Learning photography – Page 10

What is dual exposure in photography?

Dual exposure

Back in the days of film, dual exposure was when you shot two images but without advancing the film between the two shots. The film would then be exposed two times and the resulting image was a combination of the two exposures.

These days most digital cameras offers dual (or several) exposures as an option available via the menu system in the camera. My Nikon Z50 for example has “multiple exposure” as an option in the photo shooting menu, just to give an example. In the image below I have shot the little toy cow two times moving the camera a bit downwards between the two shots. Not exactly a price winning image, but I think it works to illustrate how double exposure works:

With advanced post processing software like Photoshop, it is possible to combine the images long after they are shot, and this gives even more options for creative use of combining two or several images into one.

Only your creativity sets a limit for what you can use dual exposure for. It often creates images that clearly depicts a scene or a subject that you would not find in the real world. So the result can be e.g. dreamlike, surreal or just strange. In the example below I have put the cow from above into a glass bottle by shooting the cow first and the bottle afterwards.

I hope this gave you an appetite for trying out double exposure yourself. Only your imagination and creativity is the limit! Best of luck!

What is visual weight in photography?

Visual weight

Visual weight has nothing to do with the weight or the density of a given subject in your frame, rather it is an informal scale that tells how well elements in your frame manages to pull the attention of the viewer. So it is a different way of getting attention than say leading lines.

Some of the dimension often quoted in relation to visual weight are:

High contrast
Good sharpness
Bright areas
Saturated colors
Visual size
Recognizable (vs abstract)

So a subject in your frame that is sharp, filled with contrast, bright and colorful will simply draw more attention than out of focus areas with no contrast and desaturated colors. It is obviously a simplification, but I think you get the gist of it.

Best to look at a few examples. Brightness. In the image below, my guess is that you immediately notice the sunrays coming through the treetops as it clearly is the brightest areas in the frame. The rays hold a lot of visual weight relative to the subtle nature of the rest of the frame.Sharpness. The blackbird below is actually the only that is sharp in the entire frame. The out-of-focus stems are used to frame the bird, but they do not draw attention despite their size, as they are not in focus.

Color. The chest of the little fellow below stands out and draws attention, relative to the rather de-saturated background and the branch that is not exactly colorful! Also notice that eyes have great visual weight, as we tend to seek eye contact, irrespective if the subject is a person or an animal.

Contrast and brightness. You may notice the bright sun to the right as the first in the frame below (brightness), but my guess is that right after that you notice the backlit straws. The straws have a strong contrast to the dark background hence stand out with very strong contrast. Silhouette photography has the same ability.

Another example with brightness below. Again the strong sun in the top holds a lot of visual weight and it takes some time before you notice the leaves in focus and their structure. You could consider to crop the image so that only the leaves are there – I leave it to you to decide if that would yield a better image.

Finally, one of my favorite examples of visual weight below. Although both small and not especially bright, the moon draws attention being the only bright element in the frame, with good contrast to the blue sky.

Further work

The above was only intended to be an appetizer for visual weight. Once you start to notice, I think you will start to see images slightly different and hopefully also start using visual weight as a tool in your photography.

Thank you for reading this far! Comments and questions more than welcome!

What is the rule of odds in photography?

Rule of odds

The rule of odds applies to repetition and rhythm in a frame. We seem to like repetition and rhythm in a frame, just like we do when it is about music.

The rule, which is more a guideline or a rule of thumb, simply says that you should try to have an odd number of objects repeating, rather than an even one. Simple, right? So simple that you can question if the rule works at all! I’ll let you be the judge of that, but it is always good to be more aware of the composition of what you put in your frame, and the rule of odds is just one more to build into you set of tools and skills you use as a photographer.

Take a look at the pillars in the image below. There are 5 of them, not a coincidence at all. Some say that our eyes like to rest on the middle one, as this gives balance to both sides.

Some say that we have a tendency to group objects that are close to each other into one, to give us a better overview and simplify things. Therefore simple counting of objects may not always be the way forward. Take a look at the image below. Here the worn down wood pillars could be counted as 8 pieces, but you will have a tendency to group the 2 pillars to the right as one, and the 3 pillars in the middle as one as well, giving a total of 5 “pillars” rather than 8 as you would get counting them individually.

Another example below with the same point, that the 5 thinner stems to the left of the middle visually count as one. Notice also how the lack of rhythm in the spacing of the stems makes this a rather messy image to look at, even though the subject as such is simple.

Finally we notice what is closer to us more than what is in the distance, so in the final example below, you probably notice the 3 parasols in the foreground sooner than the 8 ones in the background, although the reflections in the pool itself is worth an extra look.

What is the golden ratio in photography?

The golden ratio

Rule of thirds illustrated by the blue lines dividing the frame.

You have probably heard of the rule of 3rds in photography, in which you position the subjects or areas of interest according to lines that divide the frame into a grid of 3×3 = 9 equally large blocks. You can see the example above, where the eye of the duck is positioned in the intersection between the rightmost vertical and topmost horizontal line. The distance between the lines and from a line to the edge of the frame is exactly the same. It is a very simple rule and many cameras have an option to make such grid available in the viewfinder. No one really knows why it is better to position your subject a bit off center, but most people agree that it makes your image more interesting to watch, and that is the point with the rule of 3rds: to create more interesting pictures.

If you want to use the golden ratio instead, the lines are positioned a bit differently, so that the distance between say the leftmost vertical line relative to the edges of the frame is not 1:2, but 1:1.68 instead. So the line moves a bit closer to the center of the frame. The relationship 1:1.68 is known as the golden ratio (there is a lot of theory that follows this ratio, but I will save you the details as it is less important as long as you use the ratio). The example below shows an “updated” version of the image.

As you can see, the bottom horizontal line has a distance of 1,618 to the top of the frame relative to the distance to the bottom of the frame – this is the ratio in use. The effect is that the lines move closer to the center of the frame, but still gives a grid that positions your subjects off center, of you use them. You can see that the ducks eye should move a bit closer to the center in order to follow the golden ratio.

Which one is best? Golden ratio or rule of 3rds? Let me start by saying that these rules are first and foremost for photographers with plenty of time like landscape, architecture, product and portrait shooters. I doubt that street photographers or wildlife photographers on the fly have time to think about these compositional rules, although I do think they care a lot about the composition, but my guess is that they work more on an intuitive basis and maybe fix a few things in post. Second, the rules are only a guidance or an attempt to help – it is not meant to be a straightjacket or a limiting factor. You can break any compositional rule and still have an amazing image.

Take a look at the two images below. They follow the rule of 3rds and the golden ratio respectively. Which one do you like the best? See, that is where personal preference comes into play – there is no right or wrong. Whatever you like and find to be the best image, is the answer!

Another rule says that if your subject is moving in the frame, you should let them have space in front of them so the viewer can see where they are going. Having a subject running out of the frame creates tension that you probably don’t want. As you can see – I have broken this rule with the duck. Today I would probably have positioned the duck more to the left in the frame, but the point is that you can break the compositional rules and still have images that are ok.

The point with this post was just to illustrate the golden ratio. You can use it in many different ways – say as a size ratio between two subjects in your frame or in the way you use framing in your image.

What is the difference between resolution and bit-depth in photography?

Two dimensions to your image

You probably heard the term “megapixel war” and that manufacturers try to top the number of megapixels their camera or smartphone offers. So you could get the impression that more is merrier, but there is more to the equation than that…

Resolution

If you look at a chessboard, you can see it has 8 squares across by 8 squares up, in total 64 squares. So if your chessboard was a camera sensor, it would have a resolution of 64 pixels. Indeed not a lot, but it goes to show the principle of each “dot” that enables the camera sensor to register the amount of light it is exposed to.

My Nikon D750 camera has 6016 pixels across and 4016 up, giving a total of 24.160.256 pixels, often abbreviated 24 megapixels or 24MP. For most photography this is more than sufficient resolution unless you crop your picture, which in effect takes away some of the pixels and hence the resolution.

Bit depth

The bit depth tells how much information your camera is able to store per pixel, i.e. the size of the number per pixel. JPG files store very little information per pixel – only 8 bits known as a byte, and hence it is able to store 2^8 = 256 different values (This is per colour channel, but lets leave that aside for now).

If your image is a RAW file, the format allows you to store 12 (or 14) bit of information. This gives a much finer granularity in the tones and colors that can be stored, but it also comes with a price: the file is much larger, as the information stored per pixel is dramatically increased.

No chain is stronger than…

Many only consider the resolution as an important parameter, but the bit depth is equally important, as it enables you to store the specific reading of light from the sensor. However, you also need a good lens to let through good light with all the details required to capture the scene, so if you put a poor lens in front of a high resolution sensor that captures in RAW, the only thing the sensor will register is precisely how bad the lens is.

So you need all the elements in the chain to work together: lens, sensor resolution and sensor bit depth, in order to get the best possible image captured, with good resolution and contrast.

So if you have a good camera that can capture say 24MP in RAW format on a good sensor, the limiting factor is probably more the lens that you put in front of it than the resolution of the sensor. And that is why any experienced photographer will tell you: invest in good glass before anything else.

Review: Saul Leiter In My Room, Edited by Margit Erb and Robert Benton

Book review

You probably know Saul Leiter as the street photographer, one of the pioneers in using colors in street photography and considered part of the New York school of photography. And you may also know that he also was a painter, and started out as a painter before venturing into photography. Some of his work is painted nudes, where he combines photography and painting. And on top of all this, he also worked for many years as a fashion photographer – Harper’s Bazaar, just to mention one.

This book is not about all the above. Rather, it is filled with black and white pictures, almost entirely shot in Saul Leiter’s apartment in Manhattan. I think it is anyone’s guess why Saul shot in black and white for these images, but it enabled him to develop the films himself in the studio. And I am not so sure he ever wanted these images to amount to much, although he during the 1970’s planned to make a book of all these images, but it never amounted to anything. He was, as always, in no particular hurry.

Leiter did not any type of explanation of analysis of his work. I cannot help it, but as a photographer I immediately notice his use of natural light, patterns in shadows, framing (and yet framing!), blocking the view partly by various objects, the shallow depth of field, use of mirrors and reflections – the list goes on and on and on. He is a true master of photography – period. But where the magic surfaces for me is that no matter how much I try to analyze the images down to individual components and effects used, I find myself thinking that “this is not the whole story”. There is more to it. There is a bit of mystery, intimacy, vulnerability and uniqueness that simply transcends all analysis.

So I highly recommend this book for any photographer. Maybe his book “Early colors” is a better place to start if you are new to Saul Leiter. Or the book All about Saul Leiter. But if you find yourself wanting to know Saul Leiter for more than his street photography, or just want to see the products of a master of photography, this book should be on your coffee table anytime soon.

What is F-stop versus T-stop in photography?

Output

You have probably heard about F-stops, a value that indicates how much light a lens can take in relative to the length of the lens. So a short lens with a large diameter has large maximum aperture (low F-stop number).

A good example is the 50mm f/1.8 G lens from Nikon – it has a maximum aperture value of 1.8 and hence a lens opening of around 50/1.8 = 28mm. Had the lens been shorter, say 35mm, with the same lens opening at the front, the maximum aperture would have been 35/28 = 1.25.

However, then light travels from the front of the glass to the rear, some light is always lost. There are many reasons for this – coatings is one – but lets for now just accept that as a fact. And then the F-stop changes in upwards direction as the lens lets in less light.

Where F-stop describes the theoretical light a lens takes in, the T-stop is at the far end of the lens, measuring the actual lights that gets through the lens. So T-stops has to be measured – it is no longer a mathematical relationship between lens opening and length.

If we take the example from before, the 1.8G 50mm lens from Nikon with an F-stop value of 1.8. When you look at DXOMark and their measurements of that lens, they report the T-stop value to be 2.0. In other words, from front to back light equal to 0.2 F-stops is lost.

Why should you care about this? First of all, if you buy a fast lens with a large maximum aperture, then my guess is that you do so also because of the ability to take in a lot of light to help you out in low light situations. If the benefit of a fast lens is diminished as the light passes through the lens, then my guess is that you want to know about it?

Photographers in general do not pay much attention to T-stop values. Videographers much more so. The reason being that when you shoot film or video, you often change lens during the same scene, and you don’t want to do a lot of post processing to even out the exposure, if the lenses you use have different T-stop values. So videographers naturally look for lenses that have common T-stop values. And in my view, the less light is lost from front to back, the better lens. I guess that is also why DXOMark has this as one of their key performance indicators when they present their findings.

Review: All about Saul Leiter, collected by Margit Erb

Book review

Margit Erb apparently is the founder and director of the Saul Leiter Foundation, dedicated to preserving his art and legacy. She worked with Saul Leiter since 1996 and is instrumental in the production of a number of books about him. In this book consists of 232 images (paintings & images) and combined them with wonderful quotes from Saul Leiter. The book was originally created in Japan to accompany the exhibition Photographer Saul Leiter: A Retrospective.

The book is all about these 232 images and quotes. Only at the end of the book there are 3 short chapters written by Margit Erb, Pauline Vermare and Motoyuki Shibata. Other than that, it is only images and quotes. Just like I like a book about photography!

I simply looked at the world, not prepared for anything.

Saul Leiter.

And what images! Especially the street photography is where he shines as a ground breaking master of photography! I know he is famous for using colors where others use black and white, but I think there is so much more to his images than just color and the occasional sprinkle of red color that so many talk about: If you look at his framing techniques and how he used objects to block the viewers angle partly, plus unconventional positioning of his subject in the frame, then you start to realize how ground breaking his work actually was. And if you flip over to Instagram, there are so many photographers trying to do the same and (IMHO) not getting even remotely close.

It is not where it is or what it is that matters but how you see it.

Saul Leiter.

Saul Leiter did not like all the analysis of his work. In a video I watched on YouTube he was asked about how he saw the relationship between his paint work and his photography work and how if he believed his paint work had influenced his photography work. He stopped the academic questions and said “I am very suspicious of the analysis of art work…the explanation for certain things are not the real reasons for certain things.”. In other words, the more you analyze his work from an academic point of view, the less you enjoy the images.

In the same interview, he often says when asked why he did things a certain way or why this or why that, hen answered “because I liked them”, i.e. he was not driven by a certain agenda, it was much more simple than that. Similarly, when asked why he preferred the streets for his photography, the answer was “Things are going on! The street is like a ballet, you never know what is going to happen.”; much more preferred than a studio.

I have a great respect for people who do nothing.

Saul Leiter.

So to make a long story short: I love the images of this book! The book covers his early street photographs, images for advertising, nudes and paintings, but the street photography images are my favorite. I am sure that if you like street photography, then you will love this book and all the wonderful images and quotes.

What is a stop of light in photography?

Going up one stop means you double the amount of light that hits your sensor or film. Going down one stop means you half the amount of light.

You can go up and down in stops in the 3 dimension you know from the exposure triangle:

Shutter speed: If you double the time the shutter is open, then you go up one stop. If you change the shutter speed from 1/100th of a second to 1/50th, is the same as going up one stop. You let in more light because the sensor is exposed for a longer time.

ISO: If you half the ISO setting, it is the same as going down one stop. Say you are shooting at ISO 1600, then reducing to ISO 800 is the same as going down one stop. Increasing to ISO 3200 is going one stop up.

Aperture: If you change the aperture from f/1.4 to f/2, then you are going up one stop. Same if you go from f/2 to f/2.8. When you walk up and down the aperture scale in hole stops, you walk in steps of 1.41 (the square root of 2). This is not as easy to remember as the linear relationship for shutter speed or the doubling when it comes to ISO, but you will quickly get used to it.

What is the point? It is to give you a common language for changes to the exposure, irrespective of which dimension in the exposure triangle is changed. So to maintain status quo, you can go one stop up in shutter speed and one down in say ISO, and get the same result as before. This is a smart way to have a common language to changes to exposure, without knowing what the specific camera settings are.

Review: Henri Cartier-Bresson Here and Now, by Clément Chéroux

Book review

If there is one photographer that every photojournalist or street photographer knows, it is Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB)! This books takes you through all of HCB’s life: what event shaped him, who he met and was influenced by, his travels to Africa, Cuba, China, India, Spain etc, his work as a reporter for the Communist Press, how surrealism attracted him and influenced his work – the list goes on. Reading this book, you come to understand both how interesting a life HCB lead, but also the historical events that his images document and reflect.

I can’t figure out exactly why I find HCB’s images so stunning. There is obviously his mastering of composition long before all the rules were invented. And his talent for being at the right spot at the right time and on top of that hitting the shutter exactly at the decisive moment. But there is more to it than that. A touch of surrealism that adds a strange glow to his images that continues to fascinate me. No matter how much I analyze the images, the effect on me somehow escapes me just when I think I have it all figured out! And I guess this is exactly where a good photographer and a master of photography separate: the ability to make you look not only a second time, but again and again.

This book is a wonderful collection of 500+ of his images, and as a photographer looking over the should of a master, this is the part that I like the best. Others may find the story of his lift more interesting – for example how he 3 times escaped as a prisoner of war and later became a communist. And later decided to work for many years solely doing photojournalism. This part of the book I also enjoyed, but the pictures! I can wholeheartedly recommend this book if you find his work fascinating like I do.

PS: HCB is quoted for saying that: “In any case, people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing”. This remark is more relevant than ever, where YouTubers constantly battle to what extend photography gear matters and if the rule of thirds is to be applied always or sometimes.

Category: Learning photography

What is dual exposure in photography?

Dual exposure

Related reading

What is visual weight in photography?

Visual weight

Further work

Related reading

What is the rule of odds in photography?

Rule of odds

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What is the golden ratio in photography?

The golden ratio

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What is the difference between resolution and bit-depth in photography?

Two dimensions to your image

Resolution

Bit depth

No chain is stronger than…

Related reading

Review: Saul Leiter In My Room, Edited by Margit Erb and Robert Benton

Book review

Related reading

What is F-stop versus T-stop in photography?

Output

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Review: All about Saul Leiter, collected by Margit Erb

Book review

Related reading

What is a stop of light in photography?

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Review: Henri Cartier-Bresson Here and Now, by Clément Chéroux

Book review

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