I am not a professional
photographer but a hobbyist. Still, I
wish my photos look a little professional
though not totally!
I am
interested in shooting landscapes. Shooting landscapes was not easy
earlier. It was always a
disappointment when the sky happened to be in the frame. Yes, the skies almost all the time came dull or
washed-out! It was not purely my fault as the sky looked
like this most of the time and I am sure it hasn’t changed now also. Our eyes can distinguish highlights and shadows
and present to the brain what exactly we see.
But even the most sophisticated digital camera cannot do so. It can either focus on the land or on the sky
and not on both of them at the same time.
Our creator has equipped our eyes
with the best HDR capability!
When you look
into such a landscape picture, your eyes
would go straight to the sky and not to the subject. I tried to strictly follow various
photography rules like ‘rule of thirds‘ and ‘guiding line’ and many other
portraiture techniques direct the eyes
to the subject. But they were of no use
and the eyes would go straight to the dull skies again!
Then I
decided to start my revolt against the boring sky! So, wherever possible I to eliminate the sky itself
while composing the image. In many
situations, I cropped the sky off while post processing.
I did some
research and realized that I could make the sky look natural by using ‘Circular
polarizer filters’. I bought two CP
filters to fit the size of my two good lenses and soon realized that once a CP was
in front of a lens the camera
slowed down considerably and the pictures came out shaky. So, a
good sturdy tripod became a must. Many reviewers on tripods on the internet were
of the view that buying a light low budget tripod would just serve the purse of
not using a tripod at all! Some even
threatened that a light wind would be enough to topple it down with the camera
and send the camera to pieces. They
unanimously recommended the brand ‘Ma………’. The price of their cheapest model
was staggering and came nearly to the actual cost of my camera! Anyway, consoling myself that spending money on a good
tripod was as wise as spending on a good camera; I bought the expensive one.
The tripod proved to be really sturdy and the
pictures just popped out of my camera without any shake! When I fixed my camera on a place on this
magnificent tripod with a big lens, a heavy circular polarizer filter screwed in front of it, plus some more
accessories fitted on different sides of the camera made the whole set lookd
like a rocket ready to be launched!
It was true the
tripod helped the circular polarizers copy the cool blue colour of the skies, but they had a drawback. Yes,
the sky became presentably natural when the focusing was possible only at 90
degrees with the sun! On all other
occasions; the skies were still ‘washed
out’! I was not ready to lay down arms
and accept my defeat. I decided to
replace the dull skies altogether from
my pictures.
There are
Phtoshop techniques to replace the sky and cheat the viewers. I
down loaded as many techniques as I could from the web and bought a
Photoshop instruction books on ‘sky replacement’. The books on photography are as expensive as
books on nuclear science!
I took a lot
of pictures of the sky showing its various natures. There were Blue skies, with clouds, without clouds, dark
skies, skies with the sun setting, moon setting and so forth. Very soon, the ‘sky for replacement’ folder
on my PC got fattened to 2 GB!
The sky
replacement didn’t look unnatural if the horizon was on a straight line. If
there were trees or buildings the
replaced sky overflowed into their edges and the replaced skies looked ‘out of
place’ or ‘unnatural’. This made me philosophical and wondered how
artistically mother nature has blended the whole universe! The moment I showed these pictures to someone
they would immediately say “There is
something wrong with the skies in the pictures. They look different”!
I shot a
beautiful picture of a landscape –unfortunately with a lot of dull washed out
sky in the background. I sat by the computer
and from the Photoshop arsenal I shot one technique after the other and none of
the results was satisfactory. Anyway, before
noon I replaced the sky that looked acceptable. I heaved a sigh of relief.
I sent this
picture to my daughter hoping that she would appreciate the picture. I was careful not to mention to her that I
had the boring sky replaced.
Soon came
her comment : “What a wonderful
sky. It looks magical and looks as if
it was not a part of the landscape. Where is this place?” It was a hard blow. I felt that I could have sent her just the original
picture with the dull looking sky!
It was the
end. I decided to abandon my war against
the sky and decided to surrender. It was
not my fault that the boring skies appeared
out of my camera and it was the camera’s HDR blindness. Yes, from then onwards I decided to keep the
skies as they appeared to my camera and not to me!
Days passed
on and my defeat did not torment me much.
But I was wrong. Somewhere deep
in my subconscious mind a clock had been ticking. A ticking to find a new way to modify the
skies in my pictures. Strange!
Probably, it was this subconscious ticking that did not
prevent
me from searching for easier sky replacing techniques. One day I was online, and a Photoshop tutorial by Divakar was open in front of
me. It was about ‘digital blending’ of
images using luminosity masks. Yes, it was a tutorial on how to get the true
colour of the skies by blending two or more images using luminosity masks. I stopped all my other works, ate less,
slept less and I went on tirelessly learning about luminosity masks and how to create
them. Shortly, I made my own set of
luminosity masks in my computer and was
getting ready to test sky colour
improvement. Perhaps it might have ended up as the last attempt in my life, if
that also had failed.
I started my
first work on a boring sky and within a couple of minutes VIOLA! There was the natural looking sky where once was a dull, boring sky staring at me! My joy and exclamation over my victory was in
no way lesser than that of Archimedes who once ran along the streets of Greece
shouting “Eureka, Eureka!”.
The real colour of the sky - I saw! |
