Depict

last light

polarpanorma

Issue 1 • January 2013

chasing the

in 5 easy steps

sunset

Create your own little world with this easy step by step guide

2 • Designfreebies Magazine • www.designfreebies.org Designfreebies Magazine • www.designfreebies.org • 3

Contents

04 photographers Quote Imogen Cunningham

06 shoot the night The joys of night photography

10 last light Chasing sunsets

14 lightroom Editing tips Recover all those lost bits 16 pictures of photographers Photoception

20 Why You need a 50mm F/1.4 Best value for money lens around?

24 polar panorama A simple 5 step how to guide

tim Westtim-west.tumblr.com

In tHIs IssUe

“When I was on trips I used to put Polaroid’s in a container with sea

water, sand and pebbles. I’d swirl it all around to get scratches. It’s this

random element that I call ‘the drip’. It’s the drip which might splash

onto the other side of the canvas when you’re working on a paint-

ing and make you think ‘that is good’, possibly leading you to explore

other things. My whole life is spent in search of the drip; it can change

everything.”

– David Bailey

I think this quote by David Bailey summarises very nicely a lot of

designers relationship with photography and art in general. As much

as we sometimes want that exact, precise, OCD - ridden piece of work

some of the time; the rest of the time we are looking for ‘the drip’. That

little something extra. I think this is what makes this industry so inter-

esting and unique. The amount of scope that there is for improvisation

and pure unhindered creativity.

LAST LIGHT

POLARPANORMAHOW TO

Issue 1 • January 2013

CHASING THE

IN 5 EASY STEPS

SUNSET

Create your own little world with this easy step by step guide


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The photograph above was taken outside T13 skate park in Belfast, just down the road

from the new Titanic building. I had been in attending a graff’ and public art event

called Whitewash wich is held in various venues across Northern Ireland on a roughly

bi-monthly basis. A friend of mine was creating a public art piece on the subject ‘Love

is?’. Scary stuff I know. This building was a fantastic location for such an event as not

only do you get to watch various artists from all disciplines doing their thing but as

an added bonus you can watch skaters and BMX riders hitting half pipes, with various

levels of expertise if you get bored. So, from a photographers point of view, there was

a lot that you could point your camera at inside the building. I took many photographs

and had a great eveving. Then the time came around to help my friend pack up his

gear and go home. That was until I walked outside and as happens so many times,

I got massively distracted by the various colourful hues hanging in the evening sky.

shoot the night

canon 550d

ef 50mm f/1.4

4 secs @ f/4.5

iso 200

Andy Warhol, probably among many other people said “The idea of waiting for some-thing makes it more exciting”I would have to agree.

...is something that harks back to the highly romanticised idea of dropping a freshly exposed piece of photographic paper into the devel-oping solution in the dark room.”

Shooting skies in particular is something

that I love to do at night. I think a big

part of the enjoyment of night photog-

raphy is the waiting and anticipation

between pressing the shutter and even-

tually seeing the image after however

many seconds the shutter was required

to stay open. This can get particularly

bad (or good hopefully) when shooting

star trails. If I shoot a star trail, the single

exposure time could be easily 40 minutes

or more. Having waited 40 minutes for

the image to be made upon the camera’s

sensor, I will then have to wait the same

amount of time again to see the image

once the camera has processed it. For

a start, knowing this will make me be

extremely careful when I’m setting up

the composition, so that mistakes are as

limited as possible. I think this is good

practise in general, as it makes you think

a bit more about your composition and

camera set-up. This process of waiting

to see what the image will look like I

believe is something that harks back to

the highly romanticised idea of dropping

a freshly exposed piece of photographic

paper into the developing solution in

the dark room. Then there was the wait.

How is it going to look? Did I expose it

for long enough? When you finally do

everthing right and there before your

very eyes appears a beautifully exposed

image, that’s a feeling that I haven’t been

able to match since. But long exposure

night time photography is pretty close.


canon 550d

ef-s 18-55mm @ 55mm

4 secs @ f/5.6

iso 100


he number of times that

I have been late to vari-

ous places of work and

education because I have

become distracted by a great looking

sunrise or sunset on the way is quite

ridiculous. This feeling that it may look

differently better from the other side of

the road or if that big ugly cloud would

pass over, is something that grips me and

I will not be able to stop untill I have

explored every conceivable angle, con-

ceding only as the sun drops beyond the

horizon for another day.

This is something that I am sure is expe-

rienced by photographers from every-

genre. I was recently reading a book

called ‘Between the Hedges’ by the high-

ly successful road racing photographer

Stephen Davison and he had the follow-

ing to say on the subject:

“If you cannot see a picture you will

never be able to take a picture. This skill

cannot be taught. There is something

that must be felt when you look at a

scene, something inside yourself that

makes you feel the photograph. Chasing

that feeling is what photography is all

about.”

The photograph on the left was taken at

the underpass of Moira train station. This

was not a premeditated shoot in any way.

I was driving over the motorway bridge

on my way home and noticing the sun

was setting, I thought that I’d pull in at

my nearest convenience. The train sta-

tion was that nearest convenience and I

literally walked right into this scene, sun

curling around the brick work and all.

If I had to give one tip to held in caturing

sunset photographs like this, it would be

to consider your metering. Evaluative/

Average metering modes do a very good

job of metering scenes with moderate

contrast, i.e. scenes with a relatively con-

stant amount of light present across the

whole composition. As sunset images are

about the most contrast filled scenes you

will find, I go to a different meteing mode

wich on both Canon and Nikon cam-

eras is called Spot Metering. What this

mode does is measure the light intensity

around a very small circular area (about

2%) of your total viewfinder area, based

around your active AF (auto focus) point.

In essence what you then have is what

I like to think of as an eye-dropper tool

for selecting your perfect exposure. Pick

an element of the scene, half press the

shutter to meter, lock the exposure, re-

compose and shoot.

Last LIgHtchasing the sunset

t canon 550d

ef-s 18-55mm @ 18mm

1/15 sec @ f/5.6

iso 100

Learn how to drive while staring out of the passenger window as you chase the sun-set half way around the countryside.

...conceding only as the sun drops beyond the horizon foranother day.”


canon 550d

ef-s 10-22mm @ 22mm

1/250 secs @ f/8

iso 100


irst things first. If you have

ever had a conversation

with a professional pho-

tographer and you asked

them for tips, I would be willing to bet a

fair bit that one suggestion would have

been ‘shoot in raw’. I heard this a few

times and for a good while my thoughts

were that I was already doing enough

editing to my JPEGs, never mind having

a bunch of additional options to worry

about. How wrong I was. Having seen

the errors of my ways, I know shoot pretty

much exclusively in RAW format. One

exception is if I’m shooting something

like sports photography as most DSLR

cameras can shoot a higher frame rate

when shooting JPEGs due to their smaller

file sizes. That said everything about

editing your photographs taken in RAW

format becomes easier, quicker and with

minimum loss of detail. One of RAW’s

most simple joys is the ability to choose

the WB (white balance) during editing

without affecting quality whatsoever. An

example of this being highly useful is if

you have been shooting indoors, in tung-

sten light and then go outside and forget

to change the WB setting. You can simply

change it in Lightroom or your preffered

program during editing. One of the main

reasons that I choose to use Lightroom

when it comes to photo editing is the

way in which the program is set up to

manage a typical photographers work-

flow. Along the top you will see this in

the following format - Library > Develop

> Map > Book > Slideshow > Print > Web

. This workflow incorporates pretty much

everything you will ever need to do to

your images.

LIgHtroomediting tips

f

canon 550d

ef-s 10-22mm @ 10mm

20 secs @ f/5.6

iso 200

Recover all those little lost bits. . . .

As for the before and after images shown

here, I thing the difference is very notable

and there are very few steps required in

achieving this difference. The first thing

to do is amend the WB. As this was

shot in RAW format, I could amend the

balance to suit how the scene looked.

There are no presets for moonlight that

I’ve ever came across either in-camera or

during editing. There is however a func-

tion within Lightroom to manually adjust

the WB on two seperate scales. These

are temperature on a blue > yellow scale

and tint on a green > magenta scale.

Having amended this to match the way

the scene looked as well as I could, the

next step was to increase the exposure

by a fifth of a stop and amend the crop

angle slightly to straighten the scene.

Next, I recovered some of the backed-up

blacks using the black clipping tool and

all that left was a little tweak of the clar-

ity, which really helps lift some detail out

of the clouds, especially the reflections

on the water. Finish with a very slight

tweak of the vibrance and saturation.

”If you have ever had a conversation with a professional photog-rapher and you asked them for tips, I would be willing to bet a fair bit that one sugges-tion would have been ‘shoot in raw’.


aybe this is something that designers and aspir-

ing photographers already do but I haven’t seen it

myself that often. Taking photos of people taking

photos is something I think can be very helpful

as well as being something I really enjoy doing

and I will tell you why. First of all, I’m sure that many of us

have been out shooting

whatever photograph it

is we need and we’re

just not getting any-

where. The lighting is

a little to bright or a

little too dim. Perhaps

it’s too cold or blowy

and your tripod keeps

falling over. Give up

and go home you say?

Never. Instead, turning

your camera on your

photographer buddy

can be a great way of

letting your ‘photogra-

pher’s eye’ engage with a totally different type of subject. I find

this to be similar to writers block or any other form of ‘getting

nowhere’ in a creative capacity. Nine times out of ten, letting

yourself just do anything that is losely related to your creative

endeavour but with no restrictions and hence no pressure can

be hugely liberating and may just pop that block right out. In

the particular instance above, I was shooting some images of

the sun setting over Lough Neagh and the conditions were theo-

retically perfect but each composition seemed boring and very

‘stereotypical landscape’. However, having turned my camera on

my photographer buddy (my Dad in this instance) for a number

of shots in a different frame of mind, I was then able to turn the

camera back a few minutes later on the scene that I’d been trying

to capture and shoot a

successful image. The

second reason why

I enjoy taking these

types of photographs

is that when it comes

to stock imagery, I like

whenever humanly pos-

sible to use a photo-

graph that I have taken

myself, no matter how

ridiculous the subject

matter. I’m sure most

creatives would agree

it’s a lot more satisfying

to create as much of

any publication as you can by yourself. I have found that good

images of photographers in action are quite difficult to come by.

Especially natural looking ones, taken out and about in the real

world. For this reason, I find it extremely useful to have my own

little assortment of images like this. It makes it even better that

I don’t have to go out of my way at all to capture them. Why not

give it a go the next time your out snappin’.

take pICtUres ofphotographersNext time your out shooting and you get bored of the subject, don’t go home. Try turning the camera on your photographer buddy instead.

canon 550d

ef-s 18-55mm @ 18mm

1/500 sec @ f/3.5

iso 100

m

canon 550d

ef-s 18-55mm @ 18mm

1/50 sec @ f/3.5

iso 100



I think one of the first things that many people find interesting about photography is the concept of depth of field...more importantly the ability the photographer has to change it...”

I think one of the first things that many

people find interesting about photog-

raphy is the concept of depth of field.

More importantly, the ability that the

photographer has to change it. This

was certainly the case for me. I found

the idea of being able to isolate my

subject and throw the background and/

or foreground out of focus a very exciting

prospect. With that in mind, I give unto

you the best tool available to do this - the

50mm F/1.4 prime lens (prime meaning

a lens with fixed focal length). This lens

costs around £280, possibly less if you

shop around. Yes, there is an even wider

aperture available - you can purchase an

F/1.2 Prime lens if you want to spend an

extra one thousand pounds. For a mere

half a stop difference this seems a touch

excessive to me. When fully open the

F/1.4 can create some amazing bokeh

(out of focus elements) and as you begin

stopping it down you will notice the

fantastic clarity that comes with prime

lenses. Give yourself some time to get

used to the tricky focussing with such a

shallow depth of field and this lens will

reward like no other at this price.

Why you need a 50mm f/1.4

Is this the best value for money lens that you can buy today?

fine build quality

great image quality

canon 550d

ef 50mm f/1.4

1/800 sec @ f/2.5

iso 100



he first time I came across this particular creative

photography project, it was in a book, the name of

which I do not recall but whatever way they went

about explaining it made it seem like expert levels

of Photoshop skills would be required. I immediately wrote it off

and that was the last I heard of Polar Panoramas for a while. I

came across them again some time later, on Flickr and thought

I had to give them a go. As you will no doubt be glad to hear,

the Photoshop skills required are extemely basic and the results

are excellent with just a little bit of care. Basically, you take a

series of images as you would for a standard panorama - but for

maximum impact take images that cover 360 degrees, all the

way round a centre point. You can do a Polar Panorama with

a standard three or four shot panorama photograph but they’re

just not as good as they will incorporate less detail.

What you will need to do this, is preferably a DSLR but really

any camera with a manual mode would be sufficient, which is

something some of the more advanced point and shoot cameras

now have. The reason you require a manual mode is because if

the exposure changes, even slightly between shots then this can

show up very obviously when you stitch the images together - for

example you will see different shades of blue in the sky, etc. The

only other thing you really need is a tripod, so you can ascertain

a constant centre point for your panorama.

This series of images was taken in Castle Gardens in Lisburn. I

placed the tripod at the back of the park, near to the Cathedral.

This positon gets a look over the old walls and if you look

closely you can actually see some of the Union Bridge area of

Lisburn City toward the bottom of the picture.

poLar panoramahoW to guide

t

create your oWn little World in five simple

steps. just folloW this easy guide

If you look closely you can actually see some of the Union Bridge area of Lisburn City toward the bottom of the picture.”

canon 550d

ef-s 10-22mm @ 10mm

1/80 sec @ f13 (x11)

iso 100


1.

2.

3. 4. 5.


Stage one is the hardest part of the

process, so it’s nice to get it out of the

way first! This stage involves picking

your location and going and shooting

your panorama. One thing to consider

when chosing your location is to try and

find somewhere with a common foreground as this becomes

the centre of the picture and hence experiences the greatest

levels of distortion. It also helps in the same respect to have

a similar top third of the image. A standard blue sky is perfect.

Next, you will set up your tripod and take a few test shots to

establish an exposure that will work for all your shots. Lock this

exposure and shoot, overlapping each frame by around a third.

canon 550d

ef-s 10-22mm @ 10mm

5 secs @ f/3.5

iso 100

If you can’t think of a good location you can always try the back garden

Next you need to bring your images into

a photo - stitching application such as

Photomerge in Photoshop. This is found

under File > Automate > Photomerge. I

find Photomerge a very simple tool to

use, it’s simply a case of dragging the

required files in, pressing go and the software does the hard

work for you. What you will then have is a full 360 degree pan-

orama of your location in standard panorama format. This is a

pretty cool looking image too so save a copy at this stage for

future reference. The next stages will turn this image into your

own little planet.

Stage three is just two very simple pro-

cesses. Firstly, you will need to turn your

image into a square. The easiest way

to do this is to go into Image > Image

Size and simply change the height value

to match the width. This will turn your

panorama into a weird looking squashed square. The second

thing to do at this stage is to filp your image upside down. This

is done by going to Image > Image Rotation > 180 degrees. This

is your panorama set up for the the magic of the next stage!

Next we simply apply the polar coordi-

nates filter which can be found under

Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates.

Ensure the option Rectangular to Polar

is checked at the bottom of the Polar

Coordinated dialog box. At this stage

your little planet should be taking shape nicely. However you

will notice a few ragged edges, which we will deal with in the

final stage.

Nearly there! This is the clean up stage

to make your little world look a bit more

hospitable. This primarily requires use

of the clone stamp tool to clean up the

messy bits. You can be as patient as you

like here but of course the more patient

you are the better it’s going to look. When this is done, I took

my image into Lightroom and treating it just like any other pho-

tograph, tweaked the exposure, contrast and saturation slightly.

And you’re done - you have created your own little world!

The scope for creativity with this little tutorial is of course end-

less. You could even try it indoors! This one I made up of a

series of images taken inside a bedroom. It’s an absurd looking

image that can capture every wall in a room and place it inside

a square!

3.

2.

1.

5.

4.

Documents

Depict