Photoshop — 5 Ways To Improve Your ICM Photos

There are times I want to photograph something just because it’s beautiful. No other reason except it’s beautiful.

Recently a bouquet of roses were given to us by some close friends that were picked from their garden. The flowers colors were rich and their scent filled the room with the promise of spring. I could not resist photographing these exquisite specimens.

The Set-up

I placed the vase of flowers on a table on top of a black cloth. About three feet behind the flowers was a medium gray background. I then placed my Canon 6D in a position so the horizon line of the table would not be cutting the horizontal picture plane in half. I then placed two white reflectors just out of camera range, one to the right of the flowers and one underneath the vase. The final step was to place my Paul C. Buff White Lighting 800 strobe about 26 inches away fro the flowers and feather the light toward the reflector between the camera and the subject.

Camera Settings

The correct exposure was determined through exposure testing using the histogram as my guide. Finally the Canon 6D was set to ISO 100, f/6.6, with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second.

Exposures

Now that I was set I started the process of making exposures. The image consists of five exposures. The first was head-on, the second rotated about 1/2 inch counter clockwise, the third 1 inch clockwise, the fourth 11/2 inch counter clockwise and the last 1/12 inches clockwise. By rotating in one direction and then in the opposite I was able to keep the balance of the image. If I had kept turning the image in one direction, some of the more delicate details probably would have been lost.

Processing The Final Image

The images were brought into Photoshop through Adobe Bridge. I always use bridge for my work because it will allow you the Raw file adjustments AND it imports the images into Photoshop as 16 bit images (make sure your Photoshop is set for 16 bit; Image - Mode - 16 bits/Channel).

Adobe Bridge can also bring your group of images in as layers (Tools - Photoshop - Load Files into Photoshop Layers). Once the images were brought in as layers I kept the base layer as normal and the upper four layers were changed to Soft Light Blending Mode. All that was left to do was to add a curves adjustment layer for a bit more contrast, then a levels adjustment layer for final tonal and printing corrections.

No, It’s Alive and Well

Black and White photography is alive and well. And there are reasons why would an artist would choose black and white (monochrome) photography over color. In the days of film only, black and white could be processed faster, printed faster and reproduced easier than color images. In today’s world none of that makes any difference. Today’s color printing is as easy as hitting the print command on your computer.

Why Shoot Balck and White?

So why black and white? First of all, the black and white image immediately becomes more abstract. Lines, shapes and tone dominate the image instead of the bright colors that tend to attract the eye in a color photo. Secondly and most importantly, you can “push” the manipulations of the black and white tonal range much further than you can stretch the color. The monochrome image may get more abstract or moody by becoming darker, lighter, or more tonally compressed, but never unrealistic, garish and harsh as a color image gets when it is digitally over-processed. Finally, by producing black and white images, the artist is following in the footsteps of some of the greatest photographic masters - Adams, Weston and Penn just to name a (very) few.

The Tools of the Digital Darkroom

The tools provided by Photoshop are in many cases the same as you would use in the traditional darkroom. Burning, dodging, flashing and contrast control are just a few of the basic manipulations available. Photoshop also has advanced controls such as curves, layers, masking and levels that were either extremely difficult or outright impossible to use in the traditional darkroom. Black and white photography is alive and well and with today’s digital darkroom the monochromatic image is more powerful than ever.