Don't they Look Moo-velous?

A few weeks ago I felt to need to print me some new business cards. Actually I never owned business cards before and more and more people where asking for them. I always had to scribble something down. And that does NOT look very professional of course.
Now I am happy to say that I own business cards that have the same look and feel as this blog and my website.

A colleague of mine actually found MOO one day. And everybody in the office here was impressed by how the samples (which they happily provide) looked like. After some debating I finally ordered a small batch as a test.

I ordered 50 and used their printfinity option. Which means you can basically have multiple fronts over a single generic back. Like a mini portfolio on your business card if you will. I designed the back using Illustrator and uploaded 10 different photos for the fronts.
When I was designing the cards, I ran into a bit of a technical thing about using blacks in print. MOO offers a Live Chat support function through their website and that worked flawlessly. I quickly had a rep on the line and had my answer in 2 minutes. Now that is a company that cares and knows what they are doing!

The cards itself are super heavy weight stock. They have a beautiful satin finish on them and they are made from recycled materials! Plus they came in a nice little holder. Pretty neat.
It is also very interesting to see what images are picked. This way you can keep a top 3 of what works and what does not. ;)

Overal I can't say anything bad about these guys and I just wanted to share my experience with you. For me this was a very enjoyable and satisfying experience (and cheap too! I payed just over $30 US). I am sure I will be using them again when I run out of cards.

Step by Step

A couple of posts back I kinda explained how I transform a seemingly uninteresting photo into a far better black and white image.
I've decided to do a more detailed description of what I do in this post. So let's begin.

This is the original shot straight out of the cam. You notice the huge blue/green cast on this image. This is because I used my custom White Balance in combination with that White Balance Shift I was talking about in this post. Blue in combination with a red filter gives you a very dark result. And that is the result that I like most. I love real blacks in black and white photography and lots of contrast too. That is me. This is not necessarily something YOU love of course.

Now let's start the conversion. For this shot I used a green filter. Hey, wait a minute. Didn't you just say you almost always use the red filter preset. Yes I did but wait a minute. Green is the opposite from red. Using the green filter produces very light grays where you have green. Using the red filter produces darker blacks where you have green (deep blues produce a solid black). You can get the same result going both with the green or red filter presets. On one you will be adding blacks and burn a lot of areas. On the other you will dodge a lot. In the end, you should get the same result. But what I'm always trying to achieve in these early stages of a print is to get a very flat looking photo where I have detail in every single area of the scene.

In 90% of my B&W shots, the first thing I do is drag a gradient going from black to nothing (see through) from the top to the horizon. This is of course done on a separate layer. This layer was set to "soft light" at 100%. This effectively burns that section of the shot, in this case the sky. 100% black gives you a 100% burn. 50% black, well... 50% burning. It's like using a grad filter and it sets my overal darkness of the photo.

Alright! Before I go and put even more attention in the sky I want to make sure my foreground is to my likings. So by using the same technique I burned the foreground. So I created a new layer and with a big soft brush, set to 20% opacity and using 100% black (just use the default black, Press D in photoshop), I burned away. Again I've set this layer to "soft light". You are entering the creative stages of the conversion now. It is up to you to render darker areas where you think they should be. It takes a little bit of practice but you can learn a lot by just looking at what Mother Nature does in real life. Be always on the lookout for light patterns and try to analyse if you see something you like. You can recreate this. Learn to understand how light works!

OK so we are getting somewhere here. Now in addition to the darker spots in the previous step, I want to create some contrast in the foreground. It's dodging time! So using the exact same process but this time using WHITE start dodging selected areas where light could be hitting the scene. You are trying to create a sweet spot for the eye to land on as well. So analyse your shot and decided where that spot needs to go.

In this stage I am concentrating on the sky again. I definitely want some more contrast in there as well. I looked at the lighter tones in this area and dodged them a bit more. Effectively enlarging the range of contrast between the darker clouds and the lighter clouds.

Sweet! What I did here was setting the overal contrast of the scene. Remember we started with a gray shot with lots of info in all areas? Now at this stage I went ahead and defined a black and white point using both levels and curves. After that I added contrast just by using curves again.
I like the overal darkness of this shot but it still lacks that central hooking point. That point where your eye focusses.

If you scroll back up to the previous image you can see that I added contrast to the central white spot adding overal texture to it. This gives your eye the necessary amount of detail to hover here for a sec (or longer). Ultimately this is a very simple scene with no real subject like a tree or rock. I also darkened up the sky some more.

I liked this. So the only thing that was left to do is some minor tweaking. I burned the upper and lower edge of the frame some more. Removed all spots and added sharpening using a high pass overlay. DONE

Now this is just a demo on how I process black and white shots in 95% of the time. Sometimes I do use NIK Silver Effects Pro because – well – it works very intuitive. But most of the time I use Photoshop CS5.
Feel free to ask any questions about this technique in the comments. Try it out. You'll see it is so much fun to create something out of nothing!

You can see the final result here.

Something different

Last night all my data suggested that the auroras could have been out. Everything went crazy (for no apparent reason). Around 10pm, I got a yellow alert from the aurora watch website in Edmonton. About an hour later that changed to a red alert which means 'If you go out now, you'll see them'.
So I grabbed my gear and headed out.

Summertime is an awesome time to be out and enjoy the heavens above. I like shooting startrails and other weather/space phenomenons. The people that know me will testify I am a science geek in disguise.

Anyhow, so last night I was out in anticipation of some aurora's. Long story short. The darkness falls way after 12am here now which is not really helping when you have to get up the next day to go to work. *yawn*

Although I did not see any auroras, I was rewarded with a nice display of NLC's on the northern horizon. NLC's, Noctilucent clouds or Night Shining Clouds are the highest clouds in our atmosphere. You can read all about it here. Scientists think they are a sign of changing conditions in the atmosphere. All the shots where taken between 12am and 12.15am.

Drama is my best friend

Photographing in Black and white is one thing I truly love doing. Not only do I like photographing scenes where I already know I want to convert them to black and white. But the conversion itself is so much fun.
Photographers have really forgotten how to dodge and burn in this age of over saturation and instant gratification. And yes, I am guilty on doing that as well in the past. That is why I took a step back a few weeks back, looked at my work and analysed what I really liked doing. And the answer is B&W photography.

Now, often people ask me how I get so much drama in my shots. It's quit easy actually. It is called dodging and burning. A long lost artform from the darkroom ages.
But first let me explain what I do prior to recording a scene.

I've configured 3 presets in my camera. One is for colour landscape photography. The other for aurora shots and the 3rd one is exclusively for black and white photography. In that preset I am actually shooting in black and white mode. So my preview and photos show as black and whites on the back of my camera. Also is my B&W preset configured with a red filter effect with a lot of contrast. But most importantly I am using a custom white balance with a white balance shift where I've pulled the blues all the way to the left. It works pretty well especially with the red filter.

My WB shift point is set to the circled position.

Of course I am working in RAW so all these presets actually ONLY affect the preview and not the actual RAW file. It just allows me to preview my intentions a bit easier.

After I've pulled the file through Photoshops Raw convertor making just a few tiny tweaks I convert the photo to black and white. Usually with the red filter or infrared presets. Then I start to dodge and burn selectively on layers.

Now how do you do that? It is actually quite easy. You make a new layer, and start painting in the area you want to dodge (use white) or burn (use black). Set your layer to Overlay (heavy effect) or Soft light. Done. Be sure to use lots of layers and don't try to do all of your burning, all at once. In the end you'll get something like this.

As an example I'm showing you this image from a few weeks back.

Shot as it came out of the camera. Notice the overcast sky, flat light (my favourite) and overal not really a scene people would see as worth photographing.

Black and white conversion using the infrared preset.

After dodging and burning I got the drama I wanted.

After that I pulled the shot back in Aperture and added sharpening. That was it.
A lot of people think the light actually happened as it was in the shot. Of course it did not! And that is why I love overcast skies.

By the way, people that think their cameras are devices that record reality will never become artists. Once they realize it is a tool that allows them to capture something in the way they saw it in their minds, then and only then we can start talking about photo creativity.

What is your opinion? Did I go too far again?