Same but different

12/05/10

Photographers are often confronted with a whole host of creative decisions when making an image, from when & where to place the camera to what lenses & settings to use through to how to process the image. And small changes can make a big difference...

Light

By far and away the most important aspect of any photograph is light, or the lack of it. After all, light is the photographers paintbrush - it is how we draw and define a scene, and how we add texture and depth.

These two images were taken less than two minutes apart, and were processed in exactly the same way. But with the sun dipping below a cloud on the horizon the second image becomes dull and lifeless, losing its three-dimensional quality and vibrance.

Camera settings and Cropping

From 3 seconds to 3 minutes - these two photos show the difference shutter speeds can make to an image. Had the light levels been higher I would have liked to have added a faster shutter speed shot to freeze the water in place, but at 5 am it was a bit too dark! Three seconds was fast enough to show the clouds sharply though, and this contrasts nicely with the blur of colour from the three minute exposure below I also felt a panoramic crop would accentuate the drama of the image, and cut out the less interesting foreground as there was no reflection in this shot to hold the viewers interest.

Processing

One of the major benefits of shooting RAW as opposed to Jpeg or film is the ability to correct white balance after the fact. With this image the camera saw the colour of the sodium street lights, and assumed that this was correct, tainting the snow with a strong yellow cast. Now, I know snow is only yellow in one very specific instance, and my eyes (or more correctly my brain) automatically corrected the image making the snow white.

One of the consequences of this is the streak of the train was over corrected and became blue, but I quite liked the effect and decided to keep it. This is a great example for showing how it is a combination of both the technical and creative decisions that make a photograph, and why we can never assume that if the camera saw it like that, it must be right!

As an aside, although RAW uses more cardspace and takes a lot longer to process, its well worth it. This image (below) shows what happens when trying to correct the white balance of a tiff file as opposed to the RAW image. Not nice!