The Making of “Still Watchful”

Yesterday I shared a reprocessed version of a photo I took this last summer of a juvenile bald eagle.   While I loved the original image, I wanted this version of the image to really accentuate the magnificence of this bird and convey a sense of loss that I felt when I learned of its demise.

Here is a copy of the original image.  The eagle is perched among the tangles of a dead branch in the morning sun.  There is a nice catch light in its eye as well as nice lighting on is head and stomach with a strong shadow cast by an out of frame branch across its chest.  As many of the branches are without bark the light is reflecting and appears a little hot, detracting from the main focus – the returned stare of this incredible bird.

With that in mind, I wanted the background to disappear.  The branch in the foreground was important to convey the surroundings of this wild bird, but I wanted to make it gradually fade into the background and leave you with that incredible expression. 

Here are the steps I took to reprocess the image:

1. From within Lightroom, right-click on the image and “Edit In > Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS6…”
2. Ctrl+N to create a new layer positioned above the original image.
3. Shift+F5 to fill the new layer with solid black
4. Add a new “Reveal All” Layer Mask to the new black layer
5. With the Layer Mask selected, reduce the opacity until you’re able to see the original image through the black layer.
6. Set the foreground color to black and then select the brush tool to begin painting the bird at 100% opacity as well as some of the foreground branches.
7. As you paint, you’ll see more of the background show through the black layer.  I paid particular attention to the edges of the bird to be sure I didn’t allow any of the green foliage to show through.
8. When I had most of the image showing through the layer mask I then reduced the brush opacity to around 30%, set the brush color to white and changed the opacity of the layer mask back to 100% before tracing around the edges of the subject.  This allowed me to “clean up” any areas where I was too aggressive and made for a smooth transition from black to the colors of the subject.
9. Using this same technique, I made multiple passes along the tree branches, especially toward the ends where I wanted the branches to fade to black, until I was satisfied with the results.  If at any point I got too “heavy handed”, I simply changed the brush color to black and “undid” the wrong.
10. When I was happy with the results, I saved the file and returned to Lightroom where I applied some additional exposure adjustments and used the spot removal tool to eliminate a few more hot areas in the branches.

And that’s it.  The end result is what I feel is a much more dramatic and compelling image without the additional clutter.

What do you think? Which of the two images do you prefer?

The Making of “Around the Bend”

If you tuned in earlier in the week you may have seen the image I posted titled “Around the Bend”.

Of course this is EXACTLY how it looked straight out of camera too. Alright, not really.  Despite being out in the country there was actually a fair amount of traffic on this road.  Somehow, standing in the middle of the road on a blind corner for extended periods of time didn’t seem like a real good idea so I “shot and ran”.  Here’s the REAL out of camera shot.

Here’s a quick rundown on how it got from A to B.

In Lightroom …

1. Crop and straighten the image.  That “blah” sky has got to go and we can leverage that double-yellow as a leading line to pull the viewer into the photo.
2. Now for the exposure. What a mess.  Looks like a good candidate for HDR so I focused my efforts on exposing the road properly with the original cropped image and then made 2 virtual copies.  I set the first virtual to an exposure value 2 under my original and the second 2 over.
3. Selecting all three images I sent them out to PhotoMatix Pro (right-click, Export) and applied the default enhancer template. Looks good to me. Reimport to Lightroom.
4. At this point, everything is looking good except for what I kept of the sky. Still “blah” and in need of an overhaul.  Lucky for me I had a shot of a nice crisp blue autumn sky just a few shots further into the collection.  Selecting both my new HDR image and shot of the nice blue sky, I right-clicked and selected “Edit In …” and then “Open as Layers in Photoshop…”.

In Photoshop…

1. First thing is to position the layers so the HDR is on top and the blue sky image below that.
2. With the HDR layer selected, pick the “Select” menu, use the “Color Range…” option and change the “Select” option to “Highlights”.  Just like that the crumby sky, including the difficult to select area between the pine tree branches is selected.  For good measure, I saved the selection using the option at the bottom of the “Select” menu. Just to be safe, I expanded the selection by 1 pixel from the “Select…Modify” menu to prevent any “white lines” between my sky and trees.
3. With the HDR layer selected, add a new “Reveal All” Layer Mask.
4. Select the new Layer Mask, set the brush tool, color set to black and a 30% opacity.
5. After adjusting the brush size to be able to accommodate the height of the sky selection I make my first pass over the selected sky.  Still a little blah so I made one more pass.  There. That’s better.
6. Grab the “Move Tool” and select the layer containing the blue sky.  Move the sky layer left/right until the clouds are positioned to complement the scene.
7. Save the file and exit back to Lightroom.

In Lightroom…

1. The light on the pavement in the foreground is still a little “hot” so add a new brush using the “Burn (Darken)” effect to paint the bright area until it no longer detracts from the scene.
2. Add keywords, additional metadata and share.

Compared to the amazing effort put forth by Mother Nature to provide the fall colors, the few mouse clicks were a small price to pay to help the image along a little.

Have you leveraged HDR techniques in any of your fall photos?  Have a link or two to share?  Use the comments section below to share.

Photoshop Panorama

From an early age I can remember always wanting to “challenge” a new piece of knowledge once acquired.  For example, I recall coming home with a really cool “Indian spear” from the gift shop of one of our summer vacation stops.  It had a long bamboo shaft with a rubber spear tip attached.  Attached to the toy was a label exclaiming that bamboo was “unbreakable” so of course we had to challenge the new knowledge.  My younger brother and I ran off to our favorite rock pile fort where he was kind enough to take a few whacks at a boulder with my new treasure.  Turns out bamboo isn’t “unbreakable”. Lesson learned.

So, when I recently acquired Photoshop CS6, of course I had to try out the “Merge to Pano” option.  It was there wasn’t it?  During a recent fall photo outing, I took a series of 12 landscape orientated (portrait orientated images would have been better – another lesson learned) and ran straight home to the “rock pile” to see if I could “break it”.

Turns out it actually does work and so well that it’s nothing short of MAGIC!  When I took the photos I made sure to include about a 25% overlap from one frame to the next.  After offloading the images into Lightroom I selected the 12 shots, right-clicked and from the “Edit In…” context menu, selected “Merge to Panorama in Photoshop…”.  Photoshop launched, asked me a question about my preference for stitching the images together and then went to work.  I went to eat diner.  When I came back about 90 minutes later, there it was!  A rather awkward, but accurately stitched together, autumn panorama!

After reimporting to Lightroom I had to crop a little from the top and the bottom to remove white space, but there it was.  All 1.2 gigabytes of it!  I could zoom in to any portion of the image (wait… wait… wait…) and “WOW”, stunning detail like the deer grazing in the field.  It really is “unbreakable” (at least with this series of photos).

Anyone know where I can get a 3’ x 35’ frame?