Photo insights february '17

Jim Zuckerman’s

PH OTO I N S I G HTS February 2017

Best noise reduction B & W with color Dawn photography Photo tours Ask Jim Student showcase 1

On the cover: An aracari toucan, Costa Rica. This page: An eyelash viper, also Costa Rica.

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4. Best noise reduction 9. Black and white with color 19. Creating a color sketch 25. What’s wrong with this picture?

27. Short and Sweet 28. Ask Jim 29. Photo tours 32. Student showcase 37s. Back issues

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irline travel has become more and more restrictive. Some airlines severly limit the weight of a carryon, for example, and for photographers that’s a serious problem. For domestic flights in the U.S., this isn’t an issue . . . yet. But many international carriers are very strict about this. We can’t check our equipment in the belly of the plane, not because of damage, since we can protect our gear from tough handling, but for loss or delay in arriving at your destination. It does you no good to be on safari without a camera. Even if your equipment arrived at your destination a couple of days late, you may be somewhere far away from the airport. Good luck in getting your camera in time to start taking pictures.

My solution for this is to wear or carry an empy photo vest. If my carryon is overweight, and the checkin personel insist I check it, I simply redistribute the equipment. I leave a few pieces of equipment in my photo backpack and wear some items in the vest. The airlines aren’t restricting how much total weight you have; rather they don’t want all of the weight in one bag. Their rationale is there might be turbulence and items can fall out of the overhead compartments and hurt another passenger. So, by redistributing lenses and bodies you can make the carryon comply to the weight limits (usually 7 or 8 kilos -- 15 to 17 pounds). Once on the plane, you can re-pack as you wish or simply place the photo vest in the overhead compartment with various pieces of gear still in the pockets.

For commuter jets where the overheads are exceptionally small, I use a backpack that will, believe or not, fit. I do have to remove my laptop and iPad from one of the pockets in the pack to make it flatter, and then it barely fits. When I have a larger bag on rollers, such as when I bring my 500mm f/4 lens, then there is no choice but to gate check it.

However, I have done this dozens of times with no problem. The bag is taken from me at the door of the plane and returned to me at the end of the flight at plane side. I know my gear is packed well, and I never stress about this.

Jim Zuckerman www.jimzuckerman.com photos@jimzuckerman.com 3

Best Noise Reduction software

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igital noise is a vexing problem, and it constantly rears its ugly presence in our photographs. This is especially true when the ISO is raised and when photographing in low light circumstances.

Noise reducing software has been available for many years, but the problem has always been that when noise is minimized the picture loses sharpness. Most software smooths out the noise almost as if it’s being softened with blur. Noise

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Ninja is very much like this, and that’s why the processed images always look less sharp. Nik’s Dfine 2.0 and Topaz DeNoise 6 are both good noise reducing plugins, and I’ve used them for a long time. I’ll try a photo with one and then the other and compare the results. That produces a de-noised image that is better than the original. Just recently, though, I was referred to Neat Image software for noise reduction, and I have been very impressed. Actually, I was blown away by how good it is.

The photos at the bottom of this page and the previous page illustrate what Neat Image is capable of. I shot the original photo on page four during my snowy owl workshop at a remarkble 12,800 ISO. I needed such a high setting because it was getting quite dark and I didn’t want to compromise on the fast shutter speed.

In order to freeze the wings of birds in flight, I normally use 1/3200th of a second, but due to the gloomy light I chose 1/2500th of a second.

The lens aperture was f/5.6, and in order to get a good exposure the ISO had to be very high.

You can see the noise especially in the out of focus trees in the distance. The camera I used was the new Canon 1Dx Mark II which has excellent noise structure, but 12,800 ISO obviously is pushing the limits.

In the comparison picture below, the noise is gone and sharpness has not been compro-

mised. The photo, in fact, now looks like it was taken with 200 ISO! The black-collared hawk I captured in the Pantanal shown on the next page was shot at 3200 ISO. I enlarged the image to 100% to show you the before and after detail of the application of the software. Notice how noise-free the background is, and at the same time the sharpness is the same in both images. Enlarge this page on your computer, iPad, or smart phone to see the detail in both shots.

Neat Image can be purchase as a stand alone program or as a Photoshop plug-in. I opted for the latter, and the standard edition of the software is only $39 at this time. You can also use this software for reducing noise in videos.

Neat Image offers a trial version, but it only re-

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duces the noise in a large center portion of the photo. However, this was enough for me to recognize it was fantastic and I bought the full version right away.

Once you open the photo to be tweaked, the

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software is accessed with the pulldown menu: Filter > Neat Image > Reduce Noise v8. The dialog box that opens is shown on the next page. Like all new plug-ins, it may seem intimidating at first, but in reality it’s very, very simple; it’s just a matter of clicking one button.

If you don’t want to make micro adjustments and examine all of the options offered by Neat Image, all you have to do to eliminate noise is click the ‘Auto Profile’ tab in the upper left corner of the dialog box (red arrow). In a few seconds it does its magic, and then you click ‘Apply’ in the lower right corner. That’s it.

If you want to be able to avail yourself of some of the options in Neat Image as well as make the software more accurate in its assessment of the noise in your photograph, you can expand the blue box by dragging it larger or more rectangular. This is the box that Neat Image uses to evaluate the noise in your picture. It looks for large areas in the image that are devoid of detail but that have a lot of noise. The expanse of an overcase sky, for example, or the dark, out of focus stand of trees behind the snowy owl enables the software to look at the noise in the photo and apply the complex mathematical algorithms to eliminate it. By dragging the blue box larger than the small square you initially see, this increases the accuracy of the process.

This can only be done, of course, if the picture

has enough fairly monochromatic area to select.

The three boxes at the bottom -- gray, red, and blue -- show how the noise appears in the color channels, and the noise as a luminous value is the gray box. In a night sky, for instance, you may not initially notice the noise, but it will show up very clearly in these three boxes.

I’m not going to go into all of the options to enhance the performance of Neat Image here, but I recommend that you use the link below to see a clearly explained tutorial that goes into all of these nuances: https://ni.neatvideo.com/support/tutorials/basic-workflow Some cameras, like the Canon 7D and 7D Mark II, are excessively noisy, but Neat Image handles them very well. I noticed, though, that the processed images, at first, seemed less sharp. Upon closer examination, though, when the noise is removed there isn’t much detail under all that noise anyway.

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I took the above capture of a little bee eater in Kenya with a 7D Mark II at 3200 ISO in low light. It is magnified to 100%. You can see the noise in the image, and after applying Neat Image it’s virtually disappeared. The small amount of sharpness that appears in the upper image is 8

due to the sharply defined noise. None of that detail has been lost -- if you look very carefully -- in the lower image after the noise reduction was applied. Sometimes an extra bit of sharpening does help to bring back the illusion of sharpness, but it has to be done with subtlety. §

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Black & White with Color

ombining black and white with color in a single photograph is a technique I’ve been exploring since the beginning of my photographic career. Working with film was much more limiting, of course, than the digital realm, and with Photoshop the possiblities are intriguing. In this article, I want to talk about three different techniques.

and then add color. An example is shown below and also on page 11. I took the photograph of the three Bushmen in Namibia against a bright sky, so they were already dark -- but not solid black like you see here. I simply opened Image > adjustments > levels and increased the contrast by using the sliders to darken the shadows and lighten the highlights.

1. Create a silhouette -- all black and white --

Once you have an all black and all white (or

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UPCOMING PHOTO WORKSHOPS Carnival in Venice workshop Outrageous costumes in a medieval environment! Venice is great to visit and photograph any time, but during carnival it’s magical. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. Exotic masks, stunning colors, classic images.

Jan. 27 - Feb. 2, 2018

Frog & Reptile Workshop Close-up encounters with poison dart frogs and exotic reptiles such as chameleons, geckos, snakes, and more in St. Louis, Missouri. This is a macro workshop in which everyone consistently gets amazing pictures.

June 2 - 3, 2017

Photoshop workshop The setting is in my home, and in this two day workshop you’ll learn enough to be truly dangerous in Photoshop! How to replace a sky, how to fix all kinds of photographic problems in your pictures, how to handle blown highlights, how to be incredibly creative . . . and more.

Nov. 11 - 12, 2017 10 10

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transparent) image, it’s easy to combine that with a color background using a blend mode.

The procedure is this: a. Use Select > all, and then Edit > copy for the black and white image. This places it in the clipboard, Photoshop’s invisible holding place for a photo or part of a photo. b. Open the background image. In the case of the Bushmen, it was a telephoto shot of the sun.

Then choose Edit > paste. This creates a floating layer over the background. c. In the layers palette, click the submenu that shows the word normal, and this opens the blend mode list. Choose ‘darken’. You now see the background through all the areas that had been white.

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In the photo on page 11, I started with four elements that had been photographed in normal midday light: two impala, the tree, and the grass. I selected each one in turn (I used the pen tool for the animals, and for the grass and the tree I added enough contrast until I could use the magic wand tool to delineate the subjects from their background) and then used Edit > fill. In the dialog box, I chose color in the pulldown menu. In the color picker, I selected black. When I hit OK, the selected subjects filled with black.

I then pasted each subject into a sky background with Edit > paste. Finally, I used the Photoshop plugin Flood for the bottom portion of the image.

2. Make a selection of a portion of a photo (like the red lips in the model on page 13) and

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ESSENTIAL

KNOWLEDGE

Photoshop taps into your creative potential like nothing photographers have ever had in the past. Once you feel comfortable working in this program, the sky is the limit. You can do anything your mind can imagine. Pretty amazing, indeed!

This eBook explains many of the techniques that Jim uses all the time. These include replacing the sky, compositing images, adding textures to photos, introducing natural looking streaks of light, realistic HDR, combining black and white with color, Jim’s favoritre plugins, using the blend modes, and more. Use this as an idea book as well as a reference. If you’ve limited yourself to Lightroom’s abilities, consider expanding your horizons and learn Photoshop. It’s about time.

Click the cover to see inside the ebook

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then choose Select > inverse. This selects everything except the lips. Then go to Image > adjustments > hue/saturation and move the saturation slider all the way to the left. This removes the color and makes the image black and white in the selected area.

Usually, when an image or part of an image is converted to black and white, contrast is lost.

In order to add ‘punch’ back into the picture so the tones of gray look good, you can use either levels (Image > adjustments > levels) or curves (Image > adjustments > curves) to brighten the whites and darken the shadows.

The costumed carnival participant in Venice on page 12 was done the same way. I added the rose later and then used hue/saturation to change the rose from red to magenta to match the model’s outfit.

3. Create a layer mask of a photo and its black and white version and then paint away some of the gray tones with a lowered opacity to show the color beneath. I created the unique look in The two components that went into making the portrait of the young girl at right that way. this image are below . Here is the procedure: a. Open the original and convert it to black and white. Use Nik’s Silver Efex Pro or the hue/saturation dialog box. Save it as a separate file with File > save as. b. Copy the black and white version to the clipboard with Select > all, Edit > copy. c. Paste the clipboard image over the original color photo using Edit > paste.

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d. Create a layer mask with Layer > layer mask > reveal all. e. In the foreground/background color boxes at the bottom of the tools palette, make them black/white, respectively. f. Choose the brush tool and in the tool bar, lower the opacity to around 20%. You’ll have to experiment with exactly how much opacity you want given what you want to do in the picture. Brush away the areas of gray tone of the floating layer to reveal as much of the color image as you want. With the portrait of the beautiful little red head on the previous page, I brushed away the hair and the eyes only. To add additional visual impact, I applied tonal contrast in Nik Color Efex Pro 4, and then I smoothed the skin and evened the tones by using Portrait Professional software.

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For the rose photo below, I used a large, soft brush and brushed away the gray tones in the center of the image. When the brush tool is used on a lowered opacity, and you brush an area more than once (releasing the mouse or lifting the pen off the Wacom tablet between applications of the brush), more and more of the black and white image is removed. Specifically, if using the brush tool on 20% opacity, brushing an area five times will reveal the underlying color 100%.

If you aren’t sure what end result you want, use a lower opacity for the brush tool -- such as 10% -- because the gray tones will be brushed away at a slower pace. That way you can study your work as it gradually changes, and at any point in the process you can stop and save the image. §

Expand your photographic artistry with

eBooks

Click on any ebook to see inside

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eBooks continued Click on any ebook to see inside

Fantasy Nudes is in production and is coming soon 18

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Creating a Colored Sketch

work with a photographic representative who licenses my work to various end users -- jigsaw puzzle companies, mural companies, calendar publishers, etc. She told me recently that she wants to market my carnival pictures from Venice for adult coloring books. I never knew there were coloring books for adults -- I guess I lead a sheltered life -- but I thought it was a great idea. The rep thought my sketch images in particular would be especially appropriate for this market. I wanted to see what she was imagining, so I transformed a number of the photos from Venice into sketches and then colored them

in Photoshop. I loved the technique. The picture below is the first one I came up with. First you have to turn an original photograph into a sketch, and then you have to apply the color.

Here is the step by step procedure of how to do this.

1. Open photo in Photoshop with File > open 2. Make a duplicate layer, Command or Ctrl J 3. Open the hue/saturation dialog box, Image > Adjustments > hue/saturation, and move

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LEARNING TO SEE online course

by Jim Zuckerman

The ability to ‘see photographically’, to really grasp how your camera and lenses capture a subject or scene (which is different than how we see with our eyes) underlies successful picture taking. It is the bottom line that you’ve been looking for to take that quantum leap forward in your photography.

The great thing about online courses is that they can fit into any schedule. Life gets in the way at times, and Jim puts no limit on the time you can submit your work for his critiques. CLICK THIS PAGE to read more about this course.

Shown here is the incredible ceiling of the St. Mary’s Cathedral in Krakow, Poland.

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New eBook for beginning photographers I’ve not seen a book on beginning photography that I thought was clear, concise, and relevant to taking good pictures, so I wrote one. If you are insecure about your knowledge of how f/ stops, shutter speeds, and ISO interact, or what exactly the various exposure modes on a camera are for, this is the eBook for you.

Or if you know someone who just bought a camera and is having a hard time understanding the manual that came with the camera, the information in this new publication is essential.

It will take much of the frustration in learning photography out of the equation. Instruction

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manuals for cameras do not teach photography.

All of the basics of photography are covered including depth of field, the simple mathematical relationships between lens apertures and shutter speeds, the issues surrounding digital noise, basic fundamentals of composition, the features you should look for when choosing your next camera, the different kinds of lenses and how to use them, how shutter speeds and lens apertures allow you to express your artistic vision, and creative considerations that enable you to start taking photographs rather than mere snapshots.

the saturation slider all the way to the left. This makes the photo black and white.

darken the black lines of the image, but this is a subjective choice.

4. Make another duplicate layer, Command or Ctrl J, of the black and white image.

Adding color

5. Invert the image using Image > adjustments > invert.

6. In the layers palette, go to the blend modes (click the tab that says ‘normal’). Choose color dodge.

7. Finally, choose Filter > other > minimum. In the dialog box, select 3 or 4 or any number that makes the sketch look good to you. Now, flatten the layers with Layer > flatten image.

You now have a black and white sketch. At this point you might want to add a bit of contrast to

To add color to a sketch, choose the brush tool. The opacity box in the tool bar should be somewhere between 14% and 30%, depending on the density of color you want. If you have it on a very low opacity to apply the color gradually, you can build up the density by going over the area more than once (you have to release the mouse or lift up the Wacom pen from the tablet and then apply the color again to see the build up of density). Use different brush sizes depending on the size of the area you’re working on. By varying the color selection in the color picker and by changing the opacity, you can transform the original photograph into a work of art. §

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PHOTO TOUR to EGYPT October 5 - 14, 2017 Awesome ruins

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Great history

Ancient art

What’s wrong with this picture?

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took this picture in my snowy owl workshop last month, and I like it a lot with respect to the wing formation of the bird. The diffused light looks good and the bird is tack sharp because my shutter speed was 1/3200th of a second. Birds are easiest to shoot, and their wings look the most dynamic, on landing and takeoff.

The problem for me is the background. I would have liked either the sky comprising the entire background or the trees -- but not both. The line at the tops of the trees where the sky begins is distracting. My eye keeps going toward the sky and away from the bird, and that’s not how a success picture works. The attention should stay riveted on the subject without distraction.

I don’t like to crop my pictures, and I do it rarely. Only with bird photography is it often necessary simply because it’s tough to fill the frame with birds -25

especially birds in flight and birds at great distances. However, this image was vastly improved by cropping it, and also by darkening the forest so the bird really pops. In addition, I cloned the trees up into the sky to eliminate the light portion of the background. I feel this is a superior image compared to the original.

Had there been more snow in Canada as there usually is in January, the background forest would have been white. That would have solved the problem here. But this was an exceptionally unusual situation where my photo workshop participants and I had temperatures in the 30’s Fahrenheit instead of 10 or 20 degrees below zero. Most of the snow had melted, so we had to pay special attention to the background as we photographed the owls. If the background wasn’t ideal, then the only way around that was to use Photoshop to make it better. § 26

SHORT AND SWEET 1.

One of the ways you can increase depth of field when doing macro photography is to make the back of the camera -- i.e. the plane of the digital sensor -- parallel to the subject. That makes all of the points on the subject equidistant to the camera.

3. This tile wall in a cathedral in Ireland was curved.

Therefore, depth of field was an important issue to consider. I had to use a fairly small aperture to make sure there was enough depth of field so all of the beautiful detail was sharp. In this case, given the low light environment, I used f/11.

2.

Try using a fisheye lens with spiral staircases.

There is no apparent distortion because you can’t make something round appear to be more round than it is. I used a Canon 15mm fisheye for this staircase in Ljubliana, Slovenia.

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When photographing a caged animal, the bars in the foreground and background are a problem. The best way to eliminate them is to use a long lens. The shallower the depth of field, the better. Also, put the lens up against the bars. I captured this marmoset in an Indonesian zoo with a 500mm f/4 telephoto. §

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ASK JIM

Every month Jim will answer a question from his online students, from people who participate in his tours and workshops, or from subscribers to this magazine. If you have a question you’d like Jim to answer, please drop him a note at photos@jimzuckerman.com.

Q: Jim . . .I took this photo of the ceiling in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. It is Chihuly glass. In order

for me to sell this as a fine art print, would I need a property release from either Dale Chihuly or the Bellagio Hotel?

Wanda Holton, San Bernardino, California

A: The technical answer is yes, you do. If Mr. Chihuly signed off all rights to the hotel, then it’s the hotel

who must give you a release. On a practical note, though, if you sell a print to a friend or a customer at an art fair, I doubt the hotel will come after you with a law suit. It would be a waste of their time. If you submit the image to a stock photo agency or sell 500 prints to some other hotel for decor, then you would most probably be liable to be sued. This is not a legal opinion, of course, but after years of experience this is what I have seen to be true. §

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Photography Tours 2017 - 2018 THE PALOUSE Jul. 2017

KAZAKHSTAN Aug. 2017

EGYPT Oct. 2017

TUSCANY/CINQUE TERRA Oct. 2017

SNOWY OWLS Jan. 2018

CARNIVAL IN VENICE Feb. 2017

COSTA RICA BIRDS Nov. 2017

NEW ZEALAND Apr. 2018

WHITE HORSES, FRANCE May 2018

CROATIA, SLOVENIA, etc.

May 2018

GRIZZLIES in CANADA Sep. 2018

THE PANTANAL Nov. 2018

For a complete list of all the photo tours/workshops Jim conducts, go to his website: www.jimzuckerman.com.

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South Africa & Namibia photo safari April 25 - May 9, 2018

Awesome wildlife exotic birds monster dunes

Male lion an hour after sunrise, Sabi Sabi, South Africa

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CHINAWILDLIFE PHOTO TOUR September 4 - 17, 2017

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Student Showcase Each month, Jim features one student who took beautiful and inspiring images on one or more of his photography tours or workshops. It’s really fascinating how photographers see and compose such different images even though we may go to the same places. Everyone gets great photographs on Jim’s trips.

Bill Walkowiak, Chesapeake Beach, Maryland The Pantanal Photo Tour

© 2017 Bill Walkowiak

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2017 Bill Walkowiak

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2017 Bill Walkowiak

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Student Showcase, continued

Š 2017 Bill Walkowiak

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PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOP in my home

Sat. & Sun., November 11 - 12, 2017

Photoshop is a photographer’s best friend, and the creative possibilities are absolutely endless -- like replacing the background behind this 1947 Delahaye 135M. In a personal and ‘homey’ environment (I have a very cool classroom setup in my home), I start at the beginning -- assuming you know nothing -- but I quickly get into layers, cutting and pasting, plug-ins, using ‘grunge’ textures, modifying lighting, replacing backgrounds, using layer masks, blend modes, adding a moon, and a lot more. I promise to fill your head with so many great techniques that you won’t believe what you’ll be able to do. I go over each technique several times to make sure you understand it and can remember it.

Photoshop instructors approach teaching this program from different points of view. My approach is to be as expansive in my thinking as possible in creating unique, artistic, and compelling images. In addition to showing you how to use the various tools,

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pull down menus, layers, and so on, I spend a lot of time giving you creative ideas that will inspire you to produce amazing images with the pictures you’ve already taken.

I live in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and if you fly into the airport (BNA) I will pick you up. If you drive, I’ll give you my address and you can find my home on Mapquest or with a GPS. For the $450 fee, I include one dinner in my home (prepared by my wife who is an amazing cook and hostess) and two lunches, plus shuttling you back and forth from my home to your nearby hotel.

Contact me if you would like to participate in the workshop and I will tell you how to sign up (photos@jimzuckerman.com). All you need is a laptop and a lot of your pictures. If you don’t have a laptop, I have two Mac Book Pro laptops I can loan out for the duration of the workshop. §

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PHOTO INSIGHTS® published by Jim Zuckerman, all rights reserved © Jim Zuckerman 2017 email: photos@jimzuckerman.com mail address: P.O. Box 7, Arrington, TN 37014

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