Want to shoot better landscapes? To mark the recent launch of the Fujifilm X Landscape Photographer of the Year competition, we've put together a collection of useful tips to help you produce better landscapes. In this, the fourth instalment, Andrew Fildes puts the focus on some common post-production techniques, from black & white conversions, to toning effects and high dynamic range.
01 SATURATION, CLARITY AND VIGNETTE
This has become a very popular style in recent years. Pushing up the clarity and saturation sliders in Lightroom or other Raw conversion programs so everything is vivid can add a sense of drama to your images. I think it started with attempts to recreate vivid positive films like Velvia, but it has been pushed much further recently. It’s a matter of personal taste – push it as far as you want.
The vignette effect, where the edges of the image are darkened, can be effective too. Our eyes are naturally drawn to the brightest parts of an image, so darkening the edges has the effect of keeping our eyes locked on the central part of the image.
02 BLACK & WHITE
Monochrome landscapes are difficult to do well, but worth pursuing. When they work they can be magical. Shoot Raw (to gather as much information as possible) and set the camera to monochrome (the Raw file will still capture the colour data). There was a brilliant tutorial in the last issue of AP (June 2013) explaining how to make beautiful colour-to-b&w conversions in Adobe Lightroom.
Does your image look better in colour or black and white?
03 TONING EFFECTS
Most monochrome ‘art’ images have some degree of toning. Once, even printing papers were varied for warmer or colder tones. Alternative processes were used to get blue or brown tones and other effects. Now it’s easy, with all sorts of post-production adjustments and presets. Start with a strong image and experiment. Try some of the free presets you can find on the net to play with colour images as well. Use gradient tools to get strange sky colours in the way that graduated colour filters were once used (and still are by some photographers).
Saturation and clarity have been boosted in Lightroom, while a
vignette has been added to darken the edges of the image and keep our eyes from
straying outside the picture frame.
04 HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE
Most landscapes involve a fairly wide tonal range, usually taking in a bright sky with darker details in the foreground. In many cases the sensor in your camera will be unable to record the entirety of this tonal range, and will either overexpose the highlights, underexpose the shadows, or both. A well-known technique to overcome this problem is to shoot several shots at a range of different exposures, under, over, and averaged. You can then blend the best elements from each image together in post-production to ensure the proper exposure in all areas of the image. You may need up to nine exposures, a half to a full stop apart.
Some cameras do ‘HDR’ automatically, but you’ll have to make some choices about the strength of the settings. You’ll have more control if you apply the effect in post. Used subtly, HDR can add depth and interest to your landscapes. But be careful not to overdo the effect – many people do.
The HDR effect can help you capture a broader range of tones.
05 MINIATURE EFFECT
Who first noticed that by blurring the foreground and background of a landscape, the resulting image looked like a scale model? Many digital cameras now offer this effect in their creative modes. It’s a tricky one to use, but quite a lot of fun. You need a shot with significant man-made detail in the middle ground to allow the effect to create maximum impact. You can also add the effect in post, selectively blurring different parts of the image with selections or masks.
Many cameras now offer 'miniature mode' in their selection of in-camera effects.
06 PANORAMAS
Once the province of dedicated photographers with expensive and specialised film cameras, ultra-wide panoramic images can now be created by anyone. Some cameras do a remarkably good job of it, just press the shutter and pan. The alternative is to shoot several images and stitch them together with software. It works best if you use a tripod and a special panorama attachment to control the camera movement and make sure the images line up neatly. A true panorama involves a rotational movement of the camera – a sweep up to 360 degrees. Other single-shot techniques, such as using wide crop formats like 6x17, are really ‘letterbox’ panoramas. These are achievable by cropping an image, but the image quality may suffer from the enlargement if you’re using a regular digital camera.