Jon Revemans Photo and Film blog

The Kiwi Empress

Jon Reveman — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:45:58 +0000

I’ve said it before but food, and fruit in particular, is something I really like to take pictures of. Given the right light and setup new things can emerge from within the subject. In this picture, which I call The Kiwi Empress, the profile of a female head can be seen with an oversized brain – at least that’s what I see. I have done no particular editing except light-curves, contrast and some selective spot removals.
The slice is rather thin with lightning from the back to get the innards to stand out. The downside to this is that the outer parts of the subject gets overexposed.

White balance and night photography

Jon Reveman — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:49:52 +0000

Modern cameras are quite good at determining the white balance in normal conditions but night photography with multiple light sources like the one above makes the task quite complex. The old rule still applies; make sure you take a picture of something white/gray with the same lightning conditions – or better yet, include something white/gray in the composition. In this shot I was lucky in that I knew that the speed limit sign for boats have a white area so I could use that.
If you forgot to get a reference here are some temperature values that you can use as reference:

1750 K - Open flame (Match or candle)
3000 K - Flourecant lamps (lower for incandescent, higher for studio lights)
4100 K - Moonlight
5000 K - Horizon daylight
5700 K - Vertical daylight
6500 K - Daylight overcast
15000 K- Clear night sky (could go as high as 25000 K)

Pictures of food

Jon Reveman — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 01:32:15 +0000

I love to take pictures of food – and the preparation of it. I have tons of them. Some are quite good, but the problem I had with this one was that it had to be taken during a certain time period.. It’s a competition on a photo site I like and although the rule that the picture has to be taken during the competition period is frustrating it’s also quite stimulating. Anyhow, I thought about this for quite some time and this is my picture. It’s an orange cut thinly along the side. The post process is to mirror the image, adjust exposure and contrast. I call it The Orange Queen.

Shapes you see in fire

Jon Reveman — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:32:29 +0000

I was zooming in and out of this fire picture I made and realized that it had so many shapes and forms hidden within that I decided to make a little movie out of it. Then, given the problems with copyrights I also wrote a small tune for it. Here it is:

Fire – is it abstract?

Jon Reveman — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:08:09 +0000

I’ve been intrigued by the shapes and forms smoke makes as I have written about before. This time I was inspired by Michael (DaddyO) over at dgrin to look closer at fire. It turns out to be just like smoke photography with a lot of wonderful forms and shapes hidden in the warmth.

The technique though is quite different, here exposure is quite difficult. You want the warmth and dynamic range of the fire while still keeping the sharpness and depth. So, small aperture and short exposure time…only variable left is ISO. Still, you may not have to go that high with your ISO and still get good pictures with little or no noise in them.

The editing part is fun and, at the same time, frustrating. I often tend to rotate the picture for a while to find the shapes I want. Then, quite often, mirror it to get the final shape I want. There is something disturbing with a perfectly mirrored image so in the end I usually remove, or change, something in the picture to get some asymmetry. Come to think of it, I always do that

Back to the topic: Is fire abstract? I think it is. Although you as the photographer may have a clear idea of what your final picture represents it is very likely that the observer may see something completely different. If anything.

Last thing them, how to get good, voluminous, fire to shoot? The above picture was taken of a human fire breather (before editing). I was so intrigued by the pictures I got that I read up on fire breathing thinking that I could do it myself…It turns out to be quite dangerous. There are of course other ways to get the fire shots – but I’m not giving lessons on that.

Winter and light

JonReveman — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:46:00 +0000

Winter can present some amazing light. Sometimes this light may be better captured using HDR techniques, sometimes not. Outdoor winter photography is probably the environment that most cameras Automatic program has the most problems with. The camera typically gets both the exposure and white balance wrong. All the large white areas can also create problems for the auto focus that tries to find something to focus on by looking for sharp contrasts.
On top of that we also have the problem with the cold itself. The camera gear itself can actually handle the cold quite well. The big problem is when you get back home, into to the warmth that you’ve been longing for. At the same time you get the feeling back in your fingers and toes your camera gear may have a really tough time due to condensation. The condensation can be seen on the outside, but the dangerous condensation happens inside the camera and lens.
To keep your camera healthy remember to remove the memory card (because you want to look at the pictures right away, right?) before you enter the house. Then leave your camera in your photo bag, closed. Leave the photo bag closed for several hours, preferably until next day depending on the temperature differences. This way the gear will be heated slowly so that no condensation will build up. If you really need to “defrost” your camera quicker you need to put it in a sealed plastic bag. The main thing here is that the air around the camera has to have the same humidity as it was outside. If you let in air from the house into the bag then it will condensate.
The cold temperature will also make your batteries perform worse than normal. So make sure they are fully charged, and if you have extra batteries, don’t leave them home.
If you’ve never looked at it before, then this is the time to look at the histogram. Most cameras have it, even the really simple compacts. The height of the graph shows the amount of pixels that have this intensity with black being to the far left and white to the far right. Make sure that you do not have a spike at the far right. This means that the picture is overexposed. The camera is often fooled the all the white and, in my experience, often underexpose. The easy fix here is to add, for example +1, to exposure compensation – but keep an eye on the histogram.
The white balance can be set manually on most cameras. A good start is around 5600 Kelvin. Make it a bit higher if you want more warmth, or if you are shooting ice, you may go down to 4900 for a more dominant blue tint.
And last, if you can, use RAW. It will give you that extra chance to fix exposure with at least one exposure step back home that jpeg will not.

More of my winter photography in Sweden can be found at http://reveman.smugmug.com/Nature/Sweden-Winter/

Lights, contrast and focal plane

Jon Reveman — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:11:43 +0000

With the help of some distinct light sources, something to add contrast and manual control of focus and aperture it is possible to view otherwise daily scenery in a completely new way.

The above picture was taken with a 28mm lens fully open at f/1.8. Placing focus far from the light sources pulls the light apart.

Bubbles with macro

Jon Reveman — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:36:10 +0000

End of November and rainstorms makes indoor projects seem like a good idea.

Using a spare CD, a glass container, a flash light, water and some olive oil it is possible to create some rather interesting pictures.

Fill the glass container with a minimum of water, just enough to cover the bottom. Then add a single drop of olive oil. Stir forcefully, using a fork, to break the drop of olive oil into small droplets.
Place the glass container on the CD with the shiny surface pointing upward. Use a flash light from the side to generate all possible colors from the CD.Zoom in, set the focus, and shoot. Depending on the aperture used a depth can be achieved in the reflection off the CD.

Smoke photography

Jon Reveman — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:32:13 +0000

Smoke is a superb source of abstract shape and texture. While difficult to control it can, with some experimentation, yield unique and pleasant forms. To get started you only need a couple of things:

An external flash
A way to fire the flash remotely. Depending on camera brand and model, a so called off shoe cord may be the cheapest alternative.
Something that can act as a snoot. I used an old milk carton. I cut a large hole in the top and a smaller in the bottom where the flash goes in. This limits the light from the flash to go only where you want it do go and not spread out towards the background.
A dark, preferably black, background
Something to generate the smoke. I used incense.

Pre-set the focus to where you plan to have the smoke. And set the focus mode to manual.

Place the flash on the floor at the focus distance pointing upward. Make sure to have some distance to the background. That way you will be able to make any texture in the background blur away using the correct aperture.

Now darken the room as much as possible, close any windows and doors to keep the air movement to a minimum and start taking pictures of the smoke.

Take many pictures, watch the result and try to get a good balance between the dark background and the light from the smoke. Depending on your camera model you may want to experiment with different settings. I started with the Av mode but quickly moved to all manual.

Also experiment with the aperture to get enough focal depth while keeping the background blured.

The next step is done in you computer. You may want to try things like

Invert the picture
Rotate and crop – look at parts of the smoke and see what you may find
Add a mirror copy
Try coloring. Both using layer transforms and grey mapping.

High Dynamic Range – Photomatix Pro

Jon Reveman — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 21:04:54 +0000

There are a multitude of programs to handle and process HDR. Today almost all standard photo editing software have some kind of support for it – with varying degrees of freedom and finesse.

Photoshop have had it for quite some time as well has other more or less high end photo editing software. The one I like the best, and that I use almost exclusively, is Photomatix Pro.

Photomatix is done by a small company called HDR soft and they have a very nice and reasonable licensing scheme. First of all, you can download it for free and try it out. This gives you some limitations as well as watermarks all over. Still, you will not by it without knowing its capabilities.

Secondly, once you have bought it – it is yours. You have a personal license key that you can use on all your computers. The only requirement is that you only use the software on one installation at the time. This, I believe, makes sense to a lot of people that have laptops and stationary computers that they use interchangeably. It also covers different architectures. So if you have a stationary PC and a MAC laptop you can have the same license on them!

I have used Photomatix for close to three years and so far all upgrades has been for free – also something to note when you compare to certain other larger companies..

I get nothing from pitching Photomatix! I just wish HDR soft to be successful and for you to find this nice, cheap tool.

All these pictures and more can be found at http://reveman.smugmug.com