Catching the fast vanishing fall colors is always rewarding and the Lake County Metroparks are a great place to take nature photographs during a warm October day. Using a tripod to steady the camera and prevent any shake, and setting a low ISO to avoid digital noise, I captured the following scene of Chair Factory Falls.

Blue Falls
Fine Art Photography
Click to Enlarge

Looks pretty good or so I thought until someone asked me how I made the water so blue. Puzzling since this was one of those rare images that I pretty much took directly from the camera and didn’t manipulate.
I remarked that the sky was especially blue that day and this was reflected in the water but later realized that the camera let me down.

The human brain automatically adjusts colors so that neutrals such as white, black and grey, stay neutral despite the light. If someone wears a white T-shirt outdoors on a warm sunny day, it doesn’t look yellow and then turn blue when they walk inside under a cool fluorescent light. So, why should a waterfalls?

The camera used an auto white balance and made the whole scene too cool. Changing the white balance to warm is one way to remove the cast but there’s not a good way to tell when the water is truly white or if you overshoot and make orange-red water.

Eyedropper Points
Fine Art Photography


Curves for Neutrals
Fine Art Photography Fine Art Photography
White Water
Fine Art Photography


Click the eyedropper on a few points of light and dark areas of water and it’s easy to see how much extra blue is present. The bright points, those near 255, look balanced but the midtones are too blue. True neutral means the red channel = the green channel = the blue channel,.

A couple of curves later to balance all the numbers and the photograph warms with pure white water. Definitely more in line with what I remembered that fall day.

[Excerpted from Photography Insights, Volume 2, by Scott Ober, MD, Copyright © 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]

 

Arches have been around for over 2,000 years and during that time have frustrated artists from many persuasions — painters, sculptors, and photographers seeking to capture their appearance.
Should I photograph the entire arc or just a portion? What’s the best angle? How much of the foreground to include?

Arches
Arches
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Most of these questions depend on the situation and your options at the time. If you’re snapping a shot of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, chances are that you won’t be able to control the scene as you would in a small community neighborhood.

The only ‘rule’ I’ve heard is that you’re not supposed to edge crop a picture of anything with curves. Either leave some space above the curve or cut right into the curve. The same holds true for people especially with portraits.

Cropping Arches
Fine Art Photography Arches

As rules go in art, this sounds reasonable and you can easily crop back and forth to see what works best in your image. In the image below, there wasn’t much room at the top so I had to cut across the arc. Another option is to retake the shot and leave about a foot of purple wall at the top but this looked dull.

Now for my favorite arches, those yellow ones — if I could only get that Ronald McDonald fellow to move out of my picture….

 

[Excerpted from Photography Insights, Volume 2, by Scott Ober, MD, Copyright © 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]

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