impressionism techniques

A reader asked me a while back, "How can I get impressionist results from my camera?" I listed a few techniques (hopefully helpful ones). I'd like to add one to that list. For the purposes of this discussion, let's classify these techniques into two categories: in-camera, and out-of-camera. In-camera techniques are those you can use in the field with only your camera, such as changing the focus, using a slow shutter speed to blur the image, etc. Out-of-camera techniques are post-production alterations to the image done with software.

What I've discovered lately is that in-camera techniques used to achieve impressionist results are much more effective. First, you can see the results in the field. Second, they look more natural and less "gimicky." Out-of-camera effects are also usually easier to spot, making them feel very artificial.

In the end, though, being analog, natural, and honest, in-camera techniques and the results they reproduce feel better and look better. You even feel better about producing them. And using them is photography, while out-of-camera techniques feel more like manipulation, of both the photograph and the person viewing it. And, as a friend of mine puts it, overly manipulated photographs leave you cold.

I'll share an in-camera technique I developed recently and like a great deal. Here is a photograph I took this morning down at the river using this technique.

Nikon D200 (IR), Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 at 200mm, 1/320 sec, f/8, ISO200
Adjustments: size, curves, b&w conversion
Geotag: N 39° 3' 42", W 77° 22' 23"

This photograph displays some natural, sharp detail, but combines it with an ethereal feel, resulting in a sense of both reality and the surreal. Granted, part of this is due to the fact that it is an infrared photograph, but that's only a small contribution. You'll need a camera that can perform multiple exposures, like the Nikon D90 or D200.

The basic idea is to take multiple exposures of the same thing, but at different focus levels. Follow these steps:

1. Set your camera to manual focus.
2. Defocus your scene or subject until it's pretty blurry, and there are no recognizable details.
3. Set the camera to multiple exposure mode (this photo was done with 4 exposures).
4. Shoot your first exposure.
5. Shoot the remaining exposures, moving the focus each time a bit more towards being in focus, making sure the last one is in sharp focus.

Once your camera combines all the images, you should get a result similar to the one above.

This technique was used here in a nature photo, but that's because I happened to be at the river at the time. I plan to try this with portraits, still life, and other subject matter. Who knows what will benefit from this interesting surreal look?

One more for your impressionism toolbox. Experiment with it and see what changes to the technique work well. If you achieve any interesting results with this, let me know. I'd love to see them.

photo of the day no. 36

Took my first real hike of the year this weekend on the Maryland side of Great Falls National Park. Found a nice little pond back from the river and shot this photo.

Also learned that the connector for the Nikon GPS unit on the D90 is in a very bad place on the camera body. Just a simple hike carrying the camera around resulted in a broken connector. It got knocked loose, and now the GPS won't work any more on that camera. Afraid to ask what it would cost to repair the body. Live and learn.

Nikon D90, Nikon 18-200mm VR f/3.5-5.6, 1/1600 sec, f/4.2, ISO200
Adjustments: size, unsharp mask, curves, b&w conversion

photo of the day no. 35

Spent the afternoon and early evening yesterday out at Great Falls Park Maryland side. Not only had a great time with my pal Warren, but got quite a few photos with which I was pretty happy (see the rest at www.tonymartinphotography.com in the Infrared Photography section).

I decided to show this one to make two points. First, if you're shooting infrared photography, one of the nice benefits is that IR picks up more detail in clouds, things you and a normal visible light camera can't. Second, when capturing a sunset, you need not stick to color. Black and white skies can be just as dramatic and beautiful.

So with this infrared sunset, I one more time delve into my photographic obsession: capturing and presenting for the world that which the human eye cannot see.

Nikon D200 (IR), Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5, 1/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO200
Adjustments: size, unsharp mask, curves, b&w conversion
Geotag: N 39° 0' 3.60", W 77° 14' 55.20"

photo of the day no. 34

Just a quick one today. This caught my eye last night sitting at a friend's house. 90 seconds later, I had this nice abstract.

Nikon D90, Tamron 90mm f/2.8, 1/40 sec, f/4.5, ISO200
Adjustments: size, unsharp mask

photo of the day no. 33

Hi again. Back from a short break. Spent the morning (a cold morning at that) on the Potomac River at Riverbend Park. Every now and then, you do something and realize that much of your life is spent surrounded by the artificial - living room, office, strip mall, even the car. When you get out into the woods and stop to take a look, it feels real like so little else. What a great sensation.

Got this IR shot while I was out there. Still have some research to do with the IR camera and specific lenses, but getting there. IR photography is not simple and not a speedy process. Can't wait 'til spring!

Nikon D200, Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4.5, 1/2500 sec, f/13, ISO200
Adjustments: size, slight level adjust, B&W conversion
Geotag: N 39 1' 15.0", W 77 14' 41.4"

photo of the day no. 32

Big day today - the D200 came home from Lifepixel, the place that converted it permanently to infrared (IR). So I ran out into the street when I got home, literally, and shot a few test photos. Lesson for today: converting your camera to IR takes care of some of the problems you encounter using an IR filter, but it still has many challenges. Learned about two of them today:

1. You can no longer use autofocus and have to not only focus manually, but make guesses about how much to change the focus.
2. Fast shutter speeds may be too fast for IR photography, resulting in images with the shutter still in the way.

More on these in another article about IR as I learn more.

For now, I'll post a photo I shot in both IR color and converted to B&W. I'll post some photos in the near future that take more advantage of the IR. However, note that the wood pole lying in the snow was actually green, but in IR, it came out blue.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO200
Adjustments: size, slight level adjustments

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO200
Adjustments: size, slight contrast, B&W

Whoa! Bonus photo for today! I shot this one as well, and it really struck me, though I'm still figuring out all the "why."

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, 1/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO200
Adjustments: size, slight level adjustments, B&W

This is gonna be fun!

photo of the day no. 31

Stopped by the park on the way home to test out the new Nikon GP-1 GPS unit for the camera. We'll have a short review of that thing in the near future. As a result, from now on, I'll be posting geotag information for each photo of the day. Granted, they'll all probably be from relatively nearby, but you never know.

Today's photo, taken in the mud amongst obnoxious geese and lots of sticker bushes (ow). Let me know which you like better in this case: normal color (which is fairly subtle) or the b&w version. And, if possible, why. Thanks!

Nikon D90, Nikkor 18-200mm VR f3.5-5.6 at 60mm, 1/2500 sec, f/13, ISO200
Adjustments: size, slight level adjust, minor color balancing
Geotag: N 39° 1' 5.83", W 77° 24' 18.58"

Nikon D90, Nikkor 18-200mm VR f3.5-5.6 at 60mm, 1/2500 sec, f/13, ISO200
Adjustments: size, b&w conversion, minor contrast
Geotag: N 39° 1' 5.83", W 77° 24' 18.58"

review no. 2: lens baby composer

For those of you who haven't heard of the Lens Baby line of products, they are special purpose lenses called selective focus lenses. They allow you to adjust which part of the composition is in focus (called the focal "sweet spot"), resulting in the rest of the image being blurred. The effect is very cool: one spot has focus, while the rest of the image gets progressively fuzzier the further away from the sweet spot.

Take a look at the image below. It shows the latest model, called the Composer, attached to my Nikon D90. It consists of the base, which attaches to the camera, a focus ring, a locking ring, and a tilting front, which you can move around on its ball joint.

Operation is simple:

1. Set your camera to aperture priority or manual mode (manual works best for me)


2. Focus manually using the focus ring


3. Move the sweet spot around by shifting the front of the lens


4. Check the focus on the repositioned sweet spot - adjust if necessary


5. If you want to keep the sweet spot adjustment from moving, you can lock it down by turning the locking ring to the left


6. Select an appropriate shutter speed on the camera and shoot the picture

It is important to note that this is an extremely manual lens. There are no computer chips, focus motors, electrical contacts, or even aperture blades. It takes no power whatsoever. It's up to you to set the aperture and shutter speed manually to get a decent exposure. And you'll have to rely on your own fingers to focus manually.

It's also worth spending a moment on aperture adjustment. Modern camera/lens combinations take care of it with easy-to-use adjustments on the camera body. However, to change the aperture on the Lens Baby line of lenses, you physically remove a small metal ring from the lens and replace it with another that has a hole of a different size. You get a set of aperture rings ranging from f/2.8 to f/22. They do give you a nice little magnetic tool to remove and replace the aperture rings, as well as a convenient container for storage. As you decrease the aperture (smaller hole), the size of the focal sweet spot increases, and vice versa.

So what kinds of results can you expect from the Lens Baby Composer? Make sure you stop by their web site and look at their gallery. In addition, I shot a few quick examples around the house, all shot with the f/2.8 aperture ring:

Focal sweet spot to the left side.

Focal sweet spot roughly in the center.

Focal sweet spot on the bottom right.

The Lens Baby is significantly different than just using a narrow depth of field with a regular lens. With the Lens Baby, some objects are in focus (in the sweet spot) and some aren't, even though all objects might be the same distance from the camera. As mentioned, the focus also gets fuzzier the further an object is from the sweet spot.

There are other models of Lens Babies. The 2.0 model is still available (now called the Muse), and instead of a focus ring and ball joint, the lens is mounted on a springy plastic bellows (often called the "squeezy" model). The Muse offers a more organic, fluid, and ephemeral feel to your photographic experience, while the Composer reviewed here offers a little more precision. I have both, and use them depending on my mood and need. I think I like the Composer a little more.

The Composer is a great lens, but like most products, is not without its flaws. The aperture system using the metal rings is a definite productivity problem. It takes a minute to change the little rings, they can get lost, and it's almost impossible to change them in cold weather with frozen fingers. In addition, the locking ring operation is not smooth and is a bit noisy. Don't use the locking ring if you need quiet. The little protective cloth storage bag that accompanies the Lens Baby Composer is too small and results in a very snug fit. You can't get it in or out of that little bag quickly. I left it in the box.

However, even given its minor drawbacks, I love the images you can create with the Lens Babies. It's a fabulous creative tool that allows you to see your subject in new ways. As an avid practitioner of photo-impressionism, this tool will be very valuable to me. I plan to spend a lot more time with mine in the very near future. Despite its minor limitations and inconveniences, I'm keeping it in my camera bag all the time. I'm off to try some portrait work with the Lens Baby Composer, so I'll see you later.

Further Information
Typical street price: $269.95
Filter size: 37 mm
Lens Baby's site: http://www.lensbaby.com
Mounts available: Olympus, Pentax K, Nikon F, Sony Alpha, Canon EF

q&a session no.1

We're starting up a q&a series here at A Photo or Two. Feel free to send any photography questions to tonymartinphotography@gmail.com and we'll answer them here in the blog. Our first question...

Q: Do you have hints regarding obtaining impressionist effects using a digital camera? I have just begun to attempt this, so nothing is too basic.

A: There are many interpretations of what impressionism may look like in the world of photography. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to approach it as what sort of techniques can you use to make a photograph that shows something you can't see with your eyes. This has always been a fascination for me, since you can use a camera to see things in ways your eyes can't.

We could talk all day about what impressionism is and what it means to photography. We'll skip that for now, as it's beyond the scope of the discussion, and assume you've already thought about it to some degree. But once we know what sorts of impressionist images we want to produce, then as the question asks, how do we actually go about making it happen in practical terms?

Here are some ideas I've used in the past:

Use less than accurate focus.
Often you can get an impressionistic feel through using manual focus and ignoring what the camera says - defocus your scene as much or little as you need to help achieve the effect for which you are looking. Usually, however, this is something you do in combination with other techniques.

This technique worked well on this sunset, taking the scene and reducing it to its basic shapes and areas of color (I actually put this in very large format on my living room wall):

Look through something to distort the image.
I once shot one of my favorite impressionist images through some leaves of a tree that were very close and out of focus, which obscured parts of the image in very interesting ways and added to the tenebrous nature of the photograph. You may have seen it before on this site, but here it is again:

Try shooting through other things and materials as well. I once had good results, for example, from a hotel room shooting a photo of Chicago through the sheer curtains in the window.

Use a long exposure.
Long exposures can do lots of things to your photograph besides make things blurry. When used on a tripod, long exposures can make motionless things remain motionless, yet blur objects in motion. For example, a park bench would stay a normal park bench, but the wind blowing the trees will smear them across your photographic canvas, and make a river in motion look blurred or even completely smoothed over. Example:

Also see photo of the day no. 28 for another example. Long exposure doesn't have to mean very long. This photograph was shot with a handheld camera at about 0.4 seconds. I really liked the effect it produced.

Try out some double exposures.
Some digital SLR cameras will let you do double exposures, taking 2 or more photographs in succession and combining them into one image (both the Nikon D90 and D200 will do this). This is really only limited by your creativity, and I'm sure the imaginative photographer could make some nice impressionistic effects.

Use selective focus.
There's a great little gadget out there for DSLR's called a Lens Baby. It's a very simple (and very manual) lens that allows you to focus on selective parts of your image, blurring the rest. It's not too expensive, and makes a great creative tool to play around with. Lots of fun to use as well.

Shake that camera!
Who says you have to hold a camera still? Not me. Try a slightly longer exposure and shake the camera around while you're exposing the image. I did this with some fireworks and got this result (among others):

There are also many other things you can do once you get the image into a computer and an image editing program. If you're after an artistic look, some filters can help you out, especially if you combine them. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and PaintShop Pro all have artistic filters built in, and you can get some extremely nice third-party filters that work in these paint programs as well, such as Alien Skin's Snap Art.

So now you have a few techniques to try out. However, be creative and experimental. Try them in different lighting situations (including night), and try combining them where possible. If you have decent image editing software, dive into that as well with further experimentation.

One last hint: keep notes on what you do so that when you find something you like, you'll be able to reproduce it. Nothing is more frustrating than not being able to repeat something that really moves you.

For more information about this topic, there are two books I'd recommend. The first is by one of my favorite photographers, Freeman Patterson, and is called "Photo Impressionism and the Subjective Image." The second, more about making art with your photographs using image editing software, is "The Art of Digital Photo Painting" by Marilyn Sholin.

A Photo or Two Impressionism resources:

• photo-impressionism anyone?


• photo of the day no. 2


• photo of the day no. 3


• photo of the day no. 5


• photo of the day no. 10


• photo of the day no. 19


• photo of the day no. 26

Thanks for the question - keep them coming!

Tony.

tutorial no. 6: think ahead

I don't know if you're the same as me in this respect, but I tend to overthink. About many things, photography included. Sometimes I associate the quality or value of a photograph with the amount of work I put into it. I feel like the more I think about or plan a photograph, the better it will be. And I'm not talking about technical thinking like exposure - everyone does that, and it's important. I mean about its intent, meaning, purpose, and other characteristics often associated with a photograph's artistic value.

There are often two side effects of this overthinking. First, it can actually hamper the creative process. You can easily become paralyzed if you can't think of a good purpose behind the photograph or reason to take it. For me, it usually sounds like, "I haven't really thought about what this photograph means to me, what it's about, or what I'm trying to say. Better rethink it some more." And as often as not, I end up shooting nothing, moving on to other ideas.

Don't get me wrong - it's important to think about your photography and why you do it. However, it's also important to enjoy the process. Read through Freeman Patterson's "Photography for the Joy of it" and you'll see what I mean. Photography can be both fun and relevant. However, for me, the thinking part works better if I do most of my pondering ahead of time so it doesn't slow me down (or shut me down) when I'm actually taking photographs.

I do lots of general thinking about photography all the time. What it means to me, why photography is important, photography as an art form, that sort of thing. I develop my own theories, figure out what photographers influenced me, and most of all, gain a better understanding of what kind of photography I like to create and what I like to say and do with it. Because I think through these issues in advance, they start to influence my shooting automatically, without shutting me down in the field by overthinking it. When an actor rehearses and learns his or her lines well,their performance is better - they don't have to overthink it while they're doing it - they've done that already.

I'm going to use a photograph I took a few years ago as an example. Here it is - you may have seen it already.

When I took this photograph, I just shot it without thinking too much. The whole thing was over in about 30 seconds. Initially, I was a little let down by it, since I didn't put a lot of effort into it. However, Bryan Peterson took a look at it and quite liked it. He had this to say when I told him of my dilemma:

"The reason you took that photo was because it was 'clean, colorful and graphic in its overall composition' and my hunch is you came upon it and simply shot it without much effort. If you associate 'feelings' with the amount of effort you put into a successful image, you will probably feel shortchanged by the reaction of your audience since they will always and most often ONLY respond to the finished image-regardless of how much time and energy (or lack thereof) went into the image - learn to appreciate not only simplicity in a photo, but also the sometimes simple act of creating it."

It was about then that I realized the photograph was actually influenced by my previous time spent thinking about photography. The photograph actually did have work put into it - it was just done well ahead of time. My photographic thinking had prepared me for the moment, and helped me quickly and easily recognize the shot as one which I would probably like. And I do like it. He also reminded me that I create photographs because I like to do it. I can appreciate the act of creating an image as much as the resulting image itself.

Bottom line: if you think about your photography well in advance of actual shooting, your photographs will come more easily, and they will start to automatically fit your photographic ideals. You'll like them better. You'll shoot more "keepers" at each outing. So invest in your photography in advance, and you'll get better results, in larger quantities, and have more fun doing it.