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Creative Sharpening With HDR Software

Technique - Sharpening  Comment
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HDR software is most typically used to render shadow and highlight detail, but it also can be used to enhance tonal separation and detail in any range of tones, even in images with extremely low contrast. The very same tools that are used to compensate for HDR side effects can be used to sharpen any image.
When multiple bracketed exposures are merged into a single processed file, shadows and highlights that exceed the dynamic range of a camera’s sensor are compressed into the dynamic range of a digital file, taking the midtones with them. Depending on the HDR software used, a variety of tools are available to restore contrast and separation in midtones. If used aggressively, these tools produce the telltale signs of contemporary or grunge HDR artifacts: halos and texture accentuation. These are the very same artifacts that digital sharpening routines use more conservatively to make images appear sharper—only they look different.
Unlike the hard halo and line produced by the filter Unsharp Mask and more like the soft line produced by the filter High Pass, HDR sliders can give you still more points of control over line and texture, each with a slightly different flavor.
Find details on using Adobe Photoshop and NIK’s HDR Efex Pro.
Read the full article on Digital Photo Pro.
Find more sharpening resources here.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.

PhotoShelter's Free The Photography Blog Handbook

Books - eBooks  Comment
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PhotoShelter’s new free guide The Photography Blog Handbook covers all the basics and offers real world case studies.
Topics covered include …
– Blog to promote your brand, increase your SEO, and generate sales.
– Create a blog workflow.
– Expand your reach through social media.
– Be inspired by a list of recommended blog topics.
– Get tips direct from photographers having success with blogging.
If you’re new to blogging, it’s a must read.
If you’re a veteran blogger, it’s still worth skimming.
Download it here.

Andy Goldsworthy – Ephemeral Collaborations With Nature

My Influences, My Influences - Photographic  Comment
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Andy Goldsworthy considers his sculptures collaborations with nature.

It’s Goldsworthy’s pieces that don’t persist that impress me most. Why? It’s not because they reverse traditional expectations, that through art an individual and culture achieves extended longevity if not immortality. It’s because Goldsworthy is free to interact with and interpret the landscape without removing this possibility for us. In many ways, his work is an invitation for all of us to participate with land in a similar spirit on our own terms.

I appreciate the irony that a majority of us see most of his work through photographs. In this respect an argument can be made that his primary medium is photography. Even if we have had direct experience with his work, our photographic experience of his work is more persistent. Over time, does the second-hand experience supersede the primary one? He’s managed to use two mediums to complement and comment on each other, while shedding light on our relationships to land and our own identities.

All of these are sentiments I resonate with strongly. What’s more, I might have framed my self-identity more narrowly as a photographer only were it not for the inspiration of artists like Andy Goldsworthy.

Find out more about my influences here.

Correct Perspective With the App Front View

iPhone, iPhone - Apps, Magazine - Huffington Post  Comment
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How many times have you wished you could quickly straighten lines in an image that have been distorted by perspective? Being able to control perspective is particularly important for architectural photography and it can be used to make stronger compositions in all images.
How many times have you wished you could control the aspect ratio of an image? Making an image more horizontal, square, or vertical or changing an image from one to another can be a powerful tool for creating more expressive images.
One app will do both — FrontView.
Read more at The Huffington Post.

Free Screensaver – Antarctica

Destination - Antarctica, Store - Screensaver  Comment
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My new free screensaver features images and facts on Antarctica.
Download it here.
Antarctica is stunningly beautiful! Explorer Roald Amundsen said, “The land looks like a fairytale.” The coldest, windiest, driest, highest, most isolated continent contains 90% of earth’s ice and 70% of its fresh water, regulating global climate and sea levels.
Learn more about Antarctica here.
Preview my book Antarctica here.
View my Antarctica alumni’s work here.
Find out about my 2013 Antarctica workshop in the Wedell Sea.

Masterworks In My Collection – Joyce Tenneson – Kristin, Hands In The Air

Printing - Masterworks Collection  Comment
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Artist’s often use consistent palettes for separate bodies of work, some use a consistent palette for a lifetime. This not only makes their work more readily identifiable, it also clarifies the nature of the statements they make. When an artist does this color becomes more than attractive, it becomes a message.

Joyce Tenneson has done this masterfully. Her typically airy palette both light and desaturated give her nude or near nude portraits a distinctive look. The delicacy of her palette not only makes a statement about the more sensitive nature of her subjects but also reveals her own sensitive approach and relationships with her subjects. Her high key palette suggests a concern with spirituality, perhaps more strongly than her occasional inclusions of painted light.

Tenneson often portrays figures in ways that defy conventional representations of the body, selecting alternate body types or ages, posing them in uncharacteristic ways that create expressively complex distortions, and including unusual props.

In Kristin Hands In The Air, the woman’s lack of hair gives this image an edgy undercurrent. Viewers would not be wrong to guess that the woman is struggling with illness. As with so many of Tenneson’s portraits, this image strips away the daily concerns of persona and fashion to show a deeper character in her subjects, tenderly but unflinchingly revealing both their fragility and an uncommon strength in these fleeting moments of grace made more durable by the act of photographing them.

(There’s a lot to be learned from looking at originals, which is why we look at masterworks from my collection in all of my  digital printing workshops.)

Find my comments on other Masterworks In My Collection here.
Learn more in my digital printing workshops.