Case Study: Recreating The Art of Sumi-e
Lesson 28 from: Mastering the Art of PhotographyChris Weston
Case Study: Recreating The Art of Sumi-e
Lesson 28 from: Mastering the Art of PhotographyChris Weston
Lesson Info
28. Case Study: Recreating The Art of Sumi-e
Lessons
Class Introduction - Three Steps To Creative Photography
03:48 2Firing The Creative Mind - Part 1: The Camera Points Both Ways
03:10 3Firing The Creative Mind - Part 2: Letting Go Of Judgement
06:53 4Firing The Creative Mind - Part 3: Detaching From Outcomes
04:12 5Practicing Mindfulness In Photography
02:43 6Finding The Visual Narrative
02:39 7Behind-the-scenes: Naples
07:52 8Seeing Beneath The Surface Of Things
02:30Finding Inspiration
03:19 10Slowing Down
03:57 11Three Reasons To Shoot RAW
02:29 12Choosing the Right Frame Format
03:52 13Don’t Be Limited By The Shape Of Your Camera
05:07 14WYSIWYG
04:15 15Choosing Lenses
05:02 16Perspective
02:44 17Considering Foreground And Background
03:10 18Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad But Three Into Two Is Better
03:43 19Separate And Isolate
02:32 20The Art Of Creative Exposure
06:38 21Focus On The Story
04:20 22The Passage Of Time
03:00 23Creating A Visual Sense Of Mood
04:24 24Color vs. Black & White
03:09 25The Decisive Moment
03:00 26Using Color As A Cohesive Tools
01:51 27Photography Is A Two-Part Process
06:55 28Case Study: Recreating The Art of Sumi-e
07:04 29Case Study: Making Something Out of Nothing
04:32 30Case Study: Moody Blues
03:29 31Image Reviews
03:02 32Image Review: The “Thinking Man”
01:55 33Image Review: The Golf Course
02:32 34Image Review: Dreamstate
02:38 35Image Review: Gone Fishing
02:24 36Image Review: Promenade
01:47 37Image Review: Sky and Reflections
01:57 38Image Review: Grass and Field
02:20 39Final Word: Show Me What The World Looks Like To You
04:44Lesson Info
Case Study: Recreating The Art of Sumi-e
So let's start with the underlying story. My artistic aim is to mimic the style of the Japanese art of Senior, a minimalistic but incredibly mindful genre of art that is all about essence over Semblance. Now. In an earlier module, I revealed how I set up the camera to capture the original raw image, which is what you see on screen. Now I'm going to reveal how I process the image so it's ready for delivery to my gallery, starting with the history Graham. This is the original exposure, which, if you remember, was set at plus three stops exposure compensation. That setting was based on my vision to create an image where the white background fell in Zone nine and the white feathers of the birds in Zone eight. So looking at the history Graham, it's pretty close. So that's a good start. Now, before I start work on tone and color, I imagined this set of images as being printed in the square format. And so because they were shot on a standard 3 to 2 format camera, I'm going to use the crop too...
l to crop to a square frame. So I click on the crop tool change aspect ratio from original to one by one, which is a square and then align the frame of the crop. So in this instance, my subject is center frame and click done. Next, I want to look at the white balance now, Although white balance is a color based adjustment, it does affect tone, and that's why I set the correct level before I start using the tone adjustments by default. White balance is set to as shot, and in this case it's pretty close to where I want it. But I'm going to take the eyedropper and click on an area of white snow just for exactness, and you can see it's changed very slightly from just under 5000 Kelvin to just over. And what that's done is remove some of the blue cast from the darker tones, the black feathers and the gray legs. In this case, I don't need to alter tint so I can move straight on to the tone controls. Now, as we saw from the hist a gram, the overall exposure is close to where I want it. But looking at the patch of red on the crown, which is a mid tone red, I'd say it's slightly underexposed, so I'm going to add just a touch of positive exposure. That's enough to place the mid tones at exactly the right exposure point. So now I can work on the light and dark tones, which, after all, make up 99% of the image. My main consideration is too dark tones, which, because I applied plus three stops exposure, compensation in camera and now over exposed. And this highlights the limitations of cameras in that in camera adjustments like exposure, compensation are applied across the whole image and not selectively to certain areas. And that's why we need tools like light Room. So back to the blacks. I've got to potential controls for adjusting the dark tones the shadow slider, which affects tones from mid grey to blacks, and the black slider, which controls just dark grays and blacks. Now, because for this image I want to adjust all the darker tones, I'm going to use the shadow slider and set a negative value, and you can see the feathers now getting back to a correct exposure with no effect on the lighter tones in camera, I exposed the white feathers, so they are correctly exposed. But I want the background whites to be another zone up in the Zone nine. So I'm going to make a slight adjustment just to the background. And I'm going to use the white slider because it affects only the very brightest tones. So that's got the overall tonal range exactly where I want it. Taking the original in camera exposure and fine tuning selective areas of light and dark. But notice in the background. There are some other areas of darker shadow which are caused by the cranes footprints. In my visualized image, the background is a uniform tone, so I need to lose those shadows. First of all, I'm going to add a mask around the main subject. I select the radial filter. I'm going to click on show selected mask overlay so I can more easily position the mask and I draw an oval shaped mask around the crane. I can adjust it for size to get as close as a perfect fit as I can, and change the feather of the mouth. So any adjustments I apply don't result in a hard line with the mask in place. Any adjustments I make now are only applied to the area indicated by red. Now I'll just turn off the mark so I can see the effects of the adjustments I'm about to make, and I want to get rid of these small areas of shadow. So I'm going to take the shadow slider, and this time I'm going to add lots of positive shadow to brighten these shadows as much as possible. Now I'm using the Shadow slider because it doesn't affect any of the light tones. So I'm not brightening the already bright highlights, and this means I'm retaining all the micro detail in the background. But even at its highest setting plus 100 there's still a couple of stubborn shadows. So still, with the mask in place, I'm going to drop down to the D. Hayes Tool, which affects mid tone contrast, and I'm going to drag it across to the left, which is going to reduce the contrast in the background sufficiently to remove the remnants of those shadows that's dealt with the main area of the background. But there's still a few distracting shadows outside the mask in this area directly behind the bird, so I'm going to have to remove these one by one, using another of light rooms, selective tools, the brush talk. So I select the brush. I set an appropriate size. I want to add lots of feather to avoid any hard lines around my adjustments and a medium amount of flow, so I don't need to do too many passes over the offending blemishes. Then I take the brush and being very careful to avoid the bird, I brush over the patches of shadow, and it's important to remember that the only reason I can do this in processing is because I set a correct exposure in camera. All done. I'm pretty close to the final image. But before I finish, I just want to find Tune that patch of color in the Cranes crown, adding a bit of saturation without darkening it. So I'm going to open the H S L toolbox, click on luminescence, and I'm going to set the Red Channel to a mid range value, then click back to saturation and again taking the Red Channel. I'm going to add a small amount of saturation, and here's my final image. Soumaya photography from vision to print. Mhm, mhm
Ratings and Reviews
Gary Hook
Wow, what a wonderful journey. I love the concept of telling a story with one's photos and as I go through past images, I'm seeing them in a much different perspective. That's the good news, The bad? The lost opportunities I never 'saw' before; however that is a good thing. There is so much to internalize with the material so that it can get out of the head and into the 'heart'. I also found the concept really helps me with composition, both in camera and post. Biggest take away, as Chris underscored in his closing, is to slooooow down, take the time and feel it. Don't be so quick to leave one scene as there remain other aspects, yet to be discovered. A great experience that I truly enjoyed Thank you
Glenda
I loved this course - in particular the latter part of it in which he demonstrated how post processing lets you really tell the story of the image. Another fabulous course. Thanks Chris & thanks Creative Live.
Abdullah Alahmari
Thanks a lot to mr. Chris Weston This course is great and It is a 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 course for me. Beside the other course ( mastering photographic composition and visual storytelling) both courses are Complementing to each other and highly recommended.