How I Create an Image
One of my goals in my photography is to present images that appear on a screen or print medium as it appeared to me in the field.
This blog may be long winded and quite boring for the average reader, so I’ll just leave the “too long, didn’t read” (TLDR) here:
I create some images, like the one featured above, using exposure stacking and sometimes focus stacking techniques. What that means is I take multiple exposures in the field - typically 3- of the same scene. One will appear very dark, which is for saving the highlights from being blown, one is very bright, which is to save the shadow detail, and one is right in the middle, that I can blend the bright and dark areas onto. The same idea goes into focus stacking, if I’m very close to a foreground subject in a landscape composition I’ll want to focus on the foreground, mid-ground, and background in 3 separate shots to ensure sharpness throughout.
I do this because there are limitations when it comes to camera technology. These limitations would cause the final image to appear less than what I experienced in the field. In doing this amount of post-processing, I am bringing those elements together by using multiple exposures and blending in photoshop. The end result should look realistic, and not over or under saturated. There are always more expensive gear options that would make this process easier/better, but I work with what I have.
If you care to know how to do this you can read on…
When I’m shooting sunrise or sunset, the golden hours, there is often a strong contract between the light and dark areas of a scene. Our eyes do a great job at balancing the dark and bright areas, but cameras generally do not. This is why there is a need for exposure blending. Even with the best gear and most careful techniques in post-processing, there are still limitations to what you can do to replicate how a scene looks in person. Some examples are images with moving objects (such as trees blowing in the wind) or scenes that are shot straight into the sun. These are trickier to edit, but can still be done nicely with the right techniques. Although there are going to be some sacrifices in the final image if you try to shoot in the extremes.
In creating the “Whispering Pines” featured in this blog, I used 3 different exposures. See the first image below. This is my initial exposure, which is quite dark. This image will be used as the background layer in photoshop, and it will be especially useful when blending in the other photos that are brighter, to keep the sun from being way overexposed and blown out.
If pixels are “blown” then that means there is no color information in the pixel, and thus cannot retain any detail
Bringing dark areas “up” by making them brighter will introduce noise… and the darker the pixel, the more noise there will be
There are limitations when shooting at extremes like this. Do not expect to be able to blend a super dark image with a super bright image
The next image is an exposure that is closer to the middle of what will be useable pixels, without going too bright to blend the sun. Depending on your experience level you may be asking why I can’t just use this image and brighten up the dark areas, and darken down the highlights, and save all the work of blending to begin with. That is a technique used by beginners, as I did when I was more of a beginner. There are problems with that, especially when you are a quality nerd like myself (and I say that with a huge grain of salt, because I’m aware there are other photographers who go to extremes when it comes to quality). The biggest problem when using a single exposure to balance the contrast is that you lose all of the contrast. The image would look flat and dull. Another huge problem with that is that you still lose the blown highlight areas, or if you ETTR (Exposed to the Right - more on this later) and saved the highlights like in my above image, then bringing up those dark areas would introduce some serious noise due to the limitation of the dynamic range of most cameras.
Notice the blown highlights in the middle of this image, and the dark areas are still too dark to pull up while preserving detail. This is why multiple exposures are needed, no matter how expensive your gear is.
With the above image being my middle exposure, I will use it for most of the sky and trees since those areas are going to blend better with the darker exposure. The below image will be used to create the foreground.
The sky and background of this image are completely blown and unusable, however, I can have plenty of good, clean pixels in the foreground which can be darkened to match the final image.
I open up each file in photoshop as s smart object and layer them in the same document. Then I use various methods of selecting bright/dark sections to maintain the best pixels from each image. The very first image, the darkest one, will actually only be used for the middle area where the sun is and some of the surrounding fog, and that layer will blend nicely with the middle exposure, particularly in the sky area of the image. The bright exposure will be darkened down to a realistic level to match the look of the scene as I remember it.
Since I shoot in RAW format I always do some sharpening and some saturation boost, to bring the image back to realistic levels. RAW file are very dull to begin with because they only record the light as data, there is no in-camera processing or compression that happens like with JPEGs. Therefore, I will always need to add some sharpening and saturation to bring it back to life. This is where my judgment comes in, and I’m more on the conservative side when it comes to adding saturation, because I never want to have an image that looks fake or over-processed. I have refined my workflow to add saturation to certain colors, specific to the landscape.
Some of the limitations of the technology are evident in the final image, there is a lens flare in the middle of the foreground that could probably be resolved with a much more expensive lens. The top left corner of the image has some chromatic aberrations around the foliage in the trees due to the difference in the dark and middle exposure, which is always going to be an issue when taking multiple exposures of objects that can move, as trees do. And the sun in the middle is still blown out somewhat, although it would take more exposures and blending to make it right, sometimes the conditions change so quickly it doesn’t allow time in the field for this. Overall, I am satisfied with the end result, given the tools I have to capture the light. It could be marginally better with much more expensive gear, and eventually I’ll make that happen.
