Month: July 2019

Today’s Question: Can you explain how you created the sunset photo from the Palouse that you shared on Instagram? In particular, what enabled you to capture the strong orange glow effect?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The orange glow effect was caused by dust and haze in the sky being backlit by the sun just before sunset, using a long lens to isolate a portion of the scene near the sun, but without the sun in the frame.

More Detail: The photo in question was captured in the Palouse region of eastern Washington State, where I lead photo workshops each June. You can view the photo on my Instagram feed here (https://www.instagram.com/p/BzXzKWHAIq7/):

https://www.instagram.com/p/BzXzKWHAIq7/

There are several factors that make such a photo possible. The first is to have relatively clear skies, so that there will be strong sunlight close to sunset. However, it is beneficial to have dust or haze in the atmosphere, which help to create the strong color effect you can see in the photo.

As the sun gets relatively close to the horizon, the dust and haze will get backlit, and will generally be illuminated with a strong glow of yellow or orange. It can be helpful to be at an elevated position, so you’re able to include a view of the landscape in the photo. In this case, for example, I was photographing from atop Steptoe Butte, which put me about one thousand feet above the surrounding landscape.

To frame up the scene I used a long lens (an effective focal length of 568mm in this case, with a 355mm lens focal length on a camera with a 1.6X cropping factor). I point the lens in the direction of the sun, but without including the sun in the frame. In this case the sun was positioned a bit outside the top-left corner of the frame.

With hazy conditions it can be difficult for the camera to achieve autofocus. I will often point the camera at a relatively high contrast area of the frame to help the autofocus, or I’ll resort to manual focus if necessary.

The overall exposure is generally close to what the camera’s meter indicates. In this case I exposed one-half stop darker than the meter suggested, using the evaluative (matrix) metering mode.

The sun and atmosphere really did all of the work for this photo, with very little adjustment applied in post-processing.

Today’s Question: I have noticed that on some of my older photos of people their skins tones are decidedly red. What causes this and how can I resolve it?

Tim’s Quick Answer: A strong red color appearance for skin tones (or other colors, depending on the ethnicity of the person) are generally caused by over-saturation. Reducing the saturation for only the affected colors will generally improve the appearance of skin tones in a photo.

More Detail: Accurate color can be important for any photograph, but when it comes to skin tones color accuracy is especially important. In many cases you will find that saturation levels that are too high will lead to color problems for skin tones, such as a strong red appearance in photos of Caucasian subjects.

Some cameras (or films) may have a particular bias toward red, such as by interpreting reds at too high a saturation level. Increasing the saturation for the photo can also cause skin tones to have an inaccurate look.

The first step, of course, is to make sure the overall color for the photo looks good. That certainly involves shifting the color balance (such as with the Temperature and Tint sliders available with most raw processing software) to get the color as accurate as possible. With many photos you may also want to increase the overall saturation to create a more pleasing look. The boost in saturation, however, can make skin tones look too saturated.

In many cases this issue can be easily resolved with a targeted reduction in saturation. For example, if the skin tones look too red you can reduce the saturation for only the reds. In Lightroom or Camera Raw, for example, you can reduce the value for the Red slider under the Saturation heading in the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) set of adjustments. In Photoshop a similar result can be achieved by choosing Reds from the popup for a Hue/Saturation adjustment, reducing the value for the Saturation slider after selecting Reds.

Of course, if there are other areas of red in the photo that you don’t want to reduce the saturation for, the above approach won’t work. Instead you’ll need to apply a targeted adjustment, such as by using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom or an adjustment layer with a layer mask in Photoshop. And, of course, these same concepts can be applied to any area of problematic color in a photo, even when it isn’t necessarily a skin tone that has the color issue.