Rick Sammon's Evolution of an Image

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Creative Photographic Process

Rick Sammon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138657458
• eBook ISBN: 9781317219781
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Digital Media

Rick Sammon's Evolution of an Image illustrates the creative photographic process from start to finish. In this book, Canon Explorer of Light Rick Sammon pulls back the curtain to prove that creating amazing photographs is a well-thought-out process that involves several stages.

Comprising 50 case studies that examine photographs taken by Rick around the world in a wide variety of shooting situations, Evolution of an Image shows the power of creative thinking, getting it right in the camera, and the careful use of image processing using Lightroom.

By including his outtakes— and the reasons that he considers them outtakes— Rick suggests the steps that every photographer should take in order to improve their images. Combining technical advice with tips on lighting, composition and using Lightroom, this book will motivate and encourage those looking to evolve as creative photographers and digital darkroom artists.

Key features include:

• More than 200 before-and-after photographs

• Fully illustrated sections on wildlife, seascape, landscape, scenic, action and people photography

• Screen grabs showing Rick's Lightroom adjustments

• Suggestions on working in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom as well as Adobe Photoshop

• Special section on Rick's "Sammonisms," or quick tips on getting the best in-camera image

• Advice on evolving as a photographer

• Inspirational photographs from Provence, the Palouse, Kenya, Antarctica, Iceland, Alaska, Mongolia, Myanmar, Colorado and more

Part I
Examples

Wildlife

All in the Family

From Snapshot to Great Shot

Location Maasai Mara, Kenya

Goal Turn a snapshot of a magical wildlife encounter into a photograph that brings back a wonderful memory.

Thought process Knowing that I could correct the exposure in Lightroom, I took a quick snapshot of the high contrast scene.

Behind-the-Scenes Story

THE MAASAI MARA is a magical place. As you drive across “The Mara” in your safari vehicle, wildlife encounters are everywhere, but not all wildlife encounters make for great photographs. That’s where the magic of digital image processing comes into play.

Late one afternoon, not too far from our camp, we encountered a small herd of elephants. It was a perfect scene: The elephants were in the foreground, close to our safari vehicle. The sky was filled with dramatic clouds. The trees in the background gave a sense of scale to the scene.

All those elements created layers in the scene, and layers add a sense of depth to a two-dimensional image.

The elephants were on the move, so I shot quickly. My straight-out-of-the-camera shot shows the strong contrast range of the scene.

My Favorite Shot

I took fourteen photographs of the elephants that afternoon, as you will see below in the outtakes. The opening image is my favorite for several reasons: I like the way the third elephant from the left is looking directly at me, I like the way the elephant on the far left is holding its trunk, and most of all, I like the way the photograph shows all the adult elephants surrounding and protecting the baby elephant near the center of the frame.

Basic Big Sky Photography Tips

Every photograph has one main element: light. Break that down into sub elements and we have highlights and shadows, which comprise contrast.

When I take a single photograph, I always expose for the highlights (the white clouds in the sky in this case). That’s because if the highlights are overexposed by more than an f-stop or so, they are impossible to rescue in Lightroom or Photoshop.

To ensure a good single exposure, especially when the sky fills most of the frame, I recommend shooting with your highlight alert and histogram showing on your camera’s LCD monitor.

Exposing for the highlights in this case produced an image in which we can hardly see the small herd, an extended family, of elephants in the foreground. That was actually not a problem, because I knew I could bring out all the detail in the shadow areas in Lightroom, without losing detail in the sky.

You’ll notice that I mentioned a “single” exposure. If nothing is moving in the scene, you can take a series of photographs for a high dynamic range (HDR) image, which I cover in the As Time Goes By chapter.

Image Processing Technique

In Lightroom, the first step was to open up the shadows. That was a fast and easy process thanks to the Shadow slider. I moved it to the right until I could see the animals’ faces. If I had needed to rescue some highlights, I could have moved the Highlight slider to the left, and maybe the Whites slider to the left, as well.

Now it was time to create a much more dramatic image. I thought Nik’s Silver Efex Pro, the black-and-white plug-in that I use and recommend, would do the trick.

To access Nik from Lightroom, you follow these steps: From the menu bar select Photo > Edit In > Silver Efex Pro.

After clicking OK, a dialog box opens. I recommend selecting Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments, so your adjustments are included—if you want them included, as I did in this case.

In Silver Efex Pro, I chose Full Dynamic Range and then slightly boosted the contrast.

The sky was perfect, and I could clearly see the elephants. The evolution of my image was complete… or so I thought.

I wanted to darken the edges of the image, so I thought going to Nik Color Efex Pro and selecting the Darken/Lighten filter would do the trick. By default, the last filter you select in Nik shows up when you reopen the plug-in. I had used Glamour Glow on a previous image, so that filter was applied to my image. What a wonderful surprise. I loved how the filter softened the image for what I felt was a more creative effect.

The point here is: Experiment with plug-ins and filters. You never know when a filter, such as Glamour Glow (intended mostly for portraits) can look good on an image, even a wildlife image.

Outtakes

Here is the screen print of my fourteen images. In each image, the elephants are in slightly different positions. Because position is important, in situations like this one, I recommend taking a lot of photographs.

Unexpected Shot

As I mentioned, the opening image was my unexpected final image from this shoot. Play with plug-ins and awaken the artist within.

Closing Thought

When it comes to outdoor photography, the sky plays a key role. Compare this photograph, taken on a beautiful, sunny day, to the opening image. It’s basically the same scene: elephants in the foreground, landscape in the background and lots of sky. The difference: the clouds. Shoot on days when the dramatic clouds fill the sky and you’ll get dramatic images.

Postscript

These are some of the same elephants that you see in the opening image. In this photograph they had moved on to a different location.

I applied Silver Efex Pro/Full Dynamic Range and Color Efex Pro/Glamour Glow, but as you can see, the sky is not as dramatic. That’s because the clouds were not as dramatic.

I include this example to illustrate an important point: If you follow my processing techniques and your sky does not look as dramatic, a less dramatic sky is probably the reason.

But I still wanted a more dramatic image. To add some drama to the image, I added a Vignette (to darken the edges) and Image Border in Nik Color Efex Pro. The idea here is that an image keeps on evolving.

I know if the photograph looked brighter, you’d be better able to see the elephants. I intentionally created a darker image to add a sense of mystery to the scene… following the old photo adage, “If you destroy the mystery in a photograph, you destroy the photograph.” Of course I don’t always follow that philosophy, but it is something to keep in mind when processing your images.

Here is the original file from which I made the preceding image.

Tech Info for Opening Image

Camera Canon 5D Mark III

Lens Canon 24–105 mm IS lens

Camera settings

• Autofocus—because I wanted to shoot fast;
• High frame rate—to capture the subtle differences in the position of the elephants;
• ISO 400—due to low light; f/6.3—for good depth-of-field; 1/640 second—to stop the movement of the elephants.

Pride of the Mara

Capture Animal Behavior

Location Maasai Mara, Kenya...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Few Words About Rick
• Preface—Sammonisms
• Introduction—The Evolution of a Photograph and a Photographer
• A Quick Guide to Using This Book
• PART I Examples
• Part II The Photoshop Advantage
• Epilog: Follow Your Heart: Evolving as a Photographer and Digital Darkroom Artist
• Author Biography
• Acknowledgements
• Index