Autochrome 3 ways

White Roses

Mt Rushmore

Mary At Santa Inez Mission

A few more worked in the Autochrome style from some hi-res digital files. Details to replicate yourself HERE. All do get bigger with a click.

I believe Mt Rushmore is the least successful of the trio. Why? Well there is too much rich grays, I could have reduced the contrast a bit I suppose but when doing so things fell just too flat. Included it just as an example of a sky that worked well enough.

Enough of this for one morning, its off to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in a bit.

Replicating Autohromes in Adobe Photoshop

Today I wax poetic for another trip to Paris, of course that is all enhanced by my rediscovery of the "Autochrome" postcard collection I have. Working from some old images I've been attempting to recreated the romantic look and impressionistic feel of the old Autochromes. These are close, and worth posting for comments. They do get bigger with a click.

The Autochromes themselves were the first commercially successful color "film" process from approx 1905-1930. Auguste Lumiere was among the inventors on this process. What they did in short is come up with a process where fine potato starch grains were died, combined with lamp black (ultra fine coal dust) on a glass plate. The plate was then varnished to hold those elements then a photographic emulsion was applied. It yielded very impressionistic, not quite accurate color, but very romantic images. The images themselves up close one could see the black dots surrounding the color grains. Even viewed full frame you could still pick out the black around the color but not always pronounced in the mid-highlighted areas of the image.

In photoshop I started by working from a RAW image that I duplicated (never work from the original file) unsharpened a bit and started running through filters. Specifically after the unsharpen layer, a new layer was duplicated and a watercolor filter was applied. Another duplicate image was done and it was given the brushstroke "sumi". Then I'd use the blending tool until I got the right combination of saturation (subtle) with a combo of blurred outlines and sharp elements. That was then flattened and a final "poster" filter was applied to separate blocks of color in the sky and insert some black outlined elements in the shadows.

Not a perfect "autochrome" replication but close. Now to work on specific shooting with the process in mind and see what I can come up with while further experimenting with filters and layers to get the look even closer.

I love to experiment.

Morning Coffee

This morning I headed out for some coffee and a meeting with a person interested in running for local city council. That gave me a nice time to be down in Old Town Monrovia and just enjoy the quaintness of it all before the day heated up to a full broil. I spotted this mom type with her stroller enjoying the morning sun and a hot cup of coffee.

I composed the shot and went about my business. By itself it was OK, the post processing is the key to bring about an Orton image. I like the ability to control more elements like contrast, saturation and fuzziness in the digital realm.

A little technical stuff. The camera I shot this with was a point-n-squirt Casio Exilim that I have discussed here. The drawback to the camera is that it does not have a raw mode so I have to start with a jpeg that unfortunately does have some compression. At least with 10.1 mega pixels there is still ample to work with.

Start with your basic image file. Open it with CS2, then duplicate the image. Close the original file that way you don't alter it while working all your magic. Let the duplicate be the guinea pig.

With the new file go to image-adjustments and chose the brightness/ contrast option. As I prefer to have some detail in the shadows I up the brightness by 10-15 points, then I drop the contrast down about 5-10 points to bring back some of the highlight details.

I go to layers and chose "duplicate layer". From there I go into image-adjustments and chose brightness/contrast option again. I move the brightness to 25-35 points to mimic a one f-stop overexposure. The contrast is increased this time 10-20 points. I go back to adjustments, variations and use the saturation control. Setting at mid-point and add saturation in steps until the dept of color is just under the point I want in the final image. (Recall that the original image was lightened and flattened that did reduce your saturation a bit).

The layer then is given blur. Go to filters-blur-Gaussian blur. Pic a blur range of 15-25.

The next step is to blend the duplicate and the new layer (which is the background). Go to your layers box and use the blending tool. For this file I used the "multiply" option. I kept the opacity and fill at 100%. Note you do have several blending options as well as the ability to fine tune it by adjusting the opacity and fill levels.

The final image file then has the layers merged and run through Virtual Photographer to clean up the atmospheric haze as well as bring in some clarity to the tonal range. I opt to go for color and saturation settings that mimic the false color of fujichromes. (False as in they tended to do much better saturation with brilliant greens and blues without muddying the red tones, not entirely natural representation but certainly one that was pleasing to view).

Call me the judge...at least in a local photo contest

The guys over at The Foothill City Blog are running a photo contest. Real prizes, discounts for entering and other details can be found at their "Take a Shot at City Hall" post that ran earlier this week. Obviously the preference would be a Foothill City, LA Metro or So Cal city hall since that is where we are located. It doesn't mean that you can't send your best shot of the city hall from Crumbling Dust Wyoming if you think its a powerful enough image.

Briefly, if it is a picture of city hall or a portion there of it is eligible for entry into the contest. Upload your entry to flickr and add it to The Foothill Cities group with the tag "cityhallcontest" and you are in. You need to have it done by 8/1 for judging in the contest. The top group will be selected from a readers vote.

The photo is done with my new "point and squirt" a Casio Exilim EX-Z100. Quite a nice 10.1 Megapixel pocket camera. Its limitations didn't take much to find. Little contrast control, drops both shadow and highlight detail quickly, not so good color gradation, overall pretty good saturation and sharpness. Definitely a handy toy to have when I just meander about rather than lug the big camera and stuff out all the time. Such a deal too...$199 at Costco this week with coupon, I remember my first digicam not even 8 years ago was 1.3 megapixel and cost $240 as a reconditioned. Big changes in price and huge leaps in overall quality as the technology improved.

This image is an Alexander Rose, an English Rose that is a favorite in my garden. I love the simple single rose and when it repeat blooms it becomes a star. (Many are singles are so close to the wild rogosa's they only bloom once in early summer so this is a special treat).

I shot it with the new Casio while testing its limitations and abilities. I post processed in the orton style with CS2 then ran the final image through Virtual Phtographer for the saturated warmth of Kodachrome and contrast of a Cibachrome.

Now get out there and shoot city hall and enter the contest so I have something to do!

A little Orton exploration

Am getting a little bored just lying around. Although I'm getting better just don't have the energy or the mobility to go shooting. I did feel well enough to fire up photoshop and dig through some older images I liked and see what I could do with Orton.

One of my favorite flowers is the African Iris aka "Fort night Lily". Its a no nonsense, no effort, odd pruning out every couple of years and whatever water falls on it keeps it going. My kind of plant.

This image was shot early morning for the longer shadows. It was framed so that the bulk of the plant was in the shadows with only the blossom in the light itself.

I discovered a new Orton technique with photoshop that I decided to try in photoshop. Pretty simple and straight forward. I think I like the results a lot more than the other I found.

Open your file. Duplicate with a new layer and name it "sharp". Use the sharp filter and sharpen the layer. Use the adjust tab and adjust your saturation and color curves. I increased the saturation for this layer from "0" to "25" Change the blend type to "multiply". Merge down the layer.

Use the duplicate new layer and name it "blur". Go to the filter tab again and use the blur option, "gaussian blur". Adjust blur to desired level, for this image I opted for a blur level of "20". Next go to the adjust tab, chose brightness and adjust brightness upwards, for this one I used a "20". Change blend type to "multiply" and adjust the opacity which I used at 75%.

Merge down the final image and save as a jpeg with maximum sharpness (IE minimal compression).

The steps aren't hard, a little time consuming but when you can find a tutorial out there it is pretty easy. In the end I like this a lot more than the original image, then again I like the romantic impressionist view of the world.

Enjoy, now for a hot tub and an ice pack as I've had enough up time for one day.

Still running down the orton path this week

This morning I took advantage of the cool air, brilliant warm sun and no fires in the area by taking a walk through Duarte and Monrovia. I shot most all bracketed as I do a lot of HDR processing.

I have to admit that I am totally digging the orton effect being recreated in the digital realm. I found a new method with CS2 on flickr and worked with it some. I think the results are much closer to the orton I remembered.

Creating these I opened a raw file for max data and adjusted the "normal exposure" then opened and saved as a no compression jpeg. I duplicated the layer the went to filter>other>high pass and used a fairly high ratio. Then I took that layer and adjusted the blur but going to filter>blur>gaussian blur and used a moderate ration of 15-30. Then I went to adjust>brightness and lightened it up approx 1 stop.

The blending I used was "multiply". Then I flattened the image. A final correction with adjustments>levels then tweaked the highlight and shadow ranges. This was then put through virtual photographer to bring colors closer to what one would have found on Kodachrome printed on the old Cibachrome pos-to-pos print material.

It sounds like a lot of steps but after a few times I got the flow and it goes pretty fast. It still takes longer to resize for here and flickr before saving and posting somewhere.

Orton...the next path to meander down

Back in the college I remember a few of the guys in the fine art program were very heavy into the orton process. They got some pretty amazing results if you were into the impressionists painting and the like. I was pretty enthralled with the idea so I too experimented in it a bit.

The process was pretty easy. You had to use slide film to in order for it to work. You exposed your first slide for accurate exposure and sharp focus. The second exposure you threw it out of focus quite a bit then over exposed it two stops or more. The two slides were then combined and printed.

I opted to do my printing on cibachrome as it was a very contrasty and saturated media compared to the other positive to positive papers and processes at the timeThe results were show stoppers as it looked like a foggy dream instead of a literal translation.

To be honest I nearly completely forgot about it until one day I spotted an image that was done orton style on flickr. Turns out they had an entire group and that got me to thinking about it all over again. It took me a few months to get around to tinkering with it, but enjoy my first experiment.

This test image from Riley's farm is a bit more involved. I took the overexposed image of a series shot for hDr. I blurred it significantly with the guassian blur tool. I saved it as a copy. I then took the normal raw frame and genderated an hdr file with the overexposed blur too. The HDR then was tone mapped and next to micro contrast controls while tone mapping. The final image was run through virtual photographer with contrasty slide overlays upping the saturation of the colors and adding a "film grain" pattern. A lot of work and definitely an example of digital art rather than a straight up photo. I liked the result now I need to get the steps needed loweredI have a lot to learn but you get the direction the next meander is taking me.

Orton in the digital world exploring the surreal in another meander I'm starting.

Avoiding Black Friday with a Buick



Yesterday was "Black Friday" the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season and to celebrate the day I avoided the malls. Instead I did the routine maintenance to my 1972 Buick Centurion. Of course once it was spiffed up, fresh oil etc., I had to go for a drive and make sure there were no "cobwebs" in the old gal's pipes. I am happy to report - there weren't any, in fact this troll in an Trans Am was quite surprised when I cleared out her pipes by opening the 4 barrel on the near empty freeway.

Maybe it's the "Pasadena Senior Center" sticker in the rear window from the original owner that makes people think the car has no huevos. Hah! The only thing better than the rumble of a big block with the 4 barrel opened up is the look of shock as some poser-muscle-car troll's face when he realizes I can best him and not break a sweat. Sweet. So after the quick run through the gears we settled down for a nice cruise.

Of course I had to stop in a park and do some pictures. This time around I shot with 2 reasons in mind. Primary is I wanted to experiment more with cars as a subject, done with HDR moving more to the surreal. The other to document the condition for someone who expressed interest in purchasing the "Bu".

Anyway, I sought to give the surreal edge in varying degrees to put the car in a semi-real setting like a manicured park and then romanticise it a bit. Even went towards the ad illustrators surreal better than life direction. As always shot 3 frames bracketed +/- 2 stops, HDR generation and tonemapping in Photomatix then on to final post processing with Virtual Photographer.

Now, I need some better and more varied cars to work with. Not to be a pest but a location where I can clear out the extraneous or use it to my advantage would be nice. Thinks like signs and light poles are a real pain in the arse when you have a 5,000LB + subject to jockey around!

HDR Humans

I've touched on it a bit in prior posts regarding how HDR generating programs attempt to handle moving objects while trying to match up pixels and align stationary items. In short you get very interesting bits of people and the more they move the more the registration starts creating ghosts. I like the abstract and impressionistic results. I'm still only exploring the the possibilities but I like what I am getting.

Sports in particular I am going to have to get the discipline of using a tripod. Even as brightly lit the interiors seem to be you still have some very long shutter speeds to deal with. Camera movement is a variable I want to control or eliminate while I explore the potential of just the subject moving. Once I get a handle on that I can go to starting to blur the back grounds too.

Anyway the results of a recent Basketball tournament show 3 frames bracketed (some of the +2 exposures were nearly 1/10-1/20th second). Photomatix was used for both the HDR file generation and tonemapping. Adobe CS2 handled the post processing corrections with the Virtual Photographer doing the final finesse.

Somethings are so surreal you have to show 'em that way

The last several days its been busy with a lot of stuff in general so it's been hard to explore my favorite obsession of the "predictors". In some respects the way the HDR programs handle movement it reminds me a lot of how the abstract painter LeRoy Neiman portrayed movement. Rather than blurs it was bits and pieces representing parts in motion that when viewed as a whole you got the impression of speed, direction and strength within the setting.

I actually had the pleasure of seeing some of his works back in the day when I worked at the Fasion Show Mall in Las Vegas and a gallery there had a huge show of his original work. His was the first blending of impressionism and abstraction that worked for me.

Although I can't claim my exploring of what I call the "predictors" has the quality of his works, you can see what direction I am currently exploring. As discussed within here before it was sort of a happy-accident that I started down this path.

Anyway car shows are surreal, especially during the press events where there are few people about. IT is very museum like on those days with the exception of where the scheduled media event is taking place. Cars are presented as works of art, people oooh and ahhh as if they are just that. I am a car nut, gear head, fanatic but at the end of the day they are really just an appliance to move about quickly during the course of our day.

This set was shot with HDR post processing in mind. I kept the "film speed" down to allow longer shutter speeds to allow blurring of moving objects. It was all post processed in the Photomatix HDR generating and tonemapping programs. Final bits were complete in CS2 with help of "virtual photographer".

An interesting phenomena that came about for the first time is how black areas feather out and suddenly become devoid and glaring white. At first it bugged me, much like trying to balance different colors of light. I could control the phenom a bit through adjusting contrasts and even could have cloned it over, but I decided not to. The point behind this was to portray the surreal side of the event and kept it. It almost brings it to the realm of torn paper or feather edged soft edges from a sketch book. Since I have neither the patience nor talent to do that I let it stay. It adds to the final image so I called it a happy accident and moved on.

Enjoy the last of the LA Auto Show series. I may starting hustling press passes as these get me into things I never dreamed off.

Art Walk Premiering....HDR and other explorations
It's crunch time here in the space behind the garage. All those images I've worked on the last few months have to be printed, matted/mounted and ready for a show this weekend at the MAFA Art Walk this weekend here in Old Town Monrovia.

This show I'm going to be showing primarily my HDR work as it has been the focus of much of what I have been exploring the last few months. I've blathered on about it quite a bit, and to my pleasant surprise what I have done so far with it has been well received by viewers and collectors. Can't be too far off the mark and certainly something I will continue to work with as it gives me tremendous satisfaction. Just nice to get some reactions from time to time.

The image here is one of the ones I will be premiering that night. It is different from the others in that its intentionally taken down the extreme path to be very impressionistic much like the entire movement in painting early in the last century. The others being shown are very real or surreal but not as painterly as this one.

"Siene Dusk" was shot just as the sun dipped below the horizon our first evening in Paris this spring. I shot it from the Pont de Bir Hakeim near La Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower...now you have had your French lesson for the day). I shot it with HDR in mind which means 3 bracketed exposures. I used Photomatix to generate the HDR file from the 3 raw files the camera generated. I used Photomatix as well to do the tone mapping as I prefer it to the version bundled with CS2. Once the tonemapping was done I converted it down to an 8 bit file, worked with color, fine tuned shadows, ran it through the virtual photographer and some arty filters to get this impressionistic view.

I will be at the Paint N Play Studio and Gallery that night as I am one of their featured artists that night. PnP will also be hosting an artists reception, open to the public and FREE concurrent to the art walk. Please feel free to stop in and chat with me!

The details on the art walk.

Monrovia Art Festival Association Art Walk

July 28, 2007 6:30Pm to 9:30PM

400-500 Block South Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, CA 91016

Watch Metroblogging for the full blog on the entire Art Walk that is set to run 10AM Friday.