Helpful and interesting links

[Peterjay 0]

Graham, every time I start thinking I'm pretty good, I take a look at Brandt's work and I want to sell my gear and take up needlepoint. The man is in a class by himself.

[Graham 0]

I agree Peter, truly amazing. I notice from the shadows under many of the animals, quite a lot of images are made mid day. Many of his shots have darkened corners and wonder if he made a set of custom ND's, circular, or two semi-circular, or maybe hand burnt in Photoshop. Anyway, his mastery of light is mind blowing and his ability to capture the spirt and soul of his subjects is almost beyond belief. I think these are the best wildlife photos I ever seen.

 

I think this is one of his shooting locations

http://www.ninianlowis.com/safari_photo_diary.htm

 

 

[Peterjay 0]

I'd never seen Nick Brandt's work until I stumbled onto a rather heated discussion on the Luminous Landscape forum. (Now there's a surprise) A lot of them were whining about the fact that he won't discuss his methods. There seemed to be a consensus that he works with film, and the 6X7 was mentioned, though I have my doubts about that one. The 6X7 has an extremely loud shutter that startles people, never mind wild animals. Could be though, if the animals get used to him being around. You might be onto something about the filters. There has to be some way he works around the harsh light, since there's little or no twilight at the equator. One of the things he has mentioned is that his work is extremely dangerous. If he really uses a normal lens for that stuff, he may wind up as the greatest artist ever to wind up in a cat's digestive tract.

[Graham 0]

From viewing some of the safari website galleries, a number of the animals appear accustomed to humans in close proximity. I have a feeling he uses, at times, a tilt-shift bellows or lens, and various ND's. I was wondering if it's possible to spray or apply something that has neutral gray properties onto glass, and use this in a standard adjustable filter holder. Since he's shooting B&W, maybe the substance needs only be transparent, with opaque-ness controlled with thickness. Anyway, it's really interesting trying to figure out technique's. But even if he was shooting standard gear and techniques, instead of whats he's doing, his images would still be one of a kind.

 

 

[Peterjay 0]

Here ya go Graham! Check this thread out - straight from the zebra's mouth. (LOL) He still doesn't get too specific, but at least he clears up a few misconceptions. Gotta admit I was wrong - I thought he did the whole thing in a wet darkroom.

 

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00ERse

[Graham 0]

Looks like he uses a digital darkroom, and a Wacom tablet. I have a Wacom 6x8, but haven't used it in a couple of years. I was playing around earlier this morning, using a mouse instead of the Wacom pens, and similar vignette effects can be achieved using the dodge and burn tools, while varying the brush softness, opacity, and exposure. I'm sure using a Wacom would allow for very precise and detailed manipulation of vignette. I'd really like to spend more time playing with this technique, but it really only looks nice on Sepia or B&W images, and my biggest problem is needing to learn the best ways to adjust some of my photos from color to Sepia or B&W. I know there are better ways than just clicking on mode-grayscale or Sepia, or adjust-desaturate. I think it's best done by changing individual colors seperately. This whole Nick Brandt subject is fascinating, thanks Peter.

[JayMorr 0]

awesome thread. I have played around with the vignette quite a bit in CS2 and I love doing stuff in Guasian.

 

I too have a Wacom tablet and have been messing around with the pressure and brush types.

 

Matter of fact here is a photo I just did last night using some of those techniques. I know they are not the best but they are in color. I like using the tablet when applying these type of effects.

 

 

Grahm, within CS have you messed around with Photo Filter? It has some presets, but you can also just filter by color.

[Graham 0]

Jay, Actually I was just doing that, using the Sepia color filter, there must be a better way. I'm trying to figure out if I can set me camera to shoot in sepia? I don't think so.

 

Your photos look great!

 

I bought my Wacom tablet about 6 years ago, when I was taking some Photoshop classes, old enough that it plugs into a com-port instead of USB. I just downloaded updated drivers. I haven't thought about painting effects onto images, sounds like fun. I pretty much bought the Wacom to be able to accurately erase backgrounds from solar panel shots. Sort of product shot stuff.

 

Maybe someone should post a photo and we can all have fun tweaking it, and post our results.

[Peterjay 0]

I haven't had great results with the sepia filter in CS2 either. There seems to be something that's just enough out of whack to give it a rather odd tone. The sepia features in iPhoto and Preview that came bundled with my MacBook do a more realistic job, but it's a bit of a nuisance. There's probably another way to do it in Photoshop, but I haven't found it yet.

[Peterjay 0]

I gave this pic a sepia bath using instructions I found on this link. (it was already B&W)

 

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apssepia.htm

 

I wasn't crazy about the result, so I went back and clicked on "more yellow" one more time. It still was too strong, so I desaturated it a bit. This is closer to the real thing than what I've gotten with the sepia filter. Graham, when I convert to B&W, I just go to Channel Mixer and click the monochrome box, then adjust the red, green and blue channels until I get what I want. Somebody here (I think it may have been Kargen, but I'm not sure) posted instructions a while back for doing that. Somewhere, I have a table that show which RGB ratios you can use to simulate various types of film. If I can find it, I'll post it.

 

[Will Milne 0]

Hi

 

Another approach to the toning idea is to use something akin to the old darkroom technique of split-toning.

 

 

and then apply the toning to only a select set of values in this case the middle to lower end of the curve.

 

 

Will

 

 

[Graham 0]

Thanks for the info guys, this is fascinating, and very helpful.

 

Graham

[Peterjay 0]

There are a lot of images to sift through on this site, but William Neill does some gorgeous landscapes and abstracts.

 

http://www.williamneill.com/homepage.html

[Graham 0]

Insect Macro Photography

 

http://www.mplonsky.com/photo/article.htm

 

[JayMorr 0]

Graham,

 

Plonsky's macro work is incredible! Some of those photograph's are amazing!