0emotion that you feel. 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During my film capture days, I developed\u00a0a sense of what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chicago Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago Nature","link":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/illinois-nature-photography\/chicago-nature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bluff Spring Fen-120821-0010-00-HDR-FINAL by Mike MacDonald, Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/BluffSpringFen-120821-0010-00-HDR-FINAL-600px-Copyright.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1181,"url":"https:\/\/www.chicagonature.com\/blog\/index.php\/illinois-nature-photography\/it-can-take-decades\/","url_meta":{"origin":816,"position":4},"title":"It Can Take Decades","author":"Mike MacDonald","date":"September 22, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The image here showcases a hanging fen and a sedge meadow, two unique wetland habitats Mike has been trying to photograph for over twenty years. 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