Sky Problem

Barney

Barney

Suspended / Banned
Messages
3,043
Name
Wayne
Edit My Images
No
Has anyone any tips on how to coax a little bit of detail or contrast out of a flat, grey lifeless sky?
 
Err, didn't we just do this, or am I dreaming again?

Red filter for B&W film, polarising for colour film. But if it really is flat, grey and lifeless there is nothing you can do.
 
Probably me, my memory is going...

I want to take a photo of several swans on a lake and they will be on white water with a white sky.
 
Got some filters arriving today, I bet there is everything except red.
 
White subject on white/gray water with a white/gray sky? I would just exclude the sky from the photograph.
 
excalibur2 said:
erm change the sky in Photoshop (y)
Click to expand...

HA HA!

I would rather chuck the camera in the pond and give up photography. :) Start talking to the computer, describe the scene and let that compose it for me I hate even using one click auto adjust. :(
 
Filters have arrived, of the coloured stuff, as anticipated no red,

NDX 4, kind of grey
O (G) x 2, orange but one seems ever so slightly stronger than the other
G (x1), Green (quite strong, I would be happy gas welding through it) looks about four or five
81 a, very very pale straw colour
Sky 1a. looks clear to me
and UV etc

Edit: New book has arrived and there is a whole chapter on coloured filters, Yipee!
 
Last edited:
THE definitive book on photography, the one that claims it contains all you really need to know (probably correctly), has a chapter devoted to your "four best friends". And what might they be? In no particular order, lens hood, tripod, light meter and.... drum roll please filters.

The book is The Dumpy Book for Photographers by Denys Davies. 5/- when I bought my copy.
 
Barney said:
HA HA!

I would rather chuck the camera in the pond and give up photography. :) Start talking to the computer, describe the scene and let that compose it for me I hate even using one click auto adjust. :(
Click to expand...
..its not cheating if you use an ordinary sky (not dramatic e.g. lightning etc)....as you could have taken the same picture on a sunny day with nice clouds.
 
StephenM said:
THE definitive book on photography, the one that claims it contains all you really need to know (probably correctly), has a chapter devoted to your "four best friends". And what might they be? In no particular order, lens hood, tripod, light meter and.... drum roll please filters.

The book is The Dumpy Book for Photographers by Denys Davies. 5/- when I bought my copy.
Click to expand...
Will you please stop it mentioning books. :)
 
1000057060.jpg

This is my view at the moment. How can I not mention books? The red brown area bottom left is Poppy the cat, currently tapping my hand.
 
Last edited:
On a more serious note (Poppy having now retreated to sleep on my legs), the older books on enlarging or sections in darkroom books, always mentioned adding skies from another negative. Some photographers actively made sky only negatives in different conditions to ensure they always had something suitable.

So this sort of thing isn't Photoshop only. Look upThe two ways of life a photograph bought by the late queen (Victoria).
 
Barney said:
Will you please stop it mentioning books. :)
Click to expand...
Here is a free one , which builds on the comment from @StephenM on the long tradition of adding skies from another negative.


Gustave le Gray was around 1820-1884 and regularly produced prints from two negatives

"By printing from two separate negatives, one for the sea and one for the sky, he attained extraordinary depth to both elements; this was extremely difficult to achieve in a single shot"
There is a bit of a better background to Le Gray here

Gustave Le Gray (1820–1884) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the 1852 edition of his treatise, Le Gray wrote: “It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling within the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts.”
www.metmuseum.org www.metmuseum.org
 
Last edited:
Barney said:
81 a, very very pale straw colour
Click to expand...

That's a warming filter. A lot of people use those when shooting Kodak Ektachrome which tends towards a cooler palette, or when shooting in overcast conditions.

It can also add warmth to skin tones in portraits.

It will probably not make a noticeable amount of difference in black and white photography though.
 
myotis said:
Gustave le Gray was around 1820-1884 and regularly produced prints from two negatives
Click to expand...
That's a good point.

About thirty years ago, I met an Austrian taking pictures in the Austrian Tyrol, He had two motorised Hasselblads, mounted on a bracket. We got into a conversation and in annoyingly perfect English, he explained that he was shooting images for guide books, using Agfachrome. One camera was set for the foreground and the other for the sky, both being on a single trigger. Apparently he'd been doing this for years and the platemakers (it was going to be printed using letterpress) were very skilled at combining the two images during platemaking, I was wondering why they'd go to this level of trouble when he told me that the first print run was 250,000!
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
That's a good point.

About thirty years ago, I met an Austrian taking pictures in the Austrian Tyrol, He had two motorised Hasselblads, mounted on a bracket. We got into a conversation and in annoyingly perfect English, he explained that he was shooting images for guide books, using Agfachrome. One camera was set for the foreground and the other for the sky, both being on a single trigger. Apparently he'd been doing this for years and the platemakers (it was going to be printed using letterpress) were very skilled at combining the two images during platemaking, I was wondering why they'd go to this level of trouble when he told me that the first print run was 250,000!
Click to expand...
We did that on very rare occasions, One 5x4 Extachrome exposed for the sky and one for the foreground. This was for calendars, when commissioned to do a specific shot, ie Swilken bridge with the Royal and Ancient clubhouse in the background, which is the only one I can actually remember doing,
 
excalibur2 said:
..its not cheating if you use an ordinary sky (not dramatic e.g. lightning etc)....as you could have taken the same picture on a sunny day with nice clouds.
Click to expand...
Of course it's cheating, you might as well say AI can put the photo together for you as you could have done it yourself if you could be bothered..........
 
myotis said:
Here is a free one , which builds on the comment from @StephenM on the long tradition of adding skies from another negative.


Gustave le Gray was around 1820-1884 and regularly produced prints from two negatives

"By printing from two separate negatives, one for the sea and one for the sky, he attained extraordinary depth to both elements; this was extremely difficult to achieve in a single shot"
There is a bit of a better background to Le Gray here

Gustave Le Gray (1820–1884) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the 1852 edition of his treatise, Le Gray wrote: “It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling within the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts.”
www.metmuseum.org www.metmuseum.org
Click to expand...
There are only two of the photos any good, the first one and the last one, the latter being far superior.
 
I think it depends on your presuppositions. The simplest case is the simple syllogism, where the answer is actually baked into the initial statements. E.g.
All cats are black.
Poppy is tabby, not black
Therefore Poppy is not a cat.

Your starting point or points can determine that you reach the wrong conclusion, even if the logic is flawless.

I don't start from the presupposition that a photograph is synonymous with an objective representation of reality. And from that starting point, I see no reason not to add a sky from another negative for artistic effect. To me, it's still a photograph, and quite possibly a better image. If you do start from the presupposition that a photograph must reflect as closely as possible what was there, you reach a different conclusion.
 
Last edited:
Barney said:
There are only two of the photos any good, the first one and the last one, the latter being far superior.
Click to expand...
Given the historical context of my post, and the posts that prompted it being posted, I am unfortunately struggling to follow your response.

Regardless of how good or bad this small selection of his photographs are, it doesn't detract from his relevance to the history of photography and photographic techniques.

In particular, that in the days when people were using Wet Plates, here was someone making composite prints to compensate for the inability of a single collodion plate to record, detail in the foreground and skies of his photographs.
 
I don't mind at all that folk change this or that as their needs or desires dictate, but to me it ceases being film photography when wholesale edits are made. Part of the excitement and skill is in identifying the potential in a scene, visualizing the concept and then waiting for that moment to turn up and be there to capture the image when apposite.

If the image that you have set your heart on and visualized is not possible to recreate photographically, then adjustments, image manipulation etc is fine by me but its not photography and the image is more like a collage of bits and pieces stuck together rather than a photograph.

Its not what I want to do anyway.
 
There's a difference between using post processing techniques (including the likes of dodging and burning etc in a darkroom on a film shot) to using a totally different sky/background etc from a photoshop program the former is managing the inability of a particular film to record the whole dynamic range the latter is cheating using something that wasn't there. You may still be making an image but it isn't photography.
 
Barney said:
If the image that you have set your heart on and visualized is not possible to recreate photographically, then adjustments, image manipulation etc is fine by me but its not photography and the image is more like a collage of bits and pieces stuck together rather than a photograph.
Click to expand...

I'd argue that merging two negatives into one image is creating an image photographically. Or do you regard creating a panorama by stitching images together is cheating and it's only a photograph if you use a panoramic camera? Or using retouching dyes to remove spots in the print that came from dust on the negative means the result isn't a photograph any more?
Barney said:
Its not what I want to do anyway.
Click to expand...

That's fine. But it's not a universal view.
 
Last edited:
I appreciate that there are many interpretations within that broad church we loosely call photography, since when have the techniques and manipulation used in advertising literature become the acceptable standards and reference point?
 
Barney said:
I don't mind at all that folk change this or that as their needs or desires dictate, but to me it ceases being film photography when wholesale edits are made. Part of the excitement and skill is in identifying the potential in a scene, visualizing the concept and then waiting for that moment to turn up and be there to capture the image when apposite.

If the image that you have set your heart on and visualized is not possible to recreate photographically, then adjustments, image manipulation etc is fine by me but its not photography and the image is more like a collage of bits and pieces stuck together rather than a photograph.

Its not what I want to do anyway.
Click to expand...
Everyone has to set their own boundaries.

For me (and it has been 59 years since I processed my first film), being an "expressive" photographer is about capturing a visually and emotionally triggered interaction with a subject in a photographic print. I see no division between the "taking part" of being a photographer and the "darkroom part" of being a photographer.

Both require creative and technical skills, and my darkroom skills inform the skills needed at the taking stage, and vice versa. Both are equally important in producing prints likely to match what I saw and felt at the time of pressing the shutter. Not that I am very good at it !

I have no problems in weighing up the pros and cons of using a red filter to bring in sky detail, or taking two photographs at two different exposures and combining at the printing stage, or using experience to predict being able to burn in the sky at the printing stage (knowing how different papers cope with different tonal ranges in the negative) and take only a single carefully exposed negative, or maybe using a different development time or developer to compress the tonal range of the negative to allow printing, or, if possible, modifying the lighting on the subject. These are all skills needed by a photographer making photographs.

I see two things as being crucial for it to be photography and photographs: an interaction between the photographer and the subject being photographed and the initial image being captured on a light-sensitive medium (film or sensor).

Beyond these two "rules", I'm not sure I care all that much about how a photograph is manipulated, and it's up to the photographer to decide whether it is most appropriate to do the manipulation at the taking stage or the processing stage: albeit within some loosely defined sense of integrity to the subject and the medium of photography.

To address one of your points specifically, for me, a photographer who designs a composite photograph and then takes the photographs to construct that composite is still a photographer making a "composite photograph".

But someone who builds a composite from other people's photographs is an artist making a collage.

My "two rules" explain the difference: The photographer has had a direct interaction with the subjects in the photographs. The artist has only had an interaction with someone else's photographs, and not the subjects.

This example is more nuanced than I have explained, but this is the principle.

My rules also explain why, for me, Generative AI will never produce "photographs", even if they produce images with "photographic" qualities.
 
myotis said:
Everyone has to set their own boundaries.

For me (and it has been 59 years since I processed my first film), being an "expressive" photographer is about capturing a visually and emotionally triggered interaction with a subject in a photographic print. I see no division between the "taking part" of being a photographer and the "darkroom part" of being a photographer.

Both require creative and technical skills, and my darkroom skills inform the skills needed at the taking stage, and vice versa. Both are equally important in producing prints likely to match what I saw and felt at the time of pressing the shutter. Not that I am very good at it !

I have no problems in weighing up the pros and cons of using a red filter to bring in sky detail, or taking two photographs at two different exposures and combining at the printing stage, or using experience to predict being able to burn in the sky at the printing stage (knowing how different papers cope with different tonal ranges in the negative) and take only a single carefully exposed negative, or maybe using a different development time or developer to compress the tonal range of the negative to allow printing, or, if possible, modifying the lighting on the subject. These are all skills needed by a photographer making photographs.

I see two things as being crucial for it to be photography and photographs: an interaction between the photographer and the subject being photographed and the initial image being captured on a light-sensitive medium (film or sensor).

Beyond these two "rules", I'm not sure I care all that much about how a photograph is manipulated, and it's up to the photographer to decide whether it is most appropriate to do the manipulation at the taking stage or the processing stage: albeit within some loosely defined sense of integrity to the subject and the medium of photography.

To address one of your points specifically, for me, a photographer who designs a composite photograph and then takes the photographs to construct that composite is still a photographer making a "composite photograph".

But someone who builds a composite from other people's photographs is an artist making a collage.

My "two rules" explain the difference: The photographer has had a direct interaction with the subjects in the photographs. The artist has only had an interaction with someone else's photographs, and not the subjects.

This example is more nuanced than I have explained, but this is the principle.

My rules also explain why, for me, Generative AI will never produce "photographs", even if they produce images with "photographic" qualities.
Click to expand...
What a beautiful inspirational post Graham, your students are so lucky. They are picking up these gems of wisdom and experience when they are young enough to take a similar course of action and achieve similar or the same experience. For me it is tinged with sadness from the realization that its highly unlikely that I will, with the time remaining, ever gain that knowledge and experience to get to that stage.
 
Barney said:
... since when have the techniques and manipulation used in advertising literature become the acceptable standards and reference point?
Click to expand...

Could you explain what you mean by this? Manipulation as in modifying food for photography so that an accurate and unmanipulated photograph of the object creates a false impression? A completely objective and accurate representation of a false reality?

Are techniques used to concentrate attention on one part of the image unacceptable in photography, even if they are necessary for communicating the photographer's intention?

Advertising must be one of the most creative branches of photography, combining (one hopes) flawless technique with strong storytelling and a deep appreciation for viewers' psychology.
 
StephenM said:
Could you explain what you mean by this? Manipulation as in modifying food for photography so that an accurate and unmanipulated photograph of the object creates a false impression? A completely objective and accurate representation of a false reality?

Are techniques used to concentrate attention on one part of the image unacceptable in photography, even if they are necessary for communicating the photographer's intention?

Advertising must be one of the most creative branches of photography, combining (one hopes) flawless technique with strong storytelling and a deep appreciation for viewers' psychology.
Click to expand...
I had in mind the earlier comments regarding the chap who took a shot of the mountains and a shot of the sky to merge for a production run of 250 000 brochures,
 
Barney said:
I appreciate that there are many interpretations within that broad church we loosely call photography, since when have the techniques and manipulation used in advertising literature become the acceptable standards and reference point?
Click to expand...
It would help if you explained how my little tale, about a chat with a fellow photographer, has been transmogrified into an assertion that I proposed this as a paradigm of photographic technique.

That said, I see nothing wrong with manipulating an image to make it closer to what the photographer perceived when he recorded the scene.
 
Barney said:
What a beautiful inspirational post Graham, your students are so lucky. They are picking up these gems of wisdom and experience when they are young enough to take a similar course of action and achieve similar or the same experience. For me it is tinged with sadness from the realization that its highly unlikely that I will, with the time remaining, ever gain that knowledge and experience to get to that stage.
Click to expand...
It's the learning that's the exciting part, "having" the knowledge is just a constant reminder of how much there is still to learn.
 
Barney said:
I had in mind the earlier comments regarding the chap who took a shot of the mountains and a shot of the sky to merge for a production run of 250 000 brochures,
Click to expand...
I suspect most photographers would see this as a legitimate "photography" technique to overcome a technical limitation of their equipment and materials, which is hindering their realisation of their visualisation of the scene.

Especially as in the example being discussed, it's being used to make the final printed image a more accurate representation of reality.
 
I am going to have a crack with the orange filter today, I watched a couple of you tubers with their orange filters on that showed photo's in a "with and without" filter situation, I thought quite a few of the images blew out the oranges and lightened the browns too much. On seeing that I tried to find the light transmission data for the filter I have got and and it stated 2 stops more exposure. This led me to the conclusion, probably incorrectly, that the reason a lot of the shots were blown out oranges were perhaps because the orange filter is not responding to two stops on that wavelength but two stops filtration on the other wavelengths, a two stop ND filter on the opposite colors but perhaps less than that in the unfiltered colour,

Does that make sense or am I writing gibberish?

My plan is, so far, to expose the film half a stop over to compensate for the loss of transmission through the glass in the orange wavelength, whilst optimizing the contrast due to filtration of the obverse colours.
 
Topsy said:
There's a difference between using post processing techniques (including the likes of dodging and burning etc in a darkroom on a film shot) to using a totally different sky/background etc from a photoshop program the former is managing the inability of a particular film to record the whole dynamic range the latter is cheating using something that wasn't there. You may still be making an image but it isn't photography.
Click to expand...
Well looking at a finished photo only you know that and 8 billion people wouldn't. ;) So I suppose who is a photo for? Just for you to look at or do you want to share here (or other forums), family etc etc and I would assume photographers would want to show their shot at best (esp if they are not newbies).
Anyway for me, these days, I'm a nice weather shooter and don't have problems with skies (y)
 
Barney said:
I am going to have a crack with the orange filter today, I watched a couple of you tubers with their orange filters on that showed photo's in a "with and without" filter situation, I thought quite a few of the images blew out the oranges and lightened the browns too much. On seeing that I tried to find the light transmission data for the filter I have got and and it stated 2 stops more exposure. This led me to the conclusion, probably incorrectly, that the reason a lot of the shots were blown out oranges were perhaps because the orange filter is not responding to two stops on that wavelength but two stops filtration on the other wavelengths, a two stop ND filter on the opposite colors but perhaps less than that in the unfiltered colour,

Does that make sense or am I writing gibberish?

My plan is, so far, to expose the film half a stop over to compensate for the loss of transmission through the glass in the orange wavelength, whilst optimizing the contrast due to filtration of the obverse colours.
Click to expand...

Personally, unless it's for pictures that have to be 100% technically perfect in terms of expisure for some reason, I wouldn't sweat it. Just account for the filter in your metering and shoot normally.

I usually just trust the camera's metering if using an orange (or yellow or red) filter on a suitable SLR, and it's always fine.
 
FishyFish said:
Personally, unless it's for pictures that have to be 100% technically perfect in terms of expisure for some reason, I wouldn't sweat it. Just account for the filter in your metering and shoot normally.

I usually just trust the camera's metering if using an orange (or yellow or red) filter on a suitable SLR, and it's always fine.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that reassurance NIgel, I will be incident metering as my Bronica doesn't have a meter. There are lots of blue skies today so chance of realizing orange filter potential is there, I am also considering the film responses as well, I suspect filters will work differently with each film type. :facepalm:

I don't know how I get myself into these messes sometimes.
 
Barney said:
Thanks for that reassurance NIgel, I will be incident metering as my Bronica doesn't have a meter. There are lots of blue skies today so chance of realizing orange filter potential is there, I am also considering the film responses as well, I suspect filters will work differently with each film type. :facepalm:

I don't know how I get myself into these messes sometimes.
Click to expand...
As part of the learning process, bracket your exposures until you get a feel for how the red filter will affect exposure. It will save you a tremendous amount of wasted film in the long run.

Also bear in mind that using an incident meter reading is the same as taking a reflected reading from a grey card, so you shouldn't normally need to make any exposure compensation for light or dark subjects, just for the filter.
 
myotis said:
As part of the learning process, bracket your exposures until you get a feel for how the red filter will affect exposure. It will save you a tremendous amount of wasted film in the long run.

Also bear in mind that using an incident meter reading is the same as taking a reflected reading from a grey card, so you shouldn't normally need to make any exposure compensation for light or dark subjects, just for the filter.
Click to expand...
I will do that Graham. (y)

one at indicated reading, one at one over and one at two over.

15 shots on the roll should get me five scenes there.

I will try to get five scenes of different compositions to see if there are any differences relating to the subject matter
 
Last edited:
There's nothing mysterious about filters. They give everything an orange cast (if an orange filter, red if a red filter etc.) because they block light of other colours and only pass one. This is anything but true - filters are rarely almost monochromatic in transmission, and virtually no object reflects light in only one wavelength or range of wavelengths. That's why if you use a red filter, for example, blue and green objects aren't reduced to absolute black. But in principle it is.

Because real world objects reflect a range of wavelengths, filters can have other side effects. Healthy foliage reflects strongly in the infra red and deep red wavelengths, so a red filter can lighten rather than darken foliage (this is the Wood effect, if you want to look it up. "Wood" as in Robert Wood, not carpentry wood. You might care to read up on these "side effects" to gain a better understanding. Any half decent book on filters should cover it, but I won't name names.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top